Well the tomb was said to dated to a 200 or so BC. So … it wasn’t made for the city as it was in Jesus’ time.
The romans destroyed the second north wall that was near or over the tomb.
They built a roman polytheist temple on the site.They probably didn’t do this to cover up Jesus’ tomb, they built it there as they were removing the city walls to expand up and north, and had the material to reuse, and they wanted the temple near the palace and perhaps more central than the hebrews temple.
The christian romans had this polytheist temple removed from above the tomb, so that the tomb could be exposed and the shrine built over it.
So the rock shelf that is said to be Jesus’ tomb is just an old rock shelf… it might have been usable at the time of Jesus, and it might have been hidden below the second north wall or under rubble.
However, as it is right at the wall, it would probably have been covered up and not used, as the wall was built for security … the tomb would represent a security risk ??? Also the story would mention being AT the city walls ?
There were other tombs (morgues effectively… ) away from the walls of the city. The Garden Tomb and the cave and so on… Then the dead were moved family tombs outside the city … even 6km out from the city …
This is new to me–the real tomb of Jesus is in Shingo, Japan! Turns out that it wasn’t Jesus that died on the cross, it was his brother Isukiri. Jesus then fled to Japan, became a rice farmer, and lived to be 106.
My understanding is that the Eastern Mediterranean used to be much more forested than it is today, there was heavy deforestation and environmental destruction during the late Roman empire period.
His wife and son. Don’t forget the son. Killing your wife is one thing, but your own kid? It ups the WTF-factor a few notches, at least for me.
He had Crispus (the son) executed first, then he cooked Fausta (the wife, Crispus’s stepmother) to death in a sauna a while later. Yes, seriously. Apparently, there was some weird plot, some evil stepmothering, or possibly an affair between stepmother and stepson involved. No one knows for sure. It’s one of the oddest episodes ever.
Actually, that was just around the time his mother went off to the Holy Land and found that true cross. Maybe she figured it was a good idea to get out of town for a while, until the family member killing spree had died down.
You know, I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now. I think I have a point I want to make about it, but I’m not entirely sure how to articulate it. I’ll guess we’ll see how it goes. What are Constantine’s needs? Well, there’s the basic idea from upthread, that Constantine wants to keep the Christians on his side. Well, at the time of the Milvian Bridge, the Christians are, what, ten percent of the population? So, getting the support of those guys, at the risk of potentially alienating everyone else, would just be bad math. So let’s assume a spherical cow, as it were, and say that it’s not that. At least not exactly. But we’ll get back to that.
I also don’t think it’s about, as you put it:
This makes it sound like Constantine wants set up some kind of theocratic police state. Now, that may be one way to describe the later state of the Roman (and then Byzantine) Empire, especially if one is in a certain kind of mood, but Constantine isn’t Theodosius. I don’t think this is what is going on. Besides, there are limits to how much of a police state, theocratic or otherwise, the Roman Empire could ever hope to be, when you consider the size of the state apparatus and the communication technology of the time. But anyway.
Furthermore, this:
I realize that you probably didn’t mean it that way, but this sort of makes it sound like the Roman Empire was suffering disunity due to a proliferation of pagan gods. This I don’t think is the case at all. The ancient world in general, and the Roman Empire specifically, had been pagan and polytheistic since basically forever. And when you look at all the conflict and strife in all that space in all that time, you might notice that almost none of it has to do with religion. I mean, sometimes it gets in there, but religious conflict, as such, before this time period? Well… it’s not really a thing, is it? Frankly, I’m not sure if such a concept even makes all that much sense to a pagan-polytheistic mindset. Certainly not pagan vs pagan. For another thing, when we say pagan and polytheistic, we’re often, in context, talking about the Graeco-Roman pantheon. And that’s already a pretty unified sort of thing. So, did Constantine want to solve a problem of too many pagan gods running around? No.
Actually, we can get more specific about this. If we consider recent and relevant cases of instability, namely the Crisis of the Third Century and the Civil Wars of the Tetrarchy (which is the part we are in), well… you can write the history of all that for a good long time, and religion doesn’t even enter into it. That is, until certain emperors decide to sort of semi-arbitrarily persecute some Christians. But then that becomes important. And, again, we’ll get back to that.
So why does Constantine find Christianity, or at least a pro-Christian position, useful? Well, as I said, I don’t think it’s about setting up a theocratic police state. At least to begin with, Constantine reminds me more of a politician standing for election. He actually needs some support, from the population and the armies, and he’s positioning himself in relation to his rivals for power. I don’t want to take that analogy too far, as we’re talking about absolute autocrats, or wannabe autocrats, who fight each other with armies. It’s not like there are free elections in this world. But, still, that’s sort of the impression I get. Constantine needs, well, a platform. When he whacks one of his rivals in the rolling Civil Wars of the Tetrarchy, it’s useful for him to pose as a liberator, freeing the people from a tyrant. And why was the other guy such a tyrant? Why, he was persecuting Christians, you see. I’m not a warlord who wants absolute power, nope. I’m the champion of the oppressed, me.
But still, why pick that as a platform? Well, the question of what to do about these Christians seems to be something of a hot button issue at this time. Persecute them, or not? Now, we may be getting the wrong impression from the sources, who are 1) rather concerned with this issue, and 2) huge fans of Constantine (which is why, I suppose, we’re all going revisionist on his ass now). But that’s what it looks like. It’s what is trending on the Roman Twitter feeds.
So, Constantine, much like other Roman figures, is probably not best understood in a vacuum. When you think about it, his conversion, if that’s the right word for it, is a pretty context-specific sort of thing. That context is all about the Emperor Diocletian, the Tetrarchy, The Great Persecution, the failures of those things, and the fallout from all that. I don’t know how much I should get into that stuff. Anyway. It also involves cabbages. Maybe later.
There is a bazillion dollar question in here somewhere, I think, concerning Constantine’s beliefs. We’re saying that he was a pragmatist. And he could be a ruthless bastard, in certain ways. So: If he had found it expedient, would or could Constantine have been a persecutor, as opposed to an anti-persecutor? I mean, it’s both moot and hypothetical, since I don’t see a scenario where it would have been smart. But, you know, just as a thought experiment? Would he have been *that *much of a pragmatist? For what it’s worth, I can’t see it. Not unless you change both the context and the man so much that he’s no longer Constantine at all.
That 10% figure for Christian percentage of population surprised me. My WAG would have been around 20% but I see you’re right. I guess by being concentrated in the urban centres they had greater visibility, more importantly visibility to Constantine, than their actual numbers might suggest. I do take your point though that in coming to any decision on religion the Emperor would have to bear those figures in mind.
I’m far from suggesting Constantine had a rigid theocracy in mind (that’s the last thing he wanted) but as a practical man he could not but be aware that there were elements in the Christian religion which could be of great use if that religion were to prove dominant in his empire. The very fact that Christians could be guided by their spiritual leaders to an extent that pagans generally could not and that those leaders could potentially be guided by a Christian emperor would have been enough to set Constantine thinking. Not of a theocracy but of a regime in which the Emperor was seen as the divinely-sanctioned ruler.
As to the stability of the empire under paganism I had no intention of implying that religion was the root cause of the disunity of previous centuries. Paganism had served the Romans well and few peoples had been more tolerant of other religions, absorbing their gods into the pantheon with practiced ease. But Christianity could not be thus absorbed as I’m sure Constantine saw and I’m equally sure that he foresaw this could prove a problem in future years. The decision that might have to be made at some point was this: to preserve the status quo and continue to either stifle Christianity or keep their numbers insignificant or boldly to favour Christianity and hope that the example of the ruler would eventually persuade his subjects to follow suit, allowing in other words paganism to wither on the vine by neglect (using more forceful measure if necessary). The former course had been tried and wasn’t working, the latter course might prove more efficaceous, perhaps leading at some future date to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion. Constantine of course would not live to see that but I’m pretty sure he would not have disapproved.
Oh and I think Constantine might well have persecuted the Christians if he thought it might help in whatever was his current endeavour. I just think he was far-sighted enough to know that such persecution would be at best futile and at worst positively harmful. He only had to look back a few years to the persecutions of Diocletian and Galerian and indeed some of his current imperial rivals to see that.
When you put it like that, I agree with you completely, and thanks for bringing it up. I was even thinking of mentioning something along those lines in my post, but it didn’t seem to fit the train of thought. A regime with the emperor as divinely sanctioned ruler wasn’t even Constantine’s idea to begin with, really. For starters, the imperial cult had been a thing for a long time. But more specifically, this was another thing that was trending heavily around this time, thanks to Diocletian (yes, folks, him again, and for anyone unfamiliar, y’all need to look this dude up), another pragmatist who was very much concerned with legitimacy, both for himself specifically and for the imperial office in general. Of course, where Diocletian and Constantine differed completely was in the choice of divinity to associate themselves with, as Diocletian’s favorite deity was Jupiter. And yes, this is connected to the Great Persecution, which, despite what one might hear, wasn’t kicked off only because those Christian kitchen servants were allegedly jamming Diocletian’s and Galerius’s fortune telling sessions.
But yes, Christianity is probably a much better fit for that sort of thing than paganism. And yes, that had probably crossed Constantine’s mind at some point.
Really, though? It seems personal with Constantine. It’s not just a matter of picking the most advantageous position, although he does obviously pick a position that works out pretty well for him.
First of all, he didn’t like Galerius. Although, how could he? *I *don’t like Galerius. I don’t think Galerius is likeable. I’m not even a little bit sorry that he died from cancer of the dick. (Yes, or at least that’s the version I’m sticking with, and don’t ask.) But it’s about family, too. Constantine’s (highly credulous) mother may have been a Christian before he was. And his dad, of course, was Constantius Chlorus, who was the least enthusiastic persecutor of the first generation of tetrarchs. Constantius’s chunk of the empire was by all accounts the part where the persecution was pursued with the least fervor. You get the impression that the letters from Nicomedia telling him to get a move on kept getting, ahem, lost in the mail, and that he limited himself to knocking down the most decrepit churches he could find, while hoping that the whole thing would blow over. And then Constantine, who is kept hostage at the court of Galerius, is eventually allowed to get out of there and join his dad in the West (pro tip: the time to ask Galerius for favors is when he’s really, really drunk). There’s a heartwarming reunion. Constantine sees how popular his dad is for going easy on the persecuting. And then his dad dies. And everyone looks at Constantine…
So, yeah. Sure, we could say: “Well, let’s consider a *hypothetical *Constantine, who hadn’t been in this or that situation, or experienced this or that.” But how much can you hypothetically change his context before, as I said, he’s not even Constantine anymore? That’s *really *assuming a spherical cow. He’s a guy who is hard to separate from his biography, I think.
I’m not saying he would be happy to persecute the Christians but I’m sure if it was essential to his goals he would not have hesitated. As for Galerius, yeah, he was certainly no angel but to be fair to the old bastard he was the first emperor to issue an edict of toleration regarding the Christians, 2 years before Constantine and Licinius came up with a similar edict. (OTOH he’d been enthusiastically helping Diocletian persecute them for years and only changed direction a week or so before dying so not too many brownie points for that then!)
I can see that you are moderating your position. I’ll get you to come around completely soon enough.
BTW, lest anyone get any ideas: This would have made for a much nicer story if Maxentius, the dude on the other side at the Milvian Bridge, had been a persecutor. You could make a Mel Gibson movie out of that, right? Constantine surrounded by puppy-eyed peasants. He marches on Rome to oust the evil persecutors. On the way, he has his vision. There’s a battle where he fights on the side of Jesus. Triumphal entry into the city… record scratch sound effect
But, yeah, no. Throw that movie script idea in the bin, folks. 'Cause Maxentius wasn’t a persecutor, was he? At this particular time, that was Maximinus Daia, in the East (yes, similar names, but totally different dudes). And *he *gets whacked by Licinius (who has an alliance with Constantine at the time, but the Facebook status is still “it’s complicated, and about to get worse”), post Edict of Milan. Maxentius was all about religious toleration. And, sure, Constantine insists that he was a tyrant, but I’m not sure if anyone is buying it. So *that *was just a power struggle.
I’m not so sure about that. My understanding is that Christianity was rather decentralized at that time. Christianity followed a Jewish trajectory: communities lead by their own local teachers, in communication with others. This makes sense considering the persecution they often endured.
The strongly centralized top-down approach that Christianity later took is an outgrowth of the Roman Empire’s approval and then mandate. Basically, the Empire co-opted Christianity as a mechanism for control of the polity. Once Christianity became a part of the political power structure, those in power increased its centralization in order to increase their own power. The later power struggles between the patriarch of Rome and the other patriarchs is the continuation of this centralization process, with the addition of a misalignment between the Empire and the Church.
Or maybe co-evolution is a better term: Christians emulated the Roman hierarchy as they became more organized. The patriarch of Rome claims the title Pontiff. There are parallels between the College of Cardinals and the Roman Senate.
As a counter-factual, suppose Christianity never gained legal status in the Empire. I think Christians would have continued along their Jewish trajectory. Communities embedded within, but segregated from, society at large. I don’t think there’s any compelling reason that the successor states of the Empire in Western Europe couldn’t have been dominated by any of several pagan religions, with Christianity being a minority. Various degrees of persecution and oppression, depending on time and place. Basically a version of Judaism, but not restricted to the tribes of Judah et al.
Yes, this is one of the more annoying bits of illiteracy. I blame rampant urbanization.
I read a children’s Christmas book that showed a picture of stable described as a “manger”. And the next page said the baby Jesus was placed in a feeding trough to sleep. :smack: Looking at the book’s origin I saw it was British, so I checked to see if it was some weird “divided by a common language” problem. But no, as far as I can tell, “manger” means feeding trough universally in English.
It made a good teaching moment for my kids: 1) you can look up words in a dictionary, and 2) you can’t believe everything you read.
Of course the whole “Roman census, go to Bethlehem” is thought by many scholars to be a later embellishment to explain why a Galilean peasant would be born in the City of David… It included the descent from avid through Joseph, followed by further embellishment that Joseph was not his father. And of course, there was no census. There was a census of the Syrian province a few years before that, it did not require inhabitants to journey to a remote city of origin to register. So much of what’s in the bible is actually writer embellishments decades to centuries later to enhance the reputation of Jesus and rewrite existing narratives to conform to the approved orthodoxy.
If Rome had not made Christianity the approved religion, we’d have a much more splintered set of churches - more than as happened with protestant churches after the reformation. There were assorted Arian and other heresies that were put down by force.
There’s a very good article in the current Newsweek about how the contents of the bible are all over the map in terms of embellishments and redactions long after the time of the bible, inconsistences between various stories, etc. Scholars generally agree for example, that the last 12 verses of Mark are a much later addition.
Reza Aslan’s book “Zealot” makes many other good points. Pilate was recalled to Rome after complains of his harsh and vicious treatment of the locals; this is not a man who would have a reasoned conversation with a local preacher, a man accused or rabble rousing, vandalism of the temple merchants, and treason against the Roman empire. Assuming he and Jesus even spoke a common language…
You also have to wonder why Joseph of Arimathea would spend money to build a personal tomb only a few dozen feet from where criminals were routinely executed.
Anyway, Luke doesn’t say it was a cave, so it’s like Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior, just one of those traditional things that came around long after.
