More Suggestions that 'IC' Was Meant to be Read 'Man'

[Secret Alias]

My assumption has always been that 'this man' was Paul himself and that Paul - like Jesus in the gospel as per Bultmann - was in the habit of speaking cryptically in the third person. I wonder if there is a tradition anywhere that 'this man' = Jesus in the Patristic literature. Surely even by the most conservative accounts Paul must have seen Jesus in the third heaven/Paradise. The question then becomes is it more believable there were two separate ascensions (i.e one where Jesus is enthroned after the crucifixion and another when Paul sees Jesus enthroned) or one? I think Clement's testimony discussed in another thread becomes decisive. The Marcionites say that Jesus 'snatched up' Paul to the third heaven immediately following the Passion. I have long noted that one proposed Aramaic/Hebrew rendering of 'Passion' would also mean 'the (giving) of a new nature' (yetser). The word 'Nazarene' might well be related.

While Jesus is the subject of the gospel (at least in theory) the culmination of the Passion experience results in the transformation of Paul's yetser from his heavenly ascent. This explains all the material that has been collected into Tertullian's De Carne Christi. The heretics believed that the end result of all their mystery initiations they possessed a new form of flesh, a new yetser which would not completely succumb to corruption at death. Paul, rather than Jesus, was the likely first archetype of this 'new man.' The 'old man' Jesus was dead on the Cross but 'Christ' stood watching impassably.

[Secret Alias]

When I looked whether anyone thought 'this man' was Jesus before me I was humbled to see the great Morton Smith beat me to it.

A very few scholars have disagreed (with the identification of 'this man' as a self-reference by Paul), but their arguments have never found any following. Morton Smith, "Ascent to the Heavens and the Beginning of Christianity,” Eranos 50 (1981): 403-29, argues that Paul speaks of ]esus. He interprets the phrase ”in Christ” as adverbial, describing how Paul ”knows” this man (408). https://books.google.com/books?id=N34JX ... 22&f=false

Anything Morton Smith argues is worth reading. Now I have new reading but an important bit of support evidence.

[Secret Alias]

And with the miracle of the internet here is the argument:

They reported that Jesus had ascended after his resurrection - a full story is told in Acts 1 , the belief appears already in Philippians 2.9 and a string of later passages.36 They themselves hoped to ascend when the End came. Paul (or, if not Paul, the author of 1 Thess 4:16f.) was explicit:

The Lord himself ... with a godawful trumpet blast will come down from heaven, and the dead Christians will arise first, and then we the living ... will be caught up together with them in the clouds for a meeting with the Lord in the air.

and here is the rest - https://books.google.com/books?id=4rnYC ... 22&f=false

[Secret Alias]

Yes and Morton Smith I think has helped me solve the mystery a little. On p 62:

These statements show a pre-Pauline notion of Jesus, one shaped by the Enoch legend. Enoch was one of the antediluvian patriarchs of whom the Old Testament said that “he walked with God and he was not (to be seen), because God took him (Genesis 5:24). This brief remark may be either the cause or the consequence of a story about Enoch's being taken up to heaven. The story became so popular that we have it in three major preserved versions and several minor ones.” According to the fully developed legend, Enoch was taken up to the highest heaven and introduced to God Himself. Since one becomes like what one looks on—a principle we have heard from Jean Brun and Daryush Shayegan

Yes that is the answer. On earth, Jesus (or 'the man') took a generic form. He was a shape-shifter as Basilides recognized. When Paul is taken up to heaven he finally sees Jesus for what he is and is transformed into the image he sees just as Moses was. That's the next step in the equation. Paul becomes Christ by seeing Jesus for what he is without distraction or disguise. No one before Paul saw 'the real Jesus' (or 'the real Man').

[Secret Alias]

And then the culmination of the essay:

Finally we come back to a passage twice cited already—Paul's report in 2 Cor 12 that he himself knew a man who had gone up to the third heaven. Who was that man?

https://books.google.com/books?id=4rnYC ... 22&f=false

If Smith had been aware of Eznik's statement (and others) that Jesus 'snatched' Paul up to the third heaven he'd have unraveled a great mystery. But alas he did not.

[Secret Alias]

The parallel then between Paul and Moses is complete. Moses ascends up to the top of a mountain (Sinai) sees God and his flesh is transformed (cf. the Samaritan speculation about the superior flesh of the post-Sinai Moses:

Jarl Fossum and April De Conick successfully demonstrated the importance of the Samaritan materials for understanding the connection between the "glories" of Adam and Moses. The Samaritan texts insist that when Moses ascended to Mount Sinai, he received the image of God which Adam cast off in the Garden of Eden.[11] According to Memar Marqa, Moses was endowed with the identical glorious body as Adam.[12] Memar Marqa 5.4 tells that:
He [Moses] was vested with the form which Adam cast off in the Garden of Eden; and his face shone up to the day of his death.[13]

The Samaritan speculation about the transformed flesh of Moses from this experience is all over the Memar. But clearly Paul is similarly transformed from his experience. He is now the living manifestation of the heavenly Man.

[Secret Alias]

Interestingly again - האיש הזה (= this man) - is the way Genesis 24:58 references Abraham's angelic servant. Notice the running theme to the passage is the visitation to Abraham and the promise an angel (messenger) will retrieve a wife for Isaac:

Unto thy seed will I give this land; He will send His angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife for my son from thence.

The closest I get in the midrashic literature is the identification of the servant with Eliezar who of course is connected with an angel through numerology in the famous scene where Abraham defeats the kings.

Abraham sought a wife for his son Isaac. He bequeathed all that he possessed to Isaac, and took this writ and gave it to his servant (whom the midrash calls “Eliezer"). When Abraham commanded the latter, he told him (Gen. 24:7): “He will send His angel before you”; according to the midrash, God designated two angels when Abraham said this. One angel would accompany Eliezer on his journey, and the other would take Rebekah out of her parents’ house (Gen. Rabbah 59:10). When the servant reached Haran, he prayed to the Lord, and suggested a sign by which he would recognize the suitable maiden (Gen. 24:14): The midrash comments on this that Eliezer was one of the four who made unseemly requests. If a handmaiden had come forth to him, would he have chosen her as Isaac’s bride? If she had been lame or blind, would he have designated her as Isaac’s intended? Despite this, God granted his request and had Rebekah come before him (Gen. Rabbah 60:3; BT Taanit 4a).

[Secret Alias]

And then there is gematria. אש הזה is 318 = אֱלִיעֶזֶר or Eliezar. The secret is to go back to the original form of the name man = אש.

[Secret Alias]

Or perhaps זה האיש which is the (modern) Hebrew rendering of the gospel phrase (used in various paintings) 'Ecce Homo' John 19:5 - https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A6%27 ... 7%9C%D7%99

[Clive]

Superb http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/eps ... gel-t07139