stephan huller

So how would Constantine's statement help explain why the gospel says that a dove came down upon Jesus?

mountainman

The OP asks where the idea of the descent of the Holy Spirit is derived.

The so-called Church Fathers indulged in post hoc justification.

Constantine also indulged in the same but added a novel embellishment.

The dove did not alight on the head of Jesus but on the bosom of Mary.

As to where the all the four canonical gospel authors got the idea from your guess is as good as the next.



They fabricated their own geographical environment (See rlogan's thread: The Geography of Early Christianity).

Perhaps they simply invented or fabricated their own symbolic environment as well?

It was after all a New testament.

It follows that at least some things had to be novel.

Chili

You make a good point here as this was Gabriel and the other was Raphael = second cause from Lord God with voluntary or involuntary consent. This simply is so because God is not spirit but the nucleus of matter = the atom in its achievement as created to be conceived = presence as first cause and so I AM to 'be' or in becoming until we are I Am as individual.

It so is that Lord God knows virtue and vice wherein the woman is the manifestion of virtue and human the manifestation of vice = outside of Eden all is filthy rags.

stephan huller

No that is not what the OP says. It asks where did the idea that the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. I don't see any explanation offered by you.

stephan huller

The other possibility we have to consider is that the reference to the dove was somehow different than what we now have. Consider for a moment that Celsus's statement:

Two things to take note of. While Origen speaks of a dove coming down, Celsus references only a bird. The second is that Celsus's gospel account is very different from ours in many ways. Origen makes explicit reference to this numerous times but in particular that Jesus himself testified in the gospel that he saw the bird coming down from heaven:

So instead of a dove, Celsus only mentions a 'bird' being present in his gospel (note Polycarp's 'bird' or Peregrinus's 'vulture') and moreover that Jesus witnessed the bird coming down from heaven.

Why does this matter? Because I can't get over the switch which we already noted took place in Valentinus's account of the gospel. Here Jesus comes down from heaven on top of an individual who contains the spiritual seed who is Christ. Where is the dove? Well if the narrative developed from Genesis 15:11 then the 'dove' would be the initiate.

I am also intrigued by the name Simon bar Yona. A bar yonah is a young dove. But a baryona is some kind of militant. The two words are etymologically unrelated but there is a strangely consistent relationship of early Christianity with militants (= the crucifixion).

So, what does baryona (בריונא) actually mean? Jastrow defines the word בריונא as “rebel, outlaw, highway-man”. He relates it to the noun בריותא (baryuta, “rebellion”) and derives it etymologically from the word בראי, meaning “outside”. Hengel, in turn, relates this to the Syriac barya, the primary meaning of which is “foreigner, outsider”, and suggests that this is the most plausible etymology. This is in contradistinction to the theory of Krauss (as quoted by Hengel, op.cit., 55), who reads בריונא as a phonetic spelling of praetoriani: the Latin for “palace guards”.

The mothership of baryona references is Tractate Gittin (bGit 56a). Both references are concerned with בריונא who are preventing Jews from leaving Jerusalem and who burn the storehouses of grain and wheat (קלנהו להנהו אמברי דחיטי ושערי) in order that the Jews of whom they disapprove may not eat. The leader of the group is referred to as the ריש בריונא, and we are told that he is Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai’s nephew (בר אחתיה דרבן יוחנן בן זכאי).

While the title attributed to him does presuppose a certain sectarian mentality, his subsequent denial of any actual authority would seem to undermine the assertion that they constituted a consolidated political faction.

This text, composed by those who venerated Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and denigrated his nephew. The word בריונא is the word deliberately chosen by the authors of this narrative in order to convey that lack of unity in the first place. For that reason, while the individuals of whom the text speaks are “Zealots”, the word בריונא itself cannot mean that.

Tractate Berachot (bBer 10a) shows Rabbi Meir being harassed by בריונא who were living in the area; the other, in Tractate Sanhedrin (bSan 37a) shows Rabbi Zera being harassed by בריונא. The word itself does not actually mean “bandit”. For that reason, no identification between this word and the political Zealot movement can actually be made.

Jastrow’s suggestion makes the assumption that בַריון constitutes a nominalised form of the verb √ברא. Its form, with the -on ending, would distinguish it from the corresponding nominalisation, בריא (plural, ברייתא), which refers to external things or places, though never people. The problem with this theory is that בריון might better be explained as a gentilic from the noun ברא (= Heb. בר): “field, open space”. A בריון, rather than somebody who necessarily sets themselves in opposition to anybody else, would best be defined as a resident of the countryside. http://benabuya.com/2009/01/05/on-fa...other-robbers/

I am particularly attracted to Krauss's supposition. One of the reasons for this is that both meanings show up in relation to the Samaritan veneration of the holy mountain Gerizim. The first is the famous account in the rabbinic literature of there being a dove (= yonah) on mount Gerizim. This is strangely paralleled by a story in Abu'l Fath, the fourteenth Samaritan chronicler.

The story is woven into the account of the return of the great Samaritan reformer Baba Raba and his nephew, Levi who comes to Samaria after an absence of thirteen years, 'acquainting himself with every custom of Roman Faith' (18:2), in preparation for the longed-for day when the Samaritans would lead against their oppressors.

The sole motive behind Baba's decision to send Levi to the Romans was 'that he might ascend Mount Gerizim Beth-El, and direct all his efforts to breaking down the bird that is situated there. There follows an interesting and colourful account of Levi's fortunes among the Roman clerics, where he attained to the rank of 'Great Skopos'. From the account of his return to Samaria, accompanied by a great entourage comprising 'leaders of the Roman people, their officers, some of the kings and all the army,'2 it would seem that Levi is being depicted by the Chronicler as an overseer with special responsibilities for the kings. http://books.google.com/books?id=iLg...ngs%22&f=false

If Jews and Samaritans agree about this notion that a yonah or bar yonah stood on the holy mountain, what might help support Krauss's idea is that rabbinic sources also independently support the notion that the Samaritans called their mountain Palatinus (= palace). A palace clearly needs guards to protect it. Gen. R. 32:10 (Theodor-Albeck ed. p. 296-97) transmits a narrative, however, in which an ass driver is presented as Ieamed in Torah and able to answer an exegetical question:

This story is striking in a number of regards. Firstly, the holy mountain of the Samaritans is called “Palatinus” here, the name of the central hill amongst the seven hills of Rome, where many emperors worshiped. But it is also important to note that the term Palatinus is also used to mean exactly what Krauss supposes is meant by baryona = palace guard.

http://books.google.com/books?id=G0A...ritans&f=false

stephan huller

I guess where my investigation is leading is to the idea that the Valentinians and Baryoni might we somehow related. If the Valentinians 'inverted' Jesus and Christ in the baptism narrative, couldn't the idea of a bar yonah also have been deliberately transposed. Instead of a bar yonah coming down from heaven couldn't the spirit-being Jesus have come down upon baryoni to transform them to protect the Palatinus. Oh yes and one more thing Jastrow mentions - biryah (= palace) might also be related to baryona. biryah is a word used to describe the Jewish temple on numerous occasions in the rabbinic literature. The Soncino editors assume the etymology in Gittin 56a:

As we learn from Josephus in Vita and other sources, this grain belonged to the temple.

stephan huller

Berlin and Overman in their account of the Jewish War write the following:

and the footnote here:

stephan huller

I took a second look at Jastrow. This is quite incredible. Jastrow somehow acts as if baryon and baryona are two separate words! Here is the pertinent section: http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/..._38236_209.pdf

How can it be reasonably denied that baryon and baryona derive from the same root - biryah = the Temple so that the rebels were 'temple guards': http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/..._38236_181.pdf

stephan huller

Here is Jastrow's section on the palatinus (Samaritan pronunciation falatinus = Valentinus?): http://hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/hebr..._38237_497.pdf

I hope the reader can begin to see that I think the terms Valentinian and baryoni were interchangeable. In a sense they were roughly parallel with the term 'Samaritan' - they guarded the sacred place.

stephan huller

And of course for the reader who doesn't understand why I am interested in this. John Moschus makes clear that the Alexandrian tradition acknowledged that the gospel (= Secret Mark?) understood Jesus to have baptized only Simon baryona:

For centuries Church Fathers puzzled over the question of why Jesus never baptized his disciples and then - all of a sudden - in the seventh century of all epochs, the answer was suddenly resolved. As Quasten and Kuttner note:

Indeed this sudden introduction of a text associated with Clement seems to have had widespread circulation in Jerusalem in the seventh century.

Yet is it really believable that this profoundly significant statement about Jesus' baptism of Peter was unknown to previous generations closer to the time when Clement was actively actively writing. Indeed we see Nicephorus the ninth century historian attribute the very same quote to Evodius, the legendary first successor to Peter in the Episcopal chair of Antioch:

Another Byzantine theologian - Euthymius Zigabenus - again 'mentions that some writers near the time of the apostles records that our Lord baptized His holy mother and Peter and Saint Peter baptized the other disciples (In Joan. Ev. iii.5).

Could it be that the gospel was about Jesus baptizing and emptying his spiritual essence into the chief of the baryoni in order to empower him to defend the Temple? Could Christianity be rooted in some secret rite practiced among the Jewish rebels at the time of the revolt?