Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

After the demolition of the entirely forced Carrier reading of Philo any reasonable interpretation of the Alexandrian Jewish tradition recognizes that it was centered around veneration of אֵשׁ (fire/Man) as the Logos of the universe. I have tried in many posts up until yesterday to show that the Samaritan tradition is a continuation of this same understanding - viz. Moses witnessed a 'second God' sometimes called 'angel' but always man or fire. 'Jesus' is a name that doesn't appear anywhere in the earliest manuscripts of the religion. Instead two letters with a line over them are interpreted to mean 'Iesous' according to a practice that Irenaeus identifies as heretical and specifically Valentinian (perhaps Marcosian). There is no 'Jesus' in our surviving manuscript tradition. According to many experts ΙΣ is the oldest nomen sacrum. The development of nomina sacra are universally acknowledged to go back to Hebrew divine names. The example usually appealed to is the appearance of Paleo-Hebrew terms like Yahweh in Greek manuscripts. Hurtado's solution is to argue that ΙΗ is the oldest nomen sacrum which goes back to a Hebrew gematria of a two letter word חַי meaning 'life' but which has a numerical value of 18 (as does ΙΗ. There obvious problems with this explanation. My solution is to argue instead that ΙΣ is an attested Greek transliteration of אֵשׁ which must have been venerated as the name of the 'second god' of the highly influential 'two powers' tradition - a tradition which was known in Greek as 'the Essenes' i.e. those of אֵשׁ.

These are all things I have said before. My topic in this thread is whether it is possible that Christianity WAS SOMETHING OTHER THAN the two powers tradition. Is it likely or a better explanation to seek after evidence for a veneration of a historical man Jesus when in fact Justin Martyr (and his debate with Trypho the Jew specifically) makes it self-evident that Justin represents the 'other side' of the rabbinic reports of 'two powers' heretics? Moreover, to follow Hurtado's lead, is it likely that Christianity was at once a Jewish veneration of a man 'Jesus' as a god which adapted kabbalistic gematria to express the man 'Jesus' (ΙΗ) as a replacement for the mysticial interest in 'life' (חַי) or - as I would have it - ΙΣ was just a continuation of the Alexandrian Jewish and Samaritan (and undoubtedly Sadducean viz. the circle of R Ishmael) veneration of אֵשׁ the second god?

Mythicists are always looking to find a pagan circle of 'myth-makers' who somehow took 'a little bit' from the Jews and 'a little bit' from the pagan mythopoeic practices which means their formulations have little or no historical basis (indeed they themselves become little more than modern practitioners of 'mythopoesis'). Isn't the best place to start looking for a wholly supernatural Jesus is in the attempts to actually read the Pentateuch as Moses and the Patriarchs engaging a 'second power' who is already identified by Justin and Clement as ΙΣ (the manuscripts of the Church Fathers inevitably use the nomen sacrum ΙΣ)?

Broadly, I agree. In their better moments, Doherty and Carrier themselves also lean hard on this kind of Jewish tradition. (Regardless of this baseless argument from Carrier about Philo having a 'Jesus' angel...)

I recently read the interviews in the book Jesus Mythicism: An Introduction. The emphasis in these interviews (with Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier, that is) is on the Jewish background: Philo, 1 Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apocalypse of Elijah, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Odes of Solomon.

Perhaps the gulf isn't so wide as you imply -- despite the somewhat-political flattery Doherty and sometimes Carrier give to the pagan Christ folks. In any event, there is a solution -- put your ideas out there yourself.

Secret Alias wrote: ... any reasonable interpretation of the Alexandrian Jewish tradition recognizes that it was centered around veneration of אֵשׁ (fire/Man) as the Logos of the universe. I have tried in many posts up until yesterday to show that the Samaritan tradition is a continuation of this same understanding - viz. Moses witnessed a 'second God' sometimes called 'angel' but always man or fire. 'Jesus' is a name that doesn't appear anywhere in the earliest manuscripts of 'the religion' ...

1. What do you mean by 'the religion' ?

• a. 'the Alexandrian Jewish tradition' ?
  b. 'the Samaritan tradition' ?
  c. both ?
  e. something else ?

2. What period are you referring to?

• a. The first century AD/CE ?
  b. before the 1st century AD/CE ?
  c. before and during the 1st C AD/CE?
  d. the 1st C AD/CE and later ??

Secret Alias wrote: There is no 'Jesus' in our surviving manuscript tradition.

What "surviving manuscript tradition" ?

From when ? (ie. from what time period?)

Example P66. Where is 'Jesus'?

It would be very interesting to go through all of the NT manuscripts to find out which are consistent with your hypothesis (more precisely, which are consistent with being authored by the strictly "IS" people that you hypothesize).

Interesting in the sense that the results would be interesting, not in the sense that the work itself is engrossing.

Obviously its not near all the NT manuscripts. But that can be explained. Almost all of the Church Fathers have IC I presume.

And even those NT manuscripts that don't have IC have IH and IHC. No Iesous as far as I know. That has to be explained too. If 'gematria' was so influential that it accounts for the 'no Jesus' situation, what else did Jewish mysticism influence in early Christianity?

Peter Kirby wrote:It would be very interesting to go through all of the NT manuscripts to find out which are consistent with your hypothesis (more precisely, which are consistent with being authored by the strictly "IS" people that you hypothesize).

Someone seems to have done this, although it isn't much:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sa ... .29.5B6.5D

Of course, the church fathers etc. are missing.

If the manuscripts use more than one nomen sacrum, it would be nice to have an alternative explanation for the others, too.

Ulan wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:It would be very interesting to go through all of the NT manuscripts to find out which are consistent with your hypothesis (more precisely, which are consistent with being authored by the strictly "IS" people that you hypothesize).

Someone seems to have done this, although it isn't much:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sa ... .29.5B6.5D

Of course, the church fathers etc. are missing.

If the manuscripts use more than one nomen sacrum, it would be nice to have an alternative explanation for the others, too.

Very nice! Thank you.

Under p66 (the "example" above), there is listed:

ΙΣ ΙΝ ΙΥ

Huller seems to have developed a blind spot for the fact that this means the manuscript isn't from his hypothesized people because there is no way to make these forms of the Hebrew or Aramaic word he sees behind "IS," when the non-nominative forms are also considered -- they are Greek forms of a Greek word (different abbreviations depending on grammatical case), formed from the first and last letters of the word in its inflected form, for which there are only a very few possibilities in Greek... one of which is "Jesus."

There is absolutely no credible way for Huller to get around that fact, so this manuscript isn't from his hypothetical group. We've gone around in circles on this before, and Huller can only retreat into the idea that there are manuscripts that we don't have where they use "IS" all the time, regardless of whether it is the nominative or not.

I've also given Huller the challenge to find a single case where "IS" is used when it is in the genitive or dative or something else, as shown from the context and location in the New Testament, but he hasn't responded to that. I still don't know of any single example of such, even when it would be the simplest way to prove his case. (And, logically, if there is no such example, it's telling against his hypothesis.)

My inability to accept Huller's exact thesis has basically been on these purely empirical grounds where it falters. Conceptually it's fine and dandy, but that's not enough to make history.