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JDWiseman · #49 (**permalink**) 03-26-2008, 02:53 PM

Brother Richard,

There was a critical piece of reasoning which was missing in your post. You talked about the infancy of the nation of Israel, and the Baalism of the Caananites, and more or less made a colossal jump to, "So, when Moses writes, he is writing polemic..." The one does not establish or necessitate the other.

Here is another problem that I have with the whole concept and language of reading "polemics" into the Scriptures: Paganism has gods for everything. Athens was a famous example of that; I'm sure we've all heard the famous quote that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a mortal. They even covered their bases by honoring "the unknown God."

You can see the same thing in Hinduism. I am not even quite sure if there is an "official tally" of the number of Hindu deities, but I have heard it reaches into the thousands. The Norse myths of the ocean couldn't even contain all of the gods that supposedly had power over the sea: Njord, Ran, AEgir; and let's throw Jormungandr in to boot. Point being, what Chesterton said about the Greeks applies, in general, to all pagans: "They couldn't see the trees for the dryads [not verbatim]."

Why do I bring that up? Because the overflowing polytheism of darkened nations allows any text to be turned into a "polemic". I don't often like when people flippantly mention our Lord in order to prove a rather trite or academic point, but I don't see any other way around making my point. So let me show you what polytheism, coupled with a "Let's Find a Polemic" approach, makes possible.

Here's a sample commentary from 2014:

"The authors and redactors of the documents that eventually came to be collected in what was formerly called the "New Testament" were writing, primarily, to people of low socio-economic status, surrounded and beleaguered on all sides by the impressive majesty of the Roman empire. The claims that the faith community later placed back into the mouth of Chr*st (we should not associate these claims, of course, with the historical Y'shua ben Yosef) clearly clashed with the prevailing polytheism of Imperial Rome."

"Notwithstanding the fact that the ancient religion of the Greco-Roman pantheon was now being superseded by mystery cults and Emperor worship, the august pantheon of antiquity still exerted quite a sway in the minds of the commoners. We must also keep in mind that the documents of what would later be styled the "New Testament" were written to people of a different culture, who spoke a different language. Ergo, we must take off our lenses of preunderstanding and see these ancient texts in a way that the average proselyte or catechumen would have understood them."

"When we approach the texts in this fashion, we see clear traces of early proto-Christian polemic against the ancient Roman triad of gods (namely, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto) woven throughout the gospel narratives. Why does the gospel record numerous examples of (1) Chr*st walking on the water, (2) Chr*st calming the wind and the waves on the way to free the Gadarene epileptic, along with concomitant gloss of the "believing community" that "even the wind and the waves obey him", (3) Chr*st calling up a fish to pay taxes for Peter, (4) Chr*st enabling a miraculous catch of fish, (5) et al. Clearly these are to be understood in the prevailing cultural context of the time, and we see clearly that a polemic is being made that Chr*st is L*rd of the Waves and King of the Sea, and not Neptune."

"This insightful approach yields further results. Now we understand that when Chr*st called back Lazarus from the grave, or the text records saints rising after a great earthquake following the crucifixion, or, if we may, Chr*st himself rising from the earth and from the dead, we clearly see that a polemic is made against Pluto. The New Testament author-redactors are showing that the Christian G*d, and not Pluto, is the true L*rd of life and death."

"Lastly, this gives a profound and decisive meaning to the ascension. What is the ascension, but a grand exclamation point punctuating the end of the Chr*st-story? How does it do so? Namely, in one decisive stroke, as it were, it wrests power from the high god of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, by showing that, indeed, Chr*st is L*rd of the Skies. That the early church spoke of him being enthroned at the right hand of the F*ther only establishes and seals this fact."

"What a pity that the assured results of higher-critical scholarship were not known to the church as it formulated some of the distinctive dogmas that we now know to be muddle-headed and rather mistaken...."

Anyhow, that fictional account, I believe, makes my point rather well. Namely, when pagans have a "god" for everything, then "everything" can be turned into a polemic. Polemics against rock gods, sky gods, fire gods, fish gods, etc. There is no logical chain of reasoning that necessitates any of it, and the commentary I just provided, IMO, is 100% as plausible as the so-called Baal polemic.

The Following User Says Thank You to JDWiseman For This Useful Post:
py3ak (03-27-2008)