1 Clem. Maybe this was because he loathed Christians too much to mention them at all anywhere in his work. Thats the start. All his daughters had to obey their father, because disobeying to your parents was a great wrongdoing in the ancient world. According to Hippostratus, Danaus had all these progeny begotten by a single woman, Europa, the daughter of Nilus.[4]. . It is used in the Roman Office of Readings for the liturgical memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome on June 30. . Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircae, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with steadfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward. I realized that I hadnt added your blog to our blogroll. . Rather, the punishments Suetonius speaks of may well have been one of the occasional banishments from Rome that Jews experienced. The Roman church needs reminding, too. The simple argument of this essay, deliberately framed as a provocative hypothesis, is that this event never happened and that there are compelling reasons to doubt that it should have any place either in the history of Christian martyrdom or in the history of the early Church. ", "Id like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. Danaus didn't want that his beautiful and prosperous Argos suffer because of a war. For if I say to you: I recognise in that dream,such and such a myth; or in that emotion about my father, that folk-tale; or the atmosphere of that memory is the same as an English ballad-then you smile, you are satisfied. Both Tacitus and Suetonius actually refer to Chrestiani, not Christiani a detail indicating that this was the name by which they were commonly known in the early second century. The name of Christian was not applied so early as the identifier of this Jewish sect. According to Hurtado: Nero had somehow come to be connected with the Christians; This video claims that the Christians took blame for the fire themselves (whether they did or not). (p. 231), Allen, N.P.L. | Contact Us We use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience and to analyze site traffic. Dirke was originally the wife of King Lykos (Lycus) of Thebes who, as punishment for the mistreatment of her niece Antiope, was tied to a wild bull and torn limb from limb. Ancient history is obviously less verifiable than recent history, and open to speculative revisions of various sorts, including the use of some presumed legends and forgeries against others, according to taste. Yes, I had read Hurtados piece but my post was too long for me to include reference to what he had said. So we return to Tacituss contemporary, Suetonius, who wrote: Christians were afflicted with punishments, a type of men of a new and evil superstitio . In 1910,[41] the Hungarian poet Mihly Babits published his poem The Danaids, translated into English by Peter Zollman[42] and Istvn Ttfalusi.[43]. The result is a few phrases in a single passage testifying to the Neronian persecution of Christians because of the fire of Rome and it is constructed fromanachronisms. Its always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Afterwards, they remarried by choosing their mates in footraces (or their father bestowed them to the victors of the athletic contest[2]). Suetonius makes no connection here with the Fire. I do need to touch on the two women Clement lists, "the Danaids and Dircae." According to the footnote in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, they are either two unknown women or the phrase was possible added later. Where to eat? Prior to this episode the letter notes in very general terms that. By grace we can have the power of repentance and overcome sin. Nero had somehow come to be connected with the Christians; Christians were linked to thosewho were punished after the Great Fire. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) : Nonnus, Dionysiaca 44. [Many ingenious conjectures might be cited; but see Jacobson's valuable note, Patres Apostol., . The purpose of the current article is to address a question to which scholars devoted considerable thought: the identity of the Christian women whom Clement of Rome called "Danads" and "Dircae" in his "First Epistle to the Corinthians". Scholars Press. It is easy to miss the fullness of it. . We must not forget what a close connection there is between this narrative and the whole of Christian history, and what interest religious education and the Church have in preventing any doubt from being cast on it.. It was a crime that both people and gods would punish. Slingerland, Howard Dixon (1997). He cites Richard Carriers 2014 article,The prospect of a Christian interpolation in Tacitus, Annals15.44, in VigiliaeChristianae 68, 26483 as a recent example and source for many of the earlier studies. The absence is doubly striking since it was precisely a fire at Nicomedia (two of them, in fact) that caused Galerius and Diocletian to turn on the Christians in the Great Persecution of 303 C.E. For Aegyptus, these fifty marriages appeared as an easy route to acquire the properties of Danaus. ", "By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jims review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. Around the year 95 AD, a letter was written by the Church of Rome to the Church at Corinth that is attributed to Saint Clement. A DIFFERENT VIEW OF CLEMENS ROMANUS A DIFFERENT VIEW OF CLEMENS ROMANUS WILHELMHOOIJBERGH, A. E. 1975-07-01 00:00:00 While the writer was studying the first epistle of Clement to the Corinthians with a view to getting a clearer idea as to the conception of sin among the Apostolic Fathers some questions arose. They were to marry the 50 sons of Danaus' twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. When the sons found out who their mother was, they put Dirce to death by bidning her to an untamed bull; by the kindness of Liber [Dionysos], whose votary she was, on Mount Cithaeron, a spring was formed from her body, which was called Dirce. 6:2 By reason of jealousy women being persecuted, after that they had suffered cruel and unholy insults as Danaids and Dircae, safely reached the goal in the race of faith, and received a noble reward, feeble though they were in body. We will focus on repentance and grace in chapters 7 and 8. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Well, I essentially said all of this and presented all of this evidence (and more) in my 2009 book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. Let us look steadfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious that blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world. He nevertheless does not subscribe to the historians account of Neros reign. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. In any case, Bowersocks unease is well founded. Paul explains the problem in Romans 7. "[The rivers and springs flee before the pregnant goddess Leto, fearing the wrath of Hera should they provide her refuge :] Fled, too, Aonia [Boiotia] on the same course, and [the Naiades] Dirke (Dirce) and Strophia, holding the hands of their sire, dark-pebbled Ismenos (Ismenus). Danaus built a ship with fifty oars and fled to Greece with his fifty daughters. And the way Suetonius adds a description of these Christians that was shared by his second century contemporaries it appears as if the historian is introducing the term Christian to enable his readers to link a religion they knew about in their day with an earlier group who were previously unknown by that name. They were to marry the 50 sons of Danaus' twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. Then, Danaus and his daughters reached Argos, the birthplace of his great-grand-mother, the Argian princess Io. https://www.rebuildingthefoundations.org/faith-and-works-story.html. This could mean that Rome was also experiencing envy and there were those who wanted leadership roles out of envy. 1 Clem. The fears and loathing were all set in the late first and early second century among these literary elite. How, then, Shaw asks, was this new information about the Christians circulating among the governing officials at the time? The following is from a review of H. Dixon Slingerlands Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome reviewed by Erich S. Gruen, University of California, Berkeley, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1998/98.7.02.html. [A] persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero in connection with the Great Fire of 64 seems improbable given the context of the relations between officials of the Roman state and Christians over the first century CE. - Letter to the Corinthians, ch. Another contemporary, Pliny, shared the same negative view of Christians. The trope of the jealous spouse delating his wife to Roman authorities inthe city of Rome is also found in the writings of Justin Martyr who was probably writing in the mid-second century. ISBN 1-905048-0-68. He says: Evidently two developments had taken place prior to his writing the Annales: "I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. I know certain arguments in isolation do seem very persuasive, such as the forgery one. The book is set and revised in Rome, but was not written there, and dates from the mid-2nd century. There is thus no good evidence, Shaw concludes, that Nero was the first persecutor of the Christians, or that he had Christians rounded up for punishment in connection with the fire of Rome. Its worth comparing in detail with the alternative arguments that the entire passage is a later forgery. 6:3 Jealousy hath estranged wives from their husbands and changed the saying of our father Adam, This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. However, Shaw stresses the importance of recognising the passage is the only source for the involvement of Christians with the fire and their persecution in its aftermath.. We saw the phrase "grace of repentance" in the last chapter. These things, beloved, we write unto you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. But between such hypotheses and the text there are considerable unfillable gaps in the evidence. It is most likely that Tacitus and Pliny exchanged information on these Christians who, as Pliny records, appeared to bebecoming a noticeable social nuisance. "Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the worlds leading research universities you would be one of the worlds formidable ones. One of the plainest examples is the Acts of Peter (probably from the 180s) which tells of Neros persecution of Peter in Rome, but states that he was forced to keep his hands off Peters Christian followers due to a threatening vision from heaven. Under Martin V he reached the top rank of his office, as Apostolicus Secretarius, papal secretary. 5. In Jewish apocalyptic mythology Nero was depicted as a bestial figure, no doubt because the war that ended with the destruction of the Temple was commenced under his reign. Given the surprisingly widespread acceptance of the great significance ofthis axial event in Christian history, the thinness of the evidence on all aspects of it is quite striking. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Im so glad youre helping to spread these ideas! He offers the suggestion that Chrestus might be one of the freedmen advisers to the emperor Claudius, using as analogy the anti-semitic Helicon, counselor to Gaius Caligula. Chapter VI.Continuation. You can return Home, go to the index of commentaries, or go to my categorized index of artices. On the way she gave birth to two sons at Eleutherai (Eleutherae) in Boiotia (Boeotia). Filed under: Ancient Literature, Historical Methods and Historiography, History and Biography 33:11]; adding, moreover, this gracious declaration, 'Repent, O house of Israel, of your iniquity'" [Ezek. Its an interesting hypothesis. Danaus was angered that his daughter refused to do as he ordered and took her to the Argives courts. I once attempted to engage him in a discussion on Acts but was rebuffed as if I was a tool of Satan out to destroy Christianity because I questioned his assumptions even though I did so from the perspective of another relatively conservative scholar. Paul's warning to the Ephesian elders that evil men would rise up and draw men to themselves was a warning every church must heed (Acts. At the time, the lethal superstitio was repressed, but it burst out again not only throughout Judaea, the origin of this evil (sickness), but through the City (of Rome) to which everything that is savage and shameful flows from all directions and is actually celebrated. Furthermore, the routine fashion in which Pliny phrases his ignorance presumes that the emperor himself did not expect Pliny or any other high-ranking Roman to possess such obvious knowledge of the Christians. His beautiful and prosperous Argos suffer because of a war top rank of his office, Apostolicus. On exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my index!, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves to analyze traffic... 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