Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 14th, 2013 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxReading Wednesday meme.
What I Just Finished Reading:
History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Gregory Aldrete
Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Interesting though. I know a little bit more about the history of China now. The most detailed information continued to be Western Civ stuff, but the section on how close the Roman Empire and the one in China came to 'meeting' (but didn't) was interesting. All that trade between them and yet they remained ignorant of one another (and not simply because of the geography separating them but also because it was useful for the cultures expediting the trade to keep each ignorant of the other), with both utterly convinced that they ruled the 'entirity of the "civilized" (by their own definition) world.'
Also some interesting stuff re: Charlemagne and "The Dark Ages" near the end.
What I'm Reading Now:
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
Almost finished.
The title was no doubt chosen to be a bit provocative, but when reading the book it's quite clear that it also encapsulates Aslan's thesis. He repeatedly returns to the idea of 'Zealot', not in the way that a modern audience interprets the word (Zealot: an extremist, fanatic, dogmatist, enthusiast) but in its quite specific -- and original -- historical context. (Zealot: a member of a sect arising in Judea during the first century a.c.e. opposing the Roman domination of Palestine) with some emphasis on Jesus having been specifically (repeatedly and consistently) associated with Nazareth, and the socio, political, and economic implications of that association. (From some of the historic material provided, it can be noted that Rome experienced a similar sense of bafflement and consternation that we sometimes currently feel over what appears to be unending political-religious strife in that corner of the world. In fact, one wonders whether the negative connotations associated with the term 'zealot' are in fact related to our Greco-Roman cultural roots of finding the area to be confounding...?) At any rate, Rome found itself in a situation not entirely dissimilar to the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanastan. The indigenous populace wants you to GTFO. {Of course the Roman answer was "enslave them all!" but that would come a wee bit later...})
If all of this sounds a bit political, I'd say it's because the book is. Not political in a current context (though the FOX brouhaha sort of makes it so), but political in that the book focuses largely on -- as the title said -- the TIMES of Jesus.
The author takes the view that other than Biblical sources, there are few resources in searching for historical Jesus, but there is a wealth of information than can be used to understand the time and place where Jesus was born and lived.
It's actually somewhat interesting to have read this book in the immediate wake of the History of the Ancient World because there were interesting overlaps such as Aslan's focus on 'banditry,' with his noting that while English translations of the Bible usually say that Jesus was crucified alongside 'theives,' in the original Biblical Greek it was the same word the Romans used for "bandit." In History of the Ancient World there was a prolonged discussion of the Roman pre-occupation with 'bandits', stating that 'dealing with bandits' was THE primary concern of (functional) Roman Emperors (understanding that the period of time discussed in the Aslan book stretches not simply from the Caesars but through Caligula and Nero as well). The Roman populace considered 'dealing with badits' to be the Emperor's (and his armies') number one job, above even building roads, aqueducts, kicking ass, taking names, and decimating anyone standing in their way. Having just read this in an separate history book, it was interesting to see Aslan bring up the Roman/bandit thing in the context of the crucifiction.
"Bandit" (in the contextural historical sense) was a more nuanced term than "theif" because "bandit" pretty much encompassed any "defiance of the Roman empire." For instance, Spartacus was a "bandit". Additionally, crucifiction was specifically the punishment for sedition against the empire, so the "bandits" being crucified with Jesus were therefore being punished for sedition. Perhaps they weren't 'just' theives. (And, yeah, that basically implies that Jesus was crucified for sedition too.)
Aslan's case for Jesus teaching outright insurrection against the empire is...erm... thin. Where Jesus' teachings are concerned, we have the Gospels and that's pretty much it. And Jesus predates the actual Zealot party by several years (give or take, it's always a guess for precisely when he lived, but we're talking about a handfull of years at most). Political insurrection was fomenting in the region, particularly in Galilee (and Nazareth) which was a desperately poor, rural region in the shadow of wealthy new Roman cities such as Zephyrus.
And then there's 'messiah.'
I 'get' why Christians are up in arms in that the way that 'messiah' is addressed in the book is not the way that Christians approach 'messiah', but then it's wholly non-controversial to say that what first century Jews meant by the term 'messiah' and what third century (and beyond) Christians mean by the term are not the same thing. Examining the concept of 'messiah' as it was commonly understood in Jesus's lifetime shouldn't be a controversy that people on Amazon should cry foul over. The 1st century concept of 'messiah' being the one to reclaim the Judea for the Jews has been long understood by historical scholars and would have been the way that the ruling classes of first century would have interpreted any messianic ministry. The Christian concept of "messiah" as spriritual savior who dies for human sins is...well... Christian.
Which circles back to while I'm wary of an outright Roman insurrectionist interpretation, it's not a leap at all to say that Jesus was preaching something that was incredibly controversial re: the ruling order and ruling classes of his society and the way that was related to the religious order of the Temple. (It's all in that scene where he's throwing the money changers out of the Temple, isn't it?)
I greatly appreciated the way that Aslan elucidated the historical-political context. One of my frustrations with the way that history is often discussed and taught is how a subject tends to become isolated. You study Ancient Egypt or you study the Hittites, but really, shouldn't you study both together since they interacted? I didn't realize until a few years ago that the Biblical story of Jericho and the fall of Troy are assumed to be (roughly) contemporaneous, not only with one another but with Akhenaten and King Tut (give or take a generation or few). Or, if you look at Genesis, it says that Abraham was from Ur and Ur was in Sumeria... which was ancient Mesopotamia and doesn't anyone think that this might possibly may be why some of the things said in Genesis overlap parts of ancient Mesopotamian religion and why they share some similar stories (Epic of Gilgamesh, anyone?)
So, anyway, I appreciated the context of how Herod 'The Great' came to power in Judea through fortuitously siding with Julius Ceasar over Pompey (He bet on the right horse, it would seem. His son -- also Herod --also benefitted from this association as it was Marc Antony and Caesar Agustus who appointed him after dad shuffled the mortal coil.) and how the Herods subsequently made sure all government beuracrats were pro-Rome (thus pro-THEM). Add the way that History of the Ancient World went into detail about the way that one of Rome's deliberate tactics when expanding their empire was to 'Romanize' the local elites of a conquerored territory, allowing the 'elites' to continue to rule their home populace but also making sure that the elites were beholden to and enamoured with Roman-derived privileges (while allowing the populace to continue whatever religion they had started with. Traditionally, the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire had been religiously inclusive, as long as the conquerored people would pro-forma acknowlege the Empirical cult... which the ruling class had, which anyone who knows anything about Judeo-Christian teachings knows is a big no-no... which was another point of conflict between the Jewish general populace, the aristocratic elites, and the occupying empire.) Add in Aslan's book pointing out that the Temple's top-rung priestly class was part-time and entirely hereditary, meaning that those in charge at the Jewish Temple were the privileged landed aristocrats who would then be the ones living in the new "Roman" cities, adopting more the more Hellenistic lifestyle, and in general becoming 'Pro-Rome' with all of this being anathema to the poor who, on top of being subjugated and increasingly homeless, viewed [i]any[/i] occupation of the "Holy Land" by foreigners as an offense to God, and you can see Jesus' protest in the Temple as not only a religious protest but, in context of a rising grassroot resistance to the Romanization of the elite power structure, presaging the social, political, and economic problems that, years after Jesus' crucifiction, ignited the actual Zealot party going full war against the empire, climaxing in the seige and mass suicide at Masada, and the subsequent Roman razing of the Temple, etc.
Also interesting was touching upon General (later Emperor) Vespasian abandonning the subjugation of the Jewish rebellion in order to return to Rome during the Roman cival wars following the death of Nero (he of "while Rome burned" fame). Vespasian understood the Roman mindset and the need for something epic and triumphal in the wake of their own woes (bread and circuses, yo!) which was accomplished by Vespasian's son subjugating Jerusalem, razing the Temple, and enslaving the populace followed by a "triumph" in Rome (I remembered this last bit because of college Art History where the sacking of Jerusalem is featured in a famous panel on the triumphal arch in the Roman forum. I also remember seeing something -- I don't remember when -- about how this event was pivotal in the spread of early Christianity. Makes some sense. One can understand how messianic ministries with coded predictions of the downfall of Rome and the deliverance of the subjugated would appeal to those who had just been enslaved and relocated. The thing I saw that pointed this out also related it to the eruption of Vesuvius. Apparently there was some early Christian symbol discovered in excavated slave quarters in Pompeii which was something of a surprise because that had seemed awfully early for Chistianity to have spread so far. After all Pompeii was destroyed in 79 A.C.E, but then the triumph for Vespasian's son for the sacking of Jerusalem was in 71 A.C.E.... so not entirely impossible. And, as the argument went, post Vesuvian eruption, where two Roman cities basically fell off the planet in a doomsday bomb of smoke and fire would be fertile ground for proselytizing that God's kingdom -- and the fall of the Roman empire -- was nigh.
But none of that Pompeii/Vesuvian stuff appeared in either the Aslan book or the History of the Ancient world. It's just my mind tumbling off on tangents.
At any rate, I appreciated Aslan's efforts to contexturalize the times in which Jesus lived both with the internal socio-political structure of Judea at that time as well as what was going on with the Rome. As a kid going to Sunday School, it always seemed to be sort of an isolated Bible story kind of world. Casting the net wider and incorporating it with Roman history of Ceasar, Marc Antony, Nero, etc. helps to contexturalize it because I do think an argument can be made that to understand the context of the New Testament requires understanding how Rome played into both Jesus' time andthe centuries that followed as early Christianity was spread.
Truthfully, nothing Aslan presents re: Jesus is all that new or controversial, at least not in a secular context. (I realize that if one is coming from a strictly religious Biblical interpretation you've got a different perspective). But I've generally given the outline of Aslan's thesis of Jesus pressing for the upturning of the Temple heirarchy as part of a cultural backlash against Roman occupation. Nothing about that seems particularly threatening to Christian theology.
Aslan certainly didn't go anywhere near as far afield as Barbara Theiring's theories concerning Jesus's crucifiction and 'resurrection' (I won't go into it, but she went preeeeettty far afield).
Where Aslan probably ventured into areas that would upset Christians is less in his discussion of Jesus and more in the discussion of the establishment of the early Church and internecine struggles between James, brother of Jesus, and the 'apostle' Paul. The portrait of James is flattering, the portrait of Paul... not so much. And, as what we came to know as the (predominantly gentile) Christian church is heavily dependent upon Pauline philosophy, the Aslan portrait of Paul would be far more problematic for the faithful than anything Aslan actually says about Jesus (which, really, wouldn't be seen as particularly controversial to people approaching this in a historical rather than theological manner.).
And I've rambled enough. I found the book interesting (and not particularly controversial).
What am I reading next?
Probably listening to METAtropolis (scifi speculative fiction)
What I Just Finished Reading:
History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Gregory Aldrete
Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Interesting though. I know a little bit more about the history of China now. The most detailed information continued to be Western Civ stuff, but the section on how close the Roman Empire and the one in China came to 'meeting' (but didn't) was interesting. All that trade between them and yet they remained ignorant of one another (and not simply because of the geography separating them but also because it was useful for the cultures expediting the trade to keep each ignorant of the other), with both utterly convinced that they ruled the 'entirity of the "civilized" (by their own definition) world.'
Also some interesting stuff re: Charlemagne and "The Dark Ages" near the end.
What I'm Reading Now:
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
Almost finished.
The title was no doubt chosen to be a bit provocative, but when reading the book it's quite clear that it also encapsulates Aslan's thesis. He repeatedly returns to the idea of 'Zealot', not in the way that a modern audience interprets the word (Zealot: an extremist, fanatic, dogmatist, enthusiast) but in its quite specific -- and original -- historical context. (Zealot: a member of a sect arising in Judea during the first century a.c.e. opposing the Roman domination of Palestine) with some emphasis on Jesus having been specifically (repeatedly and consistently) associated with Nazareth, and the socio, political, and economic implications of that association. (From some of the historic material provided, it can be noted that Rome experienced a similar sense of bafflement and consternation that we sometimes currently feel over what appears to be unending political-religious strife in that corner of the world. In fact, one wonders whether the negative connotations associated with the term 'zealot' are in fact related to our Greco-Roman cultural roots of finding the area to be confounding...?) At any rate, Rome found itself in a situation not entirely dissimilar to the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanastan. The indigenous populace wants you to GTFO. {Of course the Roman answer was "enslave them all!" but that would come a wee bit later...})
If all of this sounds a bit political, I'd say it's because the book is. Not political in a current context (though the FOX brouhaha sort of makes it so), but political in that the book focuses largely on -- as the title said -- the TIMES of Jesus.
The author takes the view that other than Biblical sources, there are few resources in searching for historical Jesus, but there is a wealth of information than can be used to understand the time and place where Jesus was born and lived.
It's actually somewhat interesting to have read this book in the immediate wake of the History of the Ancient World because there were interesting overlaps such as Aslan's focus on 'banditry,' with his noting that while English translations of the Bible usually say that Jesus was crucified alongside 'theives,' in the original Biblical Greek it was the same word the Romans used for "bandit." In History of the Ancient World there was a prolonged discussion of the Roman pre-occupation with 'bandits', stating that 'dealing with bandits' was THE primary concern of (functional) Roman Emperors (understanding that the period of time discussed in the Aslan book stretches not simply from the Caesars but through Caligula and Nero as well). The Roman populace considered 'dealing with badits' to be the Emperor's (and his armies') number one job, above even building roads, aqueducts, kicking ass, taking names, and decimating anyone standing in their way. Having just read this in an separate history book, it was interesting to see Aslan bring up the Roman/bandit thing in the context of the crucifiction.
"Bandit" (in the contextural historical sense) was a more nuanced term than "theif" because "bandit" pretty much encompassed any "defiance of the Roman empire." For instance, Spartacus was a "bandit". Additionally, crucifiction was specifically the punishment for sedition against the empire, so the "bandits" being crucified with Jesus were therefore being punished for sedition. Perhaps they weren't 'just' theives. (And, yeah, that basically implies that Jesus was crucified for sedition too.)
Aslan's case for Jesus teaching outright insurrection against the empire is...erm... thin. Where Jesus' teachings are concerned, we have the Gospels and that's pretty much it. And Jesus predates the actual Zealot party by several years (give or take, it's always a guess for precisely when he lived, but we're talking about a handfull of years at most). Political insurrection was fomenting in the region, particularly in Galilee (and Nazareth) which was a desperately poor, rural region in the shadow of wealthy new Roman cities such as Zephyrus.
And then there's 'messiah.'
I 'get' why Christians are up in arms in that the way that 'messiah' is addressed in the book is not the way that Christians approach 'messiah', but then it's wholly non-controversial to say that what first century Jews meant by the term 'messiah' and what third century (and beyond) Christians mean by the term are not the same thing. Examining the concept of 'messiah' as it was commonly understood in Jesus's lifetime shouldn't be a controversy that people on Amazon should cry foul over. The 1st century concept of 'messiah' being the one to reclaim the Judea for the Jews has been long understood by historical scholars and would have been the way that the ruling classes of first century would have interpreted any messianic ministry. The Christian concept of "messiah" as spriritual savior who dies for human sins is...well... Christian.
Which circles back to while I'm wary of an outright Roman insurrectionist interpretation, it's not a leap at all to say that Jesus was preaching something that was incredibly controversial re: the ruling order and ruling classes of his society and the way that was related to the religious order of the Temple. (It's all in that scene where he's throwing the money changers out of the Temple, isn't it?)
I greatly appreciated the way that Aslan elucidated the historical-political context. One of my frustrations with the way that history is often discussed and taught is how a subject tends to become isolated. You study Ancient Egypt or you study the Hittites, but really, shouldn't you study both together since they interacted? I didn't realize until a few years ago that the Biblical story of Jericho and the fall of Troy are assumed to be (roughly) contemporaneous, not only with one another but with Akhenaten and King Tut (give or take a generation or few). Or, if you look at Genesis, it says that Abraham was from Ur and Ur was in Sumeria... which was ancient Mesopotamia and doesn't anyone think that this might possibly may be why some of the things said in Genesis overlap parts of ancient Mesopotamian religion and why they share some similar stories (Epic of Gilgamesh, anyone?)
So, anyway, I appreciated the context of how Herod 'The Great' came to power in Judea through fortuitously siding with Julius Ceasar over Pompey (He bet on the right horse, it would seem. His son -- also Herod --also benefitted from this association as it was Marc Antony and Caesar Agustus who appointed him after dad shuffled the mortal coil.) and how the Herods subsequently made sure all government beuracrats were pro-Rome (thus pro-THEM). Add the way that History of the Ancient World went into detail about the way that one of Rome's deliberate tactics when expanding their empire was to 'Romanize' the local elites of a conquerored territory, allowing the 'elites' to continue to rule their home populace but also making sure that the elites were beholden to and enamoured with Roman-derived privileges (while allowing the populace to continue whatever religion they had started with. Traditionally, the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire had been religiously inclusive, as long as the conquerored people would pro-forma acknowlege the Empirical cult... which the ruling class had, which anyone who knows anything about Judeo-Christian teachings knows is a big no-no... which was another point of conflict between the Jewish general populace, the aristocratic elites, and the occupying empire.) Add in Aslan's book pointing out that the Temple's top-rung priestly class was part-time and entirely hereditary, meaning that those in charge at the Jewish Temple were the privileged landed aristocrats who would then be the ones living in the new "Roman" cities, adopting more the more Hellenistic lifestyle, and in general becoming 'Pro-Rome' with all of this being anathema to the poor who, on top of being subjugated and increasingly homeless, viewed [i]any[/i] occupation of the "Holy Land" by foreigners as an offense to God, and you can see Jesus' protest in the Temple as not only a religious protest but, in context of a rising grassroot resistance to the Romanization of the elite power structure, presaging the social, political, and economic problems that, years after Jesus' crucifiction, ignited the actual Zealot party going full war against the empire, climaxing in the seige and mass suicide at Masada, and the subsequent Roman razing of the Temple, etc.
Also interesting was touching upon General (later Emperor) Vespasian abandonning the subjugation of the Jewish rebellion in order to return to Rome during the Roman cival wars following the death of Nero (he of "while Rome burned" fame). Vespasian understood the Roman mindset and the need for something epic and triumphal in the wake of their own woes (bread and circuses, yo!) which was accomplished by Vespasian's son subjugating Jerusalem, razing the Temple, and enslaving the populace followed by a "triumph" in Rome (I remembered this last bit because of college Art History where the sacking of Jerusalem is featured in a famous panel on the triumphal arch in the Roman forum. I also remember seeing something -- I don't remember when -- about how this event was pivotal in the spread of early Christianity. Makes some sense. One can understand how messianic ministries with coded predictions of the downfall of Rome and the deliverance of the subjugated would appeal to those who had just been enslaved and relocated. The thing I saw that pointed this out also related it to the eruption of Vesuvius. Apparently there was some early Christian symbol discovered in excavated slave quarters in Pompeii which was something of a surprise because that had seemed awfully early for Chistianity to have spread so far. After all Pompeii was destroyed in 79 A.C.E, but then the triumph for Vespasian's son for the sacking of Jerusalem was in 71 A.C.E.... so not entirely impossible. And, as the argument went, post Vesuvian eruption, where two Roman cities basically fell off the planet in a doomsday bomb of smoke and fire would be fertile ground for proselytizing that God's kingdom -- and the fall of the Roman empire -- was nigh.
But none of that Pompeii/Vesuvian stuff appeared in either the Aslan book or the History of the Ancient world. It's just my mind tumbling off on tangents.
At any rate, I appreciated Aslan's efforts to contexturalize the times in which Jesus lived both with the internal socio-political structure of Judea at that time as well as what was going on with the Rome. As a kid going to Sunday School, it always seemed to be sort of an isolated Bible story kind of world. Casting the net wider and incorporating it with Roman history of Ceasar, Marc Antony, Nero, etc. helps to contexturalize it because I do think an argument can be made that to understand the context of the New Testament requires understanding how Rome played into both Jesus' time andthe centuries that followed as early Christianity was spread.
Truthfully, nothing Aslan presents re: Jesus is all that new or controversial, at least not in a secular context. (I realize that if one is coming from a strictly religious Biblical interpretation you've got a different perspective). But I've generally given the outline of Aslan's thesis of Jesus pressing for the upturning of the Temple heirarchy as part of a cultural backlash against Roman occupation. Nothing about that seems particularly threatening to Christian theology.
Aslan certainly didn't go anywhere near as far afield as Barbara Theiring's theories concerning Jesus's crucifiction and 'resurrection' (I won't go into it, but she went preeeeettty far afield).
Where Aslan probably ventured into areas that would upset Christians is less in his discussion of Jesus and more in the discussion of the establishment of the early Church and internecine struggles between James, brother of Jesus, and the 'apostle' Paul. The portrait of James is flattering, the portrait of Paul... not so much. And, as what we came to know as the (predominantly gentile) Christian church is heavily dependent upon Pauline philosophy, the Aslan portrait of Paul would be far more problematic for the faithful than anything Aslan actually says about Jesus (which, really, wouldn't be seen as particularly controversial to people approaching this in a historical rather than theological manner.).
And I've rambled enough. I found the book interesting (and not particularly controversial).
What am I reading next?
Probably listening to METAtropolis (scifi speculative fiction)
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Date: 2013-08-15 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-08-16 06:42 am (UTC)Middlemen always watch out for their interests, lol.