Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed. This sentence is probably true for Christianity: the appearance of Christianity marks the disappearance of Alexandrian Judaism.
c.35 AD, Philo claimed there were 1 mln Jews in Egypt (including Alexandria) and if annual population growth was 0.12%, there should be how many more c.135 AD? Yet, after the pogrom of 38 AD and the devastating Kitos War, Alexandrian Judaism
disappears c.120 AD; by the Bar Kokhba revolt 132 AD, there's little evidence that Jews even exist in Egypt. Where did they go? Holocaust and apostasy, it would appear, or 'underground'.
Today we know that the first Christian liturgy is simply the liturgy used in the Greek-speaking synagogues: Christians are therefore the Judaizers and the Judeo-Greek half-breeds.
Is that translated? It's racist language that doesnt work in N.America, but I think I get the point: heterodox Judaism. But I disagree that only appeared in the 3rd C. AD. No, it was there all along, at least as far back as the 1st C. BC. Philo had such radical allegorizers on his hate-list, they were well-established by 25 AD. Much of his writing can be seen as a counterpoint to these opponents, their movement.
It is therefore in this specific milieu that we must try to understand the gospels; indeed, if these men and women overwhelmingly rally to Christianity, it is because for them Christianity represents quite clearly what they are attached to.
Specific milieu of Alexandria? No: I dont believe the Gospels come fr Egypt. There was smthg quite different going on in Egypt, very Judeo-Gnostic (1st C. AD), then Post-Jewish Gnostic (2nd C. AD). Christianity -the nascent orthodox religion- is probably Late 2nd C. and more the product of trends of Byzantium and Rome. Scholars (esp.
Bauer) have noted the peculiar absence of Church History on Alexandria 50 AD-150 AD - precisely because it was such a Gnostic embarassment.
the God of the Bible who acts, comes down to earth, knows men, cannot be the true God. It is Philo who will reply to them that there are not Logoi but only one Logos who is the second god, the son of God, etc. Philo's philosophy is very simple, as soon as God does something in the Bible, it is not God who does it but the Logos of God who does it in his place. ... Philo rewrote the Bible in philosophical language... If the Jews of Alexandria, the Judeo-Greek half-breeds and the converts from paganism were convinced of the Philonian interpretation of the Torah, the rabbis of Yavneh were much less so. They rejected this type of interpretation. For them, God really acts and, despite his infinity in history, this God is the true God and is not replaced by an archangel, a son in his action towards men.
Philo is NOT the innovator: the allegorizing method was generations old. There was NOT a single Philonic Two Power Thesis - I have discussed one example where Philo has 3 or 4 iterations of the God of Time. There are other examples. It was not only Greek philosophy that Philo addressed: Egyptian concepts and schemas also! True, whatever we might call the traditional/normative/conservative Palestinian Jews, they (elites excepted) mostly rejected Philonic theosophy, but the Diaspora was vast. As for the Gospel Judaizers in Asia Minor, well they're different also. I disagree with any 'one size fits all' oversimplification.
Jesus is thus fundamentally for the Christians of the years 120-140, not a man, but the Second God, archangel, Logos, Son of God, etc. described by Philo. Philo would say that the function of the Logos is to be the Savior God, in Hebrew Yehôshua... Jesus. In this early gospel, the miracles of God in the Tanakh are described as the miracles of the Logos of God and not of God who is impassible and therefore cannot perform miracles.
Almost 100 yrs earlier, Epistle to the Hebrews c.55 AD is a fairly novel Christos doctrine taught (by Apollos, one of these early Judeo-Xtians) to a Melchizedekian synagogue in Alexandria. 'Melchizedek' is a hallmark of Alexandria, absent from Palestinian Judaism (Qumran docs were not all locally produced; Melch. partisan literature was exported abroad to buyers of esoterica). Indigenous Judeo-Egyptian faith is profoundly heterodox, in a myriad of forms, more or less 'Jewish' (identifiable). The function of the Jewish Logos as the Savior God may well be an Egyptian development (maybe!) but this would have come about in Judeo-Egypt where rural Jews long worshipped Joseph (the Egyptian Jewish Patriarch) as Serapis. Melchizedek (or Enoch) as a divine mediator wasnt really seen as a Man. And the Alexandrian Mosaic cult tried to replace Moses for Melchizedek c.175 BC but even that apparently didnt succeed: the former wasnt accepted and the latter only weakened. Alexandrian Jewry was fighting amongst itself - that must have hastened the decline.
I'm curious what he says about Sethians, since they had a corpus of literature also (perhaps rivalling the Hermetica?) and they obviously pre-date Xtianity. Many more Jews turned Gnostic (in a Sethian Spring, c.120 AD?) rather than Xtian, but those lines arent firm either. After 115 AD, Gnosticism was a stepping-stone to Xtianity over 3-4 generations I suppose.