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Post by david2011 on Jan 20, 2012 21:26:30 GMT
I was wondering, what do people think of Rodney Stark's work, from what I've seen online, his work can be controversial, or, at least, people have issues with his methodology. The reason I ask is, I recently got a hold of his newest book 'The Triumph of Christianity', but, I'd like to see what other people think of him, so, I could know if there's anything I need to be aware of when reading him.
Anyway, thanks for any help.
David.
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Post by timoneill on Jan 21, 2012 4:04:31 GMT
I was wondering, what do people think of Rodney Stark's work, from what I've seen online, his work can be controversial, or, at least, people have issues with his methodology. The reason I ask is, I recently got a hold of his newest book 'The Triumph of Christianity', but, I'd like to see what other people think of him, so, I could know if there's anything I need to be aware of when reading him. Anyway, thanks for any help. David. His earlier books seem pretty reasonable, though I have only read The Rise of Christianity. But he seems to be presenting some far more tenously apologetic theses lately. And his recent God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades was truly woeful, as I detail in my review. |
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Post by david2011 on Jan 21, 2012 22:55:27 GMT
Thanks for the reply, and, I'll definitely keep that in mind, when I'm reading it.
David.
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Post by unkleE on Jan 23, 2012 7:30:09 GMT
I was wondering, what do people think of Rodney Stark's work, from what I've seen online, his work can be controversial, or, at least, people have issues with his methodology. The reason I ask is, I recently got a hold of his newest book 'The Triumph of Christianity', but, I'd like to see what other people think of him, so, I could know if there's anything I need to be aware of when reading him. Anyway, thanks for any help. David. I doubt my opinion's worth much, but I've read Cities of God and I thought it was slightly ponderous and repetitive, but I thought it presented some useful conclusions. It was basically the interpretation of statistics on estimated population and christian numbers at a couple of dozen Roman cities, and that interpretation allowed him to show that some of the current ideas on the growth of christianity were probably wrong. You can read a review of some of his stuff at Euangelion. My vague understanding of some of the criticisms of his work are that: 1. He is not a historian so much as a sociologist, and so uses different methods to many other scholars and gets some different answers. Some people don't like that. 2. In explaining the rise of christianity, he makes some favourable comments about christianity that some people don't like. 3. Some people feel he has become an apologist more than a scholar. If I recall correctly, before he went to Baylor University (the period when he wrote some of his earlier books) he said he was an agnostic, but he converted when he went to Baylor, which is a christian university. I guess it is reasonable to wonder ..... |
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Post by wedge on Jan 25, 2012 21:04:39 GMT
I recently had a very good discussion of Stark' Rise of Christianity, so I may be able to comment a little. Caveat: this is the only book by Stark I've read.
My main issue with the book is that it didn't seem that Stark took the context of the Late Antique world seriously enough. In other words, he seems to be guilty of importing presuppositions about how religions operate and grow (and indeed what religions are) back into the past. For instance, in his discussions of the rate of growth in Christianity, he remarks that to get the sort of numbers he calculates for the population of Christians at certain times, we only need posit a growth rate comparable to modern Mormonism (Stark apparently previously worked with Mormonism), and thus there is no need to suggest mass conversions took place. This seems flawed on a number of levels. First, I'm unconvinced (and Stark offers me no reason to be convinced) that modern Mormonism and ancient Christianity are especially analogous (the context is surely quite different, the religious and social landscape of 19th century America vs. 1st century Palestine. Can even we consider ancient religion and modern, American, religion to be the same sort of thing? I'd argue no). Nor am I convinced that we can make claims regarding the sustainability of Mormonism's current success to the 300+ years required for Stark's argument. Further, simply because a certain growth rate is a possible explanation does not make it the explanation, what if there were a lower growth rate with mass conversions however? Stark often seems to neglect the need to connect social scientific data with the historical accounts that we have, and is more content with dismissing them. Finally, even if Stark is correct, I'm not sure who he's arguing with (and he is arguing, very polemically. I would consider his tone throughout to be another significant problem with his book). I'm not sure any modern historian holds views of the sort which Stark is attempting to challenge, it seems more that he's attacking 19th century and early 20th century views.
In addition, I think he really lacks an understanding of the philosophical context either. It's my area of specialty, so perhaps this is overly nitpicky but he makes some outright wrong claims about the understanding of nature in Platonism at one point. He also does not get, I'd argue fundamentally, paganism. He draws this artificial distinction between pagan philosophy (which is, for him, sterile and dead) and religion (which is vulgar, soaked in death), which I certainly don't recognize in any of the primary texts I've read. Ultimately, referring to pagan enjoyment of gladiatorial games he says "It is difficult to comprehend the emotional life of such people." (214) as if people today didn't similarly enjoy death and violence. He consistently treats paganism as if it were monolithic, which is of course simply false.
I think that Stark is very right that the social sciences are useful to understanding history, they're vital. But ultimately, I think that he errs in forgetting that the history is very useful too.
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Post by sankari on Jan 26, 2012 13:47:37 GMT
I recently had a very good discussion of Stark' Rise of Christianity, so I may be able to comment a little. Caveat: this is the only book by Stark I've read. I am hoping to get my hands on The Rise of Christianity this year. I've read excerpts from it, mainly concerning the speed of Christianity's growth. For those who haven't seen them, Stark's figures are as follows: AD 100 – Christians comprise 0.0126% of Greco-Roman population AD 150 – 0.07% AD 200 – 0.36% AD 250 – 1.9% AD 300 – 10.5% AD 350 – 56.5% Stark estimates consistent growth of ~40% per decade (oops, not per year), which does not sound unrealistic to me. I note that his figures have been favourably received by secular scholars and theologians alike; always a good sign. Of course he dismisses the Biblical accounts of mass conversions, since they do not fit his model. But I'm not convinced he is wrong to do this. Even allowing for the fact that Jerusalem's population was massively swollen for Pentecost, the numbers given in Acts are outlandish. 3,000 converted in a single day? The other one has bells on, your Honour! Some of Stark's reasons for Christianity's accelerated growth include: * Social networking (family & friends) * Appeal of Christian social behaviour * Christians tended to live longer Christians nursed the sick during times of plague while pagans left them to die. Many Christians died (though not as many as pagans) but others would have developed resistance and stronger immune systems. With Christians outliving pagans even when they tended plague victims, it would not take long for pagans to conclude the Christian God was a winner. |
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Post by fortigurn on Jan 27, 2012 3:37:03 GMT
Even allowing for the fact that Jerusalem's population was massively swollen for Pentecost, the numbers given in Acts are outlandish. 3,000 converted in a single day? The other one has bells on, your Honour! Any particular reason why this would be outlandish? |
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Post by sankari on Jan 27, 2012 4:23:17 GMT
Any particular reason why this would be outlandish? Jerusalem's static population was ~30,000 in the 1st Century. Even assuming this tripled at Pentecost, can we honestly believe they converted 3.5% of the temporary population (~90,000) in a single day? By the time we reach Acts 4 (after Pentecost) the total number of Christians in Jerusalem is claimed to be ~5,000. That's 20% of Jerusalem's static population already! Yet the historical record does not reflect such incredible growth. |
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Post by fortigurn on Jan 27, 2012 6:32:50 GMT
Jerusalem's static population was ~30,000 in the 1st Century. Source? Are you relying on Robert Grant's claim that the population of Jerusalem was too small for 5,000 converts to Christianity?[1] Grant's estimate of the population of Jerusalem relied on an influential study by Jeremias in 1943,[2] [3] but did not mention that Jeremias calculated a far higher population figure for festival seasons such as passover, at which he estimated Jerusalem would contain up to 125,000 pilgrims.[4] Furthermore even Jeremias' estimate of Jerusalem's static population is significantly lower than the lowest of the moderate to high estimates of the static population made by Wilkinson in 1974 (70,398 under Herod the Great),[5] Broshi in 1976 (60,000),[6] Maier in 1976 (50,000, with three times that many during festival seasons),[7] and Levine in 2002 (60,000-70,000).[8] Accordingly, Cousland notes that ‘recent estimates of the population of Jerusalem suggest something in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand’.[9] Why not? Leaving aside the question of whether Jerusalem's population really was a mere 25,000 people (a figure which is not even approached by the scholarly consensus), what does the historical record indicate? Bear in mind that estimates for the number of Christians in the Roman empire by the end of the first century range widely from 7,500 to more than 50,000.[10 [11] [12] __________________________________________________ [1] Grant ‘A Historical Introduction to the New Testament, p. 145 (1963). [2] Jeremias, ‘Die Einwohnerzhal Jerusalems z. Zt. Jesu’, ZDPV, 63, pp. 24-31 (1943). [3] ‘Jeremias, for instance has estimated that there was a population of 25,000 in first century Jerusalem,’, Rocca, ‘Herod's Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World’, p. 333 (2008). [4] ‘Thus one would arrive at 125,000 festival pilgrims.’, Reinhardt, ‘The Population Size of Jerusalem and the Numerical Growth of the Jerusalem Church’, in Bauckham (ed.), ‘The Book of Acts in its Palestine Setting’, p. 261 (1995). [5] Wilkinson, ‘Ancient Jerusalem, Its Water Supply and Population’, PEFQS 106, pp. 33-51 (1974). [6] ‘This also gives a figure of around 60,000 at the time of the first Christians.’, Reinhardt, ‘The Population Size of Jerusalem and the Numerical Growth of the Jerusalem Church’, in Bauckham (ed.), ‘The Book of Acts in its Palestine Setting’, p. 247 (1995). [7] Maier, ‘First Christians: Pentecost and the Spread of Christianity’, p. 22 (1976). [8] ‘According to Levine, because the new area encompassed by the Third Wall was not densely populated, assuming that it contained half the population of the rest of the city, there were between 60,000 and 70,000 people living in Jerusalem.’, Rocca, ‘Herod's Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World’, p. 333 (2008). [9] Cousland, ‘The Crowds in the Gospel of Matthew’, p. 60 (2002). [10] Stark, ‘The Rise of Christianity’, pp. 6-7 (1996); this influential study dominates the literature, but has been questioned as it involves projecting backwards from fourth century estimates. [11] Wilken, ‘The Christians as the Romans Saw Them’, p. 31 (1984). [12] ‘Estimates for the number of Christians by 100 C.E. range from as low as 7,500 to upwards of 50,000 out of the approximately sixty million inhabitants of the Roman Empire.’, Novak, ‘Christianity and the Roman Empire: background texts’, pp. 12-13 (2001). |
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Post by sankari on Jan 27, 2012 11:20:00 GMT
Jerusalem's static population was ~30,000 in the 1st Century. Source? T. W. Manson, The Servant-Messiah (1953). Smith's Bible Dictionary says 30-45k; Zondervan Archaeological Study Bible says 40k (others go to 60k and beyond). |
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Post by fortigurn on Jan 27, 2012 11:59:51 GMT
T. W. Manson, The Servant-Messiah (1953). Smith's Bible Dictionary says 30-45k; Zondervan Archaeological Study Bible says 40k (others go to 60k and beyond). I wouldn't say that Manson or Smith's are the best sources, and I would be interested to see who wrote the article in Zondervan. And as you note, 'others go to 60k and beyond'. So clearly the lower estimates aren't exactly the majority, but we already knew that. Actually I gave more than one estimate, and all the estimates I gave are 50,000 up. The overwhelming majority are 70,000 and up, which is why Coulson says that modern estimates ‘suggest something in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand’. So the general figure we're looking at is closer to 100,000, nothing like 25,000, and this is just for the static population, let alone the population during the Passover. See my footnote 10. Stark's figures have been questioned because instead of working with first century evidence he used much later evidence, and attempted to regress to an estimate of first century figures. With a lot of people helping, and with the large pools readily available in Jerusalem, not to mention the nearby Jordan. We're dealing with a population to whom Jesus was already well know, and the only point of faith they were being asked to accept was that he was the messiah; no one was being expected to commit to a lengthy and complicated catechism. Yes, but you later identified 5,000 as 20% of Jerusalem's population, which requires a population of 25,000, so I just dealt with the figure given. Well the point doesn't stand up unless Jerusalem's population was as small as 30,000 people, and it wasn't. There isn't a specific universally agreed figure, but that's irrelevant. There's a consensus on a specific range; the majority of estimates place the figure near 100,000, certainly upwards of 70,000. That's ok, because we're not looking for a very large Christian population in Jerusalem in the first century. What we're looking for is historical evidence that it wouldn't have been possible for the Christian population of Jerusalem to be 3-5,000 people by around 33-34 CE. Do we have any evidence to suggest this? Yes, Stark's is the marginal figure on the fringe of the estimates. As I pointed out previously, his methodology has been questioned. |
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