[lit-ideas] For Mike Geary -- from a discussion of martyrdom on Anthro-L
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:39:07 -0400
>
> On Mon Aug 9 2010 at 9:23 AM Beverly Fogelson wrote:
>
>
> What about Jesus?-Martyr
>
>
> ...but did not write "Is Dan Foss reading this? I'd very much appreciate
> his take on this," at the very bottom. [Note: Yes, but not all the way down.
> - daf] That was Scott Holmes, on Tue Aug 3, 2010, at 2:33 PM.
>
> But, to start with Beverly's question: Jesus was not a religious
> martyr. Religious martyrdom had not yet been invented/developed/evolved.
> There cannot have been any, such thing as religious martyrdom without
> [strictly] religious persecution; that is to say, on the basis of "beliefs"
> proper to a "disembedded" religion (i.e., to which one can convert by
> adopting its theological doctrines whatever one's natal or ancestral
> ethnicity or culture). Such a religion came inly to self-conscious existence
> with Christianity. Neither Romans nor Jews (from "Judaeans"; or,
> self-styled, "Israel") had any experience with it.
>
> The Romans, at times, persecuted Jews quite severely, even
> genocidally; but they never persecuted them for practicing the "Jewish
> religion." Until the Byzantine Period (under the emperor Heraclius, 610-641,
> when it was outlawed) the religion of the Jews was, under the Roman Empire,
> a* religio licita*. The Roman Empire was ruled by a conservative
> landowning aristocracy which loudly trumpeted its adherence to the* mos
> maiorum*, Way of the Ancestors. The Jewish ethnic religion was
> traditional, conservative, and every bit as patriarchal (the Fifth
> Commandment &c). Christianity, as it evolved out of and away from its Jewish
> ethnoreligious matrix, was glaringly different: for one thing, over the 300
> years of Christian development prior to becoming the State Religion, at any
> given time at least 40% of Christians were new converts [Keith Hopkins, "The
> Importance of Christian Numbers,"* Journal of Early Christian Studies, 6.2
> (1998), 185-226).* In Roman law, Christianity was categorised as a*
> superstitio*, and the State punished all who affirmed adherence as
> radical innovators, disloyal subjects, and threats to social and political
> order. This policy and legal weapons of religious persecution had developed
> by the late second century.
>
> Earlier in the second century, under Hadrian (117-138),
>
> "...the Jews were forbidden to circumcise, not as an attack on Judaism but
> as part of the general Roman law against genital mutilation, the* lex
> Corneliathe de sicariis* [Note:* sicarii* were terrorists - daf]. This led
> to Jewish revolt, which led, in turn, to harsh Roman response, but there was
> never, according to [Saul Lieberman], a concerted attack on the Jewish
> religion by the Roman government...." [From Daniel Boarin, "Martyrdom and
> the Making of Christianity and Judaism,"*Journal of Early Christian
> Studies, 6.4 (1998), 577-627;* citing Saul Lieberman.]
>
>
> For both Christianity and Judaism, the concept of "martyrdom," in the
> late fourth and early fifth centuries, acquired an eroticised content,
> centring around the martyrs' "love of God" and the metaphorical language
> used to express or articulat it. See D. Boyarin,* Dying for God: Martyrdom
> and the Making of Judaism and Christianity,* Stanford, 1999; David
> Frankfurter, "Martyrdom and the Prurient Gaze,"* Journal of Ear*ly* Christian
> Studies*, 17.2 (2009), 215-245.
>
> Since it appears that I will not be able to finish what I'd planned to
> write, I'll skip over to the issue Dale has raised more than once: not only
> is martyrdom very much a social act, it is likewise, everywhere it appears
> or is manifested, an act which is construced, then perhaps re-constructed
> more than once after the martyr is long dead; or even, if the martyr had
> never existed in the first place. The late fourth century was marked by,
> among other things, a vogue for virginity. Every large city in the Roman
> East acquired a Virgin Martyr Saint. St Catherine of Alexandria was the
> first, and still the best-loved. You recall that she "re-programmed," as we
> might say, an "infernal machine" designed to kill Christians into killing
> pagans instead: they liked science in Alexandria. But, under "paganism,"
> decent Christians were supposed to shun the arena; they'd hardly have their
> own reserved section of the stands. [One might imagine the flash-card
> section....] St Catherine was said to have been 18. St Margaret was 15,
> less-well-educated but with better looks; it seems that some lustful pagan
> male wanted her body, which she disdained to sully, etc etc; and she,
> likewise, diverted disaster (by flood) from the Christian side of the arena
> to the pagan seats. St Barbara was 13; St Agnes was 12.
>
> Islam had a different trajectory: After Muhammad and his* muhajirun*
> Companions
> departed Mecca, they quickly got into power in Yathrib/Medina; the first
> Muslims to die by violence did so in combat against the Makkans (or Meccans)
> in the period 622-30. Muslims were never a small civilian minority,
> powerless in confronting a State controlled by unbelievers. Until much
> later. Whatever the post-mortem rewards alleged to be vouchsafted those who
> fall in battle (which is controversial), the major fact of relevance to
> contemporary martyrdoms is: Suicide bombers are a recent invention.
> In evaluating Dale's position, the following should be kept in mind: In
> all warfare, especially that involving the levying of mass armies of
> infantry soldiers, the Meaning and Significance of their violent deaths
> (never clearly distinguished from deaths from disease, accidents, "friendly
> fire," murder, suicide &c) are always under the jealously-kept control of
> their hierarchical superiors, both civilian and military.
> What were the Union soldiers who fell at Gettysburg in 1863 thinking
> about when they died? Sex? Fear of The Enemy? Desertion? The defining was
> left to Abraham Lincoln: "these honoured Dead....who gave the last full
> measure of their devotion....One Nation, Indivisible......" With those final
> words, Lincoln showed he knew how Civil Wars were won: by tough, mean
> bastards wielding State Power with utmost brutality and ruthlessness.
> Recalling, no doubt, Maximilien Robespierre, "The Republic, One and
> Indivisible." [Recall that on July 1-3, 1863, New York City was in the hands
> of rioting working class men, whose passions were focussed on hanging black
> men from lampposts: the so-called Draft Riots, which the Gettysburg and
> Vicksburg victories consigned to historical oblivion.
>
> Now, clearly, there are parts of the Middle East today, where being a
> suicide bomber is to accord with public decency. It is also* instrumentally
> rational*: Where the footsoldier faces a high-technology army, with the
> firepower and gadgets to destroy many hundreds of massed infantrymen before
> they can get within hand-to-hand combat range of the objective, whether
> human or material, being attacked, the suicide bomber is far likelier to
> inflict damage on something besides himself than the traditional
> infantry-person: The latter is defined as someone suffering from the
> delusion of attempting to kill someone else, as opposed to being fed to the
> slaughter like sheep.
> It's also Very Disturbing to soldiers and civilians on the other side.
> Religon helps. That's all. There's nothing Traditional about it,
> remember.
>
> Good night,
>
> Daniel A. Foss
>
Enjoy.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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