Creating Jesus 18: What Justin reflects
/
I know that many of my readers have concerns about what, if anything, second century texts can tell us about Christian origins. To limit ourselves to texts authored in the first century does not serve any of us well, especially when the ancient mindset was traditionalist and memorial. They worked to pass on in writing the oral and written traditions they had received from others before them. This doesn't mean that these traditions were passed on without development or shifts, but it does mean that we need to mine the second century materials for what they have passed on.
Justin Martyr is a case in point. He is teaching in Rome in the mid-second century. And his work assumes the Antiochean paradigm that we had located in the earlier materials. He knows Jesus as the YHWH Angel and that this Angel embodied as Jesus through the virgin womb. Jesus is the Son, the Angel of YHWH, who speaks from the burning bush, visits with Abraham, wrestles with Jacob, appears to Joshua. He writes, "Therefore, neither Abraham, nor Issac, nor Jacob, nor amy man saw the Father...but only him who, according to his [God's] will, is both God, his son, and Angel, from the fact that he ministers to his purpose. Whom he also has willed to be born through the virgin, and who once became fire for that conversation with Moses in the bush" (Dial. 127,4).
The Angel YHWH embodied the man Jesus, from the time of conception or quickening in the virgin womb.
Justin Martyr is a case in point. He is teaching in Rome in the mid-second century. And his work assumes the Antiochean paradigm that we had located in the earlier materials. He knows Jesus as the YHWH Angel and that this Angel embodied as Jesus through the virgin womb. Jesus is the Son, the Angel of YHWH, who speaks from the burning bush, visits with Abraham, wrestles with Jacob, appears to Joshua. He writes, "Therefore, neither Abraham, nor Issac, nor Jacob, nor amy man saw the Father...but only him who, according to his [God's] will, is both God, his son, and Angel, from the fact that he ministers to his purpose. Whom he also has willed to be born through the virgin, and who once became fire for that conversation with Moses in the bush" (Dial. 127,4).
The Angel YHWH embodied the man Jesus, from the time of conception or quickening in the virgin womb.