Paul and the Vision of Isaiah

[rgprice]

I was recently thinking about something else.

It seems to me that Luke 1-2 are written in reaction to the Ascension of Isaiah birth narrative. Norelli's argues that Matthew also worked from a birth narrative shared by the writer of Ascension of Isaiah.

Thus, could this not explain why the birth narratives in Luke and Matthew are so similar, yet so different? I had been working under the Goodacre type assumption that Luke knew Matthew, but does it not make more sense that Luke and Matthew were both independently writing in reaction to the Ascension of Isaiah birth narrative?

Note, when I say Ascension of Isaiah birth narrative I do not necessarily mean that they both knew that document, but that all three -- Matthew, Luke and the Ascension of Isaiah "pocket Gospel", all worked from a common narrative. It is possible that Matthew and/or Luke actually worked from Ascension of Isaiah, but not necessarily. More likely, I think, the pocket Gospel is the later incorporation of a birth narrative that was also used by Matthew and Luke.

But, Ascension of Isaiah seems to record the more original version of the narrative, whereas Matthew and Luke write in contradiction of it. They both write to refute its Docetism.

[neilgodfrey]

I would add, supporting the outer space crucifixion:

4. the specific distinction between Sheol and Hell. The Son is prohibited from going to Hell, his extreme place being the Sheol: this distinction makes much sense if the Sheol is placed in outer space above the earth, while the Hell is placed under the earth. Hence the Son dies just before his descent to celestial Sheol, without descend more down (on the earth) unless by revelations to apostles.

Sheol is everywhere else (note especially the Septuagint) designated as beneath the earth.

The pattern of descent is four-fold, and the cosmology has five layers with the world at the centre:

- Heavens

--- Firmament

------ World

--- Sheol

- Hades

The pocket gospel, which the Cathars knew even though the Church appears to have deleted it in the surviving Slavonic manuscript, states that the Beloved descended, went down, to Sheol from Jerusalem in the world.

But you can still hang on to the "outer space" crucifixion by agreeing with the Cathars that the world to which Jesus went, where he was "born" of Mary, etc etc, was actually another heavenly world above this one.

Interestingly, Hades was said to be above the earth but below the moon in some circles. The interesting reference is in Dillon's Middle Platonism, p. 191

Now this is a most interesting development, anticipating the Neo­platonic identification of Hades with the ‘sublunary demiurge’, and recalling the doctrine which we discerned in Philo QG iv 8 (above, p. 169). The fixing of the realm of Hades in the air between the Moon and the earth is accepted by Plutarch in, for instance, the Myth of De Genio (591AB), and seems to go back to Xenocrates (Fr. 15 Heinze) and even, perhaps, to Plato (Laws x 904D), but the notion that the earth has been given over to the care of this being, who, even if he is not to be thought of as positively evil, is at least contrasted with a perfectly good supreme god, is a development which seems more Persian than Greek, Pluto coming rather close to Ahriman (cf. De Is. 369E, Proc. An. 1026B).1

1. The curious formulation of Xenocrates (Fr. 18 Heinze, quoted at Plat. 9, Quaest 1007F), distinguishing between an ‘upper' and a ‘lower’ Zeus, ruling repectively the realms above and below the Moon, may provide a model for this.

But the problem with mapping that idea into the Ascension of Isaiah is that the movement of the Beloved appears to be directed to be downward from earth towards Sheol.

Asc Isa 10:8 in the L2 manuscript:

Exi, descende omnes caelos, et sis in mundo, et vade usque ad angelum qui est in infernum

supported by the Latin translation of the Slavonic:

et mane in mundo, i quoque usque ad angelurn exstantern in infernis

[Aleph One]

If there was a hall of fame for threads on here this one would belong in it. There's so much cool stuff in here.

I find this point so intriguing:

Vision of Isaiah essentially places the blame on the "lord of this world", Belial,, who did not recognize Christ. But according to Mark, the forces of Belial did recognize Christ, so it was not Belial who was responsible for the crucifixion. Rather, it was the humans beings, most specifically the Jews. This is reinforced when the Roman centurion recognizes Jesus as the son of God after the crucifixion.

On a separate note, I find it interesting that the "pre-pocket gospel" Ascension seems to suggest a version of the narrative where the reason for Jesus's death isn't exactly an atoning sacrifice but instead a mechanism to sneak into Sheol and almost 'physically' save the righteous dead. I also find it interesting that the pocket gospel section doesn't really make any mention of this "plundering of the angel of death" and the rescued 'souls'.

I know I'm not breaking any new ground here but it does stand out to me that if you combine Isaiah's ascension with Isaiah's suffering servant you end up with something that look so much like the core of the orthodox gospels' christianity. This made me wonder if there're any clear allusion to the suffering servant passages in the ascension (surprisingly none jumped out at me)? Perhaps this lack of connection is notable but I also noticed that even the pocket gospel eschews hints of true suffering thanks to its docetic flavoring (which i'm not sure what to make of in the least )

Anyway great stuff.