2021-06-22

The Incarnation of The Name – Continuing Nanine Charbonnel’s Sublime Paper Figure Jesus Christ

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by Neil Godfrey

All posts in this survey of Nanine Charbonnel’s book are archived at  Charbonnel: Jesus Christ sublime figure de papier.

Getting Real

The striking difference between pre-Christian Jewish concepts and those of Christianity is that the latter eschewed abstract notions of messiahs and divine messengers and fleshed them out with names and personalities. Where we read in the Qumran scrolls about a “Teacher of Righteousness”, Priests, Messiahs, Overseers, in the early Christian literature we meet personal names (Jesus, John) and titles (Christ, Baptist) and even signatures (Paul et al.) The new ideas were conveyed as stories, not merely abstract doctrines. Charbonnel cites André Paul, page 84, Qumrân et les Esséniens : l’éclatement d’un dogme:

We were no longer in the theoretical but in the real. We are talking about concrete people, who, moreover, have names. (Original: On n’était plus dans le théorique mais dans le réel. Il s’agit de personnes concrètes, qui de surcroît ont des noms.)

The question is: Were these the names of real people or were they the names of personifications of things to do with God and Israel and that pertain to salvation. Does the name of Jesus enter our history because it was the name of a historical figure or was it born as a personification of the Name of God? In the earlier posts, we saw how Jesus was made the personification of the People of God and of Yahweh on earth, and of the Temple and Glory of the Divine Presence (Shekinah).

Veneration of the Name

Within the heart of the Judaism of the Second Temple was the veneration of the name of God.

The name Jesus, as we know, derives from the Hebrew meaning “It is Yahweh who saves”.

The Jesus of the New Testament, Charbonnel posits, is developed in part from the two other greats named Jesus in the Old Testament.

Jesus I

First, we have Joshua (= Jesus) who led Israel into the Promised Land. Today few of us would connect God’s instruction to Moses about his messenger (commonly translated “angel”) bearing the divine name with Joshua, but we know from the second century Justin that early Christians did make that connection.

Exodus 23:20-21

See, I am sending an angel [= messenger] ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.

Here is Justin’s understanding taken from his Dialogue with Trypho, 75:

Moreover, in the book of Exodus we have also perceived that the name of God Himself which, He says, was not revealed to Abraham or to Jacob, was Jesus, and was declared mysteriously through Moses. Thus it is written:And the Lord spake to Moses, Say to this people, Behold, I send My angel before thy face, to keep thee in the way, to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee. Give heed to Him, and obey Him; do not disobey Him. For He will not draw back from you; for My name is in Him.Now understand that He who led your fathers into the land is called by this name Jesus, and first called Auses(Oshea). For if you shall understand this, you shall likewise perceive that the name of Him who said to Moses, ‘for My name is in Him,’ was Jesus. For, indeed, He was also called Israel, and Jacob’s name was changed to this also. 

Justin is writing in the second century but his explanation of the choice of the name Jesus does have a “midrashic” rationale.

Jesus II

Then there is another Jesus or Joshua, the high priest who, on his return with his people from the Babylonian exile led them in the reconstruction of the temple.

Zechariah 6:9-11

Zechariah 3:1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Take silver and gold from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon. Go the same day to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah. Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest, Joshua son of Jozadak. Tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord. It is he who will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two [roles – Priest and King].’”

Jesus III

The third Joshua/Jesus inherits the roles of the first two.

Acts 2:21

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10:13

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Both are quoting Joel.

Joel 2:32

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

To paraphrase Charbonnel, the essence of Christianity is the affirmation that the Lord, the Name of the Lord, and Jesus Christ, are one. In Joel, the call was to invoke the name of the God of the Covenant. This invocation now passes to Jesus because Jesus himself is recognized as the one with the name of God.

The narrative of the Gospel of Luke begins with the name given to the messiah. He was (literally) “called the name” Jesus (Luke 2:21– interlinear). We find the same “called the name” formula for the Davidic Messiah in the Qumran scrolls:

4Q381, fr 15

And I, Your anointed one [=messiah], have come to understand . . . will tell others about You, for You have given me knowledge, and indeed You have endowed me with great insight . . . for I am called by Your name, my God, and for your deliverance . . . . [7-9. Wise, Abegg, Cook]

In 1 Enoch we read that the Name had a pre-existence:

1 Enoch 48:3, 6

Even before the sun and the constellations were created, before the stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of Spirits. . . . He was chosen and hidden before him before the world was created, and for ever [or, until the coming of the Age].

Paul writes from deep within this cult of the name. See 1 Corinthians 1:2 and in particular,

Philippians 2:9-11

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus, we recall, was also the personification of the Temple, and also identified with its cornerstone. We find the Name of God at the heart of the Temple and its cornerstone in a later Jewish text that is widely interpreted as an attack on Christianity, the Toledot Yeshu. I quote the relevant passage of the Toledot from Frank Zindler’s The Jesus the Jews Never Knew:

The Robbing of the Shem (the Shem = the Name, the ineffable name of God)

. . . And there was in the sanctuary a foundation-stone — and this is its interpretation: God founded it and this is the stone on which Jacob poured oil — and on it were written the letters of the Shem, and whosoever learned it, could do whatsoever he would. But as the wise feared that the disciples of lsrael might learn them and therewith destroy the world, they took measures that no one should do so.

Brazen dogs were bound to two iron pillars at the entrance of the place of burnt offerings, and whosoever entered in and learned these letters — as soon as he went forth again, the dogs bayed at him; if he then looked at them, the letters vanished from his memory.

The name of Jesus may have been changed to Jeschu to rob him of the letters that would identify the name with that of the Name of Yahweh.

This Jeschu [Jesus] came, learned them, wrote them on parchment, cut into his hip and laid the parchment with the letters therein — so that the cutting of his flesh did not hurt him — then he restored the skin to its place. When he went forth the brazen dogs bayed at him, and the letters vanished from his memory. He went home, cut open his flesh with his knife, took out the writing, learned the letters, went and gathered together three hundred and ten of the young men of Israel. (pp. 428ff)

Here, in an accusation against Christianity, we see Jesus literally “embodying” the perfect Name, although he does so illegitimately. Celsus records a Jew saying something similar — that the name of Jesus had magical power although it was at the behest of demons.

Origen, Contra Celsus, I.6

After this, through the influence of some motive which is unknown to me, Celsus asserts that it is by the names of certain demons, and by the use of incantations, that the Christians appear to be possessed of [miraculous] power; hinting, I suppose, at the practices of those who expel evil spirits by incantations. And here he manifestly appears to malign the gospel. For it is not by incantations that Christians seem to prevail [over evil spirits], but by the name of Jesus, accompanied by the announcement of the narratives which relate to Him ; for the repetition of these has frequently been the means of driving demons out of men, especially when those who repeated them did so in a sound and genuinely believing spirit. Such power, indeed, does the name of Jesus possess over evil spirits, that there have been instances where it was effectual, when it was pronounced even by bad men, which Jesus Himself taught [would be the case], when He said: “Many shall say to me in that day, In Thy name we have cast out devils, and done many wonderful works.”

Bernadino of Siena with the IHS Christogram

This veneration of the name of Jesus continued throughout the subsequent centuries as witnessed in the lives of saints and the Christian Kabbalists. (See also the history of the name YHSWH – making the divine name pronounceable as Jesus — and the Sator square). Much has been written about the mystic analyses and plays with the divine name YHWH in later times but the point here is that a few of these ideas can be traced back to late antiquity and it is not unreasonable to think that their origins began in at least the gnostic forms of earliest Christianity and early elements of the Jewish religion. I may post some more details about these arcane ideas in a later post or two.

Till then, it is worth noticing that Moses created the name “Joshua” by changing the name of Hoshea to Joshua by placing at its beginning the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, God’s name. (Recall that in the earlier posts of this series that early Jewish scribes (and not only Jewish ones) found mystical significance in letters, their numerical values, puns, and so forth.) It was with the placing of this part of God’s name to Hoshea that the name Joshua was created by Moses to name the man who was to be imbued with the power of God to lead Israel into the Promised Land.

Jesus means “Yahweh saves” but such a form is not unique: the first of the minor prophets, Hosea, means “Yah saves”; Isaiah means “God saves”. We can find other instances, including Jesse and Josiah. Even Judas, from the Judah who sold Joseph, is set against Jesus by the addition of a letter at the end of the letters making up the Tetragrammaton.

The Incarnation as the Descent of the Name of YHWH

To worship YHWH was to worship his Name. The Temple was the dwelling place of his Name – 1 Kings 8:16; Deuteronomy 12:11. YHWH is even called the Name. The leading Jewish prayer, the Kaddish, is a praise of the Name of God: “Hallowed be thy Name”. The name of Jesus is: It is YHWH who saves — the lead figure in the narrative is the one who saves.

The High Priest’s function is to manifest the Name that Saves

Hence Malachi 1:11

My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.

On the Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur, the day of the Great Pardon, the high priest was said to pronounce the otherwise forbidden name of YHWH in order to remove all sins from Israel. Jesus himself is modelled on the high priest — as we also read in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Citing Christian Amphoux’s La Vie de Jesus, dialogue avec Renan, Charbonnel points out that it was through Joseph that Jesus was descended from David and thus a rightful king who had the potential to replace Herod’s dynasty, while through his mother Mary Jesus was related to John the Baptist, the son of a priest. Hence Jesus had the heritage to become both a political and religious leader. As a future king, he could be seen as a threat to Rome; but if he could also be a high priest then he posed a danger to Herod and his high priest. Machine-translating Amphoux,

James, leader of Jerusalem community: 40s – c 63
Simon, leader from 71 to c 110
Jude, driven from Jerusalem in 135

The dynastic lineage of John and Jesus was well constituted: the brothers of Jesus (Mt 13:55 / Mk 6:3) bear the names of the leaders of the Jerusalem community: James, from the 40s to his death, around 63; Simon, James’ cousin, from 71 to his death around 110; and Jude, driven out of Jerusalem in 135 with the other Jews. “‘

Continuing with Amphoux, at the baptism of Jesus the portrayal of the descent of the dove involves another wordplay if there is a Hebrew source behind it. Again a machine translation:

The image of ‘the descent of the dove’ is a play on the two proper nouns of the narrative: to descend is said in Hebrew y-r-d, and the name of the Jordan comes from this verb; and the dove is y-w-n-h, which gives the name of Jonah, which is an anagram in Greek of the name John (Iôna- / Iôan-). Thus, the two proper names in the story carry a message that is taken up in the image of the dove that descends. But what does this message say? John and Jonah refer to a third name, Onias, which designates the legitimate high priest, deposed in 175 B.C.; and the descent expresses the movement from heaven to earth, by which Jesus is invested with the function of which Onias was robbed. In other words, Jesus is invested as the new legitimate high priest, who is to restore to the Temple the priesthood that has been lost for some two hundred years.

Thus Charbonnel suggests the possibility midrashic elaborations on the Name contributed to the very belief in incarnation itself. We know gematria, finding significance in numerical values of the letters of a word, was a special interest among scribes. One scholar who has delved into possibilities here is Bernard Dubourg. In the first volume of L’invention de Jésus he notes that the Hebrew words for “son” and “messiah” have the same numerical value (52) as that of YHWH when the Tetragrammaton is read with the letters themselves spelled out with their names. The Hebrew form of the name “Jesus” likewise has the same value of 52 but only through “the descent of the vowels” (as the ancient scribes would say), or through the “voice” or “the spirit that gives life” to the consonants.

Another midrashic hypothesis relates to the titulus crucis.

John 19:19-20

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.

Charbonnel suggests that here we find another test of the midrashic hypothesis, given that the hypothesis leads us to expect to find clues in the text to alert readers to its midrashic interpretation. One intriguing possibility emerges when Luke’s version is translated into Hebrew:

Luke 23:38

There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

In Hebrew: zéh hou’ mélech hayehoudyim.

Now the expression ZéH Hou’ is unique in the whole of the First Testament and is found in 1 Samuel 16:12, when Samuel is to designate the king of Israel as the successor of Saul . . . : Jesse sent for him: he (David) was red-haired, with a beautiful look and a beautiful face. And the Lord said, “Go, anoint him: this is he/the one” . . .  For Luke, this sign declares to those who are willing to understand that Jesus is the king of the Jews designated by God, like David…

Or one can examine the possible Hebrew behind John’s description:

John 19:19

. . . . It read: JESUS  OF NAZARETHTHE KING  OF THE JEWS.

In_Hebrew: Yehôshoua’ Hanazir Wemelekh Hayehoudim
Y H W H

e

 

The name of Jesus is developed from YHWH, and perhaps even the sign on the cross identified YHWH.

The Name in Prophecy

It seems odd to us that a concept as abstract as “name” can be thought to have a separate “personhood” (or personified) existence from the figure (God or human) that the name identifies. It is therefore useful to realize that this notion was not unique to the ancient Hebrews. Nanine Charbonnel notes that it was also attested in Pharaonic Egypt and a discussion is available in Cathie Spieser’s Les noms du Pharaon comme êtres autonomes au Nouvel Empire (See pages 36-41 — Des noms du roi « personnifies » ? — The link is to open source copy of the book on archive.org)

For NC, what was surely decisive was the way the Prophets spoke of the Name:

1. The belief that the Name of the Messiah was extant and known from old, as suggested in a text like Jeremiah 23:6

2. The new Name (that of the Lord, of YHWH) was born by both the messianic king and the city of Jerusalem itself:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior. — Jeremiah 23:5-6

and

‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’ — Jeremiah 33:15-16

3. In the above passages the name of YHWH, the divine name, is expressed in full and not abbreviated as it is in other personal names. As such it is a fitting name for the Messiah.

4. The final words of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 48:35) can be rendered as either “the Lord is there” or “the Lord is its [Jerusalem’s] name”. On the Day of Atonement, after the High Priest invoked the Name he laid it upon the assembly of Israel. (After all, the YHWH chose the Temple of Jerusalem for his Name to dwell there.) It is also worth taking note that in the Shepherd of Hermas, an early Christian writing that never mentions “Jesus” or “Christ”, also speaks of the personified Name that is exalted in among the assembly of believers — in the tradition of the Atonement’s ritual.

“Listen,” saith he. “The name of the Son of God is great and incomprehensible, and sustaineth the whole world. If then all creation is sustained by the Son [of God], what thinkest thou of those that are called by Him, and bear the name of the Son of God, and walk according to His commandments?Shepherd of Hermas Parable 9, 13[90]:5

The figure of Jesus is the personification of the Name. Recall the words he is made to speak in the Gospel of John:

John 17:5-6, 26

And now, glorify Me, You Father, with Yourself, with the glory that I had with You before the world was; I revealed Your Name to the men whom You have given to Me out of the world; they were Yours, and You have given them to Me, and they have kept Your word; . . . .

and I made known to them Your Name, and will make known, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.

What is the origin of this expression “to make known the Name”? There is only one other place it is found in the Bible:

Ezekiel 39:7

I will make known my holy name among my people Israel.

The context is the time of salvation, the time of the resurrection and final rebellion against God and uniting of all the tribes of Israel: Ezekiel 37

Through the incarnation of the Name in the New Testament the people — Jews and gentiles — become one, as we read in the epistle to the Philippians that speaks of “the Name above every name”. In Acts 15:17 we find the same message where Amos 9:12 is quoted by James (=Jacob) and testifying that all the gentiles will also be called by the same Name.

The Christian embrace of the Name was not unique. Other streams of Jewish thought are also engaged with it. See 1 Enoch (ch 39ff) from the second century BCE and 3 Enoch from possibly the fifth century CE. The latter introduces Metatron, a high angel who, though subservient to God, bears God’s name. (The idea apparently originated with a midrashic interpretation of Exodus 23:21 where the angel’s name was the same as his Master’s.) The concept is similar to Jesus being given God’s name yet still being subordinate to God. The Name, HaShem, remains God’s identity, but it can be assigned to his subordinates.

One can imagine that the name was bestowed on a historical figure. NC thinks it is easier to imagine the Name itself, personified, descending to earth and appearing incarnate.

Midrashic elaborations appearing here:

The Gospels, then, are seen to be a midrashic narrative in which all that the “Old Testament” required is fulfilled: The Name of God is glorified and revealed in the Gospels. The incarnation of the Name comes about in part as a result of the midrashic view of how a word is made alive by “the spirit” of the vowels — as was discussed in the earlier posts. Combined with this understanding was the Greek notion of the Logos being identified with Reason and a Mediator. NC suggests that Jewish messianic expectations created the environment or conditions for the texts to be elaborated the way they were in the NT, but I would think, rather, that it was the need to find a healing, a replacement and restoration of what was lost with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. (If so, more thought needs to be given to the provenance of the letters attributed to Paul.)

The Gospels take the raw material from those midrashic exercises and weave them into a story in which all the prophecies or foreshadowings in the Jewish Scriptures are “realized, fulfilled, embodied” — and all happens in the Name of God with all the meanings that the Name implies. The Name of God creates and sustains the creation. God’s voice, manifestation, incarnation, make him known.

NC raises the possibility that a literal reading of the Septuagint (Greek) version of Isaiah 8:1 could have been taken to indicate the incarnation of the word, although in the Hebrew it certainly means to write of the promised child clearly in letters comprehensible to all humans.

What is evident so far is the central role of “the word”, of “the letter”, and the Word that is Jesus (= “Yahweh who saves”)– who is the Name of God, incarnate, who saves.

More to follow.


Amphoux, Christian. “La Vie de Jésus : Dialogue Avec Renan,” April 22, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140422002209/http://oratoiredulouvre.fr/evangile-et-liberte/La-vie-de-Jesus-dialogue-avec-Renan.php.

Charbonnel, Nanine. Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier. Paris: Berg International éditeurs, 2017.

Dubourg, Bernard. L’invention De Jésus; Tome I. L’hébreu Du Nouveau Testament. Accessed August 19, 2019. http://archive.org/details/LinventionDeJsusTomeI.

Origen. The Writings of Origen. Vol. 1. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark, 1869. http://archive.org/details/writingsoforigen01orig.

Sentiers, Garrigues et. “Voici l’homme ; c’est lui !” GARRIGUES ET SENTIERS. Accessed June 21, 2021. http://www.garriguesetsentiers.org/article-voici-l-homme-c-est-lui-70308958.html.

Sparks, H. F. D., ed. The Apocryphal Old Testament. Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Wise, Michael Owen, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. Revised. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005.

Zindler, Frank R. The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources. Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2003.


 

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20 thoughts on “The Incarnation of The Name – Continuing Nanine Charbonnel’s Sublime Paper Figure Jesus Christ”

  1. NC suggests that Jewish messianic expectations created the environment or conditions for the texts to be elaborated the way they were in the NT, but I would think, rather, that it was the need to find a healing, a replacement and restoration of what was lost with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

    Are the two views mutually exclusive? I don’t think so.

    1. The Markan text was written at least forty years after the Christian religion began (then an average human lifetime), and thus was responding to recent events (the destruction of Jerusalem). We can not explain the origins of Christianity by appealing to the Markan text or to the author’s motives; The Markan text is a latecomer that was responding to profound changes in the religion and its circumstances. The religion itself began long before it was known that the Romans would actually destroy Jerusalem (early Christian thinking was then more in line with Daniel, which never mentions this, but only the temple’s “desecration,” after which God and his angels would destroy everything).

      1. It’s an interesting question: the Gospel of Mark certainly appears to be the beginning of the “gospel narrative” about Jesus. Until then, any Christian teachings focus on a quite different dimension. Not all even seem to embrace the name of Jesus.

        I remain open to the idea (nothing more than that) that Christianity made no kind of appearance until after the fall of Jerusalem.

      2. “The Markan text was written at least forty years after the Christian religion began” – while I basically agree, I think the Markan text is in some ways our best link to early “Christianity”. Before that, we’ve got a few reconstituted Pauline “letters”, which are really all about somebody’s opposition to some otherwise unrecorded cults, only some of which might have had anything to do with “Jesus”; and whoever wrote them almost certainly called Jesus “Chrestus” (the Good), not “Christus” (the Messiah). The more I look into it, the more I think Jesus’ identification with “the Messiah” only started after Bar Kochba popularized the idea of a Jewish Messiah.

        1. New cud to chew on:

          • John W. Loftus (26 July 2021). “My Talk at the GCRR e-Conference on the Historical Jesus”. debunking-christianity.

          I was honored to co-edit a book with Robert Price, Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. […] This one answers the question, “If Jesus didn’t exist then how did the myth originate?” In Bob’s words, when it comes to how it all originated, “may a thousand flowers bloom”. Throw out any number of potential hypotheses for people to consider.

        2. • Gavin:

          …we’ve got a few reconstituted Pauline “letters”, which are really all about somebody’s opposition to some otherwise unrecorded cults, only some of which might have had anything to do with “Jesus”…

          And the LOLs continue . . .

          • David Madison (July 2021). “Theology Inflation and the Disappearance of Jesus”.

          Some of Paul’s quotes are etched forever in Christian consciousness—and in stained glass, “Love is patient and kind.” “Let us not be weary in well doing…”

          Never mind that his letters are not easy reading. It’s no wonder that conservative scholar Ben Witherington III said of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “…the goal of understanding this formidable discourse is not reached for a considerable period time.” Legions of devout theologians have been hard at work at it for centuries. This is a strange thing for an evangelical scholar to admit. The Gideons have given away more than two billion Bibles—so it’s right there in your hotel room, such easy access to God’s word. But understanding it requires “a considerable period of time”?

  2. Richard Carrier holds that the first Christians believed Jesus was an eternal being who descended from what they understood to be outer space. Darrell Hannah asserts that the name Jesus was an alias for the Archangel Michael, an alias that means God’s Messianic Savior, suggesting that the name is fabricated: Christ means Anointed ergo Messiah/Messianic; and Jesus, i.e. Joshua, i.e. Yeshua, means God’s Savior.

    Cf. Carrier (2021-06-11). “Was Jesus-Is-Michael an Early Christian Mystery Teaching?”. Richard Carrier Blogs.

    Paul Davidson holds that the belief in an Archangel with a “multifaceted, cosmic identity wasn’t introduced by an itinerant Galilean preacher, nor did it originate with the teachings of the early apostles, for the notion of a divine saviour described in these terms was already widespread in Judaism before Christianity was born.”

    Cf. Paul Davidson (2020-09-20). “Michael the Great Prince and Saviour of Israel”. Is That in the Bible?

    1. Nanine Charbonnel similarly holds that the first Christians believed Jesus descended from heaven to earth but seeks to explain this belief through a midrashic-style interpretation of the Scriptures. Carrier also acknowledges this midrashic process behind the gospels, but Charbonnel is delving into it far more deeply than anyone else seems to have done – with perhaps some exceptions of French researchers who have taken up the exploration of this midrashic approach, researchers whom Charbonnel frequently acknowledges. None of that denies the Michael connection, but it does not see that as part of the origin of the Jesus idea.

      1. True. It seems that, apart the obvious questions about the degree of midrashical nature of the Gospels, the principal difference between Carrier and Charbonnel is that the former insists more on visions and revelations (made by real hallucinators), while the latter insists more on diffuse apocalypticism of the period, seen as the principal impulse behind the midrash itself (even his “essence” itself). This difference is curious, given that Couchoud had pointed out the economical nature of the mythicist paradigm, in answer to Loisy, precisely calling the Peter’s first vision/hallucination as the “match” necessary to the birth of the movement. It appears that Charbonnel/Dubourg/Mergui/Gozard have not even need of a such “match” to explain the Origins. Is therefore the latter’s view even more economical than Carrier’s paradigm?

        1. Matches only start ongoing fires if there are all the conditions and fuel for fire already at hand.

          As for apocalyptic movements at the time, the biggest barrier to that idea in my view is that hopes for a deliverer, emotional longings, simply do not last for generations. They may repeat ritual prayers etc asking for the messiah but that’s not the same thing as a cultural mood.

          For a new religion to be born I think we are better off looking at a new social and cultural movement that has an appeal to more than a handful of visionaries. New social and cultural movements suggest something significant has shifted in the way the world works for people.

          Sometimes the comparison with Mormonism is raised, but are those sorts of sectarian breakaways a valid comparison?

          1. Many Jewish counter-culture sects were extant during the period in question.

            • Levine, Lee I. (2002). Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 B.C.E. ? 70 C.E.). Jewish Publication Society. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-8276-0750-7.

            A variety of religious approaches and ideologies have come to light in apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books … many are apocalyptic in nature and are concerned with the end of days … Sometimes these final events are essentially historical: a Davidic king, the end of foreign rule, an ingathering of the exiles, etc. In other cases, the description is supernatural: The messiah is a supernatural being; the final events will happen suddenly and shake the earth’s foundations; but, in the end, good will triumph once and for all over evil.

            1. Indeed, but they didn’t become a major form of or rival to the “mainstream” Judaism. What was different in the case of what became Christianity?

              1. • Carrier (2021-06-20). “Postgame on My Pastor Damon Richardson Debate”. Richard Carrier Blogs.

                [The suffering savior mythotype] was popular even in pre-Christian Jewish mythology (see OHJ, Chapter 5, Element 43, and my discussion of George Nickelsburg’s demonstrations of it, Ibid., pp. 430-32), as well as abundantly popular in surrounding cults the Christians clearly borrowed a lot of the structure of their sect from (see OHJ, Chapter 5, Elements 44-48, and my more thorough and concise discussion in Chapter 6 of Jesus from Outer Space).

              2. Neil: “What was different in the case of what became Christianity?”

                My point is that Christianity was probably better at using ubiquitous non-Jewish mystery religion tropes then other Jewish sects. This made it more more likely to expand into the Hellenistic world.

                • “Paul was converted to a Hellenized form of some Jesus movement that had already developed into a Christ cult.” [Mack 1988. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-8006-25 49-8]

                • “The evidence from Paul’s letters is that the congregations of the Christ were attractive associations and that their emerging mythology was found to be exciting. A spirited cult formed on the model of the mystery religions…” [Mack 1993. pp. 219f. ISBN 978-0-06-065374-3]

              3. Nanine Charbonnel is exploring the Jewish origin of the figure of Jesus and that’s what these posts are putting a spotlight on. Part of that exercise is learning how biblical interpretations and readings worked in the Second Temple era. The way those methods and its Jesus product worked with non-Jewish tropes is a later story.

              4. Peter (as the putative founder of Christianity) may of created/obtained a pesher that he used to recruit followers to his cult. This hypothetical pesher would of revealed God’s plan for Jesus to bring about salvation. My speculation is that this pesher was a masterful synthesis of Hebrew scripture; Middle Platonism; and the influence of Philo, that was far superior than what other sects had to offer.

              5. Writing all the proof-texts in Greek placed it on a different road for sure.

                Paul, certainly.

                If Mark is to be believed, Jesus’s active interest in ministering to gentiles, and the whole kingdom-of-god concept and its political subtext that Mack discusses extensively. And the author of Mark pushing it along, and the gospel genre evolving from there.

                Also, if any of the Jesus traditions are to be believed, he was a far better rhetor than any of the other rabble-rousers that Josephus dismisses, with the possible exception of JoB. Like Diogenes, always playing a different game than the rest of the philosophers.

  3. The Toledot’s Jesus is highly evocative of Simon Magus, who in turn is called Samaritan, with Josephus’s Samaritan prophet being one of the perhaps only messiah figures of the 30s. The Talmud also explains the name of some chamber of the temple as apocryphally being used by Simon Magus to dig under the temple to spy on the High Priest to get the Holy Name.

    There are enough parallels here to identify a common origin that led to parallel traditions.

    Simon’s style of magic is slandered as Egyptian (and we later have Egyptian prophets). However, this style of healing, demon exorcism and so forth is completely consistent with Babylonian and Assyrian practices.

    Simon Magus is also associated with the Eastern and Gnostic “Jewish Christianity” that we see leading to Manicheanism. He is also – in the Eastern tradition – deeply associated with John the Baptist which is consistent with the Mandean communities.

    My current theory is that there was no “John the Baptist”, but rather the emergence of a particularly Babylonian influenced branch/evolution of the Essene cults around 35-45 AD. That is, it would be nearly impossible to identify one single religious innovator.

    However, I do believe that someone like Theudas may have played a role as a political instigator or cultural catalyst for these people – not as their teacher, but as a leader – and that later he may have provided the historical consciousness of the baptizer.

    As for Simon Magus, I believe he is a totally symbolic character. He represents the stereotypical “Simonian” or Nazarene, from a polemic perspective. The story of Simon Magus is entirely polemical, to distance the Lukan church from Babylonian Gnosticism.

    Ironically, our Simon may have been Simon Cephas. Where the Lukan redaction or what might be called the Johannite community of the latter 2d century invokes a more accurate identity for Cephas and that community and makes them the enemy of the fictional Peter and Paul.

    In my view, Cephas is the Egyptian prophet. His ally, maybe brother, James is Jacimus the leader of the Trachonites, and in spite of Christian revisionism, I do suspect his reputation for being “just” is accurately preserved tradition about him being innocent of the crimes Ananus and his party accused him of. So, James is made a target and scapegoat of Cephas’s earlier zeal, although Ananus’s true intention is the defeat of a rival theology using political sedition as an excuse. Simon Cephas the Egyptian prophet becomes the superficial basis for the myth of Simon Magus.

    In this interpretation, because Simon bar Giora appears to be not entirely affiliated with some of the other zealot factions, I’d be comfortable as seeing him as leading the remnant of James’s community. Seeing as how bar Giora was crucified, then taken down to be thrown famously from the Tarpeian Rock, I couldn’t possibly identify a better candidate for Simon “Petrus”.

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