ER Goodenough's Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism [1935]

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billd89
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ER Goodenough's Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism [1935]

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Now on Internet Archive:

Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough's By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism [1935] LINK.

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Re: Goodenough's Interpretation of The Divine Stream (Power )

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Goodenough [1935] has the Light-Stream of God as a Royal Road, Broad Highway, in what must be a Jewish Gnosto-Hermetic Mystery, p.7:
There is much that is uncertain about Hellenistic Judaism. Yet the fact is, it seems to me, that by Philo's time, and long before, Judaism in the Greek­ speaking world, especially in Egypt, had been transformed into a Mystery.

The objective of this Judaism was salvation in the mystical sense. God was no longer only the God presented in the Old Testament: He was the Absolute, connected with phenomena by His Light-Stream, the Logos or Sophia. The hope and aim of man was to leave created things with their sordid com­plications, and to rise to incorruption, immortality, life, by climbing the mystic ladder, traversing the Royal Road, of the Light-Stream.

Goodenough [1935] sees Philo elaborating Hermetic themes as a Jewish mystical power, see p.150:
{In Philo} the richness of detail is evident with which the character of Abraham had been elaborated to make it conform to the Mystery, and to represent him as a saving force for men to come. Particularly has the light symbolism come out with increasing emphasis, and the conception that Abraham was nourished by the stream of divine rays, which was symbolized by Sophia or the Powers, and which was at the same time a law. […] It is not in the material world that Philo would find such a Law, but in the nature of the divine Stream, which incidentally coming into matter, makes it into a Cosmos, but which the higher mystic gets not as a cosmic derivation but directly from the immaterial Source. The conception is that found in the Hermetica and in the Avesta, in the Pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo, and in Neo-Pythagoreanism, rather than in the Stoics of any period.

Goodenough [1935] recognizes Philo offers competing mythologies, but apparent contractions such as Son-as-Father or multiple Nous can be understood as agglomerated myths, p.160-1:
According to Quaestiones in Genesin, 4.97, as Pascher* indicates, Sophia is herself the daughter of God and the first­born mother of all things. From the fact that Philo parallels Sophia with the source of the stream which waters Eden, Pascher concludes that she is to Philo a goddess of the Earth, like Plato's "nurse," but he has apparently not noticed that the stream here irrigates the plants and shoots of souls that love virtue.63 It will be noticed that Sophia and God mutually find delight in each other. But as the Logos was the stream from Sophia, her son in the one passage, he is the source and she the stream in De Fuga, 97.64 Pascher 63 would explain this contradiction by his theory of Philo's twofold Logos, the higher Logos, the Monad, who is the source of Sophia, and the lower Logos, the Dyad, which is their son, and wears the cosmic robe. But we have seen reason to question Pascher's second Logos. My own explanation would be to admit Philo's contradiction, and account for it by the fact that the mythologies had no absolute value in Philo's mind in any case, but were all only figures of speech for his very real conception of the great light-streaming God. Terms for stages in the Stream were of relative unimportance, for actually there were no stages. The whole Stream was the Logos, and it might be called Sophia just as well. If one began with the Logos symbolism, as in the Logos and Powers formulation, Sophia could fit in incidentally as a lesser manifestation of the Logos. If one began with the Sophia symbolism, the Logos could be her son streaming into the cosmos. The point which the story of Isaac brings out most sharply is that we have here two distinct mythologies of the Light-Stream, each of such importance that it has forced itself into the exegesis.

*Joseph Pascher, Η ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ ΟΔΟΣ: Der Königsweg zur Wiedergeburt und Vergottung bei Philon von Alexandreia (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, Bd. 17, Heft 3 & 4, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 1931)

Though the Edelsteins utilized Goodenough [1935] in so many traces, they also abandon his thesis at this point, resoundingly: their own Program of anagogy definitely outlined stages for those who would follow their reconstructed Jewish Mystery cult.

Metaphysically, we should not shy away from discussing this Judaic Mystery: the Therapeuts were a mystical order transported one by one via the Light-Stream itself unto God. This must be Jewish Gnosticism, a Judeo-Pythagorean form of anagogy resembling Jacob's Ladder.

Philo Judaeus, DVC 2.11:
τὸ δὲ θεραπευτικὸν γένος βλέπειν ἀεὶ προδιδασκόμενον τῆς τοῦ ὄντος θέας ἐφιέσθω καὶ τὸν αἰσθητὸν ἥλιον ὑπερβαινέτω καὶ μηδέποτε τὴν τάξιν ταύτην λειπέτω πρὸς τελείαν ἄγουσαν εὐδαιμονίαν.

The verb (ὑπερβαινέτω = ὑπερ + βαίνω) is especially telling, but complex: ὑπερ = over, above, beyond, upwards; βαίνω =

(intransitive) to go, step, move on foot ......... 'Let them step upward'
(transitive) to mount (a chariot) .................. 'Let them mount on high'
(intransitive) to depart, go away .................. 'Let them go up'
(euphemistic) to die ................................ 'Let them rise heavenward' (?)

μετεωρίζω might be analogous, Philo uses that term 15x in 11 books.

We can alternately read "go beyond" "climb higher than" "overpass" "step over" "drive above" (i.e. be transported in the celestial chariot) the Sun, but any metaphysical meaning is easily lost in translation. Spiritually, we're speaking of transcendence. The allusion to Merkabah mysticism seems obvious to me. The precise modus operandi is left unstated, however: Philo doesn't reveal the Mystery, he merely alludes to it.

C.D. Yonge's version (1855):
But the therapeutic sect of mankind, being continually taught to see without interruption, may well aim at obtaining a sight of the living God, and may pass by the sun, which is visible to the outward sense, and never leave this order which conducts to perfect happiness.

G.R.S. Mead (1900):
But as for the race of devotees [the Therapeuts], who are ever taught more and more to see, let them strive for the intuition of That which is; let them transcend the sun which men perceive [and gaze upon the Light beyond], nor ever leave this rank [order, space, or plane], which leads to perfect blessedness.

F.H. Colson (1935):
But it is well that the Therapeutae, a people always taught from the first to use their sight, should desire the vision of the Existent and soar above the sun of our senses and never leave their place in this company which carries them on to perfect happiness.

My own trans.
But let the Therapeutic type, [1] having been taught to perceptively behold further: [2] let them evermore yearn for the actual vision of Being and [3] let them transcend the sensible Sun, and [4] let them never quit this order which perfections to lasting happiness!

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