On "Montanism" by Christine Trevett ***

This was not exactly an introduction to the subject of the heretical Christian group that emerged in the last second century. What I mean is that the work is definitely aimed at scholars who have a pretty good degree of familiarity with the subject. It's full of arguments with other scholars about the sect and specialized language. As such, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

Trevett's views on the subject are in some way difficult to parse, insofar as she spends much time presenting the views of others and then discounting those. If I read her correctly, she believes the Montanists got a bad wrap and that they were not nearly so heretical as they are said to have been.

Montanism originated with a set of prophecies made by one Montanus and a couple of women in the late second century and spread rapidly from its central Asia Minor origin to Rome and Africa and elsewhere, converting along the way the famous Christian writer Tertullian. They were known for being against marriage, for various prophecies (the New Prophecy), for their ecstatic state when making such prophecies, and for their claim to be actually the embodiment of God and the Holy Spirit when prophesying.

All this may be twaddle Trevett seems to say. The ascetic views were not terribly out of keeping with many other Christians of the era. The world certainly did seem to be falling apart for those alive at the time (war, pestilence that may have killed as much as 25 percent of the Roman Empire's population). Our knowledge of the sect comes mostly from those who stood up against it, save for Tertullian, but the degree to which his African variety actually spoke for the earlier origin, we can't know.

As such, the Montanists may root back to a tradition of prophecy in the area established by John, the other of Revelation, and by Philip's three prophesying daughters. The prophecies that we know of don't seem all that out of step with common prophecies denoted in the Old and New Testament, regarding the end of the world. The idea that these prophets thought themselves the embodiment of God may just be the (possibly intentional) misreadings of their statements (or readings of later prophets rather than the early ones). What's really going on, Trevett seems to be claiming, is a conflict between hierarchical authority being established in Rome and a more organic concept of God speaking directly to his believers through the spirit. (This would have found a central point of contention in the Montanists view that "Jerusalem" had been relocated to the local settlement of Pepuza, to which Jesus would return.) It's an interesting theory, though I can't say that I am convinced that the views of the Montanists were otherwise quite orthodox insofar as following earlier beliefs, if we are to take Tertullian's writings as indicative of them, since he clearly taught some things not part of the first-century church's views (trinity, heaven and hell). However, the New Prophecy certainly does seem to be in line with many an apocalyptic group that let its enthusiasm carry them away into specific application of biblical prophecy that turned out to have no bearing in reality.