neologist wrote:
That's about as close as I can come to first century verification of Jesus' life and teachings. Even so, I can hardly claim to have seen it with my own eyes. The CBS news team arrived on the scene much too late, so we can't see it on TV; and I'm sure Set and Timber will have a field day with this. But what the heck, it raises many interesting asides.
The primary - in fact that from which descend all further components - source of the "Flight to Pella" tradition is to be found in the 4th Century writings of Eusebius, who apparently drew on no longer extant memoirs, the Eusebian writings a bit later endorsed and amplified by Epiphanius. An earlier possible reference may be found in Josephus, though what the latter described hardly can be considered consistent with a "flight", nor does it indicate any one city or loacale as destination, but rather provides evidence of some Jeruslemite Christians, among others, over a period of a decade or more, departing Jerusalem and environs, seeking refuge from Roman military action and Jewish rebel action, removing themselves to assorted towns, cities, and districts throughout the Hellenized region of Jordan known as the Decapolis, or "Ten Cities", of which Pella was a constituent city. No contemporarilly sourced documentation nor any archaelogic discovery of more modern times (don't waste your time with the
JVDAEA CAPTA coin, or I'll get all sortsa archaeologic on your ass :wink: ), supports the Eusebian "Flight" tradition. At the same time, contemporarilly sourced documentation and extensive modern archaeolgy at the very most charitable interpretation cast strong doubt on the historicity of any such event. Only the wishful thinking of desperate, dedicated bible-thumping Christian apologists imparts any energy to the proposition.
However, strong argument may be made, on the basis of undisputed evidence at hand, that the "Flight to Pella" tradition is construct, an artifact of the Pauline Hellenization of Jewish Christianity. If Pella is to be accorded any special status in the history of Christianity, that only would be as among the fonts of the Pauline Orthodoxy which supplanted the original Jerusalem Christian Orthodoxy, and from which Pauline Orthodoxy and the traditions directly dependent thereon has developed and descended today's Christianity.
