RELS MIDTERM
RELS 112 Class Notes
What does graffiti symbolize?
Image → “Alexamenos, Worship(s) God”
A protest towards a political case
The Alexamenos graffito was a political mockery from the romans towards the Christians regarding the crucifix – based mostly on their skepticism regarding the coming and going of Christ
The drawing could be the earliest identification of Christ outside of the Christian scrolls
The Y in the back could be a secondary cross from one of the other prisoners that were executed at the same time as Jesus
Sept 12, 2024
The Genealogy of Christianity up to 1800 AD
Early Christianity was a negative title
Would risk of execution if confirmed Christian
Catholic meant universal Christian
Two primary places where christianity was upheld
Rome (western church)
Eastern Church
1054 ad → The great schism
A fight between the western and eastern churches
Did the holy spirit come from the son and the father or just the father?
The beginning debate of the holy trinity
Martin Luther began to read through the Catholic bibles and started to identify incorrect teaching (purgatory)
Evangelism is a branch of the protestant church
Evangelicalism generally isn't attached to the mainline denominations
Evangelicals
Evangelize
Share the gospel
Believe biblical text is most important
The bible is important because what it expresses is true
Deny having traditions when the church still holds onto some traditions
Can look culturally different from location to location
Anglicans came to be after Harry the eighth created his own new religion after being denied the opportunity to divorce his last wife
September 19, 2024
Historical context of early christianity – jewish religious context
Three questions to approach the biblical text
What did it mean (historical)
What has it means (meant throughout time/course of history)
What does it mean to me?
September 24, 2024
Pharisees (religious legalists or traditionalists)
Name Pharisee means “separated ones” → separated themselves from the people to study the law
Pharisee was the favorite group within the people
Jesus was more of a pharisee since he kept to the torah and understood what it meant
Monotheistic belief (One God)
Jews Honotheism belief → believe in other deities but God is the supreme deity (Sometimes where monotheistic)
Pharisees were excellent at studying the history of the text
The combining of the torah
Explaining the why of why we are here and the relationships that people should have with God
The torah was the ‘guide’ to how to live and the Pharisees tried to live through this at its finest
Main three Tanak (old testament)
Law, writings, poems
some jews did not believe in the ‘big three’ – the pharisees were the ones who lived their lives to these ‘rules’
Oral law
Not working on shabbat because this is the time of worship
Temple Destroyed in 70AD
The jews can't sacrifice
Judaism is wiped out
Judismt doesn't believe that jesus was the messiah
The pharisees save judaism by taking the religion of sacrifice to a religion of the law
Jews go from the people of sacrifice to law; therefore the law is what keeps individuals holy not sacrifice
Many of the traditions that were done at the temple were moved to be done at home
The passover
They were done to remember the covenant that God had made with his people
Sadducees (worldly minded priests)
Liked rome because rome gives them authority, power, and money
Liberalized priests
Wealthy
Only accepted the Torah; they didn't care about the oral law
Not good at interpreting the Torah
Would take some parts literal and other parts more a passerby
Would pay for sins but continue sinning
They liked rome because they left them stay in power
‘Sold’ the people to be able to maintain their titles
September 26, 2024
Historical Context Of Early Christianity: Greco-Roman Religious Context
Greek background
Greco-roman religiosity
Titus libius
Greatest roman historian – wrote about the roman empire
Conventional wisdom → Do the right thing (according to the gods) you will be successful, do the wrong thing and you will have misfortune
You reap what you sow
The punishment of doing the wrong thing is death, conventional wisdom sometimes permits the act of hypocrisy because as human being everyone is a hypocrite but instead of taking accountability the blame gets shifted
The book of Job is a story of conventional wisdom – he was a faithful person and completely loyal to God but suffered greatly
October 1
Rome thought that christianity was into incest because they would call each other brothers and sisters and married within each other
Rome still believes in other gods so they did not say much to anger the God of the Christians
Emperor worship
Worship emperors as a god not a man
Emperors were considered divine
Emperors never claimed being a god themselves but let the people bestow the title upon them
Mystery religions
Mason religion
Collective wisdom that comes amongst the generations
The building of the pyramids
The skulls of ivy
The illuminati
All of these religions are based in secret and they are built by secret ceremonies or connections of initiations and baptisms
The Cult of Kybele, the Great Mother, and her beloved, the shepherd Attis(originating in Asia Minor)
The Cult of Isis and Osiris, later named Serapis (originating in Egypt)
The Cult of Adonis (originating in Syria and Palestine)
Mithraism (originating in Persia or Iran)
Christianity is judaism and much of platonism
Plato’s belief → cave
Stoicism
Most important philosophical influence on clusters individuals during the first century AD
Emphasized ideals such as human reason, natural law, tolerance, human natured morality and cosmopolitanism
October 3, 2024 → biblical authority: inspiration
Bibles authority based on one word
Inspired → k
“All scripture is God breathed [inspired] and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training is righteousness” 2 timothy 3:16
October 8, 2924 → Biblical authority: inspiration Continued
Inspiration has forms
Aristotle has a transcendent idea on inspiration
DIfferent views of evangelicals idea of inspiration
Verbal plenary (every word is inspired)
community
Redefinition (Inspiration has some external source that puts) meaning
Canon formation
Hapax Legomenon – once spoken
Found once in 2 tim 3:16
Paul says “God breathed”
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”
2 Tim is possibly the last book that Paul wrote before his death (believed that he and peter were imprisoned here)
Paul is saying all scripture is inspired because its God breathed
Developing a doctrine in scripture the importance of inspiration is important and also giving credit to where the inspiration comes from
Sons of Songs was changed from a book to lovers to a letter of love from God to his people by the pharisees before putting it into the canon bible
Ester and ecclesiastes are also books that the pharisees fought against being included to the canon bible
K
Patristic Views
Clement of Rome
Writing in 96 AD and he claims inspiration for Paul's writings (1 Clement 47) but he also claims inspiration for his own writing
He claims that the importance of the writings was not based on its inspiration or not but whether it belonged to the age of the apostles or not
Ignatius of antioch
Believe that the spirit was at work in every believer
Therefor he considered every believer is inspired
Not every believer can make the claims to belong to the Aspostolic age
Gregory of Nyssa
Refers to a commentary by his brother basil
Calls it an exposition given by the inspiration of theopneustos (inspiration) of God and its as admired as the words of moses himself
Augustone
In a letter to Jerome, states not only that Jerome has been favored with divine grace, but that he also writes under the dictation of the Holy Spirit
Abercius marcellus
The epitaph on the tomb of Roman bishop , Abercius marcellus was called an “inspired inscription”
Epitaph→ A tombstone – the last writing
Pope Celestine
The letter of an ecumental council to Pope Celestine describes the condemnation of a heretic at the council “a decision given by the (theopneustos) inspiration of God”
Cyril of Scythopolis
In the work vita sabae 16 describes a company of anchorites as “(theopneustos)”
Inspiration was given a much wider understanding in the early church than in modern times
Inspiration > Scripture
Other things considered inspired
Scripture > Bible
Non-biblical writings called “scripture” - clement/enoch/etc.
Bible > inspiration
Inspiration Is not a limiting factor of what becomes the bible
Therefore, Canon< scripture >bible
Inspiration, scripture and canon are not synonymous
Closest definition in the patristic period is “orthodoxy”
Contemporary evangelical views
The bible is inspired in the “original autographs”
It was developed to stem the onslaught of Liberal theology of Biblical authority. It created a stalemate between conservative and liberal theologies
Evangelical statements of faith
Each church or christian institute has its own form of a statement of faith
TWU
“We believe the scriptures, both OT and NT to be the inspired word of God, without error in the original writings, the complete revelations for His will for the salvation of men and women, and the divine and final authority for all Chritian faith and life”
Believe the scriptures are inspired (original writings)
October 10, 2024
NT textual criticism
reading walsh article do not confuse transmission and translation
Spoken gospel comes before the written gospel
The disciples had the spoken gospel and they had began to write them down after the ascension
Oral translation is just as important as the written gospel because it's the living gospel that comes from the holy spirit and from Jesus
It is believed that the disciples began to write down everything that they knew once they began to die off because of age or prosecution
The churches would share copies of the first bible
Nomina sacra
Holy names
Transmission → copy and paste (ex. Something says “I am” and you write “I am”)
October 15, 2024: Canonical formation of the NT
Next class will cover Historical Criticism
Harmonization of the bible
How can a person know what actually happened to what was added in as a filler?
Can these make the bible any less believable?
Canon means measurement. Used in early Christianity means rule, norm, collection.
Canon is revealed truth
Letters and writing began to appear during the early christian years and it wasn’t until the NT was finished that they began to collect
Reasons for NT canon:
1: Gradual spread of the gospels throughout the churches
2: The proliferation of other Gospels (gnostic gospels like gospel of Thomas not included)
3: Marcion’s Canon (considered heretic who makes his own canon- takes out parts of luke and handful of Pauls epistles bc rest is “too jewish” )
4: discrepancies in the 4 gospels (tatitan tried to get rid of the discrepancies)
What Jesus taught and the disciples preached
Taitian – 3rd C
He harmonizes the four gospels – formed the diatessaron
Means ‘through the four
Criteria of canonicity in the NT:
1: Apostolic Authority - those who were associated with Jesus, or with theology that's inline with what Jesus preached.
2: Antiquity - if writing was associated with an apostle, must be within apostolic age. Later writings cannot be put into apostolic canonical books
3: orthodoxy: all books had to be consistent with apostolic faith
4: catholicity: have universal recognition (not just locally) to be included
5: traditional use
6: inspiration
Early church fathers definition of inspiration: circular reasoning (if it's inspired → its orthodox, if its orthodox -> it's inspired)
Revelation was accepted in the Latin church very early, but it took the (eastern) orthodox hundred of years to accept it.
October 17 2024: Clarification Of Content So Far
Bible is central to Evengelicals
The Bible expresses the heart of christianity (hence its importance)
Our translations contain variants (hundreds of thousands) but 95% of variants include spelling differences.
Does not lose theological significance
Remaining 5% are more complex, but have no significant impact on Christian theological or doctrinal formations.
Bible comes from Oral processes
Criteria for being in the Bible
Was it orthodox?
Witness to the life of Jesus?
Was it traditionally used (frames the church's faith)
1 and 2 book of clements meets all criteria but is too far out of the age of AD
Finding the first book of corinthians
Could it be put back into the bible?
No
The reason as to why this cannot be put into the bible is due to the timeframe of its discovery …
The books of the bible have been SO carefully transmitted and translated.
October 29, 2024
Historical criticism is in a sense that employs all of the following methodologies and in addition it draws upon the data of archaeology and of secular historical sources
Source criticism
This is concerned with identifying the various literary sources that the biblical authors (or editors) used to produce their works and it is in the effort to determine the various written sources upon which the books of the bible are based and/or which they are derived from
KNOW THE JUDAISMS FOR THE MIDTERM!!!\
Three different tools in the tool box of historical criticism;
Source criticism → argues that biblical authors had other materials used to write their gospels and letters - understanding these materials
Form Criticism → method of determining the oral pre-history of documents and sources
Redaction criticism
It is also referred as an editorial or composition criticism because it moved our observations on the making of the bible a step forward by reviewing each book as a whole and not composed by a singular collector of stories and events but by a theologian with a very well defined purpose
It is a study of the activity of the biblical authors in shaping, modifying and even creating material for the final product which they wrote
Definition of the term theology
Basic definition of theology is the study or science of God
What God's will is
History
Human conceptions
Religion
Humanities desire to connect to something bigger than ourselves
K
K
K
K
K
K
K
k