How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Peter Kirby »

Irish1975 wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:05 pm Seems like Enoch is relatively neglected here for its influence on the Gospels.
Everything's neglected until someone takes the time and effort to write about it.
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by andrewcriddle »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:00 am that is why the odes get ignored , a jewish messianic sect existing prior to the roman war that rejected Paul is not allowed but its ok to talk about Marcion because he's magically going to solve all the problems from the garbled accounts of the church fathers.
One may well connect the odes to Jewish Esotericism but I can see nothing about Jewish Ascent Esotericism in them.

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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Ulan »

davidmartin wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 2:12 am Yes I think they were,
the Odes are full of ascent esotericism and visions, far more than Paul's brief reference to the same thing
Andrew Criddle's remark aside, there's also this:

The video doesn't only talk about 2Cor 12 in the context of Merkabah mysticism and Hekhalot literature, it also mentions Acts 22, where Paul speaks in his defense to a Jewish audience (NRSV):
17 “After I had returned to Jerusalem and while I was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance 18 and saw Jesus saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ [...] 21 Then he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the gentiles.’ 22 Up to this point they listened to him, but then they shouted, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” 23 And while they were shouting, throwing off their cloaks, and tossing dust into the air..."

Now, the normal explanation why the Jewish audience got so terribly upset at this point is that Paul mentions that Jesus went up to heaven. The "Two powers in heaven" heresy would be an explanation here that gets mentioned in the video (the book of that name by Alan F. Segal from 1977 is something Stephan mentioned a few times here in the forum and cited in that video), but Paul's talk doesn't mention Jesus sitting on the throne of God or anything like that, which would be the usual image related to the heresy. The second explanation is taken from Hekhalot literature: going into trance in the temple and visiting God's throne room in heaven is okay, but talking about that experience to anyone means it would have been better to have never been born, which has at least some resemblance to how Acts puts it, "should not be allowed to live".

TLDR: There's more than just one reference ;-)
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Ulan »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 1:40 pm this is an awkward position i feel to take. it's not black and white

but your original question hinted at pre-christian roots, well yes there has to be some as well. perhaps the wisdom side of Judaism or some reflective or esoteric side that doesn't really feel threatened by hellenism or need to appropriate it like Philo seems to. People seem to have a narrow definition of Judaism, i'm not sure i can say what a religion 'is', it's cultural, the odes have that jewish mindset i think
I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of "no true Scotsman" arguments that get used on this forum, but also in NT scholarship. In scholarship, we have these endless discussions whether an idea is Jewish or Hellenistic, where "Hellenistic" seems to mean "genuinely Greek" - which isn't correct. Even Jerusalem was thoroughly hellenized during Ptolemaic times, and while the Hasmonean Restauration was directed against Hellenistic thought, that same Hellenistic thought was present and still, even when opposed, influenced "Jewish" ideas, as transformed as they may have been. The "vice versa" is already part of the term "Hellenistic". But that's a tangent.
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Ulan »

Irish1975 wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:05 pm Seems like Enoch is relatively neglected here for its influence on the Gospels. Or maybe just since Ben left.
The video draws the line from 1 Enoch via 3 Enoch to Paul, the dating of 3 Enoch notwithstanding.
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Ulan »

Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:50 pm
davidmartin wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:00 am the odes get ignored
You've got three people in this thread alone who would be interested in the Odes (you, me, and I would guess Ulan).

If it's not being talked about, who should we blame? Surely the people who are interested in it and not talking about it?

So talk about it.

Here's a question. Were the Odes pre-Christian or composed by a Christian?

(Define that term however you want.)
Emphasis mine. Yes and yes, depending on that definition. Not very helpful, but probably close to what we look at. It shines some light on what many discussions on this board are about: which drawer do I want to drop an idea into?

That's what it means when Christianity became the Roman state religion: the drawer suddenly got a lot smaller.
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Irish1975 »

Ulan wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 2:34 am
Irish1975 wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:05 pm Seems like Enoch is relatively neglected here for its influence on the Gospels. Or maybe just since Ben left.
The video draws the line from 1 Enoch via 3 Enoch to Paul, the dating of 3 Enoch notwithstanding.
An interesting book on this subject, although I haven’t looked at in it a while, is—

The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin Reynolds (2017).

“This stimulating collection of eighteen essays focuses on a neglected but arguably central aspect of apocalyptic tradition: the fundamental role played by the divine disclosure of hidden knowledge. This emphasis on the revelatory component of apocalyptic tradition, sketched out in the introduction, has been generally ignored by New Testament scholars in favor of regarding apocalyptic almost exclusively in terms of eschatology. Each of the essays in this collection apply one or more aspects of this thesis of the fundamentally revelatory character of apocalyptic tradition to virtually every component of the New Testament, strikingly confirming its hermeneutical utility. While this collection of studies convincingly affirms the value of reading the New Testament in light of the fundamentally revelatory character of apocalyptic tradition, it represents only an initial foray into the subject. Given the interpretive potential of this approach to the New Testament, I would highly recommend this book to all serious students of the New Testament."

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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Ulan »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 7:38 am An interesting book on this subject, although I haven’t looked at in it a while, is—

The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin Reynolds (2017).
Thank you for that recommendation. Sounds interesting :)/
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Re: How Ancient Apocalyptic Jewish Ascent Esotericism Laid the Foundations of Christianity

Post by Irish1975 »

Ulan wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2023 4:25 am
Irish1975 wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 7:38 am An interesting book on this subject, although I haven’t looked at in it a while, is—

The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin Reynolds (2017).
Thank you for that recommendation. Sounds interesting :)/
Yes it is. If you get to it sometime I’d be happy to discuss it.
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