ISIDRO JUAN PALACIOS - MADRID (España)
"Who do you say that am? ", did he ask to their apostles. After 2000 years the enigma continues intact and the message has not lost its validity.
Are we before the image of an apocalyptic prophet and revolutionary deified by their partisans after their tragic death?
Does it present their life the unequivocal signs of identity of the "Son of the Man" Jew?
Or are we in front of a Teacher of wisdom and an initiate one that it indicated us the means of reaching the immortality?
In several evangelical passages Jesus is identified itself as «the Man's Son» (Lc. 9; Mt. 8). this denomination already appears in the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament (A.T.) associated to the Messiah. Mainly, it was applied the correspondent of God that played the «Final of the times» and the coming of an Age of Gold: «And I saw one similar to the Man's Son that comes on the clouds of the sky» (Daniel, 7).
This celestial image corresponded a deified superman that, when entering in the history, it would rehabilitate to the oppressed ones, it would demolish to the powerful ones and it would establish a Kingdom exactly. In consequence, it was expected from this figure a revolutionary action regarding the established order, although the term also designated to a type of characteristic immortal of this religious culture.
Given the strict Jewish monotheism, people that had tried to embody this archetype deities were not considered. Nevertheless, in spite of their human nature, they had a superior range to that of the pagan semidioses. Contrary to these that were mortal, it was beings to who God had immortalized in life and transported directly to the Sky, like he/she made with the prophets Enoch and Elías.
In the apocalyptic tradition of the Bible that you/they represent books like that of Daniel or that of Isaías in the A.T., the Messiah's expectation and of the «Son of the Man» it was basically the same one. Before consenting to the final glory, this «Correspondent» it should be mocked, pursued by the powerful and defamed. Their image acquired a dramatic aspect then, linked to the signs that distinguished its terrestrial mission and that they identified it with «the servant that suffers».
He appears this way in the canonical Gospels, in which it is affirmed that the «Son of the Man» it would be reproven by the old men, the priests and the scribes, before to die and to resuscitate. However, it is attractive that these texts excluded the subversive aspect that had this archetype in the political thing and in the social thing when mentioning the writings of the A.T. like test that Jesus was the announced Messiah (Lc. 1, 68-79; 19, 11; and Mt. 1, 21).
In the apocalyptic tradition that sustained the esenismo, some groups assimilated this messianic image of the «Son of the Man» to the return of the founder of their community, the «Teacher of the Truth» that would face to the «Iniquitous Priest» in the final battle between the Luz and the Darkness.
In case, like some authors think, the original Christianity has an important one it influences esenia, he is probable that said model it served from base to the later doctrine of the «Come Segunda of Christ» that in the san Apocalypse Juan arises as a victorious celestial commander-«faithful and truthful»-, in the context of a similar final battle to the one that you/they announced the texts esenios.
Without a doubt, the fact that Jesus refers to itself as the «Son of the Man» it is a coherent feature with his condition of apocalyptic prophet. In this sense, that makes it is to express that their public ministry also implied the execution of this promise from Yavhé to the big prophets from Israel.
In any event, the concept refers to somebody that reached a superhuman dimension and it was closely related with other archetypal figures, as those of the «New Adam» and the «New Man» that in fact designate a liberated human being of the death. In the biblical myth this is the disastrous consequence of the transgression made by the original couple in the Eden when eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Science. Of the first Adam it had arisen the mortal humanity, but the second (Christ) it would have been able to liberate us of that condemnation.
More problematic it is their consideration like «Son of God», although neither this concept was new in the Judaism. For example, we find it in the Book of Job referred to Satan, of who we are said that he was «among the children of God» that were presented before Yavhé. We also see it in the famous passage in which refers that some «children of God» they fell in love with the women and they united to them to procreate a race of heroes and antediluvian giants (Genesis, 6).
According to the Talmud, some of them, as Og, were able to survive the Flood and in the apocryphal Book of Enoch these give the secrets of the sciences, the techniques, the arts and the magic to the women. Finally, Jewish helenizantes of the century I D.C., as Reef of Alexandria, they would identify to these promiscuous ones «children of God» with the demons, doctrine that you would also assume the first Christian authors.
Such an idea was still defended in the centuries II and III d.C by thinkers like Origins and Lactancio for who Jesus and Satan were «the siblings rivals» that symbolized the dialectical of the world, following the pattern dualist of Osiris and Seth in the old Egypt or of Ormuz and Arimán in the religion Persian, although this doctrine would be condemned as erroneous by the Church.
Anyway, although we are not before a strange concept to the Jewish culture, in their Christian version-assimilated to the «Only-begotten» or «First-born» of the Father through the union between God and a human virgin-, it was scandalous and I blaspheme for the official cult of their time. In the passage in which Pedro recognizes him as such, we have two versions of Jesus' answer.
So much in Marcos-considered the oldest canonical Gospel-like in Lucas-that the experts believe next than Mateo to the lost original source, supposedly edited in Aramaic-, him same it assumes this revealed identity, but he/she requests to their pupils that maintain it secretly. Among the Christian of the century II D.C., many sustained that this divine filiation should only understand each other in a spiritual sense.
This way, for example, for the currents of the century II D.C. that they rejected the idea that he had been born of a virgin mother, as the docetismo and the ebionismo, Jesus would only have been «Son of God» for adoption.From a historical perspective, therefore, it can be thought that, probably, the «son of God» Jew derived in the «First-born» and in the «Only-begotten» later, among the communities Christian more helenizantes and familiarized with the pagan myths, in which the union between a god and a human was a very family image.
Plus still: if the «First-born» it could be adopted by Lactancio in their book Divinae institutionis like a form of affirming their dynastic genuineness in front of Satan-illegitimate applicant-, the concept of «Only-begotten» it should arise like a later formula that rejected the doctrine dualist of those «siblings rivals», implicit in the primogeniture idea.
In definitive, although anything prevents that the divine filiation was the own Jesus' original conviction or of its pupils, it is very unlikely that this attribution supposed the belief in the effective union of God with a woman. Fellow man devises he didn't have space in the Judaism, not even in his attenuated version, as miraculous procreation without sex, inspired by one of the versions of the myth of Osiris, tradition of where he surely took it the later Christianity.
The concept that makes of Jesus a «adoptive son» of God it doesn't seem only the most appropriate to the original Jewish context, but also the most coherent with the available sources, since Jesus exhorts to «to be made as him», becoming «in children of your Father that is in the Skies» (Mt. 5, 45) and he affirms that the pacifiers «they will be children of God» (Mt. 5, 9).
From this point of view, the term would designate a superior grade of spiritual excellence similar to that of the «Son of the Man», for which an individual could acquire-always for grace of God-the immortality, something that is also suggested in the episode in which Jesus grants three apostles the imperium of «not to like the death» until his «Come Segunda».
Therefore, we would not be necessarily before the recognition of their person's filiation divine sole right, but before the last objective of an initiation that, in their culmination, it implied the will of becoming a «son of God».
Beyond the institution eucarística, the last dinner speaks to us of the mystic coalition.
In the last dinner that belongs together with the pattern of ritual banquet that you practiced the esenios, Jesus he/she also affirms their divine identity when expressing the aspiration that their pupils are one, «as me and the Father we are one».
Later on, this evangelical episode contributed the doctrinal base of the trinitarian mystery and of the sacrament eucarístico, for the one which, when ingesting Christ's body symbolically, the expressed believer its own coalition will with the divinity, manifested in Jesuscristo.
However, without disqualifying this theological interpretation and ceremonial-indispensable to found a cult centered in their person-, it is necessary to highlight the deep mystic meaning of their words. «To be one with God» it can be considered the goal common of all Gnosis. We are not only before the same objective that looked for the initiate one in the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris and Isis or in the cults of the salvation of the helenística that followed their model-Miter, Atis, Dionisos, Cibeles, Orfeo, etc-, but also before the oriental mystic's goal.
Atonement and sacrifice
Of the expiatory sacrifice to the eternal life
The idea that the «Son of the Man» - as «servant that suffers» - it would expiate the sins of Israel, it is also a concept that goes back to the Jewish apocalypses. But it doesn't fit doubt that, with the Christianity, he acquires a central theological meaning. In the san Gospel Juan this aspect of Jesus' mission highlights in a special way.
Not only because it distinguishes him as the «Lamb of God», but because it even locates the episode of the crucifixion in the same moment in which the paschal lambs were sacrificed in the Temple, with that which highlights even more east symbolism.
Jesus is not only executed the same day like victim propitiatory emblemática-reason why in the san Apocalypse Juan is denominated «the lamb beheaded from the foundation of the world»-, but rather he takes the responsibility from his death to the same priests (etimológicamente, «those that sacrifice») that officiated this rite. It is not, therefore, casual that the Christianity abolished the sacrifices.
He/she is the own Jesus who, apart from transforming them into inviables when occupying the place of the paschal lamb in the altar, it had condemned them in life, as they picked up several sources, among which it highlights san Clemente from Alexandria who attributes Pedro the opposition to the same ones, and the Gospel ebionita mentioned by san Epifanio, in which Jesus affirms: «I have come to abolish the sacrifices».
And it was this way. Since he is Christ who assumes the destination of the lamb voluntarily, it is not possible to celebrate any bloody liturgy, outside of the symbolism eucarístico that evokes that tremendous act for which the divinity liberates the animals-propitiatory victims that, at least from Abraham, they had substituted the human beings in the altar-, reverting the situation dramatically when becoming to yes own in the expiatory victim.
From this perspective, it is possible to understand the mentioned exclusion in the canonical Gospels from the Jewish references to the engaged Messiah's political character as a «Son of the Man» that would arrive on the clouds. Jesus was never identified with that messianic king in his aspect of victorious warrior, but only with his human destination, as «servant that suffers» and I eat «Lamb of God».
Plus still, he always insisted in this spiritual character, noticing against any temptation of associating this figure to the earthly power: «It must be this way among you (to be imposed the subordinate or the weakest), but rather the one that wants to end up being big, will be your servant, and who wants to be the first one it will be the last one» (Mc. 10, 42-44).
Jesus washes the feet to his pupils
("The Man's Son came to serve, not to be served")
From this perspective, it seems evident that Jesus didn't only proclaim the interiorizar necessity the spirit of the Law, denouncing the literal sacralización of his enunciated as a fraud characteristic of scribes, saduceos and pharisee, but rather he also made the characteristic with the Messiah's archetypes, the «Son of the Man» and the «Son of God», projecting them to a new dimension with the startling image of the «Lamb» that Juan, the mystic in the canonical Gospels and the most suspicious picks up of «contamination» Gnostic for the first Christian heresiólogos.
These are not the signs characteristic of the messianic king that the Jews waited-neither neither those of the victorious celestial warrior of the «Come Segunda» that the Christian await-, but the initiate unequivocal signs of identity of a great one.
Jesus embodies successively this archetypes, it assumes them like destination and deep vivencia as he goes he carries out
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