So Why A Virgin?

[lostwanderingsoul]

And it is easy for believers to dismiss atheist claims.

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

Theologian Theodore 'Ted' Weeden in a paper maybe 2004 pointed out 24 parallels between Mark's account of the trial of Jesus and Josephus' account of the trial of Jesus ben Ananus in Wars 6:5. From the net, >here's< Robert Carrier's list of 21 such similarities (20, since 18's a dud), presumably working from Weeden.

I'm sufficiently persuaded by those parallels to date Mark not before 75 CE when Josephus' Wars began to circulate. (Of course, it's possible that an earlier common source served both accounts but I think that less likely.) I also take it to affirm that the author of Mark didn't have (and therefore likely there was not) any other account of the trial, and that, more generally, he worked from templates such as this and the Tanakh.

Mark’s reference to the destruction of the Temple as a supposed prophecy, but transparently as a past event, and its connection to the expected but overly delayed return of the Son of Man, puts Mark sometime in the 70’s. Whether Mark cribbed from Josephus is possible. However Weeden seems to me to be more about opposing Christian beliefs than about understanding what might really have happened or believed in the early days. For instance his spiritual only resurrection thesis totally misses the mark. And speaking of Mark Mark’s empty tomb narrative points to a belief in a physical resurrection, although in a transformed body.

Or, as it appears to say, someone of unknown name who was later remembered as Jesus.
And brings up all the unanswered questions about the role of gnosticism in the earliest church.

Middle Platonist Philo’s influence on parts of the NT is clear, including Paul. Gnosticism often shares concepts and language with Gnosticism. Paul’s third heaven and possibly other references sound like Gnosticism. His distaste for the ’inferior’ physical suggests Gnosticism. Receiving secret knowledge directly from a spiritual source practically screams Gnosticism. Gnostics latched onto Paul’s third heaven vision and elaborated on it in The Vision of Paul the Apostle. Where does the Kenosis Hymn fit in? A Gnostic Christian friend of Paul wrote it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Paul's Jesus is a supernatural being who can appear in visions after his death, and he's the Son and he's Lord, but he's not God. He also has an extremely scanty earthly biography.

In Philo, the Son of God aka the Logos both is and is not God. It/he is the extension of God into the world. From time to time, it is personified in the OT as the Angel of the Lord that speaks and acts with the authority of God. In the Gospels Jesus is definitely distinct from the Father. And there is that pesky Holy Spirit which may or may not have roots in Philo. Reconciling all this with strict monotheism took a few centuries and the end result was still just words nobody understands. Words from Neo-Platonism at that.

I think Paul's worldview (with its gnostic hints) is in very substantial contrast to that of the author of Mark, who sets out to give an account of a 'real' Jesus, including starting him off as a straightforward artisan-class Jew who at his baptism is adopted as son by God in a manner that accords with Jewish tradition.

Or was it in Jewish tradition all along, as in ─

2 Samuel 7:14 I will be his father, and he [David] shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men;

Psalm 2:7 I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.

Psalm 89:26 He shall cry to me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ 27 And I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth.

whence

Mark 1:10: And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove;
11 and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”

Acts 13:33: And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers,
33 this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.’

Or both? (Note for what it's worth that 'salvation' (yĕshuw`ah) in Psalm 89:26 is the same word as in the name Yehoshua ('Joshua', 'Yahweh is salvation') = Yeshua / Jesus.)

The way I see it, Paul is the likely culprit for taking an existing Son of God association, meaning the Messiah, and giving it a Philo inspired supernatural spin. Mark incorporated this but did not really expand on it except to connect it to scriptural passages that the Messiah as Son of God idea came from. That much was in Jewish tradition. A supernatural Son of God was not part of Jewish tradition.

Jesus / Yeshua / Joshua and the other variations was a common name then and in the OT. Here is someone who bothered to count.

 

[blü 2]

Mark’s empty tomb narrative points to a belief in a physical resurrection, although in a transformed body.

It seems clear that Jesus had left the tomb, body and all. Whether it was transformed in any sense other than restored is not so clear. In particular Paul's ideas aren't in the frame.

Paul’s third heaven and possibly other references sound like Gnosticism. His distaste for the ’inferior’ physical suggests Gnosticism. Receiving secret knowledge directly from a spiritual source practically screams Gnosticism.

I've wondered about 1 Corinthians 2:8's 'rulers of this age': οὐδεὶς τῶν ἀρχόντων τοῦ αἰῶνος, where ἄρχων can be correctly translated as 'ruler' but is also the gnostic term for the not necessarily benevolent spiritual beings that rule the earth.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Great 'con!

In Philo, the Son of God aka the Logos both is and is not God. It/he is the extension of God into the world.

I haven't looked at Philo in much depth. But your description reminds me of the Tanakh's ruach (variously spelt), the breath or spirit of Yahweh and I dare say direct forebear of the Holy Ghost.

Reconciling all this with strict monotheism took a few centuries and the end result was still just words nobody understands. Words from Neo-Platonism at that.

Gotta hand it to the theologians, though. Calling the incoherence of the Trinity doctrine 'a mystery' and declaring it 'above reason, not contrary to it', marks a high point in the history of pretty nonsense.

A supernatural Son of God was not part of Jewish tradition.

Indeed. It's those danged Alexandrians, filling their heads with newfangled Greek ideas; Philo even has a Greek name!