Who Was This Man Called the Christ?
Even if
Jesus originally wasn't largely the product of
Greek Religion, certainly the
theology forming afterwards owed a good deal to it. "The stories of the children of the
gods were paradigms for the early
Church in its understanding of
Jesus" (Riley 19). Some early
Christians in the hopes of understanding
Jesus' nature looked to the story of the famed half-god
Herakles championing man,
fighting evil,
dying, and then being adopted by the
gods and brought up to
Olympus to be of the
gods, and struck upon the idea of
adoptionism – that
Jesus was born by man but adopted by
God (120). This roughly corresponds with the ideas of the
Ebionites, who were
Jewish Christians rather than gentiles. Looking to their own stories about
Elijah and
Enoch ascending to
heaven to be brought among the
angels, they also held to this idea of
adoptionism (121-122). Many
gentiles looked to the very popular healing god
Asclepius, a man begat of
Apollo who went about
Earth healing people. This sort of things put his worship in competition with that of
Jesus (124); however,
Asclepius did not have the ability to
raise the dead, and was, in fact, slain for doing so by
Zeus. After being slain, however, he was transformed into a deity (123).
Asclepius surely was in the front of early
Christians' thoughts in their attempts to understand
Jesus; in fact, many
Christian temples were built upon old centers of healing or shrines to
Asclepius (125).
Back<<< | Main | TOC | Works Cited | next>>>