Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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rgprice wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:43 pm
The reason and point of the vision would be to show that God had conquered death through his beloved and all demonic powers fell down and worshiped him, and the Beloved. The salvation of the visionary faithful is assured. No more struggle. That's the vision -- a message of total victory.
Maybe this is getting somewhere.
You will not want to miss the first item Norelli cites here:
  • FLUSSER, D. “The Apocryphal Book of ‘Ascensio Isaiae’ and the Dead Sea Sect.” Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 1953, pp. 30–47, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27924503.
also available at. https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/27924503
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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For the sake of having more than a link to an offsite article here is Flusser's table setting out the points of comparison. It is only a bare bones outline -- I see it does not alert readers to the wilderness link in the book of Isaiah itself, for example:


DSS-AI - Flusser.jpg
DSS-AI - Flusser.jpg (180.09 KiB) Viewed 2306 times
The article itself:
  • FLUSSER, D. “The Apocryphal Book of ‘Ascensio Isaiae’ and the Dead Sea Sect.” Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 1953, pp. 30–47, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27924503.
also available at https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/27924503
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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I must add that Norelli has doubts about any of the AI being a Judaistic writing and prefers to argue for it being entirely Christian, with the elements that look like they come from Jewish literature being midrashic creations of the Christians, similar, I suppose, to the gospels and their "midrashic" rewritings of the OT.
rgprice
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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MrMacSon wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 10:13 pm What makes you think there's church authorities involved? ie. Christian church authorities
While I also see 3:21 to 3:31 as talking about later church struggle, I think this is a good question. Can those passages also be seen as relating to events leading up to the First Jewish-Roman War or some other Jewish matter? Again, the language sounds much more like Qumranic literature than most other Christian literature, so I think these are good types of questions to ask. But, as I said, I still agree that this is most likely talking about later Christian disputes.
rgprice
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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The article by Flusser made a lot of sense to me. Do you see Flusser's interpretation of AI and Norelli's interpretation as incompatible? I would think that they are.

Does Norelli address similarities between AI or VI and Qumranic literature?
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MrMacSon
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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rgprice wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:02 am
MrMacSon wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 10:13 pm What makes you think there's church authorities involved? ie. Christian church authorities
While I also see 3:21 to 3:31 as talking about later church struggle, I think this is a good question. Can those passages also be seen as relating to events leading up to the First Jewish-Roman War or some other Jewish matter? Again, the language sounds much more like Qumranic literature than most other Christian literature, so I think these are good types of questions to ask. But, as I said, I still agree that this is most likely talking about later Christian disputes.
Cheers. I think they could be talking about disputes in any number of situations in those theologically turbulent times

See this article-chapter for a discussion of the relevance of the Jewish Apocrypha, aka the Pseudepigrapha, for canon and reception history in Christian as well as Jewish history: https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10 ... 689643-e-1 -

.
... we need to deal with the relation between the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint and other Greek witnesses, and the New Testament. We also need so deal with apocalypticism; wisdom literature; the relevance of the Apocrypha for canon and reception history; and the Apocrypha in Christian and Jewish history ...

... we can, however, find evidence that at least some of the Apocrypha were indeed of impact for several New Testament writings (see Chapter 3 and 4 of this volume). The same can be said about the Apostolic Fathers, some pieces of Early Christian Apocrypha and, of course, many later authors ...
.

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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rgprice wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 10:17 am Do you see Flusser's interpretation of AI and Norelli's interpretation as incompatible? . . .

Does Norelli address similarities between AI or VI and Qumranic literature?
Norelli acknowledges the plausibility of the Qumran influence. He says that a group influenced by Qumranic ideas joining themselves to the AI visionaries in between the time of the writing of the Vision and the Martrydom is not unthinkable especially given that the two texts are starkly divergent in theology. Norelli does not draw any comparison with the Q thesis, but his analysis reminds me of Kloppenborg's observation that Q1's wisdom sayings is quite unlike Q3's apocalyptic denunciations.

He does acknowledge the similarities: the dualism, the demonology, etc and generally adds the possibility of Qumran influence in each step of his analysis of the background to the AI. But he also cites arguments against Flusser. These are not in English and I have only just now been able to locate them so give me a little moment to post them here.
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

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Norelli refers to Valentin Nikiprowetzky's response [at https://www.persee.fr/doc/rjuiv_0484-86 ... 128_1_1619] to Flusser's case for the Martyrdom of Isaiah in AI being an account of a Dead Sea sect. The full article is at Here is a translation of the relevant section:
The first of these studies, by M. Philonenko, is entitled: "The Martyrdom of Isaiah and the History of the Qumran Sect".

The Martyrdom of Isaiah is a Jewish pseudepigrapha incorporated into the Ascension of Isaiah, a Christian work of which it constitutes chapters I, l-2a; 6b-13a; II, 1-8, 10-III, 12; V, le, 14. It tells of the flight from Jerusalem of the prophet Isaiah and his disciples, when King Manasseh, under the rule of Beliar, filled the Holy City with all kinds of idolatries and crimes. Isaiah first tried to settle in Bethlehem, but the iniquity there forced him to withdraw to the desert. A false prophet from Samaria, Belkïra, who had settled in Jerusalem, denounced the prophet to King Manasseh, who had him arrested and sawn in two. Before dying, Isaiah orders his disciples to take refuge in Tyre and Sidon.

Following D. Flusser, M. Philonenko thinks that the midrash of which we have just proposed a summary, reflects "a precise historical reality, that of the sect of Qumran and its founder" (p. 3). According to Philonenko, Isaiah is none other than the Teacher of Righteousness himself; his followers, the sect of Qumran; Manasseh, Aristobulus II, and Belkirâ, his enemy brother, Hyrcan II, who joined him in persecuting the Teacher of Righteousness and perhaps in having him assassinated in Damascus. The Samaritan origin which the Pseudepigrapha attributes to Belkïrâ is explained, the author thinks, if one refers to the Commentary of Nahum found in cave 4 at Qumran and in which the two adversaries of the Teacher of Righteousness, Hyrcan II and Aristobulus II, are respectively designated by the names of Ephraïm and Manasseh. As for the mention of Tyre and Sidon, M. Philonenko thinks, with D. Flusser, that the author of the Pseudepigrapha, "as a virtuoso of the Essene parsha" (p. 5), may have wanted to designate here in a cryptic way the "country of Damascus". However, if the martyrdom of the Teacher of Righteousness took place in Damascus, Tyre and Sidon would be understood literally and the Martyrdom of Isaiah would document a phase in the history of the sect subsequent to the exile from Damascus. "After the death of the Teacher, his disciples, already refugees in Damascus, would have fled to Tyre and Sidon" (p. 6, n. 2).

What can we think of such an interpretation? It seems to us to be based on a questionable assimilation: "The Martyrdom - writes M. Philonenko - is very similar to the technique of the Qumranian 'Commentaries'. The author likes to designate the person only by allusions. These allusions, however sibylline, were made to be understood, and one can often pierce them" (p. 3).

This procedure is characteristic of Jewish apocalyptic literature - all apocalyptic literature, in fact, and not only the Qumran Commentaries - but when one refers to the Commentary of Nahum to which the author refers to justify his assertion, one realizes that the Qumran pesher uses a procedure that is diametrically opposed to the one that the author attributes to the editor of the Martyrdom of Isaiah. Indeed, the ordinary approach of the pesher consists in interpreting a scriptural text by applying it to current events, so as to show that a given historical situation is in conformity with Scripture and prophecies. It is a way of understanding the present and of reassuring oneself that the eschatological drama is going well.

It is true that the Qumranian commentator sometimes uses agreed language and technical terms - in short, a kind of "slang" - peculiar to the sect. The expressions or sobriquets of "Vatican of Lies", "Ephraim" or "Manasseh" do not belong to the biblical lemma commented on, but if they seem enigmatic to us, they were not enigmatic at all for the readers to whom this literature was addressed. They made it possible to clarify - for internal use - a prophetic oracle of obscure meaning. The pesher brought back to the biblical text almost always, as has been said, events of the present, often events to come, more rarely events of the past (as in 1 Qp. Hab., 11, 4-6) which it was then and always a question of linking to the plot of the drama predicted by the oracles. In short, weighing was inseparable from prophecy. It was at the same time the auxiliary and the prolongation of it. It was a prophecy by refraction that opened up to the inspired exegete perspectives on the future, until the end of time. Apart from Qumran, apocalyptic literature is also marked by this prophetic character in the second degree which is in fact essential to it. The past is evoked as an ex eventu prophecy only in relation to an eschatological future that is felt to be more or less imminent. It happens then that the protagonists of great events ready to manifest themselves are voluntarily presented in an anonymous and enigmatic way or even affixed with what seems to be a sobriquet, as in the biblical book of Daniel or as Taxo of the tribe of Levi in the Assumption of Moses, IX. But one always remains within the framework and perspectives of prophecy.

Nothing of the sort, on the contrary, with the midrash, as M. Philonenko himself calls it, the Martyrdom of Isaiah. The story is presented as the relation of facts belonging entirely to the past and apparently having no bearing either on the present or on the future. It is hagiography or golden legend, not prophecy. Or, to put it in Qumranian terms, it should be classified, if its Essene origin were proven, not in the pesharîm section of Qumran, but in that of which a text such as the Apocrypha of Genesis falls under. Now, apart from Bat-Enosh, wife of Lamech, whose name does not appear in the Bible, but comes from Jubilees (IV, 28), all the characters, from Lamech to Isaac, passing by Methuselah, Enoch, Abraham and Sarai, are designated there by the very names given to them in Scripture. This is because pseudonyms would have been meaningless in this case. It is, we believe, exactly the same with regard to the Martyrdom of Isaiah. This is why it is difficult to understand why the author of the Martyrdom of Isaiah, unlike the Qumranian weight, would have obscured a perfectly clear historical account of the Bible by cryptic distortions. Moreover, the plot of the Martyrdom of Isaiah cannot be included in the system of the pesher for the reason that part of the legend, and even the essential part, is not in the Bible and therefore can neither be elucidated by the Commentary nor have any demonstrative value. Also the spiritual situation of Jerusalem under Manasseh, as described in the account of the books of Kings or Chronicles, may have seemed to invite the sectarians to a comparison with the situation of the Holy City in their time, but the character of the account in the Martyrdom of Isaiah seems to exclude an interpretation such as that of M. Philonenko, whose strangeness appears in a detail that we have already mentioned: the author, "a virtuoso of the Essene pesher", is said to have called Tyre and Sidon "the land of Damascus" (p. 5). The argument drawn from the oracle of Zechariah (9:1-2), where Damascus, Tyre and Sidon are mentioned side by side (p. 6), is rather unconvincing. But above all, it is not clear why such a disguise would have been necessary, since The Damascus Script, which in some parts is much closer to the style and procedures of the pesher, refers by its name to the "place of exile". In the case of the Martyrdom of Isaiah, there would be in the transformation that one supposes a gratuitousness and a character of art for art to say the least quite strange. In addition to the general thesis, some of Mr. Philonenko's assertions seem to us to call for discussion. For example, it is a bit excessive to make the desert retreat motivated by the will to separate oneself from iniquity the characteristic mark of Qumran (p. 4). Rather, it seems that we are dealing here with a constant motif of Palestinian life in times of crisis. The rebels or saints break with the mediocre majority, take refuge in the caves and hold the desert. One of the most memorable occurrences was the edict of Antiochus Epiphanes.
"Many of the people joined them [i.e., the overseers set up by Antiochus], all of whom abandoned the Law, and they did evil in the land. They forced Israel to live in hiding places in all kinds of shelters" (I Maccabees, I, 52-53).

"Then many who were seeking justice and righteousness went down to the wilderness to settle there, they, their sons, their wives and their cattle, because evils were pressing upon them. And it was told the king's men and the troops that were in Jerusalem, in the city of David, that men who had violated the king's commandment had gone down into the wilderness" (ibid., II, 29-32).
The Second Book of Maccabees also mentions the Jews who took refuge in caves near Jerusalem to celebrate the seventh day in secret (VI, 11). At the dedication of the Temple, Maccabees and his companions recall with joy that a short time before "they were confined to the mountains and caves like wild beasts" (ibid., X, 6. - Cf. also, concerning Mattathias and his companions, ibid., II, 27-28, 42, 43). One will still evoke Herod's campaign against the people whom Josephus calls "the brigands who remained huddled in the caves" and who seem to have been something other than vulgar malefactors, because the historian paints Herod concerned to save some of them and lingers in the description of a scene which recalls certain episodes of the Books of the Maccabees or that of the mysterious Taxo of the Assumption of Moses.
There," writes Josephus, "an old man, the father of seven children, was seen killing his sons who, with their mother, were begging him to let them come out [of the cave] and go to mercy; he brought them forward, one by one, and standing at the entrance, slaughtered them one by one. From the top of an eminence, Herod contemplated this scene, deeply moved, and stretched out his hand towards the old man to beg him to spare his children; but the latter, without being moved by these words, even cursing Herod's ignoble birth, killed, after his sons, his wife, threw the corpses into the precipice and finally threw himself into it" (La Guerre juive, I, XVI, 307-313, trans. R. Harmand; cf. Antiquités judaïques, XIV, 15, 5).
Need we recall again the detail of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (II Baruch, II, 1), where Baruch is charged by God to give Jeremiah the order to leave Jerusalem "in the company of men like himself", that is to say, of the Righteous, in order to remove from the city the firm pillar and the solid rampart which prevent its destruction? Or the departure of the Christians for Pella, before the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, and that of R. Jochanan ben Zakkaï for Jabneh?

In short, the schism of the sect of Qumran is only one episode among many others in this long series of retreats in the desert and it is impossible to give it a privileged importance or to necessarily recognize its transposition in the secession of Isaiah and his disciples according to the Martyrdom of Isaiah. As for the ascetic rule to which Isaiah and his followers adhere - "All were clothed in a garment of the same name" - it is not clear that this is the case. —
"All of them were clothed in haircloth and all of them were prophets; they had nothing with them, but were naked, and all of them lamented with great lamentation over the aberration of Israel. And these had nothing to eat, but gathered the herbs of the field on the mountains, and after cooking them, they fed themselves with the prophet Isaiah" (Martyrdom, 2, 10-11, trans. E. Tisserant, in Philonenko, p. 5). —
nor does it necessarily evoke the Essenes. On the contrary, at least at first sight, it seems to have nothing in common with the clothing and diet of the Qumran sectarians. But it is certain, on the other hand, that it must be seen as a direct reference to the clothing of Elijah in II Kings (I, 8), and to the life of Elisha and the sons of the prophets, in particular to the episode of the wild coloquintes (II Kings, V, 38-41). The comparison was proposed by Dillmann, and E. Tisserant (Ascension d'Isaïe, p. 96) is quite right to consider that "Dillmann's explanation is excellent". One will also compare it with the regime of Elijah (I Kings, XVII, 2-7). The Thishbite could rightly be called the patron saint of refugees in the desert (I Kings, XIX, 3-8). In any case, the figure of Elijah and, secondarily, that of Elisha seem to have imposed themselves on the imagination as the figures par excellence of the man of God, prophet, miracle worker and almost messiah. The character of Jesus owes something to them, and some of his miracles reproduce the resurrections performed by Elijah and Elisha, the multiplication of provisions at the widow's house in Zarephath, the multiplication of oil at the house of the widow of the son of the prophets (II Kings, IV, 1-7) or, above all, the multiplication of the loaves of bread at Gilgal (II Kings, IV, 42). The vocation of Elisha (I Kings, IX, 19-21) prefigures that of Simon, Andrew, James and John in Mark, I, 16-20; the ascension of Elijah, that of Jesus. It seems natural, therefore, that the legendary imagination should have represented certain great prophetic protagonists in the guise of Elijah and Elisha. Thus in the second Book of Maccabees, which is, so to speak, placed almost completely under the invocation of Jeremiah (cf. XV, 13-15), the prophet goes, as Elijah had gone to Mount Horeb, "to the mountain where Moses had gone up to see the inheritance of God" (compare I Kings, XIX, 7-8, and II Maccabees, II, 4). In II Baruch, LXXVI, Baruch receives divine revelation on the top of a mountain; the epistle which he makes an eagle carry to the nine and a half tribes beyond the Euphrates recalls somewhat the detail of Elijah fed by ravens (cf. I Kings, XVII, 4-7, and II Baruch, LXXVII, 17 ff.), as the narrator himself underlines in verse 24. We think, therefore, that the author of the Martyrdom of Isaiah imagines the sojourn and material distress of Isaiah and his disciples in the desert according to the classical images of the trials of Elijah and Elisha. These same images are used to characterize the tribulations of the prophets, among whom we recognize, it seems, Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Micah, Isaiah (according to the Martyrdom of Isaiah) in the Epistle to the Hebrews, XI, 35-38:
"Some women recovered their dead by resurrection; others were given over to torments, and did not accept deliverance in order to obtain a better resurrection; others suffered mockery and scourging, chains and prison; They were stoned, sawed, tortured, killed by the sword, went about in sheep's skins and goat's skins, deprived of everything, persecuted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in the deserts and mountains, in the caves and dens of the earth. " (Compare I Kings, XIX, 14.).
Against the opinion of E. Tisserant and M. Philonenko (p. 5), we are not sure that we should see a contradiction between the fact that we are told of the disciples of Isaiah that "they were clothed in a hair shirt" and the fact that it is then mentioned that "they were naked". Perhaps we should understand that the author of the Martyrdom considered that to be clothed only in a hair shirt is no different from being naked; unless he meant that the prophets lacked everything, as the movement of the sentence would lead us to believe: "...they had nothing with them, but they were naked...". The Epistle to the Hebrews would support this interpretation when it describes the wandering prophets dressed in sheep's skins and goats' skins (the cilice is a shirt made of goat's hair), stripped of everything... In any case, it does not seem appropriate to compare the "nakedness" of the prophets in the Martyrdom of Isaiah with that of the Blessed in the Narrative of Zosimus. In the first case, the "nakedness" underlines destitution and penitence; in the second, where it is undoubtedly a question of real nakedness, it is the mark of the paradisiacal condition that the Blessed have found.

To return to the story of Elijah and Elisha, we shall simply ask whether the advice given by Isaiah to his disciples on his deathbed to flee to Tyre and Sidon might not have, if it is to be recognized as having any particular significance, some connection precisely with the field of activity of the first of these two prophets. If both go to Damascus (I Kings, XIX, 15; VIII, 7), Elijah takes refuge in Sarepta in Phoenicia, a coastal city situated between Tyre and Sidon (I Kings, XVII, 8).

As for the false prophet Belkirâ, it seems very difficult to us to recognize Hyrcanus II in him, as Mr. Philonenko proposes (pp. 8 ff). Belkirâ is not given here for the brother of king Manasseh, and the account never shows him exercising the functions of High Priest or any priestly function. His Samaritan origin is explained by the author of the Pseudepigrapha himself. It also reveals, as does the presence of Micah among the companions of Isaiah, the transposition to Isaiah of the golden legend of Elijah and Elisha. Belkîrâ is the nephew of Sédécias, son of Kenaanah, false prophet in favor with Ahab (I Kings, XXII, 11). We have an exact correspondence between the Ahab-Sedekiah group and the Manasseh-Belkir group and the Samaritan origin of Belkir is the very mark of the transposition to Judah of adventures having primitively Samaria for center. As E. Tisserant (p. 97), there are in this whole chapter of the Martyrdom of Isaiah "many features borrowed from the account of I Kings, XXII, 6-28". The text of II Kings, XXI, 13, itself invites this transposition. We read in fact: "I will stretch out over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the level of the house of Ahab. This said, it is necessary to recognize a polemical intention in the story of Belkîrâ who takes refuge in Jerusalem and seduces many people there. It reflects the enmity existing between the Jews and the Samaritans, as E. Tisserant rightly points out (p. 102 of his edition). The legend seems to have been established, well before the Martyrdom of Isaiah, of Beliar coming out of Samaria. Thus in the passage of Oracula Sibyllina, III, 63 ff, which we date to the second half of the first century B.C. and where we read:
Έκ δέ Σεβαστηνών ήξει βελίαρ μετόπισθεν...
... και δή μέροπας πολλούς τε πλανήσει πιστούς τ' εκλεκτούς θ' Εβραίους άνομους τε…

= From Sevastinon, there was a velociraptor in the rear...
... ...and shall deceive many of the faithful, the elect, the Jews, the unrighteous...
Beliar is here neither Caligula nor Nero, nor any definite historical figure, but a figure of Revelation born of the mingled anger and fear inspired by the heretical and schismatic brethren, "the foolish people who dwell in Sichern," to speak as Sirach, L, 25-26, or the Testament of Levi, VII, 2.

For Bethlehem, where Isaiah takes refuge, the correct explanation seems to be that proposed by E. Tisserant when he writes (p. 104): "The desert which lies to the south-east of Bethlehem was, from the time of David, the refuge of those who wanted to escape the government of Jerusalem; cf. I Samuel, XXIII, 14; XXIV, 2; XXV, XXVI, 1. Indeed, the fact that chapter III, 5, shows Belkïrâ himself fleeing to Bethlehem for fear of King Hezekiah makes it improbable that Isaiah could have come "to seek the messianic consecration in the city of David" (p. 5).

Among the accusations that Belkïrâ makes against the prophet is the claim that Isaiah had "seen much more than the prophet Moses" (III, 8). M. Philonenko (p. 7) seems to suggest that the same grievance had been articulated against the Teacher of Righteousness. But whatever the way in which the Teacher of Righteousness interpreted the Law and the Prophets, never, at least in the texts which have come down to us, does he make the claim to be greater than Moses. He only states that God made known to him the true meaning of the Law and the Prophets. If, as Mr. Philonenko notes, the author of the Pseudepigrapha does not smooth out the contradiction that Belkïrâ introduces between Isaiah, VI, 1, and Exodus, XXXIII, 20, it is indeed voluntarily, but for the reason that he endeavors to place in the mouth of his false prophet plausible slanders with reference to the real, but more or less distorted, oracles of the first seven chapters of Isaiah. Thus the scope of "the people of Gomorrah" (Isaiah I:10), an apostrophe which the prophet applied (I:9) to the "daughter of Zion" as a whole, is here restricted - perhaps so as to inflame the king's fury even more - to the principal, and not exclusively to the priests, of Judah and Jerusalem. It is impossible, in any case, not to notice the bookish character of the scene, as E. Tisserant had the merit of underlining it (p. 105): "The accusation brought by Balchira resembles very much that which Amasiah, priest of Bethel, formulated against Amos before Jeroboam (Amos, VII, 10, 11).

There remains the question of the Iranian influence on the plot of the Martyrdom of Isaiah. Since the article by S. Larionoff, it has been admitted that the story of Isaiah's martyrdom, and in particular the "extraordinary torture" inflicted on the prophet, are borrowings from Iranian literature. Our Pseudepigrapha would only reproduce the episode of the death of king Djemchid or Yima Khshaëta, the great hero of Iranian prehistory. However, if one compares the Martyrdom of Isaiah with the Iranian texts, from the Zend Avesta to the Shah Nameh, the differences appear much more numerous and significant than the similarities, which, in fact, are reduced to the instrument of torture: the saw. On the contrary, the death of Isaiah as recounted by the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin, X, 2) or the Babylonian Talmud (Yebämöt, 49b) is, this time, undoubtedly modelled on the Iranian accounts. We therefore ask the question whether the borrowing from Iran does not begin at the level of Talmudic literature. It is at least not unreasonable to imagine that initially the resemblance between the killing of Zaiah according to our Pseudepigrapha and that of king Djemchid, namely death by saw, was purely accidental. The text of Dion Cassius (LXVIII, 32) tells us that some victims of the Jewish revolt in Gyrene, in 115, were sawn from top to bottom. But since the imagination of this torture "had struck the spirits", as M. Philonenko writes (p. 10), the Jews established in Babylonia may have compared the death of Isaiah with the death of Djemchid. This is perhaps all the more easy, since the usurper who sits on the throne of Jemshid is Zohak "the man of serpents" and the text of II Kings, XXI, 6, tells us of King Manasseh that he "observed the clouds and the serpents". As E. Tisserant (p. 62), the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh., 103b) considers that the killing of Isaiah by King Manasseh constitutes a tradition1 of the Babylonian Jews. It is possible to consider that from Babylonia the legend of the death of Isaiah, closely modelled on that of Djemchid, passed into Palestine and was incorporated into the Yerusalmï. It is from the Talmudic texts or from an oral Jewish legend relating the new version of Isaiah's death that Tabari, and then Bar Hebraeus, would in turn depend. This scheme would explain the paradox already noted by R. H. Charles and which Tisserant (p. 76) formulates in the following way: "It should be noted, however, that the Ascension of Isaiah is of all the martyrdom narratives the one which comes closest to the Iranian legends. This is a rather piquant observation concerning a text which is supposed to come from a form of Judaism which the third study in this booklet will show us to have passed almost entirely into the Iranian religion.
  • 1. In its elaborated form: the idea itself, which derives from II Kings, XXI, 16, goes back to our Pseudepigrapha and must be of Palestinian origin.
In conclusion, we see in the Martyrdom of Isaiah a midrash whose primary intention is to tell an edifying legend about the prophet Isaiah. We have no difficulty in recognizing its Essene origin, and it is not inconceivable that a midrash of this kind would have been informed at the time of its author's writing by details borrowed from current events. However, it is necessary to demonstrate this and to determine the modalities of such a borrowing with the help of more decisive criteria than the identifications which are proposed to us here.
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

Post by Giuseppe »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:20 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:35 am More than a reaction, it would work as a harmonization:
  • there is a birth, to satisfy growing catholicism,
  • there is docetism, to satisfy Marcion


Something of similar to Cerinthus's Christology: separationism and a higher god vs. the demiurge, but also a Jesus mere man son of Joseph and Mary and a pious observant of the Law.
If it was meant as a harmonization it failed badly.
not so badly, insofar Ignatius is based surely on Ascension of Isaiah when he says somewhere that the birth of Jesus was hidden to Satan.
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Re: Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

Post by rgprice »

@neil

Thanks for posting that. So what do you think? These distinctions have pretty big implications.

If Martyrdom of Isaiah is Qumranic, then it implies that Vision of Isaiah is also Qumranic, and could be the earliest Jesus narrative. But as Norelli would have it, Martyrdom and Vision of Isaiah are late and post-date other Gospels.

I have a hard time seeing how they could be products of later Christians. I've seen no other Christian works that use so much language that is so close to the Qumranic works. But even more, Vision of Isaiah aligns so well with Paul in ways that none of the other Gospels do.
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