Or may not. We'll get into this below.
So to start, let's look at the possibly very interesting comment:
So then in 1 Clement 5 and 6, it discusses other violence caused by jealousy that has impacted Christian families, at which point Clement says in 7.1: "These things, beloved, we write unto you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves." In short, Clement is admonishing Christians for the previous acts. So what are those previous acts? Well, those also include the deaths of Peter and Paul.
Scholars have attempted to argue that 1 Clement mirrors Tacitus on the Neronian Persecution where he writes of a great multitude being killed (πολύ πλήθος) and this is argued to be paralleling Tacitus, Annals 15.44 where he writes that a large crowd were killed (multitudo ingens). But this is probably incorrect, the primary reason being that Clement is not talking about a singular event but an accumulation, i.e., he is saying that the deaths of Peter and Paul can be added to sequentially other previous deaths. Thus, this is not a specific event being referenced. Likewise, scholars argue the introduction of the letter may refer to the persecution of Nero or Domitian, but Bernier and others have reviewed the opening and found it is actually kinda just typical of a delayed letter.
So, there is a good case Paul and Peter were killed by fellow Christians. This would explain also why Luke-Acts ignores Paul's death, because Luke-Acts is obsessed with trying to present the early church as a more or less united front. Christians killing each other is as far from this as one gets. We also know early Christians were not violence averse. The portrayal of both Paul and Peter is that the former was a persecutor himself, had it out against perceived false teachers, and Peter dismembered a Roman guard, killed two people for not giving him money (which some early Christians even interpreted as being extreme, like John Chrysostom), and also some portray him as killing Simon Magus. We also know Peter and Paul also greatly disagreed with each other on multiple fronts (see Galatians 2). So we even have a potential motivation for a lethal intra-community conflict.
There you go.
But? Problematic, as it turns out, as is the commenter in other ways.
First, let's be upfront with the overblown claims.
Annias and Sapphira weren't killed for not giving Peter money. First, they and others gave their money to the church, in the story, which in reality didn't exist. Second, they weren't killed for not giving money; the story is about ALL their money, or not. Third, they weren't even killed for that; they were killed for lying about whether this was their "all" or not.
On the second one? Peter didn't "dismember" the guard, at least not as the word is understood connotatively. The guard doesn't end up like Monty Python's Black Knight; he loses only an ear.
On the third one? If you're plumping for an early date (late 90s CE, the "conventional" date) you just petard-hoist, since at least in writing, the story of the death of Simon Magus doesn't make its appearance until the Acts of Peter, dated late second century. OOPPPSSSSS. More on that below.
In addition, standing an "orthodoxer" on his head, Clement citing Titus, and apparently 2 Peter, is proof of its lateness based on their lateness!
Beyond that, Hansen offers no support for this being an "accumulation," at least not here, just an assertion.
Kind of going down the Jesus mythicism route, Chrissy Hansen appears to be doing Candida Moss (with whom I agree on martyrdoms) on steroids, and claim that 1 Clement talks about internecine Christian battles leading to both Peter and Paul being killed by Christian subgroups. But, as noted above, wrong. Hansen claims that it reflects a culmination of a list of deaths. But, if you accept Candida Moss that early era martyrological deaths of Christians are likely legend, and you know that Acts' story of Stephen is ahistorical, WHAT "accumulation"? We could have Jesus in Luke 11:51, but that's all Tanakh deaths, and I read Hansen as presenting this as Christian deaths.
Speaking of? There's two MORE problems, at least.
They begin with the fact that this "issue," whatever it actually is only runs in Chapters 4-7 of 1 Clement. Second, per this translation, the most modern of the three at Early Christian Writings, we have issues in chapters 6 and 7.
First of all, who the heck are the "Danaids and Dircae" in chapter 6? They're originally women from Greek myth. Per this site, Clement is supposedly referring to Christian women martyred in the style of their deaths. I find that doubtful, to pivot back to Moss. Clement claims these women are part of "a great multitude of the elect [who] furnished us with a most excellent example." That's Martyr Hagiography 101, and in short, further undermining of the idea that anything in Chapters 4-7 allegedly in semi-current times to author is actually historical.
Second, chapter 7:
These things, beloved, we write to you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling in the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us.
That struggle today surely isn't talking about violence unto the point of death at Rome or wherever the actual provenance of 1 Clement was, and ditto at Corinth. Methinks that level of violence would have been picked up 40 years later by Celsus. Rather, per the end of chapter 6, it appears to be about envy and strife in general.
(Up above, the orthodoxer's appeal against this representing an empire-wide persecution and thus as support for early dating means nothing, as there was no such persecution until the third century.)
So, I think thought at first the 1 Clement idea is at least somewhat interesting, and Hansen even has a video
about it. Is it plausible? Probably not, and certainly not as Hansen presents it as far as details. Probable? Most likely not, again, especially with the above caveats.
I'm not saying it's 100 percent IMprobable, but the OP on this post, talking about it, does raise issues. I've noted elsewhere that I reject traditional dating of 1 Clement, which may be 130-140 CE, so her interpretation, and that of David Eastman to the same end, may be iffy there, too. And, with that much later of a data, this idea then becomes early Christian urban legend. Eastman offers no suggested date for 1 Clement and appears to accept Tacitus, a very likely interpolation, at face value on Neronian persecution. This started my debate with Hansen which I have eventually ended. (Also at r/AcademicBiblical, ex-Mormon plumps for a conventional date. Shock.)
Hansen (edits from original) also is .... interesting elsewhere. Hansen apparently thinks Shushama Malik is the real deal. I don't. See here for her take. Elsewhere, Hansen gets puffed by KamilGregor, who I don't think a lot of, but, he notes she has NO academic biblical background. See here for publishing CV. Great.
Chrissy Hansen is an example of an independent researcher with no formal degree in Biblical studies and she currently has eight(!) academic publications in Biblical studies listed as forthcoming. In 2022 alone, she managed to publish six journal articles (and in good journals, too).
OK? Not OK. Gregor doesn't disclose that he's a
co-author with her at least once. That itself is an ethical issue, and I've already had other reasons to dislike him, too. And, given that at least one of the
journals is specifically geared to contributions from people with no
academic biblical background, how peer-reviewed are they? They're NOT "academic," by definition, so scratch that.
That's enough there for starters; I'll have a full post about these sidebar issues in another month.
Back to Hansen's original claim.
Let's start by diving in more on the dating.
1 Clement 5 repeats claims that are, in many ways, dependent on the Pastorals, especially 2 Timothy, vis-a-vis Paul's final struggles. (I have long thought of 2 Timothy as being a novelistic short story of pathos and bathos, like a more tragic O. Henry piece.) In addition, re dependence on the Pastorals, or at a minimum, reflecting the same time in early Christian history, it talks about bishops and deacons in chapter 42, and a rule of succession for dead ones in chapter 44.
And, since the last quarter of Acts is non-historical and Paul wasn't a Roman citizen, he had no "appeal to Rome" as a hole card. His desire to get to Spain was surely nothing more than that. Yes, 1 Clement says "farthest limits of the west," but this only gets more spelled out for the first time in the Acts of Peter and the Muratonian Canon, both late second century. Also, here, it comes off like an "A to Z" thing, like Deuteronomy and 70 angels for the 70 nations of the world.
So, that's backup for me agreeing with other scholars (I see what I did) on a late dating for 1 Clement. The pastiche nature of later chapters, which do reflect books like Shepherd of Hermes, is additional reason for that.
And, even if it IS earlier? That's still a nothingburger of Christian legend, per what I said about Acts. Paul in all likelihood never got to Rome in the first place. And, if that's a nothingburger, so is the rest of 1 Clement 5.
Next? While 1 Clement 5 could be read as Peter being killed by inter-Christian strife, it seems more of a stretch on Paul.
There's other problems with that chapter.
When was Paul "driven into exile"? His time in Damascus ended with an engineered escape, not a driving into exile, and nothing else comes even that close. With Peter, to the degree Acts is historical, it mentions nothing about "many labors" for him, and thus we're in legendary territory here.
Rather, it seems more likely that this is all ahistorical, and the author of 1 Clement is simply "spitballing," looking for more modern examples of internecine territory.
Per my thoughts on the end of Acts' ahistoricity, it's possible Paul DID break the temple proscription, bring a goy in, and either get lynched or crucified. Peter? Maybe he got killed along with James. Or killed in the scrum of the Jewish revolt. But, neither of those would be internecine Christian violence.
But, the radical idea of this Hansen person, that Paul and Peter offed each other? Laughable. And, the claim that 1 Clement offers serious support for that? Even more laughable. (I am surprised that Hansen didn't invoke the idea I have about Paul's demise in Acts, and say that Peter was behind it. I might halfway believe that.)
It's like Robert Eisenman perusing the pseudo-Clementines and coming up with bullshit. And, since he's a semi-mythicist, Hansen ought to oppose that, too.
Oh, while I'm here? That idiot Carrier thinks 1 Clement was written in the 60s. The "orthodoxer," inverted above, crushes such stupidity.
No comments:
Post a Comment