Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Moses, Jesus: god men

It must be borne in mind that if Jesus was made into a "God-man," whatever happened in the process of deification later on, at the time of the early church, when these notions were coming to the surface, there also existed similar ideas about Moses as "half-God, half-man" (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:4). Philo (Moses 1: 6.27) already earlier informs us that people could not determine whether Moses was really human or divine or a mixture of both. It would only be gratuitous to attempt to explain away the midrash by delimiting it to metaphor or hyperbole while taking Christian expressions literally.

The reader would be rewarded, however, by a study of the Moses of Memra Marqah, a major Samaritan theological tract. Rabbinic literature preserved the tradition that Moses did not die but is present in heaven where he ministers before God (Babylonian Sotah 13b; Sifrei Deuteronomy 357; and as a heavenly Intercessor Paractete, in the older collection, Assumption of Mows, 12:6).

If we understand the rabbinic terms used of Moses' celestial activity, mesammes and mesaret 'to minister,' as priestly ministrations as intermediary we have a synonymous idea with the role of the Paraclete. All of these ideas were Jewish, known and legitimate in their day within Judaism, and were applied to Jesus. The agonizing problem of the first century was not whether these ideas were Jewish. but whether to apply them to Jesus.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.976.5851&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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