I am expecting this year to enter a master’s program researching the historical origins of our canonical Christian literature. The thesis I have discussed with a potential supervisor is the evidence for their composition as late as the mid to late second century. So it was with mixed feelings that I read Robert Vipper’s 1946 Russian study that in many ways coincided with the very thesis that I had been developing in recent years.
I was first very pleased with his explanation of his approach to historical sources. Yes, he applies the same methods that historians in non-biblical or non-theological studies take for granted. He sees right through the circularity of most biblical scholars taking the narratives of the gospels and epistles at face value (or at least that they are attempts, however mythologized, to rely on some historical core), without any independent controls to test their character as source material. That’s been a “hobby horse” of mine for some years now. I am in step with his method of testing and evaluating the sources. (I pull back a little, however, on his positivist view of historical analysis — that is, Marxist-Hegelian interpretation of “laws” of historical development. Though I was intrigued by his conclusion that Christianity as we would recognize it began more as a movement led by the reasonably well-to-do members of society. All of that is another discussion for another day.)
I said I had mixed feelings. One of them was feeling humbled in having to acknowledge that others (or at least Vipper) have long ago paved the main path I have been traveling on. But that is also reassuring. Vipper identifies the horrific calamities inflicted on the Judeans not only in the war of 66-70 but even moreso with the massacres under Trajan and Hadrian as being critical factors in the emergence of what we think of as conventional Christian literature. Where he has gone on well ahead of what I had been thinking, though, is that he finds as much explanatory power in the post-Hadrianic period: that is, the “enlightened” flavour of the times under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He even points to Plutarch’s “parallel lives” (published much earlier) as having a significant influence on the gospels. That’s an idea I attempted to explore a long time ago and Vipper tempts me to revisit that possibility.
Other encouraging points in common:
- The original view of a suffering and crucified messiah was not that it took place in heaven but that it was originally an abstract or mystical act beyond space and time. In the second century we see various efforts to transfer this idea into a real place and setting in history.
- Justin Martyr (mid second century) does not know the canonical gospels
- The Epistle of Barnabas is a “pre-gospel” text
Other hypotheses that surprised me:
- The Shepherd of Hermas and The Didache are pre-Christian writings (or at best “proto-Christian”)
- Jesus was a minor deity among Jewish associations prior to Christianity. Here Vipper points to some of the stronger arguments of W.B. Smith.
All of the above is found in
- Vipper, Robert Iu. Vozniknovenie khristianskoi literatury
(Возникновение христианской литературы)
[The Emergence of Christian Literature]. Moscow: Nauka, 1946.
The other work I have translated
Vipper, Robert Iu. Rim i rannee khristianstvo
(Рим и раннее христианство)
[Rome and Early Christianity]. Moscow: Izdatelʹstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954.
Here Vipper explores in more detail the historical background from which Christianity emerged in the later second century. Given recent discussion here on the letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan about Christians, some readers will find Vipper’s chapter on that letter of interest.
Both translations are accessible via a new page I have created. Robert VIPPER (Wipper) – Works Translated into English Check the right margin of this blog.
