Hadrian a reincarnation of Augustus

by

Damien F. Mackey

When reading through Anthony Everitt’s 392-page book, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (Random House, NY, 2009), I was struck by the constant flow of similarities between Hadrian and Augustus - which the author himself does nothing to hide.

Here are some of them:

Pp. 190-191:

Ten years into his reign, Hadrian announced to the world that, speaking symbolically, he was a reincarnation of Augustus.

P. x:

… Augustus, whom Hadrian greatly admired and emulated.

P. 145:

Flatterers said that [Hadrian’s] eyes were languishing, bright, piercing and full of light”. …. One may suspect that this was exactly what Hadrian liked to hear (just as his revered Augustus prided himself on his clear, bright eyes).

P. 190:

… the true hero among his predecessors was Augustus.
For the image on Hadrian’s signet ring to have been that of the first princeps was an elegantly simple way of acknowledging indebtedness …. Later, he asked the Senate for permission to hang an ornamental shield, preferably of silver, in Augustus’ honor in the Senate.

P. 191:

What was it that Hadrian valued so highly in his predecessor? Not least the conduct of his daily life. Augustus lived with conscious simplicity and so far as he could avoided open displays of his preeminence.

P. 192:

Both Augustus and Hadrian made a point of being civiles principes, polite autocrats.
….
Whenever Augustus was present, he took care to give his entire attention to the gladiatorial displays, animal hunts, and the rest of the bloodthirsty rigmarole. Hadrian followed suit.

P. 193:

Hadrian followed Augustus’ [consulship] example to the letter - that is, once confirmed in place, he abstained.
….
Hadrian’s imitation of Augustus made it clear that he intended to rule in an orderly and law- abiding fashion ... commitment to traditional romanitas, Romanness. It was on these foundations that he would build the achievements of his reign.
Like the first princeps, Hadrian looked back to paradigms of ancient virtue to guide modern governance. Augustus liked to see himself as a new Romulus …. Hadrian followed suit ….

P. 196:

[Juvenal] was granted … a pension and a small but adequate farmstead near Tibur …. Hadrian was, once again, modelling himself on Augustus, who was a generous patron of poets ….

P. 202:

[Hadrian] conceived a plan to visit every province in his wide dominions. Like the first princeps, he liked to see things for himself….

P. 208:

Hadrian introduced [militarily] the highest standards of discipline and kept the soldiers on continual exercises, as if war were imminent. In order to ensure consistency, he followed the example of Augustus (once again) … by publishing a manual of military regulations.

P. 255:

[Eleusis] … at one level [Hadrian] was merely treading in the footsteps of many Roman predecessors, among them Augustus.

P. 271:

… with his tenth anniversary behind him … the emperor judged the time right to accept the title of Pater Patriae, father of his people. Like Augustus, and probably in imitation of him, he had declined the Senate’s offer for a long time ….

P. 277:

[Hadrian] was soon widely known throughout the Hellenic eastern provinces as “Hadrianos Sebastos Olumpius”, Sebastos being the Greek word for Augustus ….

P. 322:

The consecration ceremony was modeled on the obsequies of Augustus.

Part Two:

Here are some more comparisons from the same book:

P. 31:

Augustus’ constitutional arrangements were durable and, with some refinements, were still in place a hundred years later when the young Hadrian was becoming politically aware.

P. 58:

In Augustus’ day, Virgil, the poet laureate of Roman power, had sung of an imperium sine fine. A century later he still pointed the way to an empire without end and without frontiers.

P. 130:

… [Hadrian] depended on friends to advise him. Augustus adopted this model ….

P. 168:

So far as Hadrian was concerned [the Senate] offered him the high title of pater patriae ….
He declined, taking Augustus’ view that this was one honor that had to be earned; he would defer acceptance until he had some real achievements to his credit.

P. 173:

So military and financial reality argued against further enlargement of the empire. … Augustus, who had been an out and out expansionist for most of his career ….
… the aged Augustus produced a list of the empire’s military resources very near the end of his life. …. Hadrian may well have seen a copy of, even read, the historian’s [Tacitus’] masterpiece.
P. 188:

… all the relevant tax documents were assembled and publicly burned, to make it clear that this was a decision that could not be revoked. (Hadrian may have got the idea for the incineration from Augustus, for Suetonius records that … he had “burned the records of old debts to the treasury, which were by far the most frequent source of blackmail”).

P. 198:

His aim was to create a visual connection between himself and the first princeps, between the structures that Augustus and Agrippa had left behind them and his own grand edifices …. Beginning with the burned-out Pantheon. ….
Hadrian had in mind something far more ambitious than Agrippa’s temple. …. With studied modesty he intended to retain the inscribed attribution to Agrippa, and nowhere would Hadrian’s name be mentioned.

Mackey’s comment: Hmmmm ….

P. 233:

It can be no accident that the ruler [Hadrian] revered so much, Augustus, took the same line on Parthia as he did - namely, that talking is better than fighting.

P. 324:

As we have seen, until  the very end of his reign, Augustus was an uncompromising and bellicose imperialist. Dio’s prescription [“Even today the methods that he then introduced are the soldiers’ law of campaigning”] fits Hadrian much more closely, and he must surely have had this example in mind when penning these words.

Part Three

“This is the chief thing: Do not be perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal; and in a little time you will be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus”.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The names “Augustus” and “Hadrian” often get linked together.
For instance, for Hadrian - as we read here: “Augustus was an important role model”:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/themes/leaders_and_rulers/hadrian/ruling_an_empire

Rome’s first emperor, Augustus (reigned 27 BC–AD 14), had also suffered severe military setbacks, and took the decision to stop expanding the empire. In Hadrian’s early
reign Augustus was an important role model.
He had a portrait of him on his signet ring and kept a small bronze bust of him among the images of the household gods in his bedroom.
Like Augustus before him, Hadrian began to fix the limits of the territory that Rome could control. He withdrew his army from Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, where a serious insurgency had broken out, and abandoned the newly conquered provinces of Armenia and Assyria, as well as other parts of the empire. ….

Hadrian was even “a new Augustus” and an “Augustus redivivus”.

Thus Anthony R. Birley (Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, p. 147):

Hadrian's presence at Tarraco in the 150th year after the first emperor was given the name Augustus (16 January 27 BC) seems to coincide with an important policy development. The imperial coinage at about this time drastically abbreviates Hadrian's titulature. Instead of being styled 'Imp. Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus’, he would soon be presented simply as 'Hadrianus Augustus'. The message thereby conveyed is plain enough: he wished to be seen as a new Augustus. Such a notion had clearly been in his mind for some time. It cannot be mere chance that caused Suetonius to write in his newly published, Life of the Deified Augustus, that the first emperor had been, ‘far removed from the desire to increase the empire of for glory in war’ — an assertion which his own account appears to contradict in a later passage. Tacitus, by contrast, out of touch – and out of sympathy – with Hadrian from the start, but aware of his aspirations to be regarded as an Augustus redivivus, seems subversively to insinuate, in the Annals, that a closer parallel could be found in Tiberius. ….

“In Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Anthony Birley, according to a review of his book, “brings together the new ... story of a man who saw himself as a second Augustus and Olympian Zeus”.

Architecture

Hadrian is often presented as a finisher, or a restorer, of Augustan buildings. For example: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=20867&printable

The Pantheon is one of the few monuments to survive from the Hadrianic period, despite others in the vicinity having also been restored by him (SHA, Hadrian 19). What is unusual is that rather than replacing the dedicatory inscription with one which named him, Hadrian kept (or more likely recreated) the Agrippan inscription, reminding the populace of the original dedicator. At first this gives the impression that Hadrian was being modest, as he was not promoting himself. Contrast this with the second inscription on the façade, which commemorates the restoration of the Pantheon by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 CE (CIL 6. 896). However, by reminding people of the Pantheon’s Augustan origins Hadrian was subtly associating himself with the first emperor. This helped him legitimise his position as ruler by suggesting that he was part of the natural succession of (deified) emperors. It is worth noting that Domitian had restored the Pantheon following a fire in 80 CE (Dio Cassius 66.24.2), but Hadrian chose to name the original dedicator of the temple, Agrippa, rather than linking himself with an unpopular emperor. In addition, the unique architecture of the Pantheon, with its vast dome, was a more subtle way for Hadrian to leave his signature on the building than an inscription might have been – and it would have been more easily ‘read’ by a largely illiterate population.

Thomas Pownall (Notices and Descriptions of Antiquities of the Provincia Romana of Gaul),
has Hadrian, “in Vienne”, purportedly repairing Augustan architecture (pp. 38-39):

That the several Trophaeal and other public Edifices, dedicated to the honour of the Generals of the State, were repaired by Augustus himself, or by his order, preserving to each the honour of his respective record of glory, we read in Suetonius …. And it is a fact, that the inhabitants of Vienne raised a Triumphal Arc, to grace his progress and entry into their town. The reasons why I think that this may have been afterward repaired by Hadrian are, first, that he did actually repair and restore most of the Monuments, Temples, public Edifices, and public roads, in the Province: and next that I thought, when I viewed this Arc of Orange, I could distinguish the bas-relieves and other ornaments of the central part of this edifice; I mean particularly the bas-relief of the frieze, and of the attic of the center, were of an inferior and more antiquated taste of design and execution than those of the lateral parts; and that the Corinthian columns and their capitals were not of the simple style of architecture found in the Basilica, or Curia, in Vienne, which was undoubtedly erected in the time of Augustus, but exactly like those of the Maison carrée at Nimes, which was repaired by Hadrian.

La Maison Carrée de Nîmes

Edmund Thomas will go a step further, though, and tell that the Maison carrée belonged, rather, to the time of the emperor Hadrian (Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age, p. 50):

Also worth mentioning is the so-called 'Temple of Diana' at Nîmes.

It was roofed with a barrel-vault of stone blocks, unusual for western architecture, and its interior walls, with engaged columns framing triangular and segmental pediments … resemble those of the 'Temple of Bacchus' at Baalbek …. It seems to have formed part of the substantial augusteum complex built around a substantial spring …. The date of the building is much disputed; but the resemblance to the architecture of Baalbek and the association of Antoninus Pius with Nemausus [Nîmes], may be indications of the Antonine date formerly suggested. …. Indeed, the famous ‘Maison Carrée’ in the same city, usually
regarded as an Augustan monument, has recently been redated to the same period, when the town was at its height, and may even be the ‘basilica of wonderful construction’ founded by Hadrian around 122 [sic] ‘in honour of Plotina the wife of Trajan’ ….

The Maison Carrée is the best preserved Roman temple in the world today and is a stunning building to visit.

Christmas story still resonates down the ages

The first Christmas Day was the moment when eternity announced its presence in time. The immense and the everlasting pierced the thin veil of time.

The power of eternity was made manifest in the weakness of a newborn infant, the most powerless of any human being. And on that paradox, human history has pivoted.

The circumstances were surely as inauspicious as any could be. Mary and Joseph were a refugee family fleeing the savage persecution of Herod and finding rough, temporary shelter.

But for all that, the birth of a baby is joyous.

Remember Mother Teresa, when she picked up a tiny newborn in Kolkata, in circumstances so daunting that birth at all was a miracle: “See! There’s life in her!”

And yet there was also splendour at the first Christmas, as the three magi, the wise men, came to offer gifts.

Christmas remains the most universal, powerful symbol of both humanity and divinity, not only in the West but in the entire world. I have listened, transfixed with delight, to Christmas carols sung in hotel lobbies in Muslim Kuala Lumpur and in many other places.

Christmas has always had its enemies. The chief project of modernity over the past 200 years has been to try to kill God. Even where this dismal endeavour progresses culturally, the God that cannot be killed at all is the infant at Christmas.

Still, as Dickens suggested in A Christmas Carol, you can tell something about a person, and a culture, by their attitude to Christmas.

Thus, in a kind of Monty Python version of antique political correctness beyond parody, the Diversity Council advises companies not to hold Christmas celebrations. I have the closest family and friendship connections with people of many faiths and I have never heard one object to, or fail to enjoy, Christmas celebrations.

Still, it would be wrong to make too much of the Diversity Council’s well-intentioned silliness.

The objection to Christmas comes not from other religions — most celebrate each others’ festivals happily — but from the grinches of militant secularism, the official and dispiriting religion of our time.

In truth, Christmas is a universal symbol that spreads nothing but goodwill and hope to everyone. At every Christmas table surely every neighbour is welcome. It is also true that Christianity is true. And that it is completely distinctive.

It is a common argument against Christianity that the essential wonder of Christmas — of the everlasting, eternal, all-powerful God becoming a defenceless human baby in deepest obscurity — is similar to other religious traditions that also have some men as gods and some gods as men.

It is a characteristic mistake of atheism to hold that the similarities of different religious traditions show that they are all just artificial artefacts, manufactured by men and women like a table or a car. The reverse is true. The recurrence of motifs throughout humanity is rather a sign that a sense of God, an intuition even of the shape of God, of the commerce between heaven and earth, is hardwired into the deepest elements of human nature.

In any event, no other religious tradition has anything equivalent to Christmas. Ancient Roman emperors were sometimes elevated to the status of gods, but theologically this is not much more than saying that Don Bradman was the god of cricket.

Other religions that have gods become men date them to a mythical time. Thus Hinduism, with its deep spiritual beauty and elevated literature, describes Krishna’s adventures on Earth in a time before time.

Christianity stakes its claims to truth on specific historical events in a well-documented time.

No other religion has its supreme god seemingly defeated on Earth, arrested, tortured, humiliated and killed in the most gruesome fashion.

One of our best-credentialled and most prolific historians of biblical times, John Dickson, who teaches at Oxford and Sydney universities, has written a marvellous new book, Is Jesus History?

You could make no greater contribution to cultural literacy than encouraging everybody, certainly every high school and university student, to read it.

Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop, Anthony Fisher, in an enthralling consideration of our historical circumstance, argued recently that Australia is both partly post-Christian and partly pre-Christian.

The two social conditions are somewhat different, but one thing they have in common is a ignorance about the basic facts of Christianity.

Dickson is a believing Christian but in Is Jesus History? he writes as a historian and expertly, readably, shrewdly, unemotionally draws together the most important scholarship on the historical Jesus.

The former Pope Benedict, in his magisterial, scholarly book, Jesus of Nazareth, explains the importance of historicity: “It is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolising supra-historical truths, but is based on history, history that took place here on this Earth.”

Benedict also explains the severe limits of the historical-critical method in trying to deconstruct the New Testament. Concerning biblical critical studies, which once in their wilder speculations did much to undermine religious faith, Benedict writes: “We have to keep in mind the limits of all our efforts to know the past: We can never go beyond the domain of hypothesis because we simply cannot bring the past into the present. To be sure, some hypotheses enjoy a high degree of certainty, but overall we need to remain conscious of the limit of our certainties.”

Dickson makes a different but allied point. Historical research and understanding can only take you to the threshold of decision about whether you believe that the physical resurrection of Jesus, and all the other miracles, took place. History cannot prove the miracles; history certainly cannot disprove them either.

It is similar to the arguments about the existence of God. Reason alone can take you to belief in God, as it did with some ancient Greek philosophers. But reason alone does not prove God. Nor does reason disprove God. There is nothing unreasonable, or irrational, about believing in God.

Our culture reinforces the wholly fraudulent message that science has somehow taken a stand against God. This is untrue and not the least of popular culture’s misrepresentations of science. As our greatest poet, Les Murray, wrote: “Snobs mind us off religion nowadays, if they can.”

Dickson thinks that history can tell us a great deal about Jesus. The overwhelming weight of all recent real research evidence validates the key narrative points of the gospel and other New Testament stories about Jesus.

Dickson assesses the evidence coolly and fairly.

There are several non-Christian references to Jesus in the ancient world. The earliest New Testament texts are some of the letters of Paul, written perhaps 20 years after Jesus’ death. These letters are written to communities of Jesus’ followers who already believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is the son of God. These beliefs are almost universal among Jesus’ followers.

Dickson establishes that the books of the New Testament are the best authenticated documents of the ancient world, apart from inscriptions in stone.

Most of the New Testament scriptures were written independently of each other and their minor discrepancies tend to validate their authenticity.

He offers the illustration. You probably recall exactly when you met your spouse for the first time. But as you tell the story over and over, sometimes you say you were drinking a beer, at other times a glass of wine.

But the name of your spouse, and the impression they made on you, is vivid and unvarying.

Similarly, every archaeological discovery has tended to confirm the authenticity of the Jewish community that the gospels describe. Similarly, the empty tomb of Jesus after his death is recounted in the gospel of Mark, the gospel of John and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. These were all written independently of each other.

Then, outside the New Testament, there is strong evidence that leaders of Jerusalem in the decades following Jesus’ death claimed that disciples had stolen the body to create an empty tomb. The point of this evidence is that these authorities believed there was an empty tomb that they had to explain.

Perhaps most piquant, the discoverers of the empty tomb were women. But in the ancient Middle East women were regarded as unreliable witnesses, their testimony much discounted in courts. Therefore, as Dickson writes: “If you were making up a story about the resurrection and you wanted your fellow first century readers to believe it, you would not include women as the initial witnesses, unless it happened, perhaps embarrassingly, to be true.”

Dickson is a historian of the highest calibre and he concludes: “If the central claim of Christianity were not a miraculous resur­rection but just some extraordinary natural claim, everyone would believe it — assuming we had the same degree of historical evidence which we possess for the resurrection.”

It is important not to misrepresent Dickson here. He is emphatically not claiming history proves the resurrection or the divinity of Jesus.

What history does establish, almost beyond reasonable doubt, is that Jesus lived at the time the gospels say, that he said at least many of the things attributed to him, that he had a reputation as a miracle worker and that his earliest followers, soon after his death, claimed to have seen him, and that the broad movement of his followers believed he had risen from the dead and was the son of God. Many of them believed this so passionately that they went to their deaths rather than deny their beliefs.

These historical facts do not prove that Christianity is true or that Jesus is the son of God.

But the bigoted atheism of our time, which dismisses the rational belief of 2000 years, and holds that all of this is not only not true but mere myth and superstition invented decades or centuries later, is deeply ignorant. It is a completely unearned vanity of the moment, which self-regardingly treats contemporary derangements as timeless and obvious wisdom. This is why it would be so valuable for people to read Dickson’s book, to get some real sense of the evidence.

Even more valuable would be to read a couple of the books of the New Testament itself.

Kanishka Raffel is the dean of St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral in Sydney. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, he came to Australia as a child. As a 21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Sydney, he was asked by a friend to read something about Christianity. He thought he would get a book by CS Lewis or some such. Instead his friend got him to read St John’s gospel. I asked him about that experience: “I was struck by the vitality of Jesus. You see him with his friends, arguing with sceptics, stunning the crowd. You also see him in prayer, in intimate contact with his father. In my particular case, having studied the Buddhist scriptures, you don’t really get a sense of the manhood of Buddha.

“Also, I was surprised by the historical realism of it, it’s rooted in time and place. The things Jesus says are very provocative. I found Jesus utterly compelling.”

Leaving aside religious considerations, here is a question of cultural literacy. Beyond the diminishing ranks of church-based religious instruction, is there a single course in any subject in any Australian school or university in which students would read the gospel of St John? Apart from the majesty of the writing — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” — isn’t it worth knowing something of the story at the heart of our civilisation?

Our enduring hope in all this remains that vulnerable and homeless infant of the first Christmas. For in weakness, his power is manifest.

Greg Sheridan’s book, God is Good for You, is published by Allen & Unwin. 

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/christmas-story-still-resonates-down-the-ages/news-story/d68fcbb1f72547028476282cb786c588

Pope at Angelus: Advent helps us find Jesus in the needs of others

Ahead of the Angelus prayer on Sunday, Pope Francis reflects on the meaning of the Advent season, and invites us to pay attention to the needs of those around us who suffer.

By Devin Watkins


At the beginning of the new liturgical year, the Pope took a moment ahead of the traditional Marian prayer to comment on how the Advent season reminds us that Jesus constantly enters our lives.
He said the certainty that Jesus will return at the end of time urges us to look to the future with confidence and hope.




Drawn to the mountain


Turning to the First Reading, the Pope said the prophet Isaiah paints a picture of the mountain of the Lord’s house to which all nations shall be drawn.
After the Incarnation of the Son of God, said Pope Francis, Jesus revealed Himself as the true temple atop that mountain.
“The marvelous vision of Isaiah is a divine promise,” he said, “and impels us to assume an attitude of pilgrimage, of journeying towards Christ, who is the meaning and goal of history.”
Advent, said Pope Francis, “ is the time to welcome Jesus’ coming, as He comes as a messenger of peace to show us the ways of God.”

Staying awake

In the day’s Gospel reading, Jesus urges us to “stay awake” for His coming.
The image of staying awake does not mean keeping one’s eyes literally open at all times, said Pope Francis, but means having one’s heart “free and oriented in the right direction” by offering ourselves for the benefit of others in service.
“The sleep from which we must awake is created by indifference, by vanity, and by the inability to establish genuinely human relationships and to take care of our brothers and sisters who find themselves alone, abandoned, or ill.”

Paying attention to those in need

The Pope said our expectant waiting for Jesus requires vigilance in the form of “marveling at God’s action and at His surprises.”
Vigilance, he continued, means “paying attention to our neighbor in difficulty and allowing their need to draw us in, without waiting for him or her to ask us for help.”


Finally, Pope Francis asked the Virgin Mary for her guidance along the Advent journey.
“May Mary, the vigilant Virgin and Mother of hope,” he said, help us “to turn our gaze towards the ‘mountain of the Lord’, the image of Jesus Christ, who draws all people to Himself.”






https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-12/pope-francis-angelus-advent-journey-reflection.html

Book of Jonah’s long tradition of historicity

 

“Estimates regarding the duration of the virtually universal acceptance of the historical character of the Book of Jonah range from 1800 years to “at least twenty-one centuries”.”

 

D. Hart-Davies

 

 

 

There is indisputably a long enduring Jewish-Christian tradition according to which the story of Jonah was a genuine historical account. According to D. Hart-Davies, writing in 1925 (Jonah: Prophet and Patriot): “Jewish tradition, in one unbroken line, testifies to a belief in the historical character of the book …”.

 

And:  “… the Christian Church, with remarkable unanimity has confirmed the Jewish tradition …”.

 

By way of contrast, Hart-Davies would then give the modern opinion:

 

Such, however, is not the view which is generally held by modern theologians.  The allegorical interpretation is widely accepted. Many treat the narrative as a fiction, with or without a very slight framework of history to rest upon. By many the non-historical character of the book is regarded as indisputable. A writer who ventures to maintain the opposite runs the risk of meeting, in certain quarters, with ridicule or invective. Sir George Adam Smith thus declaims: “How long, O Lord, must Thy poetry suffer from those who can only treat it as prose? On whatever side they stand, sceptical or orthodox, they are equally pedants, quenchers of the spiritual, creators of unbelief” ….

 

But, responded Hart-Davies, a fervent believer in the book’s historicity:

 

A strong case, surely, does not require to be buttressed by the immoderate terms of such an apostrophe. For it must not be forgotten that the great majority of Hebraists and theologians of the Church Universal, from Jerome and Augustine to Pusey and Perowne, are included in the compass of the distinguished professor’s denunciation.

 

Estimates regarding the duration of the virtually universal acceptance of the historical character of the Book of Jonah range from 1800 years to “at least twenty-one centuries”, wrote Hart-Davies. The matter really depends upon a determination of its date of authorship, its terminus a quo.

We know the approximate terminus ante quem, when what Hart-Davies called the “unbroken” tradition, was broken.

 

It is, as I (Damien Mackey) said at the start of this section, an extremely long tradition. The antiquity of the tradition, and the force of ancient Christians’ enthusiasm for the story of Jonah, is borne out in this statement by Hart-Davies:

 

The Catacombs in Rome bear striking evidence of the belief of the early Christians. No Biblical subject was more popular for mural and sarcophagi representation, in those underground cemeteries of the disciples of Jesus, than that of Jonah’s submergence and deliverance as a  symbol of faith and hope in the resurrection.

 

“The  history of Jonas [Jonah] having been put forward so emphatically by our  Lord Himself, as a type both of His own and of the general  resurrection, it is not to be wondered at that it should have held the  first place among all the subjects from the Old Testament represented in  the Catacombs. It was continually repeated in every kind of monument connected with the ancient Christian cemeteries; in the frescoes on the walls, on the bas-reliefs of the sarcophagi, on lamps and medals, and glasses, and even on the ordinary gravestones. Christian artists, however, by no means confined themselves to that one scene in the life of the prophet in which he foreshadowed the resurrection, viz., his three days’ burial in the belly of the fish, and his deliverance from it, as it were from the jaws of the grave. The other incident of his life was painted quite as commonly, viz., his lying ‘under the shadow of the booth covered with ivy on the east side of the city’ for refreshment and rest; or again, his misery and discontent, as he lay in the same place, when the sun was beating upon his head and the ivy had withered away”.

 

….  Jerome … wrote a commentary on it; and the sermons and writings of Irenaeus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, abound in references which show conclusively that their belief in the historicity of Jonah was unquestioned. A long and bitter controversy was waged between Jerome and Augustine as to the nature of the plant which overshadowed the prophet; but, as to the historical character of the narrative itself, they were absolutely agreed. ….

 

Hart-Davies appended an interesting footnote to this section; one which demonstrates how well instructed in Scripture were at least the early African Christians.

When the bishop who read the lesson changed the word cucurbita (a gourd) into hedera (ivy), “the whole congregation”, he wrote, “protested, and would not allow the lection to proceed till the word to which they were accustomed was adopted”.

 

Now, imagine what might have been the reaction of these ancient Christians had they heard from the pulpit, as I did have quite recently, that Jonah was a “didactic fiction”, written in “C5th BC post-exilic times”, and that it is only according to an appreciation of such a genre that one might be able to formulate an answer to a schoolchild’s simple question: “Was Jonah really in the belly of the whale?” It is all a matter of genre, we are told.

Carsten Peter Thiede’s early dating of Matthew’s Gospel

 
“The neomodernist stranglehold is exemplified by the treatment accorded Fr. Jean Carmignac, who died in 1986. Perhaps the greatest French Bible scholar of the century, who dated the writing of each of the four Gospels between A.D. 40 and 50, he was never allowed to publish

his research, on orders of the French bishops. They accused Carmignac of "an obsession of struggling against the majority of exegetes".”

 

Paul Likoudis

 

 

 

Then came Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede with his dramatic evidence for a radical early dating of the Gospel of Matthew. We read a little of it in the following account:

https://www.preteristarchive.com/1996_thiede_eyewitness/

 

The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures

 

---

 

Christmas Eve 1994 would have come and gone like any other, had it not been for three tiny papyrus fragments discussed in The Times of London’s sensational front-page story. The avalanche of letters to the editor jarred the world into realizing that Matthew d’Ancona’s story was as big as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The flood of calls received by Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, the scholar behind the story, and the international controversy that spread like wildfire, give us an inkling as to why the Magdalen Papyrus has embroiled Christianity in a high-stakes tug-of-war over the Bible.

 

Thiede and d’Ancona boldly tell the story of two scholars a century apart who stumbled on the oldest known remains of the New Testament–hard evidence confirming that St. Matthew’s Gospel is the account of an eyewitness to Jesus. It starts in 1901 when the Reverend Charles B. Huleatt acquires three pieces of a manuscript on the murky antiquities market of Luxor, Egypt. He donates the papyrus fragments to his alma mater, Magdalen College in Oxford, England, where they are kept in a butterfly display case, along with Oscar Wilde’s ring. For nearly a century, visitors hardly notice the Matthew fragments, initially dated to a.d.180-200; but after Dr. Thiede redates them to roughly a.d. 60, people flock to the library wanting to behold a first-century copy of the Gospel.

 

But what is all the fuss about? How can three ancient papyrus fragments be so significant? How did Thiede arrive at this radical early dating? And what does it mean to the average Christian? Now we have authoritative answers to these pivotal questions. Indeed, the Magdalen Papyrus corroborates the tradition that St. Matthew actually wrote the Gospel bearing his name, that he wrote it within a generation of Jesus’ death, and that the Gospel stories about Jesus are true. Some will vehemently deny Thiede’s claims, others will embrace them, but nobody can ignore Eyewitness to Jesus.

[End of quote]

 

Paul Likoudis, writing for EWTN in 1997, has more to say on the matter.

I (Damien Mackey) would not necessarily agree with him, though, that “Matthew's is the first Gospel”. Fr. Jean Carmignac (mentioned in this article) made an excellent case for (if I recall correctly) Mark’s being basically the Gospel of St. Peter – and therefore the first gospel - translated by Mark into Greek.

Paul Likoudis: https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/new-book-claims-four-gospels-written-

 

New Book Claims Four Gospels Written Before Fall Of Jerusalem

 

….

 

The hundred years' war on the Gospels-led by Rudolf Bultmann, who charged that "we can know practically nothing about Jesus' life and personality," and escalated by some of the most prominent Catholic Bible scholars working today-has produced the intended results of religious indifference, agnosticism, and atheism.

 

Typical of the Bultmann-inspired Catholic exegetes is Fr. Jerome. Murphy O'Connor, O.P., who, writing in the December, 1996 issue of the Claretians', pontificates that the Gospels are "mythical embellishments," that Jesus didn't know He was God and didn't know where His power came from, that Mary considered Him an embarrassment to the family, that she was not at the foot of the cross as the evangelists relate, and more.

 

"Do the Gospels Paint a Clear Picture of Jesus?," he asked. Definitely not, he tells his students and readers.

 

At the core of the dissident biblical exegesis which has produced such disastrous consequences for Catholic life, liturgy, catechetics, and scholarship is a refusal to believe that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses of the events described.

 

Though there has been no shortage of genuine Catholic exegetes, archaeologists, and historians who have insisted on an early dating of the Gospels to within a decade or two of Jesus' life, these scholars have often found it difficult to break through the controls put in place by an oppressive neomodernist establishment in both Catholic and Protestant institutions.

 

(The neomodernist stranglehold is exemplified by the treatment accorded Fr. Jean Carmignac, who died in 1986. Perhaps the greatest French Bible scholar of the century, who dated the writing of each of the four Gospels between A.D. 40 and 50, he was never allowed to publish his research, on orders of the French bishops. They accused Carmignac of "an obsession of struggling against the majority of exegetes.")

 

Now comes a German scientist, Carsten Peter Thiede, director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, who, with Matthew D'Ancona, is about to dash to pieces the Bultmann-built edifice of modernist exegesis.

 

Their recently published book, (Doubleday, 1996), is about a small piece of papyrus held at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is the oldest fragment of in existence today.

 

The fragment contains disjointed segments of 26, but even more important than the writing style, which Thiede pinpointed to the time of Jesus' life, is the use of KS, an abbreviated form of [missing], to refer to Jesus as Lord God- meaning that the ancient author believed that Jesus is divine.

 

Thiede, a papyrologist, furthermore concludes that must have been the first Gospel written.

The implications of this are enormous. As Thiede and D'Ancona write in their book:

 

"Bultmann was wrong: The authors of the Gospel could hear far more than the faintest whisper of Jesus' voice.

Indeed, the first readers of may have heard the very words which the Nazarene preacher spoke during his ministry, may have listened to the parables when they were first delivered to the peasant crowd; may even have asked the wise man questions and waited respectfully for answers. The voice they heard was not a whisper but the passionate oratory of a real man of humble origins whose teaching would change the world."

 

The issue of the dating of the Gospels has implications, furthermore, for believers and nonbelievers alike. "... We have come to realize the extent to which this new claim is directly relevant to the fundamental faith questions which all people, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and agnostic must ask themselves. The redating of the fragments, in other words, has a life beyond the confines of the academy. . .

"The redating of the Gospels- a process which is only now beginning in earnest-may seem an enterprise appropriate to its times, to the mood of the millennium's end. There is now good reason to suppose that the [missing], with its detailed accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and the Great Commission, was written not long after the crucifixion and certainly before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70; that the was distributed early enough to reach Qumran; that the belonged to the first generation of Christian codices; and that internal evidence suggests a date before A.D. 70 even for the nonsynoptic .... These are the first stirrings of a major process of scholarly reappraisal."

 

International Upheaval

 

Thiede's findings are causing an international upheaval among Bible scholars, particularly Catholic exegetes who have bought the Bultmann line that separates the Gospels to a generation or more from Jesus' contemporaries (making them the unreliable voice of an uncertain community) ….

 

Two hundred years ago, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment, Reimarus, described the task of Church-haters to be to "completely separate what the Apostles presented in their writings (i.e., the Gospels) from what Jesus himself actually said and taught during his lifetime."

….

 

Footnote

 

Among the brief sections of the Gospel on the Magdalen fragment is: "Then one of the XII, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priest and said, 'What will you give me for my work?'"

….

Institut Catholique de Paris ignores Carmignac

Fr Jean Carmignac

dates Gospels early

 

Part Two:

Institut Catholique de Paris ignores Carmignac

 

 

“The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts. It discovered that

Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique in Paris where he

had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all, it has prohibited people

from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...”.

 

The Wanderer

 

 

In the 1990’s, colleague Frits Albers (RIP), PH.B, wrote about what he considered to be the “betrayals” perpetrated by Paul Cardinal Poupard, the Archbishop of Paris, including his complete snub of the research of Fr. Jean Carmignac.

 

 

...

History has recorded several major betrayals by Cardinal Paul Poupard, Archbishop of Paris and president of its Institut Catholique. I will briefly describe two of them here as an introduction to his major one, his ‘resolution’ of the Galileo Case.

 

PART ONE:   WHY I MISTRUST CARD. PAUL POUPARD

 

Here follows the official text of this “public put-down”, issued by the Holy See press office on July 11, 1981, as it appeared in the Osservatore Romano of July 20 1981, mentioning Archbishop [by then not yet Cardinal] Paul Poupard by name.

 

The letter sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to His Excellency Mons. Poupard on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin has been interpreted in a certain section of the press as a revision of previous stands taken by the Holy See in regard to this author, and in particular of the Monitum of the Holy Office of 30 June 1962, which pointed out that the work of the author contained ‘ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors’.

 

The question has been asked whether such an interpretation is well founded. After having consulted the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith, which, by order of the Holy Father, had been duly consulted beforehand about the letter in question, we are in a position to reply in the negative. Far from being a revision of the previous stands of the Holy See, Cardinal Casaroli’s letter expresses reservations in various passages - and these reservations have been passed over in silence by certain newspapers - reservations which refer precisely to the judgment given in the Monitum of June 1962, even though this document is not explicitly mentioned.

 

The second example of betrayal involving the Institut Catholique of Paris and its president, Archbishop Paul Poupard, centres on interference with the dissemination of truth by means of the direct and wilful suppression of Catholic scholarship in favour of a free and unencumbered promotion of doctrinal errors. The scandal appeared in the March 19, 1992 edition of the American Catholic paper The Wanderer, quoting two other major European Catholic periodicals, 30 Days and Il Sabato.

 

Reporting a scandal: An editorial in the current issue of 30 Days magazine (issue no. 2), titled “Scandal at the Institut Catholique” raises some tough questions about the openness of modern biblical scholars to research which offers evidence that the Gospels were written by A.D. 50.

 

Reporting on investigative work conducted by the Italian Catholic weekly Il Sabato the editorial asks why the Institut Catholique in Paris will not allow to be printed, or even acknowledge the existence of, the biblical scholarship of Fr. Jean Carmignac.

Fr. Carmignac, until his death in 1986, was one of the world’s leading experts in Hebrew and Aramaic, and his extensive research in language and the Fathers of the Church led him to believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written their Gospels by A.D. 50.

 

In addition, Carmignac noted the scholarship of 49 other recognised experts who agreed with him, but whose works also had either been ignored or censored or else they did not dare wage a battle in the name of their scientific conviction.

 

“For the consequences”, stated the 30 Days editorial, “would have revolutionised the dominant exegetical trends today. Many ideas, whose certainty is taken for granted today, would have crumbled ... If the Synoptic Gospels were written in a Semitic language it means they were written soon after Jesus’ years on earth, when the protagonists were still alive. It means that the Synoptic Gospels are the testimonies of people who saw and heard, of witnesses to the facts. It means they are not late elaborations by anonymous transcribers of popular traditions”.

 

In 1983. Fr. Carmignac published a small book containing his findings and conclusions, and promised a later book which he described as “more convincing than ever and, I hope, irrefutable”.

 

But at that time an effort began to bury his work, the editorial said, under hefty shovelfuls of earth ... Six years after his death, none of these texts has ever been published. An impenetrable curtain of silence has fallen on Fr. Carmignac and his work. The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts. It discovered that Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique in Paris where he had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all, it has prohibited people from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...

 

One of the 49 scholars mentioned here by the late Fr. Jean Carmignac is, no doubt, Claude Tresmontant whose magnificent book on that very same topic, The Hebrew Christ, carries a lengthy foreword by the Most Reverend Jean Charles Thomas, Bishop of Ajaccio, dated May 1, 1983: three years before the death of Fr. Jean Camignac. In his Foreword Bishop Thomas refers specifically to the same general state of affairs as was reported by the three Catholic papers mentioned above. There is no change of heart in either the ‘Institut Catholique’ or its president, Paul Poupard ...

 

Significance of sandals in Book of Ruth and Gospels

 

 

The meaning of it is wonderfully explained in the context of the Levirate Law in the article, “Whose Sandal Strap I am Not Worthy to Untie”, to be found at:

http://ourladyofwisdom.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/levirate.pdf

 

The book by the prominent Spanish scripture scholar Luis Alonso-Schokel called I Nomi Dell'Amore (The Names of Love) provides a fascinating and spiritually rich look at marriage symbols in the bible. I’d like to offer a brief summary of some of the insights of the chapter from that book entitled "The Levirate."

 

Schokel begins by noticing 5 similar texts from the New Testament all dealing with St. John the Baptist:

Matthew 3:11 he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry

Mark 1:7 After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie

Luke 3:16 he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John 1:27 even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

 

Acts 13:25 after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.

Now any text repeated in all of the gospels (and the book of Acts too) must have a grand significance. Most people will see it as illustrating the humility of the Baptist, unworthy to untie the sandals of the Lord, but several internal hints point to a deeper, more profound answer.

Schokel points out three textual clues:

 

1) In John 1:30 the Baptist speaks of Christ as, "This is he of whom I said, `After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.'" The word translated as "man" here is not the Greek word "anthropos" usually translated as man, instead it is "aner" a word, as Schokel points out, having more of a "sexual" (in the sense of gender) or relational meaning. It isn't man, but "male" (maschio in Italian); a male in relation to a female. The passage would better be translated in English, "After me comes a male who ranks before me." [John the Baptist is the "anthropos" - see John 1:6, 3:27]. Schokel also points out the references in John 1-3 to Isaiah 40-66, esp. chapter 54:1-10, where Yahweh is referred to as the Bridegroom/husband and in the LXX, the "aner")

 

2) At least in the synoptics the word "unworthy" or "unfit" has a juridical sense. That word is "ikanos" while John uses "axios." So it seems to be more of unfitness according to some type of Judaic law, and with the use of "aner" possibly a marital law.

 

3) Looking a few chapters down, we come to the last words of John recorded in the gospel. In responding to questions as to who this Jesus is, he responds, "You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full" (John 3:28-29). John here is challenging Israel's Messianic expectations - they expect their Christ to come as a political leader, or a warrior, or even a prophet like John the Baptist, but John says this is incorrect. He says that the messiah will come as the Bridegroom of his bride Israel; ultimately that Israel has the wrong expectations.

 

So keeping all of this in mind: the repeated reference to untying of sandals, the "maleness" of Christ, the juridical context, and the spousal-messianism John uses to describe the Christ, Schokel (along with the Fathers) exegetes this text in light of the Levirate Law in the Old Testament.

 

The Levirate Law (derived from Latin levir, meaning "a husband's brother") is the name of an ancient custom ordained by Moses, by which, when an Israelite died without issue, his surviving brother was required to marry the widow, so as to continue his brother's family through the son that might be born of that marriage (Gen 38:8; De 25:5-10 ) comp. (Ruth 3:1 4:10) Its object was "to raise up seed to the departed brother."

But if the surviving brother refused (for whatever reason) to marry the widow, a rite called "Halizah" would occur. Deut 25:5-10 describes the Levirate and Halizah:

"If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no offspring, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, `My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.' Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak to him: and if he persists, saying, `I do not wish to take her,' then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, `So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.' And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, The house of him that had his sandal pulled off" (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

The sandal is the key - the sandal is symbolic of he who has the right to marriage. The one who wears the sandal is the Bridegroom. As St. Cyprian said, this is why both Moses (Ex 3:2-6) and Joshua (John 5:13-15) were told by Yaweh that they had to remove their sandals; although they might have been prophets, they were not the one who had the right to marry Israel the Bride. In saying that he is not fit (juridically) to remove the sandal from Jesus' foot he is saying that Jesus is the bridegroom, he is the one who has the right to marriage, not John - even though he came first.

"Even though he came first" - John admits to this, being the precursor of the Messiah-Bridegroom, but he is not the one that will marry the bride (as he is not the Messiah, as some of the Jews had thought). To understand this better (and the entire Levirate process) one must look to the book of Ruth. In it, the widow Ruth is set to marry her "next of kin" via the levirate law, but Boaz arrived first to claim Ruth. It does not matter though, the next of kin has first choice. But he decides to pass up the marriage to Ruth, and gives her to Boaz. And in doing so he "drew off his sandal" (Ruth 4:8). Even though John came first, Jesus is the one with the right to the woman, and he opts for the marriage - and thus does not remove his sandal. John will not be given the chance to take his place.

This interpretation of these passages are not new, as Schokel points out. Several of the Fathers, including Jerome, Cyprian, and Gregory all see the Levirate law being referred to in the passages about John the Baptist. As Jerome writes, "being as that Christ is the Bridegroom, John the Baptist is not merited to untie the laces of the bridegroom's sandal, in order that, according to the law of Moses (as seen with Ruth) his house will not be called "the house of the un-sandaled," [a reference to the refusal to carry on the name of the deceased brother].

So, if John is not the messiah-bridegroom, and is unfit to untie the bridegroom's sandals, as the "friend of the groom" - what is his duty, esp. in the Levirate context? The root of his mission "to prepare the way of the Lord" can be found in Ruth 3:3 when the elders tell Ruth before her wedding to "Wash therefore and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes." John's baptism of repentance is done to prepare the bride for the wedding.

Liturgically, he cleans her from her impurities (see also Ezekiel 16) preparing the bride "that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word" (Ephesians 5:26). To prepare Israel the Bride for her nuptial with Christ her bridegroom is the heart of the Baptist's mission.

Now with all symbolism and typologies, it is hard to "stretch" the analogy too far. But in order to get the full meaning of Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament, one has to twist symbols around a bit. In order to do understand one other crucial aspect of the Levirate, that of the "deceased" brother, we must be a bit creative, and look at it from a different perspective. Christ marries his bride, consummates his union with her, on the cross (see Eph 5) - but this leads to his death. So he could be seen as the "dead husband." So who will be the "brother" who takes his place in marrying his bride? For the answer we must again turn to the gospel of John.

"When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son!' Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!' And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home" (John 19:26-27).

Jesus had no other brothers, so he gave his mother to John - and thus in becoming her son, John (and all apostles and Christians likewise) became Jesus' brother. But we cannot forget that on a different level (see Rev 12) Mary is the "icon of the church," the bride - so John as he becomes Jesus' brother, is given to the Church as her bridegroom. Here we have what Schokel says might be seen as the "root of apostolic succession." The Church is passed on from brother/apostle to brother/apostle - yet the bride still keeps the name of her first husband, as Paul writes, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" (1 Corinthians 1:13). The name of the husband is carried on by the generation of new sons, thus the brother through his preaching of the word, causes the bride to become fruitful. Look to St. Paul (a Jew well versed in the Law) again, "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15). The bishops/apostles have their charge to carry on the name of Christ by preaching the gospel and celebrating the sacraments - and in doing so the church/bride becomes church/mother and the Levirate law is thus fulfilled in Jesus Christ.