The Relationship of The Odes of Solomon to Jesus

The Relationship of The Odes of Solomon to Jesus Discussion Transcript

Shirley Paulson:

Welcome everyone to the October, 2020 Tanho Monday Textual Study. I am your host, Shirley Paulson of Early Christian Texts, and our presenter this evening is Dr. Hal Taussig. In this study, we’ll be talking about the relationship of the Odes of Solomon to Jesus. And of course, this is not to be confused with King Solomon, who preceded Jesus by almost a thousand years, but in fact, these odes are quite closely related to Jesus, and we’re going to find some rather dynamic portraits of Jesus. So, just a gentle reminder, please, that donations supporting the creation of these textual study archives are still greatly appreciated. Five to ten dollars per person, per session is enough to keep us going. And that means like everybody. You can find the donation link and the text we’re studying tonight, and more important information about past and future study sessions, as well as other archived recordings on the Early Christian Texts website by clicking the button on the homepage that says, Tanho Monday Textual Studies [now Bible and Beyond Discussions]. So, Hal, it’s all yours. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve got to tell us.

Hal Taussig:

Thanks very much, Shirley. And let me know when we have problems sound-wise. All right, so I’m aware that a number of you are real, wonderful students of the literature of the Odes of Solomon. And we have already had one whole session on this on our Monday night sessions. I want to focus a little bit on the complexity of Jesus and the Odes of Solomon. So spoken directly, here’s where I am on this, and then I want to us to look at four particular Odes to see what we can make of this. So, “The Odes of Solomon” is simply the wrong name, as far as I’m concerned, for this text. It does not have anything to do directly, as far as I can tell, with the King Solomon, which is what it means to allude to.

And it is a first, second, or maybe third century first, CE document. So the first puzzle we have, and that I’m going to skip is, “why do they call it the Odes of Solomon”? Some of you may know something about that background. I’m not quite as interested in that question. I’m more interested in the problem. And the second major thing to say about these 41 or 42, and we can get back to that issue, in a little bit,  is that they all come from the early first, second or third century as I was saying. And we have, there, a fairly clear picture that Jesus is in them. But as soon as I say that, the first thing for me to say back is, “Jesus isn’t in them.” As we will see, there are clear indications that the writer in at least some of the Odes, is writing about what we think is Jesus.

The language is from that time. But for me, the wonderful dilemma, tonight, is that it never mentions Jesus. And we’re going to look at that in a few minutes. So we have a collection of 41 Odes, which are basically songs or words of Psalms, from the early first, second, or third century. And we have it mainly in the Syriac language, but it’s fairly clear that some of these are referring to Jesus, and maybe some of them are not, but they are all from the same time. I’m going to be proposing some suggestions on how to solve this. And finally, frankly, I want to make steps toward saying, this is one of the most fascinating documents we have of what I would call the larger Christ people phenomenon of the first three centuries. That is, I’m going to say it may be better spiritually, theologically, and literarily if we don’t know that it’s Jesus. And it is.

So that’s one of my proposals on this. What I’d like to do is look at several texts. I’m going to take a text that gets us into the problem of Jesus first. That’s Ode 36. I know some of you have been looking at it. I’m going to read it out loud and I’ll walk us through it and then talk about that. Before I do that, we always start with five minutes that’s meant to make some things clear and some things not clear. Anyone have an important question or protest before we jump into Ode 36?

Mark:

Well, perhaps a comment on the title you mentioned that “Odes of Solomon” might not be the best title for the document. On the other hand, insofar as it also speaks of Jesus, the son of David, the fact that Solomon is the son of David could be suggestive here, as well as the fact that with 42 odes like the 42 generations of the opening chapters of Matthew, where we have 3 sets of 14, representing the name of David, the odes seem to be structured in a very similar way as well. So that it seems not to be an accident that Solomon is the name associated with the document.

Hal Taussig:

That line of thinking is so fascinating and, and lovely for me is that it makes us see that it might be best for it not to have Jesus in it. And one might say Jesus might insinuate himself into the text. I don’t think that’s exactly the way I would say it eventually. But Mark’s numerological approach, in that case, I think is really fun for us to see that yes, someone is messing with us in a wonderfully complicated way. Other questions or thoughts as we jump in? Make sure you know the question or the problem.

Hilary:

My question is to capitalization. There’s one place where it says, is it “Child of Humanity?” And why is humanity capitalized? “Most High,” I get that, capitalizing both most and high, but several other places in this one and in the other verses. I’m just curious why the capitalization?

Hal Taussig:

Oh, great question, Hilary. And the main answer back is that translators make capital letters up. By and large, these texts have no capital letters, no punctuation, and no spaces between the words. So thus, those of us who,  translated in their folks here tonight that have translated directly, a colleague of mine translated text that I gave you. Basically, translators have to fill in for the modern world, the idea of capital letters and punctuation. So this shows how much translation, itself is a modern product. So why the text that I’ve given you all tonight has capital letters is that the translator that I worked with, and I who supervised her, both decided for capital letters. And that was mainly for the reason that capital letters for the modern and post-modern person mean things. And we tried to do them therefore, translation that was meaning things in the way that it might have meant things when it didn’t have capital letters, but the capital letters where the ancients did another way of meaning the way we mean with capital letters.

Hilary:

So for instance, Child of Humanity is probably indicating a specific person of note. And therefore they have a title, and their title is capital C, capital H, because we’re not talking about any old child of humanity, but a person.

Hal Taussig:

Yes. And just to say a little bit more about that particular translation, there’s more mischief afoot. Because most Syriac translators probably would traditionally translate that “Son of Man.” And we went round and round on the translation question about that. There are a number of people who are working on changing “Son of Man” in Hebrew and in Greek as well, to “Child of Humanity.” Actually, Karen King at Harvard started that. And we were following her in that regard.

Okay, so now let’s read a little of Ode 36. And I’m going to walk us into the problem and the fascination a little at a time. Here’s the way it begins. It’s in the first person, the first person singular. So the person who is speaking says:

I rested on the Spirit of the Lord, and she raised me up to the high place and she caused me to stand on my feet in the high place of the Lord before his fullness and splendor, while I was proclaiming in the preparation of his odes.

She gave birth to me before the face of the Lord.

And while I was the Child of Humanity, I was called the Light, the Child of God, because I was glorified among the glorious, and the first among the great ones.

For she made me according to the greatness of the Most High and he renewed me according to his renewal, and anointed me from his fullness.

I’m going to stop there.

I just read two thirds of the ode, and let’s just notice how messy and wonderful this is. First of all, the main thing I would want to say is the use of the word light. “I was called Light. I was called Child of God. I was called the Child of Humanity. She caused me to stand and She gave birth to me because I was glorified among the glorious and first among the great ones, She made me according to the greatness of the most high.”

So this is a story of the birth of who? So I want to say, it sounds to me like Jesus, called the Son of God. It’s called Light, called the Son of Man or the Child of Humanity. All of those are Christ figures of Christ’s time, or Jesus figures of Jesus’ time. So this is a praising of Jesus coming to birth, and basically Jesus was given birth to by the Spirit of the Lord. And she now, she is not identified directly. So this is a she that the spirit of the Lord brings birth of this figure who is the Child of Humanity and the Light and the Child of God. So this could be thought of as another song about Jesus’ birth or Christ’s birth. Now, you notice Jesus’ name or Christ is not in here. So an alternate answer would be that this is another figure, another divine figure that is being praised in very similar terms to what the terms that eventually Jesus was described in. So let me stop here, ask for clarifications, and then I’m going to finish the rest of the ode and we’ll get deeper into the possibilities and the problems.

Joy:

Hal this is Joy. I’d like to say that maybe this is written for me to sing and the “I” is me and it is my divinity in my Christs that I’m going to sing about.

Hal Taussig:

Oh that would be perfect. And you wouldn’t mind being called the Child of God. Would you? Matter of fact, I hope you are.

Joy:

So why can’t we just see this is not about a historical figure or anything that’s happened somewhere else, at another time, but this is a song I can sing about myself.

Hal Taussig:

Mm-hmm. There’s every reason to just push that, Joy. Because in other odes it’s quite clear that the “I” person in that thinks of her or himself as in this kind of divine category, that overlaps with God, Her, or Himself, and with something like Jesus. So in other words, yes. So push that. Don’t even stop thinking that way, Joy. The answer to your question is, the reason that kind of boring people like me want to think historically, is because the text comes from there. I too, think that by and large the function, the the most powerful function of texts like these is only available when someone thinks like you. Other questions? As we’re two-thirds of the way through the first ode. Okay. I’m going to go a little bit longer here. Oh one other thing, I just stopped at verse five.

And there the ‘I’ said that:

“I was anointed from God’s fullness. And I became one of those who are near to God.”

So this would, I think, in common parlance, in our day, we might call this that the “I” is claiming a kind of divinity like Christ or Jesus, or God might have or did, at least literarily. And then the next two verses or the last.

“And my mouth was opened like a cloud of dew, and my heart gushed forth a fountain of justice, and my access was through peace, and I was set up in the spirit of instruction. Hallelujah.”

“Hallelujah” being basically, “praise God”‘ as initially, a Hebrew word.

So here also, in other words, please notice it’s not just the Christ-like words.

It’s also what this figure, this “I” does.

“My mouth was opened like a cloud of dew, and my heart gushed forth a fountain of justice, and my access was through peace, and I set up the instruction, the spirit of instruction.”

All of these are powerful functions for at least really great people or divine people. And again, here, Joy, I would want you to say this also makes you think what you’re thinking because you also gush forth a fountain of justice. Right now we’re through Ode 36, I want to say with this, if you are interested in the Jesus and Christ relationship to this ode, you’ve got some material on your hands. People want to say some other things.

Shirley Paulson:

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about this identity of the Child of Humanity, or Son of Man, or however we want to put that in terms of pre-Jesus literature, as in Ezekiel or other texts. Is there any reason that this is connecting us back that way? Or is this a new way of thinking of this?

Hal Taussig:

Yeah. Okay. Sure. I, myself, am not very much of a messiness when I think about Jesus or Christ. In other words, a lot of people want to just say that Christ or Messiah, which is the same word in Greek and Hebrew, is the way to think about Jesus as a historical or semi-historical figure. And there, I think that if I understand your question on this Shirley, I would want to say, yes, there are a lot of different kinds of meanings being made in the Hebrew scriptures on matters like this. And at the same time, some of that comes together in the first several centuries in a kind of a wanting to make Jesus into the coming Messiah or the coming Christ. Again, that meaning is the same thing in those two different languages. I don’t think, as far as I’m concerned, that the idea (that the people of Israel expected a Messiah) is a very strong idea in most of Israel.

It is an idea by some people of Israel, mostly later and nearer the time of Jesus. But even then, it’s not overwhelming. In other words, if you hear a number of Christians talk in our day, you’ll hear that what everybody was waiting for was the coming of the anointed divine king named the, “Messiah.” I think that the Christ people, or the Jesus people, had as much to do with making that come to a focus in the first three centuries as did people of Israel that were thinking before that. So yes, a bunch of that language is back there from my point of view. No, it is not the primary way that the people of Israel thought in that day. Am I near what you were asking, Shirley?

Shirley Paulson:

Yes, thanks. I wanted to hear your thoughts about that kind of connection. Thank you. Yes.

Hal Taussig:

Okay. Sure. And, and by the way, I hope that there would be people in our group tonight who would argue with me about what I just said. Because that is a primary way that many Christians think the first Christ people or Jesus people thought. And I think I would say sort of, sometimes.

Shirley Paulson:

So Kim was raising her hand.

Hal Taussig:

Yes, please.

Kim:

Who was the person at Harvard that changed it into Child of Humanity from Son of Man? And was that to get away from gender? Was that the reason?

Hal Taussig:

That’s Karen King who actually still, I believe, holds the oldest theological chair in the country. And she’s a professor of New Testament at Harvard, and has been for some time. Yes, for Karen [it was] partly grammar and partly gender. We were very hesitant in the translation of the odes to get on a high horse about gender when we published it in A New New Testament. We frankly knew this would be one of the places that more people got to hear about the Odes of Solomon in the public, than almost anywhere else. And so we did not want to come on strong with it. Although I, myself, think gender is one of the most important things to think through in terms of translation. We wanted to make sure that people got a number of different ways of translating.

But, and what I was wanting to say, is that one of the great things about translating texts that are fairly new, you have to play with gender some, and my position on this is it’s important not to stick with traditional masculine translations when they’re not called for. But when I would be talking to you, I would, if I weren’t putting it in a book — and sometimes when I do put it in a book — some of you know, I’ve been called up on heresy charges because of my gender publications. But I think it’s really important to, for these new texts as measured as possible, especially not to be masculinizing all the time as the Bible translations have for so much, but also to mix it up where we’re not sure. So do we have that question that was being posed?

Shirley Paulson:

Helen, that was you. Can you talk now?

Helen:

Oh I just wanted to say that it was in the Gospel of Mary that Karen King used the [term] Child of Humanity, and I just love it there.

Of course there’s a wonderful host of people working on that. And I include myself in that group that has gotten in trouble and made some breakthroughs in that regard.

Well thank you for that.

Hal Taussig:

Sure, sure.

Speaker 7:

That’s what I was going to say. We appreciate it because, you know, we’ve all gotten in trouble for that but, if we all keep doing it and pushing it and saying it, then pretty soon we won’t be getting in trouble for it anymore.

Hal Taussig:

Yeah. Well, and you know, for the two co-authored Sophia books that I authored early on and that I had church charges brought against me about it. Turns out it worked out just fine. Having the fights, really helped. Okay. So, let’s see. Mark, do you want to say something to everybody?

Mark:

Yeah. Just two comments first, as far as the Son of Man is concerned, I also appreciate what Karen King does with that. Although personally, I kind of like to split the difference and use the phrase Son of Humanity. That kind of has a ring to it for me. But in our translation of the Odes of Solomon, my colleague Samuel Zener, who has translated it from the Syriac, is simply choosing not to actually translate the phrase because of the many controversies around it and simply transliterates. It literally is bar nasha That’s how we have it in our translation with footnotes, you know, mentioning some of the difficulties.

Hal Taussig:

Hmm. Thank you. Thank you.

Mark:

And the only other comment I was going to make was with respects to the Messiah, the term, “Messiah,” is used seven times in the text in addition to the one case in verse five, about the Odist being anointed.

Hal Taussig:

Yes, for me, that would not get the traditional Christian position too much further along. We would still have to ask, what do they mean when they say Messiah? So, let’s, talk a little bit more directly about the question of, is this Jesus, or is this not? I’ve only shown you one ode. You can please read all of them, and we’ll see it a little bit more. But, first I want others of you to make a statement on how much or how little of this is Jesus. Just with this one, when you read this, is this Jesus? It doesn’t say it is.

Are you asking for a show of hands or, shout or scream. Either way.

Janice:

I wanted it to be Jesus.

Hal Taussig:

You wanted it to be. Good. Okay.

Stephanie:

I wanted to say, you know, back to the gender piece, when I first read this ode six years ago I thought as I was reading, “I rested on the spirit of the Lord, and She raised me up to the high place.” And so I wanted it to be Jesus because of the interrelation of genders as described in God. And that was exciting to me. But if we’re going to connect it to Jesus of Nazareth then I’m looking at it as “She” being Mary. And I think that many, if you’re going to get the Bible reading conservative (I don’t want to say just conservative), but the ‘close to the Bible’ that needed to be Jesus; is that “She” Mary, or is it God? “I rested on the spirit of the Lord and She raised me up to the high place, and She caused me to stand on my feet in the high place of the Lord.”

And as I said, when I first read it, I saw “She” as God and I was excited. I want to say, too, that because of my readings of the Secret Revelation and the origins of the world, I just automatically saw God as He and She. So is that what it’s saying? And if it is, it’s exciting. I need that to be Jesus myself, because that gives it a whole new look on Jesus and the spiritual realm. And it takes a binary view as far as gender is concerned with God. So I needed it to be.

Hal Taussig:

I want to say, Stephanie, that it feels to me as if the part of this ode that you’re talking about is intentionally messing with us. I think it is wanting us to have a different kind of relationship to divinity, and it’s intentionally messing with it. I’m not sure of this, but I think it’s pretty close to, it wants to make the Mary people nervous. In other words, it wants to make the coming of this person into divinity by birth. It wants that to be in a multiplicity so that one can’t reduce the born-ness of this person to just, oh yeah, it was Mary and Joseph or Mary and not Joseph. So Janice, say a little bit more, you were saying that you thought probably it is not Jesus.

Janice:

You know, when I see the first line, I rested on the spirit of the Lord, I thought it was from the Hebrew, and I was wondering if the Lord was the [inaudible], but I don’t know what it is in Syriac.

Janice:

And I was curious as to is it truly switching back and forth between she and he? Because I mean, we’ve got one sentence here, where God apparently is she and he, and that’s fascinating to me. So, I mean, I know that that can happen in the Hebrew, but I don’t know about the Syriac.

Hal Taussig:

I would love Mark to say a little bit about that, because he knows. Sir?

Mark:

Just a little bit. I can say that in the reference here in the feminine pronoun in verse one is the spirit, spirit is feminine in Syriac, “and the Spirit, She lifted me up.”

Speaker 10:

And then his fullness and surrender…”

Mark:

Oh, yeah, the, his is, let me see here, looking at an interlinear here on my screen. Yes, it’s the masculine ending. So it is his, there is the Lord, which in the Syriac is the word, mry the usual word for Lord, marya’. And so “the spirit who raised me up” is the she and the Lord into his presence. “I’m standing up” is God.

Hal Taussig:

Rick, you’ve been, wanting to come to speak on whether this is Jesus or not.

Rick:

Hal, I just sent a chat saying that at the moment, today, right now, I’m about 60/40 in favor of this ode being sung by Jesus. But I’ve got a strong 40% that says it also feels, and sounds like an invitation for any who wish to, you know, fully claim that Christlike character to sing it as well. So there’s, where I’m sitting on it right now.

Hal Taussig:

Oh, you’re sitting frankly on a fence that’s pretty comfortable for me.

Rick:

Yes.

Hal Taussig:

So you know about what it means to have the “I” be both the composer and the person singing somewhere else and this whole thing is being written in order to sing together.

Rick:

Right, right.

Hal Taussig:

And even think about, especially as far as I’m concerned, think about what it is for a whole bunch of people to be singing “I” together. That’s simply another kind of understanding that because music is music, it gets us further. And there’s so many places in which, Rick, if you read these odes you can see how delighted it is in ambiguity and multiplicity.

Rick:

Yes, definitely.

Hal Taussig:

Stephanie?

Stephanie:

I just put in the chat, “Isn’t that the point of Jesus’ ministry? You know, he said that we would do the things that he would do and even more. And so the point of his, this ode being his ode, which then becomes our ode. You know what I mean?

Hal Taussig:

Right. Yes.

Stephanie:

But I looked at it, if I’m singing this ode, then the, she becomes my mother. And if I’m the Child of Humanity, I look at the point that I’m my mother’s firstborn child. And that’s a big thing in culture, in the Caribbean culture, that having a firstborn child. If it’s a boy, it’s an even bigger thing. But if you’re the firstborn, it’s a special thing. And then that I wasn’t even supposed to be born because my mother had health issues, you know. And so for me to sing this ode, I sing it in my own life, but I’m also singing it because Jesus is a son and that makes sense.

Hal Taussig:

And let’s just remind ourselves that this was the point Joy made at the very beginning of the hour, right? That, there’s a multiplicity of identity that is happening here. Because we’ve only gotten to one ode so far, I want to go to, to another…

Shirley Paulson:

Hal can you hear me? I think we should hear from Anita there who had a comment.

Hal Taussig:

Oh, I’m sorry. Yes.

Shirley Paulson:

Anita, are you there? Do you want to make your comment real quick?

Anita:

Well, I was just saying that there’s echoes to me from the Gospel of Thomas,  sort of the emphasis on almost a mystical internal (you find God within). And I’m thinking also some of the stuff that I remember reading when I was sort of focusing on Dead Sea Scrolls, in a non-academic way. Just the Sons of Light, if I remember, was one of the things that’s referred to in the Quran. And so I’m hearing echoes of this, and I’m sort of thinking, this would be a great ode for some sort of Christian mystical sect. What we’ve talked about, the multiplicity of ideas just really flows into it. I mean, it just fits perfectly. I’m not sure that it really expands on anything that’s already been said.

Hal Taussig:

Anita, that’s just beautiful. Thank you. And thanks for bringing in that you were working on Dead Sea Scrolls in non-academic ways. Thanks for that too. I would just say one other thing. If one is into Jesus, as I sometimes am, when you think of Jesus’ parables, parables work also very much like songs. They have multiple identities. The parabolic approach of the sayings of Jesus is intentionally messing up how you think about the reign of God. Or the realm of God is multiply framed so that one either has to be multiple in one’s assignment, or confused, both of which are pretty good things to happen to people as far as I’m concerned.

I want to look at Ode 8, and it’s too long for us to do in 10 minutes. But first I just want to alert you to this. Secondly, I was thinking one of our kind of senior and younger scholars would be here who has written a song for this in English. And so Ode eight has been recorded by Natalie Perkins. You can get a whole DVD of contemporary song by Natalie Perkins of the Odes. Not all of them, but a bunch of them.

Shirley Paulson:

Really quickly too, that we do have a podcast with Natalie talking about that ode in our Early Christian Texts podcast also.

Hal Taussig:

I’m going to first just read the poetic-ness of this first stage. And the other thing I want to say about Ode 8 is like so many of the odes, it’s just full of joy, It’s a whole bunch of experiences put in song that are from people who are in really difficult circumstances and people who are full of joy. I’ll just read a little of this and then I want to jump to later in the ode.

Open your hearts to the dancing joy of the Lord, and let your love abound from hearts to lips in order to bring forth fruits for God, a holy life, and to speak with attention in His light.

Now, the next section of Ode 8 is a combination. It shows how this ode to joy is from someone who is beaten down.

Stand and be restored all you who were once flattened. Speak, you who were silent, because your mouth has been opened. From now on, be lifted up you who were destroyed since your justice has been raised. For the right hand of the Lord is with you all, and She will be a helper for you.

So Liz, our translator here, translates always when the right hand of the Lord happens in the Odes, and it does a lot, she translates it as she. She has done a study of the image of the right hand of the Lord in the Odes of Solomon. And she basically sees that the right hand of the Lord, literarily, is she. And you’ll notice that she also translates very clearly the Lord as he. We’re going to stick with the text the way we find it as much as possible. Now, here, one of the things to say about Ode 8, after verse seven, Liz and I cheated and we followed another scholar, James Charlesworth, who in the middle of Odes where Charlesworth thinks that this is really Christ, he, puts in the words “Christ speaks,” but that’s not in the text. It’s not in the Syriac text. But he thinks it’s so clear that it is, that he puts it in. And so he does after this opening section of Ode 8. He says, the next 13 verses are all meant to be understood as the words of Jesus or Christ. And here, I’ll just read you a little bit and see what you think. This is a kind of a creator of Christ.

Hear the word of the truth and receive the knowledge of the most high. Your flesh may not understand what I say to you, nor your clothing, what I show you. Keep my mystery, you who are kept by it. Keep my faith, you who are kept by it. Recognize my knowledge, you who in truth know me. Love me with gentleness, you who love. For I do not turn my face from my own because I recognize them even before when they did not exist, I knew them.

So right after the part of the song that is full of joy and saying, “Stand up after you’ve been beaten down”, this other voice comes in that says, Hey, I know those guys. I know those people, these men and women I know and they’re my folks and I’m helping them along. Again, no Jesus in the words, but I guess one of the things I would say is if it isn’t Jesus, it’s clear that some people wish it were. Here, I’m having a Jesus without a name or a not Jesus without a name, with this character, with this power and this compassion that is key. And I’m just finishing up a book on an overview of the early Jesus people, with a number of others. And there, we are noticing how much those first two centuries had a lot of other literature that didn’t necessarily want to make Jesus the key figure, but just a figure. Some of them, of course, want to make Jesus the figure. But it’s a big, wonderful, two century jumble of how much you need to put Jesus at the center or at the margins. Okay, well, let’s hear from another couple of you briefly before we have to go.

Mark:

I just put a comment in the chat box there with a question about the pronoun in Ode 8:6 because in the series, “hand” is feminine, but the pronoun in 8:6 is masculine. So that would appear to refer back to the, “Lord” as opposed to the, “Lord’s right hand.” Had the Odist intended for the helper to be, you know, the, “right hand” the Odist could have used a feminine pronoun, but chose not to.

Hal Taussig:

Yes, that’s a great question. Thanks. That’s more than I ever knew about verse six. Thank you.

Helen:

Is it possible that for those that didn’t focus completely on the physical man, Jesus, but had more ambiguous ways of referring to this enlightenment, whether it’s us or whoever it is they’re referring to, that it has to do with a vein of Christianity or a branch of Christianity that was more gnosis centered instead of the more historical Jesus centering of what became more orthodox Christianity?

Hal Taussig:

Ooh, beautiful Helen. Of course, I don’t know to a certain extent. But I want to say that the later traditional Christian thinking about Jesus’ historical realities are later. In other words, when you look at the early texts, they’re quite playful about historicity. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t. I myself, don’t really buy that there was ‘gnosticism.’ But I think that your question is more important than that. You’re saying, “Are these people trying to think about and to know things?” Yeah. The answer is, of course yes. You can find that both inside and outside the cannon — all over the place. For instance, knowing is really important for Paul, and why don’t they call him a gnostic?

Thank you all. I’m over overtime as usual, screwing up amount of things we can get in. But what a wonderful time of all of you jumping in.

Shirley Paulson:

I want to thank you too, Hal. Mark, are you still there? Do you want to just pick up your book and show people what you brought tonight and tell people what that is.

Mark:

Here is the Greek manuscript of Ode 11, which is the only ode that’s in Greek. That’s what that looks like in black and white. And in Coptic, here’s an example of the Coptic manuscript and also where there’s no real verbs between those words as Hal said. And there are two Syriac manuscripts. This is manuscript N. It’s much harder to read, a little smaller there, manuscript. Each of the other Syriac manuscripts, which are easier to read because it’s nice and big. So those are the four different ancient manuscripts that we have of the Odes of Solomon.

Shirley Paulson:

That’s very cool. Thank you.

Hal Taussig:

Oh, and thank you. Thank you Mark so much for spending your time with us. It’s really been very helpful.

Mark:

I’ve really enjoyed it too. Thank you very much, Hal.

Shirley Paulson:

Thanks everybody so much for your participation. This was the October, 2020, Tanho Monday Textual Studies discussion [Bible and Beyond Discussions] on the relationship of the “Odes of Solomon to Jesus,” led by Dr. Hal Taussig.

Once a month at 8:00 – 9:00 Eastern time on Monday nights. Generally, the fourth of the month, we provide a discussion of one of the early Christian texts. Dr. Hal Taussig leads these sessions carrying a well framed overview of the particular text.