"The living God"

[rgprice]

Very helpful. What is your opinion about the prospect that traditions originating from the Baal Cycle may have contributed to the development of the concept of Jesus as a son of the Most High God who faced death, was resurrected by his Father and is then enthroned in a battle against Death, whom he will at some point defeat?

[Ben C. Smith]

Very helpful. What is your opinion about the prospect that traditions originating from the Baal Cycle may have contributed to the development of the concept of Jesus as a son of the Most High God who faced death, was resurrected by his Father and is then enthroned in a battle against Death, whom he will at some point defeat?

It seems pretty plausible to me that the kind of drama exemplified by the Ba'al cycle might have had an impact on how the Jesus story was developed. I think I linked you to some comparisons of mine before.

My outstanding questions are (A) how fundamental the Ba'al motif was and (B) how direct the influence might have been. For A, I have toyed quite a lot with the idea that the story of Ba'al and Môt was the actual, original source of the story of Jesus' death and resurrection; however, the issue of B has muted my enthusiasm for such a profound and direct influence, since I find myself basically having to imagine a Yahweh cult involving death and resurrection which is attested only in interpretive flourishes applied to obscure passages. Not that this is impossible; rather, it is simply very hard to demonstrate with any real degree of confidence. This is the main reason I have turned to the Messiah ben Ephraim motif instead: messianic templates were almost certainly patterned after some of those Ancient Near Eastern myth cycles (witness the comparisons between Ba'al and the "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7); such templates are even closer to the Jesus story than the Ba'al cycle is; and they are massively attested. Their only shortfall is that they are attested late for the most part.

My latest, greatest attempts to bridge the lateness gap amount to a recognition that there are different degrees of exegetical finesse when it comes to interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. Some interpretations, made by Christian and rabbinical exegetes alike, are eccentric and forced. Others, however, are quite natural to the text at hand, and are likely to arise simply by reading the text and taking it at face value. The bare idea of various messianic figures being predicted as arising to rescue Israel from its enemies clearly belongs to the latter category. Some of the specifics of what such a messianic figure is supposed to do also belong to that latter category, while other specifics belong to the former. I contend that there are enough specifics in the latter category to justify the idea that early Jewish and Christian exegetes could have formulated the Jesus story, including his death and resurrection, from the scriptural passages which were, whether earlier or later, applied to the Messiah ben Ephraim motif.

This approach undercuts the traditional search for evidence from before the advent of Christianity that the Jews were expecting the Messiah to die. Such direct evidence is not easy to find unless one counts the scriptures themselves as read in the light both of Christian and rabbinical speculations. The rabbis had no problem with disagreeing profoundly with Christians when it came to interpreting the scriptures, and yet, when it came to the bare interpretations of the most important messianic passages, they agree almost completely! They demure only in their denial that the Christian Jesus was that figure. (There is a bit more to this, but it is complicated.) Why is that? I submit that it is because that shared interpretation is one of the most natural interpretations of the scriptures in question. As such, there is no obstacle to the notion that early exegetes were interpreting those scriptures in such a way as to produce the Jesus story. While it is true that there is no direct, unassailable attestation for this, it is equally true that the only alternative that we have which is actually attested is that Jesus actually died and rose again from the dead. The alternative ancient explanations (such as Jewish protests to the effect that the disciples stole the body), if they existed, look to me like reactions to that original story of death and resurrection.

My primary contention, then, is that, if we accept that we do not possess anything derived from genuine eyewitness testimony, whether from friend or from foe, either in the gospel stories at our disposal or in the Jewish and pagan reactions to those stories, then the Messiah ben Ephraim motif is the easiest explanation for the development of those stories. A secondary contention is that, even if there is something going back to eyewitnesses in our gospel stories, whether or not the Messiah ben Ephraim motif remains a viable explanation completely depends on which elements go back that far. In other words, it can still remain the main explanation for the thrust of the story even if certain elements go back to historical events.

I know this got off track. Sorry. But that is my response to the influence that the Ba'al cycle might have had on Christianity. I believe that a lot of messianic motifs were inspired by the Ba'al cycle, and that they are the most likely intermediaries between the Canaanite religion and Christianity.

[rgprice]

Well, the Gospels are entirely out IMO. They are total red herrings. As you know, IMO, the Gospel of Mark is based on a prior story about Paul, in which Jesus takes over the character of Paul.

But that doesn't explain pre-Gospel concepts of Jesus.

I think Margaret Barker is on to something, but she didn't quite get there.

I think one thing that really helps her thesis is Gmirkin's work, which shows that the Torah, and ostensibly the entire Deuteronomistic movement, is much later than was long thought, so instead of having to bridge a gap between the 7th century BCE and the first century, its really a matter of bridging a gap between 4th or 3rd century BCE and the first century.

And if we count the Enoch literature as a part of the non-Deuteronomistic holdover, along with the Wisdom literature, there really isn't such a gap. But I agree, we don't find much else that seems to bridge the gap of Ba'al between the Ugarit texts and Jesus.

The pieces I'm struggling with are these:
1) Philo's Logos
2) The Suffering Servant
3) Yahweh as the Lord and son of El Elyon
4) Ba'al and Mot: death, resurrection and triumph over death

These all seem to be puzzle pieces, but I'm not sure how or if they really fit together and the degree to which one may preclude the others.

A lot of testimony says that Jesus is the Word. But Paul and Hebrews don't say it directly. Jesus looks like the Word.

Philo did NOT equate the Word to the Lord. Later Christians did equate the Lord to the Word. By the second century it was clear that Jesus was the Word and the Word was the Lord. But Paul didn't say this directly. Even if we assume that Paul's concepts about Jesus came indirectly from Philo, how do you get to the crucifixion?

That's where the Suffering Servant comes in. If we can conclude that the Suffering Servant was equated to the Word, then we get to the idea that the Word was crucified. The Word was the servant of God, and the suffering servant was the servant of God. So the various servant passages in Isaiah as well as servant passages from Qumran are one way to get to Jesus, with the servant being equated to the Word.

But, as you show in your link, there are a lot of similarities between the story of Jesus and Ba'al-Mot. But, is that just an entirely different tangent, or can that be part of a "zeitgeist" of ideas that contributed to the Jesus story along with other influences like the Suffering Servant? Or does one preclude the other?

As Barker indicates, there is reason to believe that many Canaanite traditions were being held-over, recollected and re-envisioned within the Jewish community. Enoch, Wisdom, Melchezedeck, etc. appear to be evidence of this. Yahweh appears to have taken over many aspects of Ba'al and elements of his stories.

But what is lacking? Essentially any hint of the Ba'al-Mot story outside of the Ugarit texts? Any association between Yahweh and a conflict with Mot? If it is true that, "The contest between Baʿal and Yam is now seen as the prototype for the vision recorded in the 7th chapter of the Biblical Book of Daniel," then it makes other such prototypes much more plausible as well IMO.

Now its getting late and I'm rambling. Anyway, thanks for the additional thoughts. I'm not sold on Messiah ben Ephraim.

[MrMacSon]

Dunno if this is relevant or even of interest, but here it is, fwiw, -

Bronmer, L (1968) The Stories of Elijah and Elisha as Polemics against Baal Worship (Leiden: E.J. Brill)

[eta: dunno anything about it, just found it in a bibliography]