Ich glaube auch nicht an die "kleinen Splittergruppen". Dafür haben sie für zu viel Wirbel bei den Kirchenvätern geführt. Die Großkirche musste sich von Beginn an bis in das Mittelalter mit einer offensichtlich mächtigen gnostischen Gegenströmung auseinandersetzen.
... Ich bin bestrebt, die Daten in ein System einzugliedern, das in sich so logisch wie möglich ist.
Wenn wir mal die "verwischten Spuren" und die in einem Forum nicht operationale Frage weglassen, was einem "glaubhaft" oder "offensichtlich" erscheint, ist das Resümee aus dem zitierten "From Jupiter to Christ" interessant.
Der Einfachheit halber die Zitate, der recht rigoroser Schluss (unterstrichen) sowie komprimierte Hinweise:
"The city of Rome, as the most important centre of an Empire embracing the entire Mediterranean region, was of course an exceptional case. Metaphors for the enormous scale of cult imports included the view of Rome as a ‘blend of the known world’, and the notion of the Syrian Orontes flowing into the (Italian) Tiber (Juvenal, Satire 3.62). And the heir to this Antiquity was Christianity, the dominance of a monotheism developed from Jewish roots, expressed eventually, in Late Antiquity, in the legal codices enforcing orthodoxy and outlawing apostasy.
This astonishing historical development is not a new theme. Possibly no other theme in the religious history of Antiquity has been so frequently discussed as the reasons for the ‘triumph of Christianity’, or, more romantically, and looking more benevolently on the losing side, the ‘downfall of paganism’.
But the reasons found — the need for redemption, growing individuality, the spiritual sterility of the traditional cults, the organizational superiority of the Christian Church, the inspirational influence of martyrs — are not merely controversial: they are uninteresting. The entire quest for reasons is uninteresting.
What is interesting in the historical relationship between polytheism and pluralism
is not who triumphed and why, but why the contest happened in the first place and at what level was it fought?
...what is ancient polytheism and what characterizes it? Firstly, it is not a ‘religion’, in the sense that we speak of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as religions. Rather, ancient polytheism is the sum of cult acts performed in individual cities. Of course, each of these cities had a hinterland: the question of the polytheism of non-urbanized tribes remains an unanswered one;
I wish only to indicate the problem. What distinguishes the polytheism of the first and second centuries CE? For the sake of brevity, and at the same time to establish a canvas for the developments that followed, I shall confine myself to a few key points and begin by indicating the following striking lacunae:
[komprimiert als "headline": soziologische Ansätze:]
- The absence of geographical hierarchies
- The absence of hierarchies in respect of time
- The absence of a hierarchized world view
- The absence of communicative hierarchies
- PLURALISM AND PLURALITY: ...
It is, however, clear from this very example of the establishment of new cults that in such an open system religious competence was widely distributed. Any attempt to interpret the definitions of new deities on the part of victorious commanders in Republican Rome encounters circumstantial plausibilities, not rules. Controls were in place only in questions of finance and land law (both points already mentioned), and in respect of formalities. The property of new gods had to be clearly attributable, in both architectural and temporal terms. Nobody was unduly concerned if a temple was built for the new gods of ‘Virtue’ and ‘Honour’ instead of for a new Venus or Jupiter...
The system was still largely functioning at the end of the second century; 100 years later it had changed enormously; 200 years later, another system had taken its place. The rise of Christianity, imperial conversion, the administrative suppression of ancient cults already consumed from within: this is an old narrative, long the subject of academic criticism, and even already located historically...
Aristocratic societies are societies based on competition. Such systems profit from the successes of those of their members who wish to distinguish themselves from the rest; they draw their stability from their capacity to arbitrate the differences between those same individuals, and reduce those differences to a minimum...
[weiter komprimiert die folgenden Aspekte:]
- The disintegration of spatial structures
- Time is disassociated, but at the same time hierarchized
- The demise of the philosophical basis of polytheism
- The privatization of religious communication
- Power requires new forms of legitimation
As regards the legal context of pluralism and religious change, however, three further aspects must be noted:
1. the connection between the legitimation of power and the truth criteria for religions,
2. the political character of the concept of religion itself, and
3. a particular connection between monotheism and pluralism: in the development of a competitive pluralism, such as may be observed in Late Antiquity, it is the monotheism of world views that is key, not the number of gods possessed by the particular elements, that is to say whether particular religions have monotheistic or polytheistic structures. But the process by which such a system develops cannot be analysed within a narrowly conceived religious-historical context.
[s.o., S. 170-183]
