| roger.pearse@googlemail.com 2008-01-31, 9:56 pm |
| On Jan 31, 4:59=A0pm, "HeyBub" <hey...@gmail.com> wrote:
> roger.pea...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
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> You're right. I was relying on, er, um, shit! What's that thing called whe=
n
> you remember something?
A police siren? :-)
>
>
> And Peter or Mark spoke Gr ? Oh well.
An awful lot of people out in the region speak English at the moment,
as well as their native Arabic. In Hellenistic times everyone who
wanted to sell a camel or a postcard probably needed to know some
Gr.
Josephus knew Gr, but not to rely on, so hired assistants to polish
his composition. These are sufficiently distinctive, in terms of the
older authors whom they mimic, as to be identifiable by modern
editors. It's notable in that context that Peter co-writes his
epistle with Silas, whose Gr name of Silvanus suggests that he was
pretty Hellenised.
>
[color=darkred]
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> Sorry, I didn't mean "establishment" in the sense of a state religion; I
> meant the authorizing of doctrine and the denomination of those outside th=
e
> dogma as heretics.
Probably all a bit anachronistic; the Spanish Inquisition wasn't to be
thought of for a 1000 years. At that date the Fathers had just come
through a bestial persecution, and some of them had come straight from
the prison-camps etc. Many of them were simply glad to be alive!
Others couldn't get over the unimaginable idea of a Christian
emperor.
The later ideas of authoritarianism aren't what is going on there, or
not seriously. Every movement has the right to self-definition,
without this being sinister. The use of accusations of heresy as part
of a power struggle really starts ca. 400 in the Origenist
controversies, when money and power come into it. (The accounts of
the Council of Ephesus in 433 don't make pretty reading) Constantine
was somewhat responsible for this, in that around the time of the
Council of Nicaea he gave the clergy wealth and legal position. The
rest was inevitable, as people scrambled to join the new privileged
class.
All the best,
Roger Pearse
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