From where did “Paul”
derive his notion “slaver of Christ,” of “ministry” and of “inheritance of the
promise” and his notion that the Judeans/Israelites could be separated from a
promise made to them in TaNaKh?
From Philo.
From “Who is the heir of Divine things?”
II. 7-8:
So when else should the slave of God (του θεου δουλον) open his mouth freely to Him Who
is the ruler and master both of himself and of the All, save when he is pure
from sin and the judgments of his conscience are loyal to his master, when he
feels more joy at being the servant of God than if he had been king of all the
human race and assumed an uncontested sovereignty over land and sea? The loyalty of Abraham’s service and ministry
(λειτουργιας) is shown by the
concluding words of the oracle (χρησθεντος)
addressed to Abraham’s son
We see in Philo’s use of του θεου δουλον Paul’s description of himself as “prisoner of Christ/slave of Christ. “
Philo describes
Abraham’s activity relating to God as “λειτουργιας. “ “ministry,“ a word adopted by Greco-Romans who
wanted to be accepted as members of the Judean Temple.
Philo’s use of
χρησθεντος, a cognate of χριστος, would very likely have indicated to
those Greco-Roman proto-Christians that this Jewish “philosopher” understood
the text the same way that they did, and gave his assent for their assumption
of ownership of the text.
III:10-13:
For ignorance is exceedingly bold
and glib of tongue; and the first remedy
for it is to hold its peace, the second to give ear to those who advance
something worth hearing. Yet let no one
suppose that this exhausts the significance of the words: “be silent and
hear.” No, they enjoin something else of
greater weight. They bid us not only to
be silent with the tongue and hear with the ears, but be silent and hear with
the soul also. For many who come to hear
a discourse have not come with their minds, but wander abroad rehearsing
inwardly numberless thoughts on numberless subjects, thoughts on their
families, on outsiders, on things private and things public, which properly
should be forgotten for the moment. All
these, we may say, form a series of
successions in the mind, and the inward uproar makes it impossible for them to
listen to the speaker, who discourses as in an audience not of human beings but
of lifeless statues who have ears but no hearing in those ears.
IV:14
For the ignorant then it is well to
keep silent, but for those who desire knowledge and also love their master,
frank speech is a most essential possession.
Thus we read in Exodus: “the Lord will war for you and you will be
silent.” And at once there follows a divine oracle (χρησμος) in these words: “What is it you shout at me?” (Ex 14:14-5),
The meaning is that those should keep silent who have nothing worth hearing to
say, and those should speak who have put their faith in the God-sent love of
wisdom, and not only speak with ordinary gentleness but shout with a louder
cry. That cry is not made with mouth and
tongue, through which, as we are told, the air assumes a spherical shape and
thus is rendered perceptible by the sense of hearing, but by the organ of the
soul, uniting all music in its mighty tones, heard by no mortal whatsoever, but
only by Him Who is uncreated and imperishable.
Compare the logical progression of Philo’s assessment of
ignorance and wisdom with “Paul’s” assessment of the nature of love in 1
Corinthians.
Philo calls God’s reply “oracle,” χρησμος, which indicated to a Greco-Roman audience
that the Judean text conformed to their understanding of godly speech.
V:19:
But the man of worth has such courage of speech that he is bold not only to
speak and cry aloud, but actually to make an outcry of reproach, wrung from him
by real conviction and expressing true emotion...
V:21
For to whom should a man speak with frankness but to his friend? And so most excellent is it that in the
oracles, Moses is proclaimed the friend of God (Ex 33:11) to show that all the
audacities of his bold discourse were uttered in friendship, rather than in
presumption.
This would
suffice to Greco-Romans for permission to speak/write whatever they wanted to
claim about God, and to attribute it to a “Pharisee, “ Paul, just to create their own fence
around the law: they could claim that
the “radical“ statements about God did not come from
them, but from a Jew who presumably was, like Moses, a “friend of God“ and who therefore could say whatever he wanted.
VI:22-3
But observe on the other hand that confidence is blended with caution. For while the words ‘what will you give me’
show confidence, ‘master’ shows caution.
While Moses usually employs two titles in speaking of the Cause, namely
God and Lord, here he uses neither, but substututes ‘master.’ In this he shows great caution and exactness
in the use of terms. It is true that
‘Lord’ and ‘master’ are said to be synonyms.
But though one and the same thing is denoted by both, the connotations
of the two titles are different...
This has the
sound of Paul, using “God“ and “Father“ where Philo says Moses used “God“ and “Lord. “
VI:26-7:
Am I not a wanderer from my country, an outcast from my kinsfolk, an alien
in my father’s house? Do not all men
call me excommunicate, exile, desolate, disfranchised» But you, Master, are my country, my kinsfolk,
my paternal hearth, my franchise, my free speech, my great and glorious and
inalienable wealth.
This has the
sound of Paul, telling his communities that he was persecuted by his people for
the sake of the good news.
The clearest
evidence we have that Philo was the source of “Paul’s“ theory of inheritance by adoption into the
“promise“ can be found in56:277-280:
After “thou shalt depart“ come the words
“to thy fathers. “ What fathers? …For we
read “the Lord said to Abraham ‘Depart from they land and from thy kinsfolk and
from the house of they father unto the land which I will show thee, and I will make
thee into a great nation.’ Was it
reasonable that he should again have affinity with the very persons from whom
he had been alienated by the forethought of God? Or that he who was to be the captain of
another race and nation should be associated with that of a former age? God would not bestow on him a fresh and in a
sense a novel race and nation if he were not cutting him right adrift from the
old. Surely he is indeed the founder of
the nation and the race, since from him as root sprang the young plant called
Israel, which observes and contemplates all the things of nature. So we are told to bear out the old from the
face of the new. Rightly, for how shall
they on whom the rain of new blessings has fallen in all its abundance, sudden
and unlooked for, still find profit in old-world lore and the ruts of ancient
customs.
No; by “fathers”
he does not mean those whom the pilgrim soul has left behind, those who lie
buried in the sepulchers of Chaldea, but possibly, as some say, the sun, moon
and other start to which it is held that all things on earth owe their birth
and framing, or, as others think, the archetypal ideas which, invisible and
intelligible there, are the patterns of things visible and sensible here—the
ideas in which, as they say, the mind of the sage finds its new home.
This would seem to be the text on which “Paul” predicated
his claim that the proto-Christians “inherited” the promise of Abraham. In this text, Philo separates Abraham from
his own fathers, and claims that he now possesses other fathers. This notion of separation from one’s family
ancestry and assumption of a new family with a new ancestry, which is contrary
to the intent of Lev 18:22 and 20:13, deriving as it does from the “Jewish
philosopher” Philo, was easy for the early Church to put in the mouth of the
“Pharisee,” “Paul,” thereby providing a dual “Jewish” basis for the claim that
the early Church, not the Judean population, were the heirs of both text and “promise.”
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