Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background ARTHUR DARBY NOCK βπη άν ό λόγος ώσπερ πνεύμα φέρβ, ταύτη ίτέον WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION BY THE AUTHOR, 1962, AND TWO ADDITIONAL ESSAYS, Ά NOTE ON THE RESURRECTION* AND 'HELLENISTIC MYSTERIES AND CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS' HARPER TORCH BOOKS • The Cloister Library Harper & Row, Publishers New York, Evanston and London EARLY GENTILE CHRISTIANITY AND ITS HELLENISTIC BACKGROUND Introduction to the Torchbook edition copyright ©1964 by The Estate of Arthur Darby Nock. Printed in the United States of America. "Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background" and "A Note on the Resurrection" both originally appeared in ESSAYS ON THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION, edited by A. E. J. Rawlinson, and published by Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., London, in 1928. They are here reprinted by arrangement. "Hellenistic Mysteries and Christian Sacraments" was first published in Mnemosyne, S. IV, Vol. V, 1952, issued by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. It is here reprinted by arrangement. First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1964 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated 49 East 33 rd Street New York 16, Ν. Y. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION νϋ BIBLIOGRAPHY xviii I. EARLY GENTILE CHRISTIANITY AND ITS HELLENISTIC BACKGROUND . ι I. THE BACKGROUND. II. THE THEOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY AS A MISSION-RELIGION. III. THE PRACTICE OF CHRISTIANITY. IV. CHRISTIANITY IN THE COMMUNITIES. V. RELATIONS TO PHILOSOPHY. VI. CONCLUSIONS. II. A NOTE ON THE RESURRECTION . 105 III. HELLENISTIC MYSTERIES AND CHRIS­ TIAN SACRAMENTS . .109 I. MYSTERIES AND INITIATIONS IN CLASSICAL GREECE. II. MYSTERIES IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD: THE METAPHORICAL USE OF MYSTERY TERMINOLOGY. III. MYSTERION AND THE METAPHOR OF MYS­ TERIES IN JUDAISM. IV. BAPTISM AND THE EUCHARIST AS DONA DA T A. V. DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECOND AND THIRD CENTURIES. VI. DEVELOPMENT IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. INDEX 147 ABBREVIATIONS. A.R.W. = Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft. C.Q. = Classical Quarterly. C.R. = Classical Review. J.H.S. = Journal of Hellenic Studies. J.T.S. =a Journal of Theological Studies. R.G. V. V. = Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten (Giessen, 1903-). Z.N.W. = Zeitschrift fur neutestantentliche Wissenschaft. Clemen = C. Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklarung des neuen Testa­ ments, ed. II (Giessen, 1924). E.R.E. = Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings. P.W. = Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertums- wissenschaft. Reitzenstein, Myst.% = R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterien- religionen, ed. II (Leipzig, 1920). Myst* = ed. Ill (Leipzig, 1927). Strack-Billerbeck = Kommentar xum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, von H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, I— (Munchen, 1922-). INTRODUCTION to the Torchbook edition FROM the University of Oxford there issued in i860 Essays and Reviews, in 1889 Lux Mundi, in 1912 Foundations, each the product of a number of minds and each in its own way a landmark in the theological thinking of the English- speaking world. In 1924 A. E. J. Rawlinson (later Bishop of Derby), who had contributed to Foundations, Κ. E. Kirk (later Bishop of Oxford) and some of their colleagues decided on a new venture, to be named Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation. One topic which to them seemed to call for treatment was the relation of Christianity in the Apostolic age to its non-Jewish environment. For a generation this subject had been actively canvassed, and it was energetically maintained that the idea of a Resurrection on the third day had its origin in Near Eastern myths of dying and rising gods, and that the description of Jesus as Lord and again the sacra­ mental character of baptism and the Eucharist were likewise importations from the Gentile world. In the second century of our era Justin Martyr had noted pagan analogies to the sacred story and to the rites of the Christians: he explained them by the theory that the demons had produced a coun­ terfeit in advance. The modern supposition that Christianity had borrowed substantially from paganism is in no sense comparable with the notion that Jesus never existed (which may aptly be compared with the Bacon-Shakespeare theory and its successors). The idea of such borrowing was initiated and developed by notable scholars who made serious and solid observations and who substantially enlarged our horizon of knowledge. Rawlinson and his associates turned first to Edwyn Bevan, whose The House of Seleucus, Jerusalem under the High Priests, Stoics and Sceptics, and Hellenism and Chris­ tianity marked him as a natural choice. Bevan declined, and suggested my name. I was then teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, and spending all my free time studying various aspects of religious development in the Graeco-Roman world. Gilbert Murray's Four Stages of Greek Religion (later to be expanded to Five Stages of Greek Reli­ gion) had come into my hands at school and left on me a permanent impress and impulse. To try to rewrite or even to revise something composed so long ago would be foolish even if it were possible; it would mean putting new wine into old bottles. The shorter essay on mysteries and sacraments (from Mnemosyne 1952) included in this volume does in a measure supplement and correct what was written earlier. (So do my Conversion1 and St. Paul,2 and my chapters in Cambridge Ancient History, vols. X and XII, all of which were likewise produced in response to external stimuli.) I venture to hope that this reprinting may have its rele­ vance today. Not a few of the theories which more than thirty years ago seemed to call for scrutiny continue to have a wide circulation. Take the Paulus of H. J. Schoeps, published in 1959.3 It is a brilliant and learned book, doing justice to the Apostle's thought as rooted in Pharisaic tra­ dition and as determined by his personal experience and by eschatology; Schoeps has moreover seized on the funda­ mental significance of Schweitzer's The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Yet even Schoeps maintains that 'Son of God' and all that goes with the belief, e.g. the descent of a heavenly figure (Philippians ii) takes us 'into the neighborhood of pagan ideas of the time'. What were these 'pagan ideas of the time'? Certain historical persons were thought to be sons of deities, but as such they were human, though specially endowed. They could be raised to the level of 1 Oxford University Press, 1933; paperback edition available. 2 Harper & Brothers, 1938; Harper Torchbook edition, 1963. 3 Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History, translated by Harold Knight. London: Lutterworth, 1961 the gods: they had not voluntarily come down from that level and they were not thought to have had a pre-existence on a heavenly plane. In fact, almost all the gods worshipped in antiquity (including the 'dying and rising gods') were thought to have been born in time and place (often here on earth). Gods could take human shape, but they were hardly ever thought to assume 'la condition humaine', with all its liabilities, and the idea of Incarnation was a stumbling block and not a point of attraction to the Greeks. Let us now consider briefly certain topics on which the last thirty years have brought a better understanding. (The selection and emphasis are necessarily personal.) § i. Judaism.—First, our knowledge of Judaism in the first centuries of our era has been greatly enriched. The documents found at and near Qumran, commonly called the Dead Sea Scrolls, have brought before us the books and the life of a sect, identified beyond doubt with the Essenes as known from Philo and Josephus. This sect had a strict communal organization, and combined a meticulous zeal for the observance of the Law with a lyrical enthusiasm shown in their psalms. They had a great preoccupation with secret knowledge, above all secret knowledge of God's plans, i.e. eschatology, and their solemn communal meals were probably taken in anticipation of the fulfilment of their Messianic hopes and beliefs. Repentance and baptism were prerequisites for admission into 'the eschatological commu­ nity of God'.1 Their picture of the world was characterized by various contrasts—the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Perversity, the Children of Light and the Children of Dark­ ness (predestined to be such), and (occasionally, and not precisely in a Pauline sense) flesh and spirit. In spite of the secrecy which all members were solemnly bound to observe as to the teachings of the sect (including the names of the angels), the general character of these teachings was known outside the movement, and the new information about it is pertinent to the study of Paul as well as to that of Jesus. 1 F. M. Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumram and modern Biblical Studies, 177. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1958; Anchor paperback edition, 1961. A point of special interest is that among the very nume­ rous Biblical texts belonging to the sect there are some in Greek. This is one more indication that we must not draw too sharp a distinction between the Judaism of the Holy Land and the Judaism of the Dispersion. There was much coming and going between Jerusalem and Alexandria, and the quasi-monastic Therapeutai described by Philo look as though they were in some sense related to the Qumran sect. Again, knowledge of the Greek language was not uncommon in Palestine, and where there was the language there could be some of the thought. On the other side Philo, with all his knowledge of Greek philosophy and his willingness to read some of its insights into Scripture, was Jewish to the core.