Secret Alias wrote:
My question had more to do with where Luke got knowledge of the Ascension if it wasn't in the gospels he had before him.
Elijah's ascent -- if we accept the analysis of Luke's gospel that concludes that Jesus was modeled in Elijah in much the same way Matthew's Jesus was on Moses. Luke removes the Elijah trappings from John the Baptist and presents Jesus, instead, as the Elijah, only a transvalued Elijah, of course, as Aeneas was a transvaluation of Odysseus. Elijah needed a horse-drawn chariot to carry him up to the heavens; the greater Elijah was not so limited. The spirit was then bequeathed to the disciples as it had been to Elisha, and as observed by onlookers.
The comparison with Elijah is found throughout Luke's gospel, from the beginning where he is rejected at the outset for making the comparison in his home town, to his refusal to send fire on the Samaritans -- but then the fire was sent down in the form of salvation at Pentecost when the spirit was given not to just one but all disciples who had seen him ascend to heaven.
In Matthew there is no such separation between the ascent and the sending of the spirit; nor in John. This is a Lukan feature seemingly inspired by the Elijah story.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
That sounds great, Neil. I haven't read anything by Spong but I remember reading about him on your blog. I'm intrigued and want to look into this angle more. This looks like a good place for me to start:
Secret Alias wrote:
My question had more to do with where Luke got knowledge of the Ascension if it wasn't in the gospels he had before him.
Elijah's ascent --
Or Romulus's ascent ... (or both" follower of Elijah had to witness his ascent to receive spirit; no-one witnessed R's). I earlier cited Hawes' Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity. I recommend her chapter 6 on Plutarch's origins stories of Athens and Rome via Theseus and Romulus, and the rationale for myth being part of the historical origins story of Rome, not to overlook the mythical character of the founding of both cities.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I'm liking the book I linked to above so far. Brodie is making a good case in chapter one for an Elijianic structure in Luke and sees it as being part of proto-Luke. This idea "feels" right but I need to investigate it more. What would this structure do for the idea that Macion created or used proto-Luke if it is based on the Elijah-Elisha narrative?
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
In his conclusion on page 28, Brodie notes something that seems applicable to MacDonald's theory of Homeric mimesis in Mark:
... the simplest hypothesis is that Luke, a first-century litterateur, employed a well-known literary procedure of the first century: he imitated part of the LXX account of Elijah. He used basic techniques of adaptation, and he sought, above all, to emulate the older text. In other words, he sought to produce a better account and to show that the Jesus of whom he spoke continued the work of Elijah and in some sense fulfilled it.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
I am trying to process this concept. The first immediate thought is that Elijah in the later rabbinic tradition is the messiah (because of Malachi 4:5). It's odd that at once John = Elijah in some gospels while in another tradition Jesus is like Elijah.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
John2 wrote:That sounds great, Neil. I haven't read anything by Spong but I remember reading about him on your blog. I'm intrigued and want to look into this angle more. This looks like a good place for me to start:
The two primary arguments are Goulder's and Brodie's. (The Spong posts were written some years ago; they actually derived from Goulder's but lacked Goulder's nuance and detail. Interestingly Goulder makes no mention of Spong at all in his academic biography.)
Thanks for the link. I was unaware of that volume.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
John2 wrote:I'm liking the book I linked to above so far. Brodie is making a good case in chapter one for an Elijianic structure in Luke and sees it as being part of proto-Luke. This idea "feels" right but I need to investigate it more. What would this structure do for the idea that Macion created or used proto-Luke if it is based on the Elijah-Elisha narrative?
I don't know enough about Marcion's relationships with the Jewish scriptures to have an opinion on that. I am waiting for Roger Parvus's essay on the relationship between Marcionism and the Gospel of Mark hoping there will be more hints there. It's a question I'm still exploring, too.
Of course how much of the Elijah-Elisha detail we read in the canonical gospel was carried over from an earlier draft or version is another question.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Secret Alias wrote:I am trying to process this concept. The first immediate thought is that Elijah in the later rabbinic tradition is the messiah (because of Malachi 4:5). It's odd that at once John = Elijah in some gospels while in another tradition Jesus is like Elijah.
I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the notion that the Jewish Scriptures were being used to "point to" the Christ figure. They were read as shadowy proleptic hints. The Law and the Prophets were "until John" -- they witnessed to the Christ. There is no explicit one-to-one correspondence as in type and anti-type but rather a series of midrashic games playing with words and associations.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
