From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

Also Davies talks about common sources:
Charlesworth finds the idea of Johannine Christianity to be so similar to ideas found in the Odes of Solomon that he concludes that the two must arise from a common milieu. ''It is improbable that the Odes systematically borrowed from John'', he writes, ''the most probable solution, at this stage in our research, is that both the author of John and the odist contemporaneously inhabited not only the same milieu but perhaps the same community''. If there were, as I argue here, pre-Christian communities of Odes Judaism, the Gospel of John perhaps represents the next stage in the development of those communities themselves as they merge with the cult that arose from the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
(p. 268)
[Robert] Grant quote a conversation with his friend Arthur Darby Nock: ''Professor Nock has observed to me in this connection, we can probably conclude that the Christ of the Odes of Solomon was not really born, did not really live, was not really crucified, did not really die''.
One can go further. The Odes do not mention Jesus in any sense. His name is never used, nor do the Odes contain a single one of his sayings, nor do they mention even one event in which the gospels say he participated. The word ''cross'' supposedly appears twice in the Odes of Solomon (Odes 27 and 42), but only when translators such as Charlesworth take the Syriac (qaysa) or Greek (xylon), the word for tree or wood and translate it as ''cross''. Less tendentious translators do not do this. The first English translator, Rendel Harris, used the word ''wood''.
(p. 249)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
andrewcriddle
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by andrewcriddle »

andrewcriddle wrote: H.J.W. Drijvers, "The 19th Ode of Solomon: Its interpretation and place in Syrian Christianity," Journal of Theological Studies ns 31.2 (Oct. 1980): 337-355 argues plausibly but not conclusively that the Ode has been influenced by Tatian's Diatessaron.

Andrew Criddle
I've been trying to investigate other scholars views about Drijvers late dating of the Odes. Most seem to think that his 3rd century date is too late. However, there is considerable support for his claim that the repeated reference in the Odes to God being without envy, is directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites who attributed envy to the world creator. (E.G. forbidding Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge out of envy.) If the Odes are directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites then a date after 100 CE for the Odes would follow.

Andrew Criddle
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

If the Odes are directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites then a date after 100 CE for the Odes would follow.
I should find that passage in Philo where Philo is polemic with contemporary sectarians (not Romans or gentiles) who seem to despise the god of the Jews...
https://books.google.it/books?id=liZLAw ... cs&f=false
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
andrewcriddle
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote:
If the Odes are directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites then a date after 100 CE for the Odes would follow.
I should find that passage in Philo where Philo is polemic with contemporary sectarians (not Romans or gentiles) who seem to despise the god of the Jews...
https://books.google.it/books?id=liZLAw ... cs&f=false
This may possibly be relevant posterity of cain
(52) Since, therefore, every city consists of houses and inhabitants, and laws, the houses, in Cain's case, are the reasons which he alleges to prove his point; by which, as from a wall, he fights against the persuasive attacks of his enemies; inventing fabulous devices against the truth. The inhabitants are the companions of impiety, ungodliness, self-love, haughtiness, falsehood, vain opinions; the men wise in their own conceit, the men who know not wisdom as relating to truth, the men who are full of ignorance, and stupidity, and folly; and all the other similar and kindred evils. The laws are, lawlessness, injustice, inequality, intemperance, boldness, folly, insolence, immoderate indulgence in pleasure, and innumerable appetites in despite of nature. (53) Now of such a city as this, every impious man is found to be a builder in his own miserable soul, until God deliberately causes complete and great confusion to their sophistical Arts.
Andrew Criddle
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

The fact "that the repeated reference in the Odes to God being without envy, is directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites who attributed envy to the world creator" is a relatively strong argument to move the Odes after the marcionites, but only if then we consider the nickname of James as "the Just" as an anti-marcionite reaction, too. Or, the fact that in Luke God is called "The Most High" is a reaction against the marcionite despise of the Demiurge, and therefore a relatively strong argument to move Luke after proto-Luke aka Mcn.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

While expecting a possible answer to my previous post, I quote Rylands, p. 19:
In relation to official Judaism the Essenes and Therapeuts
were as Protestants in relation to Roman Catholicism ; but
Protestants of a moderate type. There were others whose
non-conformity went farther —e.g., the Naassenes and the
Peratai, who were already Gnostics in the full sense of the
term. It was possibly such sects as these that Philo had in
mind when he wrote : " But there are people who, holding
the writings of the Law to be symbols of a spiritual life,
carefully search for the latter but contemn the former.
Such men I cannot but blame." All these sects were
undoubtedly of pre-Christian origin.
(my bold)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
andrewcriddle
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote:The fact "that the repeated reference in the Odes to God being without envy, is directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites who attributed envy to the world creator" is a relatively strong argument to move the Odes after the marcionites, but only if then we consider the nickname of James as "the Just" as an anti-marcionite reaction, too. Or, the fact that in Luke God is called "The Most High" is a reaction against the marcionite despise of the Demiurge, and therefore a relatively strong argument to move Luke after proto-Luke aka Mcn.
The nickname "the Just" for James comes from 2nd century and later sources and could chronologically be a response to Marcion, although I am not personally convinced.

"The Most High" is a common Old Testament title for God and its use by Luke does not IMO suggest a polemic against Marcion or other 'heretics'. See patheos

Andrew Criddle
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

Not even when where Luke has "the Most High" Marcion has "God"?

https://markusvinzent.blogspot.it/2011/ ... f.html?m=1

Why can't I apply the "argument from polemical reason" about the "Most High" affair just as you have used it about the "envy" affair in the Odes?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
andrewcriddle
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote:Not even when where Luke has "the Most High" Marcion has "God"?

https://markusvinzent.blogspot.it/2011/ ... f.html?m=1

Why can't I apply the "argument from polemical reason" about the "Most High" affair just as you have used it about the "envy" affair in the Odes?
Marcion in Luke 6:35 definitely has sons/children of God instead of sons/children of the most high. in canonical Luke. However in Luke 8:28 Marcion probably read son of God instead of son of the most high God in canonical Luke. I'm not sure of this but the exact title is relevant enough that IF Tertullian is playing fair then he should have mentioned most High if it occurred. Now son of the most high God is almost certainly original being found in Mark Luke's source. (There is a problem that a few manuscripts of canonical Luke read just son of the most high but this is probably homoteleuton.) If I'm right that Marcion omitted most high in Luke 8:28 then he probably changed most High to God in Luke 6:35.

Andrew Criddle

EDITED TO ADD

I'm adding Tertullian on the demoniac in Luke 8 for ease of reference
You suppose that He is predicted as a military and armed warrior, instead of one who in a figurative and allegorical sense was to wage a spiritual warfare against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual weapons: come now, when in one man alone you discover a multitude of demons calling itself Legion, Luke 8:30 of course comprised of spirits, you should learn that Christ also must be understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife; and that it was none other than He, who now had to contend with even a legion of demons. Therefore it is of such a war as this that the Psalm may evidently have spoken: The Lord is strong, The Lord is mighty in battle. For with the last enemy death did He fight, and through the trophy of the cross He triumphed. Now of what God did the Legion testify that Jesus was the Son? Luke 8:28 No doubt, of that God whose torments and abyss they knew and dreaded. It seems impossible for them to have remained up to this time in ignorance of what the power of the recent and unknown god was working in the world, because it is very unlikely that the Creator was ignorant thereof. For if He had been at any time ignorant that there was another god above Himself, He had by this time at all events discovered that there was one at work below His heaven. Now, what their Lord had discovered had by this time become notorious to His entire family within the same world and the same circuit of heaven, in which the strange deity dwelt and acted. As therefore both the Creator and His creatures must have had knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they recollected they must beg of the Creator— not to be plunged into the Creator's abyss. They at last had their request granted. On what ground? Because they had lied? Because they had proclaimed Him to be the Son of a ruthless God? And what sort of god will that be who helped the lying, and upheld his detractors? However, no need of this thought, for, inasmuch as they had not lied, inasmuch as they had acknowledged that the God of the abyss was also their God, so did He actually Himself affirm that He was the same whom these demons acknowledged— Jesus, the Judge and Son of the avenging God.
Giuseppe
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Re: From a dying Christ to Jesus Christ

Post by Giuseppe »

Now son of the most high God is almost certainly original being found in Mark Luke's source.
Ok, but I would like to resolve a question of method. Why do you think that Mark is before Mcn if I can interpret ''son of the most High God'' as an anti-marcionite reaction even in Mark, just as, according to you, ''the repeated reference in the Odes to God being without envy, is directed against Gnostics and/or Marcionites who attributed envy to the world creator'' ?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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