stephan huller

The three Targums all take dath to be " law " in this place. The LXX. has "angels" (iyyekot), instead of the combination eshdath. Possibly the word was taken as ashdoth (plural of the Chaldee ashda), meaning " rays " (of light) and so "angels." Comp., "He maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire." " they " ran and returned as a flash of lightning (Ps. civ. 4 ; Ezek. i. 14). It is also possible that the LXX. read r instead of d in the word which they had before them, and that they arrived at the meaning " angels " through the Hebrew word sharath, " to minister." The confusion between r and d, which are extremely alike in Hebrew, is very common. The parallels referred to in the notes on the verse show that " fiery law" will yield a good sense. The only question is whether dath, "law" can be reasonably supposed to have occurred in the Mosaic writings [Charles John Ellicott, An Old Testament commentary for English readers, Volume 2 p 99]

stephan huller

"Lightning flashing at them from his right" footnote - meaning of mimino eshdath unknown perhaps a place name [Jewish Publication Society The Torah: the five books of Moses]

stephan huller

The Samaritan text I think makes the most sense nstead of a fiery law, אש דת esh dath, he reads, following the Samaritan version אש אוֹר esh aur, a fire shining out upon them.

He appeared from Mount Paran,
with Him were thousands of Holy Ones,
a fire shining out upon them from his right,

I wonder if this is the source of the fire baptism, literally divine fire bathing the people.

stephan huller

Another recent scholarly paper argues the same thing

http://www.leimanlibrary.com/texts_o...0Decalogue.pdf

It concludes that "the original meaning of the phrase was ‘from his right, fire flew to them.' Is the 'fire flying' or 'shining' upon them the ultimate source of the idea in Mark 9:49 (as reconstructed by Baarda) that "everyone will be baptized with fire"? Was this what was understood to have happened to Moses as he ascended up to heaven for the third time to become established as king of Israel (cf. Clement Strom. 1.23)? I strongly think all of this links back to the mystery of the divine kingship which Jesus 'teaches' to the beloved disciple in the cited text from Secret Mark. As Meeks notes (p. 196) all references to Moses as king go back to Deut 33:2.

stephan huller

Most interesting of all is the fact that the same material is also understood by a very old tradition to be a parallel for the divine marriage of the Song of Songs:

The point then is that the Gospel of Philip's ideas about 'the bridal chamber' and fire baptism may well be related.

stephan huller

It is interesting to note that the Samaritan reading אש אוֹר in Deuteronomy 33:2 might find backhanded support with the hiph'il of אוֹר in verse 10 at Qumran - 'to cause to shine.' Instead of the Samaritan and Masoretic reading:

The Qumran text has

I don't think that this can be coincidental. For the readership who aren't familiar in ancient Hebrew the three letters appearing on the page could mean 'fire,' 'light' or 'lightning.' The term means both fire and light in modern Hebrew. It also has the sense of 'light of understanding.'

It is curious that there is such a pronounced fire interest in the concluding appearance of Moses. I am struck by the reconstructed image of God appearing with a myriad of angels and fire streaming from his right hand. It seems to have influenced apocryphal and apocalyptic literature. Yet more significantly I can't believe that the transformation of the original text was accidental. The image was clearly 'weeded out' of the Bible.

The Qumran reading:

stephan huller

If I am right about connecting the initiation of the beloved youth by Jesus (= God) in Secret Mark to the experience of Moses in Deuteronomy, then the implications are obvious. Just look at how Peter Schäfer (Origins of Jewish Mysticism p. 167) summarizes Philo's interpretation of Deuteronomy 33:

What De Vita Mosis describes is precisely the stage at which the soul liberates itself from its bodily prison and returns to its ideal and always longed-for state. That is to say, it captures the very moment at which Moses crosses the border from mortality to immortality. To be sure, he still prophesies, namely his very last blessings over the tribes (Deut. 33), but this prophecy is uttered at the threshold of immortality, immediately before his death, and hence just prior to his transformation into a monad.

In employing this vocabulary for Moses's ascent to Mount Sinai and his “coming near to God,” the Quaestiones in Exodum take an enormous and bold step. They transfer Moses's transformation from duality to unity – from body and soul to pure soul – from the realm of immortality to the realm of mortality: Moses attained this stage, which is usually reserved for the time after death, during his lifetime! He came as close as possible to God, because when God asked him to come near to him, he was still a human being with body and soul (and he would return to this human stage following this unique experience).

Moreover, the Quaestiones go further than De Vita Mosis in describing what precisely this transformation entails. Whereas the phrase that Moses is "resolved into the nature of unity” can be understood, with De Vita Mosis, as his transformation from the duality of body and soul to the unity of pure soul – and hence not as a unity/unification with God – further along the Quaestiones stress that Moses enters into a “kind of family relation” with God and, being “changed into the divine,” thus becomes “truly divine." Here, of course, it would be imperative to know the original Greek text (which we do not). The only other passage where Philo speaks of the “divinization” of the “holy soul” through its ascent to a region above the heavens – that is, to God – is in his commentary on Ex. 24:12 (“Come up to Me to the mountain and be there”), here within the same pericope. The translator from the Armenian remarks that the Armenian word for becoming divinized “usually renders theousthai, a word that seems not to occur elsewhere in Philo” and proposes theophoreisthai as the Greek Vorlage. But although this word is commonly used by Philo to signify being possessed or inspired by God (in QE, II, 29, Marcus translates it "filled with God," it does not necessarily take on the strong meaning of becoming divinized in the sense of becoming united with the divine. Altogether, therefore, although he goes very far in the exceptional case of Moses, Philo seems reluctant to overstate his case. We cannot preclude the possibility that the Armenian translator retains responsibility for the particular tone of our two passages in the Quaestiones, with their emphasis on Moses's “deification.

Ultimately, however, it is not only Moses's soul that can ascend to the heights of the divine during its lifetime but any human soul if it follows the proper procedure. Any mind (nous), “which has been perfectly cleansed and purified and which renounces all things pertaining to creation, is acquainted with One alone (hen monon) and knows the Uncreated (to agenēton), to Whom it has drawn nigh, by Whom also it has been taken to Himself." [Plant 64] That purified soul that has left behind the created world is drawn close to God, the Uncreated One. When Hannah says, “I will pour out my soul before the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:15), according to Philo this refers to the desire of the human soul to obtain a vision of God:

What else was meant by the words, "I will pour out my soul" (I Samuel 1:15) but "I will consecrate it all to Him, I will loosen all the chains that bound it tight, which the empty aims and desires of mortal life had fastened upon it. I will send it abroad, extend and diffuse it, so that it shall touch the bounds of the All (tōn tou pantos hapsasthai peratōn), and hasten to that most glorious and loveliest of visions (thean) – the vision of the Uncreated (tou agenētou)”? [Ebr. 152]

This is one of the rare cases in which Philo does not employ the philosophical pattern of the soul's transformation into pure soul and its being “overpowered” by the divine mind but resorts to the traditional (biblical and postbiblical) language of the vision of God. He does not explain what this vision entails, but there can be no doubt that for him it is precisely this: the transformation of the soul, and not the vision of God's shape in terms of the biblical and apocalyptic narratives.

In a number of passages Philo describes in greater detail what this ascent of the soul/mind involves. The mind of the sage (who is the perfect man) is in a kind of liminal state, “midway between mortal and immortal kind,” on the borderline between the created and the uncreated. When it directs itself to God, it is driven by its own desire as much as by God's overwhelming force:

When the mind is mastered by the love of the divine (erōtos theiou), when it strains its powers to reach the inmost shrine, when it puts forth every effort and ardor on its forward march, under the divine impelling force (theophoroumenos) it forgets all else, forgets itself, and fixes its thoughts and memories on Him alone whose attendant and servant it is, to whom it dedicates not a palpable offering, but incense, the incense of consecrated virtues. But when the inspiration (to enthousiōdes) is stayed, and the strong yearning abates, it hastens back from the divine and becomes a man.68 In other words, the divinely inspired mind is no longer a human mind but in some kind of intermediary stage between the human and the divine.

In other words, the divinely inspired mind is no longer a human mind but in some kind of intermediate stage between the human and the divine, completely overwhelmed by the inspiration granted from above.

stephan huller

Who cannot see now that Clement of Alexandria's Egyptian Church has merely adopted the Philonic interpretation of Deuteronomy 33 - filled with its 'spiritualized' homoerotic Platonism - and applied it to a passage in Secret Mark about God (= Jesus) and his initiation of a chosen disciple who is at once the Marcionite apostle (= Paul) who in turn 'passes on what he received' to the early Church. I can't understand why I am the only one who sees this. How did Morton Smith know how to created a text that 'works' with Philonic thought on every possible level?

andrewcriddle

If we are discussing fire baptism then this pasage from the Books of Jeu (Book 2) is relevant.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

I don't think that this is what Hippolytus really means.

A little earlier Hippolytus says: According to Hippolytus Empdeocles (for purposes of purification) required his followers to abstain from meat and sexual relations. Marcion forbids marriage childbearing and the eating of meat products. Hence according to Hippolytus Marcion is really a follower of Empedocles who only pretends to be a Christian.

Andrew Criddle