Corpus-Paul

[Hope_Rosenbaum_Werner AT deweyballantine.com]

Dave Hindley wrote:
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? <snip>
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.

List Members:  I am out of my depth here, but I happen to be reading I.
Gruenwald's "Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism".  His discussion is far too
broad to even attempt to summarize here (now there's good weekend reading for
you <g>), but I do note that Gruenwald notes that the "earliest post-biblical
traces of Merkavah mysticism are found in apocalyptic literature and in some 
of
the texts discovered at Qumran." (intro, p. 1)   Then, at page 16, he states:
"This assumption of a relation between the revelation of secrets to the
apocalyptists and the future revelation of knowledge to the righteous 
approaches
the conclusion maintained by the early gnostics, that knowledge is a conditio
sine qua non for salvation.  Although the gnostic concept of knowledge is much
more complex and developed than the one we find in apocalypticism, it still
seems that the relation between knowledge and salvation was one of the major
elements which Jewish apocalyptic contributed to gnosticsm."  (ftnt to I.
Gruenwald in Israel Oriental Studies III (1973), pp. 75 ff.
Best Regards,
Hope Rosenbaum-Werner
Attorney by Day and
Lurker Extraordinnaire by Night


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