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".