"You are white-washed sepulchres, which are filled with dead men's bones because there is not in you the Living Man. The dead shall leap from the grave, from their earthly bodies, being regenerated as spiritual men, not carnal. This is the resurrection which comes to pass through the gate of heaven, and those who do not enter by it all remain dead."
A Naassene tribute to Ash Wednesday (Hipp., Ref. 5.8,23-24).
2 comments:
Mt 23:25b: For you are like tombs, having been whitewashed, which indeed appear beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of dead people and every kind of impurity.
You are a tomb, I.e. you are a body within which is a dead soul/spirit/mind (Compare Philo LA I 108, When we are living, the soul is dead and has been entombed in the body as in a sepulchre).
Within you are bones of the dead, I.e., within you are the relics of your dead soul/spirit/mind (Compare Philo Mig 17: Joseph's bones, by which I mean the only relics of such a soul).
There is not within you the Living Man, I.e., there is not within you a living inner Man of soul/spirit/mind--for it is dead--with only relics of it still remaining.
But your inner Man can leap from the grave, I.e., it can be "resurrected" from the dead through the rebirth of the mind/soul/spirit alone and, thereby, escape from the tomb/grave of the body.
It can then pass through the gate of heaven, I.e., it can then pass through this Cosmos and enter into the eternal and incorporeal beyond it (Compare Philo, Som 1 188: Correspondingly, then, the conception of the intelligible world was gained from the one which our senses perceive: it is therefore a kind of gate into the former).
Your Lecture in the Houston Museum of Natural Science:
Distinguished Lectures -The Birth of Christianity
April Deconick, Ph.D., Rice University
Monday, April 6, 6:30 p.m.
"Christianity was born out of the Jewish teachings of Jesus and James his brother at a time of social and political upheaval in ancient Palestine. Dr. April Deconick will examine the links between Judaism and Christianity. Archeological evidence will also discussed within this context."
Isn't this presumtuous on your part? And aren't you really wandering out of your own area? I get the sense that this series of Lectures is very much along traditional literalistic lines, and that really scholars are doing the milk rounds.
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