I thought it might be worthwhile to get the background in order to see:
(1) what texts we actually have and what do they say, and
(2) what variant texts or fragments exist that might shed further light exists.
I want to concentrate on passages that suggest that Jesus came to earth, so I will ignore the history of the development of the texts, i.e. how there are different sections written over different times. The key passages appear to be in the "Vision of Isaiah" section.
As always, I will distinguish between "historical Jesus" and "earthly Jesus", since an earthly Jesus doesn't necessarily mean "historical Jesus".
I'd like to invite those knowledgeable on these texts to join in. If there is anything I get wrong, or anything I am missing out, please let me know. I'm hoping that this thread can be a resource for others to use whenever this topic comes up. If I am missing variant texts that (for example) leave out key sentences, or have passages that might be relevant, please let us know.
Information can be found in Charles' introduction to "The Ascension of Isaiah: translated from the Ethiopic version, which, together with the new Greek fragment, the Latin versions and the Latin translation of the Slavonic, is here published in full" by Charles, R. H. (Robert Henry), 1855-1931
https://archive.org/details/cu31924014590529/page/n11
This is how I understand the texts in question, both extant and not extant:
G --> G1 --> L1, E
G --> G2 --> L2, S {--> RCRT}
Where:
G: The source Greek text (not extant)
G1: Greek variant based on G (not extant except possibly for fragments)
G2: Greek variant based on G (parent of L2 and S)
L1: Latin fragment, not containing any of the key passages, so will be ignored (extant)
L2: Latin text containing the Vision of Isaiah (extant)
S: Slavonic text in Latin containing the Vision of Isaiah (extant)
E: Ethiopic text containing the complete Ascension of Isaiah that is the usual translation (which I originally thought was written in smudgy Greek(!), but was actually written in Ethiopic presumably from the Greek. That's the one on the ECW page. (extant)
RCRT: Dr Richard Carrier's reconstructed text, as per his book "On the Historicity of Jesus" (not extant)
E contains a "pocket gospel", where Jesus comes to earth and is born of the virgin Mary, etc.
Both L2 and S contain at 11:2 the phrase "Et uidi similem filii hominis, et cum hominibus habitare, et in mundo, et non cognouerunt eum", translated as "And I saw one like a son of man, dwelling among men, and in the world, and they did not know him." This seems to indicate that Jesus was on earth. "Dwelling among men" suggests a period of time on earth, and that plus "they did not know him" suggests that this dwelling was more than just appearing as a vision to a few people.
Charles brackets the 11.2 passage, which according to his description of his keys indicates that "the words so enclosed in S L2 are found in G2, but not in G1. In certain cases the words peculiar either to G1 or G2 are derived from G."
Richard Carrier describes the phrase at 11.2 in the following way, on page 43:
Carrier goes on to explain that the gap in L2 and S between 11.2 and the following passage shows that something has been removed from the L2/S texts, for example the fulfilment of the prophecies leading up to the Jesus dying and then rising. In this, he is undoubtedly correct. The question is: what was there originally? Carrier gives his view on page 45:
Carrier goes on to write more on his reasons for why he thinks his reconstruction is plausible, which is interesting but too lengthy to put here. He does believe his reconstructed redacted version "where Jesus never dwells on earth" can be seen in other texts used by early Christians (page 322):
So in the three extant texts that we have -- E, S and L2 -- we have Jesus coming to earth. In E, it has Jesus being born to Mary, etc. In S and L2, we see Jesus "dwelling among men." It is only in Carrier's reconstructed version that Jesus never dwells on earth and is crucified in the air.
(There is also the question of "in your form" appearing in L2 and S and its implications for an earthly sojourn, but I won't cover that here at this time.)
Are there any variant texts that I have left out, or scholarly studies that might help to shed light on L2 or S, from an earthly/celestial Jesus perspective?