first century perverts?
Helen Willis hhiwater@BRIGHT.NET
Thu, 01 Oct 1998 12:13:03 -0700 (00907287183, 3613D43F.7B7C@bright.net)
Joseph Crea posted some quotes from the testimony of Marcus Cornelius Fronto
(100 - 166? CE) and the later writings of an early Christian writer,
Epiphanius. The quotes from Epiphanius I had seen quoted before by John M.
Allegro about the early Gnostics in "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian
Myth". I'm especially thinking of the very odd practice of drinking semen or
menstrual blood as somehow connected with communing with God. Besides being
gross, this would seem to be an unique practice. I have never heard of
another religious group anywhere in the world doing such a thing. It is not
at all compatible with Jewish religious thought. I asked a liberal NT scholar
years ago in Miami about Allegro's claims and he told me there was no basis
for the claims in this book.
After that I had presumed that Epiphanius' witness simply represented some
kind of later cult of perverts justifying their perversion with the Christian
myth. Allegro doesn't quote Fronto. The idea that there were first century
perverts claiming to be Christians would seem to be incompatible with Paul,
but as I have claimed in the past so would first century worship of Mary, but
I think the first few chapters of Luke strongly suggest that Mary worship was
in fact going on among some groups of "Christians" very early in the history
of "the church". Allegro more or less claims that the agape (love feast) was
an orgy wrapped around these sexual fluid drinking practice among at least
some early Christian groups. It seems to me that I have read that "sexual
immorality" was the reason the early church dropped the agape ceremony. I
think Robert Graves claims someplace that at least some of the early
Christians were practicing perverted sexual rituals. Do any serious modern
scholars other that Allegro make claims for sexual perversions as acts of
worship among early Christian?
It seems to me that when we try to go back before the writing of Mark, the
earliest gospel, around 70 AD, Christianity seem to be a very diverse set of
cults with Paul representing only one set of believers.
Helen
hhiwater@bright.net