Carrier proposes the NT Jesus based on Philo's Jesus angel

[MrMacSon]

Jesus (Joshua) of Nazareth is connected to 'Dawn Rising' in Luke.

And Luke apparently took that image from Zechariah where it is linked with another Jesus.

Jeshua ben Jehozadak/Jozadek ??

[winningedge101]

Hey guys......so did Philo cause Jesus the logos or what? Help me out here friends.

[DCHindley]

Hey guys......so did Philo cause Jesus the logos or what? Help me out here friends.

Not sure what you are asking, friend.

Are you asking whether Philo created the concept himself, or whether he made use of a similar concept that was floating around in his day and place?

The answer, in either case, is that we don't know. No one else speaks of it but Philo.

DCH

[winningedge101]

I was wondering If Philo outright calls Jesus the logos and the firstborn son of God.

[MrMacSon]

I was wondering If Philo outright calls Jesus the logos and the firstborn son of God.

Philo alludes to an OT passage that refers to Jeshua ben Jehozadak/Jozadak,

• and Jehozadak/Jozadak means justice of the Lord' (Jehovah justifies/justified
  
  See viewtopic.php?p=43492#p43492

Some scholars hold that Philo's concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology. Other scholars, however, deny direct influence but say both Philo and Early Christianity borrow from a common source ...

Philo bases his doctrines on the Old Testament, which he considers as the source and standard not only of religious truth but in general of all truth.

Philo thought that God created and governed the world through 'mediators'. Logos is the chief among them, the next to God, demiurge of the world. Logos is immaterial, an adequate image of God, his shadow, his firstborn son. Being the mind of the Eternal, Logos is imperishable. He is neither uncreated as God is, nor created as men are, but occupies a middle position. He has no autarkic power, only an entrusted one ...

Moreover,

[Philo] the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today. Philo's primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity. The church preserved the Philonic writings because Eusebius of Caesarea labeled the monastic ascetic group of Therapeutae and Therapeutrides, described in Philo's The Contemplative Life, as Christians, which is highly unlikely. Eusebius also promoted the legend that Philo met Peter in Rome. Jerome (345-420 C.E.) even lists him as a church Father ...

... it seems that Philo also picked up his ancestral tradition, though as an adult, and once having discovered it, he put forward the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Moses, as "the summit of philosophy" (Op. 8), and considered Moses the teacher of Pythagoras (b. ca 570 B.C.E.) and of all Greek philosophers and lawgivers (Hesiod, Heraclitus, Lycurgus, to mention a few). For Philo, Greek philosophy was a natural development of the revelatory teachings of Moses. He was no innovator in this matter because already before him Jewish scholars attempted the same.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/


3. Technique of Exposition
Philo uses an allegorical technique for interpretation of the Hebrew myth and in this he follows the Greek tradition of Theagenes of Rhegium (second half of the sixth century B.C.E.). Theagenes used this approach in defense of Homer's theology against the detractors. He said that the myths of gods struggling with each other referred to the opposition between the elements; the names of gods were made to refer to various dispositions of the soul, e.g., Athena was reflection, Aphrodite, desire, Hermes, elocution ... Philo seeks out the hidden message beneath the surface of any particular text and tries to read back a new doctrine into the work of the past ...

.

[MrMacSon]

I was wondering If Philo outright calls Jesus 'the logos' and the firstborn son of God.

Perhaps you might like to read

• MacDonald, Dennis R.' Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias’s Exposition of Logia about the Lord'
  Society of Biblical Literature: Early Christianity and Its Literature 8
  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Pp. xvi + 711. ISBN 9781589836907

MacDonald concludes Chapter 6 with

“the Logoi of Jesus was not a loose assortment of traditional sayings clumsily gathered into speeches: it was a strategic rewriting of Deuteronomy with a coherent and compelling structure and plot. To be sure, it is not a narrative such as one finds in the Synoptics, but it is a narrative nonetheless”

Appendix 3 offers an overview of the Logoi of Jesus and its relationship to other Gospels.

& see http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9390.pdf

.

[Peter Kirby]

I was wondering If Philo outright calls Jesus the logos and the firstborn son of God.

Philo alludes to an OT passage that refers to Jeshua ben Jehozadak/Jozadak,

• and Jehozadak/Jozadak means justice of the Lord' (Jehovah justifies/justified
  
  See viewtopic.php?p=43492#p43492

Some scholars hold that Philo's concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology. Other scholars, however, deny direct influence but say both Philo and Early Christianity borrow from a common source ...

Philo bases his doctrines on the Old Testament, which he considers as the source and standard not only of religious truth but in general of all truth.

Philo thought that God created and governed the world through 'mediators'. Logos is the chief among them, the next to God, demiurge of the world. Logos is immaterial, an adequate image of God, his shadow, his firstborn son. Being the mind of the Eternal, Logos is imperishable. He is neither uncreated as God is, nor created as men are, but occupies a middle position. He has no autarkic power, only an entrusted one ...

Moreover,

[Philo] the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today. Philo's primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity. The church preserved the Philonic writings because Eusebius of Caesarea labeled the monastic ascetic group of Therapeutae and Therapeutrides, described in Philo's The Contemplative Life, as Christians, which is highly unlikely. Eusebius also promoted the legend that Philo met Peter in Rome. Jerome (345-420 C.E.) even lists him as a church Father ...

... it seems that Philo also picked up his ancestral tradition, though as an adult, and once having discovered it, he put forward the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Moses, as "the summit of philosophy" (Op. 8), and considered Moses the teacher of Pythagoras (b. ca 570 B.C.E.) and of all Greek philosophers and lawgivers (Hesiod, Heraclitus, Lycurgus, to mention a few). For Philo, Greek philosophy was a natural development of the revelatory teachings of Moses. He was no innovator in this matter because already before him Jewish scholars attempted the same.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/


3. Technique of Exposition
Philo uses an allegorical technique for interpretation of the Hebrew myth and in this he follows the Greek tradition of Theagenes of Rhegium (second half of the sixth century B.C.E.). Theagenes used this approach in defense of Homer's theology against the detractors. He said that the myths of gods struggling with each other referred to the opposition between the elements; the names of gods were made to refer to various dispositions of the soul, e.g., Athena was reflection, Aphrodite, desire, Hermes, elocution ... Philo seeks out the hidden message beneath the surface of any particular text and tries to read back a new doctrine into the work of the past ...

.

I was wondering If Philo outright calls Jesus 'the logos' and the firstborn son of God.

Perhaps you might like to read

• MacDonald, Dennis R.' Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias’s Exposition of Logia about the Lord'
  Society of Biblical Literature: Early Christianity and Its Literature 8
  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Pp. xvi + 711. ISBN 9781589836907

MacDonald concludes Chapter 6 with

“the Logoi of Jesus was not a loose assortment of traditional sayings clumsily gathered into speeches: it was a strategic rewriting of Deuteronomy with a coherent and compelling structure and plot. To be sure, it is not a narrative such as one finds in the Synoptics, but it is a narrative nonetheless”

Appendix 3 offers an overview of the Logoi of Jesus and its relationship to other Gospels.

& see http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8565_9390.pdf

.

Interesting way to answer a question that has a definite answer: "no." (And I would assume winningedge101 had tongue firmly in cheek!)

[MrMacSon]

Interesting way to answer a question that has a definite answer: "no." (And I would assume winningedge101 had tongue firmly in cheek!)

Sure, I also assumed winningedge101 had 'tongue firmly in cheek'

But it got me thinking ...

• a. How one might get from Philo to 'Jesus as the Logos' in John 1,
  b. What aspects of Philo might be the genesis of such a path, and
  c. What so-called 'inter-Testamentary literature' might facilitate that.

[MrMacSon]

Margaret Barker ([argued] the link Anatolè = Jesus, too)

M. Barker, “The Two Figures in Zechariah,” HeyJ 18 (1977).

And this = Risen Lord

Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God.

Geo Widengren, "Early Hebrew Myths and Their Interpretation," in S. H. Hooke, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel.

The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God

Many of the old certainties have been destroyed by new knowledge. What has become clear to me time and time again is that the evidence indicates that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic in the sense that we use that word. Many in first century Palestine retained a world view derived from the more ancient religion of Israel, in which there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh the Lord could be manifested on earth in human form, as an angel, or in the Davidic king. It was as a manifestation of Yahweh, the Son of God, that Jesus was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah and Lord.

READ THE INTRODUCTION

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Publicati ... tAngel.htm

The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God

What did "Son of God," "Messiah," and "Lord," mean to the first Christians when they used these words to describe their beliefs about Jesus? In this book Margaret Barker explores the possibility that, in the expectations and traditions of first-century Palestine, these titles belonged together, and that the first Christians fit Jesus' identity into an existing pattern of belief. She claims that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic and that the roots of Christian Trinitarian theology lie in a pre-Christian Palestinian belief about angels --a belief derived from the ancient religion of Israel, in which there was a "High God" and several "Sons of God." Yahweh was a son of God, manifested on earth in human form as an angel or in the Davidic King. Jesus was a manifestation of Yahweh, and was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah, and Lord. Barker relies on canonical and deutero-canonical works and literature from Qumran and rabbinic sources to present her thoughtful investigation.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Angel-I ... 0664253954