THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

ALPHA AND OMEGA | 2005-05-11

Someone just asked me where my ideas come from.

Another person told me something that I think gets to the truth about where my ideas come from:

"Bob, things that other people don't even notice leap out at you."

An example of this is Jesus's words, "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end." Alpha and omega are NOT Hebrew letters. They are not Aramaic letters. They are Greek letters, and everyone who was listening knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

When Jesus spoke privately with Pontius Pilate, what language do think they were speaking IN? The question never occurred to me until I started thinking about "the alpha and the omega." Greek was the language of the Eastern Roman Empire. Greek was also the language in which the Roman nobility spoke to each other in Rome.

They spoke Greek, of course.

Jesus kept quoting the Septuagint, the Jewish scriptures in Greek. When Saint John wrote Revelations, and pronounced a curse on anyone who added or subtracted from them, he wrote in GREEK.

Luther and Calvin assumed that only Hebrew scriptures before Christ were Biblical. So they chopped out a huge part of the Catholic Bible that was in Greek. In fact, they cut out all of the Bible from the centuries before Jesus. Jesus Himself would not recognize the Bible I was raised with.

Catholics still keep these Greek books, as the Apocrypha, but they do not study it much. They almost never quote it.

But when Revelations was written in the first century, the New Testament had not yet been compiled. Each of the Gospels, including the many that were thrown out when the New Testament was officially complied, was THE New Testament for a large number of Christians. All they had as scripture was the Bible St. John spoke of in Revelations, and all of the last part of it was the Greek writings we no longer pay attention to.

So the last words of our Bible are a curse on anyone who would remove any part of the Bible, and it was written in Greek.

I am not a Bible literalist, so this makes little difference to me. For Bible literalists, this makes no difference at all.

So where exactly did Greek culture fit into the whole mosaic of Christian history? There were seven million Jews in the Roman Empire when Jesus was born, over ten percent of the total population. As Christianity advanced, these Hellenist Jews, like the historian Josephus, disappear from history quietly and entirely.

They became the basis of the Christian Church.

So most Roman Jews DID accept Christ, but they are the very Jews Christian theologians today reject. Both today's Jews and today's Christians do not see them as real Jews because their language was Greek, not Hebrew.

Looking deeply into this would not so much change theology, which is not my field. But it would change history, which IS my field. I want to know what political influence those millions of Jews had in the time of Christ that allowed them to be the only people exempted from the rite of emperor-worship.

I would like to know what how five million people, as they became Christian, began to make their alliances and throw their weight behind the increasingly vicious struggles for imperial power. In the third century, Roman emperors ruled for months at a time before being killed. There was something desperate going on.

And when Constantine accepted Christianity, was it a religious decision or a political one?

All from thinking about "the alpha and the omega," I realize that there is a giant void in Roman political history without which the history we have is pure myth.

COMMENTS (10)

#1 Elizabeth | 2005-05-12 12:57

I can answer two of these questions, at least partially.

The Jewish community in Rome made a deal with one of the Roman emperors not to seek converts. This emperor was either Claudius or Nero. There has to be something additional in regard to exemptions from emperor worship, but I don't recall anything.

The historical consensus is that Constantine made Christianity legal for political reasons. He needed support against opponents, Christianity was making inroads in the middle class, and was apparently making a lot of converts among the military. Christianity had an advantage over Mithraism in that it allows female worshippers. (Constantine's mother was a Christian, the (possibly) British concubine of a military officer. )

Will Durant's Caesar and Christ is an excellent source on Roman history,and was originally published in the late 1930s or 1940s. I need to go back and re-read it myself.

#2 Antonio Fini | 2005-05-12 15:18

There's a neat little scene in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ" wherein Pontius Pilate interrogates Jesus, posing his questions in Aramaic, the peasent language a fisherman from Galilee would understand. Jesus replies to Pilate in perfect Latin, the official language of Rome. The actor playing Pilate registers a moment of very realistic shock, because this simple man had no apparent means to learn the Empire's language. Then Pilate continues the interrogation. It's a nice touch- very artistic.

As for Constantine, Rush Limbaugh can't ask him about his true motives. But I suspect the Emporer's thoughts were not that different from the President's when he puts on his yarmakule and goes to an AIPAC dinner to ask for money and positive news spin.

#3 Peter | 2005-05-12 15:44

Elizabeth: Thanks for posting that source.

Bob:

What where is the alpha text for the OT?

Yes, Jesus quoted only from the Septuagint. The Septuagint we have is the oldest complete text for the OT (much older than the Hebrew), but even this manuscript bears signs of "improvement." For example, in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, fragments of texts older than the extant Septuagint were uncovered; these older fragments use the plural of god (elohim), where our Septuagint reads singular (theos); and, the older fragments use the personal names for other regional gods (such as the god Shaddai), which our Septuagint translates as nicknames for God (such as "God almighty").

The Ugaritic cuneiform texts, which the Germans unearthed right at the outbreak of WWII, provided the entire regional pantheon, listing all the personal names such as Shaddai, Adonai, or Salem (=Shalom/Solomon) for the different deities. The later Septuagint text that we have intellectualizes these personal names as epithets for the one God, which fits in Hellenic philosophy then current.*

The ur-text of the Septuagint could be assembled from the available writings, but no one has done it yet. No one knows how the original, alpha-text of the OT of Christ would read.

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*At the time, Greek polytheism had all but disappeared among the upper classes, replaced with a rational monotheism. By the way, in the regional pantheon of the holy land, the personal name for the devil was Yau/Yahu, which etymologists say is the same as Yahweh -- the 'h's are silent, vowels were unwritten, and the 'w' was vocalic. Early Christian texts also identify the devil's name as Yao, pronounced precisely the same as Yau.

#4 Bob | 2005-05-12 16:19

Elizabeth sure knows her stuff!

I have read Durant's Caesar and Christ a couple of times. In fact, believe it or not, I have read Durant's whole series of which this is part, several times. I never saw anything there about the kind of practical politics I am talking about.

Antonio, I did not see the Passionof the Christ. Jesus undergoing all that agony is not what I would want to see, though I believe others need to see it.

My opinion is that the scene about Jesus and Pilate is just plain wrong. Pilate almost certainly did not speak Aramaic. Roman Governors had interpreters for that.

Secondly, the official language of the eastern Roman empire, from the first, was NEVER Latin. The Roman upper class even spoke Greek in their own homes. Jesus would have had no reason to learn Latin, since the official language of the Roman Empire where he lived was Greek.

I think this scene was an invention. Jesus and Pilate would have naturally spoken Greek.

However, since I was very young at the time, I could be wrong. But I cannot imagine how anyone would know about the incident you mention.

#5 The Devil | 2005-05-12 19:13

Bob,

I'll explain the correct spelling when you get here.

#6 Bob | 2005-05-12 19:25

Dear Devil,

Many thanks!

But before I meet with you, I'll have to greet all the people I know Down There whom I met in politics up here. So it may take a while for me to get around to you.

#7 Devil's Assistant | 2005-05-13 12:03

RE: I'll have to greet all the people I know Down There whom I met in politics up here.

We don't stoop that low. Those people get sent to Detroit or East St. Louis.

#8 Bob | 2005-05-13 13:25

Dear D.A.,

Discrimination is illegal. Nobody has worked harder than politicians to deserve a place Down There, and you are denying it to them.

I am going to sic the Civil Rights Commission on you.

#9 Devil's Assistant | 2005-05-13 15:19

RE: Discrimination is illegal. Nobody has worked harder than politicians to deserve a place Down There, and you are denying it to them.

You may call it discrimination. We choose to call it Affirmative Action.

#10 Bob | 2005-05-13 15:53

Dear D.A.,

I was going to say, "The Devil take you," but I guess it's a little late for that.