‘The Son of Man’, by Juan Esteban Constaín: The paganism that was in Christianity served to take Rome: “The Catholic mass is the last Greek tragedy” | Culture | EUROtoday

In the summer season of 2021, when the world was reopening to tourism after the Great Lockdown, Colombian author Juan Esteban Constaín took his daughters to go to the catacombs in Rome. He was struck by one element: the illustration of Orpheus, one of many heroes of Greek mythology, the son of Apollo who performed the lyre for animals and people, and who tried to rescue his beloved Eurydice in Hades, the dominion of the lifeless. “What the first Christians do is homologate Orpheus with Christ,” explains Constaín (Popayán, 46 years previous), historian, novelist and essayist. Orpheus was additionally a superb shepherd and a savior, somebody who defied dying. Then he considered making ready a brief essay on the symbiosis between early Christianity and paganism that might occupy, it was stated, about 20 pages. In the tip there have been 554: the consequence is known as The son of man. Greece, Rome and the delivery of Christianity, and has been printed by Debate.

These greater than half a thousand pages haven’t even exhausted what the creator wished to inform: the extreme mutual affect between the completely different cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, an area that within the handful of centuries previous to the Christian period was extra various than is assumed. Even Judea and Galilee had been multicultural, which had been “close to everything: Greece, Persia, Babylon.” Constantine wished to succeed in Constantine, the emperor who introduced the brand new religion out of hiding and introduced it nearer to the middle of Roman energy within the 4th century. But it already had too many pages. There will likely be a second installment that’s half written.

To clarify the origin of Christianity, the way it went from being a marginal Jewish sect to the official faith of the Roman Empire, and to dissect its “appropriation of the Gentile heritage,” the author needed to go far again. To the Judaism of the Second Temple, the one rebuilt in Jerusalem after the captivity in Babylon; to the enlargement in direction of the East of Hellenistic tradition beginning with Alexander the Great (one thing that the Greeks, hooked up to their polis, “saw with horror”); to the origins of Rome, from the parable of Romulus and Remus to its dominance of all of the shores of the Mediterranean. A tour of the classical world that pivots between Jerusalem and Rome but in addition stops in Alexandria, Athens or Antioch. And during which Socrates and Plato, Mark Antony and Cleopatra seem, the Odyssey of Homer and Eneida of Virgil, virtually sanctified later.

Let’s go to the start: the Jews freed by Cyrus and returned to the land of their ancestors within the sixth century BC had taken with them “that very Persian idea of ​​Zoroastrian origin of the afterlife, which is fundamental for the idea of ​​Christian salvation,” explains Constaín in an appointment in Madrid, the place he’s on his technique to Berlin. The Jewish identification has simply been strengthened after the revolt of the Maccabees, in opposition to the Seleucid empire, across the yr 160 BC. C. And, within the following centuries, that city is impregnated with Greek tradition. “The founding fact of Christianity is the process of Hellenization of the Jewish world since the conquests of Alexander and his descendants,” explains Constaín. “The Jews reaffirm their identity and their faith in monotheism. But there is a split from a cultural and linguistic point of view. In the area of ​​Jerusalem there is bilingualism and even trilingualism: they speak Hebrew and Aramaic and are learning Greek. And in the diaspora the Jewish communities begin to demand translations of sacred texts into Greek, which is the language of pagan literature and philosophy. This is how the Greek mental categories enter.”

Paul extracts the Christian message from a closed Jewish setting and takes it to the Gentile world. He is an amazing political and business strategist.

Only within the ultimate two chapters does the creator attempt to x-ray Jesus of Nazareth, the historic and the evangelical, in any case, he says, essentially the most influential determine within the historical past of humanity. And the e book ends when Paul of Tarsus seems on the scene, the decisive character within the conversion of the brand new cult right into a common faith. “Paul is the one who extracts the Christian message from that closed Jewish environment and takes it in full force to the Gentile world. He was an enormous political and commercial strategist, of exceptional talent, with great rhetorical ability. An enlightened interpreter of the message of Jesus.”

Paul would confront James (or James the Just, brother of Jesus) and Peter (the official successor) in protection of that common imaginative and prescient of Christianity, one that doesn’t require following Jewish rituals equivalent to circumcision. When Jerusalem was crushed by the Romans across the yr 70, “that Judeo-Christian version became extinct; we do not know what path it could have had.” And what stays is “the Christianity of the diaspora, now completely Pauline and Greek, turned to paganism.”

On Pablo’s aspect is Lucas the evangelist, additionally very influential, an creator of literary stature, who for Constaín “seems like one of those chroniclers of the new North American journalism in narrative techniques.” It is not any coincidence that the gospels had been written after the defeat of the Jews, between 70 and 100 AD, and in Greek.

The author is aware of that he’s treading on slippery floor, that it’s not all the time doable to tell apart fable from historic truth, however each go away their mark on subsequent generations. “History is also a collective fiction: a story that society agrees on and abides by, an act of faith,” he writes.

The most attention-grabbing factor within the historical past of Christianity, he explains, “is how a messianic and marginal sect, at the turn of three centuries, subdues the Roman Empire, which is the greatest expression of power that has ever existed.” Rome turns into, he says, “the sublimation of that encounter between paganism and Christianity.” The transition from polytheism to monotheism implied “some concessions to the pagan heritage that are explainable and were very effective in guaranteeing the entry of pagans into Christianity.” This ranges from the nod to Orpheus to the Holy Trinity, by means of the cult of saints and virgins. And specifically the shape taken by the Catholic mass, which is “the last possible version of the Greek tragedy in our world. Because we are there before a God and a hero who goes to the inevitable fulfillment of his fate and his destiny.”

The Catholic Church later turned, and continues to today, “the most evident and profound continuation of Rome,” which is mirrored “both in its expressions of power and in its cultural expressions, always linked to that idea of ​​what is Latin or what is Roman.” Including his language, Latin, and even the title of Pontiff Maximus that Julius Caesar wore and continues to be held by the popes. Since the Renaissance, the Christian world has unapologetically claimed pagan tradition, nevertheless it was already in its roots.

Constantine is a visionary politician who understands that Christianity is already an awesome drive

This is left for the second quantity, however Constaín advances within the dialog his imaginative and prescient of Constantine, the explanation for the legalization of Christianity and its subsequent rise to official faith. In very turbulent years, the emperor admired the resistance of the underground Christians throughout the fierce persecution of his predecessor Diocletian. “And Constantine says: these guys, the more they persecute them, the better organized they are; that’s what we need for civil war. In the official story that has other edges, but Constantine is a visionary politician who understands that Christianity is already an overwhelming force and that it should be incorporated into the empire.”

And has this Christianity, which works from being persecuted to merging with imperial energy, moved away from the revolutionary and radical message of Jesus of Nazareth? “In many aspects yes, without a doubt, but because three centuries have passed and the context is very different. Christ’s message was focused on redemption, in the hereafter, but his church understood that this message had no future without agreeing, in the hereafter, in the here and now, with that power that until the day before had persecuted it so much.”

Constaín doesn’t imagine that we’re experiencing an enormous return to religion (as has been deduced from phenomena such because the album Lux from Rosalía or the film on Sundays), however there’s a rising curiosity in its cultural and historic manifestations. “The modern world has been filled with very superficial substitutes for religion, such as the slogan of spirituality, which includes yoga, Pilates or transcendental meditation. This substitute is no longer enough and people are looking for ways to find a foothold.” He is stunned by the power of evangelicals: “In Latin America, Catholicism was the pillar of culture, with a history of undoubted repression. The only thing that has managed to fracture it was not secular, liberal and enlightened republicanism, but evangelical Protestantism.” A brand new problem for that Catholic Church that turned essentially the most lasting work of the Roman Empire.