Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

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Secret Alias
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Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

Post by Secret Alias »

I have completed a paper about the Ish God/angel (it's all a matter of perspective on what the difference between a god and what an angel is). So that closest the door in my opinion to whether or not there is enough to turn an idea into a paper if it gets published. So what's the next step. Here I will outline it.

1. Ex 15:3. all the Church Fathers read the 'man' of Genesis and Exodus (and other books) as our 'Jesus.' That's nothing new. Everyone knows that. Justin likely read Philo or was aware of a common tradition. The Samaritans are one such 'parallel' tradition. There were others. My guess is the 'Essenes' may have been related (speculation). But the next step is what was THE scripture which defined the Christian Ish tradition. There are always 'scriptures' behind early Christian readings. The Passion narrative develops from the Suffering Servant. So what scripture defined the Ish tradition. Answer Exodus 15:3. The rabbinic tradition always used Exodus 15:3 to define 'the man' God and he is identified as Yahweh. So Yahweh was anthropomorphic right?

Well that was a problem. There is evidence that the Exodus 15:3 identification in the earliest use of the scripture acknowledged the warrior as a young man. This was contrasted with the 'old man' apprehended at Mount Sinai (I think the voice from heaven) I think the other god who was 'seen' on the mountain was the 'young man'/man of war. But that's another story. https://books.google.com/books?id=xsBF2 ... 22&f=false

The complexity of Exodus 15:3 is so deep it's a minefield. As you all know there are three main preservations of the Pentateuch - the Masoretic, the Samaritan and the LXX. I happen to think Philo's Greek translation is different than what now passes as the LXX but that's another story. The Dositheans had a different version of the SP but that's another story. There was also possibly a Samaritan Greek text called the Samaritikon. Then there are the text(s) of Qumran. There are Jewish Targums, Samaritan Targums etc. Aquila and various Greek translations too. So lots of recensions but we'll stick to the number 3 for the time being.

There is great divergence in the preservation/translation of Exodus 15:3 is unprecedented. The basic gist is that only the Jewish tradition keeps the 'man' in Exodus 15:3. SP = “The Lord is hero of war” instead of “man of war” in the Masoretic version.
Secret Alias
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Re: Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

Post by Secret Alias »

Exodus 15:3 is the arguably the most problematic verse in the entire Pentateuch. First of all (speculation) given that Jews were always at war with the Roman Empire during the first two centuries of occupation of Judea the idea that God would come down in the form of a man or a warrior was of great appeal to the revolutionaries as we see from the War Scroll of Qumran. It is further speculated that Samaritans and Jews were uncomfortable with God being so explicitly identified as a 'man.' But why then did the Samaritans and the Alexandrian Jews (Philo) who are more explicit with their understanding of the Ish as a divine being in the Pentateuch who made Moses 'the Man of God' (by some sort of divine creation/reflection) why did they change their text and the Jews who have less interest now in the Ish retained the original reading? Another question for later.

https://books.google.com/books?id=DmQ1D ... 22&f=false There are only so many questions to answer. What we will focus on instead is:

a) the two powers tradition cites Exodus 15:3 as a proof text (MdRI) https://www.sefaria.org/Mekhilta_d'Rabbi_Yishmael
b) the Marcionites on multiple occasions use this term to identify 'Jesus'/IC (Ephrem Against Marcion 1)

The problem is that the early Church Fathers couldn't read Hebrew. So they used Philo who likely used the LXX which had 'Kyrios syntribōn polemus "The Lord who crushes wars" (Exod 15:3 LXX). So they didn't know what to make of the Marcionite use of the 'man of god' epithet. Tertullian's Against the Jews and Against Marcion 3 are parallel developments from a lost text of Justin which resembled Dialogue (so Evans in his introduction). It was

1. Justin's lost text
2. Tertullian Against the Jews
3. Tertullian Against Marcion 3 (in the parts retained from (2))

In Against the Jews Tertullian preserves Justin's original acknowledgement that our 'Jesus' was the ''war hero" from Psalm 24:2. This is important because by Tertullian Against Marcion the argument has been turned on its head. It is 'Marcion' who believes in Psalm 24:2 or upholds its applicability to Jesus or God and Tertullian (remember the way that Against Marcion in the introduction says the text has been rewritten 3 times!) now argues that all 'war' references should be read 'allegorically' or 'spiritually' so God is engaged in spiritual warfare.
Secret Alias
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Re: Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

Post by Secret Alias »

The point here is that at one time Justin and Marcion (who often agree surprisingly despite what Irenaeus claims and the surviving Apologies claim) understand 'Jesus/God' to be the 'man of war'/'war hero' of Ex 15:3/Ps 24:2. It is the third generations of Christians (if we can assume 'first generation' = Marcion, 'second generation' = Justin, 'third generation' = Irenaeus/Tertullian) who blow up the whole association between Jesus and the 'man of war'/'war hero.' Indeed we see the Tertullian in Against Marcion 4 preserve a possible Marcionite link in understanding Exodus 15's depiction of the 'man of war' on the sea by means of Psalm 29.

The difficulty that scholars have with Tertullian's discussion of Marcion is that they ignore what Evans acknowledges about the existing text. They read it as Tertullian writing 'against Marcion' with the Marcionite 'Bible' in hand and the ideas all coming from Tertullian. The ideas come from Justin not Tertullian - perhaps Justin by means of Irenaeus (i.e. that Irenaeus's Against Marcion came from Justin's original text). But the point is that we always have to go back to the formula Evans works out:

1. Justin's lost text
2. Tertullian Against the Jews
3. Tertullian Against Marcion 3 (in the parts retained from (2))

and adapt that to other parts of Against Marcion. So with Book 4 it is:

1. Justin's lost text
2. Irenaeus's Against Marcion
3. Tertullian Against Marcion 4 (in the parts retained from (2))

and so on. My point is that Justin identifies 'Jesus'/IC as the 'war hero' from Psalm 24. This understanding was changed under Irenaeus/Tertullian so that there aren't 'just god'/'merciful god' situations or assumptions but a monarchian conception of God who has 'two hands' but there's one god acting through out. There wasn't a 'just god' on the sea in his 'warrior' aspect. This is what Irenaeus routes out of the interpretation.
Secret Alias
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Re: Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

Post by Secret Alias »

But getting back to the Exodus 15:3/Psalm 24:2 situation. The surviving Samaritan Pentateuch and Psalm 24:2 have the same revision of Hebrew Exodus 15:3 preserved in the Masoretic text. God is a 'war hero' not a 'man of war.' The problem with 'man of war' is that it is used by the ditheistic (= 'two powers') Jewish/Samaritan tradition to argue for a 'young' (= the Son) god/angel who crushed the Egyptians. It opens a massive problem for later monarchian apologists because if you have a young god/old god dynamic on Sinai then that means that the text of ur-Exodus (= Qumran/SP/MdRI) really did confirm with Israel 'saw' one god on Sinai and 'heard' another in heaven. It means R Akiva's solution that time and space 'bent' at the theophany with God contradicting Aristotle and the same god being BOTH in heaven and on the mountain was demonstrated to be utter bullshit which is what it was.

So there was all this effort at the end of the second century to drive through a new interpretation of Exodus to not allow for Philo's 'two power' understanding of the narrative. This 'reform' took two forms:

1. the Samaritan and LXX changed the reading of Exodus 15:3 away from God being a man
2. the text of Exodus 19 - 21 was completely transformed with original parallel 'harmony' passages from Deuteronomy taken out of Exodus which confirmed the existence of two gods of Israel

This is where the Ish god journey takes us. That in the late century there was immense pressure placed not only on the interpretation but the very text of the Bible to make it monotheistic. The ditheists were on the run. The Marcionites having IC = Ish talking about 'the Good god' (Mark 10:2) was also part of the problem. You couldn't have one god (IC/Ish) casually mention that there was a merciful Good god who was better than him.

Why couldn't you have this? Because someone or some people didn't like the idea God who is supposed to be Almighty having a confidence problem, and identity crisis. This is where I will end this preliminary investigation. If Ish = the man of war = Yahweh then the ur-gospel is (speculation) a kind of pathetic narrative of Yahweh with an identity crisis. He's like Tom Brady who's now discovered there is this other 'better' QB playing in a superior NFL in a higher heaven. Tom Brady thought he was 'God and there was no other' but oops he just didn't realize that there was a 'Super NFL' where QBs can fly and leap over buildings etc. The gospel narrative under this conception was the supposedly Almighty God with a confidence/identity crisis. All his life he thought he was everything (if he is the only God he doesn't have a father and is effectively an abortion/orphan = Jesus mamzer myth). Now he discovers he has a 'nice' daddy who probably doesn't like the way he has been acting in the Bible.
Secret Alias
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Re: Further Speculation About the Ish God: Exodus 15:3

Post by Secret Alias »

Even with only this much worked out you can start to see why the later orthodox developed all this 'Marcion hates the Jewish god.' People like Irenaeus worked hard to retain the idea of one all powerful God. This portrait of the 'man of war Yahweh' was pathetic. For Irenaeus God still was all powerful. He didn't 'wake up' to discover another Good god and then had an identity crisis which was only solved para-suicidally. This was an abomination. But the notion of the 'world ruler' with metanoia never quite left Christianity. It was first put forward by the Marcionites. Eznik preserves the myth. The Valentinians had a version of it. Even Origen's Apocatastasis doctrine involving the devil can be argued to be an adaptation of the original Marcionite understanding. But even Origen's notion wasn't as blasphemous as the Marcionite myth. Does Yahweh need to repent? Well the Hebrew Genesis already says he did once.
Genesis 6:6 - 8 Yahweh regretted/repented (וַיִּנָּחֵ֥ם) that He had made he had made Adams on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret/repent (נִחַ֖מְתִּי) that I have made them.” But Noah (וְנֹ֕חַ) found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
The point here is that IT SHOULDN'T have been blasphemous to suggest that Yahweh from time to time had metanoia. He is ALWAYS portrayed this way in the Pentateuch. He changes his mind with Abraham and Moses too (the Marcionites are said to have noted this 'change of mind' with Moses and use it to argue he is inferior). But by the late second century what the texts actually said was ignored and the only interest was to create an image of a big all powerful Lord. Genesis actually names Deucalion 'Noah' because he is God's agent of metanoia, God's regret/second thought.

So the guy who wrote the gospel (if it was written by a ditheist Jewish man) took the repenting/regretting Yahweh from the Pentateuch and developed a 'modern spinoff' that he got off the train just before the destruction of the temple regretting that he had ever made the Jews/Judaism and wanting to start over again.
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