Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

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Giuseppe
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Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

The reason is not because Jesus was the "Egyptian" (as per Lena Einhorn).

Dr. Detering has explained that Joshua replaced Moses in the role of crosser from the Egypt. So the Celsus's Jew euhemerized this mythical Joshua in a banal magician coming from the Egypt.


And the mythicist Thomas Whittaker wrote:
A particular confirmation of Mr. Robertson's view to which I desire to draw attention
is an older reading in the Epistle of Jude (recognised in the margin of the Revised Version).
It occurs in verse 5, and its significance is brought out by verse 6. "I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that Jesus [that is, Joshua, instead of' the Lord'] having saved the people out of the land of Egypt the second time [Moses having saved them the first time] afterward destroyed them that believed not." The next verse proceeds: ''And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under
darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Plainly the binding of erring angels can
only be attributed to a supernatural being, and not to a mere national hero. And it must be
remembered that the Epistle is a Judeo-Christian, not a ''heathen Christian", work.
With this passage from a book of the New Testament, it is interesting to compare a
Messianic prophecy from the Sibylline Oracles, translated by the Rev. W. J. Deane as
follows : "Now a certain excellent man shall come again from heaven, who spread forth
his hands upon the very fruitful tree, the best of the Hebrews, who once made the sun
stand still, speaking with beauteous words and pure lips." Here, as Mr. Robertson would
say, we observe the conception passing into that of the Teaching God.
(extract from The Origins of Christianity, 1904, my emphasis and bold)

How you can see, there is no doubt that who saved the people the second time is not Moses, but his successor, Joshua.

1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
(Book of Joshua 1:1-5)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Jesus/Joshua represents the spirit crossing from Egypt, which represented captivity and slavery, and the material to Kabbalists, and into the Holy land of Israel. Moses's death is emulated by Jesus dying, but his resurrection is marked as becoming Christ (Philippians 2:8-11).

Coming out of Egypt, seems to be a trend among messianic men: the Egyptian (obviously), Yeshu ben Stada, Jonathan the Weaver, Lukuas, and Jesus.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

The Egypt is the kingdom of the sin and of the death. A kind of "sin city" of the Antiquity.

So basically the Celsus's Jew is euhemerizing, by the his anti-Christian despise, a mythical being. Just as Athenagoras did euhemerize Zeus.

http://naturalreason.revolvingplanet.ne ... in-177-ad/
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

The Egyptian in Josephus was called so because he came from Egypt.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

The point is that Josephus called the rebellious leader ''Egyptian'' to make anti-Zealot irony: the zealots are so idiots that just the rebels against a foreign authority have an Egyptian (hence: not a Jew) as leader.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Ulan
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Ulan »

I don't think you can equate "Egyptian" with "not a Jew", it's more like "not a Judean" or "not from a part of the former Hasmonean kingdom". Alexandria was the largest Jewish city of the early 1st century CE. The Jews who lived there seemed to have been treated somewhat differently by the inhabitants of Judea though, so there may be some derogatory undertones to the term "Egyptian".
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

I think that is impossible that the man was from Egypt. It is like if Arminius was said to be from Gallia. The irony by Josephus is evident.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Ulan
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Ulan »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon May 14, 2018 6:46 am I think that is impossible that the man was from Egypt.
On what is this statement based on? Jews occupied two of the five city districts of Alexandria and had their own government there. If we go with traditional dating, Philo, who led the embassy to Caligula at some point of his life and would have been a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, had also visited the Jerusalem temple. They even had their own temple in Leontopolis (Heliopolis), which seemed to have been the only other Jewish temple where sacrifices were done in Roman times besides Jerusalem, and which was closed during or after the Jewish War in course of the general backlash against everything Jewish, as Josephus tells us. Egyptian Jews also generously provided for the Jerusalem temple though, as Philo relates.

I can imagine that the sheer existence of that temple led to some mixed feelings regarding Egyptian Jews. The Talmud seems to waffle around on that topic somewhat.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

Could a so xenophobe sect as the Zealots have a Jew (ok: a Jew) from Egypt as their leader? A sect who did a point of honour of the his religious nationalism? When even the evangelists had some embarrassment with Nazaret and introduced Bethlehem?

The irony of Josephus is evident: only a magus from Egypt could deceive these idiots to follow him as their Messiah.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Jesus was despised by Celsus's Jew as "coming from Egypt"

Post by Giuseppe »

I think that the same irony was used by the Celsus's Jew. Basically, a Messiah from Egypt (or lived for some time in Egypt) had to be probably an usurper, in the anti-Messianic propaganda.

But then again: was this a parody more than a propaganda?

A parody of the messianic claim that only a new Joshua could to complete what Moses started: the Conquest of the Land "from the Egypt".
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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