Reconstructing 2nd century cultural literature context of Roman satire in Early Christianity texts
See reading sequence Language Bias Hypotheses under the Path Semantics project.
The central essay is In Saeculum Satyrarum - The Century of Satire.
In Path Semantics, the language bias hypothesis of Seshatism vs Platonism plays a significant important role to understand the relationship between Infinite-Valued Logic (which has a model in PSQ) and human biases.
The overall hypothesis of Seshatism is that human cultures are changing dynamically over time in language bias, readapting existing ideas according to trends in language biases and reinterpreting texts in the past.
This hypothesis overlaps with the fundamental theory for Intellectual History, that ideas have a history. Where Intellectual History studies ideas themselves, one can use Seshatism vs Platonism to study interpretation of ideas and perspectives influenced by language design.
The study of language bias is not merely history of ideas, but attempt to classifying languages, whether they are mathematical, artistic or philosophic, according to language biases. A formal language Joker Calculus is used to describe a bias according to higher dualities of Seshatism vs Platonism.
Early Christianity in the 2nd century provides a good test case for developing the tools of language bias analysis.
New research in academic biblical scholarship suggests that the historical context of Early Christianity is important for interpreting the texts (there are thousands of Early Christian writings) through the lens of the people who write them.
One of the things recently discovered is that some Early Christians write in the contemporary cultural genre of Roman satire. This violates the expectations of Late Christianity that people wrote these texts with the intention of being serious. Instead, one might view the texts as means to climb the social ladder, fit in with contemporary cultural movements and to mimic signs of prestige in elite literacy.
The Roman empire in late 1st and early 2nd century opened up more access to higher education to fill in government positions and to integrate Samaria and Judea politically. This program was successful in Samaria, but failed in Judea when the emperor tried to remove the ritual practice of circumcision. The following war, the Bar Kokhba revolt, was devastating to the Roman army, who almost lost.
In the aftermatch of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Early Christians renamed their mythological characters away from "Simon" to not get associated with "Simon bar Kokhba":
- Simon => Peter
- Simon => Saul => Paul
It is possible that both Peter and Paul refer to the same original character (Simon Magus), but the new name differs between competing sects. The evidence is that Marcion of Sinope joins the school of Cerdo in Rome, which is a Simonian.
Marcion of Sinope is the first person who claims to have letters by Paul. The letters of Paul might not have been original or have been rewritten to reflect a new cultural identity in the aftermatch of the war. Another sign is that Paul's letters refer to events that seem to be from Acts of Paul (fighting beasts in an arena) and Acts of Andrew (an incesteous mother). These texts are clearly written as Roman satire and this casts doubts on the historicity of these letters.
In Acts of The Apostles, the authors respond to Marcion of Sinope, includes Simon Magus, a deity in a competing sect, and uses events from Josephus extensively. This casts doubts on the historicity of Peter. The original name of Peter as Simon could mean that this character was originally the same character, Simon Magus, but changing to Peter to disassociate from Simon bar Kokhba and to compete with Paul in Marcion of Sinope's canon.
For example, when explaining the parallels between Jesus and Dionysus, one can think about the author of a story about Jesus as a person who recently gained access to higher education, learns about Dionysus and mimics some things from the stories about Dionysus. This does not mean that the author views Jesus as the same character as Dionysus. The cultural identity around Jesus is formed by taking ideas from other cultural identities, at the same time copying but also creating something new.
As an analogue, when the Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt, he likely was inspired by a historical person, Napoleon, but the primary motive was to produce a Norwegian cultural identity corresponding to Shakespeare in England. Norway at the time had no institutions for higher education and Henrik Ibsen was among the first who got access to it. Peer Gynt is a very different character than Napoleon and the historicity of Peer Gynt is not relevant in this context. Similarly, Jesus could have been based on a very different character historically, e.g. Joshua in the old Hebrew bible.
When people write with cultural identity in mind, they might place a character in a different century. For example, origin stories about Santa Claus are usually put in a different century than Nicholas of Myra.
There seems to be competing sects that advocate different family members of Jesus:
- Maria (Jesus' mother)
- Zoe or Mary of Magdala (Jesus' wife or disciple)
- Sophia (Jesus' sister)
"Zoe" means "life" and "Sophia" means "wisdom". This practice of giving Greek philosophical names to characters reflects a tradition in Simonianism:
- "Nous" for Simon Magus, which means "intellect" or "mind"
- "Ennoia" for Helen of Tyre, which means "thought"
Jesus also gets a such Greek philosophical name, which is "Logos" that means "reason".
Early Christianity is a historical development around stories designed for young children, kind of like Santa Claus in modern times. Another analogy is "medicine for babies" or "medicine without the cord attached to the console" (when young kids pretend to play with a gaming console control alongside their parents playing).
This might seem offensive to religion today, but all religions in the ancient world functioned more or less the same way. Syncretism in ancient religion is primarily motivated by sharing knowledge of medicine, besides political and economic motivations. Religious stories are generally not the end goal, but designed to help people accept different cultures from their own (keep distance, but respectfully), plus recognize strangers sharing their own background, as a pre-medicine foundation needed for long-term survival. Compatibility of religion is primarily concerned about compatibility of medicine practices in groups of people.
The bias due to the lens of a modern mind, that sees religion as an end goal, causes people living in modern times to put more emphasis on texts which originally were written for young children, interpreted through a modern lens, as if they were aimed at an adult audience.
It is kind of like archeologists finding evidence of baby-food in the ancient world. Finding some evidence of people eating baby-food, is not evidence that baby-food was all that people in the ancient world ate. Since modern religions are built upon the analogue of baby-food in ancient religions, it is easy for modern people to think that people in the ancient world believed and practiced religion in a more similar way to themselves, when the actual evidence suggests that this way of practicing religion was more common for young children, but to a lesser extent for adults.
Medicine was needed for survival on pair with getting food and water. Religion in the ancient world is centered on stories for children primarily, to teach them words and terminology needed preparing for a later education within medicine. These stories evolved into stories with more adult themes over time, that could include extreme religious rituals.
The language is heavily influenced by medicine, but not vice versa, and the disciples' lives were fictional, plus satirical elements of the stories, mimicking elite literacy philosophical genres. The overall picture informed by this evidence suggests that these texts were intended primarily as pre-school teachings, advocated and published by various brands of schools that taught medicine (e.g. Cerdo in Rome, Marcion of Sinope and others). Early Christianity largely evolves alongside Simonianism in the 2nd century. They worship different savior figures, but with people who know each other across religious boundaries, something most likely due to shared medicine practices. Lying about each other's savior figures in texts was socially acceptable (e.g. by putting Simon Magus is Acts of The Apostles), since these texts were aimed at children with less developed critical thinking skills. This is less likely to have happened in stories that were meant to be taken seriously by adults.
Parents used these texts to teach their own children, to prepare them for a potential education within medicine. Despite the violence and sexual references in these texts compared to modern stories for children, these texts were relatively innocent at the time, compared to general adult practice of religions, which were full of glorified violence and sex.
The debate about circumcision is about lowering the entry requirements into guilds of medicine practitioners. These medicine practitioners were called "Magi", as is "Simon Magus", the savior figure in Simonianism. The title "Christ" might have been a play on the word "Magi", which dates back to the Bronze Age, when the same title was used for Medea, the granddaughter of Helios. Whether people used "Magi" or "Christ" for their savior figure, the terminology is coming from medicine practice anyway, along very similar traditions. For example, both Simon Magus and Jesus Christ were thought to have to have known John the Baptist. Baptism rituals were performed as a way of spiritual cleansing, which could be interpreted as closely related to healing by medicine. People did not have the modern understanding of medicine, preventing illness by washing their hands, feet and bodies, so they thought about this in religious context accompanied by stories that explained why they performed these rituals, most likely because these stories were aimed at young children who did not intuitively see these rituals as part of everyday habitual behavior.
The Jesus Christ savior figure was intended as a more Socratic and Platonic version of Simon Magus, by using "Logos" (Reason as the ultimate highest form of being) compared to "Nous" (Intellect or mind as the highest form of being). It is currently unknown how the death of Jesus Christ was originally portrayed, which might have been cynical or satirical, or to explain the fall of Jerusalem, which later was tied to a more Socratic perspective. The combination of innocence, medicine and sacrificial aspects of Jesus Christ's death, all important elements of the theology of animal sacrifice in ancient religions, contributed to Jesus Christ's popularity as a savior figure.
Savior figures were used in stories designed for initiation into Mystery cults (Again: Primarily for young people and children), which purpose was sharing secret medicine practices among themselves, that ensured their own survival and wealth. This is why these stories contain healing miracles, to advocate for that particular cult, compared to alternative competitors. In the unstable political environment of the 2nd century, people more and more relied on faith in their savior figures, instead of trusting their government. This distrust of government is reflected in the belief in the end of the world, with a promise of a returning king that will punish people for unjust actions and make the world safe again.