Philo's Jesus refers to an argument put forward by mythicists and originally due to Dr R.
Carrier that holds that there was a Jewish celestial figure of worship called Jesus who
pre-dated the life of Jesus as understood by historicists.
If true, that would be a powerful argument.
But is it true?
The argument comes from two texts: the old Testament minor prophet Zachariah and Philo
of Alexandria's book “On the Confusion of Tongues”.
The claimed connection between them is that they both contain a similar line.
That line being “Here is the man whose name is East”.
Both Philo and the Septuagint used the same Greek word ανατολή But this word is
translated as Branch in the Old Testement and as East in Philo.
It can also be translated as bud, sunrise or rising.
This is the passage from Philo:
(60)…....For there is a twofold kind of dawning in the soul, the one of a better sort,
the other of a worse.
That is the better sort, when the light of the virtues shines forth like the beams of
the sun; and that is the worse kind, when they are overshadowed, and the vices show
forth.
(61) Now, the following is an example of the former kind: "And God planted a paradise in
Eden, toward the East," not of terrestrial but of celestial plants, which the planter
caused to spring up from the incorporeal light which exists around him, in such a way as
to be for ever inextinguishable. (62) I have also heard of one of the companions of Moses
having uttered such a speech as this: "Behold, a man whose name is the East!"
A very novel appellation indeed, if you consider it as spoken of a man who is compounded of
body and soul; but if you look upon it as applied to that incorporeal being who in no
respect differs from the divine image, you will then agree that the name of the east
has been given to him with great felicity. (63) For the Father of the universe has caused
him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn;
and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father, has formed such and such species,
looking to his archetypal patterns.
And this is the passage from Zacharia 6:
9 And the word of the Lord came to me: 10 “Take from the exiles Heldai, Tobi′jah,
and Jedai′ah, who have arrived from Babylon; and go the same day to the house of Josi′ah,
the son of Zephani′ah.
11 Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown,and set it upon the head of Joshua,
the son of Jehoz′adak, the high priest; 12 and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of
hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall grow up in his place,
and he shall build the temple of the Lord.
13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord, and shall bear royal honor, and
shall sit and rule upon his throne.
And there shall be a priest by his throne, and peaceful understanding shall be between
them both.”’
14 And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord as a reminder to Heldai, Tobi′jah,
Jedai′ah, and Josi′ah the son of Zephani′ah.
15 “And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord;
and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.
And this shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.”
The translations of the Greek word ανατολή do differ in these two passages with Philo
given as East and Zacheria given as Branch but the originals in Philo, who wrote in greek,
and the Septuagint, which is the greek version of the old Testament that Philo favoured,
use the same word.
There is a similar linguistic issue of the names Jesus and Joshua.
They were the same name in Aramaic.
Joshua was translated into Greek as Ἰησοῦ Then into Latin as Iesus and finally into
English as Jesus.
But Zechariah in the Greek Septuagint and the original Greek New Testament use the same
word Ἰησοῦ.
So the Philo's Jesus argument holds that these two passages are talking about the same person.
That person is called both Ἰησοῦ and ανατολή, and has various other Jesus
like attributes such as is the firstborn son of God, from Philo, and will build a temple
to the Lord, bear royal honour, sit and rule upon his throne etc. from Zachariah.
Philo died around 50 A.D., and “on the confusion of tongues” probably dates from somewhere
towards the end of the first half of the first century A.D.
The book of Zechariah dates itself to 520 - 518 BC during the reign of Darius, shortly
after the Babylonian exlie and before the the building of the second Temple which according
to Ezra was in 516BC.
So if this is all true, we have a reference to somebody who looks very like a celestial
Jesus over 500 years before his earthly appearance.
So what's the problem?
Well, there are many serious problems.
To start with, Is Philo really quoting from Zachariah?
The link between the two passages is not something mythicists have come up with.
It's long been debated by scholars and there are problems.
Zechariah doesn't make many quotes from the prophets and when he does in other cases he
always says he's quoting from the profits.
Furthermore, his preferred source for the Tanach or old Testament was the greek Septuagint
and his wording is similar but not the same as that in Septuagint.
Also he tells us what his source was and it wasn't Zechariah.
He sais “I have also heard of one of the companions of Moses having uttered such a
speech as this:” I'm not sure who he means by companion of Moses.
This seems to be a person who was speaking contemporary with Philo so possibly some of
the Jew.
Comment below if you know.
The wording of the two passages is however pretty similar.
This leads me to suspect that either Philo got it indirectly from Zechariah via a third
party or they both got the idea from a common source, and if either are the case, the connection
with Jesus is tenuous, as we'll see.
If, mindful these objections, it is accepted that Philo is quoting Zechariah, there is
the further problem that Zechariah does not seem to be equating Joshua, the son of Jehoz′adak
with the one called ανατολή or Branch.
Zachariah 6 says: And the word of the Lord came to me...... 11 “Take from them silver
and gold, and make a crown,and set it upon the head of Joshua, the son of Jehoz′adak,
the high priest; 12 and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man
whose name is the Branch: for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple
of the Lord.'
Is immediately doubtful that Mr Branch and Joseph are the same person because Zechariah
is being commanded to tell Joseph to behold the man whose name is Branch and it seems
unlikely that Zechariah was commanded to tell Joseph to behold himself.
The two are also mentioned in Zechariah 3:
3 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and
Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.
2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!
The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!
Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?”
3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. 4 And the angel
said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.”
And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe
you with rich apparel.”
5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.”
So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments; and the angel of
the Lord was standing by.
6 And the angel of the Lord enjoined Joshua, 7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: If you will
walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my
courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here.
8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they
are men of good omen: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. 9 For behold, upon
the stone which I have set before Joshua, upon a single stone with seven facets, I will
engrave its inscription, says the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this
land in a single day.
10 In that day, says the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor under
his vine and under his fig tree.”
So the angel of the lord says to Joshua and his friends "behold, I will bring my servant
the Branch”.
In other words watch and I'll bring Mr Branch.
Again suggesting that Joshua is not Mr Branch.
Most commentators on Zechariah are of course either Christian or Jewish and both groups
agree that this reference to the branch is a prophecy about the Messiah.
Christians think it refers to the Messiah of the new Testament whereas Jews consider
it refers to the to the awaited Messiah.
No one seems to conflate the Branch with Joshua.
To my mind at least these objections add up to a likelihood that Philo was not referring
to a heavenly character called Jesus.
And that seriously undermines the argument, particulary as without the name Jesus, the
argument's powerful soundbyte is lost.
But even if the branch and Joshua are not the same, the words still appear close together,
which seems rather a coincidence.
And this isn't the only coincidence relevant to the argument.
Paul gives us the earliest picture we have of Jesus and there are many parallels between
Paul's Jesus and Zachariah on the one hand and Paul's Jesus and Philo's logos on the
other.
The very word logos being being applied to Jesus later in the gospel of John.
For example Zechariah's branch is the first born son of God, high priest, and Anatoly
can be interpreted as Pising, Philo's logos was given authority over the Earth by God,
was the image of God was the agent of god who made the earth.
The argument goes that these parallels are so numerous that it is very unlikely that
they arose by chance and therefore they must reflect an earlier prehistoric Jesus figure.
I would agree that these parallels are too numerous to be easily explicable by random
chance, but the prehistoric mythical Jesus figure is not the only explanation.
A more obvious one in the case of Zechariah is that early Christians consider Zechariah
to be prophecy about Jesus and therefore its hardly surprisingly that the figure of Jesus
evolved to accord with him.
In the case of Philo, the parallels between him and Paul have received considerable scholarly
attention.
Philo and Paul both believe that God is transcendent whereas man is trapped in his body on earth.
Their solution to the problems this causes were similar with Christ being the key in
Paul and the Logos being the key Philo.
Philo's logos Paul's christ appear to be timeless.
Both Paul and Philo seem to see salvation in similar terms as release of the spirit
from the bondage of flesh and the world.
Both Philo and Paul were strongly Dualist.
They were both Hellenised diaspora Jews wrestling with the same theological problems from the
same texts.
They were contemporary with Philo being about 20 years older but we have no evidence that
they ever met.
That all being the case, multiple parallels between the two come as no surprise and do
not require us to invoke the idea of a pre-first century figure of worship that they were both
aware of to explain these commonalities.
So what is Philo talking about?
He's talking about two kinds of dawnings of the soul.
One good and one bad.
With the good one the light of virtue shines forth like the beams of the sun and in the
bad kind the sunlight is overshadowed and vices show.
He gives an example of the good kind.
God planted a paradise in Eden towards the East, of a celestial kind that came from incorporeal
light.
Philo also heard companions of Moses refer to a man called East, which he found rather
an odd name if given to a man but to makes perfect sense for something incorporeal.
So who is this incorporeal man connected with the incorporeal Garden of Eden?
Not that difficult is it?
He's no Jesus, he's an Adam, who he associates with the Logos.
So now let's consider what probably happened here.
One possibility, and although I personally don't favour it, it is a possibility, is that
there was a pre-first century celestial being called Jesus with the properties identified
above.
Paul worshiped him and Philo at least knew of him.
Then he developed the fictional earthly narrative that we know today.
All trace of the earlier belief was expunged from the record by the mediaeval Christian
church but they missed these traces in Zachariah and Philo.
The other possibility is that this pre-first century celestial Jesus figure is a really
big deal to mythicists.
Such a figure coupled with the silence of Paul is going to convince a lot of people
they're right.
And they have searched for him as feverishly as the mediaeval church may have searched
for heresy, only they had the internet.
As so often happens they searched so hard they found what they were looking for but
if you strip away over-eager mythicist spin, what you find is nothing more than you would
expect by random chance when trawling through extensive ancient sources for that elusive
nugget.
This gives an alternative explanation for the coincidence that the Branch and Joshua
appear close together in Zachariah, even if they're not referring to the same person.
Joshua was a common name in this is indeed a coincidence but not unexpected given the
volume of text being examined for parallels.
In other words the argument holds that the proximity of the words was caused by the prehistoric
mythical Jesus belief.
The counter is that the argument is caused by the proximity of the words!
So does the argument favoured historicity or mysticism?
Will the mythicist interpretation is certainly possible and strongly favours mysticism, where
is the historicist interpretation, though more likely seems pretty neutral.
However, there is more.
The mythicists have spent thousands of hours of diligent and motivated effort to find this
early celestial Jesus.
If this is the best they've come up with we can be pretty damn sure there isn't anything
better in the record.