More info on Jesus' "miraculous (Egyptian) powers" ?

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billd89
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More info on Jesus' "miraculous (Egyptian) powers" ?

Post by billd89 »

Continuing a point from another thread:
billd89 wrote: Sun Sep 26, 2021 2:37 pm If -- following one theory, that The True Doctrine dates c.125 AD -- Celsum got his information partly from Jewish prophets in Phoenicia, then Celsum was referring to the same decade and area in & on which Philo of Byblos (c.125 AD) wrote.

Celsum knowing the Four-fold Gospels in 125 AD will also not allow any late-dating favored by deniers on this forum. For if Celsum knew the Four Gospels, all those works should already be circulating one or more decades previously (at least). The Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) would have existed in some form before 110 AD and there's NO WAY that Celsum could have known a Gospel of Marcion.
In addition to (Four?) Gospels circulating (in 125 AD) and those Xian "books" that Perigrinus (Lucian of Samosata) knew of (c.125 AD, by the account), the Jesus Story has already become richly embroidered by that point. I am curious when Jesus' EGYPTIAN (HEALING) POWERS motif first developed. Something is missing, however. The Egyptian Church would have played that up, no?

Link: random blog post, Background.

Contra Celsum 1.28:
...[Celsus] accuses [Jesus] of having "invented his birth from a virgin," and upbraids Him with being "born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child. And because of his poverty, he prostituted himself to serve in Egypt. And having demonstrated there some miracle-powers (about which the Egyptians irreverently boast), he returned home with the miraculous conceit and publicly proclaimed himself God."...

Translated by Frederick Crombie. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4. [1885]
Jesus ... who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God.

1.28.
... καὶ ὅτι οὗτος διὰ πενίαν εἰς Αἴγυπτον μισθαρνήσας κἀκεῖ δυνάμεών τινων πειραθείς, ἐφ' αἷς Αἰγύπτιοι σεμνύνονται, ἐπανῆλθεν ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσι μέγα φρονῶν, καὶ δι' αὐτὰς θεὸν αὑτὸν ἀνηγόρευσε. ...

μισθαρνέω = 'work, serve for hire' rather slanderously suggests 'prostituted himself'. However, the aquisition (and implicit demonstration) of miracle-powers obviously necessitated a discipleship in some cult. I suppose 'hired to serve' might have been twisted by Celsum, if a more accurate 'servant of god' (θεράπων) had been originally conveyed to him by rumor, etc. The clear implication is that Jesus is demoted to a mere greedy charlatan (in my English) - albeit one who had some success - with his 'Egyptian powers' being suspect/dodgy but not denied.

Dr. Carl Jung (projecting himself into the story as Jesus!) picked up on this illegitimacy, and rationalized the theory (another author's?) that Jesus was a Therapeut. Celsus never uses that term (nor does any other 1st-2nd C author, btw), but it is readily inferred.

So: Jesus taught his Disciples 'the Egyptian Mirace-Powers' : is there more info on that?

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Last edited by billd89 on Tue Oct 19, 2021 4:00 am, edited 8 times in total.
ABuddhist
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Re: More info on Jesus' "miraculous (Egyptian) powers" ?

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billd89 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:31 pm something is missing, howver. The Egyptian Church would have played that up, no?
Why assume that? Jesus as magic-user trained in Egypt is inferior from a Christian religious perspective to Jesus as YHWH's appointed Son/Prophet/Avatar/Messiah, surely.
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Re: Embarrassing!

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ABuddhist wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:08 pmWhy assume that? Jesus as magic-user trained in Egypt is inferior from a Christian religious perspective to Jesus as YHWH's appointed Son/Prophet/Avatar/Messiah, surely.
Apollos is identified as Alexandrian, and Basilides + Valentinus + etc. are typically identified that way, also. One imagines it would still have been a known fact, c.100 AD.

What antinomian Jewish sect might he have been tutored in? Philo mentions a Mosaic 'Son of Man' noviate scandalously (re-)named "Arise!" c. 25 AD. It seems likely Jesus-the-Therapeut would also take a holy name, in Rebirth.
billd89 wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:56 am De Confusione Linguarum 146 may suggest the 'Man After (God's) the Image' as the Aletheian Man:
De Confusione Linguarum 146: ὢν υἱὸς θεοῦ προσαγορεύεσθαι σπουδαζέτω κοσμεῖσθαι κατὰ τὸν πρωτἡονον αὐτοῦ λόγον, τὸν ἀγγέλων πρεσβύτατόν, ὡς ἂν ἀρχάγγελον, πολυώνυμον ὑπάρχοντα· καὶ γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ ὄνομα θεοῦ καὶ λόγος καὶ ὁ κατ εἰκόνα αννθρωπος καὶ ὁ ὁρῶν, Ἰσραήλ, προσαγορεύετ̣αι.

De Confusione Linguarum 146 "Let the ‘Son of God’ adorn himself to be addressed according to his First-Born Logos, Ambassador of his angels as the great Archangel; for He possesses and is worshiped under many names: the First {Son, Principle, etc.}, God's Name, Logos, 'Man After (God's) the Image', and Israel {i.e. He Who Sees}."

Analysis:
De Confusione Linguarum 146 is about choosing a holy name, might be a corrupt passage or divergent concept: Logos as 'Man After God's Image' is problematic idea, contradicted by other systems Philo outlines, and philonically suspect for a number of reasons.

For Philo, the implication Aletheian Man is the very Logos itself cannot be correct. There may be equivalence, but these are not identical. However, this expression may have been one group's interpretation - not Philo's own designation, nor by any need consistent with his philosophy - where he would be simply reporting that name among several others. Was a 'Second Logos' otherwise related to the 'Son of Man' cult?

On "the arising" (a variation of the 'leaving behind' through Spiritual Rebirth), see Philo's discussion in De Confusione Linguarum, 62-3:
I have heard also an oracle from the lips of one of the Mosaic disciples {i.e. a Jewish esoteric cult member}, which runs thus: "Behold a man is Arising {ἀνατολή: Anatole, The Ascendent}" (Zechariah 6:12). A very novel name, if you would think to call someone compounded of body and soul. But if you would call him who is Incorporeal {i.e. Monad = The One = Inutterable God}, a Divine Image, then agree that is a most excellent name given to this man. For the Father has raised {ἀνατολῆς} the All-Ambassador, whom He called the First-Born {i.e. Logos}. And you shall be born-again, by 1) imitating the ways of his (i.e. the Logos’) Father, and 2) in the likeness of the Archetypes of he (debatedly: Father or Logos) beholding the different kinds. {or "... the Son thus begotten followed the ways of his Father, and shaped the different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which the Father supplied."}
On the taking of a special mystical-metaphysical name (by pre-eminent suggestion), a custom of this Jewish cult, see De Somniis 128:
Of these (incorporeal logoi), he takes one, choosing as best the topmost one, occupying the place which the head does in the whole body and sets it up close to his understanding.
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Re: More info on Jesus' "miraculous (Egyptian) powers" ?

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billd89 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:31 pmI am curious when Jesus' EGYPTIAN (HEALING) POWERS motif first developed. Something is missing, however. The Egyptian Church would have played that up, no?
Was it something created by Christianity's enemies or friends? If by enemies, then that would be a reason to not playing up that side.
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Re: More info on Jesus' "miraculous (Egyptian) powers" ?

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It seems related to Jewish anti-Christian claims such as are found much later in the Babylonian Talmud.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_the_Talmud

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Re: Jesus as a Therapeut

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Reviews of Arthur Drews, The Christ Myth [1910] in Lutheran Quarterly p.442.

The whole discussion this time gathers about the views of Arthur Drews, professor of philosophy in the Karlsruhe Polytechnic. The controversy was precipitated by a book from his pen last fall, Die Christusmythe, but more especially by his missionary tour through north Germany in February for the purpose of propagating his views through popular assemblies. The position which Drews seeks so earnestly to maintain and for which he has succeeded in gaining a numerous following, especially among the proletariat, may be concisely formulated in the proposition: Jesus never lived. The historicity of Jesus is flatly denied and it is seriously argued that Christ is a myth. [...]

One more element has entered into the combination to produce Drews' Christusmythe. It is the influence of the theological school of comparative religions. The inordinate tendency to explain away the miraculous elements in the life of Christ on the ground that they are purely legendary conceptions derived from other religious systems has here been followed to its utmost consequences and has brought forth its mature fruit in the denial of both Jesus and Christ.[...] Drews sets himself the task of explaining the origin of Christianity not as based upon a personality who founded it, but as an outgrowth of a hither-Asiatic-Hindu myth, a syncretistic product of Judaism and Adonis-worship. [...]

In his first chapter, “The Pre-Christian Jesus,” he strives to show that Jesus was an imaginary god worshipped by a Jewish sect of Old Testament times. He points out that according to Zech. 3 and 6:9-15 Joshua (=Jesus) is the name of the messiah who is to lead the Jews back again to their own land. But he overlooks the fact that this Joshua is a well-accredited historical personage, the hereditary high priest, divinely commissioned to head the youthful Jewish Church in Jerusalem in company with the admittedly historical Zerubbabel whose character partakes of more messianic qualities than Joshua's. He points to an ancient hymn preserved by Hippolytus in which the heavenly Jesus is celebrated. But he fails to see that the name Jesus occurring in this hymn as we now have it is most probably the work of the Christian gnostics, whose habit it was to apply ancient Babylonian mythology to the historical Jesus of the Church. He supposes that the Therapeutae and the Essenes must have worshipped a god by the name of Jesus, since the word Jesus means therapeutes, physician, healer, redeemer. But this is pure baseless supposition, for while the members of these sects regarded themselves as soul-physicians there is not the least evidence that they had any cult-god whatever. He observes that an old Paris document on magic calls the god of the Hebrews Jesus. But Deissmann and Harnack have long since shown that our oldest manuscript copy of this document was written since the beginning of the Christian era and therefore under Christian influence. He argues that Jesus of Nazareth is nothing more than Jesus of the Nazarites, a sect which existed before Christ and knew nothing of Christ, and which takes its name not from the place Nazareth, purely a geographical fiction according to Cheyne, but from the divine name nasaraya, meaning guardian, redeemer, savior, (=Jesus). Moreover, says Drews, closely related to the Nazarites in doctrine and life were the Essenes or Jessenes, followers of the “branch of the root of Jesse" (Jesus). But these interesting speculations rest partly upon a mistake of Epiphanius in identifying the Therapeutae of Philo with the primitive Christians and partly upon a most defective etymology, and in no case do they support the theory of a pre-Christian worship of Jesus. And finally Drew's points out certain New Testament traces of such a worship as e.g., in Acts 18:25 the Alexandrian Apollos is found teaching the doctrines concerning Jesus before he had learned of Christianity. But Apollos' teaching rested upon the “baptism of John” and presupposed the historical Jesus as miracle-worker and healer.

To have shown the weakness of the argument for a pre-Christian Jesus-cult is to have removed the chief foundation-stone for the contention against the historicity of Jesus Christ. For Drews' argument that there was also a pre-Christian conception of Messiah (ο χριστός) (xplotós) will be pretty generally granted and in itself does not affect the existence of Jesus. ...

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Re: Embarrassing!

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billd89 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:44 pm
ABuddhist wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:08 pmWhy assume that? Jesus as magic-user trained in Egypt is inferior from a Christian religious perspective to Jesus as YHWH's appointed Son/Prophet/Avatar/Messiah, surely.
Apollos is identified as Alexandrian, and Basilides + Valentinus + etc. are typically identified that way, also. One imagines it would still have been a known fact, c.100 AD.
In Codex Bezae "Apollos" is written "Apollonius". Do you view Apollonius of Tyana to have been an historical figure of the 1st century CE?
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