6. Many modern Christian Evangelicals, influenced by the interpretations of nineteenth-century biblical scholar John Nelson Darby, base their view of a “secret rapture” of the church before the Second Coming of Christ on this passage in Paul.
7. Although Luke is following a passage in Mark 12:24–25 here as his source, these particular descriptions of the nature of the resurrection he adds to Mark’s narrative, as one can see with a side-by-side comparison.
8. Isaiah 61:1 is the core text where Yahweh “anoints” by the Spirit the one who is to bring “Good News.” Jesus quotes this text in Luke 4:18–21, applying it to himself as the Messiah. The Dead Sea Scrolls also quote Isaiah 61:1 and refer to this figure as the “Anointed one of the Spirit.” See “The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek,” 11Q13 in Vermes, ed., The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, pp. 500–1.
9. The Greek word I have translated here “son-ship” (hiothesios) appears in some English translations as “adoption.” This is misleading since it can imply in English that there is no “natural” relationship between the parent and the child, only a legal one. Paul believes that the select group is truly made up of children of God, begotten by his Spirit, every bit as much as Jesus became a child of God.
10. One of the better studies is by James G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980).
11. Some scholars have argued that Paul is not referring to Jesus’ preexistence here but rather to his choice, as a human being created in the image of God, to “empty” himself and become an obedient servant, providing a model for the glorification process. See Charles Talbert, “The Problem of Pre-Existence in Phil. 2:6-11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 86 (1967): 141–53. The scholarly discussion of the passage is extensive. See Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii.5–11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983).
12. There was ample development of these kinds of speculative cosmological ideas within various forms of mystical Judaism at the time and one can assume Paul would have been aware of these. See Schonfield, “The Christology of Paul,” in Those Incredible Christians, pp. 227–41.
13. See my discussion of Jesus and John the Baptizer and their proclamation of the Kingdom in The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 125–67.
14. See Leviticus 23:9–10.
CHAPTER 6: A MYSTICAL UNION WITH CHRIST
1. Only once in the Hebrew Bible does the idea of believing or trusting in Moses occur, but it is as an agent of God, when the Israelites at the crossing of the Red Sea “believed in Yahweh, and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31).
2. Outside of Paul’s letters (58 times), or letters attributed to Paul (27 times), the phrase “in Christ” occurs only once in the book of Acts, where the reference is to faith in Christ (Acts 24:24), and three times in the letter known as 1 Peter, where Paul’s ideas are directly echoed by the author (1 Peter 3:15; 5:10, 14).
3. The great classic study is Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, translated by William Montgomery (London: A. & C. Black, 1931). Schweitzer successfully argued that one does not need to go to “pagan” Greco-Roman religions to find close parallels to Paul’s mysticism. Paul’s thinking is rooted in Jewish apocalyptic traditions of the late Second Temple period (300 B.C. to A.D. 70).
4. Romans 3:22, 26; Galatians 2:16; 3:22.
5. The most direct reference is 1 Corinthians 9:14: “In the same way the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” One can assume that passage could be connected to Luke 10:17: “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” It is possible, but not certain, that he knows Jesus’ teaching forbidding divorce (1 Corinthians 7:10), but when he says he has something “from the Lord,” it can just as likely mean he is claiming a subsequent revelation from the heavenly Christ. That is surely the case in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, where he relates the scene of the Lord’s Supper. Paul teaches that loving one’s neighbor fulfills the Torah, but since this saying was common among rabbis of his day, not only Jesus, we can’t say he is referring to Jesus (Galatians 5:14; Romans 13:10). The book of Acts quotes Paul as quoting Jesus once: “Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ ” (Acts 20:23). Ironically, this does not appear to be a direct quotation but an allusion, perhaps to Luke 6:38.
6. See Margaret Barker, The Great Angeclass="underline" A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), and Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinical Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
7. The literal term in Hebrew, “messenger-Yahweh,” is usually translated as “the angel of Yahweh,” but this is not the best choice for English since “angel” in English has its own set of connotations quite different from Hebrew. In Hebrew the phrase used, mal’ak Yahweh, means a manifestation of Yahweh and this figure speaks and acts as Yahweh in the first person, appearing and departing, sometimes in a flame of fire (see Genesis 16:10; 18:33; 22:11; Exodus 3:2; Judges 13:20). There are a few passages where these “two Yahwehs” are mentioned in a single verse: “Then Yahweh [below] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh [above] from heaven” (Genesis 19:24).
8. See Schonfield, “The Christology of John,” in Those Incredible Christians, pp. 243–55.
9. See David B. Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology, WUZT 2.47 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1992) for ways that Paul applied texts of the Hebrew Bible about Yahweh directly to Jesus.
10. Josephus, Antiquities 18.117–19.
11. They had to do with ritual purity after contact with such contaminants as blood, a corpse, disease, or bodily discharges (Leviticus 14:8–9; 15:1–33; 19:13). Running water from a lake or stream was preferred though ritual pools or baths called mikveh are commonly found in Jewish homes and public buildings during this period.
12. Community Rule 3.1–10, in Vermes, ed., The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, pp. 100–1.
13. See my discussion in The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 134–37.
14. See Richard E. Demaris, “Corinthian Religion and Baptism for the Dead (1 Corinthians 15:29): Insights from Archaeology and Anthropology,” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 661–82.
15. The author of Acts records one such riverside baptism (Acts 16:13–15).
16. Naked baptism was considered essential and is specified in all of our sources. Presumably, the sexes were segregated even if male attendants officiated, but it is possible that women attended to women. We are not sure how this practice was carried out to ensure modesty. In Judaism to this day men and women who visit the mikveh or ritual bath remove all clothing. When male witnesses are present in the case of women, they stand out of sight. See Jonathan Z. Smith, “Garments of Shame,” in Map Is Not Territory (Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 1–23.
17. Paul never mentions the “laying on of hands” in his letters but the author of the books of Acts seems to know of the practice, tracing it back to Paul (Acts 19:6). It is also mentioned twice in later letters attributed to Paul (1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6). The book of Hebrews, which seems to have some connection to Pauline ideas, mentions “baptisms and the laying on of hands” in conjunction with one another (Hebrews 6:2).