The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

Post by Ben C. Smith »

John2 wrote: Wed Aug 23, 2017 1:55 pm Regarding "the name that is above every name" in the Philippians Hymn, I'm seeing it the way Fee puts it....
I agree with much of that. The big point of potential disagreement comes here:

In so doing they expressed his equality with God but also avoided calling him Yahweh, which is reserved for God the father.

I would suggest that, if the early Christians regularly interpreted scriptural passages about "the Lord" (= Yahweh) as applying to Jesus, then they were saying that Jesus is Yahweh.

My recent debate with spin is relevant: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2588&start=10#p71703. In the Pauline epistles, the Father is called God, but the Father is never called Lord. That title seems to refer to Jesus alone (spin obviously disagreed with me on this, and you check our arguments against each other for yourself). The distinction between the Father as God and Jesus as Lord seems to emphasized here:

1 Corinthians 8.6: 6 ...yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

This verse appears explicitly to deny the title of Lord to the Father; there is only one Lord, and that is Jesus.

It also occurs in the Jesus Hymn we are discussing, as well as in most of the epistolary greetings:

Philippians 2.11: 11 ...and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

1 Corinthians 1.3: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. [Refer also to Romans 1.7; 2 Corinthians 1.2-3; Galatians 1.3; Philippians 1.2; 1 Thessalonians 1.1, 3; Philemon 1.3.]

What appears to me to be the case is the following:

Hebrew scriptures (canonical redaction):

El = the Father = Yahweh = God.

Pauline epistles:

God = the Father.
Yahweh = Jesus (= a god?).

Hebrew scriptures (earlier indications):

El = the Father = God.
Yahweh = his Son = a god.

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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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Ben wrote:
I would suggest that, if the early Christians regularly interpreted scriptural passages about "the Lord" (= Yahweh) as applying to Jesus, then they were saying that Jesus is Yahweh.
I agree. Boyarin has made me "see the light" regarding Jewish Christian binitarianism (based on the two heavenly thrones in Dan. 7:9), and Fee appears to be hesitant to go that far. But I think this is why Paul says in 1 Cor. 10:3-5:
They [the Israelites] all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness…


What do you think is going on in Rom. 14:6-9? Does "the Lord" mean God or Jesus (or both)?
Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
And in 2 Cor. 3:13-18:
We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Last edited by John2 on Wed Aug 23, 2017 4:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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Ben,

Lord and God seem to be used interchangeably in the Letter of James (which I think we've discussed before). 1:1 says:
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ ...
But in the next uses of Lord it appears to refer to God.

1:6-8:
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
1:12:
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
Then in 2:1 Jesus is called Lord again:
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.
Then 3:9 says:
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.
Then 4:7-10 says:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
And 4:15:
Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that."
And 5:4:
The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.
And 5:10-11:
Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
And 5:14-15:
Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.
And don't you insist that "the coming of the Lord" in 5:7-8 refers to God? So every reference to "the Lord" in James appears to refer to God except the references to Jesus in 1:1 and 2:1 (and, in my view, 5:7-8). So James calls both God and Jesus "Lord," and in 3:9 he calls God "our Lord and father":
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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John2 wrote: Wed Aug 23, 2017 3:38 pmWhat do you think is going on in Rom. 14:6-9? Does "the Lord" mean God or Jesus (or both)?
Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
And in 2 Cor. 3:13-18:
We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Those are ambiguous cases on their own. In the first one, "whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God" can easily sound as if Lord and God are the same person because of the conjunction ("for"); yet to replace "the Lord" with "Jesus" and "God" with "the Father" would produce no stumbling block, and the very next sentence makes it sound as if the two are different entities ("whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God"). The second one presents no contrast between God and the Lord, so it is easy to take the Lord as Yahweh, which means Jesus for Paul. I am not going to pretend that the twin equations of the Lord with the Spirit (sandwiched around a far more understandable yet seemingly contrasting phrase, "the Spirit of the Lord") is unproblematic; but it does not directly concern whether God ever equates God with the Lord.

So I can easily apply the simple rule (Lord = Jesus; God = the Father), but only because of those other passages which encourage me to do so. On their own, these passages could go either way.

Incidentally, that second passage is drawing from the following:

Exodus 34.34-35: 34 But whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded, 35 the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Him.

I read an article many, many years ago (so far back I cannot remember the title or the author) which argued that "the Lord is the Spirit" is actually a sort of pesher technique, whereby "the Lord" in Exodus 34.34 allegorically represents the Spirit in the Christian age. That is, "the Lord is the Spirit" is actually of the same quality as saying that Moses stretching out his hands in a battle "is" (represents) the cross. Or something like that. The upshot is that "the Lord" did not refer to an ontological entity; rather, it referred to the actual words ("the Lord") in the text of Exodus, which were pointing mystically to the work of the Spirit in the new age. YMMV.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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John2 wrote: Wed Aug 23, 2017 4:31 pmAnd don't you insist that "the coming of the Lord" in 5:7-8 refers to God?
I insist that it refers to Yahweh. "God" is an extra step (which James may take and Paul may not). See below.
So every reference to "the Lord" in James appears to refer to God except the references to Jesus in 1:1 and 2:1 (and, in my view, 5:7-8). So James calls both God and Jesus "Lord," and in 3:9 he calls God "our Lord and father":
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.
James and Paul do not necessarily share the same exact language structures in this situation. I have wondered out loud before whether Paul might not have refrained from equating the Lord with God on purpose for the sake of his gentile readers, who might have been confused by the full brunt of Jewish and Christian theology combined. It seems indubitable that Paul would have regarded Jesus as "a god" (at the very least) if he regarded Jesus as Yahweh! Yet he never says as much in uncertain terms, and that may have more to do with his readers than with his own judgments.

But James does seem to equate the Lord with God, as you point out. As for how James regards the two figures (the Son and the Father), I opined a while ago that there were three relatively clean options, and I think they still stand for me: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2629&p=58719. I wrote:
I see only three relatively clean options here:
  1. James consistently refers to God the Father as "Lord", and only the name of Jesus Christ (as in 1.1 and 2.1) is enough to make the title apply to anyone else.
  2. James consistently refers to God the Father as "Lord", and both phrases referring to Jesus Christ as Lord are interpolations ("and of the Lord Jesus Christ" in 1.1 and "in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ" in 2.1).
  3. James cleanly identifies Jesus with Yahweh, or God; they are the same person. Jesus was an incarnation or avatar, so to speak, of Yahweh himself. (Refer to another thread of mine for more on this topic: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2588&p=58143.)
Thoughts?
I am still quite open to #2, though Peter Kirby has rightly cautioned against finding interpolations all over the place willy-nilly. I am fine with #3, if the two verses mentioning Jesus are not interpolations. The only difference here between James and Paul would be that James did not refrain from the obvious step of calling Jesus (the Lord) a god. #1 is the standard view, I think, and it is certainly possible. There is no shortage of Christian texts which apply the title Lord both to the Son and to the Father, often leaving things ambiguous in context, perhaps sometimes deliberately so. My question is whether Christians always did this, right from the start. Or were they, in light of verses like 1 Corinthians 8.6, perhaps more consistent in their terminology, which became confused only later as different gospels and epistles began to make their way into the same canon of texts alongside the Hebrew scriptures?
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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I wrote:
I don't get the impression that there was Jewish life of any sort in Jerusalem after 70 CE, except maybe c. 120 CE to 132 CE, when it was being rebuilt by Hadrian before the Bar Kokhba war, after which all Jews were barred from Jerusalem (and I'm not exactly sure when Jerusalem was resettled by Jews after that).
Alon to the rescue again. According to his assessment of the sources, Jerusalem was not resettled by Jews until the third century CE. I wanted to bring his book to the library with me today so I could copy the relevant section, but I need to do some shopping later and can't spare the backpack space (I ride a bike). But it looks like there were no Jews living in Jerusalem after 70 CE (excepting perhaps between 120 CE and 132 CE) until maybe the time of Rabbi Judah (c. 200 CE). So again, I see the term "Jerusalem" Church (after 70 CE) as being like the "Jerusalem" Talmud. As Wikipedia puts it again, "Naming this version of the Talmud after the Land of Israel rather than Jerusalem is considered more accurate by some because, while the work was certainly composed in "the West" (as seen from Babylonia) ... it mainly originates from the Galilee rather than from Jerusalem in Judea, as no Jews lived in Jerusalem at this time."
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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John2 wrote: Mon Aug 28, 2017 6:24 am I wrote:
I don't get the impression that there was Jewish life of any sort in Jerusalem after 70 CE, except maybe c. 120 CE to 132 CE, when it was being rebuilt by Hadrian before the Bar Kokhba war, after which all Jews were barred from Jerusalem (and I'm not exactly sure when Jerusalem was resettled by Jews after that).
Alon to the rescue again. According to his assessment of the sources, Jerusalem was not resettled by Jews until the third century CE. I wanted to bring his book to the library with me today so I could copy the relevant section, but I need to do some shopping later and can't spare the backpack space (I ride a bike). But it looks like there were no Jews living in Jerusalem after 70 CE (excepting perhaps between 120 CE and 132 CE) until maybe the time of Rabbi Judah (c. 200 CE). So again, I see the term "Jerusalem" Church (after 70 CE) as being like the "Jerusalem" Talmud. As Wikipedia puts it again, "Naming this version of the Talmud after the Land of Israel rather than Jerusalem is considered more accurate by some because, while the work was certainly composed in "the West" (as seen from Babylonia) ... it mainly originates from the Galilee rather than from Jerusalem in Judea, as no Jews lived in Jerusalem at this time."
You might be right on that. On the other hand, it would be hard to judge what the "Jerusalem" church is. From the little I know it seems that the school und the Christian life in Caesarea Maritima was during the famous era rather international than native.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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KK,

Irenaeus says in AH 1.26.3 in the late second century CE that Jewish Christians "adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God," so they at least maintained an attachment to Jerusalem even if they did not live there.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

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I thought I'd resurrect this thread after talking with Ben, who helped me with some Greek words.

I noted above that what Hegesippus says about James in EH 2.23.10 seems to be in keeping with what Josephus says about the James in Ant. 20.9.1 to me.

But regarding one particular element, I had wondered if Hegesippus and Josephus use the same or similar words for "assembled"/"coming therefore in a body," and Ben pointed out that they use different words and that "The sense of καθίζω [that Josephus uses] in this context is less about people coming together and more about seating a formal body of officiants" and that "there is nothing in the verb συνέρχομαι [that Hegesippus uses] to prevent this from being an officially convened event. It is just that this kind of formality is not in the verb itself."

EH 2.23:10:
... there was a commotion among the Jews and Scribes and Pharisees, who said that there was danger that the whole people would be looking for Jesus as the Christ. Coming therefore in a body to James
Ant. 20.9.1:
... so he [Ananus] assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James ...
A few days ago I happened to see this recent post on Neil Godfrey's blog about the James passage in Josephus and this comment caught my eye:
Efron is entirely correct to assert that there was no “Great Sanhedrin”, no standing council, and that this is a mythological institution (proably derived from popular imagination) subesequently enshrined in Talmudic literature. But the passage of Josephus that we are discussing doesn’t mention any such institution. It says that Ananus “καθίζει συνέδριον κριτῶν”, “convened a council of judges”. The addition of the qualifier “of judges” shows that this is not “The Sanhedrin” in the absolute sense used in the Talmud (and by the Gospels in the Passion narrative), but is an ad hoc convocation, entirely analogous to other appearances of the term συνέδριον in Josephus.

https://vridar.org/2018/01/22/6-more-re ... /#comments
Then after checking to see how the word Hegesippus uses is used in the NT I found this instance:

http://biblehub.com/greek/4905.htm

http://biblehub.com/text/mark/14-53.htm

Mk. 14:53:
And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together.
And here is who "came together" in Mark 14:53 (in addition to priests): "the elders and scribes," and my understanding is that "elders" here refers to the Pharisees, since the same word is used in Mk. 7:1-5 in reference to the Pharisees' oral Torah:
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders ... And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
And here is who "came together" in Hegesippus:
... there was a commotion among the Jews and scribes and Pharisees, who said that there was danger that the whole people would be looking for Jesus as the Christ. Coming therefore in a body to James ...
Last edited by John2 on Fri Jan 26, 2018 7:08 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: The Jerusalem Church after 70 CE

Post by John2 »

And while Josephus mentions Ananus as being a Sadducee, the Sanhedrin itself was dominated by the Pharisees, as he says in Ant. 18.1.4:
But they [the Sadducees] are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.


Ant. 20.9.1:
But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James ...
And while Hegesippus doesn't specifically mention the Sadducees (or Ananus), if you look again he does mention a broad third category of people who "came therefore in a body to James" that could include them/him:
... there was a commotion among the Jews and scribes and Pharisees, who said that there was danger that the whole people would be looking for Jesus as the Christ. Coming therefore in a body to James ...
And one of the other things that seems similar about the accounts in Josephus and Hegesippus that I mentioned above is:

Josephus:
... he [Ananus] delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done.
Hegesippus:
And while they were thus stoning him one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, the son of the Rechabites, who are mentioned by Jeremiah the prophet, cried out, saying, ‘Cease, what do ye? The just one prayeth for you.’
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