Origin of christianity Aka when drowning men were clutching at straws P.2
I never Imagined one day that the idea of the taking Jesus as God, incarnation etc... could be a Jewish product (based on faulty Jewish Exegesis)... as I used to read the arguments (of the old school) is that the concept is based on Greek (or pagan) philosophy or mythology .....
till recently ,I was fortunate enough to get reading the work of the new school that re-investigate the issue of the origin of christianity......
It is true that :
In recent decades there has been an intensively renewed interest in the origins and development of ‘christology’, or, to use a broader term intended to take into account religious practices as well as ideas/beliefs, earliest ‘devotion’ to Jesus. In general, this newer work has emphasized the early period and Jewish religious setting in which this remarkable devotion to Jesus first emerged (e.g., Newman, Davila, Lewis 1999), and scholars have thus explored in what ways Jesus-devotion may have drawn upon Jewish tradition and how it may have represented something innovative. In particular, there are questions about the means by which early believers shaped by Jewish tradition with its concern for the uniqueness of God may have accommodated devotion to Jesus as in some way bearing divine significance.
Hurtado, Larry W Monotheism, Principal Angels, and the Background of Christology
There is a complex range of Jewish texts from different periods that speculate about the exaltation and the heavenly enthronement of a figure who may be either an angel or a human being. These speculations grow from meditation upon and discussion of certain key texts such as Ezekiel 1, in which the prophet receives a vision of YHWH's throne-chariot, and Daniel 7, where "one like a son of man" is presented to "the Ancient of Days" and shares his throne. . . .
How far these speculations were taken is a matter of continuing debate. But the point should be clear: things like this were thinkable; they were not obviously self-contradictory, nor were they regarded as necessarily a threat to what second-Temple Jews meant by "monotheism."
N. T. Wright. The Challenge of Jesus (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999) p. 105.
Now let's go directly to the Jewish sources :
proofs of some Jewish shirk before Jesus?
1- were the Jews capable of thinking of of more than one divine figure along with God ?
a simple reading of the Jewish Book of 1 Enoch (dated before the mission of Jesus) will reveal that.
It is there where the figure "Son of man" is described as,judge of the world (xlvi. 2, xlviii. 2, lxx. 27); universal dominion and preexistence are predicated of him (xlviii. 2, lxvii. 6). He sits on God's throne (xlv. 3, li. 3), which is His own throne.
Bauckham comments:That he is seated on the divine throne,the symbol of the unique divine sovereignty, is sufficient to establish that he does receive a divine worship..
The Son of Man
Fragment of 1 Enoch (Scrolls of the Dead Sea)
And there I saw the One to Whom belongs the time before time, and His head was white like wool. With Him was another being, whose countenance had the appearance of a man, and his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels. I asked the angel who went with me [...] concerning that son of and who he was, and whence he was, and why he went with the One to Whom belongs the time before time.
He answered and said to me: 'This is the son of man who has righteousness, with whom dwells righteousness, and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of the spirits has chosen him, and whose lot has the pre-eminence before the Lord of the spirits in uprightness for ever. This son of man whom you have seen shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats and the strong from their thrones, and shall loosen the reins of the strong and break the teeth of the sinners.'
And at that hour that Son of Man was named in the presence of the Lord of the spirits, and his name before the the One to Whom belongs the time before time. Yes, before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of the heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of the spirits. He shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay themselves and not fall, and he shall be the light of the gentiles and the hope of those who are troubled of heart. All who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship before him, and will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of the spirits. For this reason has he been chosen and hidden before Him, before the creation of the world and for ever more. The wisdom of the Lord of the spirits has revealed him to the holy and righteous; for he has preserved the lot of the righteous, because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness, and have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of the spirits: for in his name they are saved, and according to his good pleasure has it been in regard to their life.
In these days downcast in countenance shall the kings of the earth have become, and the strong who possess the land because of the works of their hands, for on the day of their anguish and affliction they shall not be able to save themselves. And I will give them over into the hands of My elect: as straw in the fire so shall they burn before the face of the holy, as lead in the water shall they sink before the face of the righteous, and no trace of them shall any more be found.
And on the day of their affliction there shall be rest on the earth, and before them they shall fall and not rise again. There shall be no one to take them with his hands and raise them, for they have denied the Lord of the spirits and His Messiah. The name of the Lord of the spirits be blessed.
[1 Enoch 46.1-4;
1 Enoch 48.2-10]
Another form of Jewish shirk? (pleas for help at the tombs of dead saints and martyrs):
Jack Lightstone dedicated a chapter of 20 pages in his book (The Commerce of the Sacred: Mediation of the Divine Among Jews in the Greco-Roman World) dealing with that matter, that tombs are the site of veneration of the dead, and in which the earthly
remains of these saints constitute valued objects in the mediation of
the divine.:
some quotes from the chapter:
That tombs, local or national, may assume such a function has more to do with what has befallen the surviving spirit of the deceased and the possible services that the spirit may render, than (at least initially)
with any integral holiness adhering to the entombed bones. The spirit of the Patriarch (or of other Holy Men) seems in some fashion both in his tomb and in heaven. He or she is privy to the requests of
the supplicants and in turn has the ear of the deity. That the deceased constitutes an active intermediary, rather than a passive instrument of communication, seems evident. For prayer may be addressed to the deceased rather than to a divine being. More properly put, the deceased has become a "divine" being in some serious sense, and therefore, like God or an angel, may be efficaciously beseeched in prayer.
The Matriarch, Rachel, is a case in point, surviving even in rabbinic Judaism. It remains customary for barren women to visit the Tomb of Rachel to pray for progeny. The specific efficacy of this tomb
for countering barrenness has to do with the particular person (and biography) of the entombed, who herself, according to the biblical narrative, long remained barren. In short, the specificity of function
here alerts one to the active role played by the deceased; she above all ought to understand and sympathize with the problem. And supplicants usually address their prayers directly to her.
Pilgrimages to tombs of famous Holy Men were not limited to these few instances. The (alleged) tombs of David, Maimonides, and Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (to name but a few obvious examples) have
all been objects over the centuries of such piety by rabbinic Jews,although the specific world-view that makes sense of these practices has been rigorously ignored (or suppressed) by the rabbis. Late
Antique rabbinic sources relate that persons visited the gravesite of the rabbinic Holy Man Rav in order to procure its earth for theurgic purposes.9 Rav functioned in life as an instrument of mediation(at least for those in third-century CE Babylonia who accorded such status to rabbinic figures). In death, therefore, his grave remained a gateway to heaven, not only for Rav but also for the downward flow of sacred power. But here even the material of the gravesite remains a locus of the sacred and of salutary efficacy. We have here a relic in the true sense.Early Rabbinic literature views these developments with considerable
ambivalence even when deceased rabbinic figures constitute the object of such cultic activity. To be sure, Rabbinism offered their (living) elite as more than equal to other Holy Men as regards theurgy.10
Still the early rabbinic literature of Palestine and Babylonia refrained from delivering their deceased masters for the same ends. The sources do not view positively the veneration of Rav's grave. The Talmud
enjoins that fences not be erected around graves, lest this aid in the identification (and use) of the sites as sacred territory.1 1 Presumably they feared that the dead, even the rabbinic dead, might wrest authority
from the living, ultimately undermining the rabbinic Holy Men. In any case, the survival of such rites in a hostile (or, minimally, ambivalent) rabbinic environment attests to their entrenchment among
Late Antique Jews and among their rabbinized descendants. With the denationalization of the cult of the dead, persons other than those who had accrued holy status in life might in death join the ranks of the elite. More precisely put, the manner of dying might win post mortem sacrality for the deceased and his or her tomb. By the beginning of the first century BCE evidence emerges pointing to the possible veneration of martyrs. II Maccabees 7 relates, with the requisite "detail" of Hellenistic historiography, the story of the
torture and martyrdom of the "women and her seven sons" at the command of Antiochus IV. N o doubt the narrative previously circulated on its own and enjoyed considerable popularity before either Jason of Cyrene or his (Alexandrian?) epitomist included the tale in their "histories." The story stands as a unit apart from its context, is entirely intelligible on its own and, indeed, interrupts the principal narrative of the book. Given, moreover, that the Palestinian editor of I Maccabees remained ignorant of the tradition in question, one may well locate its provenance in the Hellenistic diaspora. In sum, evidence for martyrology for Hellenistic Judaism dates to the beginning of the first and in all probability to the latter half of the second
century BCE.
Again what Late Antique Rabbinism attempted to suppress (or minimally reinterpret in other terms), medieval Rabbinism clearly evinces.Regular visits to the tombs of the family remain commonplace among
traditional, rabbinic Jews. There one customarily addresses the deceased,asking that he or she intercede with the divine powers on behalf of surviving relatives. The artifactual and archaeological evidence for Hellenistic Jewry indicates as well that the common tomb functioned as a portal to the realm of the divine2 2—initially, at least, for the deceased and, therefore, perhaps for the prayers of the living. Parallel to the new conception among Jews of Hellenistic and Roman times that the dead ascend to heaven, rather than descend to the nether world, one finds the development of new modes of burial and of a remarkably consistent vocabulary of funerary art.
Under “Star Worship” the Jewish Encyclopedia states:
The Israelites fell into this kind of idolatry and as early as the time of Amos they had the images of Siccuth and Chium, ‘the stars of their god’ (Amos 5:26); the latter name is generally supposed to denote the planet Saturn. That the Kingdom of Israel fell earlier than that of Judah is stated (II Kings 17:16) to have been due, among other causes, to its worshipping the host of heaven. But the Kingdom of Judah in its later period seems to have outdone the Northern Kingdom [Israel] in star-worship.” Of Manasseh it is related that he built altars to all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of YHWY, and it seems it was the practice of even Kings before him to appoint priests who offered sacrifices to the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and all the hosts of heaven. Altars for star-worship were built on the roofs of the houses, and horses and chariots were dedicated to the worship of the Sun. (II Kings 21:5; 23:4-5, 11-12) Star-worship continued in Judah until the 18th year of Josiah’s reign (621 B.C.) when the King took measures to abolish all kinds of idolatry. But although star-worship was then abolished as a public cult, it was practiced privately by individuals who worshipped the heavenly bodies, and poured out libations to them on the roofs of their houses (Zephaniah 1:5; Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13) … Jeremiah, who prophesied in the sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (591 B.C.) describes the worship of the Sun as practiced in the court of the Temple (Ezekiel 8:16) and that even after the destruction of the Temple the women insisted on continuing to worship the Queen of Heaven
To be continued .....
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