Yes, I know. I was agreeing with you on this. I said so explicitly.
The difference is merely one of perspective: the assumed figure is the Son of God, whereas Melchizedek is described in terms of the Son of God. If you miss this perspective you may miss what is important to the author; this sort of skewed focus is what bedeviled Doherty's interpretations of Hebrews, and he wound up making claims which were directly contradicted by the text on its account.What is the difference, since both are eternal beings?
He was midrashic at Qumran, too. What is he, after all, even here in Hebrews? All of this comes from how he is introduced in Genesis as someone to whom Abraham owed tribute for some reason, and then how he is used in Psalm 110 (OG 109).
I don't think that Melkizedek is a midrashic figure. He was an archangel adored in Qumran, for example.
First, I love your term for this.Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sun Oct 06, 2019 7:36 amThis is an Argument from Snowball: the Christians of today have to accept the entire snowball, not the Christians of yesterday.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Sun Oct 06, 2019 7:26 am Lots of Christians thought and still think both that Jesus was born and that he had no beginning of days. It is impossible; and yet millions believe it.
And I remember thinking much like you before, to the effect that the earliest layers of Christianity had to be simple, and they got more complex only with time. But my thinking was incorrect, because the early Christians did have a snowball which they accepted. They did not start from scratch. They had an entire raft of Jewish speculations to play around with, and the notion, for example, of a divine entity who is also born is found in the Parables of Enoch. Enoch was born; and yet Enoch is somehow the preexistent Son of Man and Anointed One. This weird outlook is probably the result of combining two different perspectives on divinity (manifestation and exaltation), and so is Jesus Christ in early Christianity: the Christ was expected from Judah in many circles (hence his Judahite ancestry in Hebrews), and the Christ was a preexistent being in many overlapping circles (hence his preexistence in Hebrews). The very earliest layers of Christianity are already complex, and that it because it was not a religious novelty.
This sentiment is not in the epistle; you are reading it in from elsewhere:The interpolator wants us believe that Jesus became the new Melkizedek in virtue of the his not-provenance from Levi (but from Judah), just as Melkizedek didn't come from Levi.
Hebrews: Jesus had to be of the order of Melchizedek because he was not from Levi.
Two completely different things.