Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[seeker]

Hmmm, we seem to have gone full circle. If there was no significant Christian presence to talk about under Trajan the next up would be Hadrian who just also manages to preside over the Bar Kockba revolt

[Minimalist]

You'd have to define "significant." Clearly they did exist.

Although, from the scant clues available I doubt that Pliny was dealing with Ignatius' literalists. That "singing a hymn to Christ as if (Latin: quasi) he were a god" bugs me.

[Ishtar]

Question?
Do any of you think that a "Q" document ever existed? I recently read a lengthy discussion on another forum about the document and its possibility of existence. Personally, I agreed with one poster that there were probably several Q documents consisting of parables, mysteries etc. that later were incorporated into the Mark gospel. This would actually allow Mark to have a later construction but seem to be dated from much earlier in time. The discussion also consisted of the idea that Mark HAD to be written at a later date to remove the Mysteries section while retaining the parables and teachings of the mythological Jesus to make him real.

Patti

I knew I had something interesting for you on this but it took a while to dig it out.

It's from Freke and Gandy's Jesus and the Goddess:

As well as basing their version of the Jesus myth on The Gospel of Mark, the authors of Matthew and Luke drew on a now lost gospel, which scholars call Q. The Gospel of Q portrays both Jesus and John the Baptist as messengers sent by Sophia. It contains sayings attributed to Sophia, which in the gospels are put in the mouth of her envoy Jesus. Most of these sayings are not Jewish in character, but heavily influenced by the Cynic school of pagan philosophy. In the Gospel of Luke, one of these sayings remains attributed to Sophia herself. Referring directly to the myth of Sophia and the Good Man, and so insinuating that he is Sophia's representative on Earth, Jesus attributes to Sophia the pronouncement: "I will send them prophets and messengers and some of these they will persecute and kill."

The story of Sophia and the Good Man is interesting. Sophia appears in the OT although in later years she was translated into the gender-less ‘wisdom’. But when Moses passed on his spiritual authority to Joshua (Jesus ben Nun), Joshua also receives the ‘spirit of Sophia.’ She is talked about more fully in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon where she is portrayed as God’s consort and co-creator.

In fact, the Hebrew religion was similar to every other religion at the time in that there was a God and Goddess (Isis and Osiris, Ishtar and Marduk, Inanna and Tammuz etc etc), but later redactors tried to edit Sophia out by making her an abstract quality - wisdom.

In Paul’s Colossian 2:3, Paul calls Christ ‘the power of God and the Sophia of God’.

Anyway, the Cynics, like many Greeks, were followers of Sophia and in the Sophia literature, the Good Man is persecuted by his own people for preaching Sophia’s wisdom and he is condemned to a shameful death. However, he is vindicated afterwards and confronts his persecutors as their judge in Heaven (shades of Joseph here, confronting his brothers in the Egyptian court), where he is one of the Sons of God. In the hands of the Christian Gnostics, according to F and G, this Good Man is translated into Son of God who comes so that Sophia might be proclaimed.

In the Gnostic Acts of John, Jesus announces: "In me, know the Logos of Sophia."

As you know, Philo taught about the Logos of Sophia.

This is from Wikipedia on the Cynic school of philosophy and Christianity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynics

Many historians have noted the similarities between the life and teachings of Jesus and those of the Cynics. Some scholars on the quest for the historical Jesus, such as John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, who have conducted a study of Jesus using cross-cultural anthropology, Greco-Roman history, and an analysis of the primary sources of the Jesus tradition itself, have come to the controversial conclusion that the historical Jesus was more like a Cynic sage from an Hellenistic Jewish tradition than either a Christ who would die as a substitute for sinners or a Messiah who would lead a revolt against the Roman Empire and establish an independent Jewish state of Israel.[30] Burton Mack has described Jesus as a "rather normal Cynic-type figure."[31]

[Ishtar]

Hmmm, we seem to have gone full circle. If there was no significant Christian presence to talk about under Trajan the next up would be Hadrian who just also manages to preside over the Bar Kockba revolt

Hadrian, in his letter to the Consul Servanius, wrote that when he visited Alexandria c 130 CE, he encountered Christians who practised the local pagan mysteries of the godman Serapis and who studied Pythagorean mathematics and astrology. He also said that the bishops of the Christians there worshipped at the shrine of Serapis.

Serapis had been the deliberate creation of the Theraputae - he was a sort of one stop shop for all the gods in the area rolled into one. Serapis held sway in Alexandria until the Christian soldiers burned down the Serapeum in order to destroy his image.

Several writers have recorded the fact that Christian symbols were found in the ruined foundations of this building. Socrates (not the usual one, but a church historian of the fifth century CE) said that after the pious Christians had razed the Serapeum at Alexandria and scattered the demons that dwelt their under the guise of gods, beneath the foundations was found the monogram of Christ.

Taylor says that the Theraputae, who travelled as far as Persia, India and China, taught about this godman in various places and he took on various names according to the language of the people such as: IE, IES, Ieud, Judas, Joshua, Jason, Iesios, Iasios...

This is CW King from his Gnostics and Their Remains:

"There can be no doubt that the head of Serapis, marked as the face is by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Saviour. The Jewish prejudices of the first converts were so powerful that we may be sure that no attempts were made to depict his countenance until some generations after all that had beheld it on Earth has passed away."

Walker says that "Iasus became a healer of the Theraputae, as the Greeks called the Essenes, whose cult groups always included a man with the title of Christos."

This would explain why the later Jesus was also a healer.

In the Oxyrhynchus fragment of the Gospel of St Thomas, Jesus is referred to as Iesios.

[Ishtar]

Min

What you say makes sense. Also Trajan seems very fair.

It's tricky, isn't it ... separating history from mythology and hagiography from lies.

[seeker]

As well as basing their version of the Jesus myth on The Gospel of Mark, the authors of Matthew and Luke drew on a now lost gospel, which scholars call Q. The Gospel of Q portrays both Jesus and John the Baptist as messengers sent by Sophia. It contains sayings attributed to Sophia, which in the gospels are put in the mouth of her envoy Jesus. Most of these sayings are not Jewish in character, but heavily influenced by the Cynic school of pagan philosophy. In the Gospel of Luke, one of these sayings remains attributed to Sophia herself. Referring directly to the myth of Sophia and the Good Man, and so insinuating that he is Sophia's representative on Earth, Jesus attributes to Sophia the pronouncement: "I will send them prophets and messengers and some of these they will persecute and kill."

This is the kind of thing that puts me off about Freke and Gandy. Q is an unknown document, it's existence is purely speculative. in fact it was invented to try to explain how the synoptic Gospels contained so much of the same material and especially how later Gospels like Matthew and Luke could expand on the earlier Mark without some independent source of information. The obvious answer, that the authors of Matthew and Luke just made shit up was unacceptable to people who think this stuff is holy so they made up a Q document that supposedly extra details.

[Ishtar]

I think I agree with you, Seeker.

I realised the same thing after posting it ... that no-one has ever actually held a document called Q in their hands. So then I searched around the internet for any corroboration and could find none. That said, I don't think F&G make stuff up and they're not stupid... they obviously have a basis for saying it, and there has been a propensity to hide Sophia among the scribes. But at the moment, I can't corroborate it, so maybe we should ignore it.

The outcome of my internet trawl, however, was that I have ordered a copy of the Nag Hammadi gospel Pistis Sophia, which the story of the Good Man would have come from, if anywhere. So I'll let you know if I find anything.

[Minimalist]

Q reminds me of physicists and the tachyon. Not one of them has ever seen, tracked or measured a tachyon but they theorize that they exist.

Likewise Q.

Which is not to say that there might not have been a book of sayings kicking around but it could have come from any of who knows how many sects.

What is clear is that in Turkey and probably parts of Syria and Egypt, by 100 AD there were various groups who in general believed that either JC was a recent, historical, figure or who was a spiritual god like all the others. That there was tension between these groups is obvious but it is stretching the point to suggest that either of them had the ability to "persecute" the other. Both existed under the framework of Roman law. We get to see only one side of the story because with the 4th century triumph of the literalists they got to go back and expunge history of anything which opposed them.

Less well known than the revolts of 66 and 135 was a Jewish revolt in 117 which resulted in the destruction of the Jewish community in Alexandria. Again....as with the aftermath of the Great Revolt... it would have been an ideal time for "Jews" who were not part of the rebellion to look for ways to distance themselves from the people that the Romans were killing.

As you say, Ish, trying to sort out the history from the handful of clues that are left is a daunting task.

[Ishtar]

Yeah... it's fun trying, though!

[Minimalist]

Beats doing crossword puzzles.

[seeker]

The only thing that makes it difficult is that you have so many ideologues pushing this or that point of view along with outright liars like Eusebius its hard get through the weeds.

Ish - I don't think Freke and Gandy made anything up but i do think they tend to sensationalism.

[Ishtar]

The only thing that makes it difficult is that you have so many ideologues pushing this or that point of view along with outright liars like Eusebius its hard get through the weeds.

Ish - I don't think Freke and Gandy made anything up but i do think they tend to sensationalism.

I feel stupid for missing that Q thing ... I should have spotted it.

[Minimalist]

Q has been around for a long time....early 19th century, really...which is amazing for an idea which has not a shred of evidence to sustain it.

Doherty's suggestion seems far more plausibe. "Mark" wrote out the story and "Matthew" and "Luke" copied large parts of it.

[seeker]

Q has been around for a long time....early 19th century, really...which is amazing for an idea which has not a shred of evidence to sustain it.

Doherty's suggestion seems far more plausibe. "Mark" wrote out the story and "Matthew" and "Luke" copied large parts of it.

That is what I tend to think Min. Q was just a way for theists to avoid admitting that the gospels were made up.

[Minimalist]

True but fundies think that the damn things were actually written by the people whose names were attached later...even though Lucius and Marcus were Roman names.

To be a true fundie you have to believe that they were sitting there taking notes while jc was hanging on the cross.