Philo pointing to a celestial crucifixion of the Kyrios in outer space

[MrMacSon]

What is the earliest acknowledgment of the crucifixion of a Logos or Christ figure in the "Church Father" literature?

Good question

Justin Martyr's First Apology chapter 60 comes to mind:

And the physiological discussion concerning the Son of God in the Timaeus of Plato, where he says, "He placed him crosswise in the universe," 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, 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, 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, he [Plato] said that the power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe. 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; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, And the third around the third.
.

There's Tertullian's De Carne Christi 5 (and 6)

4 (end). ... the professors of this world's wisdom find it easier to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan than Marcion finds it to believe that Christ veritably became man.

5 There are, I submit, other things too that are foolish enough, those concerned with the reproaches and sufferings of God. If not, let them call it prudence that God was crucified. Excise this also, Marcion--or rather, this for preference. For which is more beneath God's dignity, more a matter of shame, to be born or to die, to carry about a body or a cross, to be circumcised or to be crucified, to be fed at the breast or to be buried, to be laid in a manger or to be entombed in a sepulchre? You will be the wiser if you refuse to believe these either. Yet wise you cannot be, except by becoming a fool in the world through believing the foolish things of God. Or was your reason for not tearing out of your scriptures the sufferings of Christ that as a phantasm he was free from the perception of them? I have already suggested that he could equally well have undergone the unsubstantial ridicule of an imaginary nativity and infancy.

But your answer is now required, murderer of the truth: was not God truly crucified? Did he not, as truly crucified, truly die? Was he not truly raised again, seeing of course he truly died? Was it by fraud that Paul determined to know nothing among us save Jesus crucified [2 Cor 2:12], was it by fraud that he represented him as buried [1 Cor. 15:4], by fraud that he insisted that he was raised up again? Fraudulent in that case is also our faith, and the whole of what we hope for from Christ will be a phantasm, you utter scoundrel, who pronounce innocent the assassins of God. For of them Christ suffered nothing, if he in reality suffered nothing. Spare the one and only hope of the whole world: why tear down the indispensable dishonour of the faith? Whatever is beneath God's dignity is for my advantage.

I am saved if I am not ashamed of my Lord. Whosoever is ashamed of me, he says, of him will I also be ashamed. I find no other grounds for shame, such as may prove that in contempt of dishonour I am nobly shameless and advantageously a fool. The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed--because it is shameful. The Son of God died: it is immediately credible--because it is silly. He was buried, and rose again: it is certain--because it is impossible. But how can these acts be true in him, if he himself was not true, if he had not truly in himself that which could be crucified, which could die, which could be buried and raised up again--this flesh, in fact, suffused with blood, scaffolded of bones, threaded through with sinews, intertwined with veins, competent to be born and to die, human unquestionably, as born of a human mother? And in Christ this flesh will be mortal precisely because Christ is man, and Son of Man. Else why is Christ called Man, and Son of Man, if he has nothing that is man's, and nothing derived from man?--unless perchance either man is something other than flesh, or man's flesh is derived from somewhere else than from man, or Mary is something other than human, or Marcion's god is a man ...

6. ... But even supposing we allow all the heretics to make use of the scriptures of that God whose world they also use--and this too will be for them a testimony of judgement, that they find support for their blasphemies from precedents he has provided--it is easy for the truth to win its case, even without raising this kind of objection to their use of the evidence. Therefore, I would that these who claim that the flesh of Christ followed the precedent of the angels, alleging that though flesh it was not born, would compare also the reasons, Christ's no less than the angels', for which they made their appearance in flesh. No angel ever came down with the intention of being crucified, of obtaining experience of death, of being raised again from death. If there never was this kind of reason for angels becoming embodied, you have the very reason why they took to them flesh without being born. They had not come to die, and consequently had no need to be born. Christ, on the other hand, being sent to die, had of necessity also to be born, so that he might die ...

[billd89]

... the witness of a lost tract by Philo, to be on the top of the celestial ladder in the vision of Jacob.

a) Ezekiel's Exagoge, (c.225 BC-75 BC?): "I saw, upon the summit of Mount Sinai, a Throne touching the vault of Heaven {οὐρανοῦ πτυχὸς}. On this Throne sat a noble personage,..."

At the top of the Celestial Stair was what, then? Hekhalot symbolism, Enochic tropes. I suppose the personage is Melchizedek, already rendered nameless and even then being replaced by Moses. The 'vault' is the negative space around the mountain's pinnacle: the Throne sits upon the sharp point between Earth and Sky. By the symbol of the thorn or spearhead, Moses is associated with Egyptian god-pair Sopdu/Sah, analoguous deity whose constellation is Orion. In Antiquity, Moses/Thoth was definitely linked to Sirius.

b) Justin Martyr, Hortatory Address to the Greeks 15/ Orphic Fragment Kern 245 (c.175 BC) : "For this Chalkeion {χάλκειον = brazen Cauldron} into Heaven is firmly set."

The three-legged cauldron was an oracular/divinatory device, but in Egypt there are alchemical factors to be reckoned with also. This symbol is still obscure for me, is it properly astrological? Uncertain. Here, where God sits, (the inside of) a brass cauldron likened unto the inside of a dome; a station inside the sphere. In fact, this peculiar Orphic image (w/ Thoth and the Moon-Child, Musaeus) bears an eerie resemblance to a 'Vision' described by Zosimos of Panopolis (c.180 AD, I think):

See M Escolano-Poveda, Zosimos Aigyptiakos. Identifying the Imagery of the “Visions” and Locating Zosimos of Panopolis in His Egyptian Context [2022] pp.89-90:

Of all the imagery in Zosimos’ “Visions”, the lunar staircases with sacrificing altars are the most memorable. In the first dream, Zosimos sees a ἱερουργός, a “sacrificing priest”, standing above an altar in the shape of a φιάλη, a bowl(ἐπάνω βωμοῦ φιαλοειδοῦς, Mém. auth., X 2, l. 18.; also called φιαλοβωμός, a word invented by Zosimos).51 Inside this altar stands a priest.52 The altar is located on top of a staircase of fifteen steps, although some versions indicate seven steps. 53 The priest residing inside the bowl-shaped altar talks to Zosimos and tells him that he has descended the fifteen steps of darkness and ascended those of light (Πεπλήρωκα τὸ κατιέναι με ταύτας τὰς δεκαπέντε σκοτοφεγγεῖς κλίμακας καὶ ἀνιέναι με τὰς φωτολαμπεῖς κλίμακας, Mém. auth., X 2, ll. 21-23). This most certainly refers to the complete cycle of the waning and waxing Moon.54 The image of the staircase of fifteen steps, with the bowl-shaped altar on top and the priest in it, about to experience a transformation/transmutation, connects Zosimos’ description with an important scene found in many Graeco-Roman period Egyptian temples: the lunar staircases.55 The most notorious examples are located on the ceiling of the pronaos of the Hathor Temple at Dendera, and on the external south wall of this same pronaos, overlooking the roof of the temple and giving access to the roof of the pronaos. We find them also in the temples of Edfu, Esna, and Philae, either as staircases or as processions of deities.

Taking the representation on the ceiling of the pronaos in Dendera as the most complete and lavish example (Fig. 1), we can enumerate the most distinctive elements of the scene: a staircase of fifteen steps, which on top has a depiction of the wedjat-eye inside of a disk with a lunar crescent in its lower part, sometimes standing on a papyriform column, and being revered by Thoth. On each one of the fourteen steps that lead to the top a deity stands. This staircase depicts the cycle from the new to the full Moon, which is represented in the wedjat-eye inside the disk. The depiction of the Moon as a disk with a crescent on its lower part is definitely reminiscent of the shape of a bowl, 56 particularly as it appears in the representations of alchemical apparatus in the Byzantine manuscripts, such as the representation of a dibikos in Marc. gr. 299, fol. 188v (Fig. 2).57

51. Mertens, 1995, p.36.
52. The sacrificial priest and the priest in the bowl-shaped altar could be considered as different figures, or be conflated as one. The text is ambiguous, perhaps on purpose, allowing the interpretation of the scene also as a self-sacrifice by the alchemist who performs the procedure. In fact, later the text says that the man of copper, the first transformation of the priest, is ὁ ἱερουργῶν καὶ ἱερουργούμενος “celui qui sacrifie et celui qui est sacrifié” (Mém. auth., X 3, ll. 71-72). Cf. Lindsay, 1970, pp. 344-345; Fowden, 1986, p. 121; Mertens, 1995, pp. 34-35. [...]

In this case, the 'Jewish' Copper Cauldron would be an alternate interpretation for the Egyptian wedjat-eye ("healing power as well as regeneration and protection in general"). Here is a tableau w/ Thoth's baboons.



c) Philo's De Vita Mosis 2 (c.30 AD) has Moses hurled upward to Heaven as shot from a crossbow {βαλβῖδος}, perhaps a katapeltikon.

Once again, Jewish military imagery tied to long-lost constellation lore. This is exactly where the Edelsteins snatched the catapulted/rocketed meme, one key element of their Mosaic paradigm. Think of a rising man/soul piercing the Horos or rupturing the Spheres of Destiny, but also any Judeo-Egytian symbolism/mythos around the constellation 'Orion the Warrior' (w/ crossbow). A year ago, I posted this: the metaphor of the crossbow definitely evokes the cross, but ἀπολύω + ἀφίστημι + ἀφορίζω seem to be three stages in separation from 'The Way of Death'. Could this archetype of transcendence have been preserved by descendants of a Semitic military cult, Judeo-Chaldeans networked along the Nile c.100 BC? The Bow-Star held some significance for the Chaldeans: because Moses is explicitly identified as a Chaldean, we should always remember they were astronomers/astrologers, telling stories w/ the stars.

[billd89]

This was recently in the news:

Crossbow fibulae/brooch were first used in the Western and Byzantine Empires in Late Antiquity, from the late third century to the middle of the sixth century A.D. They were worn as cloak fasteners by military officials and civil servants and became strongly associated with military and civil authority.