The bastard bit of Galatians 4:4 read in a new light (thanks to Hoffmann)

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Giuseppe
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The bastard bit of Galatians 4:4 read in a new light (thanks to Hoffmann)

Post by Giuseppe »

Prof Hoffmann is a historicist but I think that he is on something. He thinks that Paul, by saying in Gal 4:4 that Jesus was "born by woman, born under the law", was polemizing against Jewish accusers of Jesus as son of a prostitute.

But the crucial thing for Paul is to dispose of the historically inconvenient tradition that Jesus was born outside the law–a tradition that would have made his entire theological enterprise suspect: Only a victim who was born according to the law could die in accordance with the scriptures. . . .

This almost spasmodic reaching into and beyond history for meaning is one of the more difficult aspects of Paul’s theology, but it seems to me that there is no other explanation for why the “birth” of Jesus intrudes, in just the way it does, into his letter to the Galatians.

Prof Hoffmann in particular considers the gossip about Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom he suspects was really Mary Magdalene.

The basis of this surmise is that:

clues concerning the “multiple Mary” conundrum of the gospels might be found in seeing the confusion as an effort to write around (or write out) the tradition that it was Jesus’ mother rather than a woman acquaintance—Mary Magdalene—who had the scarlet reputation (keeping in view that the floating tradition of the woman taken in adultery, usually assigned to Luke, is unnamed).

https://vridar.org/2012/07/07/hoffmanns ... f-a-woman/

Where Hofmann clearly is in error is on the fact that he thinks that "born by woman, born under the law" is genuine in Paul. Really, apart the obvious anti-Marcionite reason to insert the construct, I think that the proto-Catholic interpolator was inserting "born by woman, born under the law" just in the context of a pauline allegory where appears a woman who resembles Mary Magdalene: the slave Agar. In other terms, it was the Catholic interpolator who was reacting against the Talmudic defamation by inserting "born by woman, born under the law" , and not Paul.

But which is the true origin of the degrading nature of the mother of Jesus?

There is evidence that Mary is allegory of the Wisdom:

...in Jewish legend 'Miriam's Well' was the rock that gave birth to the flow of water after Moses struck it with his staff (noted earlier). Paul equated Jesus with that rock (I Cor. 10.1-4). But if Jesus were equated with the water that flowed from it, the rock would then become his mother. Thus 'Mary's well' would have been Jesus' mother in Paul"s conceptual scheme. Note that in legend, 'Miriam's Well' not only traveled with the Jews, but finally settled in the Sea of Galilee, where it could 'effect magical cures for those who were able to get to it' (Taylor, Jewish Women, pp. 335-36). Philo equated that rock with the celestial being named Wisdom (Life of Moses 1.181-86, 188-90.210-11, 255-57; On Flight and Finding 183-87), which was then considered the feminine dimension of God (Taylor, Jewish Women, p. 336; e.g. 'Miriam is thus associated with an everlasting well which will never dry up', a legend ripe to be paralleled with the mothering of Jesus). Note that 'Miriam's Well' also had symbolic parallels to 'Jacob's Well', and Mark symbolically equated the empty tomb of Jesus with the latter (Carrier. 'Spiritual Body', in Empty Tomb [ed. Price and Lowder], pp. 161, 163): thus his birth and his death were in Mark associated with life-giving wells

(R. Carrier, On the historicity of Jesus, p. 456, my bold)

Now, the Wisdom or Sophia becomes, in the Gnostic myth, the mother of the Demiurge against her will.

Note the parallel Gnostic interpretation of the seven demons who posseded Mary Magdalene: they were the seven archons of the demiurge who mastered her.

There would be evidence that Jesus is called "carpenter" in Nazareth because he is wrongly identified with the Demiurge.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4569#p92141

Prof Hoffmann would argue surely that, since the name of the father of Jesus is not mentioned in Mark, then the fact that Jesus is recognized as "son of Mary" would be an not-so-implicit allusion to the his bastard origin. But he is ignoring that there is also a "bastard" deity: the gnostic Demiurge, the abort (ektroma) of the lost Sophia (Wisdom).

Hence to answer to the question:

which is the true origin of the degrading nature of the mother of Jesus?

...the answer is that the Wisdom had already a bad reputation among the Gnostics for the her capital sin: to give birth to the evil Demiurge. In this sense her condition was so degrading that she was compared to a prostitute.

The legend of Helen saved by Simon Magus from the her condition of prostitute in a bordel of Tyrus refers to the same Myth of the lost Sophia.

Hence, the proto-Catholic interpolator of Gal 4:4 secured the readers that the mother of Jesus was a woman who gave birth to Jesus "under the law" against the Gnostics who preached that the man Jesus, differently from the divine Christ, was a creature of the Demiurge and therefore a "son of Mary", son of the degraded Sophia.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The bastard bit of Galatians 4:4 read in a new light (thanks to Hoffmann)

Post by Giuseppe »

If Jesus was "born by woman (and therefore) born under the Law", then the Creator (who gave birth to the Law) was not "born by woman" (=the "prostitute" Sophia/"Mary") because he couldn't be under the same thing whom he created and gave to man via Moses: the Law.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
andrewcriddle
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Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:36 am

Re: The bastard bit of Galatians 4:4 read in a new light (thanks to Hoffmann)

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 29, 2018 11:58 am Prof Hoffmann is a historicist but I think that he is on something. He thinks that Paul, by saying in Gal 4:4 that Jesus was "born by woman, born under the law", was polemizing against Jewish accusers of Jesus as son of a prostitute.

But the crucial thing for Paul is to dispose of the historically inconvenient tradition that Jesus was born outside the law–a tradition that would have made his entire theological enterprise suspect: Only a victim who was born according to the law could die in accordance with the scriptures. . . .

This almost spasmodic reaching into and beyond history for meaning is one of the more difficult aspects of Paul’s theology, but it seems to me that there is no other explanation for why the “birth” of Jesus intrudes, in just the way it does, into his letter to the Galatians.

Prof Hoffmann in particular considers the gossip about Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom he suspects was really Mary Magdalene.

The basis of this surmise is that:

clues concerning the “multiple Mary” conundrum of the gospels might be found in seeing the confusion as an effort to write around (or write out) the tradition that it was Jesus’ mother rather than a woman acquaintance—Mary Magdalene—who had the scarlet reputation (keeping in view that the floating tradition of the woman taken in adultery, usually assigned to Luke, is unnamed).

https://vridar.org/2012/07/07/hoffmanns ... f-a-woman/

One issue here is that there is no explicit statement in the NT that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. The later tradition involves identifying as the same woman several distinct figures.

Andrew Criddle
Giuseppe
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Re: The bastard bit of Galatians 4:4 read in a new light (thanks to Hoffmann)

Post by Giuseppe »

andrewcriddle wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:50 am One issue here is that there is no explicit statement in the NT that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. The later tradition involves identifying as the same woman several distinct figures.

Andrew Criddle
Someone has seen a similarity between the possession by seven demons of Mary Magdalene, the woman who had seven husbands in the riddle raised by the sadducees (Mark 12:18-27) and the Samaritan woman with seven husbands in the fourth Gospel.

The number seven in any case refers to Gentiles and therefore to a sensuous world by definition. For a woman, what could be more sensuous than the condition of prostitution?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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