where Detering and Carrier agree

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by Giuseppe »

The recent discussions between Carrier and Gullotta/Hurtado have persuaded me that the basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus (even if he had still to be named "Jesus") is essentially the Logos of Philo.

This idea is shared by Detering insofar he places in Alexandria the first Gnostics who called "Jesus" the same being named Logos by Philo.

The idea was shared by Rylands, too.

In short, under both the two more persuasive mythicist thesis (resp. with and without a Paul real autor of the epistles) the reference to Philo is necessary to explain the Origins.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

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Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 amthe basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo
Wrong. This is not "the basic mythicist thesis."
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Giuseppe
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

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Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:25 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 amthe basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo
Wrong. This is not "the basic mythicist thesis."
I mean: both the scholars recognize that the same archangel named by Philo as ''Logos'' was the archangel who is named Jesus by the alexandrine Gnostics (in Detering's view) and by the pre-Christians (in Carrier's view).

You can't deny this fact.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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arnoldo
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by arnoldo »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:14 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:25 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 amthe basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo
Wrong. This is not "the basic mythicist thesis."
I mean: both the scholars recognize that the same archangel named by Philo as ''Logos'' was the archangel who is named Jesus by the alexandrine Gnostics (in Detering's view) and by the pre-Christians (in Carrier's view). . .
Can you provide Detering's date range when the Alexandrine Gnostics allegedly named this archangel? Muchas gracias.
Giuseppe
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by Giuseppe »

arnoldo wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:30 am
Giuseppe wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:14 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:25 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 amthe basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo
Wrong. This is not "the basic mythicist thesis."
I mean: both the scholars recognize that the same archangel named by Philo as ''Logos'' was the archangel who is named Jesus by the alexandrine Gnostics (in Detering's view) and by the pre-Christians (in Carrier's view). . .
Can you provide Detering's date range when the Alexandrine Gnostics allegedly named this archangel? Muchas gracias.
During the same time of Philo, I presume.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3538&am ... ing#p76498
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by Giuseppe »

The influence of Bolland on Detering is clear given the only mention of Alexandria:
On the one hand, Jesus redeems Judaism by cleansing it from the impure spirit of vengeful messianism, on the other hand he redeems mankind from Judaism. The spirit of the Gospel Jesus effectuates a purification from the inside, not on the outside. This is Hellenic-Alexandrian, and no judaisation applied to the Alexandrian UrGospel (resulting in the canonical gospels) may hide that to the competent scholar's eye. The main lesson to be learned is:
The gospel is born from the spirit of Alexandrian Gnosis, and its Jesus is the Logos incarnate coming from within Judaism, in order to supersede it
http://www.egodeath.com/BollandGospelJesus.htm

Only, see the different direction of the influence:

For Carrier (who believes in the authenticity of the 7 pauline epistles) Philo's Logos was influenced by a pre-christian tradition who had already his archangel named Jesus (or, in alternative, the same archangel of Philo named differently).

For Bolland and Detering (who don't believe in the authenticity of the 7 pauline epistles) Philo's Logos influenced the Gnostics who called it ''Jesus''.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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MrMacSon
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by MrMacSon »

arnoldo wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:30 am ... date range when the Alexandrine Gnostics allegedly named this archangel? Muchas gracias.
Others have argued for earlier development of both Gnosticism and named archangels than otherwise commonly thought -

Barker, Margaret. The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992.
  • Margaret Barker (a mainstream British biblical scholar; a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study) has argued that Gnosticism arose out of the Judaism First Temple period (c. 950-586 BC) ...

    Barker says there may have originally been no distinction between Yahweh and the Angel of Yahweh. She points out many texts in the Old Testament equate the two, for example Judges 2:1: Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, "I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you'."

    In Genesis 22, with its story of the sacrifice of Isaac, it is 'the angel of Yahweh' that calls to Abraham out of heaven (Gen. 22:11), but in the end Abraham names the place where this happened 'Yahweh-Yireh'; 'Yahweh is seen' (Gen. 22:14). In Genesis 48:15-16 Jacob says, "God, before whom my ancestors Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long to this day, the Angel which has redeemed me from all evil, may he bless these boys."

    In short, 'the bulk of the evidence suggests that the Angel of Yahweh and Yahweh had been identical'.

    Sometimes Yahweh was described as being incarnated in the Davidic king, as we learn in Chronicles' account of Solomon's coronation: "And all the assembly blessed the Lord God of their fathers, and bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord and the king" (1 Chron. 29:23). If this was the case, and the tradition had survived among the people of Israel if not in the official cult of the Second Temple (539 bc - ad 70), it would explain why the Gospels stress that Jesus was a descendant of David: as the messiah, he would be the embodiment of Yahweh as the old kings of Judah had been.

    According to Barker's view of Judaism in the Second Temple, the radical monotheists who wrote Deuteronomy and Second Isaiah won the day, and their marginalized opponents preserved a kind of antitradition that is represented in works such as the pseudepigraphical 1 Enoch and in Gnosticism. The Gnostics, repudiating Judaism, would also have repudiated Yahweh, who in their eyes had usurped the position of the true, supernal God, much as Blavatsky claims; hence the stupid, arrogant Ialdabaoth.

    Most scholars agree that the concept of a deuteros theos was widespread in Judaism of the first century ad. Barker differs in arguing that it had always existed in Judaism. Philo's innovation, she says, was simply to connect this 'second god' with the logos of Greek thought. The innovation of Christianity was to argue that this logos was embodied in Jesus, as Yahweh may have been in the kings of the old Davidic dynasty. Hence the emphasis on Jesus as the 'son of David'.

    Barker's portrait of this Temple theology, as she calls it, could clarify a great deal about the history of Christianity. It explains why Jesus could have attained quasi-divine status ... (cf. Phil. 2:6-11): he would have been the anointed one, the embodiment of Yahweh. It also explains why the Gnostics would have had an ambivalent attitude toward Yahweh. https://www.theosophical.org/publicatio ... azine/2196


Segal, Alan (2002) Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism, Brill.
  • Segal explores some relationships between rabbinic Judaism, Merkabah mysticism, and early Christianity. "Two Powers in Heaven" was a very early category of heresy. It was one of the basic categories by which the rabbis perceived the new phenomenon of Christianity and one of the central issues over which Judaism and Christianity separated. Segal reconstructs the development of the heresy through prudent dating of the stages of the rabbinic traditions. The basic heresy involved interpreting scripture to say that a principal angelic or hypostatic manifestation in heaven was equivalent to God. The earliest heretics believed in two complementary powers in heaven, while later heretics believed in two opposing powers in heaven.


Schäfer, Peter (2012) The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other, Princeton University Press.
  • In The Jewish Jesus, Peter Schäfer reveals the crucial ways in which various Jewish heresies, including Christianity, affected the development of rabbinic Judaism. He even shows that some of the ideas that the rabbis appropriated from Christianity were actually re-appropriated Jewish ideas. The result is a demonstration of the deep mutual influence between the sister religions, one that calls into question hard and fast distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, and even Judaism and Christianity ... https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9724.html
  • Peter Schäfer assembles considerable evidence ... exploring a whole range of partner-deities for the supposedly unique God of Hebraic tradition. These motifs include the duality of Elohim (literally "gods") and Yahweh in the Pentateuch; the contrast of the old god (the "ancient of days") and the young god; the use of plural verbs in the Hebrew Bible to describe divine actions; the curious figure of Metatron, ostensibly the chief of the angels; and the idea of the eternal David.
  • ..The Jewish Jesus posits that Christians with two divine figures, God and his Son, were provocatively pointing to all the biblical textual references that could mirror their own theology: Genesis where on several occasions God is mentioned in plural and in Exodus where God is depicted as a young warrior God in Egypt very different from the Mt. Sinai old God of justice and mercy. Using the OT as a springboard that announces Christianity, 2nd century CE church fathers could argue that even the Jewish Bible had two Gods. During the early centuries CE the rabbis were trying to talk themselves out of such difficulties. Attempting to explain the apparent contradictions, the rabbi’s were in for a spell of exegetical acrobatics ...

    ... he believes that pre-Christian Jewish texts elaborating on Wisdom and the Logos were instrumental in establishing Christianity’s divine family. The Christian bi- and Trinitarian concepts of the divine owe more to Hellenistic Docetic doctrines than to oldest Judaism.

    .. Schaffer shows that marginal factions of Judaism were attempting to promote a different Messiah-King than Jesus Christ. With the Apocalypse of David, writers in Babylonia responded to the “Jesus” literature as found in the Book of Revelation. The short analysis of third century CE frescoes from the Dura Europos Synagogue is a remarkable addition to Shaffer’s demonstration.

    Chapter 4. Schaffer carefully exposes Enoch’s transformation from a biblical figure walking with God into a celestial scribe then an angelic figure before becoming a Lesser God under the name of Metatron in the third Book of Enoch. All these later apocalyptic texts had BCE Jewish antecedents, essentially in Jubilees, Daniel and the Song of Songs. (Qumran literature also gave Melchizedeck an outstanding messianic rank next to God and their Teacher was elevated to messianic eminence).

    The second to fourth century CE Babylonian texts promoting divine Messiahs (that remained in the Jewish fold) intended to propose an alternative to Jesus Messiah that the nations had taken out of Israel’s hands. Schaffer revives the influences Christianity’s divine Messiah had on Babylonian Judaism. The process was tortuous and contested, and here again Schaffer’s analysis is very helpful. These local apocalyptic theologies nevertheless remained marginal. The Jewish Messiahs “catching up with Jesus” did not receive official theological recognition on behalf of centrist Rabbinical Judaism and only survived in fringe communities.

    Chapter 6. The Angels
    The Palestinian rabbis are caught in endless exegetical gossip: when were the angels created, did God consult them before creating man, do they have a higher or lower standing than Adam?

    The Babylonian rabbis step in to give a resolutely anti angelic version of God’s consulting them before the creation. Behind the discussions the uniqueness of God is at stake. The traditions of angels attending God and transmitting the law to Moses are contested because negatively used by Christian writers. (God didn’t give the law himself because it was not the final one). Worship and sacrifice for angels are prohibited.

    Chapter 7. Adam
    This is a wonderful chapter that shows how the two creation accounts in Genesis were used to validate an earthly Jesus and a heavenly, immaterial and incorruptible Jesus.

    Chapter 8. The Birth of the Messiah, or Why did Baby Messiah Disappear?
    ... this Davidic Messiah, born in Bethlehem, is a post-Temple affair (and not some 35 yrs before, stretching from Herod to Pilate). Schaffer does not try to explain this oddity. But the rabbis knew that there were no Jesus traditions while the Temple was standing. Facing its destruction, all strains of Judaism had to react. To dissident Jewish factions, the Temple’s fall meant that God was displeased with the present day administration and was asking for things to change. The Jesus-for-Messiah forwarded by a Nazarene community was a Temple replacement answer: a Messiah that held in his hands the Holy Spirit, replacing Elijah (the prototype of the Temple’s Messiah) and Moses (so silent on eternal life). They started setting the contours of their new messianic party in script around 75 CE (Mark’s(?)). It was expanded and completed over the following century.

    Chapter 9. The Suffering Messiah Ephraim
    We find here a tradition that derives the Messiah from the house of Joseph and not the house of David.
    The first homily stresses that Torah tradition is not enough if messianic expectations are neglected.
    The second homily reverts to a more traditional: “Torah obedience leads to salvation.” And then changes it’s course. The Messiah was created before the creation and his light hides under God’s seat. God negotiates Messiah-ship against seven years of suffering. The Messiah will take on all the sins of all generations! Salvation here is exclusively for Israel and the Messiah gains a throne of glory.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-revi ... 0691160953
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Peter Kirby
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by Peter Kirby »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:14 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:25 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 amthe basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo
Wrong. This is not "the basic mythicist thesis."
I mean: both the scholars recognize that the same archangel named by Philo as ''Logos'' was the archangel who is named Jesus by the alexandrine Gnostics (in Detering's view) and by the pre-Christians (in Carrier's view).

You can't deny this fact.
Detering and Carrier's personal opinions cannot be used to define "the basic mythicist thesis."
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Giuseppe
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by Giuseppe »

I have explained simply what I mean with that term.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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MrMacSon
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Re: where Detering and Carrier agree

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 6:51 am .. the basic mythicist thesis is that the original Jesus ... is essentially the Logos of Philo.
or that one or some of the original notions of Christ reflected the Logos of Philo ...

The original Jesus may not exist. There may just be a definitive final NT Jesus.
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