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2025-05-28
With Permission of Silence
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by Neil Godfrey
2025-05-21
How Did We Get Here? (Part 3) Are Democracies “Vile”?
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by Tim Widowfield
The first eight words in the alleged quotation below by James Madison, below, are false.
Here’s what Madison said about democracy:
Democracy is the most vile form of government . . . democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. [The text in boldface is pure fiction.]
The Founders just didn’t trust the ordinary people and deliberately kept them at arm’s length, as can be seen from the way they drafted the Articles of Confederation and then the U.S. Constitution. (Arnheim 2018, p. 25)
Certain conservative authors insist these words from James Madison prove that the framers of the U.S. Constitution distrusted ordinary people and hated democracy. The above example comes from Michael Arnheim (Ph.D., ancient history) who is, according to the editors of the “for Dummies” series, “uniquely qualified to present an unbiased view of the U.S. Constitution.” (Arnheim 2018, back cover)
Uniquely qualified?
Dr. Arnheim provides no citation for the Madison quote, but you can find the true part in Federalist 10. Since so many versions and editions of the Federalist Papers exist, I’ll cite paragraph numbers rather than page numbers.
Before continuing, however, please be aware that the mischief does not begin and end with the fictional denigration of democracy. Conservatives will often, as Arnheim does, neglect to define the term, knowing that modern readers will conflate the common term “representative democracy” with Madison’s “pure democracy.”
We shouldn’t discuss terms like “constitution,” “republic,” and “democracy” as if they were simple English words. In the context of government, or in this specific case — a history of the U.S. Constitution — these are terms of art. We need to know how the authors at the time defined these terms in order to deal with them honestly. Fortunately, Madison et al. often gave perfectly concise definitions of the terms at hand. On the subject of democracy, he wrote: Continue reading “How Did We Get Here? (Part 3) Are Democracies “Vile”?”
2025-05-13
Trump Is the True Face of American “Democracy”
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by Neil Godfrey
The mask has been cast aside; the neoliberal suavity of the Bidens and Obamas, when pulled away, shows the reality that has been at the core of American foreign policy and capitalism and propaganda all along. But its true face is hideous, so all of us who have all their lives been so enamoured and dulled by the pretence of “freedom” and “human rights” protest in horror, aching for the mask of reassuring illusion to be brought back.
Trump’s barefaced vulgarity – his outright disregard for even the most basic norms of human decency – is, in its own way, refreshing.
I much prefer it to Obama’s sleek duplicities and fake sincerity, beneath which he advanced some of the most vicious imperial designs imaginable – including the hyper-militarisation of the Israeli settler colony – far more effectively than Trump ever could.
Trump’s thuggish demeanour is, in fact, quite liberating.
I read the article that expressed much (not all) of what I have been thinking lately — and it gave me the small leg-up I needed to post again, at least for now:
Dabashi, Hamid. 2025. “Why US Liberals Refuse to Acknowledge That Trump Is a Homegrown Dictator.” Middle East Eye. May 12, 2025. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-liberals-refuse-acknowledge-trump-homegrown-dictator-why.
It says almost everything that has been hammering away at me these past few months:
Trump is too obvious, too crass, too vulgar an imperialist. Their first instinct is to disown him as an anomaly. He looks like a Latin American dictator, an African despot, an Oriental tyrant, or a Russian czar.
. . . . He cannot possibly be American. Except he is – more than any of them – representing 77,284,118 Americans just like him, who eagerly rushed to vote him into power.
This is a bizarre intellectual malady on full display in the US, where badly defeated and demoralised liberals refuse to acknowledge that Trump is a 100 percent American phenomenon.
He is a homegrown dictator with unabashed fascistic proclivities, barely able to contain his urges, and surrounded by equally 100 percent American sycophants – worse than any clown or court jester ever conjured from their Orientalist imagination.
. . . . This is all American. “Made in America.” It is not an import. They are making America great again!
. . . . If there is any context for Trump, it is the long and recent history of European fascism – from Hitler and Mussolini to Franco, and now all their heir-apparent lookalikes: Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, ad nauseam.
. . . . Much closer to Trump are Hitler, Mussolini and Franco – even closer still are the exposed fascistic roots of American so-called democracy.
Go there: go to the roots of America’s claim to democracy, and you will see fascism staring you down.
This is Trump doing exactly what he always said he would. And what he does is backed by his claim to represent the will of the American majority.
And then Hamid Dabashi comes to the raw nerve at the centre of how all this works:
But here is the heart of the paradox: this is not merely the rule of the majority, but the tyranny of the majority – a term made potently insightful by Alexis de Tocqueville in his two-volume diagnosis of the malice and maladies of American democracy, Democracy in America (1835-1840).
The more liberal Americans detest him, the more I appreciate his having exposed the true face of America – unvarnished, with the thick democratic lipstick they have plastered over their tyrannical pigs now smeared and exposed for all to see.
But such characterisations should not descend into ad hominem name-calling. Presidents and other leaders become symbolic, allegorical of the nations that elect or tolerate them.
So it is with American presidents. What do they represent? Who gave them the authority to do what they do? The majority of the electorate, of course. And that majority is the point.
Hamid Dabashi goes on to address a core malignity that Alexis de Tocqueville identified almost two centuries ago: the tyranny of the majority, “or what is perceived to be the majority”. European monarchs had the power to control the lives of their subjects but never their minds. I have written about this a number of times over the years. One book I found of special interest because it detailed the way British and American propaganda had cast its pall over Australia — see, for example, the series of posts on Alex Carey’s Taking the Risk Out of Democracy.
[Tocqueville] wrote: “In America, the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever steps beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fe, but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy.”
That “daily obloquy” is now called doxxing – a vicious act of intimidation perfected by genocidal Zionists against anyone who dares cross the boundaries of manufactured consent that cast Israel as God’s gift to humanity.
. . . . Propaganda organs of liberal imperialism – of the gaudiest and most dysfunctional sorts – like The New York Times, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal define the boundaries of acceptable discourse.
There may be no visible chains, but the restraints operate through moral and intellectual pressure, daring any would-be dissenter to defy them and speak out.
Tocqueville observed that American “democracy” enslaved the mind, leaving the body to feel free. European despots could only attack a person’s body, but their minds were free and they were able to rise against those despots.
What defines the American predicament is this: how is the opinion of the majority – and thus its unyielding power – manufactured and sustained?
Three ways: through general elections, periodic polling, and, above all, through dominant media outlets.
These institutions manufacture the illusion of majority opinion by demonising critical thought, and by normalising compliance, acquiescence, and subdued fatalism in the face of a cruel fate too deeply internalised to even be recognised.
That is democracy in America.
The article concludes with an editorial disclaimer: The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
They are also my views. I would add one more area not addressed, and one that has been hammering away inside me for some time now, especially since our recent observance of Anzac Day (Australia’s annual day to remember the war dead and war veterans). Why did we — Britain, Australia, the US and the rest — go to war against Germany and then Japan? Why? I had been reading of Japan’s efforts after World War 1 to persuade America, Australia, Britain and France to formalize “racial equality” through the League of Nations that was being nutted out at the time. “We” — our leaders — point blank refused Japan’s request. How was it that whole nations felt such moral outrage that they were prompted to declare war in 1939? How could whole nations be of one mind over an attack on Poland — yet those same nations not feel the slightest twinge of upset over the massacres of Palestinians today? It doesn’t make sense. What is it that has made it unthinkable that anyone among the World War 2 allied nations should question the righteousness of that “war against nazism”? What will future generations, looking back, identify “what it was really all about”?
There was one glimmer of a moment when I really believed, with a little relief and pride, that the Australian government had actually stood up to Indonesia in order to defend the East Timor from invasion. One journalist, John Pilger, at the time wrote cynically that Australian policy was being motivated by the hopes of gaining control of East Timor’s off-shore oil reserves. That was going too far, I and many others thought. Pilger is too much of a lefty, so cynical, he cannot see situations clearly — only through his ideological bias. I was disappointed in Pilger. Years later we learned that Australia had indeed been spying on East Timorese government deliberations and did indeed use their information to demand control of the off-shore oil fields. How easy it was for me and my associates to be swept up in false propaganda myth of our nation fighting for liberty of the oppressed.
(A few days ago I watched an old documentary about how German forces treated peoples they occupied in the 1940s. In response to “terrorist” partisan attacks on them, the German army would slaughter women, children, elderly in villages from where the partisans had come. I would not dare suggest anything similar is happening in the world today among our “friends and allies”, on a far larger scale and not even hidden ….., no?)
2025-05-11
Delay in Vridar blog posting…. another reason
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by Neil Godfrey
This year I resumed full time studies. I am currently engaged in a preparatory year to undertake a Master of Ancient History degree — hopefully next year. It is too early to say whether I will continue with doctoral studies after that.
Studies so far have taken me away from biblical topics, but that’s been very useful. Already I have a wider grasp of different approaches and standards among classicists, a point I will be able to use in future discussions about biblical scholarship. Especially useful has been formal instruction in learning ancient Greek, especially being alerted to the various dialects and differences that sometimes arise between reading literary texts and reading inscriptions. Already so many questions I had after grasping some very basic self-taught competence have been answered.
Hopefully I will find time to post once in a while in the meantime.
2025-05-03
“That’s what it means to be a Jew” — interviewing a West Bank settler
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by Neil Godfrey
I transcribed a portion from Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, The Settlers, where he is interviewing Ari, from Texas, now a West Bank settler….
After recalling previous discussions about Ari’s view of the importance of Jewish presence in “the biblical land of Israel” . . . .
Theroux: 50:22 Are you saying that you see Israel as playing a role for modelling a new kind of nationalism, is that right?
Ari: 50:30 I think all that’s happening in the world right now is leading us as a nation to open our eyes to who we are. We are the tip of the spear fighting the battles of America and defending the entire Western world, and not just the Western world – anyone who wants any semblance of liberty and freedom in their lives.
Theroux: 50:52 Nevertheless, there are millions of people up and down the area, Arabs, Muslims, who aren’t living free right now. They’re enclosed without the same rights, without national self-determination, and in many respects feeling besieged, and I just wonder, do you see that?
Ari: 51:10 I don’t have tremendous compassion for a society that has an unquenchable, genocidal, theological, blood-lust. It’s like a death cult.
Theroux: 51:23 It’s easy with a danger with that kind of characterization of Palestinians to define them as eliminationist, and hateful, and genocidal, … are those the words …?
Ari: 51:32 Yes, I use the word death cult.
. . . . that then permits you to almost create a mirror image of that . . . .
Theroux: 51:35 It’s a death cult… that that then permits you to almost create a mirror image of that, that you say, well, if they want to do that to us, then we need to do that to them.
Ari: 51:45 I think that when you’re living amongst people who have perpetually proven, not only by word, but by deed, that they want your blood spilled in the streets, that they want to murder your children, that they want to slay all of you, kill all of you in the most horrific genocidal way — That all of the polls showed after October 7, that these people who you continuosly call the Palestinian people – that I reject the very premise that they are actually a real nation for a lot of reasons, I mean….
Theroux: 2:15 But the millions of people who have nothing to do with October 7, who actually would just like to live free full lives
Ari: 52:24 If that’s really what they wanted they would have had it a long time ago. They want to wipe Israel off the map. They want every last Jew dead.
Theroux: 52:32 So what’s the answer?
Ari: 52:33 The answer is for us to declare sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and all of the land of Israel, and Gaza, and to settle Gaza and all Judea and Samaria with Jews in the land of Israel.
Theroux: 52:50 Did the question annoy you?
Ari: 52:52 Annoy me? I hear it so often. And it feels like it’s being addressed again and again and again. Even if the entire world is pointing accusing fingers and gnashing their teeth in rage and anger, we know the righteousness and the truth of our cause, even if we stand alone. That’s what it means to be a Hebrew. That’s what it means to be a Jew. If we know the truth of our cause that’s all we need.
2025-05-02
It’s Still Hard to Post — But Let’s Support Wikipedia
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by Tim Widowfield
Like Neil, I’ve found it almost impossible to write anything right now. When I try to write about something “important,” I feel unable to move. On the other hand, when I consider writing something “normal” (like a series on translating Mark, which I’ve been planning), it feels frivolous.
We are in seriously dark times. Of course, we’ve always lived in dark times; it’s just that the darkness mostly lay outside our borders, out in our colonial empire, out in the world we dominate. I’m particularly conscious of the darkness now, as I’m reading The Myth of American Idealism, a recently published book by Nathan J. Robinson and Noam Chomsky. By the way, that link will take you to Bookshop.org. Using them is a nice way to support local bookstores against the onslaught of the billionaires.
What pushed me finally to touch the keyboard again is the recent attacks on Wikipedia by the fascist Trump regime and the fanatically pro-Israel ADL. You can read details here at Law & Crime. The actual crime Wikipedia has committed is the audacity to tell some of the truth about the genocide in Gaza. It isn’t enough to have unrestricted freedom of action and the unlimited right to control the world militarily (“What we say goes!”). No, all media must also be brought to heel. Freedom of thought consists solely in correct thinking. All else must be silenced.
From the article:
Wikipedia has been criticized by people — including Trump ally and unofficial DOGE leader Elon Musk — as of late for allowing what many have perceived to be “woke” information about current events and topics to be edited in.
Reich Chancellor Musk has decided Wikipedia is unfair to Dear Leader and bad for the Fatherland, and has told his followers to stop donating to them.
Even if you have never supported Wikipedia before, please now consider that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And as our institutions continue to fail us, left and right, we need to support independent media in all its forms.
As soon as I publish this thing, I’m heading over to Wikipedia to drop some dollars.
2025-04-22
Encouraging to hear Trump acknowledging the Pope’s passing . . .
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by Neil Godfrey
2025-04-13
Is it a forgery? How can we know?
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by Neil Godfrey
I came across the following passage when looking into the question of whether a certain letter said to be by a famous ancient Roman woman was a forgery. It reminded me questions that have arisen among those debating whether a passage in Josephus is a partial or complete forgery (e.g. the Testimonium Flavianum — the passage about Jesus), or even whether entire New Testament letters are what they claim to be. The bolded highlighting and formatting is my own.
Also not unproblematic—and burdening the discussion with ambiguity—is the not uncommon tendency to handle the term “forgery” too summarily. The alternative between authenticity and forgery is too crude to capture more nuanced realities. It is also prone to introduce unchecked prejudices. The forger is often regarded from the outset as a bungler whose product reveals itself by its qualitative inferiority. While that is indeed possible and often the case, it need not necessarily always be so. The phrase “palpable rhetorical fabrication,” … is marked by its somewhat disparaging tone and is quite characteristic in this respect. On the other hand, this can lead to a situation where proof of quality is accepted as proof of authenticity—though the one by no means guarantees the other.
Finally, it must be remembered that not every literary fiction necessarily stems from an intentional intent to deceive. One need only point to speeches or letters in ancient historical works—though the same applies to rhetorical school exercises. But when a piece that was originally recognizable as fiction in its original context is removed from that context and transmitted as a fragment, it can then pose for later readers precisely the kind of problem whose complexity is no longer adequately addressed by the oversimplified alternative of authenticity or forgery.
Instinsky, Hans Ulrich. 1971. “Zur Echtheitsfrage der Brieffragmente der Cornelia, Mutter der Gracchen.” Chiron 1:177–90. https://doi.org/10.34780/HNT9-299I. pp 183f – ChatGPT translation
2025-04-07
Hard to post right now
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by Neil Godfrey
It is hard to bring oneself to blog about new things (in historical and biblical studies) that I am learning all the time when every day the news is recallibrating my identity as a citizen of the West.
As a little child I wowed the grownups when I naively asked why everyone was so sad that my great grandfather was dying. Isn’t he going to heaven, I asked. Shouldn’t we be happy? Aww — so innocent!
As a teenager school student I felt it safer not to ask my war veteran elders why it was “us” who declared war on the Axis powers and not the Axis powers on us. And why the fire-bombing of Germany and Japan and snuffing out two cities with atomic bombs? I sometimes wondered if a future generation would look back and see WW2 as a titanic struggle for domination between great powers. Our identity as the liberators of democracy and crushers of fascism was at risk if such questions were taken too far.
Now today we see nothing has changed in the project to control the Middle East. Mass murder is brought into our phones and tv sets daily. The only thing that has changed is the removal of the pretence. It was easier to be deceived when the powers said they were looking for peace and that the ongoing military build up and daily occupation was all about security. Now that pretence is gone and we can see it in all its mind-numbing reality. So our leaders remain silent and criminalize those who attempt to speak out.
We are the bad guys. World War 2 was a contest to see who would dominate the world. We won. The world lost. Yes, there was welcome progress in some areas, and despite the gap between rich and poor increasing that was a good thing. But even Hitler before the war did good things for the German economy and youth welfare. Now I feel like I understand a little how anti-fascists felt living in Germany under Hitler. The difference is the propaganda. Nazi and Soviet propaganda was crude by comparison. In this post I linked to a discussion about the attempt to silence journalists. That was old hat. Today at home they are being hauled before the courts while in the Middle East they are being murdered at scale.
It’s a heavy time. Apologies.
…..
P.S. — added later….
A few days ago there was a great kerfuffle in media, in talk shows, in comedy sessions, among government and political representatives — about a lapse in security involving talk about bombing Yemen. I strained in vain to hear from those talk-fests a word of outrage over the murder of innocent human beings in an apartment building. I can no longer bring myself to listen to some of those programs ever again.
2025-03-26
Israel – Beacon of Western (White) Values in a (Dark) Middle East
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by Neil Godfrey
Western support for Israel, I have heard, is in large measure rooted in an identification with a state that represents our Judeo-Christian heritage, our values. But on to another topic….
From https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-24/truth-yoorrook/105090138
ELIZABETH BALDERSTONE: There’s many historians who’ve written a lot on this and researched in depth the story of what happened here. There were clearly issues and skirmishes between the traditional owners and the settlers and culminated in mid-1843 the murder of a fellow, Ronald Macalister, who was the nephew of a very wealthy pastoralist from New South Wales. In retaliation for the murder of Ronald, it’s understood that a group of settlers known now as the Highland Brigade got together and came upon a large group of Brataualung people camped at Warrigal Creek at the waterhole.
BRIDGET BRENNAN, REPORTER: Historical records are patchy. University of Newcastle researchers now estimate that at least 125 men, women and children were shot dead in a five-day rampage in the area. In 1925, a Gippsland magazine published this anonymous account of the massacre.
MASSACRE ACCOUNT: “Some escaped in the scrub, others jumped into the waterhole, and, as fast as they put their heads up for breath, they were shot, until the water was red with blood… I knew two blacks who, though wounded, came out of that hole alive. One was a boy at that time, about 12 or 14 years old. He was hit in the eye by a slug, captured by the whites, and made to lead the Brigade on from one camp to another.“
The media cheered the war on “the savages”, praising the heroic efforts of the defenders of white Judeo-Christian values. Addressing similar massacres in Queensland….
As he set out for Cardwell, newspapers were still applauding the exploits of this “most indefatigable and energetic officer”. The story of the Hermitage campaign reached Scotland, where the meaning of “prompt justice” had to be spelt out for readers. The Perthshire Journal wrote: “Prompt justice was done to them, and the blood-thirsty cannibals, one and all, bit the dust.” Once in Cardwell, Uhr swiftly won the approval of The Port Denison Times: Our black brethren have been keeping quiet lately, and I have not heard of any depredations having been committed by them; no doubt they have been kept in awe from the fact of our gallant Sub-Inspector and his ‘brave army’ having been amongst us, preventing them from ‘kicking up a row.’ (Marr, Killing for Country, 286)
Newspapers published condemnation of “bleeding hearts” who protested the violence whenever it came to their attention. The protests were too few and isolated. Overall, silence prevailed. Ignorance was a virtue.
Philip Sellheim had tramped the bush with Dalrymple and endeared himself to the Commissioner of Crown Lands by writing to newspapers pouring scorn on city folk who, blind to “the savage character of the aborigines”, were agitating for the removal of the Native Police from the Kennedy: “The pioneer settlers of the north will not tamely allow their risks and arduous labors to be undervalued by any ignorant individual, living in a well-protected township, who, to further his own private ends, perverts truth and risks the lives of his fellow-creatures.” (Marr, 270)
The blacks, of course, killed only out of hatred for the whites, not for any conceivably justifiable reason:
“Psalm-singing hypocrites”, D’arcy called them and returned fire: These men, Mr. Editor, speak without experience, speak as their mind guides them; such is the case now in the moral city of Adelaide. Morality amongst the wild tribes is not known. I thoroughly endorse Mr. Alfred Giles’s sentiments, and say that all the tribes that I have met with—and I have made the acquaintance of a few—nearly always try to force you to take their women as a peace offering, or decoy to get a good opportunity of attack… I could, Mr. Editor, relate dozens of instances where men have been murdered without any cause. (Marr, 381)
Silence, the Enabler
The silence was so pervasive that subsequent generations simply did not know that the massacres had happened. Later scholars would attempt to look into how this country was built and were denounced by the Prime Minister John Howard as creating a negative “black arm” version of history. Still today many cannot bring themselves to believe that their ancestors took this land through genocide.
I was watching a youtube video of a recent episode of the Steven Colbert show. He tackles any controversial topic except one. Though to his credit he did mention the ongoing Gaza slaughter in a sanitized quip: he said something to the effect, “No matter what your views are on the current….” — as if different views were like supporting different sports teams. All equal: just differing opinions that we don’t want to intrude and spoil the show. One more brick in the wall of silence.
I’ve sometimes heard condemnation of Germans in the Nazi era keeping silent though they are said to have known what was happening to Jews who were being transported out of their neighbourhoods. I can understand the thread of deportation making one think twice before speaking out. But the rest of us today…. what excuse is there?
2025-03-03
30 Best Atheist Blogs and Websites in 2025
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by Neil Godfrey
Not really happy about seeing Vridar in the same list as History for Atheists, though. 🙁 Maybe I should take that as reason enough to do more about what I think is an alternative voice to “history”, what it is, how it works — not just for atheists but for everyone, and a counter to both Tim O’Neill (who follows the fallacious methods of theologians) and Richard Carrier (who follows the long outdated positivists).
2025-02-21
A Beginning of Christianity — An Objection; and the Role of Asceticism
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by Neil Godfrey
A possible objection
Traditional attempts to explain Christian origins have had to rely on hypotheses about oral traditions (and more recently memory theory), on hypothetical constructions of long lost Christian-like communities. The letters of Paul have been read by and large at face value, ignoring the scholarship that should warn us that such a reading needs to be justified, not assumed. The gospels have been assumed, through circular reasoning, to be based on historical events. The explanation for Christianity I am proposing (having rediscovered the main conclusions of Roger Parvus via my own route with some prodding by Nina Livesey — though NL limits her case to the letters of Paul) has the advantage of being based on evidence we can see before us in the record. We can point to individuals, specific teachings and a historical context with strong explanatory power.
An immediate objection that comes to mind is that followers of various of these “gnostic” Christianities reinterpreted the same gospels we know in our Bibles. Surely these gospels came first, one might reasonably conclude. As an answer, I turn again to Nina Livesey’s point that the writings and teachings of the various schools were shared and debated among one another. We should also note that the canonical gospels pick up and re-work, re-interpret, teachings of the “gnostic” Christians that came before them. Just one instance of this is John 1:5
The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not grasp it.
Saturninus taught that the unknown father god shone down on the creator angels (including the demiurge creator of Genesis) and those angels attempted but failed to grasp that light. So they decided to create a physical image of what they saw in that light — the first man. I owe that example of John 1:5 being related to the teaching of Saturninus to Simon Pétrement’s A Separate God but SP is assuming that the canonical gospel preceded Saturninus. Another example would be one pointed out by Matthias Klinghardt and Markus Vinzent: Marcion introduced John the Baptist in his gospel to epitomize the ultimate and final prophet of the Old Testament for whom Jesus was the antithesis; the Gospel of Mark and later canonical gospels re-interpreted Marcion’s Baptist to predict Jesus as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. The Gospel of Luke includes a rather pointless scene of Pilate sending Jesus to Herod, only for Herod to return him again to Pilate. I cannot help but wonder if the evangelist is attempting to “answer” other narratives we know about that said it was Herod who crucified Jesus (Justin Martyr, Gospel of Peter). Hence the dialogue went both ways: each school reinterpreting what the others were saying.
Introducing asceticism
Continuing from A Beginning of Christianity? — A Closer Look in Antioch . . . .
Those who taught that the god who created the world was a lesser deity than the “Unknown Father” also taught, understandably, that it is better to live an ascetic lifestyle to avoid as much as possible contamination with the inferior creation. If marriage was an ordinance of the lower creator god, it followed that it was better to avoid marriage if possible. Similarly, the lesser god was responsible for killing, it was better to avoid eating what had been killed.
If ascetic practices went hand in hand with some of the anti-Jewish teachers of the early second century, the rejection of asceticism may be understood as a logical corollary of the opposing teaching that defended the physical creation as the work of the only God.
The author of 1 Timothy 4, on the other hand, defended the Creator God of Genesis as the supreme God, attacking those who, like Saturninus and Marcion, taught the necessity for an ascetic life:
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
My point is that the teaching to avoid marriage and eating meat was part of the package that taught the Jewish Scriptures were the teachings of the “Jewish god” who was responsible for the law, suffering and injustice. The author of 1 Timothy stresses that the physical creation is good, not evil or the work of a lesser deity.
Most scholars deny that 1 Timothy was written by Paul. It was written by a “proto-orthodox” teacher who depicted Paul more in line with his image in Acts than the main letters. If the other letters of Paul were published by the school of Marcion (as per Nina Livesey’s new book) we find pointers to the same teachings, although muted by lines that appeared to contradict them. Opponents of Marcion accused him of deleting these passages but we are entitled to wonder if they had been added. See 1 Corinthians 7 for the discussion of marriage and Romans 14 for abstinance from meat.
It was not only Marcion and Saturninus who are said to have devalued the created world and advocated sexual and dietary asceticism. I hope to discuss others in upcoming posts because of the strong links they appear to have with our New Testament writings. One of these, Elchasai, has been discussed in depth as the founder of the “heresy” attacked in the epistles to the Galatians and Colossians — see the translation of Hermann Detering’s works.
2025-02-20
A Beginning of Christianity? — A Closer Look in Antioch
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by Neil Godfrey
How and when did Christianity begin?
By “independent evidence” I mean sources that refer to the letters other than the letters themselves, such as the Church Fathers Irenaeus and Tertullian of the late second century. If we rely on the letters themselves we might choose to date them by their reference to a ruler of Damascus of uncertain date, most likely first century, and to Paul’s contacts with the original apostles of Jesus. The NT Acts of the Apostles (dated anywhere between the later part of the first century and first half of the second) contains a narrative of Paul’s life but provides no explicit indication that Paul wrote any letters. Scholars have remarked that Acts and the Letters present contradictory impressions of Paul’s beliefs.
We have the New Testament letters of Paul and other apostles. But there is no independent confirmation that these letters existed before the middle of the second century. All the independent evidence points to them being first known among a group of Christians (followers of Marcion) around the 130s or 140s CE. There is no independent evidence that places them any earlier. I recently reviewed and discussed the contents of a new book by Professor Nina Livesey arguing that Paul’s letters originated in a “school of Marcion” around the 130s/140s CE.
We have the four canonical gospels, but again, independent witnesses do not offer us any reason to believe that these existed before the middle of the second century of our era. There are references to Christians in works of historians Josephus and Tacitus but they are either of debatable authenticity or can tell us no more than what was being said in the second century.
We also have what has long been the unfortunately bypassed elephant in the room: How on earth did so many Christian groups arise declaring that Jesus had never been human, some saying he was never even crucified, some proclaiming that his own disciples remained ignorant of what he taught and preached falsehoods, some saying that Jesus came to abolish the law and others saying he came to keep the law more completely, some even saying he called the God of the Jews some kind of devil. None of that makes any sense if Jesus had gathered and inspired followers to proclaim his teachings after his death as the New Testament claims. I can understand modifications to his teachings arising as new situations arose, but not the wholesale divergence of whether he was even human, or whether he worshiped or denounced the God who created the world and gave the law, or whether his immediate disciples spoke truth or lies.
How could such wildly divergent ideas about Jesus have arisen from one of supposedly a number of teachers and prophets attracting followers in first century Palestine?
But what if it all happened the other way around?
What if there first appeared on the scene teachers denouncing the god of the Jews and proclaiming a new and higher god who offered salvation for those who had been led to death and destruction by the God of the Jewish Bible?
Could such a teaching be understood to have arisen in historical times either among Jews themselves or among their would-be friends who happened to be well informed about the Jewish Scriptures?
There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been . . .
I think it can. Indications are that teachers of this kind (declaring the creator God of Genesis and the lawgiver God of Moses to be inferior deities to a higher, hitherto unknown, God who saves rather than kills) arose in the early decades of the second century. That was a time of
- some of the most horrific destructions wreaked by Jews (or Judeans of the time) on pagan temples and on Roman armies
- some of the most horrific mass slaughters of Jews, along with non-Jews, under the emperors Trajan and Hadrian
For some details of the uprisings of the Jews and their consequences in the time of Trajan, see
Why did a transnational revolt, with the Jews at its centre, erupt in 116, capable of seriously challenging the Roman empire, which at that very moment had reached the phase of its greatest expansion? . . . What events, in 115 and then 116 CE, first led to Greek-Jewish clashes in Mediterranean cities, and then caused the Jews to take up arms to destroy every element of pagan culture and religion they encountered in their path? — Livia Capponi: Il Mistero Del Tempio p.18 — translation
Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate . . . Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, “If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health.” — Cassius Dio, 69,14)
- Rebellion of the Diaspora — the world in which Christianity and Judaism were moulded
- The Red Horse of the Apocalypse and Its Rider
For the scale of destruction (of both Jews and Romans) in the Bar Kochba war in the time of Hadrian, see
- The Simon Bar Kochba Rebellion (scroll down to the heading The War)
The bloodshed of these times was on a scale that the war of 66-70 CE never approached. The destruction of the temple primarily involved the destruction of a city. The uprisings and their genocidal consequences in the second century were on a totally different scale.
Such times help to explain the emergence of the devaluation of the defining markers of Jewishness. As Nina Livesey writes,
Events leading up to and following the Bar Kokhba revolt can be understood as influential to the development of Pauline letters. For, the Bar Kokhba period saw not only massive destruction, death, and the removal of the Jewish population from Judaea but also the call for a ban on circumcision and the destruction of Hebrew scriptures? Rulings against the Jewish practice of circumcision and Jewish writings redound in discussions of these themes in texts dated in and around this period. In addition, treatments of Jewish law and circumcision in biblical and non-biblical texts dated to this period reveal a dramatic downward shift in their value. Comparably dismissive and/or derogatory assessments of circumcision and Jewish law do not surface in texts dated prior to the end of the first century. Discussions of the rite of circumcision dated at or after the Bar Kokhba revolt parallel those found in Pauline letters. (Livesey, 202f)
I think we can extend the point beyond the Bar Kochba war and the letters of Paul. The troubles began in the 110s and earliest indicators of teachers denouncing the Jewish Scriptures and their creator-lawgiver deity come from the same period.
The Dialogue, which was probably written shortly before the death of Justin (around 165 CE) (Lohr, 433)
Some historians believe that Book 2 was written during a persecution, that is, under Marcus Aurelius (161-80), because in 2.22.2 Irenaeus writes of persecutions of the just as if they are then going on. Books 1 and 2, then, may have been written before 180. (Unger/Dillon, 4)
Some historians believe that Book 2 was written during a persecution, that is, under Marcus Aurelius (161-80), because in 2.22.2 Irenaeus writes of persecutions of the just as if they are then going on. Books 1 and 2, then, may have been written before 180. (Unger/Dillon, 4)
Our information is scarce, vague and late, so we can only attempt a bare outline. Justin Martyr, apparently writing shortly before his death in 165 CE mentions several early “heretics”, among them Saturninus, whose followers called themselves Christians:
These men call themselves Christians in much the same way as some Gentiles engrave the name of God upon their statues, and then indulge in every kind of wicked and atheistic rite. Some of these heretics are called Marcionites, some Valentinians, some Basilidians, and some Saturnilians, and others by still other names, each designated by the name of the founder of the system, just as each person who deems himself a philosopher, as I stated at the beginning of this discussion, claims that he must bear the name of the philosophy he favors from the founder of that particular school of philosophy. (Trypho, 35.6)
The bishop Irenaeus was writing “before 180 CE” about leaders he understood to be early teachers of “heretical” views around and prior to the 130s CE and also speaks of Saturninus and prefers to arrange the names in a sequential genealogy of teachings.
And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. — Acts 11:26
The successor of Simon [Magus] was Menander, a Samaritan by birth. . . . . Saturninus, who was of Antioch near Daphne, and Basilides got their start from these heretics. Still they taught different doctrines, the one in Syria, the other in Alexandria. Saturninus, following Menander . . . . (Against Heresies, 1.23.5-24.1)
Saturninus/Satornilus/Satorneilos/Satornil
I will use the Latin rendering of the name, Saturninus, but will return shortly to a possible significance of the Greek form. (Irenaeus originally wrote in Greek and would have used one of the other forms of the name.) What is of significance here is the teaching on god and the Jewish law attributed to Saturninus, a figure estimated to have been active in Antioch, Syria, in the 120s CE. Since we have been talking about the establishment of “schools”, with “Christian” teachers following the ways of philosophical schools of the time, M. David Litwa’s comment is of interest:
Eusebius dated Saturninus to the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE). In the same context, the church historian said that Saturninus set up a “school” (didaskaleion), depicting him more as a philosopher than as a religious leader. Nonetheless, we should not exclude the idea that Saturninus’s “school” did double duty as a small, ecclesial formation within a larger network of Christian assemblies in Antioch (among them the networks of Menander and Ignatius, for instance). (Litwa, 77)
If, as seems likely, Saturninus was active at a time of widespread and extreme hostility towards Jews in the eastern part of the Roman empire, the following characterization of his teaching should not be surprising:
Saturninus’s theology . . . expresses a strongly anti-Judaic stance insofar as it openly sought to discredit the Judean deity. . . .
Despite Saturninus’s seeming antagonism toward the Judean deity, he was deeply familiar with Judean scriptures and traditions . . . .
The theological seeds sown by Saturninus bore much fruit. Along with Johannine Christians, Saturninians were among the first to create a strong ideological boundary between their group and competing Jewish (and Christian) circles who worshiped the Jewish deity. Saturninus is the first known Antiochene theologian whose theology derives largely from the exegesis of scriptural texts (with a healthy dose of Jewish tradition). He was determined to revise the book of Genesis. In this revision, Saturninus was the first Christian clearly to identify the Judean god as an angel, one of seven wicked creators. This was a fateful move, proving influential for Marcion . . . . (Litwa, 77f, 82)
The link between Saturninus’s anti-Judaic theology and his historical situation was noted long ago by Robert Grant:
The historical environment of Saturninus was not purely theological. . . It included at least one Jewish revolt against the Romans, in the years 115-117, and perhaps another, in 132—135. Both revolts were disastrous for those who took part in them. Both revolts, as we have already pointed out (see Chapter 1), led radical dualist Jews and Christians to move from apocalyptic toward gnosis, and to reinterpret the Old Testament in a new way. Examining the Heilsgeschichte of Saturninus we shall find that such a reinterpretation is what he is trying to provide. (Grant, 99f — Grant is assuming the traditional first century dates for much of the New Testament literature. I am suggesting that possibly all of the New Testament literature is from the second century.)
Saturninus taught that the world and humankind were created by seven angels, one of whom was the god identified as the creator in Genesis. A higher god had created these angels, including one who was known as Yahweh.
But one of these angels is “the God of the Jews,” and the latter seems to be more important than the others, since Christ came into the world “for the destruction of the God of the Jews and for the salvation of those who believe in him [Jesus Christ].” This is what we read in the Latin translation of Irenaeus summarizing Saturnilus’s doctrine (Adv. haer. I, 24, 2), and also in the Greek text of Hippolytus (Ref. VII, 28, 5). . . . It is almost beyond doubt that for Saturnilus . . . the God of the Jews is the head of the creator angels (d. Irenaeus, I, 24, 4). He can therefore be spoken of as the principal creator.
Thus, according to Saturnilus, the God of the Old Testament is in reality an angel; that is, he is not the true God. As for the reasons that led to the devaluation of this figure, we find them without difficulty in an anti-Judaism and an anticosmic attitude that go much further than those of John. [Unlike the Gospel of John, Saturnilus taught that] Christ came into the world to destroy the God of the prophets and the old Law. . . .
We also learn from Irenaeus’s account that, according to Saturnilus, up to the coming of Christ the demons helped the wickedest human beings, and that this is why Christ came, in order to help the good and destroy the evil and the demons. This seems to mean that the persons in the Old Testament who are depicted as having been prosperous, happy and victorious were in general the most evil, which is to say that the Old Testament depicts men and judges history contrary to the truth; it is to open the door to those Gnostics who declared themselves in favor of the reprobate in the Old Testament. . . . All this manifests an anti-Judaism, or more precisely an antinomianism, a criticism of the Old Testament, that is not found in John . . . (Pétrement, 329f — my bolding)
Roger Parvus proposed the possibility that the Ascension of Isaiah lies behind some passages in our letters of Paul, and that the figure of Paul may be related in some way to Saturninus (compare the Greek form of the name, Sartornilus, with Saulos, the first name of Paul according to Acts):
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 1
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 2
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 3
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 4 / Conclusion – Historical Jesus?
- A Simonian Origin for Christianity? — A few more thoughts
I suspect the 120s are a little late for the revival of interest in a historical prophet crucified by Pilate. The more likely scenario is that a second Joshua (Greek: Jesus; see also the posts on the name of Jesus from a classicist’s perspective) was chosen to overthrow the cult and teachings of Moses. This Jesus came to earth to trick the wicked powers into crucifying him so that the good could be released from the power of death. There was no heavenly crucifixion as some have attempted to argue. The Saviour figure took on the forms of the angels in the respective heavens on his way down to earth in order not to be recognized as he passed by. In the same way he took on the form of a human in order to hide his true identity while on earth.
But if Saturninus was one of the first to expound teachings that came to have a close relationship to our idea of Christianity, they were in time supplanted by a more positive and appealing narrative: a story in which the Jewish Scriptures were not only superseded but fulfilled, or given a radically new meaning. Instead of coming to destroy the law Jesus was said to have fulfilled it, and even have bound up in himself a spiritual Moses, a spiritual Elijah, a spiritual David. This was a time of “the Second Sophistic” in literature, and a time of applying allegorical insights to bring out new meanings in old myths and narratives. A new narrative biography, like those of the philosophers, was composed in our gospels. This new narrative, better than other narratives like the Ascension of Isaiah or tales of demonic creators, could be read as a key to discovering new and “higher” meanings in Scriptures. That narrative thereby acquired the added depth that came from those Scriptures while supplanting the “Jewishness” that those Scriptures had long upheld, but that had proved a failure and a loathing to the world by the apocalyptic events in the times of Trajan and Hadrian. But the story of that new narrative would likely transfer us from Antioch to Rome.
Grant, Robert M. Gnosticism and Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.
Litwa, M. David. Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century CE. London ; New York: T&T Clark, 2022.
Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Lohr, Winrich. “Justin Martyr.” In From Thomas to Tertullian: Christian Literary Receptions of Jesus in the Second and Third Centuries CE, edited by Chris Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter, 433–48. The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries. T&T Clark, 2020.
Pearson, Birger. Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1990.
Petrement, Simone. A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism. Translated by Carol Harrison. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
Unger, Dominic J., trans. St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies Book 1. Ancient Christian Writers 55. New York, N.Y: The Newman Press, 1991.
2025-02-18
Which One Came First? “Gnostic” ideas or “Orthodox” Christianity?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
by Neil Godfrey
This post is a sequel to Not Finding the First Jesus, Look for the Last. What follows assumes one has read that post.
It is the orthodox view that Jesus came in order to fulfil the Jewish Scriptures, but he did so in a manner that defied the expectation that the messiah would conquer the enemies of the Judeans. I have suggested that this view of Jesus arose in a wider context of ideas whereby a Jesus or Saviour figure came to overthrow the works of the Old Testament creator and lawgiver god.
My view is built on Nina Livesey’s argument for Paul’s letters being produced by one of the several “Christian schools” that existed in Rome in the second century. As I pointed out in my previous post, I have found it difficult to understand how the kinds of teachings we associate with “gnosticism” — arguing that Jesus did not have a flesh and blood body, that the Jewish god was evil, that creation itself was evil — arose from what we know of our gospels and letters of Paul. But as per my previous post, I think that the relationship between those “gnostic” ideas and the ideas of orthodox Christianity makes sense if we set orthodoxy as the latecomer.
As Livesey points out, Paul’s letters, arguably critical of “Judaism”, arose at a time when Jews or Judeans were seen as having caused horrific losses to Roman military power in the Bar Kochba war of 132-135 CE and were themselves being severely punished. I would extend the time when Jews (and Jewishness) were widely abhored to the decades before when under the emperor Trajan there were widespread Judean revolts and massacres throughout the eastern part of the empire. (One might compare the widespread loathing of the “troublous” Palestinians – and Muslims – in Israel and the West today.) This was also the time when we see the emergence of “gnostic” or similar types of teachings arguing that the Jewish Scriptures testified to an ignorant (or even evil) god whose rule only promised death.
But there is an argument that “gnosticism” emerged after Christianity. This argument denies that there was any kind of Jewish gnosticism before the gospels and letters of Paul. Edwin Yamauchi pointed out…
A major difficulty in accepting a Jewish origin for Gnosticism is to account for the anti-Jewish use which most Gnostics seem to have made of these elements. The anticosmic attitude of the Gnostics contradicts the Jewish belief that God created the world and declared it good. . . .
Many scholars therefore believe that it was probably through the mediation of Christianity that these Jewish elements came to be used in such an antithetical way. (Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Evidences, 2nd ed, p. 242f)
Then a few pages later,
Gnosticism with a fully articulated theology, cosmology, anthropology, and soteriology cannot be discerned clearly until the post-Christian era. According to Wilson, were we to adopt the programmatic definition of Jonas ‘then we must probably wait for the second century’. Hengel would concur: ‘Gnosticism is first visible as a spiritual movement at the end of the first century AD at the earliest and only develops fully in the second century.’ (p. 245)
Both of these objections fall by the wayside if we place the whole game in the second century. Anti-Jewish ideas are readily understandable in a world that saw Jews as hostile to humanity “and the gods” and deserving of the bloodshed they were suffering. That is, in the times of Trajan (110s) and Hadrian (130s).
The second objection cited above expresses the point I am making: that yes, we are looking at second century developments.
It is not altogether coincidental that scholars who assume a Gnostic background for New Testament documents in some cases also adopt very late dates for these books, because late dates for these documents would make a stronger case for affinities with Gnosticism. Thus Rudolph dates Colossians to AD 80, Ephesians to the end of the first century, and both the Pastoral and the Johannine Epistles to the beginning of the second century. Koester dates the Pastorals to as late as between AD 120 and AD 160. (pp. 192f)
And why does Koester date the Pastorals to the middle of the second century? In large part because it is believed that it would have taken decades for Paul’s first century church assemblies to have evolved into the authoritarian episcopal structures that those letters indicate. But as Livesey has pointed out in her recent book, the “home gathering” situations of the letters is a rhetorical device aimed at building a sense of community among readers. They are not documenting a historical situation.
There is no independent evidence that dates any of our New Testament writings earlier than the middle of the second century. Yamauchi acknowledges that a second century date for the gospels and letters would make the possibility of a “pre-Christian” gnosticism more likely. I think the argument goes beyond mere chronological ordering of sources, though. That returns me to the point I was making in my previous post.
In coming posts I may (as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s) post notes on various teachers who appear to me to have preceded (proto-)orthodox Christianity and whose followers appear to have engaged with the new gospels and Pauline writings.