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