Jesus as Logos or 'mediator'

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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nightshadetwine
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Jesus as Logos or 'mediator'

Post by nightshadetwine »

One of the main 'motifs' or concepts associated with Jesus is that of a mediator between god or the divine and humanity. This concept is related to the Logos, Wisdom/Maat(as found in Hebrew and Egyptian religion), the dying and resurrecting savior, and the king/messiah. These are all mediators between the divine and humanity. Since Jesus is being portrayed as the mediator in the NT he shares similarities with or encompasses all of these concepts. In other words, the concepts and motifs associated with Jesus have a long pre-Christian history.

"Some Notes on Biblical and Egyptian Theology", John Strange in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford edited by Gary N. Knoppers(Brill Academic Pub, May 2004)
A good part of Donald Redford's work has been dedicated to investigate the interrelationship between Egypt and the Levant, already in his penetrating work "A study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50)" from 1970 and culminating in his major book "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times" from 1992 in which a synthesis of the extant information is given to us. Here he has with erudition and imagination done a great service to all of us, especially to people with only a limited knowledge of the Egyptian language and the Egyptian historical sources, by showing, how intense these interrelations really were. One of the areas dealt with in his book has--of course because of its importance for Christian theology and European culture--been investigated before, the impact of Egyptian thought on the Bible. The following notes are a modest contribution to understand how profoundly Egyptian theology, especially creation theology, has influenced Jewish and Christian theology...

After the Babylonian conquest there was a considerable exodus from Judah to Egypt (2 Kgs 25:26; Jer 42-43), the beginning of the later Egyptian diaspora of the Jewish people. From this time we should expect a massive Egyptian influence on Jewish religion, especially in the Hellenistic and Roman periods where we may also find indirect influence via the Greek philosophy, as we find it in Philo of Alexandria (see e.g., Fruchtel 1968). The greatest monument of this influence from Hellenistic culture is of course the Septuagint, created in Egypt in the third-second centuries B.C....

In Wisdom Literature the Egyptian influence has long been pointed out. A well known example is, if course, the parallels in Prov 22: 17-24:22 to Wisdom of Amenemope. There, the similarity is so close that we undoubtedly have a direct borrowing. And this borrowing from Egyptian wisdom is not superficial, as can be seen in Proverbs 1-9, in which a long praise of Lady Wisdom culminates in her own speech (chapter 8). She says that she is created as a kind of goddess, the firstborn of creation, and herself a collaborator in creation... The personification of wisdom is also found in Job 28, Sir 24:1-22, obviously partly modeled on Proverbs; Wis 7:7-9:18...

It is impossible not to think of the goddess Ma'at and Egyptian concepts of wisdom...

Since Frankfort wrote "Kingship and the Gods" (Frankfort 1948), there has been discussion on whether the Israelite kingship took its model from Egypt where the king was God incarnate, or from Mesopotamia where the king was God's adopted son...

In the temple of Jerusalem which was part of the royal palace and which was certainly preexilic, as it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. we find, however, evidence that the royal ideology in Jerusalem was derived primarily from Egypt and not from Mesopotamia, corroborating the view that the king was the physical son of Yahweh and not adopted.

And this, in combination with the two quotes from Psalm 2 and 110, discussed above, shows, how much Egyptian ideas of divine kingship have influenced the faith of Israel in the preexilic period, and later Jewish and Christian beliefs in Messiah and Christ.

The most profound influence from Egyptian theology on Biblical and Christian theology is to be found in creation theology...

But in the creation story of Gen 1:1-2:4 (see in general Notter 1974) we find what amounts to such a close similarity to Memphite creation theology as expressed in the Shabaka-stele that in my opinion can be explained only by direct loan...

Already Breasted saw that the Shabaka-text contained a conception of the world and its creation which was the root of the later Greek notions of "nous" and "logos," and that "the Greek tradition of the origin of their philosophy in Egypt undoubtedly contains more of truth than has in recent years been conceded," and that "the habit... of interpreting philosophically the functions and relations of the Egyptian Gods... had already begun in Egypt" (Breasted 1901:54). This has been taken up in the penetrating and profound investigation by Erik Iversen: "Egyptian and Hermetic Doctrine" (1984). There the author, in a comparison between the text of the Shabaka-stele and key notions in the Hermetic literature, has demonstrated how the Hermetic literature is associated "with genuine and well-established Egyptian concepts and notions" and that "it seems hardly just... to discard or mistrust outright the unanimous statements of all Greek writers on Egypt, that although translated into philosophical terms their accounts of Egyptian philosophy and religious doctrine were to the best of their conviction fair renderings of them" (Iverson 1984:54)...

Now there are a number of striking similarities between some statements in the prologue[of gJohn] and passages in wisdom literature. Dodd (1953:274-75) demonstrates that "while the Logos of the prologue has many of the traits of the Word of God in the Old Testament, it is on the other side a concept closely similar to that of Wisdom, that is to say, the hypostatized thought of God projected into creation".

Finally, by making the creative word of God incarnate in Messiah, "the Son of God who was to come" (John 11:27), the Son of David, and the King of Israel, John in his prologue links the royal ideology from the Old Testament to the New Testament Christ, and we find a combination of royal ideology and creation theology. Christ is king and creator, like the kings from the temple in Jerusalem and like the Kings in Egypt. There is thus a nexus between the creation theology of Egypt, the legacy in Hellenism expressed in the Hermetic literature and Philo of Alexandria, and in the Bible, both in the creation story of Genesis and in the latest gospel, the Gospel of John.
Wisdom in Proverbs 8:
The Lord created me the beginnings of his works,
before all else that he made, long ago.
Alone I was fashioned in times long past,
At the beginning, long before earth itself.
When there was yet no ocean I was born,
No springs brimming with water.
The Invention of God, Thomas Romer
Another way of compensating for the disappearance of the goddess is the personification of wisdom... In Proverbs 8, Wisdom herself speaks, presenting herself as a goddess who was at the side of Yhwh even before the creation of the world... Wisdom appears here as a daughter of Yhwh, begotten by him during the creation of the universe; to some extant she is a mediatrix between Yhwh and men.
The Egyptian Maat:

The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, David Leeming
Maat might be seen as a principle analogous to the Logos, divine reason and order. As Christians are told "In the beginning the Word[Logos] already was"(John 1:1), Atum announces that before creation, "when the heavens were asleep, my daughter Maat lived within me and around me."
Romer, T.C., 2013, ‘Yhwh, the Goddess and Evil: Is “monotheism” an adequate concept to describe the Hebrew Bible’s discourses about the God of Israel?’, Verbum et Ecclesia 34(2), Art. #841, 5 pages.
Another evolution is the personification of ‘wisdom’ in the first chapters of the book of Proverbs. In Proverbs 8, Hokmah presents herself in the same way as does Yhwh (and the other gods). She is said to have been created by Yhwh in the beginning (Pr 8:22), but she precedes the creation of the world; she is even presented as Yhwh’s craftswoman. This is a possible translation of Proverbs 8:30: ‘I was beside him as a craftsman’. The fact that the vocalization ??? is unusual and that the word is masculine has led to variants in manuscripts and translations, like ‘little child’ or ‘constantly’. But the idea of a goddess who assists the creator God, makes sense and reminds of the Egyptian couple Ra and Maat.
http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10618-memra
MEMRA (= "Ma'amar" or "Dibbur," "Logos"):

"The Word," in the sense of the creative or directive word or speech of God manifesting His power in the world of matter or mind; a term used especially in the Targum as a substitute for "the Lord" when an anthropomorphic expression is to be avoided...

Mediatorship.

Like the Shekinah (comp. Targ. Num. xxiii. 21), the Memra is accordingly the manifestation of God. "The Memra brings Israel nigh unto God and sits on His throne receiving the prayers of Israel" (Targ. Yer. to Deut. iv. 7). It shielded Noah from the flood (Targ. Yer. to Gen. vii. 16) and brought about the dispersion of the seventy nations (l.c. xi. 8); it is the guardian of Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 20-21, xxxv. 3) and of Israel (Targ. Yer. to Ex. xii. 23, 29); it works all the wonders in Egypt (l.c. xiii. 8, xiv. 25); hardens the heart of Pharaoh (l.c. xiii. 15); goes before Israel in the wilderness (Targ. Yer. to Ex. xx. 1); blesses Israel (Targ. Yer. to Num. xxiii. 8); battles for the people (Targ. Josh. iii. 7, x. 14, xxiii. 3)...

The Logos

It is difficult to say how far the rabbinical concept of the Memra, which is used now as a parallel to the divine Wisdom and again as a parallel to the Shekinah, had come under the influence of the Greek term "Logos," which denotes both word and reason, and, perhaps owing to Egyptian mythological notions, assumed in the philosophical system of Heraclitos, of Plato, and of the Stoa the metaphysical meaning of world-constructive and world-permeating intelligence. The Memra as a cosmic power furnished Philo the corner-stone upon which he built his peculiar semi-Jewish philosophy. Philo's "divine thought," "the image" and "first-born son" of God, "the archpriest," "intercessor," and "paraclete" of humanity, the "arch type of man" (see Philo), paved the way for the Christian conceptions of the Incarnation ("the Word become flesh") and the Trinity.
The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson
The text alludes to the Heliopolitan creation account centered on the god Atum, but goes on to claim that the Memphite god Ptah preceded the sun god and that it was Ptah who created Atum and ultimately the other gods and all else 'through his heart and through his tongue'. The expression alludes to the conscious planning of creation and it's execution through rational thought and speech, and this story of creation ex nihilo as attributed to Ptah by the priests of Memphis is the earliest known example of the so-called 'logos' doctrine in which the world is formed through a god's creative speech...It lies before, and in line with, the philosophical concepts found in the Hebrew Bible where 'God said, let there be light, and there was light'(Genesis 1:3), and the Christian scriptures which state that 'In the beginning was the word[logos]...and the word was God...all things were made by him...'(John 1:1,3).
Last edited by nightshadetwine on Sun May 19, 2019 11:25 am, edited 2 times in total.
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus as Logos or 'mediator'

Post by nightshadetwine »

Dying and resurrecting savior as mediator:

Euripides Bacchae Translated by Ian Johnston
I’ve arrived here in the land of Thebes,
I, Dionysus, son of Zeus, born to him
from Semele, Cadmus’ daughter, delivered
by a fiery midwife—Zeus’ lightning flash.(1)
Yes, I’ve changed my form from god to human,
appearing here at these streams of Dirce,
the waters of Ismarus.
The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides, Dennis R. MacDonald
MacDonald observes that the Fourth Gospel sounds themes proper to the Greek god Dionysos (the Roman Bacchus), not least as he was depicted in Euripides’s play The Bacchae. A divine figure, offspring of a divine father and human mother, takes on flesh to live among mortals, but is rejected by his own; miraculously provides wine; includes women as his close devotees; dies a violent death—and returns to life.
The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations by Jan Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
...Dionysos and Persephone, who, in spite of being immortals, suffer some events
which can be interpreted as death and resurrection in tales in which human beings
participate in one way or another. Both gods act as mediators who grant the initiates
salvation and divinization. The initiates hope to be identified with Dionysos after
death...
Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets By Fritz Graf, Sarah Iles Johnston
The motive for the Titans’ actions is also important in this respect: all of our sources agree that they killed Dionysus because they envied his rise to cosmic power...Like his father, he is destined to usher in the next, even greater phase of cosmic history, but unlike his father, he falls prey to the titans...the unfulfilled promise of his truncated kingship glimmers behind the different role he takes on, once he is reborn, as a mediator between the world of the living and that of the dead.
Osiris(also a resurrecting savior and king) is the Logos according to Plutarch:

The Gospel of Thomas and Plato : A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel By Ivan Miroshnikov
The double role of Plutarch's Osiris is determined by his intermediary status: in order to act as an intermediary between the transcendent God and the world, he needs to participate in both transcendence and immanence. The very same double role is ascribed to Logos in Philo: according to Mos. 2.127, the cosmic Logos deals with both "the incorporeal and paradigmatic forms" and the visible objects that imitate these forms. The fact that Philo's Logos and Plutarch's Osiris are functionally identical and that Osiris can also be called Logos demonstrates that Philo's philosophy of Logos was part of a larger Middle Platonist tradition and that this tradition as a whole should be recognized as a possible background for the Johannine Logos.
The king as mediator and logos:

God's Wife, God's Servant: The God's Wife of Amun (ca.740–525 BC), Mariam F. Ayad
...a union with the king's mother and the supreme deity imbued the future king with his divine nature. It was precisely this divine nature that enabled an Egyptian king to serve as a mediator between mankind and the gods. Temple scene representing the king's divine conception and birth are known from the reigns of Queen Hatshepsut(c. 1479/73-1458/57 BC) and Amenhotep III(c. 1390-1352 BC)
Assessing representations of the imperial cult in New Testament studies, Pieter J J Botha
The reorganisation of the cultus over which Augustus and his successors were to hold power as pontifex maximus and as divi filius made the imperial ruler the mediator of metaphysical order and thereby peace.
Temples of Ancient Egypt Edited by Byron E Shafer
The royal ka was the immortal creative spirit of divine kingship, a form of the Creator's collective ka. The ka of a particular king was but a specific instance, or fragment, of the royal ka...Possessing the royal ka and being possessed by it were potential at a person's birth, but they were actualized only at his coronation, when his legitimancy upon the Horus Throne of the Living was confirmed and publicly claimed. Only at a person's coronation did he take on a divine aspect and cease to be solely human. Only in retrospect could he be portrayed as predestined by the Creator to rule Egypt as truly perfect from the beginning, as divine seed, son of the Creator, the very flesh of god, one with the Father, god's incarnation on earth, his sacred image...
The Logos in Plato:

Plato, Republic 508a
Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say...

And this is whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation
to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind.
Re as logos in Egyptian religion:

"Amun and Amun-Re" by Vincent A Tobin in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Volume 1
During the New Kingdom, the theology of Amun-Re at Thebes became very complex. His position as king of the gods increased to a point that approached monotheism. In Amun-Re's most advanced theological expressions, the other gods became symbols of his power or manifestations of him- he himself being the one and only supreme divine power. This absolute supremacy of Amun-Re was eloquently expressed in the sun hymns found in the eighteenth dynasty tombs at Thebes. As Amun, he was secret, hidden, and mysterious; but as Re, he was visible and revealed. Although for centuries Egyptian religion had been flexible and open to contradictory mythological expressions, the Theban theology of Amun-Re came close to establishing a standard of orthodoxy in doctrine.
Last edited by nightshadetwine on Sun May 19, 2019 11:09 am, edited 3 times in total.
Giuseppe
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Re: Jesus as Logos or 'mediator'

Post by Giuseppe »

The discussion about the god as mediator is boring if it is not specified how the mediation works truly according to the different theologies. For example:


For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

(John 3:17)

The verse is so simple if interpreted according to the usual judaizing exegesis (simple expiatory sacrifice, etc) that it appears too much simplicist. Fortunately there is another explanation:
John 3:17 Interpretation

For God did not send his Son into the world

The Good God allowed that the his Son was killed by the archons of the demiurge to create the material world

to condemn the world

he is not the Jewish Messiah

, but to save the world through him

this is not sacrifice expiatory by true shedding of blood etc. The disiepta membra of the Son sown in the world of the demiurge serve to save the Gnostic elite only once these divine photons are discovered inside the soul of any Gnostic elect. The Gospel Jesus is a revealer not a redeemer.

Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
nightshadetwine
Posts: 253
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:35 am

Re: Jesus as Logos or 'mediator'

Post by nightshadetwine »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun May 19, 2019 11:01 am The discussion about the god as mediator is boring if it is not specified how the mediation works truly according to the different theologies.
That's the thing, the mediator is pretty much the same in all of these theologies. I think this is the problem. People/scholars are making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. It's very simple to see that Jesus as portrayed in the NT is just a continuation of the savior/king/logos or divine mediator. There's no mystery about where the early Christians got these concepts that they associated with Jesus(whether you think he's historical or not). These concepts are found throughout ANE and Greco-Roman religion.
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