 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
If you want a challenging and a most surprising religious study then let me recommend an in-depth study of the origin of religious concepts such as the "Son of God," "the Sophia," "the Logos," and "the Christ". What to your amazement you will find is that these religious concepts have been among mankind since the beginning of time and represent some of the earliest Divine Revelations given to mankind. Of course the names might change depending upon nations and culture but the underlying religious concepts are the same. What is important for our study is the knowledge of the fact that this spiritual idea was a fundamental religious idea of the age right before as well as after the first century where we look for the emergence of Christianity. We will discover upon examination that these religious concepts like "the Christ" and "the Sophia" are ideas which Christianity assimilated from preexistent religious teachings and presented to world in a new way.
Most of us are familiar somewhat with the Old Testament and Judaism's view of its God. Judaism has a long history understanding its God as the sole authority and supreme being which has endured throughout the ages. Little has changed for centuries upon centuries. But several centuries before Christianity, Greek thinkers had arrived at their own concept of monotheism. Because they perceived the universe as moving in obedience to a stable law, they postulated a single cosmic mind or governing force behind it. This is know as the "world soul" or the "soul of the Universe." Strands of ideas before Plato became consolidated in Plato, and out of his school came later ideas which, if they did not all go back to the Master himself, were attributed to him and called "Platonism."
This Platonic conception of God was that he was an Absolute Being, a Unity, that he constituted pure mind and inhabited a world of pure spirit. He was not and never could be a part of the imperfect world of matter and the senses, nor could he make any personal contact with it. To humans who inhabited the material, changing world he was inaccessible and incapable of being understood. This is the meaning of the word "transcendent." God is a transcendent being, totally separated from the material universe. God was indefinable.
Platonism taught that the governing force of the universe (God) was something which lay outside matter. God was the true reality while the visible world was only a distant, imperfect reflection of him. Thus the universe was "dualistic" (in two parts). This might sound simple but big problems lay ahead as men reasoned that this understanding of God did not satisfy the cry of men's hearts for God. Surely a compromise was needed otherwise otherwise mankind could have no contact with God at all and that was impossible for humanity who believed they were created in the image of God. Thinkers reasoned:
Answer for yourself: How was this problem to be handled?
Out of necessity men had to come to an understanding and bridge the gap between the realm of the invisible pure Spirit and the realm of visible matter. Out of necessity some intermediate force or being had to exist for the link between the Spirit and matter to be connected. Many religious concepts were envisioned to explain this distance between the invisible God and the realm of visible matter. The first task of this "assumed" intermediary had been creation. In Platonism, the process of creation can be described by saying that the mind of God produced Ideas, and another aspect of this mind, God's creative energy (which Plato called the "Demiurge"), took these Ideas or Forms and fashioned copies of them out of matter, thus producing the material world perceived by the senses. All these elements in the mind of God, his Ideas, the creative forces, were seen as "intermediate" and came collectively to be referred to by the term Logos (literally, "Word").
Answer for yourself: Did this concept of the "intermediary" begin with the Greeks or can it be traced as far back as Egypt? Yes it can for we first meet the concept of "the Logos" and "the Word" of Creation in Egyptian theology.
The Platonic Logos was thus an emanation of God and God's point of contact with the world. In addition to the Logos being "the" agent of creation, the Logos was the "revealer" of God to mankind! It was God's Logos that revealed God, His nature, His divine will and was the channel of divine aid to the world. The Logos was the bridge between the world of pure soul or pure Spirit and the world of physical matter. The Logos was also the image of God according to which humans were created.
Platonists tended not to regard the Logos as a personal being, but more an abstract force. For some, however, the Logos could provide salvation.
Answer for yourself: Did this religious concept of mediation always remain as a "non" person? No. We find the incarnation of "the Logos" in revealing document entitled Discourse to the Greeks. This document has in the past been erroneously ascribed to Justin Martyr since it speaks of the Logos as instructing and having "ceaseless care over us," making "human beings gods." Here, for the first time, the Logos has become a personal divinity!
Answer for yourself: Is this Discourse to the Greeks a "Christ" centered document and a Christian document? No. But yet we begin to see the emergence of ideas which will be assimilated by key thinkers in the soon to emerge religion of Christianity. .
Owing to the problem of bridging the gap between the realm of pure Spirit and the realm of physical matter the impetus of the age was to bring the intermediary between God and the world closer to "literal" matter. This intermediary has to be more like mankind yet he is pure Spirit. Efforts began to mold this spiritual concept into a more personal being which could be understood as more accessible on a human level. This intermediary between the realm of pure Spirit and the physical realm of matter was to be "the Son of God." The Son of God was also therefore called "the Logos."
There are two ways to view "the Son of God":
From the Logos of Greek and Philonic philosophy to Paul's Christ Jesus is hardly any distance at all once these religious concepts were enlarged
Philo, a Hellenistic Jew, embraced the Logos and associated ideas in his synthesis of Hebrew and Greek religious concepts.
Answer for yourself: What ancient Jewish concept existed at this time that also expressed companionship with God and also seen involved as the agent in Creation as we have seen previously with "the Logos"? God's Wisdom.
Mainstream Judaism had its own intermediary figure going back centuries, certainly as old as Plato if not older. The Jews, unlike the Greeks, never saw God as inaccessible. Jewish scribes of the period after the Exile presented God as making himself known and working in the world through a part of Himself they called "Wisdom." There are those who maintain that "Wisdom" was simply a poetic way of expressing certain of God's activities, but most scholars will admit that the portrayal of Wisdom in the biblical and extra-biblical literature makes her a distinct personage or force (Helmer Ringgren, Word and Wisdom, p. 118, 132, etc.).
This was no "Son" of God, however, for the figure of Wisdom was a female. Let us take not that the grammatical gender of "wisdom" in Hebrew is feminine! Wisdom took on a status and personality of her own. She developed her own "myths" about coming to earth, although there was NEVER any thought of her being physically incarnated.
Here is what the Old Testament Book of Proverbs has to say about Wisdom (from 8:1-36):
"By the gate, Wisdom calls aloud: 'Men, it is to you I call . . . I am Wisdom, I bestow shrewdness, and show the way to knowledge and prudence. . . The Lord created me the beginning of his works. when he set the heavens in their place I was there . . . I was at the Lord's side each day. . . Happy is the man who keeps to my ways."
There are two important aspects of Wisdom here:
"In wisdom the Lord founded the earth and by understanding he set the heavens in their place." (Proverbs, 3:19)
Answer for yourself: What should we have noticed here?
We should have noticed that the religious themes of "pre-existence" and being an "agent in creation" are familiar to what we have read in the New Testament concerning Paul's Christ. These same spiritual attributes are given to the "Spiritual Christ" in the religious thought of Paul.
Eph 3:9 9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: (KJV)
2 Cor 8:9 9 For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. (KJV)
Gal 4:4 4 But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, (KJV)
Phil 2:5-6 5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (KJV)
Col 1:15-16 15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: (KJV)
Eph 4:8-9 8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. 9 Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? (KJV)
Paul shares with us in the above passages the pre-existence of "the Christ." Paul pleads that converts live as sons because "God sent forth his son"; argues for self effacement from the fact that Christ, being in the form of God, "emptied himself"; argues that "the Christ" is the first of God's emanations that is responsible for the creation of all later things; both in the invisible spiritual realm as well as the visible physical realm. As "Lord from heaven" Christ provides the pattern of our resurrected humanity; as he first descended, so he has ascended, the measure of his triumph and assurance of ours.
Baruch 3:37 gives us a line which, even though originally intended as a reference to the Torah (the Jewish Law contained in the five biblical books of Moses, which mainstream rabbinic thought identified with Wisdom), may have had a profound influence on the future:
"Thereupon wisdom appeared on earth and lived among men."
Answer for yourself: Was this one of the footsteps on the path that eventually brought to earth a different emanation of God-the Son? Perhaps the writer of the hymn to the Logos which was adapted as a Prologue to the final version of the Gospel of John turned it into a song of the incarnation:
"So the Logos (Word) became flesh and dwelt among us." (Jn. 1:14)
In the "Wisdom of Solomon," perhaps the most important surviving piece of Hellenistic Jewish writing, we can see a clear and exotic blending of Wisdom with the Logos. This document was almost certainly written in Alexandria, probably in the early first century CE. Like the Logos, Wisdom is now the divine power active in the world, the spirit that pervades and governs all things. She, too, is pre-existent and an agent of creation. She is God's "throne-partner," a step away from Christ sitting at the right hand of God.
24: For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. 25: For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall into her. 26: For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. 27: And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets. 28: For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. 29: For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. 30: For after this cometh night: but vice shall not prevail against wisdom.
In the above passage notice the parallels with Paul's Christ:
It should be now obvious that the concept of God's Wisdom (she) and Paul's Christ are the same concept and idea!
Answer for yourself: Have we ever read about God's "Wisdom" in the New Testament and not noticed it?
Similar ideas and concepts that we encounter in the Wisdom of Solomon saturates the New Testament epistles. We only need look at the opening verses about the nature of the "Son" in the book of Hebrews, a document which comes either from Alexandria, or from some Palestinian circle with close ties to that city's philosophy.
Heb 1:2-3 2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Did we not see above in the Wisdom of Solomon that Wisdom (feminine aspect of God) was God's agent in creation, the expressed image of God, and the power of God as we now find expressed though the agent of God's Son? We sure did!
Answer for yourself: Is then Wisdom (she) and God's Son the same? Yes they are! God's names in the Bible are both masculine and feminine and we find this expressed through different ways where personification is used to express these nuances within the Godhead. God's Wisdom (she) and God's Son (Christ) are the same idea!
The hymn in Colossians 1:15-20 is stamped with the same imagery:
Col 1:15-19 15 Who (He...God's Son) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell;...
As we saw before where God's Wisdom (She) is the image of God, the first of God's creations, the agent in all other creations that follow, the sustainer of all creation, and pre-existent with God we now find the identically same concepts expressed though the masculine agency of God's Son. Paul tells us the same story as we saw in the Wisdom of Solomon only he changes the agent from the feminine Wisdom to the masculine Son.
Paul himself tells us that Christ:
Is the power of God and the wisdom of God
1 Cor 1:24 24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (KJV)
Is the very image of God:
2 Cor 4:4 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (KJV)
Is the agent of creation, channeling the source of all things that resides in the Father:
1 Cor 8:6 6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. (KJV)
Paul and other early Christian writers are speaking of Christ in exactly the same language as we find previously in the broader philosophical world, both Greek and Jewish.
Answer for yourself: Is Paul writing any new revelation when he speaks of "the Christ" or is he retelling what was already known and understood by the people of his day? Paul is only giving a review. This is not "revelation" but only futher "illumination" of prior revelation given to the Ancients.
Paul's idea of the spiritual Son has absorbed both the Logos and personified Wisdom. In reading scripture and imagining he is being inspired to a view of God's Son, Paul is drawing on the prominent ideas of his day and the deeper heritage which lay behind them.
Scholarship fully recognizes this, of course, but most Pastors and Christians don't simply because their studies are deficient in such areas of their faith.
What is very important for us to now understand is that ALL these current ideas were applied to the Joshua-Jesus. Lacking explicit historical evidence to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth outside of the one book, the New Testament, then one can assume that if there was a historical Jesus that those who came in contact with him, his apostles and other followers, were so overwhelmed by the force of Jesus' personality, by the things he had said and done, that immediately after his death and perceived resurrection they went out, gathered all this sophisticated mythological theory and heaped it upon the humble Jewish preacher they had followed. This is one possibility but not the only one. At the same time in so doing we have to also assume that in the process, those followers abandoned all former interest in the details of his life and teachings and presented their master in allegorical terms whereby the personified concepts of Wisdom and God's Son were applied to him. In such a way he became greater in death than ever in life.
As I said the above is one possible explanation for what we find in the New Testament concerning Jesus. Yet the inherent fallacy in such a scenario is easy to see. In the above passages, early Christian writers are presenting the Son as "the image of the invisible God," etc. They are describing a divine figure in terms of divine attributes. No identification with a human man is ever made, no writer gives us even a hint that an "application" to an historical Jesus is anywhere in their minds. As suggested earlier, scholars are guilty of reading into the text things they find hard to believe are not there. There is no getting around the deafening silence of the absence of any credible and unforged record of the life of Jesus outside the New Testament!!!
If you happen to possess a Harper's Bible Dictionary I would direct you to the comments by D. Moody Smith under the heading of the "Logos". Here we find that he states that "it is not immediately obvious why a man sent from God, even the Messiah of Israel, should have played such a role," referring to the Logos' role as God's agent in creating the world. He is quite right.
That Jews, no less, could assign to a crucified preacher the creation of the universe is beyond belief (THINK!)! But of course they did nothing of the sort. The Jews assigned the role of God's agent in creation not to a man but to the spiritual Son in heaven, just as thinkers before them had assigned it to God's Wisdom and others to the intermediary Logos. Due to the later addition of the "literal" Gospels by Rome when they altered the "allegorical" concept of mediation between the pure Spiritual Realm (God) and the Universe (physical realm) we then lose the truths that were first expressed not only in Marcion's First New Testament which did not teach a human Christ or even a human Jesus. But Rome will change all that through forgery, destruction, addition, and pure invention of this pre-existing New Testament after 180 C.E. through the effort of Irenaeus and others which will follow in his footsteps. The historical man entered the picture only when the heavenly son & heavenly wisdom was later thought to have come to earth and lived a life told of in the Gospels. Thus the dating of the Gospels are crucial. Modern scholarship has challenged the traditional dating of the Gospels as "early" and has brought to light damaging facts to this hypothesis like the absence of any quote from a "named Gospel" by any Christian writer until after 180 C.E. (THINK)!!! Cosmic beliefs about a supposed historical man were much easier to accept when applied long after the "fact," and easier still when created by a largely gentile mind.
On the matter of presumed Jewish response to a human Jesus, one of the common observations about groups in the 2nd and 3rd centuries which are styled "Jewish-Christian" is that they did not regard Jesus as a divine figure. The Ebionites, for example, saw Jesus as a prophet Messiah but not the Son of God. But all these groups flourished only after the first century, and the record of fragments from their documents (as in Epiphanius and Hippolytus) comes from the 3rd and 4th centuries. There is great difficulty in tracing Ebionite views back into the 1st century, especially to the Jerusalem community known to us through the letters of Paul.
Thus, our evidence that Jewish-Christians regarded an historical Jesus as simply a human prophet arises only after the figure contained in the Gospels had come to be widely known and accepted as historical. And this again is quite late; as late as 150 to 180 C.E. In fact, certain preserved fragments suggest that earlier Jewish-Christian sects did indeed envision a heavenly origin for Christ, though not as a Son of God. "They (the Ebionites) say that he was not begotten of God the Father, but created as one of the archangels . . . that he rules over the angels and all the creatures of the Almighty." (Epiphanius, Refutation of All Heresies, 30.16,4; E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, vol.1, p.158.)
These observations support the view that Jews, as a general rule, were unable to associate a human man with God. Once Jesus was brought to earth and given a human identity through the Roman Gospels in the mid-second century (produced in refutation of Marcion's Gnostic allegorical "Christ" as presented in his First New Testament in 140 C.E.), Jewish groups who were part of the Christian faith (and carried along like everyone else by the juggernaut of the Gospel accounts of Jesus) could no longer accept divinity for such a figure and had to reduce him to human dimensions.
As I stated above such an attitude surfaces as early as Justin around 150 C.E., whose character Trypho the Jew, in Dialogue with Trypho, serves to represent the outlook and opinions toward Christianity current in Justin's day, when the historical Jesus was beginning to make inroads into the thought of the time (around 150 C.E.). In chapter 88, Justin puts these words into Trypho's mouth: "For you utter many blasphemies, in that you seek to persuade us that this crucified man ought to be worshiped." Such an attitude in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, whether among Jews or Jewish-Christians, was not likely to have differed from that of the 1st century, and thus the entire picture of Christianity (up to this time) beginning with a response to a human Jesus by great numbers of Jews, elevating him to the status of a pre-existent divinity with all of God's titles, must be dismissed.
Paul's Christ, like Wisdom and the Logos, is God's channel in his dealings with the world. It is not a person yet dwell within every living creature.
Paul has an expression to convey this idea. In the letters of Paul and those who later wrote in his name, we find the phrase "in Christ Jesus" or "through Christ Jesus" over a hundred times. With Wisdom and the Logos in mind, we can see just what this phrase means.
Here Paul is using the idea of "in Christ" to represent a channel of contact with God; Christ is the means by which Christians are "alive" to God.
Answer for yourself: Now that we have seen that Paul's Christ is nothing new then were what Christianity considers pagans alive unto God through their "Logos" and their "Wisdom" and their "Sophia" that provided the foundation for Paul's later "Christ"? If you read Plato and Philo you have a hard time putting these people in "hell" for their understanding and love of God permeate every page of their writings.
This intermediary channel is a Spiritual force that has been present since time began; past, present, and future. This Spiritual force has no reference to a recent historical event or person; it is only a "Divine Concept"!
At the opening of 1 Corinthians, Paul says that the congregation at Corinth is:
1 Cor 1:2 2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: (KJV)
Christ is the medium which links the believers of that city with God himself.
Romans 8:39:
Rom 8:39 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (KJV)
Here Christ is the spiritual force which embodies and conveys God's love. Like the Logos, though in a more personal sense, the intermediary Christ allows humanity to reach God and to receive benefits from him. It is often said that the idea of the Logos pervades Paul, but the word itself is missing. Paul, in his writings, uses other words to express the "Logos" such as "Christ" and "Wisdom of God":
The above passages not only equate "the Christ" with "Wisdom" but again we find Paul referring to the pre-existence of both "the Christ" and "Wisdom of God."
Titus 3:4-6 tells us:
Titus 3:4-6 4 But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, 5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; 6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; (KJV)
Normally we have been taught that "Jesus Christ" or "Christ Jesus" is a human being in the New Testament and like we have seen in the Gospels "the Christ" is depicted as such but the earliest epistles teach "the Christ" and "Christ Jesus" (Joshua-Jesus) as a spiritual bridge between God and the physical creation. Let us remember that in Hebrew there is such a thing as "parallelism" and the the Bible is full of antithetical and synonymous parallelism. The above passage is rather simply if you understand that Hebrew thought often repeats itself over and over again by saying the ideas either twice or the opposite twice. Above we have a perfect case of synonymous parallelism where the same idea is repeated twice. The above verse is now to be understood correctly. God is the ONLY SAVIOR thru the medium of the Holy Ghost which is God's agent of salvation to the world. We have already seen that another name for the "Wisdom of God" is the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. Likewise we have seen Paul's "Christ" is another term for the "Wisdom of God" as well. God is the ONLY SAVIOR and God brings salvation to mankind through the agency of His Wisdom and the Christ. We will see that these are expressions of the feminine and masculine attributes of God in His saving grace. God come to mankind through His Wisdom (the Sophia) and His Christ (the Son). These again are allegorical concepts ONLY and were understood as such by the Ancients and the believers of the first century. Only later do we find an aberration of these earliest Divine Truths as these allegories take upon themselves human flesh through the later Gospels. The saving acts which have occurred in the present time are not the events of Jesus' death and resurrection. They are God's granting of the rite of baptism (being born again) and the bestowing of the Spirit (Judaism teaches this as receiving the soul that comes down from Heaven). The Joshua-Jesus, if you read the article, is again the allegory by which this channel along which this Spirit has flowed from God to the world. This allegory will take upon itself human flesh when proto-Catholics like Irenaeus refutes the earliest accounts of "the Christ" in Marcion's Pauline New Testament and out comes Rome's "golden calf" which is our current New Testaments today!
Christ, then, operates entirely on a spiritual level. He is a communicating and sacramental power now present in the world, impregnating the hearts and minds of believers. These are highly mystical ideas, and there is no justification for scholarship's frequent attempt to see the Pauline phrase "in or through Christ" as a cryptic summary of Jesus' life on earth. (Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle, 1999, p. 87-94).
Paul, or a pro-Pauline writer tell us in the Book of Colossians:
Col 1:26 26 Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: (KJV)
The earliest Christians after Pentecost understood that God's Son (Logos-Christ-Wisdom-Sophia) as a Spiritual entity was NOW in their day now being revealed to the world. For them God's Son (Christ-Logos-Wisdom-Sophia) has been "sent" into the world.
Acts 2:1-4 1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (KJV)
We have seen in earlier articles that the name of the "Holy Spirit" was also understood to be terms used for God's Wisdom (Sophia-Logos) as well as "the Christ." Thus in the earliest Pauline passages the early Church understood that God has sent His "Christ" to them and God through His Christ tabernacles within them in a new way.
Early Christians saw the spiritual Christ as having arrived in a real way, active and speaking through themselves. When Paul and other writers speak of the "Spirit" sent from God, they are usually referring to the traditional idea of the Holy Spirit, the power and presence of God acting within inspired teachers and apostles. Yet on occasion we see a more explicit identification of this Spirit with Christ himself (as in Philippians 1:19), so that Christ becomes a spirit force in his own right.
Phil 1:19 19 For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, (KJV)
Gal 4:6 6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. (KJV)
1 John 5:20 reads: "We know that the Son of God has come (literally, "is come"- in the present tense) and given us understanding to know him who is real." The Son is working among Christians at the present time, imparting knowledge of God.
Eph 2:17 17 And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. (KJV)
In the same way, we can understand the "coming" in Ephesians 2:17: "And coming, he (the Christ) announced the good news . . ."
Answer for yourself: What was the content of that news as taught by "the Christ" that the writer of the Book of Ephesians mentions?
"peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, for through him we both alike have access in one spirit to the Father." [NEB/my trans.] (Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle, 1999, p. 87-94).
It is very important that you notice that instead of taking the opportunity to refer to some of Jesus' earthly teachings, the writer of the epistles of Ephesians quotes ONLY from Old Testament Scripture: Isaiah 57:19, which speaks of an end-time reconciliation between peoples. Even the preliminary words about preaching good news are based on Isaiah 52:7. This is the Christ who has "come" in the spirit and speaks to the world - a "speaking" found in the Hebrew Scripture ...in the Old Testament Scriptures. The final phrase of the quote identifies him as a spiritual channel to the Father. The writer of the epistle of Ephesians does not give us "one" teaching of the Jesus of the Gospels; not one!!!
This fact above has led to an important insight into how the early Christians viewed Christ. Not only is the Son revealed in scripture, the Son speaks from scripture. Certain passages in the sacred writings and Hebrew Scriptures were regarded as the voice of the Son, speaking directly to the world.
This is most evident in the epistle to the Hebrews. It begins with the statement:
Heb 1:2 2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Having begun the book of Hebrew by stating that God's Son is not "speaking" then where do we find this message of the Son as spoken of by the writer of the Book of Hebrews? NOWHERE!
In the absence of any teaching of the Son of God in the epistle of Hebrews then this "speaking of the Son" would seem to be something other than the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, for not a single Gospel saying is offered through 13 chapters, not even a reference to the fact that Jesus had taught in an earthly ministry. Instead, when "quoting" the voice of the Son to make his arguments, the author draws on passages from the Hebrew Scripture that are identified as the Son's own words.
When seeking to illustrate (2:12) that the Son considers believers to be his brothers, he offers Psalm 22:22, "I will proclaim thy name to my brothers." More than one commentator has sought to explain why the writer would not have drawn on such sayings as are found in the Gospels, for example in Mark 3:35: "Whoever does the will of God is my brother."Hugh Montefiore (Hebrews, p. 63) suggests that this practice of putting scriptural texts into Jesus' mouth was "the tradition of the early church." That is an understatement of unbelievable proportions. What we have seen and continue to see is that in the complete lack of any historical reference to the Jesus of Nazareth outside of this "one" book the New Testament the early church and writers of the New Testament were left with no recourse owing to the fact that no historical record existed of the human Jesus and any supposed teachings. They were left with pure invention and purposeful misquotation, mistranslation, and misuse of the existing Hebrew Scriptures to which they, as Montefiore stated, put into Jesus' mouth as they created a human "Christ" and put flesh upon him.
The scriptural 'sayings" are prefaced by a "he says" - in the present tense -showing that in the writer's mind, the Son is an entity who is known and communicates now and today, through the sacred writings, not through any past preaching career on earth.
Lacking any historical career for this historical Christ the early writers and forgers of the New Testament had to create one to which they did when they refuted Marcion's First New Testament and his Spiritual Christ.
Heb 10:5 5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: (KJV)
Unbelievable alterations of the Hebrew Scriptures were made in order to create a human "Christ". Above we are seeing a quote taken from the Hebrew Scriptures and presented by this writer of the Book of Hebrews that would lead us to believe that Jesus, coming from God, was given a human body long prepared for him in the mind of God. But the actual Hebrew Scriptures says something entirely different:
Psalms 40:6-8 says as taken from the Hebrew Bible:
"You, O Lord my God, have done many things; the wonders You have devised for us cannot be set out before You; I would rehearse the tale of them, but they are more than can be told. You gave me to understand that you do not desire sacrifice and meal offering; You do not ask for burnt offering and sin offering. Then I said, "See, I will bring a scroll recounting what befell me". (JPS)
The Soncino version says in Psalm 40:6-8
"Many things hast Thou done, O Lord my God, Even Thy wondrous works, and Thy thoughts toward us; There is none to be compared unto Thee! If I would declare and speak of them, They are more than can be told. Sacrifice and meal-offering Thou hast no delight in; Mine ears hast Thou opened; Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required. Then said I: 'Lo, I am come With the roll of a book which is prescribed me"
As we have seen God did not "prepare a body" as the writer of the Book of Hebrew attest but rather God opened the ears of his servant in order that he could understand the Torah and God's message to mankind. This same message God was later to send into the hearts of His children through His Christ. This is but one example of hundreds to show the reader the early literary creationism by the early writers of the Jesus myth.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews views scripture as presenting a picture of spiritual world realities, where the Son operates and speaks. This is the meaning of the epistle's opening statement, for God in this final age speaks to the world not through the teachings of an earthly Jesus but through a new reading of scripture, in which the voice of the Son is to be heard.
As late as the end of the century, the same phenomenon can be detected in the epistle 1 Clement. In chapter 22 'Clement' says:
"All these promises (by God) find their confirmation when we believe in Christ, for it is he himself who summons us through the Holy Spirit, with the words: 'Come, children, listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.'"
Clement regards this quote from Psalm 34 as a personal summons from Christ, as though Christ himself is telling Christian readers that he will teach them the fear of the Lord. When he earlier (ch. 16) describes Christ's sufferings, he quotes a passage from Psalm 22, again presenting it as the voice of Christ himself, telling of his experiences of suffering and rejection through the words of scripture.
These early writers provide us with an insight into the fundamental nature of early Christian thought.