DESTROYER OF THE GODS: by Larry Hurtado

DESTROYER OF THE GODS: by Larry Hurtado – Some of the earliest Christians were thought-about atheists by their mates. however, is that this so? In Larry Hurtado’s latest new book, “Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness within the Roman World” we discover out! this can be Associate in Nursing exciting piece of recent Testament scholarship. it’s exciting as a result of it is a book that engages with the often-asked question, “What distinction will Christianity very make?” Hurtado appearance at the distinctiveness of Christianity in the Roman world, absorption on the primary 2 centuries of Christianity and sometimes dipping into the third. several of his observations give food for thought once brooding about Christianity in our own modern world. DESTROYER OF THE GODS,

DESTROYER OF THE GODS- The book is divided into 5 chapters:

1) Early Christians and Christianity in the Eyes of Non-Christians
2) A New Kind of Faith
3) A Different Identity
4) A “Bookish” Religion
5) A New Way to Live

Early Christians and Christianity in the Eyes of Non-Christians

The best evidence for the distinctiveness of Christians in the Roman world was accounts of Christianity as observed by outsiders. Hurtado looks first at Jewish responses to early Christianity.

The earliest Christians were mostly Jews and they were viewed with suspicion and hostility by other Jews. Saul who becomes Paul the Apostle is a great example of this.

He was known for persecuting the early Christians with zeal. Hurtado explores Paul’s zeal for the law as connected to the Jewish tradition for “justifiable use of violence by Jews against fellow Jews seen guilty of some major and public violation of God’s law.

The story of Phineas illustrates this (Numbers 25:1-15). Hurtado concludes that Paul would have seen the Jesus movement as a kind of threat to the Jewish community and its way of life. Why is this? Hurtado thinks that it is likely that what Paul considered inappropriate reverence for Jesus was at the heart of the issue. It was likely that before his conversion Paul viewed Jesus as a false teacher and his crucifixion as a sign of the curse.

Not only was there tension amongst early Jewish Christians and the broader Jewish population, there were also plenty of Pagan critics of Christianity. Hurtado says, “These pagan critics were members of the cultural elite of the time, such as philosophers, rhetoricians, and literary figures, people from the Roman-era intelligentsia.” (page 20)
A New Kind of Faith

Remember

In our contemporary Western society when we talk about God it is often a common assumption that we are all talking about the same deity. Hurtado argues that this is a “curious assumption” in the wider context of human history and that this is due to the “cultural impact of Christianity.”

What made Christianity so different in the Roman era from most religious practices of the time was its insistence that there is only one true God. This belief even went as far to imply impiety or even atheism compared with a Roman view of religion.

Hurtado is very keen to define what Romans might mean by religion as compared with how we might understand religion today. In the modern sense religion “can be regarded as a kind of activity distinguishable from other areas of life, such as politics, economics, or science.”

In the Roman world, religion wasn’t separable from the rest of life as a distinct category. “We may think of ‘religion’ as something you do on, for example, on Sundays, or, if you are Jewish, on Sabbath. But in the Roman Empire what moderns call ‘religion’ was virtually everywhere, a regular and integral part of the fabric of life.”

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The Roman world was a world “full of Gods.” its says by Hurtado in book, “The most very well-known deities were was associated with particular those peoples,

and also particular geographical areas, particular areas of life, particular forces of nature, and particular cities. Each of the many people of the Roman Empire had their own traditional, and multiple, deities,

and in that period the tendency was to recognize and welcome them all.”

The attituded then in Roman society was that one would reverence multiple gods, and this is what it means to be a “pious” Roman.

The prayer to certain gods was woven into everyday life with activities such as making a journey, eating in someone’s home or at public meetings.

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Here we can see where Christians stood out as distinctive. Christians only worshipped one God and anything else was considered idolatry. This would have been very difficult for Christians in the Roman Era.

“Christians likely often also had to refuse to join in the worship of the various divinities and so had to negotiate their relationships carefully, especially, no doubt, those involving family and close acquaintances.”

In the Roman world, this exemption from the worship of the gods wasn’t unique. The Jewish people took a stance against idolatry but it was viewed with a level of tolerance because it was regarded as a national peculiarity.

But for many Christians, “could not claim any traditional ethnic privilege to justify their refusal to worship the gods.” This would make for many awkward dinner parties indeed.

The exclusive claims Christians made and their refusal to join in worship meant they were even accused of atheism!

Not only were their exclusive claims of worship odd, but the beliefs Christians held about God were also distinctive in the Roman world.

What was very strange was: “The notion that there is one true and transcendent God, and that this God loves the world/humanity.”

The idea of the kind of relational terms used to describe God by Christians was foreign to many pagan texts of the Greek and Roman-era.

Hurtado concludes that “early Christianity represented a new kind of what we would call ‘religion,’ something that had not quite been seen before,

and something that proved revolutionary in what ‘religion’ came to mean thereafter.”

A Different Identity

In the era we’d indicate our faith on a census however within the Roman Era “what we’d decision non secular identity was given at birth and wasn’t extremely a distinguishable abstract category.”

The exception was that there have been voluntary religions that one may be a part of akin to the varied “mystery cults” of the Roman world.
However, as we’ve seen earlier within the book Christians were expected to exclude themselves from the worship, of the gods amongst the pressure from family and friends,

and in doing therefore would got to talk terms their commitment to following Christ and their social life. The distinctiveness for Christianity was the identity that was fashioned in belief and apply as followers of Jesus.

This argues Hurtado, results in what we’d acknowledge as a separate non secular identity “distinguishable from, and not a corollary of, one’s family, civic, or ethnic connection.”

A New thanks to Live

In this chapter, Hurtado makes the purpose that nowadays we would think {about} “religion” is about morality and activity needs nonetheless within the ancient world this wasn’t essentially the case. Christianity’s stress on social and behavioral practices was rather unusual. Hurtado is careful to not stereotype all practices of the Roman amount as “depraved or cruel” however he will impose observing that they were “engaged in some practices, that, hopefully, we might conceive repugnant today.” Some examples he provides are child exposure, fighter contests and spectacles, and Roman sexual practices.
Infant exposure was the observation of discarding unwanted newborn babies who would either be left therefore were obscure to die or be spoken as slaves. This exposure was widely practiced and not looked upon with ethical outrage. The Gladiator contests of Roman life are most likely additional acknowledged in a fashionable culture so I won’t enter them here. The one purpose to form is that the sanguinary and violent nature of those spectacles were a distinguished part of civic life.
Hurtado all over again makes the purpose that Christians had to wrestle terribly in public with their new means of life that meant they lived with several tensions. Christianity was “a new thanks to living.” In contrast, “Roman-era faith didn’t usually have abundant to mention on what we would term ‘ethics’, ‘do’s and don’ts’.”
One example that Hurtado uses to spotlight this moral distinction at length is Roman-era views of physiological property in distinction with the first Christian developments. nowadays several assume Christian views of sex are typically viewed as quaint, irrelevant, or retrograde. However, within the earliest days of Christianity in the Roman world, Christian views on sex were radical.

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