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  • From: "John Brand" <jbrand AT gvsd.mb.ca>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul break the Law?
  • Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:55:27 -0600

> John Brand wrote:
> > 'Christos,' of course, is Greek for the Hebrew mashiach. The Aryan
> > cognate would be 'atman' which is understood to be the higher self or
> > spirit.

Jeffrey Gibson writes:
> Cognates are words which linguistically share a common root. I'd be
> grateful if you'd show how "atman" and "mashiach" are related
> linguistically.

John responds:
I stand corrected. 'Atman’ is not a cognate for ‘mashiach.’ ‘Atman’
as a ‘life principle’ would have semantic fields which overlap with
the Greek ‘logos’ and ‘mashiach’ would be closer to ho logos, would
it not? Thus, Christ is the incarnation of logos. Heraclietus used
logos as the life principle of which we are all manifestations.

There is a closer relationship between the Aramaic ‘meshia’ and the Aryan
Maitreya. And this is where there is overlap between Isaiah’s ‘anointed’
and the Zoroastrian Maitreya. Maitreya means ‘friendly, loving’ and is
derived from maitri which is the Sanskrit form of Mithras. Arnold Toynbee
posits Mithras as one of the competitors for Lord of the Roman cult along
with Jesus (“Mankind and Mother Earth”). Which brings me back to the
original question that Jim and Tim were discussing

> Tim Gallant wrote:
> 4. What would Christos mean to a Gentile? Frankly, I doubt it would have
meant much apart from explanation. Soter would have meant more, and
that puts us in the "political" realm. But Paul could scarcely have
got very far in his message without identifying this soter who
rivalled Caesar as in fact a Jew, and his political significance as
rooted in Israelite history. If that is anywhere close to the mark,
we are already getting into "Messiah territory."

John continues:
The Greek criw (‘to smear or rub’) is the root of cristos and crisma.
Christ is an office but He is also regarded as the manifestation of logos
and the dispenser of the anointing of the Holy Spirit of which all those
‘in Christ’ are partakers. This would not be ‘news’ to the Gentile. The
gods are manifestations of the ground of being and a number of them were
anointed as saviors. Caesar is one such ‘god’ and hailed as a savior.

John wrote:
> > > Ahura Mazda (the creator) has a corresponding atman which
> > permeates his creation. There were numerous ideas of who was the
> > 'incarnate' atman (Persian) or the incarnate soter (Greek).

Jeffrey Gibson writes:
> So when Isaiah speaks of Cyrus being Yahweh's anointed he is saying that
> Cyrus is the incarnate atman?

John responds:
Cyrus is called YHWH’s ‘anointed’ or mashiach. There are many who lay
claim to that title in Persian and Greco-Roman thought. This is where I
was heading in my quote:

>". In the far East the Persian Mazda worshippers looked for the birth
of a Saviour from a virgin mother. In the sacred books of Zoroaster
we read: "We worship the guardian spirit of the holy maid Esetât-
Jedhri, who is called the all-conquering, for she will bring him
forth who will destroy the malice of the demons and of men." [Dr. L.
H. Mills, "Zoroaster and the Bible," in Nineteenth Century, Jan.
1894, p. 51]. It was this firm belief which brought the Magi, many
long centuries after the above was written, from the land of
Zoroaster to worship Him whom they had heard of, as born of a virgin
to be the King of the Jews." [Frederick Thomas Elworthy, "The Evil
Eye" (Julian Press, 1986), 194]

What we are seeing in the multi-faceted Greco-Roman world is a development
of the same ideas that we see in the Jewish world. It is not as though the
Jew only was expecting a savior. For example, in Aeschylus “Prometheus
Bound” Zeus fears the ancient prophecy that he will be undone by one of
his progeny just as he had murdered his own father Kronos and as Kronos
had done to his own father Heaven. Prometheus tells Io that the prophecy
will be fulfilled in Achilles (whom we know for his ‘weak’ heel as in the
ancient promise that the serpent will ‘strike his heel’): “A son shall she
bear stronger than his sire” (Prometheus Bound.33). This appears to be an
outworking of the ancient promise in Genesis ‘your seed shall bruise the
serpents head.’

Jeffrey Gibson writes:
> And when the author of the Ps. of
> Solomon speaks of God raising up his anointed, he's really just
> speaking of something that permeates creation?

John responds:
It would be better to go to Proverbs, Jeffrey, to see the correspondence
between the logos that permeates creation and Lady Wisdom.

In Proverbs we see the contrast of Lady Wisdom (9:1-12) and Dame Folly
(9:13-18). Lady Wisdom symbolizes purity and embracing her brings
prosperity and life. Tracing back to 8:12 we see Wisdom personified as a
woman. She is immanent (8:1ff); the source of all just law (v15) [Natural
Law in Aristotle and Cicero et al]; coeval with God (v22 cf. Cicero’s
‘Laws’ ‘[Law] is coeval with that god who watches over and rules heaven
and earth’ II.10]; and she is source of justification (v35b) as well as
happiness (35a).

There is a transformation in Greco-Roman thought of the mythic symbols
into philosophical discourse. Athene and Prometheus are the sources of
wisdom and prudence. But they are transformed into the philosophical
discourse as Wisdom (called ‘logos’) and as the image of the just sufferer
who approaches the Mashiach idea of the Isaiah 53.

In Plato’s ‘Republic,’ for example, we find the following reference to the
story of Prometheus:‘... the just man who is thought unjust will be
scourged, racked, bound will have his eyes burst out; and, at last,
after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled’ There he will
understand that he ought to seem only, and not to be, just.” Adeimantus
in this section refers to Aeschylus, the poet who creates this image.
Prometheus is for the Greeks, the archetypal sufferer similar to Isaiah’s
‘suffering servant’ (Isaiah 53). .

Heraclietus transformed the mythic figures into what he called Logos.
This is the universal behind all law that we see in Cicero. And this idea
of the gods as manifestations of wisdom goes back to Ancient Mesopotamia:
Shamash is ‘not the originator but the divine Custodian of justice … the
magistrates of gods and men, whose lot is justice and to whom truths have
been granted for dispensation’ (Moshe Greenberg, ‘Some Postulates of
Biblical Criminal Law’ The Jewish Expression, ed. Judah Goldin, 1976, 21).
For the Greeks this is Athene. Adherence to the divine justice brings
happiness and justification (see Republic.x for the afterlife story). For
the Jews, Moses is the mediator of Torah, their covenant with the God of
creation. Their righteousness is to be found in Torah as guide. For the
Christian, the Torah is Christ. For the Greek, Athene or Mithras would be
the guide into all truth.

IMO both Tim and Jim are short of the mark of understanding the
Greco-Roman world when such statements as the following are made: “I doubt
[Christos] would have meant much apart from explanation. Soter would have
meant more, and that puts us in the "political" realm.” Christos would be
recognized by those initiated in the mysteries as a Mithras or a Dionysos
or an Athene. All of these are fulfillments of ancient expectations for
the Greco-Roman just as Christ was the fulfillment of the ancient hope of
Judaism.

John wrote:
> > Hopefully, this helps to bring out the identifier 'Christos' as it
> > relates to your discussion.
>
Jeffrey wrote:
> No, it doesn't -- because it's not grounded in anything that bears
> even the slightest resemblance to the real framework of thought in which
> the terms Mashiach/Christos gained their meaning: Yahweh's
> righteousness, his election of Israel as the instrument by which
> "blessing" would be brought to all nations, and his faithfulness to the
> promises of protection that he made to Israel.

John responds:
Perhaps the picture is a little clearer for you now, Jeffrey. Taken the
writings of Proverbs into account, would you still contend that Maitreya
and Logos do not bear ‘even the slightest resemblance to the real
framework of thought in which the terms Mashiach/Christos gained their
meaning’?

The election of Israel as an instrument of blessing fulfills the promise
to Abraham that ‘in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed’
(Genesis 12:3). The Hebrew niphal stem for barak indicates either a
passive sense where the subject is acted upon or a middle or reflexive
sense where the subject acts upon himself. If we take the sense that the
subject acts upon himself, we would say that the families of the earth
‘bless themselves’ through Abraham. Which is better to build on the ideas
already common between a culture that one seeks to influence or to posit a
contrast between the two cultures that can only be bridged by adherence to
‘ritual’ (halakah) from the advancing culture? Maybe the Jewish
perspective is a better aid to us than our own:

Mark Nanos wrote:
I hope that this at least helps to explain how one can differently read
these texts often cited at one as if self-evidently meaning that Torah in
a comprehensive sense (and thus Judaism) has been erased (finished, ended,
completed, rendered irrelevant, adiaphora, whatever) with the coming of
Christ according to Paul, and thus, according to the one doing the arguing
(so often "shouting" citations, it seems)--as if they were not involved in
making interpretive choices that are not effected by their own identity
and interests and training, and in a policy statement the effects of
which, for Jewish people, who still populate their world, have often been
deleterious, to put it nicely. What would you lose by recognizing there
might be some who do not agree with Paul's proposition because of
Christ-faith of this altered role for defining who are the righteous ones,
but who remain "also" but not "only" the righteous ones? After all, it is
this proposition of "also" for which Paul struggled, in the opposite
direction. Is it not making the same category mistake (according to Paul,
that is being made by some Jews) from the non-Jewish side when you insist
on "only" and find no place for "also"?

and, Mark Nanos wrote:
In conclusion, it seems to me, this "also" but not "only" concern (by not
excluding the one when the other gets control of interpretation) is a
fitting way to approach each other especially on this day, which in
America, is set aside to honor the memory of Martin Luther King. Did he
mean to argue that America was to offer equal opportunity for "only" the
minority people who were not experiencing it, or for that freedom for them
"also"?

John Brand adds:
What I am arguing, Jeffrey, moves in the direction of the Gentile in the
same manner as what Mark is arguing for the Jew: That it is more
respectful of another culture to give equal opportunity for enjoyment of
blessing to that culture as for the culture which is the source of the
blessing. This should start by legitimating the quest of the culture. And
this seems to be precisely what Paul was seeking to do.

I find helpful Lloyd Gaston’s discussion of “Israel’s Misstep in the Eyes
of Paul” [“The Romans Debate,” ed. Karl P. Donfried (Massachusetts:
Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2001), 309-326] although he is focusing more
on some Jews response to Paul’s mission to the Gentiles.

“It is important that the Roman Christians understand that God’s election
of Israel, which is not based on works or faith, still stands, and that
the Gentiles who were not chosen in the past had no valid ground for
complaint. It is however also important that they understand that God, in
a new act of righteousness, has now called also a new people, the Gentiles
[Romans 9:25-26], who share the same advantages of election [Romans
8:28-39].” (page 315).

I am simply arguing for a better understanding of Greco-Roman thought
beyond what Jim West advocates in this comment:

I’m not sure if the average greek on the street would have given a
thought to the salvation of Israel. Would they have really cared all that
much? I dont think so. I think, in fact, that any language Paul used
would have resonated from their own upbringing in the Mysteries. Blood,
washing, salvation, all that stuff wouldn't have been heard by greeks the
same way it was by jews. When Paul spoke to greeks did they hear what he
meant or what they understood?

Language that Paul used would have resonated from a well developed culture
that included the mystery religions and a finely tuned philosophical
system that branched out into four discernable streams developing from
Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurius. IMO Paul took advantage of these
systems in his mission to the Gentile.

Regards,

John Brand

B.A. (Providence College, 1980)
M.Min. (Providence Seminary, 1990)





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