Typically, we assume Greek philosophy and Hellenism influenced Christianity, not the other way around. This is generally a safe assumption, as I wrote about recently. In the first few centuries, Christianity developed chiefly in the cultural matrix of Hellenism, leaving Christians the long standing problem of sorting out what was worth keeping from the “host culture.”
Some people can get a little grouchy when it is suggested that Christianity Hellenized from its first-century Jewish roots as proceeded deeper into late antiquity (e.g., the Christological formulae). In my view, while there are different ways to spin it rhetorically, that proposition is basically beyond dispute, particularly when we’re talking about the Christian intellectual and leadership class.
I’m more skeptical of other proposed cases of osmotic cultural influence. For a famous example, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana and its obvious parallels to the gospels’ depiction of Jesus has led some to posit that the latter were pulling cultural tropes that were simply “in the air” during antiquity. Of course, pretty much everyone acknowledges that the Life of Apollonius was significantly later than the synoptic tradition: its author’s floruit was around the turn of the third century. And by that point, pagan intellectuals were already well aware of Christianity, as witnessed by the critic Celsus (fl. 175–77), and there is good evidence that by then even Christianity’s sacred texts were readily available for purchase in the empire’s book markets.[1]
So how would we know if the influence didn’t run in the opposite direction, that Philostratus was riffing on the gospels and not vice versa? Lacking further evidence, we can’t.
But I recently found a strong case of where Christianity does seem to be influencing the broader Greek mainstream, or its intellectual mainstream anyway. The argument appears in J. B. Rives’s riveting new book, Animal Sacrifice in the Roman Empire (31 BCE–395 CE). Anyone interested in ancient religion will benefit from reading this monograph. While it also explores the social dynamics of sacrifice, it has quite a lot to say about the philosophical and cosmological “theorizing” of the practice, which necessarily draws in Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian ideas. Chapter 8 looks at the period c. 100–300, and here, the reader encounters quite a lot of fascinating late ancient demonology.
Rives shows that Christians and pagan philosophers alike came to place animal sacrifice somewhere on the spectrum of superstitious on one end to daimonically collusive on the other. But here’s Rives’s striking conclusion: “The Christian demonological discourse of animal sacrifice not only developed in dialogue with the demonological theorizing of Graeco-Roman philosophers but also at times, it seems, directly influenced it.”[2] In particular, Rives has his eye on Origen’s effect on the philosopher (and critic of Christianity) Porphyry, which he and other scholars believe is not merely a mirage projected from a shared background Platonism. Of course, one naturally wonders whether that influence went beyond just Porphyry himself; given the prominent intellectual circles he ran in during the late third century, I suspect it did. It’s also worth noting that Origen was one of the few Christian intellectuals to receive positive attention from the (pagan, pre-Constantinian) imperial court.
Origen’s ability to leave a mark on the wider culture reminds me of the present. Although it has not always been framed in such terms, I think much of the last decade’s acrimonious debate on the Christian Right—and the Right more generally, too—has centered on the question of dialogue, compromise, and rapprochement with those who don’t share the same beliefs. “Can we get along with the apistoi, or must everything be totalized into a friend-enemy distinction?”
Admittedly, there’s an ancient dispute about what Origen actually believed on many points and just how heterodox his thinking was. It is less a matter of dispute that he was widely condemned in orthodox circles during the subsequent centuries. While I don’t share many of his ideas, my respect for his intellectual acuity has really only grown the more I’ve learned. Indeed, there are other revered patristic figures (to be left judiciously unnamed) who were more than a few ticks below Origen in pure intellectual horsepower. Frankly, I wish we were generating and supporting more Origen-esque intellectuals, both for their ability to interface with the wide culture and for the fresh air they can bring into the Christian community.
Alas—as the culture continues to galvanize, as the fox of populism runs the institutional henhouse, and as the internet intensifies the chasing of audience and constituencies—I think we are pretty well doomed to get fewer, not more.
Christoph Markschies, Christian Theology and Its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire: Prolegomena to a History of Early Christian Theology, trans. Wayne Coppins (Baylor University Press, 2015), 269–70.
↑My emphasis. J. B Rives, Animal Sacrifice in the Roman Empire (31 BCE-395 CE): Power, Communication, and Cultural Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2024), 237. ↑