Solitary Man

Matthean Jesus is not God himself. But neither Matthew nor Luke are primary. Mark is primary. Matthew and Luke are later works. So in Mark, is Jesus God? I dare say not.

dog-on

Does Mark refer to JC's birth? No.

Primary source for JC's birth is either Mat or Luke...

You got another one?

Cesc

offtopic
Point taken, thx. Allegory of the Cave is prolly more relevant than Horus, or perhaps Plato's Metaphor of the Sun even (which in turn could maybe be compared to Akhnaten's philosophy). I was thinking about the Jewish milieu in Alexandria at the time of the turn of the era, and the Jewish allegorists there who were applying Greek thought and allegory to the Scriptures the way the Gospel writers arguably did. And in relation to the way the concept of Horus/Harpocrates developed during the whole Hellenistic hegemony aswell as the way Alexandria at the time was a huge buzzing centre for new ideas and new ways of thinking etc. mixing both Greek philosophy aswell as Egyptian or indeed Greco-Egyptian. Didnt the sidelock of Harpocrates (Horus) develop into the Rho of the Chi-Rho, which became an early symbol for Jesus also btw?
Thx for good reply. Very interesting with the shaminism too, I think.
/offtopic

Solitary Man

Red Herring.

Solo

I am not familiar with any particular claim of a cryptic meaning behind the symbol. AFAIK as I know the chi-rho christogram are simply the first two Greek letters of Christos. FWIW, I believe Harpokrates was a likely inspiration for the "infant" Jesus narratives of the 2nd century: in both the Arabic Gospel of The Infancy and Protevangelion the infant's birth in the cave is announced by great light.

But the narratives are construed with the view of later Jesus career, so I don't think there were great parallels to draw on. In the Thomas' Infancy Gospel, little Jesus announces himself as a saviour of the world as early as the cradle (lest mother Mary had any doubts on that score). So little chance little Jesus could keep anything secret.

Jiri

ETA: In the Arabic Infancy Gospel, the light intensity is explicitly said to be greater than the sun's - which coincides with the traditional Islamic appearance of the archangel Gabriel, described by Mohammed as falaq-as-subh, a sudden, violent rending of the night sky in the desert morning. The "sun" motive gives Hosea 11:1 "Out of Egypt I called my son" quoted also in the Arabic Infancy Gospel, an interesting twist.

Darrell W. Conder

It's of little value what you or I "believe" happened or didn't happen. It's what the accumulated evidence demonstrates. After almost four decades of wallowing in Hebrew, Torah, Nev'im and Kethuvim study, I've learned that just about anything is possible in the wild world of religion. There's one more thing I've learned, which is that it's the mark of the unwise when one takes themselves too seriously!

Malachi151

Well, its a good thing that my post went well beyond the short portion that you decided to quote isn't it?

fatpie42

Yeah, like any of them are primary sources on Jesus' birth. Luke is more reliable in the sense that it describes some typical Jewish birth rituals, but that is more likely to be because he found out what the typical Jewish birth rituals were than because he found people who knew Jesus' parents and asked what happened. Matthew's story is almost like a reverse of the Exodus story, depicting Jesus escaping INTO Egypt to escape a murderous tyrant.

I guess you could say that Matthew and Luke are both primary sources about Jesus' birth in the sense that both of them have probably made up their stories almost from scratch.

On the other hand, you could say that none of the gospels are primary because they generally work on pre-existing pericopes.

aa5874

I do not think it can be said that there were no "pagan" borrowing in the Jesus story, the very conception of Jesus is not Jewish at all, Trypho the Jew, based on Justin Martyr's Dialogue , did indeed consider the conception of Jesus as similar or borrowed from Greek or "pagan" myth.

Dialogue with Trypho LXVII So, as early as the 2nd century, Trypho the Jew considered Jesus as described by Justin, as similar to Greek myth.

It appears the OT was used as a mask to propagate a pagan concept. And there is no evidence that any of the writers of the Synoptics were not pagans.

Up to the 2nd century, the Jewish concept of the Messiah was a military leader as Simon bar Kokhba, not the Jesus of the NT who was virtually supernatural in every aspect of his life.

fatpie42

aa5874,
On the pre-2nd Century messiah idea perhaps you can clear something up for me.

E.P. Sanders reckons that the idea of what a messiah involved was not so clear cut. He notes that in the dead sea scrolls it envisages two messiahs, one of whom is a descendent of David who does very little and one a descendant of Aaron who leads an army. While there were clearly others claiming to be messiahs and who clearly wanted a military victory against Roman control of the area, there is still reason to suppose that there was not a singular definition of 'messiah' which everyone would agree with at this stage.

As for whether the messiah could be expected to be supernatural, the Egyptian certainly expected to perform a great feat through God's power. Also, there were plenty of people who performed 'miracles' all over the place. Nevertheless, I think you are right to say that the Jews were not expecting a man-god who has the power to save through his death and resurrection. That notion is clearly far more Hellenic than Jewish.

Any thoughts?