MrMacSon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 5:09 am
1 The letters of Paul might be analogous to the [dismembered] parts of Osiris spread across the region/s.
- as might the letters of Ignatius
2 or
vice versa: how Christ represented or became the church (and his disciples could also represent parts of Osiris).
3 Jesus (or,
more specifically, aspects of the narratives about him & what he is said to have said) reflects the Temple & its destruction (and possibly the destruction of and rewriting about other pre-70 Jewish groups such as the Sadducees)
There may be something to that. There is a Gnostic idea presented in certain of the mysteries that the scattering of the god represented both the sowing of seeds and the spirit. So Proclus states that Osiris's dismemberment and scattered limbs represented the gnostic spirit being imparted to mankind. Similar to how Dionysus and Horus are torn asunder, with man being made from Dionysus's ashes. The wadjet, the eye of Re/Horus, was broken into seven pieces, and its restoration symbolized resurrection. It was then offered to the deceased king/queen in the form of beer, wine, bread and cakes to rejuvenate them. This also goes along with the so-called Canable text, in which the king actually eats the gods.
And so similar motifs exist for Jesus, in the Pistis Sofia, the spirit of Jesus is said to be broken and scattered across the earth. (There's another text similar to this, but its title escapes me right now). And then there is the Eucharist, in which the body of Christ is (symbolically) broken up and consumed to his followers, the Apostles.
The significance this has to Pauline Christology and his Epistles may indeed be more important then I realize.
Right now I'm thinking that Christ originally represented for Paul the Good News itself, the new Covenant, which was a written document, an edict, either versions of
Marqah Memra,
2 Esdras, or the
Epistle of Barnabas. The subsequent letters were written to promote and later defend, this original Message from the Apostle.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.
Interesting how the concept of the "
field" is likewise reflected in
2 Esdras:
Therefore I commanded thee to go into the field, where no foundation of any building was. For in the place wherein the Highest beginneth to shew his city, there can no man's building be able to stand.
The field is to be where the New Jerusalem is to be erected, with a communal Temple.
And
Mark and
Luke emphasis the rustic nature of Simon of Cyrene:
And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.*
And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus.
All of this is to say that the dispersal of the epistles may have been seeds to plant a new Jerusalem. Interesting how most of these letters are written for the Phrygians, and Montanus declared the New Jerusalem in Phrygia. Hmmmm...
*I am of the mind that Simon of Cyrene was in fact Lukuas Andreas, with his "sons" being Julian/John (Simon bar Kochba) and Pappus/James (R. Akiva).