For Bach

Achilles achillesz@usa.net
Sun, 21 Feb 1999 06:39:54 -0500 (00919618794, 11381215237138@unifour.com) 

On 21 Feb 99, at 4:42, eric/cindy bach wrote:


> At 04:49 AM 2/21/99 -0500, Achilles wrote:

> >You asked before where Paul could have found Christ in the Tanach. This

> article 

> >fills in part of it, I think;

> >

> >http://www.tzaddikim.org/gnosis~1.html

> >/Achilles     achillesz@usa.net

> 

> BACH

> Not for me, it didn't, but thanks anyway, I guess.  How anyone can

> possibly interpret that Numbers 19 has anything remotely to do with Jesus,

> I cannot fully understand. Surely this can't be what Jesus was supposedly talking

> about in John 5:46, can it?  Anyway, how can anyone think that Moses

> actually wrote the first 5 books of the OT when there is a description of

> his death contained in them? How can an author write a history of his own

> death?   


Achilles
Just so I am not misunderstood, I don't believe Moses wrote the Torah, or that 
Jesus even existed, except as a body of folklore that became historicized in 
the second and third centuries. And I am not saying that whoever wrote Numbers 
had any such interpretation in mind. 

But bearing in mind that the early Christians seem to have been almost 
exclusively Hellenic Jews, and given the tendency amongst that group towards 
allegorical interpretations and the use of oral Torah, given further all the 
evidence of early christianity being a sectarian, mystical manifestation of 
judaism, it is not, IMOP, all that extraordinary a notion that, for instance, 
the author of John was in fact referring to Numbers 19 (and other parts of the 
written and oral Torah) in 5:45-47. 

According to the oral Torah there have been 9 red heifers in history, and the 
tenth to mark the coming of the Messiah. For a mystically inclined person, 
disposed to searching the text for hidden meanings and the use of gematria and 
so forth, it would not be that huge a leap to decide that the 10th heifer would 
not just mark the Messiah, but in fact would be the Messiah. Just as the same 
sort of mind might yank a line out of psalms, contemplate it for hours, days, 
weeks, and suddenly have a flash of insight and "realize" that the Messiah was 
crucified. 


/Achilles     achillesz@usa.net

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Random thought for the moment:

If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn
and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who
turns back the soonest is the most progressive man.
          -- C.S. Lewis