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corpus-paul - Re: corpus-paul digest: August 17, 2001

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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: corpus-paul digest: August 17, 2001
  • Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 03:34:58 -0400


Noel J Fitzpatrick says:

>>I read with amazement the e-mail I received today [from CORPUS-PAUL
Digest dated August 17, 2001] with contributions:

1. Re: Ignatius and all that! (Part One)
2. Re: Ignatius and all that! (Part Two)

[...] I do not know what the sentence or the contributions mean and
their relevance to the "corpus-paul" list. Were the contributions
intended as anti-Catholic or anti-Moslem diatribes?<<

Mike was responding to my evaluation (here on C-P) of an article he
had published in The Journal of Higher Criticism. This all is an
outgrowth of an earlier discussion dealing with a late 19th century
Dutch Radical hypothesis that all the Pauline letters were spurious.
Mike had drawn attention to his article, which proposes that the
Ignatian epistles were spurious and composed to advance the agenda of
the original writers. Although unstated, I took this to mean the
shorter Greek version of the epistles, although I could be wrong.

My evaluation had questioned the likelihood that the agenda he had
proposed (establishment of a rigid hierarchy and strengthening of the
concept of martyrdom for the cause, with the aim of undermining, and
eventual controlling, the Roman government) could really have been
held by the publishers of the Ignatian corpus. While I have not yet
had the time to compose a reply, I believe Mike is trying to emphasize
that amazing things have been pulled off in the name of a strongly
held ideology. Islamic beginnings have the advantage of being much
better documented than early Christianity's.

When Mike says "The elite of the Roman Church" he is referring to his
contention that about the end of the first century some Christian
leaders had established themselves in the Roman capital itself in
order to create an underground anti-government intent of subverting
and eventually taking control of the public government. Only when
Constantine recognized Mike's proposed Christian agenda, and turned it
to his advantage, was it realized.

Now Mike does say: "Perhaps the most significant activities of Roman
Catholicism in the third to the six centuries C.E. - that is to say,
following the disappearance of their religious opponents - were 1) the
liquidation of their opponents records and 2) the fabrication of
alternatives where they sensed a meaningful lacuna. The clerical
falsification of documents is a leitmotif up into our own times."

I noted that he otherwise speaks of "proto-christians, the
non-orthodox, if you will, the anti-Establishment elements within the
Palestinian population" who expected "a form of apocalyptic
messianism, on which a better world (and kingdom) was expected to come
*in place of the existing system" (there quoting me). I understand
Mike to be saying that it was the failure of such an expectation that
drove some "proto-christians" to develop the highly organized system
of bishops, elders, deacons and clerics as means to exert control over
the faithful and fulfill a political agenda.

So I did not take this as anti Roman Catholic diatribe. However,
considering the above, I think I now know where I will go in my
response to Mike, which I will post separately.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA









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