Growing up Pentecostal/Greeks & Romans

Yup, if you remember the sequence of the days of the week you will know today, mouseketeers, is Literary Thursday. Yayyyyy! I'm tipping my hat to the neighbor lady back home when i was a kid; she always let me come over and watch old black and white Mickey Mouse Club repeats of the old Mickey Mouse Club from the 50s and 60s. She already had four boys, but they pretty much, like mangy coyotes, ran wild around the fields and woods where i grew up. I suppose she enjoyed a kid who she could make cookies for and yap with her during a summer afternoon. Jimmy always had a different event for every day of the week...

I am reading two books by the same author at once, Persian Fire and Rubicon by Tom Holland. I'll admit it: after taking classes from Carlin Barton here at the University, i am hooked by the Greeks and the Romans. I am hooked because of a crisis that i went thru due to my own religious upbringing. I grew up a third generation Pentecostal, my family attended the local Assembly of God Church. The Bible was important, but not as important

as the religious experiences Pentecostals are known for, i.e., speaking in tongues, prophesy, testimonies, quick, rollicking hymns, and three services a week. In Sunday school, in the sermons, and in the hymns the Bible, an ancient document thousands of years old, was presented as an authority that gave legitimacy to all our modern assumptions and presuppositions. I was young enough not to find it at all odd that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written by a people who thought just like we did...

This concept was not dispelled even as i attended Bible College in North Dakota (where, i assure everyone, i suffered for Jesus). Instead, it was reinforced. With the nifty application of the scientific method of hermenutics, i learned anyone could completely exegete a passage to understand its one, original meaning and intent the author had when he wrote the words lo those many years ago. Imagine my surprise as i read beyond my college years and began to understand that these people, both the Jews and Gentiles that produced the documents that make up our modern Bible, thought and acted almost completely opposite from a post Enlightenment mindset.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were only three basic sources to generate the power needed for the tools society depended upon. There was "horsepower," from domesticated animals, wind power from windmills and ship sails, and manpower. Every society from the dawn of time to just after the American civil war was a slave holding society, as people were needed to do most of the work. All the cultures of the entire world, up until nationalism was invented, again around 1300 AD, had their foundations based upon kinship with some kind of honor code, some type of warrior code not based upon individuality or conscience but upon community and honor. The assumptions and presuppositions of such a society was hugely different.

What happens when we place these differences between modern and ancient culture in the forefront of our minds when we read the Biblical narrative? Well, for one thing, all those stories Jews and Christians are sheepish about now, such as the invasion and conquest of Canaan and Paul's exclusion of  those who practice homosexuality from inheriting the Kingdom of God, to name two subjects off the top of my head, gain a new perspective. The problem is that American teachers/pastors are rarely well-read about antiquity. During my whole Bible college experience i never heard of the Church Fathers or Patristic studies. The main focus was in introducing me to the modern methodology of hermenutics, the "science" of Biblical interpretation. Here's the irony:       Wait for it, wait for it        In studying for my history undergraduate degree at UMass all of these things were required reading for my classes, especially Professor Barton's classes. She actually taught a class entitled Martyrs and Sacrifice, and used the biblical books of Dueteronomy and Hebrews as well as Greek and Roman texts on ancient religions.

Professor Barton has spoken to the Patristic Society at the University of Chicago and to this day still requires Jewish and Christian Scripture in her classes. When she taught the Roman Empire class i was attending, she required the book of Romans, and gave a lecture on Paul's teaching of Justification by faith that was better than 90% of my theology classes in Bible college. Prof. Barton isn't a Christian, and we have spent hours in her office debating about Christianity and ancient paganism. Yet i came away with a completely fresh perspective on my own Christianity.

So i recommend these books, and also ask forgiveness for my many spelling errors. It seems the spell chech button on my Vox compose box will not function properly...