Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Jeffrey Gibson asked:

>>Instead of Gnosticsim, should we not be looking at Judaism and what
it said was "pre-existent", as well as what was being done by Jews
when one asserted the "pre-existence" of what was said to be
"pre-existent" (Torah, the "name" of the Messiah", "the heavenly
throne",  Divine Wisdom, etc.),  as the interpretative matrix in which
these statements about Jesus (or the Logos which, ala GJohn,  becomes
incarnate in him) take on meaning and derive their particular
significance and theological force? If so, then it seems to me that
what  "Paul" is doing in Colossians and elsewhere when he speaks of
Jesus/Christ as "preexistent" is carrying on a debate parallel with
the debate that Luke was carrying on with his ascription of Caesar's
titles to Jesus, of where it is that the God of the universe is most
powerfully and bindingly known/to be found.

So I guess what I'm asking is whether we should view "preexistence"
language not so much ontologically as functionally within the
framework of the question of "where do you find God and his purposes
revealed?".<<

I consulted Harry Wolfson's _Philo_, since he discussed preexistence
of ideas in vol 1:183-4. Are not the ideas of the pre-existence of the
Law, the throne of glory, the tabernacle, the Patriarchs, Israel, the
name of the Messiah, repentance, paradise, hell, and the Holy Land,
attested unambiguously for the most part in sources (primarily the
Talmud) originating well after the 1st century CE? Of these, only the
preexistence of the Law and the Tabernacle are attested in Jewish
Hellenistic sources (Pseudo-Philo, Theodotus and 2 Baruch, I think,
for the Law, and Pseudo-Philo and Wisdom of Solomon for the
tabernacle).

Where is the messiah considered *eternal* or *preexistent* in
contemporary Jewish tradition? Wolfson thinks that Hellenistic Jews
found it "quite natural to blend such beliefs in the preexistence of
things with the Platonic theory of ideas." We are then back to
Platonism, which was the principal influence behind Gnosticism.

Regards,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA