Customer Reviews

Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library)

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Many religious people choose to focus on those things that make their religion unique, ahistorically separating it from the cultures and other religions in and around which it originally formed. It makes sense that several kinds of contemporary Christianity would do the same. For those looking for a scholarly, well-argued position against the singular historical uniqueness of Christianity, Luke Timothy Johnson provides an excellent one in "Among the Gentiles."

Johnson feels that illustrating lines of continuity between Greco-Roman paganism, Jewish traditions, and nascent Christianity opens up the possibility of dialogue, as well as providing a space where the comparative history of religions can take place stripped of the limiting, often judgmental assumptions of contemporary conservative Christian apologetics. Any project with this type of scope requires tools which allow for the analysis of those types of continuity at which Johnson is looking.

Methodologically, he proposes a fourfold religious typology which claims will be useful in looking at all of these traditions; even though Johnson teaches in a school of theology, he avoids any theological language in any of these. What he calls "Religiousness A" is the participation in divine benefits, including "revelation through prophecy, healing through revelation, providing security and status through Mysteries, enabling and providing for the daily successes of individuals, households, cities, and empires." This type of religious practice is optimistic in believing that the world is a stage for divine activity, and pragmatic in that "salvation involves security and success in this mortal life." Johnson says that Greek orator Aelius Aristides embodies this type. In several of Aristides' orations, he singles out for praise Serapis (who protected him on his journey to Egypt) and Asclepius (who bestowed the gift of oratory upon him).

Religiousness B is moral transformation, which exemplifies the belief that "the divine [spirit] is immanent within human activity and expressed through moral transformation." The pagan example here is the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose Enchiridion is quite literally a "handbook for the moral life," detailing how to manage desires and emotions and learn one's social duties.

Religiousness C attempts to transcend the world, since "the divine is not found in material processes of the world but only in the realm of immortal spirit and light. Salvation is rescuing the spark of light that has fallen into a bodily prison and returning it, through asceticism and death itself, to the realm from which it first came. It is triumph through escape." Johnson selects as an example of Religiousness C the Poimandres, a selection from the Corpus Hermeticum (a complex set of texts of Egyptian origin associated with the revealer-god Hermes Trismegistus).

Religiousness D tries to stabilize the world, consisting largely of "all ministers and mystagogues of cults, all prophets who translated oracles and examined entrails and Sibylline utterances, all therapists who aided the god Asclepius in his healing work, all `liturgists' who organized and facilitated the festivals, all priests who carried out sacrifices, all Vestal Virgins whose presence and dedication ensured the permanence of the city." Johnson chooses Plutarch, the biographer, priest, and philosopher as the epitome of Religiousness D. Plutarch accepts the responsibility of exercising civic magistracies, shows a commitment to maintaining Apollo's temple at Delphi (as well as serving as a priest there), and expends a lot of effort in returning the temple to its former grandeur. Plutarch is a student of the social dimension of religion, and obviously is most concerned with how religion affects the reigning social order.

Johnson says that types A and B were already at work in the Christian world in the first century; he looks at type A in the apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Montanism; type B is discussed in Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Polycarp. Religiousness C, "transcending the world," Johnson argues, does not appear until the second century, where its predominant idiom is found in the Gnostic writings discovered at Nag-Hammadi, and especially Irenaeus' refutation of Gnostic doctrine in "Adversus Haereses." Religiousness D, stabilizing the world, first became recognizable after 313's Edict of Milan, which marked the beginning of Constantine's adoption of Christianity as the official imperial religion, and grew even stronger after the appearance of political and communal power within the bishoprics around the Christian world.

If there was one criticism I have of the book, it would be that the fourfold typology is sometimes applied too strictly to situations where it doesn't apply as well as others. It is clear from the way Johnson phrases the language of the four types that he anticipates the rise of Christianity, and therefore molds them to accommodate it. Also, Johnson represents the types as if they were compartmentalized and essential, when in fact they bleed together and inform each others' practice. Surely transcendence was sometimes thought of as a gift bestowed by the gods, or that moral transformation can stabilize society, and so forth. Surely Johnson realizes this, but he has already performed quite the feat in establishing his thesis in a mere 280 pages.

Johnson is a Catholic, and his scholarship in this book truly is in the spirit of the "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council's rallying exhortation for a thoroughgoing ecumenism. The truth is that Johnson does have an agenda: one of inclusion, one whose goal is the "embrace of a catholicity of religious sensibility and expression." At the heart of Johnson's book is a call for Christians to embrace the fullness and complexity of their past, and to view this as a means of starting a conversation instead of stopping one.

I have simplified and adumbrated some of the arguments that Johnson makes in the book, because they really are too rich and fully textured to give them the treatment they deserve here. I recommend this highly for anyone with a catholic (lower-case c) attitude toward Christianity and Christian history, and anyone who wants to learn about the ways that Christianity borrowed from paganism during its first few centuries.

Luke Timothy Johnson does it again. This most creative and learned interpreter of New Testament and early church history challenges his readers to use four new interpretive categories to explore Jewish, Christian, and Gentile religion. Scales fall from readers' eyes as they see familiar texts in exciting and brilliant new ways. For example, why should it be surprising that new converts in Galatia wanted to add circumcision to baptism? After all, the religious practices with which they were familiar invited deeper levels of initiation.

It seems Luke Johnson always has something interesting to say. And, what he has to say is founded on his extensive research. Therefore, if someone desires to disagree with Johnson's interpretation it requires an extensive moment of silence before his evidence prior to opening one's mouth. Yes, the 100+ pages of footnotes is daunting but one has to appreciate that someone is doing the study for which others (me!) don't have the time or the inclination to do. I would have enjoyed a longer section on "implications" and I would hope that Johnson would consider such in a later book. Nonetheless, his "implications" are instructive. Arguing that the structure of my religiousness is right does not make the structure of religious expression of someone else, wrong. That premise appears sadly lacking in many debates. To reflect on Christianity in light of the structure of "pagan" religions simply confirms to me that much of human religiousness finds common human structure allowing us to investigate content a bit more intentionally. I have profited by reading this book.

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." -Y.B. Yeats

Although attracted by the promise of the title, when I finished reading this book, things did indeed fall apart and in the end the center did not hold.

I am a history enthusiast, as well as a Christian. To be clear, when I purchased this book I was not looking for something spiritual. Rather I was interested in a secular assessment of how the cultures of the Greeks and the Romans influenced the developing "culture" of the emerging Christian religion. (Perhaps if you are looking for something more spiritual or about the faith itself, you may have to look elsewhere.)

The author asserts that the Greeks and Romans used religion in their cultures for four purposes. These are: 1. to receive divine benefits, 2. to transform oneself morally, 3. to transcend the world, and 4. to stabilize the world. Unfortunately, Johnson provides little evidence to support the notion that these four purposes were prevalent in Greco-Roman culture. Rather for each he uses only one example of the writings of an illustrative person (Aelius Aristides, Epictetus, Plutarch) or a work of hermetic literature ("Poimandres") as the sole support for his assertion. For me, this is insufficient evidence. Much as I would like to agree with his sense of the use religion by the ancients, I must conclude that one example does not warrant his conclusion that these purposes existed, were prevalent and are, as he states, "supported by the literature."

Once these unfounded assertions are made, the author provides an assessment of these purposes against what we know about early Christianity. This comes mostly from Scriptural exegesis. This is where Johnson moves to more stable gournd; it is at times insightful. He shows that these purposes were practiced by the Christians. However, unfortunately this is insufficient to overcome the fundamental weakness of his assessment of the use of religion by the Greeks and Romans. His arguement cannot be supported. Things just fall apart.

Surely, we can probably all agree that as Christianity emerged in the middle of the first century it must have drawn from Greco-Roman culture in some ways. We know that as Judaism turned away from Hellenism, Christianity grew closer and contributed to it. As Johnson notes, as a result Christianity became a religion of the Gentiles, not the Jews. However, what role these cultures had specifically on the religion of Christianity and vice versa is not clear. Johnson's exposition does not penetrate this fog.

I like the details but not the $2.00 vocabulary. He could have used many more down to earth words to share the information. His information is very helpful and well documented. It adds a perspective that can help Church better communicate and not be so defensive. God is in charge and we are part of creation, on a journey toward eternity.