The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by MrMacSon »

Sinouhe wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 11:07 pm In my opinion, i think the first mention of the cross comes from the Epistle of Barnabas that I date before Justin martyr :
  • Barnabas 9:7
    Understand ye that He saith the eighteen first,
    and then after an interval three hundred In the eighteen 'I'
    stands for ten, 'H' for eight. Here thou hast JESUS (IHSOYS). And
    because the cross in the 'T' was to have grace, He saith also three
    hundred. So He revealeth Jesus in the two letters, and in the
    remaining one the cross.
I'm not sure what's going on with " 'H' [stands for] for eight " and " Here thou hast JESUS (IHSOYS) " in that translation

Codex Sinaiticus has IN as in "Here thou has IN" ie. Iota Nu (not Iota Eta nor IΣ, and certainly not ΙΗΣΕΟΣ, ΙΗΣΕΟΝ, etc.)
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manu ... omSlider=0

And before "Understand ye that He saith the eighteen first" there's a clear reference to the Hebrew's scriptures with

"For the scripture saith; And Abraham circumcised of his household eighteen males and three hundred. What then was the knowledge given unto him? "

The previous verse/pericope/passage also has IN ie. Iota Nu

Learn therefore, children of love, concerning all things abundantly, that Abraham, who first appointed circumcision, looked forward in the spirit unto IN, when he circumcised having received the ordinances of three letters.

In Barnabas there's also

Barnabas 8.5: 5 Then there is the placing the wool on the tree [ξύλον]. This means that the kingdom of Jesus is on the tree [ξύλου], and that they who set their hope on Him shall live for ever.

and

Barnabas 12.1-4: 1 In like manner again He defineth concerning the cross in another prophet, who saith; And when shall these things be accomplished? saith the Lord. Whenever a tree shall be bended and stand upright, and whensoever blood shall drop from a tree. Again thou art taught concerning the cross, and Him that was to be crucified. 2 And He saith again in Moses, when war was waged against Israel by men of another nation, and that He might remind them when the war was waged against them that for their sins they were delivered unto death; the Spirit saith to the heart of Moses, that he should make a type of the cross and of Him that was to suffer, that unless, saith He, they shall set their hope on Him, war shall be waged against them for ever. Moses therefore pileth arms one upon another in the midst of the encounter, and standing on higher ground than any he stretched out his hands, and so Israel was again victorious. Then, whenever he lowered them, they were slain with the sword. 3 Wherefore was this? That they might learn that they cannot be saved, unless they should set their hope on Him. 4 And again in another prophet He saith; ''The whole day long have I stretched out My hands to a disobedient people that did gainsay My righteous way'' [Isaiah 65.2].

There's also a lot of other similar passages in other literature
See viewtopic.php?p=70033#p70033
(quoted here viewtopic.php?p=117402#p117402)
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Sinouhe
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by Sinouhe »

Thanks to both of you for the details.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by neilgodfrey »

Sinouhe wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 2:05 pm What Paul did with the OT is exactly what Mark and Qumran did with the OT : interpreting the Bible as if it was related to their own history.

Paul considers that Jesus is an ancestral secret to be discovered in the scriptures (romans 16:25-26, romans 1:1-3) so basically he search his christ in the scriptures.

By example, in the story of Moses, with the Rock, he sees Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). It is a pesher of the exodus and not really an historical account about Jesus.

We have a suffering and killed servant in Isaiah 53 with an ambiguous verse that can be interpreted as a resurrection :
  • 8 and as for his generation who considered
    that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people?
    9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
    10 he has put him to grief; when makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall extend his days;
    the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
    12 and he shall divide the spoil with the strong
    because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors;
    yet he bore the sin of many,
This is a perfect summary of his doctrine concerning Jesus: he sacrifices himself to save his people but God will not abandon him. And Paul made an allusion to Isaiah 53 (1 Corinthians 15:3).
But why crucifixion as the manner of death? (Yes, it can be found exegetically by means of the word play, but word play can surely produce the results that one is predisposed to find.) And when was the crucifixion introduced?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by neilgodfrey »

MrMacSon wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 4:34 pm
I wonder if the idea of Jesus' crucifixion emerged with Justin Martyr, in part, at least, +/or previously in something he was reflecting on (without stating what that might have been ie. if he was indeed reflecting on something). I've been thinking about collating all the stuff I poste on this about 12-18mths ago. Here's a start on that exercise (motivated by Neil's question/s):
The question I'm left with after looking at the several justifications or rationales for the crucifixion that Justin (and others) discover, is: Why did they interpret everything that way? What was leading them to see a rationale or foreshadowing of the crucifixion?

mlinssen wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:22 pm
Dialogue with Trypho chapter 55 is where we can see how he uses the staurogram to argue for "the cross":

First Apology 55 -

the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross. And so it was said by the prophet, "The breath before our face is the Lord Christ".a

Ditto -- is Justin really explaining the origin of the idea or creatively rationalizing what he has inherited?
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mlinssen
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by mlinssen »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:10 am
MrMacSon wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 4:34 pm
I wonder if the idea of Jesus' crucifixion emerged with Justin Martyr, in part, at least, +/or previously in something he was reflecting on (without stating what that might have been ie. if he was indeed reflecting on something). I've been thinking about collating all the stuff I poste on this about 12-18mths ago. Here's a start on that exercise (motivated by Neil's question/s):
The question I'm left with after looking at the several justifications or rationales for the crucifixion that Justin (and others) discover, is: Why did they interpret everything that way? What was leading them to see a rationale or foreshadowing of the crucifixion?

mlinssen wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:22 pm
Dialogue with Trypho chapter 55 is where we can see how he uses the staurogram to argue for "the cross":

First Apology 55 -

the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross. And so it was said by the prophet, "The breath before our face is the Lord Christ".a

Ditto -- is Justin really explaining the origin of the idea or creatively rationalizing what he has inherited?
Oh no, surely he's merely trying hard to make a case for a forced inheritance.
If Mark really did invent the resurrection - and I find my own paper there fairly convincing (of course) - then we move from an execution by "Marcion" where the stauros merely is a mundane execution device to something less intrusive, so to say

And if you want to advertise with the death of your idol then it also doesn't make for a great banner or button to have him die with a stake up any orifice

No, they're all trying hard to make a case for a graceful death by changing the device IMO - and mistranslating the Tanakh is part and parcel of that as usual
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mlinssen
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by mlinssen »

But what I find most extraordinary is that none of the texts has anything but stauros - and that seems to point very, very hard in a Justin who is writing long after all the texts have been settled

Or did the Romans just not understand what a stauros is because they were self-congratulatory assholes who didn't give a shit about anything?
There is just a giant chasm there - then again nobody had access to the texts, and perhaps they were just making up whatever they felt like because only the incrowd had access.
Can't wrap my 21st CE head around it
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by Giuseppe »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:06 am(Yes, it can be found exegetically by means of the word play, but word play can surely produce the results that one is predisposed to find.) And when was the crucifixion introduced?
if one is ready to ignore the possibility of the word play, then the more probable explanation for an invented crucifixion before 70 CE is the Plato's reference to the creator fixing the universe in the form of a cross. Wasn't Paul saying that Jesus is the divine agent of the creation?

That hypothesis would explain why, when Jesus works, in the Judaizing/catholic theologies, as the demiurge in the Platonic myth of the creation, he is the Logos, while when Jesus works as the enemy of the demiurge (in anti-demiurgist theologies), he is the direct victim of the demiurge.
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Sinouhe
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by Sinouhe »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:06 am But why crucifixion as the manner of death? (Yes, it can be found exegetically by means of the word play, but word play can surely produce the results that one is predisposed to find.) And when was the crucifixion introduced?
So for Paul (and most likely for people around him), the Messiah was Pre-existent and hidden in heaven until the last judgment, a tradition inherited from the parables of Enoch, a text prior to Paul that strongly influenced his conception of the Messiah, as James Waddell has brilliantly demonstrated.
In order to understand and explain this mysterious Messiah, they searched for him in the scriptures :
  • Romans 16:
    25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,
    26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from[a] faith
When they searched for the Messiah in the scripture, they found the Servant of Isaiah, the book that best describes the coming Messiah.
And what does the prophet say about the servant Messiah in Isaiah 53 ? That he was killed.

So far there is nothing far-fetched when I say that Paul (or his colleagues) used Isaiah 53 for his conception of the sacrifice of their Messiah to atone for the faults of men :
  • 1 Corinthians 15
    3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (Isaiah 53) ,
    4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Because the first christians searched their Messiah in the scriptures, then they had to find how did the Messiah was killed in Isaiah 53.
And apart from Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 is undoubtedly the most influential text on the passion of Jesus among Christians.
And this Psalm mentions the pierced hands and feet.

By associating Psalm 22 with Isaiah 53, they imagined that Jesus was crucified on a wooden stake as Paul refers to it in Galatians :
  • Galatians 3
    13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written:
    Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”
To imagine that Christians have associated Psalm 22 with Isaiah 53 would be far-fetched ???

Not really. Besides the verses referring to the servant of Isaiah, the psalms of lament (including psalm 22 with almost fifteen allusions or quotations) are the most used texts in the Hodayot to describe the persecution of the Teacher of Righteousness .
This implies that the psalms of lament (including Psalm 22) were related to Isaiah’s servant for some jews, even before Christ.

Of course, this is only my opinion :D
Last edited by Sinouhe on Mon May 16, 2022 4:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

Post by MrMacSon »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:10 am
MrMacSon wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 4:34 pm I wonder if the idea of Jesus' crucifixion emerged with Justin Martyr, in part, at least, +/or previously in something he was reflecting on (without stating what that might have been ie. if he was indeed reflecting on something). I've been thinking about collating all the stuff I poste on this about 12-18mths ago. Here's a start on that exercise (motivated by Neil's question/s):
The question I'm left with after looking at the several justifications or rationales for the crucifixion that Justin (and others) discover, is: Why did they interpret everything that way? What was leading them to see a rationale or foreshadowing of the crucifixion?

-- is Justin really explaining the origin of the idea or creatively rationalizing what he has inherited?
Rhetoric? ie. neither (i) explaining the origin of the idea, nor (ii) creatively rationalizing what he has inherited

(though a more measured answer depends on what you meant by "the idea" )

Staking wasn't new, but perhaps Justin helped shape or even create the idea of a shaped crucifixion and the lore / imagery etc that has long been part of with that.

We only know 'saturos-fixation' as crucifixion via crux-ifixion ie. via the Latin of crux

Simon of Cyrene carried a σταυρὸν, a stauron, a stake; despite the English transliterabomination of 'cross'
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MrMacSon
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Re: The Celestial Messiah in the parables of Enoch

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Sinouhe wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 3:46 am And apart from Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 is undoubtedly the most influential text on the passion of Jesus among Christians.
Among the authors of the gospels, in fact.

With selected verses from Psalm 22 in the gospels in reverse order (to how they appear in Ps 22)
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