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

[Secret Alias]

No it doesn't. This is where the argument starts to fall off the rails:

We know Zechariah meant this in some way to be Jesus ben Jehozadak ...

Statements like 'we know ...' are not worthy of seriously scholarship without explanation.

[Secret Alias]

It would be more accurate to say tradition says X but I - for entirely selfish reasons - have decided to ignore almost everything that has ever been written on the subject and decided to posit Y.

[MrMacSon]

I've mentioned this many times before at this and the previous forum. Anatolê does NOT mean the direction of east. It means the newly risen sun, or otherwise the first appearance of anything at all. It only means the east in the phrase anatolê hêliou literally “the appearance of the sun”, and even then only with the right preposition in front, e.g. en anatolêi hêliou “in the east”. It does NOT mean the East (as some translations have it), as anyone with any feeling for Greek will see.

Carrier agrees with you -

Carrier writes on pages 81-82 (Element 6), and pages 200, 203 (Element 40) of On the Historicity of Jesus:

Element 6

The key noun is anatole, which is often translated 'East' because it refers to where the sun rises (hence 'East'), but such a translation obscures the fact that the actual word used is the noun 'rising' or 'rise' (as in 'sunrise'), which was not always used in reference to a compass point, and whose real connotations are more obvious when translated literally. In fact by immediately using the cognate verb 'to rise up' (anatelei, and that explicitly 'from his place below') it's clear the Septuagint translator understood the word to mean 'rise' (and Philo echoes the same pun in his interpretation, and thus also understood: see Element 40) ...


Element 40
As discussed in Element 6, in Zechariah 6 we have a man named Jesus being crowned king, 'rising' from his place below, and building up God's house, which is a feasible description of our Jesus; and this same Jesus appearing in Zechariah 6 also appears in Zechariah 3, where he is given supreme authority over God's domain (just as our Jesus was), and somehow ends all sins in a single day just as 'our Jesus' does), and this same Jesus is in both passages called a high priest (as was our Jesus). Discussing this Jesus figure in Zechariah, Philo argues:

• "'Behold, the man named Rising!' is a very novel appellation indeed, if you consider it as spoken of a man who is compounded of body and souI. But if you look upon it as applied to that incorporeal being who is none other than the divine image, you will then agree that the name of 'Rising' has been given to him with great felicity. For the Father of the Universe has caused him to rise up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn. And he who is thus born, imitates the ways of his father."

....

I have heard doubts whether Philo (or his source) was aware of the whole sentence he quotes from Zechariah and thus of the name 'Jesus' being in it. But such doubts are unwarranted. Nearly the whole sentence in Zechariah, in the Greek translation quoted by Philo, reads:

• "You shall make crowns, and set them upon the head of Jesus the son of Jehovah the Righteous, the high priest, and say to him, 'Thus says the almighty Lord, "'Behold, the man whose name is Rising (anatole)" and he shall rise up [anatelei] from his place below and shall build the house of the Lord, and receive power, and sit and rule upon his throne'" (Zech. 6.11-13).

The whole sentence (of which Philo quotes only the part here in bold thus identifies the man spoken of as both God's son and high priest, and in the very same sentence names him Jesus. This creates a series of coincidences far too improbable to imagine on any other conclusion than that Philo and Paul were talking about the same figure: Jesus the Son of Jehovah the Righteous, the image of God, God's agent of creation, God's high priest and firstborn son (see Elements 6 and I0).

[Secret Alias]

If he seriously suggesting that Jews thought the passage referred to a cosmic 'Jesus' figure? Funny I haven't heard any Jewish writers ever say that. Is he seriously positing that Christian writers thought that this passage referred to an entirely divine Jesus god? Really where is evidence to support this proposition raised? So what he is really saying when he says 'we know ...' is that 'we know' this once we ignore everyone and everything authoritative that's ever been written on this subject which means - in effect - we don't know this, we just want it to be true for entirely selfish reasons.

[Secret Alias]

Yes I know he agrees with me. I sent him a long explanation of this once by email. Hardly fucking surprising that he plucked what he liked about the email and ignored the rest.

[Ben C. Smith]

Ok, got it. Seems an odd phrase to me.

Ted, you are correct that it is something of an odd phrase. Bernard is once again working only from the English. I have checked the Hebrew Masoretic, the Greek LXX, and the Latin Vulgate, and none of them responds to his handling of the grammar here:

וְאָמַרְתָּ֤ אֵלָיו֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר כֹּ֥ה אָמַ֛ר יְהוָ֥ה צְבָא֖וֹת לֵאמֹ֑ר הִנֵּה־אִ֞ישׁ צֶ֤מַח שְׁמוֹ֙ וּמִתַּחְתָּ֣יו יִצְמָ֔ח וּבָנָ֖ה אֶת־הֵיכַ֥ל יְהוָֽה׃

Καὶ ἐρεῖς πρὸς αὐτόν τάδε λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ ἰδοὺ ἀνήρ Ἀνατολὴ ὄνομα αὐτῷ καὶ ὑποκάτωθεν αὐτοῦ ἀνατελεῖ καὶ οἰκοδομήσει τὸν οἶκον κυρίου.

Et loqueris ad eum dicens haec ait Dominus exercituum dicens ecce vir Oriens nomen eius et subter eum orietur et aedificabit templum Domino.

The phrase in question is וּמִתַּחְתָּ֣יו יִצְמָ֔ח / καὶ ὑποκάτωθεν αὐτοῦ ἀνατελεῖ / et subter eum orietur. Translating very literally, one might get something like: "and from underneath him(self) he shall arise." (All three renditions - Hebrew, Greek, and Latin - come out to something of that nature, virtually word by word.) The RSV smooths this out to: "for he shall grow up in his place," the NAS to: "for He will branch out from where He is." It appears the translation Bernard is using is Brenton, which represents another attempt to render the phrase, though not a literal one (there is actually no noun in the phrase corresponding to "stem/branch", and the pronoun which might be translated as "his" is actually the object of a preposition meaning "underneath" or "from under" rather than a separate pronoun indicating possession like the English "his" would imply).

That said, Bernard's overall point may or may not be correct (I have read only the lines quoted concerning the grammar), but his comments have little or nothing to do with the actual grammar underlying the ancient texts.

Ben.

[TedM]

Bernard, this Jesus son of Josedec DID help rebuild the temple according to Ezra 5:1-2. This seems to indicate that the Branch was not a future king, nor that the crowns were for those that wait for him, but that the Branch really was this Jesus, the first High Priest of the New Jerusalem, thus suggesting a real likelihood that Philo did --with a Messianic interpretation of the passage 500 years later -- equate the Branch and 'Rising' and rebuilding of the Temple with someone named Jesus, thus combining the Messiah Branch with the resurrected Messiah who ushers in the new era of Salvation -- via Jesus -- which means God Saves:

5 Now the prophets, aHaggai and bZechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. 2 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.

"And thou shalt take silver and gold, and make crowns, and thou shalt put them upon the head of Jesus the son of Josedec the high priest; 12 and thou [Zechariah] shalt say to him [Jesus son of Josedec], Thus saith the Lord Almighty;
Behold the man whose name is the Branch [better translated as "Rises" or "Rising" or "Dawn"]; and he shall spring up from his stem, and build the house of the Lord
Grammatically, "his" refers to the last person mentioned before. And that person is "Rises", not Jesus son of Josedec.
Furthermore, it is God, through Zechariah, asking to pronounce these words to Jesus, son of Josedec. If God wanted to attribute the "stem" to Jesus, son of Josedec, the 'his" would have been replaced by "your".

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

'Jehovah declares' that this Jesus is 'the man named ''Rising"

NO, "Zechariah" does not say that.

he shall rise up from his place below

NO, "Zechariah" does not say what I bolded.

Cordially, Bernard

[Secret Alias]

But if he is capable of staying within in the lines regarding the use of language, how does he go completely off the rails about what 'we know' about the passage from ancient interpretations of the passage? I never understand that in discussions here at the forum too. How doesn't the way a passage has been interpreted in the past figure into our understanding of the passage in the present? Where do we come off knowing more than people with greater and more natural command of the original language(s) and who lived closer to the original interpretation of the passage? For surely whoever wrote Zechariah had a point which he passed on to others. And surely if Philo is the source, surely his views squared with the Alexandrian community he lived in. As such do we really believe that Philo and his community worshiped a Jesus angel? Where is the evidence? From an interpretation of Zechariah that doesn't depend on anything Philo is known to have said or which willfully manipulates it? Not very confident in that approach I am afraid.

[Secret Alias]

I've posted this before and can't improve upon it:

There is no difficulty in reconciling the Hebrew and the Greek. There are two main groups of meanings of tsemacḥ in Hebrew and anatolê in Greek. They can mean “sprouting” and “first appearing over the horizon, shining for the first time”. The two verbs tsamacḥ and anatellein have the same range of meaning as the noun. The root idea, a first appearance from nowhere, can be seen clearly in their use in speaking of the outwelling of the headwaters of a river from the ground. When opening most modern English translations we find the Hebrew word tsemacḥ rendered as “the branch”, or something to that effect. This is a bad rendering, caused by mental association with verses in Isaiah and elsewhere that speak of a new branch, as well as being due to absence of feeling for the Hebrew language. The literal meaning would be something like – “behold a man whose name is Sprout”, or “behold the man whose name is the eye of the potato”. That is what the text actually says.

Aquila renders it in Greek as “new growth” [anaphyē; the noun is not in Liddell and Scott, but the verb is well attested]. Symmachus and Ho Hebraios render as growthbud [blastēma]. The Bible de Jérusalem and the Traduction Ecuménique de la Bible also both translate correctly as ‘germe’ in French, meaning growthbud, such as the eye of a potato. The Greek translator chooses a valid alternative interpretation, the first dawning. Here is Philo’s comment on Zechariah 6:12, “Behold a man whose name is the Daybreak (Anatolē)”. Philo says these words are:

spoken of a man who is compounded of body and soul; but if you look upon it as applied to that incorporeal being who in no respect differs from the divine image, you will then agree that the name of the Daybreak has been given to him with great felicity. For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his Father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns.

Philo finds a hint of the connection of both the passage from Zechariah and Genesis 21:23, the planting of the tree with Paradise in Genesis 2:8, “The Lord God planted a Garden in Eden in the East.” The Hebrew is miqqedem, which can also mean “aforetime” and this is the interpretation in the Jewish Targums. Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus do the same. In the LXX however the term that appears in its place is kata anatolas “in the east”. The Samaritan Targum agrees.