Joseph B. Tyson

Professor Tyson (1928- __) is not only a scholar of accomplishment, but for heaven's sake, he shares a last name with a great boxer (Mike T.), and one of the finest science-explainers (Neil deGrasse T.) of his generation. Still, in reading this work, one has the distinct impression one is witness to a reverse-Nikolai Berdyaev. Where Berdyaev was a theologian reputed to be brilliantly incapable of positive statements, our author seems brilliantly-incapable of making negative ones.

Our Professor Tyson is a leading expert on Marcion, one of the most controversial and hated theologians of Early Christianity. Tyson cites Iranaeus' descriptions of Marcionite Christianity as "an extremely dangerous sect". [385] Noting that Marcion's writings "have completely disappeared", Tyson goes on to credit Marcion with making "the first attempt to form a body of authoritative Christian Scripture", although discarding everything Jewish and all the Gospels but Luke. In spite of Marcion's acknowledged history of wealthy profligacy, and in spite of Hippolytus' eyewitness claims, Tyson steps across the negatives and lands on a comfortable illusion: "Marcion was known as a profoundly ethical person and a practicing ascetic. [386] Concluding a description of the spectrum between Marcionites and Jewish Christians, with Paulines, Johannines, and Gnostics in between, Tyson makes the important point that in the period from 70--185, "there was a great diversity in Christianity". [387]

The pattern that emerges is that the closer in time and examinations of place one takes this investigation, the farther away the "origin" moves. Tyson does not move into this departure, does not challenge this shimmering Morgana Fata. In this he behaves much like his primary Marcion "source", the Nazi apologist/theologian and dogmatic reconstructor, Adolf Harnack.
This text is first of all a "Study" of "Early Christianity" --

As a history, the scholarship exhibits sly gestures of courage. He begins by noting "The surprising thing about the [Christian] movement is that, in its early stages, several quite different groups could call themselves Christian." [4] And then he admits that they didn't--that description occurs centuries later.

He candidly describes the authors of the Gospels in nakedly anti-semitic terms: A Jew was "generally regarded as a narrow, legalistic antisocial person with less than universal appeal". [143] Tyson pretends that the placement of Jesus in connection with Galilee and Jerusalem could not have been "a matter of the authors' choices". Tyson ignores the actual literature of Greeks who had been limning heroic figures out of foreign places since Homer's Iliad.

Tyson notes that other than some disputed letters of Paul, "there are no signs this early of any sustained attempts to exterminate Christians or of any policies that would have impeded their activities." [392] The Romans were actively trying to exterminate Jews--during this entire "early" period of the putative Christian movement. The Romans put down three Jewish revolts, ended the Hasmonean royal dynasty and Jewish independence in 63 BCE [54] with Pompey's conquest.

Tyson accounts for Herod's rule as a "client king", confirmed by Augustus in 30 BCE. [56] Herod physically rebuilt Judea, including the Temple in Jerusalem, which he rebuilt on the site of Solomon's 515 BCE Temple. Herod died in 4 BCE, after executing his son, Antipater, the last of the Hasmonean blood. [56] Augustus appointed ethnarchs and tetrarchs to rule over a divided Judea. [58-59] Among the governors, "one worthy of note is Pontius Pilate who conducted the trial of Jesus". No source is cited, and Josephus is excluded by Tyson: "Josephus probably knows nothing about Jesus' trial, but he records several incidents involving Pilate" in his administration. "On one occasion Pilate ordered his soldiers to display the emperor's image in Jerusalem." Tyson notes that "Another Jewish writer {!}, Philo, records Agrippa I as saying that Pilate was recklessly arbitrary and that during his administration there was "corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill-treatment of people, grievances, continuous executions even without the form of a trial." [Citing Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 38; at 60].

For historians, the question could be WHY was Jerusalem the scene of so many rebellions against Rome? Was it because Jerusalem was the largest fortified city in the world?--a fact not mentioned by Tyson. He does document the fact that "Jewish revolutionaries became more and more prominent." As if these people had a singular desire for "independence", which somehow survived Herod and the self-annihilating Hasmonean kings and queens. Tyson puts it all together neatly but incompletely with this summary on the eve of the fall of Jerusalem [60]:

"Many people desire to control their own affairs, but with the Jews this desire was reinforced by their memory of recent independence under the Hasmoneans, by occasional Roman attempts to interfere with religious rites and taboos that they little understood, and by the distinctive nature of Jewish monotheism."

We find the assumption that
under the by 70 ACE,… (meer)