Tag: ANE Research Papers

Question: What part did Diaspora play in the success of early Christian mission not only be location but by interaction?

‘The growth and transformation of Christianity in the years between the death of Jesus and the accession of Constantine, from roughly 30 to 312 CE cannot fail to evoke a reaction of one kind and another’.  John Gager.                                      

This essay will show that the Greek-speaking Diaspora was one of a number of major factors to which the early Christian mission owed its success not only by location but also by interaction.  

Christianity began in Palestine and rapidly spread throughout the then thoroughly Hellenised Mediterranean world.  ‘The Hellenistic period is usually regarded as the three hundred year span between the death of Alexander in 323 BCE and the beginning of the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus in 31 BCE’ (Dunstan, 2000: 418).  Following the Babylonian exile of the Jews (587 BCE) the Persian Cyrus finally came to power (538 BCE).  Cyrus presented the exiled Jews with the opportunity to return and resettle Palestine.  Those who responded were, in the main, the rich and influential of the exiled Jews.  Others opted to stay in Babylon.  Eventually, Babylon was re-founded by Alexander, which together with Seleucia on the Tigris (founded 312 BCE) had the greatest population of Jews as well as being the most populous cities of the whole east.  

The Jews language in Babylon was Aramaic.  However, particularly in the matter of business and legal dealings, and with the spread of Hellenism throughout the east, these Jews began to integrate with the new world in order to survive.  Through their mutual language, these Babylonian Jews were inextricably linked with those who returned to Palestine.  ‘The original social location of the Jesus movement was as diverse sectarian groups within Palestinian Jewish society’ (Freedman:1997).  This tie with the Jews in the east helped carry over Hellenistic influences and in particular the Greek language to those in Palestine.  Finally, they all became bilingual, as did the rest of the Mediterranean world. 

Aside from the link with the Aramaic speaking Jews there were other influences of Hellenism in orthodox Palestine.  Through ‘strong religious ties’ these influences ‘were maintained by means of the annual pilgrimages to the temple, the paying of the half-shekel offering for the daily sacrifices and the acceptances of daily regulation on liturgical matters (eg dealing with the calendar) from the Jerusalem Sanhedrin’ (Hanson, 1998: 70).  Aside from attending temple, house churches were established by the early Jewish Christians, ‘And every day, in the temple and at home, they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ.’ (Acts 5:42) Nevertheless, ‘the history of the Jews in Palestine is but a small segment of the history of the Jewish people in the Hellenistic period’ (Koester, 1982: 219 in RELS 306: 22).  

The importance of the Diaspora Jewish synagogue in early Christian mission cannot be overstated.  The Jews were zealous in active missionary zeal.  They built synagogues wherever they resettled, attracting ‘god-fearers’ and proselytes.  Outside Jerusalem the Diaspora Jewish synagogue served as the community hall.  Those propagating Christianity put this ‘sacred space’ to good use.  ‘One has only to consider Paul’s missionary strategy as described in the Acts of the Apostles – using Jewish synagogues as his first base of operation – to recognise how vital it was for the new movement to have certain structures established throughout the Roman world’ (Hanson, 1998: 69-70).  ‘Thus in a special sense, one might argue that the availability of the synagogue as a model for the religious community helped to preserve primitive Christianity from extinction’ (Gager, 1975: 129).   

Greater movement of Jews in Hellenistic times ‘began an independent religious and cultural development’ (Koester, 1982: 220 in RELS 306: 23).  Large foreign settlements were to be found in most trading and commercial centres.  Archaeological evidences of synagogues, cemeteries and other identifiably Jewish buildings were strewn across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, and even beyond.  The Diaspora Synagogue service acted as a model for the early Christian mission to imitate.  There the people took turns reciting prayers with the reading Scripture being the most important event.  All were welcome to participate.  Both the observances of the Jewish Sabbath and annual religious festivals continued.  Strabo, a Hellenistic geographer (+25 CE approx.) says of the Jew’s dispersion throughout the Mediterranean world, ‘it was not easy to find a place in the inhabited world which this tribe (Jews) has not penetrated and which has not been occupied by it’ (Hanson, 1998: 69).  

As part of this development the Jews sacred literature was another factor that aided Christianity in its success.  This huge body of Jewish literature had undergone changes during the Babylonian exile.  There, their sacred text, originally written in the Palestinian language, underwent change to Aramaic.  This linguistic change then became the most influential amongst the Jews of the east in its varied forms.  However, the most influential change for our study here was when the Hebrew Scriptures and other Jewish literary heritage were translated into Greek koine.  

Once Jewish literary heritage became available in the Greek language it came under the influences of Hellenism.  Consequently, Judaist literature, thought, and institutions of the Hellenistic world of the Diaspora influenced their Christian counterparts.  Not only that, Gager claims that in a real sense Hellenistic Christianity alone preserved the legacy of Hellenistic Judaism and so much so, that the Christian churches simply followed in the footsteps of the Jewish Diaspora.  ‘Diaspora Judaism provided a blue print, precise to the finest detail, for the adaptation of Christianity to the Greco- Roman world’ (Gager, 1975: 126).  ‘Christian congregations simply adopted them, unaltered, for their own use – liturgical, apologetic, and otherwise (Gager, 1975: 127).  ‘As Greek koine became the language of the Bible, of liturgy, preaching, and literature, so did Hellenistic concepts and ideas invade Jewish thinking and bring fundamental changes in the tradition and reception of Israel’s literary inheritance’ (Koester, 1982: 224 in RELS 306: 25).  

This language change made the Hebrew Bible available to the whole of the Mediterranean Greek-speaking world as early as 111 BCE.  Its influence in this world and for the overall success of Christianity cannot be emphasised enough.  ‘In its missionary activities in the Greek-speaking world, Christianity was able to take its starting point from this Hellenization of the Old Testament inheritance’ (Koester, 1982: 225 in RELS 306: 25).  Influenced by Hellenism and as the Jews dispersion increased, Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism continued to change.  Therefore, Diaspora communities, like other ethnic or religious groups, became ‘associations’ recognised by the Greek or Roman jurisdictions.  Hence their ‘theological’ statements became ‘philosophy’, their ‘theocrasy’ became ‘democracy’, and their ‘ecclesia’ granted members equal rights to vote or elect a council (Koester, 1982: 225 in RELS 306: 25).

Jews enjoyed reasonable relations in Egypt and Palestine under Ptolemaic rule (305 BCE) and later Roman (30 BCE) authorities.  At the time of the Babylonian exile some Jews went to Egypt.  Later in Egypt we find Diaspora Jews playing a vital role in the life of the new city, Alexandria, which became one of the great cultural centres of the Mediterranean world.  It was here that the museum and library ‘the greatest of all ancient institutions intended primarily for scholarship and research … containing everything of note ever written in Greek’ was housed (Dunstan, 2000: 402).  Alexandria had  ‘roughly one million inhabitants during its period of greater glory’ (Dunstan, 2000: 400).  

Mercenaries from all over the Greek world dramatically swelled Alexandria’s numbers.  ‘A substantial number of Greek speakers had come to Egypt in the fourth century BCE as mercenaries and traders’.  Free land was available to the military.  Jews co-existed here with Egyptians and Persians, with a cadre of Macedonians and Greeks forming the citizen body.  The Jews ‘maintained their traditional societies and customs’ enjoying religious freedom (Dunstan, 2000: 396).  Onas 1V, an expatriate high priest (c. 170 BCE – 73 CE) set up a temple in Alexandria.   

Jewish residents in other cities of Egypt also enjoyed the freedom of religion and association where, in all, the common language spoken was Greek.  Of the city of Cyrene in North Africa, Strabo writes ‘there were four classes in the city – citizens, farmers, resident aliens, and Jews’.  These Jewish communities enjoyed free association for religious purposes and legal status.  This explains why we find fully organised quasi-autonomous Jewish communities with their own synagogues, officials and judicious system within the Greek cities, and also in Rome.  Therefore, not only Judaism, but the different Hellenistic communities legal structures recognised by the various city charters eventually served as models ‘for Christian groups to organise along similar lines’ (Hanson, 1998: 72-3).  

The Jewish Diaspora saw two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia resettled in the regions of Phrygia and Lydia in Asia Minor (c. 210 BCE) and as we have noted, preparing the way for the further spread of Christianity.  These were promised religious freedom and various tax incentives in return for them taking care of Seleuceid interests in a troubled area (Hanson, 1998: 71).  Seleucia, a vast and complex kingdom was the largest area among the Hellenistic kingdoms with the great commercial capital noted for its luxuries and sensual pleasures, enjoying tremendous prosperity as the terminus of the caravan routes from India and eastern Iran.  Antioch-on-Orontes was its capital and the kingdom’s last territory, Syria, annexed as a Roman province in 64 BCE, ended the second of the great Hellenistic kingdoms (Dunstan, 2000: 406).  

The Hellenised native states of Galatia, Capadocia, Pontus, and Bithinia, soon followed suit in northern and central Asia Minor (Dunstan, 2000: 403-4).  Pergamum was an architectural masterpiece and cultural centre fashioned after Athens the Greek city-state, exploiting the disarray in the third century BCE.  Pergamum’s riches were eventually bequeathed to Rome in 133 BCE.  The consequences of granting the petition of Hellenising Jewish leaders to stamp Jerusalem with the forms of a Greek city, finally installing Zeus in the Jerusalem temple, provoked the outbreak of an uprising in 167 BCE, the Maccabean revolt- which soon turned into a vicious civil war with anti Greeks fighting pro Greeks.  ‘During the reign of Antiochus 1V from 175 BCE the rulers began an unaccustomed program of “Hellenising”, forcing Greek ways on the Jews in a manner that often clashed with and compromised their religious beliefs’ (RELS 306: 16).  In 142 BCE the Seleucid garrison was expelled from Jerusalem.  

As important as it was not everyone saw Diaspora as the major factor in the success of Christianity.  For example, Origin saw the spread of Christianity was contingent on Augustus’ creation of an ordered, unified, and reasonably peaceful empire after decades of internal strife’.  Contrary to Origin’s theory, there is no record that shows Augustus’ peaceful rule nurtured the flourishing of other religious cults (Gager, 1975: 122).  

The extension of Roman rule throughout the Mediterranean basin, accompanied by its basic attitude of tolerance, created a political structure through which the international character of Hellenistic culture reached its fullest expression.  This relatively peaceful political climate provided by Augustus also allowed ease of travel for both Jewish and Christian missionaries.  Roman law, cultural unity, and the recognition of local customs everywhere – included broad privileges extended to Jewish communities.  However, neither can Christianity’s early mission success rely entirely on Rome’s initial religious tolerance

Nevertheless, all of this did foster an international character of the Empire that was reflected in almost every major city.  These privileges allowed the Jews to recognise the Sabbath as well as conduct their own autonomously governed legal courts.  The Jews found sanctuary in Rome under various rulers, such as Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus and Claudias who made general appeals that the rights of the Jews ‘to live according to their ancestral laws’ be recognised.  By the first century CE there was a large Jewish community in Rome.  The earliest synagogue found in Rome dates from 3rd century BCE;  the earliest church in Rome was established by 41 CE (Perkins, 1988: 41-42 in RELS 306: 57).  

The spread of the Greek language was another important factor in Christianity’s success.  Slavery was central to the Greek civilisation, mentality, and way of life.  Slaves therefore were found carrying out every conceivable task amongst the families and wider circle of contacts in Greece.  Bi-lingual slaves specially were active spreading the Greek language amongst Rome’s upper class households by way of educating their children.  Other slaves acted as secretaries and overseers, tutors and governors, traders and craftsmen.  Roman culture could not escape the influences Hellenism brought and by the time of the later republic all educated Romans were also bi-lingual as were its traders (RELS 306: 21).

Again, not everyone saw the rapid spread of Christianity in the same light.  John Gager points out that it is purely a matter of perspective, and depending upon our given perspective, it will shape our vision.  ‘Some see the success of Christianity  – and I use the term in a strictly quantitative sense – as the work of divine providence, such as Paul of Tarsus (Gal 4:5-5), Clement of Alexandria (Stromatia 1.28.3) and Origin (Against Celsus 2.30) (Gager, 1975: 117).  Alternatively, others saw it as an unfortunate accident that contributed mightily to the demise of ancient Rome, and still others as the salutary blending of the best elements of Greco Roman and Semitic civilisations.  Pliny in 112 CE wrote ‘but I discovered nothing else than a perverse and extravagant superstition … for may of all ages and every rank, and also both sexes are bought into present and future danger’ (Gager, 1975: 115).  Yet others, like Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire sees it as a social cancer and blames it on the decay of philosophy and the rise of superstition (Gibbon in Gager, 1975: 117).  

With the changes and activities and opportunity of travel taking place in the Mediterranean world country people left their agrarian lifestyles and poured into the cities, in some cases creating homelessness and poverty.  They brought with them their unique religions – the mystery cults.  These cults offered protection and new life here and after with a personal and private nature in a relationship available with the infinite.  The existence of many gods indistinguishable from one another facilitated the initial founding of Christian communities.  Thus in the last phase the cult of the old gods was not much different from the forms of worship that developed in Diaspora Judaism and in Christianity’ (RELS 306: 39).  

The rich and poor alike yearned for peace and identity, a happy and secure life, a sense of belonging, carrying a special appeal to the dispossessed of society.  ‘As a reforming sect, the (Jewish Christian) movement would have offered… participation to individuals and groups, including dissidents, women, and marginal groups, that would have felt left out of the traditional power structure’ (Freedman: 1997).  It was both ‘a religious and a social phenomenon’ (Gager, 1975: 131).  In a world fraught with anxiety it offered a sense of community that, according to Gager retained the loyalty of converts (1975:131).  

As well as offering a sense of community the Jew’s belief in monotheism served Christianity’s success with Greek philosophy and religion also playing their part.  Greek philosophy introduced ‘the search for some kind of universal principle’ and ‘the relation between a man’s [sic] inner and outer self (body and spirit)’ (Freyne, 1980: 30 in RELS 306: 44).  These all served to replace and incorporate different religious ideas.  At the centre of Greek philosophy was the ‘Eternal Principle or Logos (Reason) whose spark exists in all reality, man [sic] included, thereby constituting the unity of all creation’ (Freyne, 1980: 30).  Although early Christianity ridiculed the religion and gods of the Greco-Roman culture, it nevertheless appropriated much of it for the purposes of furthering the gospel (Garrison, 1997: 14).  

Alternatively, the Hebrew God called people into a covenantal relationship with divinity doing away with fate’s power over their lives, hence Christianity’s appeal to all classes in the Greco Roman world (RELS 306: 40-41).  As well, the Stoics developed sense of ‘being true to one’s inner self, and, following the call of God’ created a climate in which monotheism or belief in one God was more readily acceptable (Freyne, 1980: 28 in RELS 306: 44-5).  The Greek Philosopher, Epicurus’ answer was geared toward achieving inner harmony and happiness in this life, to ‘eat drink and be merry’ seen as there is nothing after death (Freyne, 1980: 29 in RELS 306: 43).  Overall a considerable degree of religious pluralism and assimilation took place involving, in the main, Greek, Roman, and Jewish religion, with an increasing acceptance of oriental rites.  

In sum, the Jewish Diaspora was one of the major factors in the success of early Christian mission.  Initially, Hellenistic enculturation of the Jews and their literature together with the use of the local Jewish synagogues provided the means for Jewish Christianity to become firmly engrafted into Judaism.  Once it took hold, it grew up and bore seed.  These seeds became embedded in the cultural carriers of transformation and were inevitably dispersed to the four corners of Greece’s expansive borders and territories.  Travelling in the wake of a multicultural mobile population of merchants, military, personnel, and slaves, as it did, and aided by the winds of change, mutation took place in every conceivable way.  

⁹Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabians’.  Book of Acts Chapter 2.

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1. What kind of activity led to the foundation of Christianity?

This essay will show how a number of crucial changes such as the radical shift in the development of Judaism, the surrounding Hellinistic culture and the turbulent political climate all gave impetus to the emerging of Christianity.

It was a time of renewal and reform for the exiled Jews when, in 538 BCE, after 500 years of exile in Babylon, Cyrus of Persia came to power and released the Jews to return to Palestine and the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple.  However, “those who go into exile are not the ones who return” (Jacob Neusner, p 51, in UNE Studies in Religion, RELS 112.  Introduction to World Religions B, Study Guide and Unit Notes).  A shift had taken place in the development of the Jews and transformation was inevitable (p 51).

This significant event precipitated a “resurgence of Judaic religion and national identity” with prophets by the early 400s BCE recalling the people to return to the traditional lifestyle (p 51). For those of the Diaspora, distance separated them from Jerusalem and the temple and “the age of “emergent (Pharisaic) Judaism” ensued (p 51

For well over the next two hundred years the Jews religion developed and evolved as they adapted to the Hellenising influence of Greek culture and thought until, in 63 BCE, Rome conquered Greece.  This new political change brought with it severe persecution for the Jews erupting in violence and some revolts, reviving in them a message of messianic hope.

Within this new melting pot of “sociopolitical forces feeding off one another and influencing each other” (p 37) a new movement erupted. )  Its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, the “agent of intentional change” (Robert E. Goodin p 78, in UNE Studies in Religion, RELS 112.  Introduction to World Religions B, Study Guide and Unit Notes ) recognized as a prophet by his followers, intervened, calling on the professional and priest to “fulfil, reform, and remake“ that which was already there (p 23 Pratt in UNE Studies in Religion, RELS 112.  Introduction to World Religions B, Study Guide and Unit Notes).  Not willing to accept the “revised vision” and “move to a new tradition of a relationship with the deity”, Yahweh, they killed its founder (p 81).

Following Jesus’ death the “crisis of continuance” (Pratt p 23 in UNE Studies in Religion, RELS 112 Introduction to World Religions B, Study Guide and Unit Notes) was met by new leaders being selected and the three fold “interrelated phenomena of belief, event, and activity” carried the movement forward.  The gathered community shared the “belief” in the resurrection of the dead.  The “event” of ‘Pentecost’ as recorded in the Book of Acts falls into the category where those gathered received “spiritual empowerment”.  The “activity-phenomena”, saw acts of healing, teaching and preaching (Pratt p 60).

In sum, Rabbinical Judaism was in a process of change for over five hundred years.  Centripetal forces caused by culture and political change brought to bear pressures from without.  Centrifugal forces from within Judaism came from changes in the fundamentals of their religion.  All of these opened up a breach, thus making way for the new movement, Christianity, to emerge.

Bibliography

UNE Studies in Religion, RELS 112.  Introduction to World Religions B, Study Guide and Unit Notes, 2002, The University of New England, Armidale, NSW.

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“The brute facts of our existence do bring us face to face with questions about which our normal practical techniques and scientific know-how are powerless to provide answers or solutions”

This essay will identify the key focus of the following disciplines in general and then with regard to the study of religion, and discuss the usefulness of such a focus: Philosophy, anthropology, psychology.

The key focus of the three sciences, philosophy, anthropology, and psychology, in general, is to gain a better understanding of what it means to be human, individually and collectively.  Two of these, Philosophy and Anthropology, in contrast to Psychology, converge under the general heading of social sciences, whereas, Psychology’s practitioners are massed together under one roof (Topic 7:73, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion). All three concentrate their attention on different facets of these sciences to help interpret religion.

It is at this point of divergence between the three that their individual usefulness in their different major concepts and approaches to religion can be discovered.  In the conjoint discussions of philosophy and religion, for example ‘issues of truth claims’ and ‘reason’, surface.  A philosophical question such as ‘what are the basic assumptions that underlie some leader of a religious movement’s assertions of truth’, might be discussed as the starting point of a philosophical discussion. (Alison Manion in Topic 4:45-6, Philosophy and Religion, Approachesto the Study of Religion).  Other questions that might be asked in relation to such avowals to truthare ‘what concepts and ideas-structure do such assertions offer, as opposed to what they actually believe or assert about themselves as true”.  Questions such as these show philosophy not so much as attempting to solve the questions that arise from the matters under investigation as to dealing with the issues underlying all knowledge and reality in the interest of gaining understanding.  In so doing foundations and presuppositions are exposed and the process of reasoning comes into play.

In its quest to gain understanding, modern philosophy may be divided into two branches, critical or analytical and continental, sometimes called dialectical.  Analytic philosophy will be considered here.  This branch of philosophy has largely been based on Christianity due to the cultural background surrounding it.  The usefulness of a non-theistic and fairly abstract focus remains broad enough to cover issues that arise from many religions.  In keeping with this broad approach is a typical definition of deity.  ‘God’ is explained as ‘a being who created us, loves us, knows all, is all-powerful and with whom we can have a personal relationship’ (Topic 4:46, Philosophy and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).  The usefulness of having a philosophical approach may help people question their basic religious beliefs and gain a broader understanding of them.  Alternatively, it could also assist people who do not believe in a deity and prefer a more philosophical approach to life.

Unlike philosophy, anthropology’s main points of interest are on particular societies and cultural phenomena, especially non-western, non-industrial societies.  Sociology’s approach, on the other hand, although it is interchangeable with anthropology, is more general and abstract in its major concepts and approaches in its way of looking at the experiences of human societies and social change.  The breadth of sociology-anthropology has two major areas.  The first is physical anthropology with questions of human origins and physiological links between human and earlier hominids.  The other, cultural anthropology is the study of all facets of culture and deals with social organization, folklore, and beliefs (Topic 7:73-4, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

Where anthropology couples together with religion, its diversity can be seen in all four of cultural anthropology’s sub disciplines:

1) Ethnology, to do with human custom

2) Social Anthropology, dealing with social customs

3) Ethnography, the detailed description of individual cultures, normally by means of participant observation, and

4) Structural Anthropology, involving linguistic and literary analysis (Topic 7:73-4, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

Anthropology is useful in helping humanity understand, define and legitimate their society, and themselves as individuals, as well as their identity and place in it.  The theories of modern sociology’s two founders, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, serve to help people understand better and even discover their place in society.  Overall, these two appear to follow opposing ideas about the role of religion in society.

The usefulness of the sociology of religion can be seen in helping an individual, a small community, and a nation collectively, to gain an understanding of their particular society and customs through a study of their religious history leading up to the present time.  Cultural anthropology has four sub-disciplines, Ethnology, Social Anthropology, Ethnography, and Structural Anthropology (Topic 7:74, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

One of the modern founders of Cultuaral Anthropology, Emile Durkheim (1915) in his ‘Elementary Forms of the Religious Life’ debunked the experiences and feelings of individuals.  His theory was that society collectively sought to belong, to be ethical, to serve society, to sacrifice, to answer to the need to surrender and worship.  Durkheim said, “Religion is the sacred power that legitimates the existing order” (Topic 7:77, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).  Feminists would agree with this theory that ‘religion … legitimates the existing order’. ‘On the simplest level, feminist criticism of religious traditions understands religion, or perhaps the constructions of religion in various social contexts, as one of the players in the oppression of women’ (Topic 10:103, Feminist Criticism, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

Unlike Durkheim, Max Weber (1963) in The Sociology of Religion, focused on the individual.  He saw the individual and in particular, the charismatic leader acting as a prophet, initiating new trends, “that favor criticism, change, and greater personal commitment”, by gathering small groups of people, bringing about change and breakthroughs, and new forms of religion.  He understood “the substance of religion as building sacred communities” “creating order and stability” and “personal commitment” and choice (Topic 7:78 Sociology, Anthropology, and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).  Weber would fit more in today’s western society then Durkheim, however, both views exist in any society, allowing for checks and balances in it that nurture the individual as well as the community as a whole.  Overall these two diverse ways of thinking mirror the complex cultural pluralism people encounter in the modern world and both would prove to be advantageous in helping people to discover their identity and place.

Psychology, like anthropology, also belongs to the social sciences.  It involves discovering and analyzing the experience of the individual, helping them to discover their identity.  The focus of psychology is another way in which the study of religion might be approached.  The study of psychology and religion is divided into four main groups.  1) Debunking religion, 2) legitimation of religion 3) legitimation of one kind of religion over another, 4) the appropriation of psychology by religionists for internal religionists ends (Topic 6:59, Psychology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

Psychology in its numerous forms employs a variety of applications to religion allowing the individual to 1) examine self, as well as, 2) identify the various stages of growth that 3), leads to maturity.  These three main categories of psychology where applied to religion reveal the diversity and variety found in it.  These, together with the variances found in religion, would prove to be advantageous to the individual seeking to clarify their own belief system, its function, and whether they have matured and broadened their belief system enough to be beneficial to their everyday life, future growth, and development.

One of the disadvantages of psychology might be for the inquirer lighting upon the ‘wrong’ field.  For example, Freud (1907) claimed the best way to explain religion is through theories of psychoanalysis (p 62).  However, a psychologist trained in Freudian methods would claim that religion is both an illusion (p 63), and a neurosis (p 62).  According to Freud’s theory ‘maturity will see it pass away’, and ‘in order for the individual to be cured the neurosis has to be removed’ (Topic 6:62, Psychology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion). Freudian focus is to debunk religion (Topic 6:59, Psychology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).  Therefore, Freud’s view may not necessarily be beneficial for religious fundamentalists, for example, who value their religious beliefs and are ‘trying to conserve a particular religious heritage’ (Topic 9:95, Political Criticism Approaches to the Study of Religion).

Carl Jung (1875-1961) on the other hand, describing himself as a phenomenologist, considers only that which is there on the surface; that the focus is the individual person and that person’s psyche, and identifying archetypes in the person’s dreams, say, as opposed to the ‘depth model’ developed by Freud.  Jung’s model requires the practitioner to investigate what is beneath the surface of a person’s life.  He claims that ‘primordial images’ can be seen to recur throughout human history’ (Topic 6:64-6, Psychology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

These images, in turn, appear to synthesize with Durkheim’s argument.  Durkheim believes that ‘every stable nation and society has a ‘myth’, a set of ideas, symbols, and stories, that define and legitimate society’ (Topic 7:75, Sociology, Anthropology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).  However here the similarity ends, in that Durkheim insisted that ‘religion is never found away from a group or a collectivity’ (p 75).  Jung however, does not mean by the ‘collective unconscious’ that they are a ‘collective inheritance of images and myths that are a joint possession of the human race’.  Rather, they are ‘inherited tendency’ and ‘instinctive’, such as bird’s nest-building and without ‘known origin’ (Topic 6:66, Psychology and Religion, Approaches to the Study of Religion).

In sum, all three disciplines philosophy, anthropology, psychology, with regard to the study of religion, can show their usefulness in helping individuals as well as collectively, to gain an understanding of what it means to be human, by helping people to formulate their own religious or philosophical position more clearly.

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Bibliography

Approaches to the Study of Religion, Studies in Religion, RELS 304, Study Guide and Unit Notes, The University of New England, Armidale.

 ‘To the Greeks the gods were distant, aloof, and uninterested in human affairs’.  Discuss

In this dissertation I will debate that some seemingly unbridgeable gulfs existed between the blessed gods and puny mortals.  Yet, to the Greeks, the gods were not distant, aloof, and uninterested in human affairs’, but were present, and through the Greek’s day to day observing religious conciliatory rituals, they competed to win the god’s favor.

A thousand year cultural phenomenon, Greek religion evolved over the first millennium.  It consisted of a potpourri of sacred practices, beliefs, and obligations, ‘a system of explanation and response’ with ‘uncanny coincidences’ the sign of divine activity. [1].  The two clusters of gods, theoi, the Greeks ‘acknowledged’, theous nomizein, occupied two different spheres.  The Olympians were known as sky gods, the cathonic deities dwelled underground.

Two great gulfs separated the mortals from their gods.  Demarcating the sphere of the religious, the sacred, hieros, was bridged by creating ‘sacred space’ hieron, and surrounding it with prohibitions, separating it from the profane, bebelos.  ‘For the Greeks any location might serve as a place of cult’. [2]

The other great gulf was the nature of the gods themselves, considered by the Greeks to be divine.  This was overcome by ritual: prayer and blood sacrifice in particular.  ‘Bloody animal sacrifice of alimentary type’ offered by priests acting as ‘mediators between the city and its gods’. [3] gave recognition of a ‘sacrificial community’; of ‘expression to the bonds that tied the citizens one to another and served as a privileged means of communication with the divine world’. [4].

Meeting with the gods meant responsibility on the part of mortals, and ‘ritual transgression meant that the many could suffer from the mistakes of the few’ [5].  Therefore the Greeks sought ways to ‘find the good pleasure of the gods’ to make them cheerful, for the anger of the gods is dangerous.  The gods had the power to inflict eternal punishment.  They were not to be offended by stupidity, neglect or ‘acts of impiety’: disrespect for the gods. [6].  A polytheistic religion, it offered them ‘a framework of explanation and a system of responses to all that was wayward’. [7].

To counteract excesses, there was an unwritten code of honour and shame.  Hybris kept the Greeks in check of Nemesis or Envy: do not be negligent, ‘do not seek to become a god’, and ‘honour the gods’, gera, and honour one’s parents.  It was ‘a real danger when a man tries to place himself above the gods, even though only in words’. [8].

Unlike other religions, theirs recognised no prophet or lawgiver, no special class of priesthood in the traditional sense.  However, priests and priestesses ‘as vicars mediating between the city and the gods’ were respected personages, and recognised as such. [9].  There were also ‘sacred laws’. They were ‘inscribed on stone or bronze pillars and displayed at the entrance of temples and in other public places’. [10].

The Greeks were united in their religion, ‘and we have the temples of our gods in common and our sacrifices’. [11].  Originally spirits that inhabited the entire cosmos, the Olympian family, made up of twelve members, originally came about by two authors.  One of them, Hesiod, in his Theogany, tells of the origin of the universe and the descent of the gods, “borrowing heavily on the myths of western Asia and Mesopotamia. [12].  However, it was Homer, who wrote in the 8^thcentury BC, of his ‘naif folktale anthropomorphism’.  He attributed the Olympian gods with having fully human characteristics, ‘Thieving and adultery and deceiving one another’.[13].

Finally, fifth century tragedy, ‘freely moving in the sphere of myth’, developed them further into ‘ a complex image of dark and light, of human and alien, of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in the notion of divine power’, of ‘inhuman powers that defy description’. [14].  By this time, Homer’s aristocratic Olympian gods, ‘immortal and all powerful’, related directly to different city states, being associated with virtually all aspects of Greek society, and in particular, its politics.

Bestowed upon with virtues and vices, the Olympian family lived their lives independent and isolated like the Greeks themselves.  The Greeks believed the gods were on the side of good: thus they sought their goodwill, and according to Arthur Nock, ‘the gods were larger Greeks’. [15].  John Gould expands upon this, ‘the essence of divinity lies in the paradoxical coexistence of incompatible truths about human experience’. [16].

The cathonic deities that dwelled underground, were called the ‘new’ mystery religions, emerging in the 6^th century.  However, they were not new at all, but, rather, were not mentioned in Homer.  These grew in popularity in the sixth century.  Most mysteries that admit to a fellowship included a sacramental meal; ‘so much we learn from a Hellenistic inscription, in which a priest declares that he ‘broke the Bread and poured the Cup for the Mystai’. [17]. However, John Gould disagrees, along with Burkett and Meuli, pointing out that sacrifice of animals may only mean ‘ritualised slaughter’. [18].  Walter Burkett clarifies this thought by suggesting it was to overcome the ‘antinomy inherent in all sanguinary sacrifice: killing for food becomes a ritual to honour a god’. [19].

The ‘wild dancers’, originally peasants coming in from the country to the city, who participated in the mystery religion’s midnight revelries, signified an escape from the aristocratic royal Olympian city-state religion.  Thus, in the springtime, at the return of the Maiden Persophone, they could be heard, on their fifteen mile march to the sea, having about them a “mystical air”, and singing the song of ‘the mystic Iakchos’ [20].  At midnight, they celebrated, calling ‘Son of Semele, Iakchos, giver of riches’, ‘dance amongst your pious mystai’, ‘striking with bold / Foot the unbridled sportive rite’. [21].

Those who dared to, peered into those unspeakable ‘Dread Mysteries, which one may not in any way transgress or learn of or utter; for great reverence for the gods checks the voice’. [22].  Athenian Olympian religion, was ‘focused almost exclusively on the life in this world, not in the next’. [23] whereas, these ‘pious mystai’ were seekers of fertility, communion with the dead and the afterlife. [24].

The Mystery religions attracted sincere, respectful, but not humble, reverential awe and admiration amongst its followers. They offered to the Two Goddesses, The Great Mother, Demeter, and her daughter, the Maiden, Persephone, cakes, pelanos, and preparatory offerings after ritual bathing, prior to the offering of the sacrifice.  The hieropoioi collected grain and encouraged the worshippers at Euleusis to offer first-fruits (aparkhai) to consecrate the sacrifice ta hierothuta, which had already been festively prepared, and the pouring of the ‘lustral water’ of libation (sponde) as a gesture of propitiation.[25]. 

In the midst of their celebrating, the Mystai went into retreat.  It was at this juncture that those who were seeking health, Hygieia celebrated the two-day Epidauria, the festival of the Healer, Asklepios, Apollo’s son.  There, incubation in his sanctuary took place, and ‘each of us set our mattresses in order’ [26] preceded by a three day purity, including abstinence from sexual intercourse, and certain foods, and by offering a sacrifice, in this case, a piglet.[27].

Various state festivals followed Greek traditional custom, the nomos, ‘serving as markers in the flux of time’ [28].  Notwithstanding, so complex were their festival calendars that each individual polis and tribe, ‘exhibit an extreme particularism’.  Indeed, ‘the living religious practice of the Greeks is concentrated on the festivals’. [29].

By the middle of the sixth century two ‘Great Festivals’ surpassed all others; the Panathenaea at the beginning of the civil year in summer, celebrated in iconography by the frieze encircling the cella of the Parthenon; and the ‘Great Dionysia’ in the spring, with the Eleusinian Mysteries gaining equal prominence.  Festivals were a time of processions, dances, vows and prayers, animal sacrifice with feasting, contests of various kinds, ensuring in all of this that none of the gods had been forgotten.  During a time of war, those participating in the festivals were offered safety as they made their journeyed to the sacred place.

Religion pervaded the lives of the Greeks and none but the impious were excluded.  Boys and girls together with their parents and household slaves, the genos, gathered in the courtyard bowing at their home altar.  Women and girls carried their own sense of self worth; through birth, puberty, marriage, childbirth, and death.  Little girls, called arktoi, got to act as ‘she-bears’, performing dances for Artemis [30].  Young unmarried women attendants, parthenoi, especially chosen, helped annually to weave a beautiful cover for the great goddess, the formidable Athena.  Married women attended the three day festival, Thesmophoria.

Dedications to Artemis was carried out by the young women at vantage points of neutral territory on polis borders, thereby a focus of conflict.  By attending festivals and processions there, they contributed to the safety of the polis itself. [31].  Her priestess, like the parthenos, represented all the young women of the community.  Each citizen had their ‘place of cult’, their family graves, which could not be removed from one place to another.  Dead hero’s places of burial were celebrated.  Even slaves in Athens were granted a festival day, Kronia, running riot through the city and in Sparta, Hyacynthia, enjoying a sumptuous banquet waited on by their masters.

One of the means of knowing the will of the gods, mantike, was by divination.  These could take the form of ‘reading’ the internal organs of the victims sacrificed, until one got favorable omens.  Alternatively, the flight and the screaming of birds overhead or of portents, (events deemed to be out of the normal order), visions, dreams and other signs, and warnings, based on the god’s having foreknowledge, were sought.

Spartans, especially, ‘loved oracles, more perhaps than did the citizens of any other Greek state’. [32].  Delphi, the most famous sacred place of all for oracles and omens, seers and divination, was visited by citizen and politician alike, all seeking direction, and until ‘they had learnt all the details from the seers’ would not make a decision. [33].

To recapitulate, the gods of the Greeks were not ‘distant, aloof, and uninterested in human affairs’.  However, there were obstacles to overcome.  These were bridged by providing ‘sacred space’ and by ritual.  So long as each person carried out their duty, in such matters as were required of them to ensure the god’s favor, then the gods were expected to reciprocate in like manner.  The consequence was that having performed their obligations, the Greeks believed that they won the god’s favour, and thereby set about to enjoy their religion in very many varied and marvelous ways.

‘We believe in the existence of immortal gods and on account of the honours which they receive, and of the good things they bestow upon us’.  (Plut. Per. 8, 9).  

Footnotes

[1]J. Gould, ‘on making sense of Greek religion’, p.14, in Easterling, P.E. & Muir, J.V. Greek Religion and Society, Cambridge, 1985.

[2] L.B. Zaidman, & P.S. Pantel, ‘rituals’, in Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Cambridge, 1992, p. 55.

[3] R.S.J. Garland, ‘priests and power in classical Athens’, p. 81, in M. Beard & J. North (eds.) Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World, London 1990.

[4] Zaidman, & Pantel, op.cit., p. 29.

[5] S.G. Cole, ‘domesticating Artemis’, in Blundell, S. & Williamson, M. The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece London, 1998.p. 29.

[6] J. Mikalson, ‘piety & impiety’ p. 92 Athenian Popular Religion, Chapel Hill, 1983.

[7]Gould, op. cit., p.5.

[8] W. Burkett, ‘Greek Religion’, Oxford, 1985, p. 274.  

[9] L.B. Zaidman, & P.S. Pantel, ‘religious personnel’, in Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Cambridge, 1992, p. 51.

[10] Zaidman, & Pantel, op. Cit., p. 28.

[11] M. Dillon & L. Garland, Ancient Greece, London. 12.43, p 382.

[12] W. E. Dunstan Ancient Greece, Harcourt, 2000, p. 118

[13] Dillon & Garland, op. cit.,12.12, p 364

[14] Gould, op. cit., pp.27-8.

[15] A. S Nock, Religious Attitudes of the Ancient Greeks, 1942, American Philosophical Society 85, p. 477.

[16] Gould, op. cit., p.32.

[17] A.R. Burn The Lyric Age of Greece. London, 1960, p. 349.

[18] Gould, op. cit., pp.18-9.

[19] W. Burkett, ‘Athenian cults and festivals’, p. 251, in D.M. Lewis, J.K. Davies, M. Ostwald (eds.), The Fifth Century BC, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 5, ed. 2, Cambridge, 1992.

[20] A.R. Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece’, p. 353.

[21] Dillon & Garland op. cit.,12.2. ll. 330/1/2, p 357.

[22] Dillon & Garland op. cit.,12.1 ll. 478-79, p. 356-57

[23] J. Mikalson, ‘the afterlife’ p. 75, Athenian Popular Religion, Chapel Hill, 1983.

[24] ANCH110 Study Resources, p.50

[25]Dillon & Garland, op. cit,. IG 13 78 (IG 12 76) 12.6, p 360.

[26]ibid, 12.9.  l. 663, p 362.

[27] W. Burkett, ‘Greek Religion’, Oxford, 1985, pp. 267-8.  

[28] W. Burkett, ‘Athenian cults and festivals’, p. 245.

[29] Burkett, op. cit., p. 225.  

[30] Dillon & Garland, op. cit,. 12.38, ll. 641-46.

[31] Cole, op. cit., pp. 27-8. 

[32] R. Parker, ‘Spartan religion’, p. 154, in A. Powell (ed.) Classical Sparta: Techniques behind Her Success , London, 1989.

[33]Dillon & Garland, op. cit,, 1.2, p. 3.

 END

ESSENTIALIST POSITION OF WOMEN in the Christian Tradition

 This essay will discuss the implications of the essentialist position on a woman’s nature in the Christian religious tradition.

‘If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our everlasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure’  Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus encouraging marriage and childbirth. 

The desire to define an essential female nature is still extraordinarily strong.  Modern and postmodern feminist theory is split along party lines.  The essentialist position shows that there are both radical and conservatives sharing a belief in innate differences between men and women.  In seeking the ‘foundational essentialist impulse’ position on a woman’s nature a universalistic theory about social structure was formulated by Aristotle, questioning the relationship between nature and culture in the definition of sex roles. 

Since then it has sent its roots deep down into women and men’s psyche, influencing western society in profound ways (Heckman in RELS: 26).  Rossi (1977), in keeping with this pro-family position says “the females attachment to her children is biological, whereas the male’s is social’ thus resurrecting a familiar argument with a marked similarity to nineteenth century feminism (RELS 303: 27). 

Social constructivists also link up with ‘maternal thinking’ theorists.  These eco feminists seek a new style of political leadership ‘largely associated with women’ rooted in distinctly feminine values.  They advocate a feminist philosophy of liberation with an emphasis on an essential universal experience of the woman’s body, even uniting some who are otherwise radically opposed such as Firestone (1979) and Griffin (1978) Eco feminists agree with the essentialist nature of women but want to alter this biological role, which they see as the source of woman’s oppression (Heckman, RELS 303: 26).

The central thrust of contemporary feminist anthropology maintains ‘gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes’.  It is a product of the social relations of sexuality, and, ‘the masculine feminine dichotomy appears to be universal; the traits associated with them are not consistent across cultures’; ‘gender is entirely a social construct constituted by cultures and symbolic systems they deploy’.  Gayle Rubin (1975) makes an interesting observation, ‘the sex gender system” is a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity in which these transformed sexual needs is satisfied’ (RELS 303: 30).

Another postmodernist who sharply criticizes the essentialist position is Judith Stacy (1983; 84; 87;) labeling it ‘conservative pro family feminism’ (: 86) and ‘maternal thinking’ (RELS 303: 28).  Postmodernists say that the very fact that the question concerning women and men’s roles in the family arises at all reveals that our knowledge of the world has not advanced, the discussion is futile and is evidence of universalist absolutist tendency’s enduring tenacity.  However, postmodernists have been accused by essentialists of ‘abandoning difference’, denoting the inability to discuss any differences between men and women. One of the most forward thinking is Faucalt, a postmodern philosopher and an extreme constructivist, who focuses on bodies and sexuality and claims they are both constructed through discourse (RELS 303: 29).

The outcome of this argument has serious consequences for women in the West, and particularly for women’s religious experience.  It seems as if by some sad irony the ghost of tradition is still haunting women (Fatum 1989:55).  This ghost of tradition, the ‘rule of the fathers, patriarchy, is embedded in the household codes of the New Testament.  Richard Leonard’s book (in M. Franzmann 2000: 25). ‘Beloved Daughters’ shows the power of discourse in shoring up the essentialist position to keep women in their place in the home and under their husband’s rule.  Leonard, a male celibate cleric approached his theological thesis from the essentialist position from the papal document (Mulieris dignitatem).  This document asserts that ‘women and men do not have equal rights in marriage’: The married woman must be obedient to her husband’ (in Franzmann 2000: 28).  Such a negative argument does not affirm women in their true essence of the non-essential as a means of overcoming cultural oppression.  This oppressive stance, in turn, springs from the New Testament household codes, which are riveted in Aristotle’s essentialist position and the concept of patria potestas, the power of the father over his own family, a fundamental principle of Roman Law’ (Lefkowitz & Fant 1992: 99)

One of the underlying problems of having an essentialist dogmatic approach that serves to maintain the ‘maternalist’ position is found in Lone Fatum’s statement: ‘traditional interpretation of Paul is based on an overall gender-blind theology with a basic attitude of dogmatic rather than analytic, resulting in an aversion towards problems of sexual discrimination or suppression of women in Paul and among the early Christians (Fatum: 1991:50).  Discriminating interpretation of this kind, resting upon the foundation stone of the essentialist position of the women has resulted in a large body of evidence being knowingly concealed.  Brooten (1985) in her groundbreaking work spells it out in her Introduction ‘the purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is not to present a hitherto unknown body of evidence, but rather to suggest a new interpretation of known material’.

Brooten’s work corrects one aspect of Jewish women’s freedom of movement and leadership roles around the first century C.E.  However, new scholarship carried out by biblical feminists does not, as a general rule, find its way into the homes of largely uneducated women in the domestic realm who are most affected by Aristotle’s’ essentialist position on women, the historical background to the New Testament household codes, and the gender blind theology of Paul.

The importance of historical data concerning women in Judaism and early Christianity being re-interpreted by biblical feminists which has been uncovered in primary and secondary sources of literary and material remains is commented on by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza.  Fiorenza sums up the difference in such research and the traditional work carried out by men, who in the main have started from the essentialist position on women’s nature.  Fiorenza maintains ‘Antiquarian Positivism reduces text to archival quarries for historical facts, understanding them as windows on the world which give us accurate information and “data” about the past’ (1992: 81).  However, if we accept that the text does not give us reality of ‘history as event’ but rather, historical representation’, then we can not rely upon the scriptures alone as reliable data for the study of women past and present.  This is important given that ‘history by and large has always been written by elite men as their own story’ (1992: 80).

Fiorenza points out that access to reality is ‘always mediated through language’ (1992:91).  It is little wonder then, that where the essentialist position is held, Christian women will experience the effects of language that is intent on keeping the reality of the public lives of women in the New Testament era hidden.  The work of biblical feminists is found in their attempting to ‘break through the silences and biases of historical records to re-appropriate the past of women who have participated as historical agents in social, cultural and religious transformation’ (1992: 80).  Jewish feminists such as Kraemer (1996: 36) and Brooten (1985) have refuted this marred image of first century Jewish women that has left all women on the periphery, marginalizing them.

Examples of these effects can be found in a wide range of Christian scholarship which sketches a ‘monolithic Jewish society in the first century CE that was highly “patriarchal” confining women primarily to the domestic realm, with little access to any public life’.  Kramer argues ‘negative portraits of Jewish women in the first century are thus contrasted with New Testament narratives to buttress claims of Christian superiority over Judaism’. A multitude of sources ‘testifies to women’s attendance at synagogue services and their participation in synagogue life. (1985: 106).  Bernadette J. Brooten’s research confirms this in her dissertation ‘Women Leaders in the Synagogue’.  There, according to Brooten, women served as leaders in a number of synagogues from 27 B.C.E. to perhaps sixth century C.E., during the Roman and Byzantine periods.

Classical Greek social code restricted women’s movements.  However, changes were taking place in the second century B.C.E. through second century C.E. due to the influences of Hellenistic culture and Rome (Corley 1993: 24).  Respectable women in Classical Athens and in Hellenistic Alexandria, obliged to stay at home, due to the household codes of classical Greece, were working creatively in wool and with the lyre.  Certainly the women in Athens were not idle, but instead they supported and superintended their households (Aristophanes in Ancient Greece 13:56).  There is other evidence showing that women of the lower classes in Athens went out to work to earn a living to support their households (Aristophanes in Ancient Greece 13:54).

At the same time, women became landowners by inheritance in Ptolemaic Egypt the earliest record showing CE 42.  Around this same time plenty of women owned immovables, including houses or sheds or parts of buildings (Pomeroy 1984:156).  Aristotle reported that ‘nearly two fifths the whole country is in the hands of women’ (Aristotle Politics 1270a23, in Ancient Greece 13:18).  Educated Greek women are present in the Gospels, the Syro-Phoenecian women being an example of one speaking out publicly in a confronting manner and winning a theological argument (Schussler Fiorenza, 1992: 96)

‘Despite the androcentric retelling of women’s stories, treatises from this formative period reveal that women were apostles, prophets, and teachers, that they exercised a diversity of ministries including baptizing, disciplining, and presiding over the Eucharist, and that they held the full range of church offices – bishop, presbyter, widow, deacon, and virgin’ (Torjensen 1993: 291).

Changes were also taking place in Rome noted by Corley in Rome’s meal practices with ‘the inclusion of wives in some formal banquet settings’ (Corley 1993:28).  This change meant that the communal meal was one where women and men met together face to face, prompting social intercourse between the sexes. It is interesting to note that in all of this social change ‘the primary setting of early Christian dialogue and worship was a formal public meal’ (Corley 1993:24). This took place in women’s space, in their homes.  It was not until the early church was moved out of the private sphere of the woman to a public place that women were displaced from leadership in the Christian community.  However, not wanting to fall into the trap of making a theological project of utopian quality, nevertheless, the early Christian church theological foundations were laid for women’s leadership in the Christian vision of the reign of God (basileia). Therein ‘God’s wholeness was extended to all and it can be said to have made women and men equal’ (Torjensen 1993:291)

When women agree to obey the household codes, they are thus enforcing the essentialist position of the woman, and its continuing power can be seen.  This power relies upon women’s compliance.  This confirms Kate Millett’s proposal that ‘perhaps patriarchy is even more a habit of mind and a way of life than a political system’ (in Franzmann 2000: 8).  The implications of this are that Christian women have suffered ‘loss of life’ to a misguided ‘cause’, that of androcentric doctrines and practices which serve to build and maintain a household and church community that is overshadowed by the rule of the father.  As a result, the church collectively has been impoverished, morally, intellectually emotionally and spiritually, with its wider implications, ‘the exclusion of women from the public realm throughout the history of western political thought’ (Jean Bethke Elshtain, in RELS: 27).

The outcome of this phenomena up to the present day has been, with few exceptions, dutiful women submerging themselves and their identity, thus reinforcing the cover up of that body of women’s history, albeit ignorantly, in order to accommodate a religious system that denies them functioning in it beyond their essentialist nature.  Furthermore, by their supporting a system financially, serving it freely and wholeheartedly, by enriching and nurturing it, assisting it by every means for its public face to appear flawless, without recognition or reward, is a phenomena especially related to women in religion generally.

Several questions arise from this observation.  Where do those Christian women who no longer support this system of abuse go to nurture their own spirituality?  Where does community arise for these exiled women in order to fill the vacuum left in the wake of this essentialist position being held to their detriment?  Other questions concern her need for having her own sacred space?  Indeed a woman’s home, the very place that was once constituted as her prison has become her sacred place to hide and find refuge from the resultant fallout of the effects of the essentialist position.

In sum, the assumption that woman is essentialist in her nature has had serious implications on freedom and development with regard to her spirituality and her finding her unique place in the world at large.

END