Scapegoat Sacrifice and the Crucifixion

[Secret Alias]

I am stuck on the problem that Paul and many others interpreted Jesus as a Yom Kippur sacrifice ... on Passover! Fryer's article is a good case in point. Seriously consider what is being argued here for a moment:

The context supports it (viz. the typological interpretation of hilasterion in Rom. 3:25 as a nomen loci, applying to Christ the properties of the kapporet) solidly: it fits in admirably into Paul's description of the exceeding sinfulness of all the world before God; it suits the emphatic autou in the phrase en to autou haimati;22 the mention ofthe doxa theou (v. 23); the reference to the (sacrificial) blood of Christ as the means of atonement; the term hilasterion itself; and the resultant forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7), justification (Rom. 3:24; 5:9), reconciliation with God (5:10, 11), and peace with God (5:1). This remarkable correspondence with motifs which are also connected with the Day of Atonement, indicates, as Richardson says, 'that Paul is putting forward the view that Calvary is the Christian mercy-seat.' (1958:225; also Manson 1945:6ff.; Nygren1965:118ff.; Wilckens 1978:191£).

(iii). An impressive history of interpretation supports this interpretation. Rabbinic sources23 as well as the unanimous interpretation of the Greek Fathers and many protestant exegetes, including Luther and Calvin, support it.24 If this interpretation is correct, then the Apostle is saying that Christ on the cross, Le. 'in his (own) blood', has become to the world all that the kapporet was for Israel. 'What was symbolically figured forth on the Day of Atonement has been fulfilled in Christ' (Hunter 1955:47). Christ on the Cross is the pla<;e where God meets the sinner and shows his mercy to the world.

Is it possible that there was an ur-tradition in Christianity which understood Jesus to have been sacrificed on Yom Kippur rather than Passover?

[Peter Kirby]

Shot in the dark here.... maybe conformity to Aristotelian logic wasn't really a strong suit of early Christian thought.

Remember that this is all, in the movie-trailer phrase, "from the people who brought you the Trinity"...

[Secret Alias]

But the Trinity can be explained as a Platonic carry over (cf. Origen Contra Celsum 6). To me the implausibility of interpreting a Passover lamb as a Yom Kippur goat is akin to playing Xmas music in July.

[Peter Kirby]

Literally he's neither. Metaphorically Jesus Christ gets slapped with the whole kitchen sink. He's a rock; he's not a rock. He's a door; he's not a door. He's a lamb; he's a shepherd. He's a hand; he's a breast. He's a word; he's wisdom. He's bread; he's wine. How long would you like me to keep going here.

[Secret Alias]

In one sense he isn't 'literally' the Paschal lamb but being led to his crucifixion on the Passover makes him as much a lamb as let's say someone dressed in a red costume with a fake white beard is Santa Claus. No the guy working at the mall 'isn't' Santa Claus. His name is George Smith. But he's Santa Claus.

And then to write a book about George Smith working as a mall Santa and then layer on top of that description - i.e. while developing a portrait of George Smith the mall Santa - a secondary identification of him as the Easter Bunny, that would never happen.

"George Smith a jolly man, his white beard glistening in the artificial lights of Mall of America. His crimson robe a beacon to children everywhere ... it was as if his long ears invoked the bringing of painted eggs ... presents under the tree." It's just muddled and unlikely to have occurred naturally especially if - and this is critical - the author is trying to communicate a message of salvation rather than silly artistic rambling or license.

[Secret Alias]

I tend - like most people at the forum - to run multiple investigations at the same time. In this case Jesus the high priest is strangely related to Jesus the goat sacrificed on Yom Kippur. Dix notes ‘From the days of Clement of Rome in the first century, for whom our LORD is ‘the High-priest of our offerings’ Who is ‘in the heights of the heavens (1 Clem.6) it can be said with truth that this doctrine of the offering of the earthly Eucharist by the heavenly Priest at the heavenly altar is to all intents and purposes the only conception of the eucharistic sacrifice which is known anywhere in the church... there is no pre-Nicene author Eastern or Western whose eucharistic doctrine is at all fully stated who does not regard the offering and consecration of the Eucharist as the present action of the LORD Himself, the Second Person of the Trinity.’

Barker adds that interpreting the Eucharist as the Day of Atonement offering, Origen wrote: ‘You who came to Christ the true high priest, who made atonement for you... do not hold fast to the blood of the flesh. Learn rather the blood of the Word and hear him saying to you “This is my blood which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He who is inspired by the mysteries knows both the flesh and the blood of the Word of God (On Leviticus 9.10).

Jerome, commenting on Zephaniah 3 wrote of ‘the priests who pray at the Eucharist for the coming of the LORD’. He too went on to link the day of the LORD’s coming to the Day of Atonement, and ‘wait for me, for the day when I rise’ (RSV Zeph.3.8) was read as ‘Wait for me on the day of my resurrection’.

Barker adds this association of the two advents of the LORD with the Day of Atonement is found as early as the Letter of Barnabas, a Levite. As in Jerome, the earthly life of Jesus is compared to the role of the scapegoat who bore the sins, ‘but the point of there being two similar goats is that when they see him coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel between him and the goat (Barn.7). The implication is that the blood of the goat being brought from the holy of holies was believed from the very earliest period to prefigure the Parousia and that the association of the Eucharist and the Day of Atonement was well known. Justin in the mid-second century linked the sacrificed goat to the second coming, (Trypho 40) and Cyril of Alexandria wrote some two centuries later: We must perceive the Immanuel in the slaughtered goat... the two goats illustrate the mystery (Letter 41).

[Secret Alias]

I would merely add that all modern commentators who have investigated the connection between Yom Kippur and the crucifixion fail to grasp that the 'sent for' goat naturally corresponds to the origin of the 'apostle' the second coming as it were of Christ. It is for this reason certainly that Paul is identified as 'the Paraclete' (i.e. the one who would come after Jesus and remind people of what was said by Jesus). This is evidenced in the Acts of Archelaus, the Marcionites (cf Origen Hom Luc etc). It is also implicit in the description of the 'Marcionite myth' described by Eznik:

He sent his Son to redeem them and 'to take on the likeness of a slave and to come into being in the form of man' [Phil 2:7] in the midst of the sons of the God of the Law. 'Heal' he said 'their lepers and give life to their dead and open their blind and make very great healings as a gift to them, so that the Lord of creatures might see you and be jealous and raise you on a cross.'

'And then having become dead you will descend into the Harsh (or, Hell) and you will raise them thence because it is not customary for the Harsh to accept life into its midst. And for the same reason you will go up to the cross so that you might resemble the dead and so that you might open the mouth of Hell to take you and enter into the middle of it and empty it.'

And when he had raised him on a cross, they say, he descended into the Harsh and emptied it. And having raised the souls from the middle of it he led them into the third heaven, to his Father.

And the Lord of creatures having become angry, in his anger he rent his robe and the curtain of of his temple. And he darkened his sun and he clothed his world in umber. And in his affliction he dwelt in mourning. Then when Jesus descended a second time in the form of his divinity to the Lord of creatures, he brought a lawsuit against him on account of his death.

And when the Lord of the world saw that divinity of Jesus, he discovered that another God apart from himself existed. And Jesus said to him, 'I am in litigation with you, and let no one judge between us, but the laws that you wrote.'

And when they had placed the Law in the middle, Jesus said to him "Did you not write in your Law, 'Whoever will murder he will die, (cf Num 35.30 - 34)?' and 'Whoever sheds the blood of a righteous one, his blood will be shed (Gen 9:6)?'" And he said, 'Yes, I wrote."

And Jesus said to him "So give yourself into my hands, so that I might slaughter and shed your blood, because rightly am I more lawful than you, and great favors have I bestowed on your creatures." And he began to reckon up those favors that he had bestowed on that one's creatures.

And when the Lord of creatures saw that he had gained victory over him - neither did he know what to say in reply because by his own Law he was condemned; nor did he find an answer to give because he came forth condemnation in exchange for his death - so having fallen down in supplication, he was praying to him "Whereas I sinned and slaughtered you ignorantly because I did not know that you were a god, but rather I considered you a man, let there be given to you in exchange, for revenge, all of those who wish to believe in you to take wheresoever you wish."

So Jesus having released him, he carried off Paul from the astonished ones, and he revealed to him their prices, and he sent him forth to preach that we have been bought for a price, and everyone who believes in Jesus has been sold by that Just One to the Good One.

This is the beginning of the sect of the Marcion, leaving aside many irrelevancies - and what not everyone knows, but rather a few from among them, and they transmit that teaching to one another by mouth. They say, "By means of the price of the Stranger we were purchased from the Lord of creatures," and "How or in what way is the purchase, this no one knows." https://books.google.com/books?id=3yP-K ... 22&f=false

[Secret Alias]

If you look at the Marcionite myth there can be no doubt that the Marcionites identified Jesus as Chrestos (= the good one) because Philo already identifies the power of mercy as ho chrestos theos.

So Jesus having released him, he carried off Paul from the astonished ones, and he revealed to him their prices, and he sent him forth to preach that we have been bought for a price, and everyone who believes in Jesus has been sold by that Just One to the Good One:

Since the, the virtuous man has been bred up among and practised in these and similar divisions and discriminations of things, does he not rightly appear to pray that Ishmael may live, if he is not as yet able to become the father of Isaac? What then does the Good God say [ὁ χρηστὸς θεός]? To him who asks for one thing he gives two, and on him who prays for what is less he bestows what is greater; for, says the historian, he said unto Abraham, "Yea, behold, Sarrah thy wife shall bring forth a Son." [De Mutione Nomimum 1.253]

This being who visited Abraham is consistently identified as 'Jesus' by Christians. More examples from Philo

God is merciful, and compassionate and kind (χρηστὸς ὢν καὶ φιλάνθρωπος ὁ θεός) [De Abrahamo 1:203]

inasmuch as the Father is kind and merciful, and most humane, still he is rather inclined to alleviate the evil than to add to men's misery (χρηστός ὢν καὶ φιλάνθρωπος ὁ θεὸς ἐπικουφίζει τὰ κακὰ μᾶλλον ἢ προστίθησι ταῖς συμφοραῖς) [Quaestiones in Genesim fragment. 2:54]

Getting back to the Marcionite myth for a moment, the discussion between Jesus and the Just One leads not only to the conversion of the latter but the 'selling' of Paul to Jesus as his first disciple. This would suggest a very early (= immediate) conversation of Paul, days (perhaps hours) after the crucifixion.

[Secret Alias]

The fact that Paul identifies himself as having been a persecutor seems to echo this understanding:

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, 13even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief [1 Tim 1.13]

Like the power of judgement above, Paul is said to have converted almost immediately after the crucifixion to become the leader of the community. Paul is very aware of contemporary and very advanced theological interpretations of the Jews - the Catholic tradition even makes him the student of Gamaliel. But the fact that the gospel has a leading Jew already described in terms that resembles just the kind of figure 'Paul' must have been understood to be in the Marcionite community, I can't help but think that Paul might well have been one and the same with Joseph, especially if Joseph was originally the high priest who accused Jesus and debated with him from scriptures (as we see in the Marcionite myth occurred between Jesus as Yahweh).

[MrMacSon]

... Philo already identifies the power of mercy as ho chrestos theos.

A Clement does that as well? Refers to the ‘kind God’ (ho chrestos theos ??