cora wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:03 am
To everybody:
I think I know something about it but it is complicated.
1. I know in Egypt the praying pose was standing upright with your arms outstretched. That comes from Egypt.
2. The word stauros still means stake. One upright piece of wood. There is also a verb with it. Paul uses both. It means that Jesus died on a stake.
Justin Martyr enters (again). Our philosopher keeps adding new things to the story. There are already a dozen or so.
I knew that the crucifixion story is based on a psalm. On a forgery in a psalm by a Christian. The forgery is still in our bible. The jewish bible where it comes from says something different. I once read an article by a jewish woman scholar, where she explained everything. Including the jewish characters. There is written: lions my hands and feet. They translate: as lions they attacked my hands and feet. Some Christian made of it: they PIERCED my hands and feet. That must have been Justin, because he mentions it. I guess that there the cross and the crucifixion image comes from. It is a forgery and it is not the truth. But it is used probably from Justin on. It is used in the gospels. The psalm is psalm 22, which the jews call the suffering psalm. IMO Justin did it, because he is inventing things all the time. That is why I call him crazy Justin.
Jesus still died on a stake. Only thanks to Justin we do not know that. I think that is a bit strange. Also basing the story on a psalm at all is very strange. It means IMO the story is not real, but written over from the OT. So what really happened? We will never know. But we are looking at a fake execution. Including dividing of clothes etc. How about the inerrability of the gospels? This is IMO a bad point for the gospels. If this is invented what more is?
greetings, Cora.
Justin pontificates about crucifixion & the cross a lot, & what meaning he got about them from elsewhere
- ie. other than the NT, especially from accounts about Moses
eg.
First Apology 35 -
.
... David, the king and prophet, who uttered these things, suffered none of them; but Jesus Christ stretched forth His hands, being crucified by the Jews speaking against Him, and denying that He was the Christ. And as the prophet spoke, they tormented Him, and set Him on the judgment-seat, and said, Judge us. And the expression, ''They pierced my hands and my feet'', was used in reference to the nails of the cross which were fixed in His hands and feet. And after He was crucified they cast lots upon His vesture, and they that crucified Him parted it among them. And that these things did happen, you can ascertain from the Acts of Pontius Pilate.
.
Psalm 22:
1-
2,
6-
8,
15-
18, -
.
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.
...---
6 But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
8 ‘Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver-let him rescue the one in whom he delights!’
...---
15 My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
.....and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
.....you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs surround me,
.....a pack of villains encircles me;
......they pierce my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots
.
(The crucifixion passage in Mark 15:24-39, uses lines from Psalm 22 in reverse order)
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
a = a number of potential passages, such as Gen
2:7; Ezekiel
37:5, 6, 8 or 9; Job
12:10; 27:3; 32:8; 33:4; Psalms
33:6 or 150:6;
but I think
Isaiah 42:5 may fit best -
.
Thus says God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
Who gives breath to the people on it
And spirit to those who walk in it
.
First Apology 60
.
“And the physiological discussion concerning the Son of God in the Timoeus of Plato, where he says, "He placed him crosswise in the universe",1 he borrowed in like manner from Moses; for in 'the writings of Moses' it is related how at that time, when the Israelites went out of Egypt and were in the wilderness, they fell in with poisonous beasts, both vipers and asps, and every kind of serpent, which slew the people; and that Moses, by the inspiration and influence of God, took brass, and made it into the figure of a cross,2 and set it in the holy tabernacle, and said to the people, "If ye look to this figure, and believe, ye shall be saved thereby".
“And when this was done, it is recorded that the serpents died,3 and it is handed down that the people thus escaped death.
“Which things Plato reading, and not accurately understanding, and 'not apprehending' that it was the figure of the cross, but taking it to be a placing crosswise,1 he said that the power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe.1
“And as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, "that the Spirit of God moved over the waters." For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he said was placed crosswise in the universe;1 and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, "And the third around the third".
“And hear how the Spirit of prophecy signified through Moses that there should be a conflagration.”
.
1 In
First Apol. 60 Justin refers to 'crosswise' four times ("placed in the universe" three), and, in the first line, he ties that to Son of God in Plato's
Timaeus in which there is cosmological commentary with a compound divided lengthways into two parts, united at the centre like the letter X, and bent into an inner and outer circle or sphere, crossing one another again at a point over the point at which they first cross; and later, the outer and the inner sphere cross one another again and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact.
2 Justin has 'reconfigured' the "serpent of brass upon a signal-staff" from Numbers 21:8 as 'the figure of a cross'.
3. The serpents didn't die: see Numbers 21:9.
Moreover, Plato's
Republic, bk II (s.361e-362a), has a reference to a crucified just man -
such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire.
Dialogue with Trypho 40
.
Trypho: "prove to us whether He must be crucified and die so disgracefully and so dishonourably by the death cursed in the law. For we cannot bring ourselves even to think of this."
... said [Justin], "that what the prophets said and did they veiled by parables and types, as you admitted to us; so that it was not easy for all to understand ...
They answered, "We admitted this."
"Listen, therefore," say [Justin], "to what follows; for Moses first exhibited this seeming curse of Christ's by the signs which he made."
"Of what [signs] do you speak?" said [Trypho]
"When the people," replied [Justin], "waged war with Amalek, and the son of Nave (Nun), by name Y'hosua / Iésous, led the fight, Moses himself prayed to God, stretching out both hands, and Hur with Aaron supported them during the whole day, so that they might not hang down when he got wearied. For if he gave up any part of this sign, which was an imitation of the cross, the people were beaten, as is recorded in the writings of Moses; but if he remained in this form, Amalek was proportionally defeated, and he who prevailed prevailed by the cross. For it was not because Moses so prayed that the people were stronger, but because, while one who bore the name of Iésous was in the forefront of the battle, he himself [ie. Moses] made the sign of the cross ...
.
Dialogue with Trypho 41
.
"And God by Moses shows in another way the force of the mystery of the cross ...
... even as Amalek was defeated and Israel victorious when the people came out of Egypt, by means of the type of the stretching out of Moses' hands, and the name of Y'hoshua / Iésous, by which the son of Nave (Nun) was called.
And it seems that the type and sign, which was erected to counteract the serpents which bit Israel, was intended for the salvation of those who believe that death was declared to come thereafter on the serpent through Him that would be crucified, but salvation to those who had been bitten by him and had betaken themselves to Him that sent His Son into the world to be crucified.
.
Dial. 111
.
"And that it was declared by symbol, even in the time of Moses, that there would be two advents of this Christ, as I have mentioned previously, [manifest] from the symbol of the goats presented for sacrifice during the fast. And again, by what Moses and Y'hoshua / Iésous did, the same thing was symbolically announced and told beforehand. For the one of them, stretching out his hands, remained till evening on the hill, his hands being supported; and this reveals a type of no other thing than of the cross: and the other, whose name was altered to Iésous, led the fight, and Israel conquered.
"Now this took place in the case of both those holy men and prophets of God, that you may perceive how one of them could not bear up both the mysteries: I mean, the type of the cross and the type of the name.
.
Dial. 112
"And shall we not rather refer the standard to the resemblance of the crucified Jesus, since also Moses by his outstretched hands, together with him who was named Iésous, achieved a victory for your people?
