A 'Practical' Jesus Mythicism - 'Be a Mensch!'

[Giuseppe]

As premise, I recognize humbly that my knowledge of all the evidence is surely more imperfect than your, but I think to know enough to reply against this:

But we've shown here that the starting point to this investigation - mistrust of homosexual-sounding imagery - is only based on an imperfect understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

If Secret Mark had these words ''man against man'' or something of similar, with ''man'' referring resp. to Jesus and his young initiate, I doubt that that Gospel can have some utility (even if heretic and ancient), given the fact that the first Gospel (I assume here being Mcn) didn't claim precisely that Jesus was a ''man''.

[Secret Alias]

As Tsedaka notes repeatedly in his annotated edition wherever 'ish' (man) appears in the Samaritan Pentateuch "[t]he Samaritan Sages in their tradition always considered the “man” to be an angel." https://books.google.com/books?id=-wn8A ... 22&f=false This is said in reference to numerous passages in Genesis and elsewhere.

A list of angelic 'Man' references recognized by the Samaritan tradition including Genesis 32:25 https://books.google.com/books?id=-wn8A ... sh&f=false

The Jewish tradition is the same. Ish is an angel. Philo says that everything that happens before Genesis 2:4 describes the creation of the realm of ideas before the 'double earth' below. As such the 'man' created in Genesis 1 is different from the Adam in Genesis chapter 2. He is the perfect ideal man who = Jesus in the early Christian tradition. I have consistently argued that the original nomen sacrum ΙΣ is a transliteration of the Hebrew term for 'man' (ish). The LXX does indeed transliterate ish with ΙΣ as I have duly noted. As such the reason why it was written in sacred character ΙΣ like Yahweh is because like Yahweh in the nomen sacrum it is preserving a sacred Hebrew name is special letters.

To this end also a sacred 'Man' who was divine was easily adapted by the orthodox to a material human being who was god by virgin birth because the original Hebrew term can be used both ways. Indeed the idea that ish could = a divine being was only preserved in whispers.

What I am saying in this thread is that many modern scholars have been thrown off track by the homosexual aspect of 'naked man with naked man' because we have taken our belief of a historical Jesus into the discussion (and they dislike homosexuality let's not kid ourselves). Once we learn that the narrative was modeled after Genesis 32:25 and Clement says ΙΣ was the 'man' who wrestled with Jacob all these objections are easily overcome. Surely the Jews who rendered what the LXX says was 'wrestling' with 'fucking' or 'enticing' or 'exerting (himself)' - the word is ambiguous in the Aramaic Targum could also have developed a gospel narrative about the reappearance of this divine being 'doing it' (the same thing he did with Jacob) with another man, a new Jacob (remember 'James' = Jacob).

Who was this man? Probably the same man who was naked in our Mark 14:52 whom Epiphanius ideas as James/Jacob. While Jacob is a common Jewish name the idea that such an individual wrestled with the same angel as the Patriarch lends itself to mythical (re?)interpretation. But this isn't the point. Clement clearly imagined Jacob the Patriarch to have been naked with angel ΙΣ when they wrestled. The rabbis clearly struggled with the Aramaic translation of Genesis 32:25 which implied or could imply a sexualized 'encounter' between Jacob and the divine ish. All the pieces are now there.

[Secret Alias]

And I've never understood the 'difficulty' with respect to Morton Smith's alleged homosexuality or at least the fact he never got married. If the closest we can get to Smith being a homosexual is the fact he never married (so he was 'gay on the inside') surely all the Jews who thought that Jacob became divine by having sex with God shared this same 'inner' or 'secret homosexuality.' Smith is never demonstrated to have had physical sex with a man, these Jewish priests likely never had sex with men.

Atheists have the right to go further down the road with the 'anyone who is secretly gay is really gay on the outside too' argument. Maybe even religious people to some extent. But religious critics of the Letter to Theodore also have to let go of 'their God guided the preservation of the canon' through the Church and Nicaea argument too because the same arguments can be used to defend the rediscovery of the letter.

Clearly the same god established the idea that Jacob had sex with ΙΣ as inspired Mark to write the 'naked man with naked man' addition to Mark. Clement clearly knows about it in Quis Dives Salvetur. He also inspired the rabbis to translate the now ambiguous Hebrew term in Genesis 32:25 with ishtadel = fucking.

Either there is no God in the world with no interest in preserving mystical truths in the Bible (as the atheists would have it) or God wanted to preserve the holiness of the idea we should all be gay on the inside to assure our union with God. That's why the manuscript was re-discovered by a 'secretly gay' man like Smith.

The alternative again is that there is no God, no supernatural force cares or was ever present in the Bible. But they can't claim that God is active in the world and actively preserving a mystical truth in holy writings to save humanity. For the Bible clearly believes that God wants to entice us to 'wrestle with him' and have him implant his divine seed in us and make us fully 'after his image.' Yes, that's a gay myth but it's a myth that the earliest Jews believed was encoded into the story of Jacob and the angel. So how do they argue with that? Don't Catholic priests partake of this mystery still to this day? Isn't this the basis of Roman Catholicism?

[Secret Alias]

And I would also turn things around and say - it's easy to say the Bible is a lie, there is no truth in the scriptures. But a mystical truth ... at least that helps make sense of everything. Too many mythicists allow themselves to latch on to any stupid myth ... in order to assure the gospel was stupid. But why would smart people like Clement and Origen latch on to a stupid myth? Surely the myth would have had great significance for them. They 'really' thought it was holy. It wasn't a con game to destroy people's lives. I see this as making sense of all the loose ends in early Christianity.

[lsayre]

What do you make of the (mainly gnostic) bridal chamber references with respect to Jesus? Is there a common connection point here?

[Secret Alias]

Good question. I think the Valentinians expanded the exclusive male relationship to include females. But the bridal chamber is proof of the existence of an early sexualized myth in Christianity. Thank you again for great question

[Secret Alias]

And if you were to develop a myth in post-destruction Judaism into a holy narrative text, the wrestling with the ΙΣ is the logical starting point. It's not like we are alleging someone made a religion out of some minor passage in the Pentateuch like 'and Moses went to the store to buy a pack of smokes ...' This is the logical starting point because it's starting point of the myth of Israel and the author was clearly trying to restart the concept of Israel without the sacrificial religion of the Pentateuch. There isn't enough 'in' the Ten Commandments to replace the grand narrative of the Pentateuch. An explanation was needed for how and why and when the 'restart' took place.

[Secret Alias]

Theodore W Jennings Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary has written an entire book on the subject of the homoerotic underpinnings to the story of Jacob wrestling with the man.

The narratives upon which we have focused most attention are stories of those who have lived in the light and shadow of a passionate, and indeed erotic, encounter with Jacob's most intimate adversary. The name that Jacob receives from this passion is one that is carried by the people who take his new name, Israel, and who as well, perhaps, inherit the wound of this passion. At least, that is what this study has suggested. The homoeroticism prefigured in Jacob's intimate grappling with God is a homoeroticism that will be disseminated across the traditions that bear his name. https://books.google.com/books?id=Guuye ... 22&f=false

If Jacob and the Ish form a sublimated homoerotic narrative then Clement by identifying Jesus with this figure necessarily accepts similar possibilities in the 'modernized' gospel narrative.