I found your entry interesting so I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

Adolf Harnack (1851-1930)

Thank you for the comment as well as the additional imagery on things Aquilan. Harnack is a very interesting breed of scholar, at once devout and yet somehow ruthless in his approach to critical method. It took intervention from Kaiser Wilhelm II to save his appointment at the University of Berlin. Perhaps Harnack is an example of what the American historian Henry Adams meant when he coined the phrase ‘conservative Christian anarchist?”
In any event, Harnack delivered a long address at a conference at Giessen in the summer of 1885 after completing his massive work, History of Dogma. The Giessen conference sought to summarize the then present state of research in early church history (which became the title for Harnack’s address when it was set to print in 1886).
At this stage, the German schools of historical criticism continued to labor in the shadow of Tubingen. In distilling the essence of where early Christian scholarship stood, Harnack outlined the Tubingen school’s strongly Hegelian model: the struggle between Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity (a strophe and anti-strophe) result in a compromise, i.e., orthodox Roman Christianity (forgive the oversimplification). From our twenty first century perspective, what is missing is, at the very least, a third element representing a powerful panhellenistic (here the term is used to avoid using the adjective pagan) state sponsored religion exerting its own powerful gravity on the early evolution of Christianity. Harnack seems to have been moving toward a more complex model as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Here is an excerpt from that summer of 1885 address.

The glittering web: Chryselephantine reconstruction of Athena Parthenos. Athena the virgin goddess holding symbol of supreme diety, an eagle. (Nashville, Tenn. USA)

The loss of the original [Jewish] element and the gain of a fresh one, namely, the Greek, are insufficient to explain the great change which the Christian religion experienced in the second century. We must bear in mind, thirdly, the great struggle which that religion was then carrying on within its own domain. Parallel with the slow influx of the element of Greek philosophy experiments were being made all along the line in the direction of what may be briefly called ‘acute Hellenization.” While they offer us a most magnificent historical spectacle, the period itself they were a terrible danger. More than any before it, the second century is the century of religious fusion, of theocracy. The problem was to bring Christianity into the realm of theocracy, as one element among others, although the chief. The ‘Hellenism’ which made this endeavor had already attracted to itself all the mysteries, all the philosophy of the Eastern worship, elements the most sublime and the most absurd, and by the never failing of the philosophical, that is to say, of allegorical interpretation, had spun them all into a glittering web. (Harnack, The Present State of Early Christian Research, 1885).

The glittering web: Chryselephantine Apollo: this effigy was excavated from the great sanctuary at the temple of Delphi. The temple itself dates from the 6th century BCE. Sometime in the 4th century, the temple and the image of the sun god burned (died?) and thereafter ritually buried (did he rise again?)

Without necessarily agreeing in every respect with Harnack’s conclusions (our position should be taken to mean in part that ‘acute Hellenization’ for an intense period leads us directly to Aelia Capitolina), one may casually observe that much scholarship on Christian origins in our own day remains hopelessly caught in the filaments of that ‘glittering web’ spun in the second century. One clearly finds anchor points for the creation of a divine Jesus in the second century, anchor points are postulated for the first century but have yet to be empirically demonstrated. I do not suppose we will ever reach the heart of the matter until the scholarly community sets stringent rules for methodology; otherwise, we will continue to focus on the glittering web and never arrive at a proper classification of the organism from which it was spun.

The glittering web: Mosaic in the apse of Torcello Cathedral showing the Virgin Mary as Theotokos (virgin goddess holding symbol of supreme diety) with the Apostles below, 12th century

The forerunner of this empire was Charlemagne, crowned in 800 by the Pope of the Catholic Church. Charlemagne’s policy of "renovatio Romanorum imperii" (reviving the Roman Empire) was the official position of the Empire until its end in 1806.

Left: Kaiser of the Austrian Empire, Franz I (1804–1835)

The rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1804–1918) were born in the Habsburg dynasty, which had provided most of Holy Roman Emperors since 1438.

This eagle has a long and proud pagan tradition.

Right: Denarius minted by Mark Antony to pay his legions. On the reverse, the aquila of his Third legion.

As the old joke goes: the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman.

The question raised is if Christianity itself is anything more than a joke – well, to be reasonable: a parody.

This was the theological response by Islamic scholars to the claim that the language of the Koran is Aramaic, offering many important and different translations from the Arabic. If true, the scholars said, then their Faith would be a joke. Quite, though one should note that historicity does not depend on faith, for science is not blind, but the very opposite.

Left: St. John with head of an eagle.

Thank you, Lancelotto, for your first and major contribution here to our study of divine men in Classical Antiquity. You and I have been studying this for a while now, and I look forward with great anticipation to your future posts.

I like this from Harnack:

…the fourth Gospel, which does not emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, cannot be taken as an historical authority in the ordinary meaning of the word.

That is equally true for the synoptic gospels – no canonical gospel comes with an identifiable author..

…The author of it acted with sovereign freedom, transposed events and put them in a strange light, drew up the discourses himself, and illustrated great thoughts by imaginary situations.

The crucial word there is ‘sovereign’ and the method – using great thoughts to illustrate imaginary situations – is exactly that of the philosophers of the period, in which philosophy contained Greek magic, such as we see in the magic bowl found in Alexandria.

Now, Part II.