A book on first and second century Christian communism using David Graeber's work

I agree with a lot of what you are saying about the cynics as we are on really flimsy ground with them as what we do have very much second hand stuff.

However as Celsus tell us JC did actually go to Egypt as according to him an economic migrant worker.

And there were cynics in Alexandria in the first century.

As to Jesus not knowing Greek philosophy isn’t the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 a Democritus ‘pun’ re truth lies at the bottom of a deep well that you draw out?

Bit of another point re eating people.

Does anyone know the origin of ‘food for thought’ and ‘thirst for knowledge’ and is it an ‘idiom’ in other languages?

Hi Rommon

I have had my personal internet book buying private secretary order your book for me.

She rang me up a few days ago to tell me that it costs about £15.

She was concerned that I may have been drunk when I emailed her to get it for me.

My ceiling is normally £10, for second books, and I prefer to borrow from libraries.

You should feel justifiably flattered.

For others on cynic thing it has been extensively well covered by academics with books written on it and books written about the books.

The arguments end up being quite simple.

The anti cynic influence people will say something like; Greek cynicism appeared to die out around 100BC and revived suddenly in the late first century with reports of large numbers of ‘Greek cynics’ in the urban centres of the eastern portion of the Roman empire.

So; JC wasn’t interacting with urban centres being a rural peasant and all that.

The urban Greek cynic revival was post 50AD and thus post JC.

And maybe Palestine etc wasn’t Hellenised then either.

And some of the kind of the supposedly weird cynic sounding stuff in the gospel was already present in ‘Jewish Wisdom’ documents.

And there is no contemporary evidence of Greek cynicism in the first century Judea literature.

There is a bit of hyprocrisy here as we are onto the absence of evidence being evidence of absence which is what the Richard Carrier school use to deny the historicity of JC.

The Christian apologists will say absence of evidence doesn’t mean the evidence of absence when it comes to the historicity of JC.

But will say the of absence of evidence is the evidence of absence when it comes to cynic influence.

There is also a bit of straw manning,

So you get from some a hypothesises that maybe there was an influence or fusion of Greek cynic type ideas.

And they respond with an argument, that has not been made, that JC was not a Greek Cynic.

Actually the whole thing is a problem for a ‘Marxist’ because we are not supposed to believe in the primacy of the ‘influence’ of ideas in the first place, which more Hegelian Idealism.

That is that some clever bod comes up with a good idea, out of his head, which is so good that other people accept it and it spreads just because it good cerebral idea.

And we have a cerebral and philosophical human progression of enlightenment.

[You could make the case that some sections of ‘natural philosophy’ does that like theoretical physics and cosmology in the sense that it is science for science sake and of no practical use.]

But for us new ideologies are more about re-orientating modes of thought to deal with and make sense of new material realities.

So then we come across something more sensible in this anti cynic debate called ‘parallelism’ or ‘parallelmania’.

Or in other word just because you may have something similar in Greek cynicism to gospel stuff it doesn’t mean one influenced the other.

Anymore than the Russian Mir communists influenced the Scottish Saint Kilda ones, or the other away around.

Or in other words, from my potential hypothesis, certain economic conditions in the first century Roman empire produced an ideological reaction from expropriated self employed peasants etc.

That took similar forms in different groups, that only differed in their religious paraphernalia.

So a ‘Greek’ becomes a Cynic and a ‘Jew’ becomes a Christian.

So you get it in scientific methodology.

An increase in one thing and a correlated increase in another; and bad science pre supposes that one is causing the other.

Rather than a ‘hidden’ third thing is producing both the observable phenomena.

When you look at the revelation according to John it reads like a theological Maoist Shining path- red brigade stuff.

But no one would suggest that the one influenced the other.

If all that stuff about burning Rome written in 69AD was part of the previous Christian ideology I am little surprised that Nero blamed them for it.

Like they blamed Bin Laden for 9/11.

Contra Celsum by Origen

On "True Discourse," as Celsus has entitled it; probably written at the pagan intellectual centre at the Celsus library at Ephesus

Book one

CHAP. XXIX.

Karl Marx

The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

Difficulties Concerning the Identity Of the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/ch03.htm

Democritus is or was generally regarded as an atheist or Epicureuan which makes the woman at the well thing doubly amusing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/history/ancient.shtml

the passage is also a rosseta stone for unlocking other boxes in the gospel.

Hi Rommon

I am really glad you are back

I wasn’t complaining about the price of the book just the idea of paying £15 for them.

I think when it comes to this kind of thing you need start with a hypothesis, or one of a series and then test them.

I think Celsus can be taken as seriously as Joesphus; they both had their bias and agenda’s etc but we know what they are so that can help.

They were both reporting on ‘things’ that happened a hundred or years or so before them.

And there was an interesting rational ‘dialogue’ about how you could be sure anything had actually happened.

[That made me think as they didn’t have a print media, photography and the internet etc. I think it was the dove thing or maybe one of the talking cloud stuff where there appeared to be some kind of ‘internal logical contradiction’ in the gospel version.

Celsum pulled apart the gospel stuff including contradictions in the reports of the crucifixion narrative, as well as how JC fell for the old crucifixation feeling thirsty, here have a suck on this.]

And these documents could be bonkers eg Josephus in claiming that emperor Vespasian was the one that would be the king of kings who would emerge from Palestine to rule the world as prophesised in the old testament etc.

[The Romans quite liked the old testament as an old book and we all like the Nostradamus type stuff even today.]

Although contra celsum is more interesting in that it we have two antagonists discussing a ‘history’.

My Hypothesis is that Celsum’s true doctrine was in fact a compilation of separate anti Christian documents re written and strung together into a continuous document at the Celsus library.

[Celsum appears to have a political and ideological multi personality disorder when attacking Christianity as he attacks it from mutually exclusive ideological positions.

Eg Pagan one moment, Judaic the next and then an atheist epicurean.

Origen the christain is all too aware of that and frequently is heard banging his fist on the table over it before carrying on.]

However for all that “he” seems an intellectual and I think it is reasonable that they both Origen and Celsum had access to material around 200 AD that we don’t have now.

It is interesting in what Origen doesn’t deny or just moves on; like the physical description of JC himself.

For the historicity of Jesus thing it is relevant I think that despite throwing everything at JC the one thing Celsum doesn’t do is challenge that he existed.

As origen quoted celsum saying Mary was a whore who had sex with a roman soldier from which JC was the product; I think we are safe in saying if Celsum had said JC didn’t exist we would have heard about that as well.

It would have been fantastic for us if he had.

It wouldn’t have disturbed the integrity of Celsum’s argument to have said that JC didn’t exist after describing what he looked like.

It is even obvious in gospel stuff and Paul that JC had brothers and sisters eg James although the catholics have tried to bury it.

The is some very old Christian material that has Joseph as a widower with a brood who takes in or marries a young and pregnant mary.

It is in some of the infancy gospels.

I seem to remember one has James? leading the donkey back with pregnant Mary on it and one of Joseph’s daughters acting as midwife at the birth in a cave.

They used caves carved out of soft rock as stables as they still do and it was common practice for women to birth in the cave stables often attached homestead farms for hygiene and privacy reasons etc etc.

Justyn the Martyr circa 150AD has JC born in a cave and it appears elsewhere.

The stuff about the roman soldier as the father, possibly rape or prostitution would have been really offensive in Roman occupied Palestine eg german occupied France in the 1940’s etc.

CF monty python Life of Brian.

This could have been anti Christian judiac mud slinging.

It existed in 6th century anti Christian Judiac material.

There is a debate as to whether it pre dated that or they were plagiarising celsum’s true doctrines.

The Christians in the 6th century, feeling a bit more secure, preserved it as a justification for anti Semitism against lying slanderous ‘Jews’.

On;

And that he only took the parts of Cynic philosophy that we also find plenty of precedent in the Hebrew Tradition.

I think there is some thing whacky and in common re the the method of thought in the gospel stuff and cynicism.

I actually started off with a Buddhist-gospel thing.

I have done Buddhism.

Then I think I see the same kind of alien to western thought thing in cynicism.

But I am ok with the idea of Buddhism influencing cynicism and Judaic thought; although I am not up to speed of this ‘Jewish Wisdom’ stuff.

Thus it is possible that that kind of stuff, parallel and similarity is another thing having an influence on both.

Perhaps it is no accident that cynicism with Diogenes is contemporary with Alexander just back from India.

As to the content of the gospel documents and John I am trying be where Christians “are at” and taking it from there as basically a valid un-interfered with record.

The platonic word was made flesh thing was obviously a philosophical intrusion and prologue.

Although I still ‘like it’, Rosa did a good take on it and used it when the international Marxists all joined the let the workers kill each other.

I thought it was funny.

On Jesus going to Egypt I don’t know how locked in your are into the Matthew nativity narrative etc.

I mean how long he could have stayed there and how old he could have been there as a child labourer when he came back?

According to the infancy gospel of Thomas? JC as young child was doing the old magic trick of turning mud into birds; which is part of the few patchy references to JC in the Quran.

I have seen that kind of thing done live on stage.

I am inclined to contemplate that there may have been some nugget of truth in it as well in fact in the Luke version.

Deconstructing it is an impossible task as you can’t hope to test it; although Celsum’s take on things and Origens hand wave away is worthy of consideration.

They do do the absence of evidence thing; no 1st century documents or archaeology on the lower class sub culture of Christianity.

But there wouldn’t be.

By the second half 1st century there were loads of greek cynics on the streets of Alexandria.

There must have been a seed culture before that.

There was no record of the anti Vietnam war movement before 1965 but it was there as Noam Chomsky insists on.

Anyway the anti cynic thesis, and I really appreciate the fact the you are as being open minded on it as me.

JC may have gone to Egypt once and he may have gone again and was not probably hermitically sealed into Palestine as a peasant, land locked, redneck hillbillie.

Who knows his pissed off weaver mother or his older step brother James could have picked up proletarian cynicism whilst over there.

[ The hiring himself for labour to the Egyptians was another pop at JC but it obviously doesn’t work as well now or her were it is a badge of honour- eg according to Cicero working for a wage de-facto slavery; in fact wage slave comes from Cicero. There was a dignity to being a self employed peasant, that culture prevails in our 2nd generation Indian working class peasants over her- she has ordered your book for me and earns in IT twice what I get as an English chemist]

There were lots of Jewish guys called Jesus. The Talmud story isn't about the Jesus.

Wrong comparison. There are not even writings of eye witnesses to Jesus, whereas there are living participants to the Nazi mass murder of jews. I think already Kautsky tended to believe in the non-historicity of Jesus, so it's not just some new Atheists thing. There's even a similar claim about the non-historicity of Mohammad.

Richard Carrier is the main ones arguing against the historicity of Jesus and there is no doubt that his site is full of interesting material on this kind of thing.

I think even Carrier accepts Paul as a valid and contemporary historical, so it must be and is probably not worth delving into.

[There are question marks over whether all of the documents attributed to Paul were actually written directly by him or the same person.

Computer pattern recognition on the texts technologically ‘undisputedly identifies at least two authors.

Even the die hard christians accept this; but they suggest a secretarial argument in that the disputed ones were dictated or drafted by Paul and written up by another scribe.]

On the historicity of JC one of the ‘best’ ones is from Paul.

gallatians 1:18-2:10New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

As Bart Erhman quipped to Carrier; “if jesus hadn’t existed you would think his brother would have known about it.

Barts book on the historicity of Jesus is worth a read, he really is quite entertaining and it ain’t heavy.

What nailed it for me was the stuff in contra celsum; which was a refutation or response to a document called True Doctrines by an author called Celsum or Celsus , depending on how it declines in Latin.

As to the dating of True Doctrines it can be internally dated to three possible dates as it was written when there were 'two Emperors'.

I seem to remember there are three possible dates; eg around AD 80 , Ad 120 and AD 180.

The third date is generally accepted based solely on the somewhat tenuous argument that was when Christianity was being more persecuted.

I actually think the 180AD date conclusion and basis is doubtful.

Although ‘True Doctrines’ is quite ‘nasty’ it is still a somewhat measured intellectual attack and doesn’t sound to me very like the kind of ranting ‘send them to the gas chambers’ type stuff that you would expect in a period of persecution.

And when Origen the Christian in 230 AD responds to it he makes clear that he has no idea who wrote it, seems to think it something old that has reappeared all of a sudden.

Origen was the Christian’s number one intellectual in 230 AD and that was the reason why it was passed to him.

He had a massive library himself and apparently wrote loads of stuff; most of it trashed by later Christians as he himself by the 4th century was regarded as a bit dodgy and was posthumously excommunicated, a rare honour.

And slandered I think we can presume as he was ‘accused’ of chopping his own dick off to stop him sinning.

Some Origen’s material was kept and preserved by the Christians as ‘top shelf’ material probably due to its ‘intellectual and theological’ quality.

For instance he had read Josephus and quoted from it etc.

Thus for instance in the less famous passage in Josephus about ‘James the brother of Jesus.

That passage is interesting on its own.

There are several Jesus’s in Josephus but somehow Josephus seems to think we should automatically know or is it obvious which one, or bothers we are talking about?

However Origen unequivocally identifies or interprets that James, in Josephus, as the brother of ‘his Jesus’.

Origen also says in the same passage that Josephus didn’t believe that ‘his’ Jesus was the messiah.

That was an accurate interpretation as Josephus, as Vespasian’s poodle, said Vespasian was.

It is also important as it trashes somewhat the

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/testimonium.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Origen was no idiot either as he seems to have spotted a problem with the contradiction in the nativity in Luke and Matthew, which is a more modern thing.

Anyway!

Celsum says that JC was a dwarf, ugly, shifty looking with some kind physical deformity; as well as coming from a working class and not noble background.

And Celsum comes up with a very modern argument as to why son of a divine would appear in such a form.

I mean JC is portrayed as a drop dead gorgeous movie star eg Robert Powell?

Not as some Filius Flitwick as in Harry Potter?

In the gospel document stuff there are several examples of out of context stuff I thought, laugh if you like.

But doctor heal yourself was one of them.

I actually ringed them when I first read it and my first take on it. seems to have proved later instructive.

Anyway according to Celsum and Origen they were both aware of 'reports' that JC was no ‘movie star oil painting’ and Origen says that that was how it was prophesied.

Thus;

CHAP. LXXV, in one of the books

"Since a divine Spirit inhabited the body (of Jesus), it must certainly have been different From that of other beings, in respect of grandeur, or beauty, or strength, or voice, or impressiveness, or persuasiveness. For it is impossible that He, to whom was imparted some divine quality beyond other beings, should not differ from others; whereas this person did not differ in any respect from another, but was, as they report, little, and ill-favoured, and ignoble."

Now it is evident by these words, that when Celsus wishes to bring a charge against Jesus, he adduces the sacred writings, as one who believed them to be writings apparently fitted to afford a handle for a charge against Him; but wherever, in the same writings, statements would appear to be made opposed to those charges which are adduced, he pretends not even to know them! There are, indeed, admitted to be recorded some statements respecting the body of Jesus having been "ill-favoured;" not, however, "ignoble," as has been stated, nor is there any certain evidence that he was "little." The language of Isaiah runs as follows, who prophesied regarding Him that He would come and visit the multitude, not in comeliness of form, nor in any surpassing beauty:

Personally I have prejudicially switched from JC as a Calvinistic modern Christian to a kick arse communistic revolutionary cynic and reclaim him as my ‘own’.

And trash these born again Christians in Armani suits.

Yeah, so Paul was no eye witness to Jesus.

Carrier's response to that:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11516

Actually there were many apocalyptic prophets at the time and there were many crucifixions. I think it's the mainstream view in Judaism that the Talmud's mention of a Jesus of Nazareth does not refer to the Christian Jesus, but to one who lived some century earlier. It's possible that Celsus mistakenly based himself on this jewish story.

But we have even more compelling evidence than eye-witness accounts for eg Alexander the Great, namely a huge empire. There's archeological evidence of even some minor characters, much earlier in the Hebrew bible, eg some scribe. Like I said also, we have no eye-witness accounts for Mohammad, hence his historicity can be legitimately questioned.

I think Carrier's point is that "Brother of the Lord" was a designation of any Christian believer. If I'm not mistaken, there were also lots of guys called James. There is no evidence to explain away by a conspiracy theory.

Send a review copy to the SPGB for a review in the Socialist Standard....
Or suggest DaveB submit one for it, once he has read it
Mind you, i don't think religious debates are very popular with the editors

I don't think the Talmud's mention of a Jesus of Nazareth specified though that he was crucified (and under Pilate at that).

no, but when the story was transmitted orally from much earlier on, and if Celsus was familiar with the oral tradition, it is possible that was his source.

Not really, Christian antisemitic tradition on the other hand does, which is why I objected to it.

I don't expect archeological evidence, just some evidence (eg eyewitness report). And according to Christianity he was not some uppity peasant, but a prophet who caused massive commotion in Jerusalem and throughout the land. Kautsky pointed out how Josephus detailed all sorts of detailed occurrences, yet he didn't mention Jesus Christ (later interpolations don't count).

On the James thing, I think Carrier is right that that's probably the weakest pillar you could have as support for the historicity of Jesus.

Noa, you do realize that writing was rather uncommon at the time, right? And that the material on which they did write wasn't especially durable.

Khawaga, that point holds eg of records of simple commodity exchange by ordinary people vs. records of them by kings/palace merchants. There their absence is not evidence of non-existence (or limited nature) of simple commodity production. However, I suspect stories of a saviour/miracle man would be better recorded than how many sheep a farmer sold on the local market. Besides there are tons of writings that date from that time, yet no eyewitness accounts.

Well, on simple commodity production/exchange, I completely disagree that it even existed. Marx referred to it as a theoretical fiction (in the same way that he refers to simple accumulation, which explains what accumulation is logically, but any capitalist enterprise that reproduced itself simply would not be a capitalist enterprise).

My point is that back in the day there simple wasn't that much written, hence the insistence that there should be some written "eye-wtiness" report is kind of misplaced. That was the only point I was making. Sure, there would be great if more writing from that age survived, but there wasn't that much written down to begin with.

In the previous post I was referring to this material not the Talmud material

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledot_Yeshu

On 170 year old oral history?

The latest discovery was made two years and a day after Canadian marine archeologists found the wreck of Erebus in the same area of eastern Queen Maud gulf where Inuit oral history had long said a large wooden ship sank.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arc...

I am being baited on simple commodity production Rommon.

we did it before in a massive thread where I mentioned JC making yokes and ploughs as sited by Justyn in chapter 88 on the dialogue with the Jew thing

I am going to ignore it.

You don't disagree that some commodity production existed before capitalism. You just can say that it didn't dominate all of society's labour, like in an abstract model, which is fucking fair enough. Just like I don't deny that there were religious rebels in the first century. There's just not one that can be identified as the Christian Jesus.

Nah, commodity production did exist prior to capitalism and so did the exchange of some commodities for money (and/or other commodities), I am just tired of the assertions that the first few chapters of Capital refers to an actual historical period of simple commodity production/circulation when all the historical material is left for the end of the book. At the very beginning of Capital Marx deals with the logical presupposition of capital and leaves the historical presupposition for the end. Hence, there is no evidence for simple commodity production because it is a theoretical fiction Marx used to explain commodities, money and value in the most abstract way possible. But that commodities were produced and exchanged, is of course, pretty clear from the historical record.

Yes, but you're misunderstanding my point then. You assertion that "there should be some eye witness evidence" just doesn't square with the fact that the further we go back in history, the less of a historical record there is. Hence, you demand of definitive proof is a red herring (though, of course, your skepticism is a-ok.

Nah, that was all Noa and I (we've had this disagreement before), We'll stop the derail (Noa, if you want to continue discussing this, please start a new thread. Though, I don't think it's necessary as our only disagreement is whether SCP is historical or logical (and I don't think the twain will ever meet)).

Where does your "hence" come from that there is no evidence for simple commodity production? Do you just mean no evidence for it in Capital, or evidence in history?

Which is all what SCP refers to. So if you disagree, start another thread

I didn't assert/demand this. I just remind that every single thing ever written about Jesus was not authored by an eyewitness. And I don't demand eyewitness/definitive proof, just any proof will do (example: I don't know if pig bones in sea last 2000 years, but Jesus allegedly drove a herd of demon pigs into the sea, so if there's even a tiny evidence of similar or other stories, it would be interesting to hear).

I didn't bait Dave. I actually took on board Rommon's point about there being less records for non-important persons, but Jesus (is said to have) caused great commotions throughout the land, so he wasn't a nobody. Meanwhile Josephus recorded events of less importance.

The hence refers to how there cannot be evidence for something abstract that Marx only used for the sake of his argument and logical development of capital as a category.

Many scholars say it's not referring to the Christian Jesus. Carrier just mentions that the Talmud dates the story a century off (ie before Christ), that's not controversial I think. That only because of this reason it refers to a different Jesus is not argued btw.

What eye witness traditions in the synoptics? Do you believe there are eye witness accounts?

The growth of the Christian movement is no evidence, neither are the gospels. There are no pagan sources for Jesus. Tacitus was also a possible later interpolation.

Yes there are plenty of these apocryphal materials (+Qumran etc), just a few decades after Jesus, and they survived. We can rule out a miraculous increase in literacy between Jesus's time and a century or so later. So many after Jesus, yet none during his life or by contemporary eyewitnesses.