DCHindley

Here is chapter 11:

CHAPTER 11.1 AFTER this I saw, and the angel who spoke with me, who conducted me, said unto me: "Understand, Isaiah son of Amoz; for for this purpose have I been sent from God."	CHAPTER 11.1 AFTER this I saw, and the angel who spoke with me, who conducted me, said unto me: "Understand, Isaiah son of Amoz; for for this purpose have I been sent from God."
2. [And I indeed saw a woman of the family of David the prophet, named Mary, and Virgin, and she was espoused to a man named Joseph, a carpenter, and he also was of the seed and family of the righteous David of Bethlehem Judah.] 3. [And he came into his lot. And when she was espoused, she was found with child, and Joseph the carpenter was desirous to put her away.] 4. [But the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world, and after that Joseph did not put her away, but kept Mary and did not reveal this matter to any one.] 5. [And he did not approach May, but kept her as a holy virgin, though with child.] 6. [And he did not live with her for two months.] 7. [And after two months of days while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his wife, but both alone.] 8. [It came to pass that when they were alone that Mary straight-way looked with her eyes and saw a small babe, and she was astonished.] 9. [And after she had been astonished, her womb was found as formerly before she had conceived.] 10. [And when her husband Joseph said unto her: "What has astonished thee?" his eyes were opened and he saw the infant and praised God, because into his portion God had come.] 11. [And a voice came to them: "Tell this vision to no one."] 12. [And the story regarding the infant was noised broad in Bethlehem.] 13. [Some said: "The Virgin Mary hath borne a child, before she was married two months."] 14. [And many said: "She has not borne a child, nor has a midwife gone up (to her), nor have we heard the cries of (labour) pains." And they were all blinded respecting Him and they all knew regarding Him, though they knew not whence He was.] 15. [And they took Him, and went to Nazareth (in Galilee).] ('Galilee' is omitted by Eth ms b) 16. [And I saw, O Hezekiah and Josab my son, and I declare to the other prophets also who are standing by, that (this) hath escaped all the heavens and all the princes and all the gods of this world.] 17. [And I saw: In Nazareth He sucked the breast as a babe and as is customary in order that He might not be recognized.] 18. [And when He had grown up he worked great signs and wonders in the land of Israel and of Jerusalem.] 19a. [And after this the adversary envied Him and roused the children of Israel against Him,]	2-19a[*]
19b not knowing who He was,	19b. not knowing who He was.
19c. [and they delivered Him to the king, and crucified Him, and He descended to the angel (of Sheol)]. 20. [In Jerusalem indeed I was Him being crucified on a tree:] 21. [And likewise after the third day rise again and remain days.] [22. And the angel who conducted me said: "Understand, Isaiah": and I saw when He sent out the Twelve Apostles and ascended].	19c-22.[*]
23. And I saw Him, and He was in the firmament, but He had not changed Himself into their form, and all the angels of the firmament [and the Satans] saw Him and they worshipped.24. And [there was much sorrow there, while] they said: "How did our Lord descend in our midst, and we perceived not the glory [which has been upon Him], which we see has been upon Him from the sixth heaven?"	23. And I saw Him, and He was in the firmament, but He had not changed Himself into their form, and all the angels of the firmament and the Satans saw Him and they worshipped.24. And there was much sorrow there, while they said: "How did our Lord descend in our midst, and we perceived not the glory [which has been upon Him], which we see has been upon Him from the sixth heaven?"
25. And He ascended into the second heaven, and He did not transform Himself, but all the angels who were on the right and on the left and the throne in the midst.26. Both worshipped Him and praised Him and said: "How did our Lord escape us whilst descending, and we perceived not?"	25. And He ascended into the second heaven, and He did not transform Himself, but all the angels who were on the right and on the left and the throne in the midst.26. Both worshipped Him and praised Him and said: "How did our Lord escape us whilst descending, and we perceived not?"
27. /And in like manner He ascended into the third heaven, and they praised and said in like manner./	27.-30. /And in like manner He ascended (into the second and) third heaven/ (Charles notes that 'into the second and' must be an error, as the Lord already ascended to the second heaven in vs 25)
28. /And in the fourth heaven and in the fifth [also they said precisely after the same manner. 29. But there was one glory, and from it He did not change Himself. 30. And I saw when He ascended into the sixth heaven, and they worshipped and glorified Him./	28.-30. /and the fourth, and in the fifth and in the sixth./
31. But in all the heavens the praise increased (in volume).32. And I saw how He ascended into the seventh heaven, and all the righteous and all the angels[*] praised Him. And then I saw Him sit down on the right hand of that Great Glory whose glory I told you that I could not behold.33. And also the angel of the Holy Spirit I saw sitting on the left hand.	31. But in all the heavens the praise increased (in volume).32. And I saw how He ascended into the seventh heaven, and all the righteous and all the angels [and all the virtues] praised Him. And then I saw Him sit down on the right hand of that Great Glory whose glory I told you that I could not behold.33. And also the angel of the Holy Spirit I saw sitting on the left hand.
34a. And this angel said unto me: "Isaiah, son of Amoz, /I preserve thee/; [for these are great things] for thou hast seen what no child of flesh has seen.	34a. And this angel said unto me: "Isaiah, son of Amoz, /it is enough for thee/;[*] for thou hast seen what no child of flesh has seen.
34b.[*]	34b. [What eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, how great things God hath prepared for all (so L2, S omits 'all') that love Him.] (compare 1 Cor 2:9)
35. And thou wilt return into thy garment (of the flesh) until thy days are completed. Then thou wilt come hither."	35. And thou wilt return into thy garment (of the flesh) until thy days are completed. Then thou wilt come hither."
36a. /These things I saw. And Isaiah told/ unto all that stood before him, /and they praised/.	36. /These things Isaiah saw and told/ unto all that stood before him, /and hearing these wonderful things they all praised and glorified/ (L2 omits 'these').
36b. And he spake to Hezekiah the King [and said]: "I have spoken these things."	36b. And he spake to Hezekiah the King[*]: "I have spoken these things."
37. Both the end of this world; 38. And all this vision will be consummated in the last generations. 39. And Isaiah made him swear that he would not tell (it) to the people of Israel, nor give these words to any man to transcribe.	37. Both the end of this world; 38. And all this vision will be consummated in the last generations. 39. And Isaiah made him swear that he would not tell (it) to the people of Israel, nor give these words to any man to transcribe.
40.[*] (something is believed to be lost here in the Ethiopic & L1) /and then ye will read/, and watch ye in the Holy Spirit in order that ye may receive your garments and thrones and crowns of glory which are laid up in the [seventh] heaven.	40. [But very many things were understood by the king,] /even words of prophecy such things ye will read/, and watch ye in the Holy Spirit in order that ye may receive your garments and thrones and crowns of glory which are laid up in the[*] heaven.
41. On account of these visions and prophecies Sammael Satan sawed in sunder Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet, by the hand of Manasseh.42. And all these things Hezekiah delivered to Manasseh in the twenty-sixth year.43. But Manasseh did not remember them nor place these things in his heart, but becoming the servant of Satan he was destroyed.	41. On account of these visions and prophecies Sammael Satan sawed in sunder Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet, by the hand of Manasseh.42. And all these things Hezekiah delivered to Manasseh in the twenty-sixth year.43. But Manasseh did not remember them nor place these things in his heart, but becoming the servant of Satan he was destroyed.
Postscript. Here endeth the vision of Isaiah the prophet with his ascension.	Postscript. Here endeth the vision of Isaiah the prophet with his ascension.

DCH

EmmaZunz

Thank you DCH, I'll have a look.

EmmaZunz

9:13 and 15 are a mess, basically then?

Even if we can't tell what the original said, it is odd that the terms "god of that world" and "Son" are used in 9:14 for the first time.

There's certainly no mention of suffering or death in God's instructions in chap. 10.

What do you think?

DCHindley

Emma,

The phrase 'God of this world' is from 2 Cor. 4:4. What I find interesting are the overtly Christian portions (using NT terms such as Son of God or Only-begotten Son).

E/L1	S/L2
7:23. /And I rejoiced with great joy, that those who love the Most High and His Beloved will afterwards ascend thither by the angel of the Holy Spirit./	7:23. /And I rejoiced with exceeding great joy, because such is the consummation of those who know of the Most High and his eternal beloved son: and by the angel of the Holy Spirit these come (there)/
7:37a. /And I praised Him, who is not named and the Only-begotten/ (presupposes John 1:16, 18 & 3:16, 18)	7:37a. /And I, I wondered at this, so great a multitude of angels, when I saw the bounty of different orders, and the glory of the honor every one of them gives/
8:18. And there they /all named the primal [this word omitted by Eth ms c] Father/ and the (mss b,c, a has 'His') Beloved, [the Christ], and the Holy Spirit, all with one voice.19. And (their voice) was not like the voice of the angels /in the five heavens/.	8:18. And there /they praised the Father of all/ and His Beloved,[*], and the Holy Spirit, all with one voice.19. And (their voice) was not like the voice of the angels /in the fifth heaven/.
8:25. And the angel who conducted me [discovered what I thought and] said: "If in this light thou dost rejoice, how much more wilt thou rejoice, when in the seventh heaven thou seest the light where is the /Lord and His Beloved/ [whence I have been sent, who is to be called "Son" in this world].	8:25. And the angel who conducted me[*] said: "If in this light thou dost rejoice, how much more wilt thou rejoice, when in the seventh heaven thou seest the light where is the /heavenly Father and His Only-begotten Son/[*]
9:5. And He who permitted thee, this is /thy (or 'our') Lord (God)/, [the Lord Christ, who will be called "Jesus" in the world], but His name thou canst not hear till thou hast ascended out of /(thy - or this)/ body."	9:5. And He who permitted thee, this is /the Son of God/[*], but His name thou canst not hear till thou hast ascended out of /(thy - or the)/ body."
9:13 (this is original order of Eth vss 12 & 13, which Charles thinks is reversed due to a confused scribe). And he said unto me: "Crowns and thrones of glory they do not receive, till the Beloved will descend in the form in which you will see Him descend [(will descend, I say) into the world in the last days the Lord, who will be called Christ]. 12. Nevertheless they [see and] know whose will be thrones, and whose the crowns when He has descended and been made in your form, [and they will think that He is flesh and is a man.]	9:12. Nevertheless they[*] know whose will be thrones, and whose the crowns when He has descended and been made in your form, and[*].13. And he said unto me: "Crowns and thrones of glory they do not receive, till the Beloved will descend in the form in which you will see Him descend[*].
9:14. And the god of that world will stretch forth his hand against the Son, /and will lay hands upon Him, and will crucify Him./ not knowing who He is.	9:14. And the god of that world will stretch forth his hand against the Son, /and they will crucify Him on a tree, and will slay Him/ not knowing who He is.
9:15. And thus His descent, /as you will see, will be hidden even from the heavens, so that it will not be known who He is./16. /And when He hath plundered the angel of death, He will ascend on the third day,/ [and he will remain in that world five hundred and forty-five days].17. /And then many of the righteous will ascend with Him, whose spirits do not receive their garments till [the Lord Christ] ascend and they ascend with Him./	9:15. And thus His descent, /And He will descend into Hades and make it and the phantoms (visiones) of hell desolate./ 16. /And He will seize the prince of death, and will plunder him, and will crush all his powers, and He will rise the third day,/[*] 17. /Having certain righteous persons with Him, and He will send forth His preachers into the whole world and[*] will ascend into the heavens./
10:11. And none of the angels of that world shall know [that Thou art Lord with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels.] 12. [And they shall not know that Thou art with Me, till with a loud voice I have called (to) the heavens, and their angels and their lights, (even) unto the sixth heaven, in order that you mayest] judge [and destroy] the princes and angels [and gods] of that world, and the world that is dominated by them:	10:11. And none of the angels of that world shall know[*]. 12.[*] Judge (you)[*] the princes and angels[*] of that world, and the world that is dominated by them:
11:16. [And I saw, O Hezekiah and Josab my son, and I declare to the other prophets also who are standing by, that (this) hath escaped all the heavens and all the princes and all the gods of this world.]	11:2-19a[*]

Funny thing is, all the rest of it (Chaps 6-11) is about a secret mission into an "alien world" to rescue those in Sheol (the grave), and this sounds Marcionite (cue Stephan Hüller).

However, I am not aware of any examples of Marcionite pseudepigrapha that made use of OT figures like the Ascension of Isaiah does. Could it rather be reflecting a Gnostic Redeemer myth (cue the mythicists)? Gnostics definitely made use of pseudepigrapha to "market" their ideas to orthodox Christians. The commonalities with Marcionitism may just be due to them using variations of the same divine redeemer myth. What we may have, then, is a Christianized form of a Gnostic or Marcionite pseudepigraph (gawd do I love them big incomprehensible words).

DCH

EmmaZunz

A lot of those details you think are Xian are very unstable textually, from the looks of it.

I don't see the original being Marcionite or Gnostic. What are you thinking of as belonging distinctively to either?

DCHindley

Hi Emma,

Exactly. As I suggested, the passages I had highlighted were all the ones mentioning Christ, Son of God, Only-begotten (Son) and the God of this world or Gods of that world.

I also highlighted mention of Most High, God, Father, and Holy Spirit that are in these passages, although these terms also appear elsewhere in the Ascension of Isaiah without any overtly Christian connection.

What I think it demonstrates, is that the overtly Christian terms are very often part of the text that is in E/L1 but NOT in S/L2.

While Charles shows that there are indications that the Greek text underlaying S/L2 at times abbreviates a nearly identical Greek text that underlays E/L1, the number of passages in E/L1 that is not in S/L2 (which I had bracketed) is much more extensive than those few obvious cases. Either S/L2 substantially abbreviates the text behind E/L1, or the text of E/L1 substantially expands the text underlaying S/L2.

What I was suggesting is that if E/L1 is an expansion of the text behind S/L2, then it may have been done in the interest of a Christian editor.

I'll have to get back to you on that. I am still proofing the tables to remove errors and catch things I missed. I will note, though, that the tables show that the English translation based on E/L1 has 6,021 words (some are comments), while the S/L2 based translation has 4,348 words. That works out to E/L1 being about 38% larger than S/L2 (or conversely, S/L2 being about 28% smaller than E/L1).

DCH

GakuseiDon

Emma, there is a website on the AoI text here:
http://archive.org/details/cu31924014590529

The PDF on the website has the Ethiopic version, but it also points out those passages that appear or don't appear in the S/L ones. Since those details appear in footnotes, it's not easy to use for that purpose (DCH's posts above are much easier to follow). But it is a good resource to use, since it provides more information on how some of the passages are translated in the footnotes.

mountainman

Hi GDon,

I do not wish to sidetrack this thread, so I will make only one post, the purpose of which is to attempt to better identify the "Seven Heavens" that are outlined in this text AoI (and in other texts associated with Christian origins, some of which are in the NHC). If you want to discuss any of this another thread may be appropriate, however I am still researching this issue, and in time may create a new thread myself.

In the above I am making a reference to the knowledge of Greek astronomy that was known by Pythagoras and the ancient Greeks and referred to by Plato, such as in the following from WIKI:




BTW, also see the Antikythera mechanism


QUESTION: Does anyone know of an ancient diagram for these concenric spheres, or layers, for the known Greek planets? (The above image is late)




The Seven Heavens

I am exploring the possibility that the seven heavens referred to the above list, renumbered from zero (for the Moon) to the 7th heaven being the universe of fixed stars (where the [universal] "One" dwells). There have been a number of discussions about the "Sub Lunar" realm, which as I see it, includes the moon and earth, and the true "heavens" only start further away from the moon.


You said you like to try and think what it was that the ancients thought, or how they thought .... well I think the above stuff is a "guess" about the conceptual framework of antiquity on the "seven heavens". It was equivalent to their "best guesses and research at the time". It required mathematics and geometry to model, the Platonists were engaged in this stuff.


I hope this answers your question.

I am still reading about this, and will post another thread when I have reviewed more articles and other sources.





Pythagoras started this secrecy business thing .... need I elaborate further?

DCHindley

That website allows you to download an OCR'd scan of R H Charles' 1900 critical translation, which Emma has otherwise linked to via a web image version of this book. Unfortunately, the OCR quality is not so hot.

Peter Kirby has apparently scanned it and posted online a much better text of Charle's English translation. This is what I started with.

The footnotes in Charles' translation, for the most part, identify variant readings between the Greek rescension reflected by Ethiopic/L1 versus the Greek rescension reflected by the S/L2 recension, and what I did was modify Charles' English translation to reflect what these two rescensions actually say. I also had to use Google translate to get the sense of some of the Latin text provided in the book's appendices, as sometimes Charles only says S"/L2 has a much fuller/smaller account, see page XXX."

It won't be perfect, and as I noted before, I developed a couple errors in Charles' notes and more so in Peter's text (spelling and some omitted phrases).

Gotta start work ...

DCH

mountainman

Not necessarily. We do not have the author, the date or the political context. It MAY look to be "very unstable textually" precisely because we do not know the genuine provenance of the text, despite a number of hypotheses.

For instance it may not be interpolated, and it may not have been a composite amalgamation of authorship (as is currently suspected), but rather may have been written (similar to what is before us) in Greek for a purpose that is not yet clear to us.



The NHC text On the Origin of the World" mentions the "Seven heavens", and it is gnostic.

I think that the "plain and simple" Christian rendition of just the one heaven (there are a few exceptions) is being capitalised upon by those who were privy to the understanding of multiple heavens. They therefore introduced into their version of the Jesus story an exposition of the Jesus figure descending not from "heaven", but from the "ONENESS of the 7th Heaven", through a sequence of other heavens, in accordance to their ideas of cosmology, as I have indicated in the above post # 28.

Also see:
GOSPEL OF BARTHOLOMEW
From "The Apocryphal New Testament"
M.R. James-Translation and Notes
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924


I think if you are going to do any textual criticism you also need to examine other sources which are similar and attempt to establish possible hypotheses as to why we see any similar patterns of literary subject matter.