Subject: How Does Christianity Work?
I honestly don't see anything to debate here. We cannot jump from a praying position and a tree -- the most commonplace of religious imagery -- to a historical crucifixion unless we ourselves are allegorizing, or simply assuming a Christian context without justification, as Charlesworth and Lattke do.
Subject: How Does Christianity Work?
Folks i agree getting an crucifixion reference from the Odes is tricky
I have long been wary of reading a crucifixion reference into the Odes. The description, on its face, seems to be comparing the
orans position for prayer to a tree:
Odes of Solomon 27.1-3: 1
I stretched out my hands and sanctified my Lord, 2 for
the extension of my hands is His sign, 3 and my expansion is the upright
tree.
Odes of Solomon 42.1-6: 1
I stretched out my hands and approached my Lord, 2 for
the stretching of my hands is His sign. 2 My expansion is the outspread
tree which was set up on the way of the Righteous One. 4 And I became of no account to those who did not take hold of me and I shall be with those who love me. 5 All my persecutors are dead; and they sought after me who hoped in me, because I was alive. 6 And I rose up and am with them; and I will speak by their mouths.
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There is a collocation of elements in these two Odes which merits attention:
- I stretched out my hands (A)....
- ...and sanctified my Lord (B)....
- ...for the extension of my hands is His sign (C)....
- ...and my expansion is the upright tree (D).
These four elements appear in overtly Christian texts in various combinations:
Barnabas 12.1-4: 1 In a similar way he makes another declaration about the cross in another prophet, who says, “‘When will these things be fulfilled?’ says the Lord. ‘When a tree falls and rises up, and when blood flows from a tree [ὅταν ξύλον κλιθῇ καὶ ἀναστῇ, καὶ ὅταν ἐκ ξύλου αἷμα στάξῃ]’ (D) (= 4 Ezra 4.33; 5.5).” Again you have a message about the cross [περὶ τοῦ σταυροῦ] (D) and the one who was about to be crucified. 2 And he again tells Moses, when Israel was attacked by a foreign people, to remind those under assault that they were being handed over to death because of their sins. The Spirit speaks to the heart of Moses that he should make a type of the cross (C) and of the one who was about to suffer, that they might realize, he says, that if they refused to hope in him, they would be attacked forever. And so Moses stacked weapons one on the other in the midst of the battle, and standing high above all the people he stretched out his hands [ἐξέτεινεν τὰς χεῖρας] (A); and so Israel again gained the victory. But then, when he lowered his hands, they began to be killed (= Exodus 17.8-13). 3 Why was that? So that they may know that they cannot be saved unless they hope in him. 4 And again in another prophet he says, “All day long I have opened up my hands [διεπέτασα τὰς χεῖράς μου] to a disobedient people that opposes my upright path” (= Isaiah 65.2).
Sibylline Oracles 5.255-258: 255-258 Then there shall come from the sky a certain / Exalted man (B) whose hands he spread out (A) upon the fruitful tree [ξύλου] (D), / The noblest of the Hebrews who caused the sun to stand still / When he cries with fair speech and pure lips.
Hippolytus, On the Antichrist 61, lines 1-31: 1-31 By the woman then clothed with the sun, he meant most manifestly the Church, endued with the Father’s word, whose brightness is above the sun. And by the moon under her feet he referred to her being adorned like the moon with heavenly glory. And the words, “Upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (= Revelation 12.1), refer to the Twelve Apostles by whom the Church was founded. And those, she, being with child, cries, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered, mean that the Church will not cease to bear from her heart the Word that is persecuted by the unbelieving in the world. “And she brought forth,” he says, “a Son, a male, who is to rule all the nations” (= Revelation 12.5), by which is meant that the Church, always bringing forth Christ, the perfect Son, a male, of God, who is declared to be God and man, becomes the instructor of all the nations. And the words, “Her child was caught up unto God and to His throne” (= Revelation 12.5), signify that He who is always born of her is a heavenly King, and not an earthly one, even as David also declared of old when he said, “The Lord said to my Lord (B), ‘Sit at my right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool’ (= Psalm 110.1).” “And the dragon,” he says, “saw and persecuted the woman which brought forth the male. And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, so that she might fly into the wilderness, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent” (= Revelation 12.14-15). That refers to the “one thousand two hundred and sixty days” (= Revelation 12.6), the half of the week, during which the tyrant is to reign and persecute the Church, which flees “from city to city” (= Matthew 10.23; 23.34) and seeks concealment in the wilderness among the mountains, possessed of no other defense than the two wings of the great eagle, that is to say, the faith of Jesus Christ, who, having stretched forth His holy hands [ἐκτείνας τὰς ἁγίας χεῖρας] (A) upon the tree [ἐπὶ τῷ ξύλῳ] (D), unfolded two wings, the right and the left, and called to Him all who believed upon Him, and covered them as a hen her chickens. For by the mouth of Malachi also He speaks thus, “And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings” (= Malachi 4.2).
Minucius Felix, Octavius 29: 29 Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it. We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched (A). Thus the sign (C) of the cross (D) either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.
Tertullian, On Prayer 14[.1]: 1 Though Israel wash every day, in all his members, yet is he never clean. His hands at all events are always unclean, crusted over for ever with the blood of the prophets and of the Lord himself: and therefore being, through consciousness of their fathers’ guilt, criminals by inheritance, they dare not lift them up to the Lord, lest some Isaiah cry out, lest Christ be horrified. We however not only lift them up, but also spread them out (A), and, modulating them by the Lord’s B passion (D), in our prayers also express our faith in Christ[/u]. / 1 Omnibus licet membris lauet quotidie Israel, nunquam tamen mundus est. Certe manus eius semper immundae, sanguine prophetarum et ipsius Domini incrustatae in aeternum; et ideo conscientia patrum haereditarii rei nec attollere eas ad Dominum audent, ne exclamet aliquis Esaias, ne exhorreat Christus. Nos uero non attollimus tantum, sed etiam expandimus et dominica passione modula<ta>, tum et orantes confitemur Christo.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes 4.26: Nor ought any one to be ignorant of this, that He Himself, speaking before of His passion, also made it known that He had the power, when He willed it, of laying down His life and of taking it again. Therefore, because He had laid down His life while fastened to the cross, His executioners did not think it necessary to break His bones, as was their prevailing custom, but they only pierced His side. Thus His unbroken body was taken down from the cross, and carefully enclosed in a tomb. Now all these things were done lest His body, being injured and broken, should be rendered unsuitable for rising again. That also was a principal cause why God chose the cross, because it was necessary that He should be lifted up on it, and the passion of God become known to all nations. For since he who is suspended upon a cross is both conspicuous to all and higher than others, the cross was especially chosen, which might signify that He would be so conspicuous, and so raised on high, that all nations from the whole world should meet together at once to know and worship Him. Lastly, no nation is so uncivilized, no region so remote, to which either His passion or the height of His majesty would be unknown. Therefore in His passion He stretched forth His hands [extendit ergo in passione manus suas] (A, D) and measured out the world, that even then He might show that a great multitude, collected together out of all languages and tribes, from the rising of the sun even to his setting, was about to come under His wings, and to receive on their foreheads that great and lofty sign (C). And the Jews even now exhibit a figure of this transaction when they mark their thresholds with the blood of a lamb. For when God was about to smite the Egyptians, to secure the Hebrews from that infliction He had enjoined them to slay a white lamb without spot, and to place on their thresholds a mark from its blood. And thus, when the first-born of the Egyptians had perished in one night, the Hebrews alone were saved by the sign of the blood: not that the blood of a sheep had such efficacy in itself as to be the safety of men, but it was an image of things to come. For Christ was the white lamb without spot; that is, He was innocent, and just, and holy, who, being slain by the same Jews, is the salvation of all who have written on their foreheads the sign of blood — that is, of the cross, on which He shed His blood. For the forehead is the top of the threshold in man, and the wood sprinkled with blood is the emblem of the cross. Lastly, the slaying of the lamb by those very persons who perform it is called the Paschal feast [Pascha nominatur], from paschein [ἀπὸ τοῦ πάσχειν], because it is a figure of the passion, which God, foreknowing the future, delivered by Moses to be celebrated by His people. But at that time the figure was efficacious at the present for averting the danger, that it may appear what great efficacy the truth itself is about to have for the protection of God’s people in the extreme necessity of the whole world. But in what manner or in what region all will be safe who have marked on the highest part of their body this sign of the true and divine blood, I will show in the last book.
I have underlined references to a cross as well as to a tree above, not in order to prejudice the outcome, but rather because the Christian vocabulary was quite comfortable with describing the cross as a tree:
Galatians 3.13: 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us -- for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree [ξύλου]."
1 Peter 2.24: 24 He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree [ξύλον], that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
Acts 5.30: 30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a tree [ξύλου].
Acts 10.39: 39 And we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And they also put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree [ξύλου].
Acts 13.29: 29 And when they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the tree [ξύλου] and laid Him in a tomb.
Barnabas 8.5: 5 Then there is the placing the wool on the tree [ξύλον]. This means that the kingdom of Jesus is on the tree [ξύλου], and that they who set their hope on Him shall live for ever.
Whether the same should be the case for our Odist is exactly the matter at hand.
If it were not for these references comparing a worship position to the death of Jesus on the cross, the above list not intended to be exhaustive, I would look at Odes 27 and 42 and simply say, "Okay, this is a person worshiping his or her Lord in a position that objectively resembles a tree." As Irish1975 correctly observes, praying postures and trees are both common enough as religious tropes.
But can the same be said of this particular
collocation of motifs? The outstretched hands, them being a sign specifically of the Lord, the image of the tree.... In what kind and how many contexts can those ideas be found put together like this?
Not a rhetorical question; I am interested in the precedents because I have been working with the idea of the Odes being very early and even formative for Christianity for a long time now, and these ideas coming together in this seemingly stereotyped way bears explaining. I have toyed with the worship position, for example, actually having led to the idea of the crucifixion of Jesus in the first place (in the same way that I have toyed with the dove in Ode 24 having led to the idea of the dove descending at the baptism of Jesus); in such a case Odes 27 and 42 would definitely be related to all of those Christian passages, but as
source rather than as
peer. That the entire crucifixion itself should derive from a worship position, however, is something that would have to be fleshed out; also, the Odes are, by their very nature, very difficult to date (both collectively and individually, which is where things can
really get messy), so it is hard to demonstrate by
external means that the Odes are the fount and not part of the stream.
If there is a pagan or Jewish or some other description of the
orans posture in terms of both a tree and a sign, that would be most welcome. Or, if there is a clear, cogent way to explain the relationship of Odes 27 and 42 to those similar Christian texts in a way that does not lump them in as just another example of the same motif, that too would be most welcome.
ETA: From
Andrew Criddle:
Untitled Text 2: 2 .... And the word which comes from his mouth penetrates what is above and below. And the hair of his head is the number of the hidden worlds, and the boundary of his face is the image of the aeons. The hairs of his face are the number of the outer worlds. And the stretching out of his hands is the manifestation of the cross. The stretching out of the cross is the ennead on the right side and on the left. The sprouting of the cross is the incomprehensible man. This is the Father. This is the source which wells up from the silence. This is he who is sought in every place. ....
