Journal of Early Christian Studies

I

One of the most radical attitudes to be found among the early Christians, Docetism soon became a generic term for some of the worst heresies fought by the church fathers. Oddly enough, this puzzling phenomenon does not seem to have elicited enough scholarly attention. In 1957 Gustave Bardy, who claimed that "les origines de cette erreur sont obscures," lamented the lack of a full-fledged monograph on the topic, and no such monograph has appeared in print since then.¹ [End Page 267]

Moreover, there is no general agreement upon a convincing definition of Docetism, and one is at a loss as to the focal point of the docetic worldview. The two main approaches relate either to Christ's incarnation or to his passion: either Christ was not really incarnated, as the divine and matter could not have a common ground, so Christ would be totally spiritual in nature; or Christ was indeed incarnated, but did not really suffer on the cross. These two views are not identical. The first, being broader, is inclusive of the second. Most scholars seem to support the first approach and find the roots of Docetism in Platonic thought, or in what is sometimes called, rather nebulously, "Graeco-Oriental Dualism."² For them, Docetism argues that the human nature of Jesus is only a semblance. For the second opinion, which focuses on the crucifixion, Jesus' death, rather than his very corporeal existence, was the scandal that the first Docetists sought to avoid. J. G. Davies, in a paper read at the Sixth Oxford Patristics Conference and published in Studia Patristica in 1962, seems to have been the first to suggest this idea.³ Soon thereafter Norbert Brox seconded him with new arguments.⁴ According to both scholars, Jewish motives (for Davies) or Jewish-Christian ones (for Brox) should be identified, together with "Graeco-oriental" dualism, at the origins of Docetism.

It should be pointed out, however, that the views of Davies and Brox do not seem to have become the majority opinion. As knowledgeable a scholar as Basil Studer remarks that the docetic tendency makes sense [End Page 268] only within a Platonic context, adding that "strictly speaking, only Valentinians should be considered docetists."⁵ Charles Munier, for his part, who echoes Bardy when he states that "les commencements du docétisme sont insaisissables," argues that Docetism was born "from the difficulty to conciliate Jesus Christ with Hellenistic conceptions about God's transcendence."⁶

What is clear is that in modern scholarly usage "Docetism" does not refer to any clearly definable sect but rather to an attitude. While many of those doctrines we often refer to (rather vaguely) as "gnostic" also reflect a docetic attitude, "Docetism" is by no means identical to "Gnosticism." Michael Williams has made a convincing case for questioning the hypostatic use of the concept of "Gnosticism," as if it referred to a stable, historically and theologically defined movement.⁷ A similar caution should be used with the construct of "Docetism." In other words, "Docetism" is no more a fixed set of doctrines than "Gnosticism" is, but rather a theological option that shows up in a wide variety of early Christian texts. It is probable that "docetic" doctrines were already present in the first Christian century, as it is against such doctrines that the author of 1 and 2 John, for instance, seems to argue.⁸ The first appearance of doke \ tismos, however, is only found in Clement of Alexandria's Stromateis, while Eusebius refers briefly to the "Docetes."⁹ For Clement, Docetism is related to those who claim that birth is evil and is therefore upheld by Julianus Cassianus, the father of encratism, as well as by Marcion and Valentinus, for whom Christ's body was "psychic." The developed character of Valentinus' doctrines, and in particular his complex conception of Christ, is probably responsible for the commonly held view that Docetism owes its rejection of the physical body to the influence of the Platonic negation of matter.

Seeking to offer a taxonomy of three different kinds of docetic attitudes, Georg Strecker proposed to distinguish among three different claims: (1) the one according to which Simon of Cyrene was the substitute of Jesus on the cross (a claim made by Basilides, at least according to [End Page 269] Irenaeus); (2) the one affirming that Christ left Jesus just before his death on the cross (according to Cerinthus and the Gospel of Peter¹⁰ ); and (3) the claim that Jesus Christ was indeed crucified but did not suffer, that he remained impassibilis, as his nature is pneumatic (the claim of the Docetics fought by Ignatius).¹¹

While the two above-mentioned articles of Davies and Brox point in the right direction in the search for the origins of Docetism, both retain, unfortunately, rather vague formulations in their hypotheses; and both argue for a "twofold" origin of Docetism, in both "Graeco-Oriental and Jewish thought."¹²

To my mind, however, the very historical core of Docetism, at least in its earliest phases, does not lie in Platonic elements, which were wholly absent from Christian origins, but in the rejection of Jesus' passion on the cross, "a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles," to use Paul's terms (1 Cor 1.24). This rejection, I submit, came first; and only then were the docetic attitudes broadened, as it were, to include also the very incarnation, the idea of Christ having possessed a body of flesh. It is only at a later stage, finally, that Docetism may have influenced early Christian conceptions of martyrdom.¹³ While it is by no means my intention here to offer a review of all the evidence on early Christian Docetism, I shall discuss a few texts that I hope will shed some new light on the origins of Docetism and shall emphasize its roots in the earliest stages of Christianity.

I shall begin with the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, a particularly powerful text (extant in Coptic translation) that has been called one of the most interesting texts from Nag Hammadi relating to Docetism:¹⁴

For my death, which they think happened, [happened] to them in their error and blindness. They nailed their man up to their death. For their minds did [End Page 270] not see me, for they were deaf and blind. But in doing these things, they render judgment against themselves. As for me, on the one hand, they saw me; they punished me. Another, their father, was the one who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They were hitting me with the reed; another was the one who lifted up the cross on his shoulder, who was Simon. Another was the one on whom they put the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the riches of the archons and the offspring of their error and their conceit, and I was laughing at their ignorance.¹⁵

One does not have to be a Christian to be taken aback by the image of Christ laughing when watching from heaven as the poor Simon of Cyrene carries his cross and suffers in his place.¹⁶ Indeed, from antiquity to modern times a quite common image of Christ in the Christian tradition (albeit not the only one) is that of a stern figure who could cry at times but had never laughed. The topical texts here are some Homilies of John Chrysostom and a text of Ambrosius.¹⁷ While it is true that the Second Treatise of the Great Seth does not specifically say that Simon was crucified in Christ's place, it is hard to argue (as Gregory Riley, whose translation I have quoted, seems to do) that this text has no docetic proclivities.¹⁸ The cosmic cruelty of this laughter seems to evoke Siva's mythic destruction of the demons' cities rather than Christ's traditional compassion.

This passage is not the only one mentioning Christ's laughter. In the Apocalypse of Peter, another text from Nag Hammadi, we read:

When he had said these things, I saw him [the Savior] apparently being seized by them. And I said, "What am I seeing, O Lord? Is it you yourself whom they take? And are you holding on to me? Who is this one above the cross, who is glad and laughing? And is it another person whose feet and hands they are hammering?" The Savior said to me, "He whom you see [End Page 271] above the cross, glad and laughing, is the living Jesus. But he into whose hands and feet they are driving the nails is his physical part, which is the substitute."¹⁹

Various other texts from Nag Hammadi reflect the same docetic perception of Jesus, who did not suffer on the cross. The Letter of Peter to Philip offers a similar vision of things: "My brothers, Jesus is a stranger to this suffering. But we are the ones who have suffered at the transgression of the mother."²⁰ The text entitled The Concept of Our Great Power describes how the ruler of the archons "found that the nature of his [the Savior's] flesh could not be seized, in order to show it to the archons."²¹ In the First Apocalypse of James the Lord is quoted as saying: "James, do not be concerned for me or for this people. I am he who was within me. Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this people has done me no harm." Elsewhere in the same text, the Lord says to James that he will reveal to the "authorities," or archons, that "he cannot be seized."²²

Two other texts, at least, mention the laughter of a feminine figure behaving in a manner similar to that of the docetic Christ, namely, avoiding being caught by the evil archons. In the Hypostasis of the Archons Eve "laughed at [the authorities] for their folly and their blindness; and in their clutches, she became a tree, and left before them a shadow of herself resembling herself." It is this shadow, of course, that they catch and defile.²³ In the Valentinian Exposition, finally, Sophia "laughs since she remained alone and imitated the 'ungraspable.'"²⁴ The figure imitated by [End Page 272] Sophia seems to be he who cannot be caught, i.e., who cannot suffer through his capture by the archons.²⁵

To these texts one should add some "gnostic" traditions retained by the patristic heresiographers, in particular the views of Basilides according to Irenaeus of Lyon. The question has been raised whether Irenaeus' report really reflects Basilides' doctrine, or rather the views of some of his followers, but this does not affect its significance for our present task.

And unto the nations belonging to them it [the intellect] appeared on earth as a man, and he performed deeds of power. Hence he did not suffer. Rather, a certain Simon of Cyrene was forced to bear his cross for him, and it was he who was ignorantly and erroneously crucified, being transformed by the other, so that he was taken for Jesus; while Jesus, for his part, assumed the form of Simon and stood by, laughing at them [irrisisse eos].²⁶

Finally, the Acts of John preserve a famous description of Christ's docetic nature quite similar to the "gnostic" traditions quoted above. As noted by the editors of this text, Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, the dissociation reflected in this text between the Savior and the man on the cross fits quite well Eastern Valentinian christology.²⁷

"So then I have suffered none of those things which they will say of me. . . . You hear that I suffered, yet I suffered not . . . and that I was pierced, yet I [End Page 273] was not lashed, that I was hanged, yet I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, yet it did not flow. . . ." When he had said these things to me, and others which I know not how to say as he wills, he was taken up, without any of the multitude seeing him. And going down I laughed at them all when they told me what they had said about him. . . .²⁸

The texts briefly discussed above, which are certainly not the only ones harboring a docetic view of the Savior, are enough to highlight the importance of the motif of laughter on the part of Christ, as he secretly avoids the passion on the cross.

One cannot say, however, that this laughter, which has been identified by various scholars as "typically gnostic" and as directly related in its origin to both gnostic mythology and Docetism, has been adequately explained.²⁹ Louis Painchaud, in the commentary to his edition of the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, refers to some of the parallels, noting that the laughter underlines the blindness and ignorance of the archons and of their creatures as well as their inability to distinguish reality from illusion. Jacques Ménard, on his side, notes the strangeness of this laughter, adding that it is typical of "celestial entities." Neither Junod and Kaestli, nor Bentley Layton, nor even Antonio Piñero, who refers only to "a gnostic inversion," offer any substantial interpretation.³⁰

The only serious suggestion I am aware of is that of Robert Grant, who proposed, in an article published long ago, to interpret Christ's laughter as a reflection of Ps 2.4: "He who sits in the heavens laughs [yoshev ba-shammayim ish >= aq]; the Lord has them in derision." This proposal must be taken seriously, as Psalm 2 deals with the messianic drama, calling the Messiah "God's son" (v. 8). The same chapter, moreover, is quoted in Acts 4.23-26 in the prayer of Peter and John after their release by the Sanhedrin.³¹ I hope to offer here a more convincing interpretation of Christ's laughter. My proposal, however, is not exclusive of Grant's suggestion, as an early conflation between two different themes might have contributed to the development of the idea of Christ's laughter. [End Page 274]

Before going any further, it is important to underline the context of this laughter. It seems that in various texts the Savior's laughter (or that of a heavenly figure seeking to imitate him) is directly related to his ability to avoid death at the hands of the archons. It is either through his transformation at the last moment, his disappearance, or his replacement by a substitute (such as Simon of Cyrene) that the Savior avoids death, and he laughs at having succeeded in averting the evil archon's scheme. This laughter, then, would appear to be integral to the docetic interpretation of Christ's passion.

II

As is well known, the biblical patriarch Isaac is presented in early Christian literature as a typos of Christ, or sacramentum futuri.³² While Isaac is not alone among the major figures of the Old Testament to be thus perceived, he certainly has a pride of place, thanks both to his birth and to his near sacrifice.³³ After the New Testament, the earliest text to refer to Isaac explicitly as a typos of Christ is the Epistle of Barnabas. The Lord "was going to offer the vessel of the spirit as a sacrifice for our sins, in order that the type established by Isaac, who was offered upon the altar, might be fulfilled."³⁴ From then on, many patristic authors writing in Greek, Latin, or Syriac will refer to Isaac as a typos of Christ, focusing in particular on the Akedah in Genesis 22. Abraham, like God, intended to sacrifice his own son.³⁵ Isaac carried the wood for the burnt offering, in a [End Page 275] prefiguration of Jesus carrying his cross. The major difference between the two figures, of course, lies in the fact that according to the biblical text Isaac was eventually not sacrificed, while Jesus did die on the cross.

Melito of Sardis deals with the parallelism between the two figures in his Peri Pascha.³⁶ Melito, who has been called "the first poet of Deicide," emphasizes the difference between Isaac and Christ:

and he carried the wood on his shoulders     as he was led up to be slain like Isaac by his Father. But Christ suffered [epathen], whereas Isaac did not suffer;     for he was a model of the Christ who was going to suffer. But by being merely the model of Christ     he caused astonishment and fear among men.³⁷

Origen devotes one of his most powerful Homilies on Genesis to the biblical figure of Isaac. According to him, "Isaac means laughter or joy" (Isaac risus uel gaudium interpretatur).³⁸ Origen does not pursue this line of interpretation and does not link Isaac's laughter to Christ. He does say, however, that Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son, hoped that he would be resurrected, believing that what had never taken place would happen. Abraham's faith was based upon his knowledge that Isaac was the prefiguration of the truth to come, Christ's resurrection from the dead.³⁹ "That Isaac carried himself the wood for the burnt offering, this is the figura of Christ who carried himself his cross."⁴⁰ Later, he adds that while Abraham offered to God a mortal son who did not die, "God, for humans, [End Page 276] delivered to death an immortal Son" (Abraham mortalem filium non moriturum obtulit Deo; Deus immortalem filium pro hominibus tradidit morti).⁴¹ In the next paragraph Origen discusses the ram, which was indeed slaughtered, as another typos of Christ, in parallel to Isaac. In order to explain the double type of Christ he notes that Christ is at once human, born of a virgin, and the Logos of God, coming from on high.

Hence, Christ suffers, but [only] in his flesh, and he underwent death, but [only] in the flesh, of which the ram is here the form [Patitur ergo Christus, sed in carne; et pertulit mortem, sed caro, cuius hic aries forma est]. John said, similarly, "Here is the lamb of God, who takes away sin from the world." The Logos, however, which is Christ according to the spirit, of whom Isaac is the image, remained "in incorruptibility" [Verbum uero in incorruptione permansit, quod est secundum spiritum Christus, cuius imago est Isaac]. This is why he is at once victim and high priest.⁴²

In other words, Origen points out that the parallelism between the Akedah of Isaac and the crucifixion of Christ relates precisely to the fact that Christ, at least in his divine nature, like Isaac, did not suffer death.

Isaac as a figura of Christ also often appears in Latin authors. For Tertullian, types and figures

needed to be covered in obscurity, so that difficulty of understanding might make request for the grace of God. And so Isaac, to begin with, when delivered up by his father for a sacrifice, himself carried the wood for himself, and did at that early date set forth the death of Christ, who when surrendered as a victim by his Father carried the wood of his own passion.⁴³

Augustine too discusses both the meaning of Isaac's name (Isaac, quod interpretatur Risus) and the ram of the Akedah as referring to Jesus (Quis ergo illo figurabatur, nisi Iesus, antequam immolaretur, spinis Iudaicis [End Page 277] coronatus?).⁴⁴ He also knows that Isaac is a figure of Jesus but does not seem to be particularly interested by the topic.⁴⁵

In iconography too the importance of the sacrifice of Isaac seems to reflect its similitude to the crucifixion in Christian culture throughout the ages.⁴⁶ This tradition, which has been much studied, is reasonably well-charted. It should be pointed out that a similarly central place of the Akedah seems to be found among Jews, as reflected in synagogue mosaics such as the ones from Beit Alpha and Sepphoris.⁴⁷

A passage from Clement of Alexandria's Paedagogus deserves special attention in our present context.⁴⁸ While this intriguing text has received some notice (Jean Gribomont calls it "une page curieuse," and Jean Daniélou speaks of "ce passage très remarquable"), its full significance seems to be still ignored. ⁴⁹ In the context of discussing the various ways in which men and women can be called children—and thus in need of education by the divine teacher—Clement writes, "The word Isaac I also connect with child. Isaac means laughter [gelôs hermeneuetai ho Isaak]." He then goes on to interpret this laughter as the joy of the Christians, rejoicing in the salvation offered by Christ, adding: "That which is signified by the prophet may be interpreted differently, namely, it is we who rejoice and laugh on account of salvation, like Isaac. He too laughed, when delivered from death . . . (egela de kakeinos tou thanatou lelumenos)." Further on, he adds: [End Page 278]

The king, then, is Christ, who beholds our laughter from above, and looking through the window, as the scripture says, looks at the thanksgiving, and the blessing, and the rejoicing, and the gladness, and furthermore the endurance which works together with them and their embrace. . . . He himself [Christ] is Isaac [for the passage may be interpreted otherwise], who is a type [typos] of the Lord, a child as a son; for he was the son of Abraham, as Christ, the Son of God, and a sacrifice as the Lord. But he was not immolated as the Lord. Isaac only bore the wood [of the sacrifice], as the Lord the wood [of the cross]. And he [Isaac] laughed in a secret way [egela de mustikôs], prophesying that the Lord would fill us with joy, as we have been redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord. But Isaac did not suffer, yielding the precedence in suffering to the Logos. Moreover, his not having been slain hints at the divinity of the Lord. For Jesus rose again after his burial, without having suffered, exactly like Isaac was released from sacrifice [mè pathôn, kathaper hierourgias apheimenos ho Isaak].⁵⁰

While many other patristic authors refer to the similarities between Isaac and Jesus, Clement (who like them also recognizes the difference between the two figures: Isaac did not suffer and is therefore inferior to Jesus) seems to be the only one to go beyond insisting on the etymological meaning of Isaac's name (yzhaq: "he will laugh")—a meaning that he could easily have learned from Philo and Jewish Alexandrian traditions with which we know he was familiar. As we have seen above, this Alexandrian tradition is also reflected by Origen. Clement, however, also connects this laughter directly with Isaac's last-minute escape from sacrificial death. He also relates Isaac's laughter to the joy of the Christians, as their Lord, although he had been crucified, did not suffer, thanks to his resurrection; and he equates this lack of suffering with Isaac's avoidance of sacrifice.⁵¹ It is worth noting that Clement, as also Origen after him, underlines the fact that at least in his divine nature Jesus did not suffer. One can speak here, in a way, of a semi-docetic perception. A full-fledged docetic perception, however, would contradict the central myth and the central ritual of Christianity: a sacrifice. Such a full-fledged Docetism is of [End Page 279] course conceivable only in a religious system where there exist other sacrifices; when the very notion of sacrifice is rejected, Docetism is meaningless.

The significance of this unique text goes far beyond the story of the Akedah. It should lead us on the way to an interpretation of Christ's puzzling laughter in the gnostic texts mentioned above and to a new suggestion about the origins of Docetism.

III

It is a fact beyond dispute that the Jewish hermeneutical tradition on the Akedah in Genesis 22 is very old and can be followed through the different literary genres from the Second Temple period.⁵² This fact entails, inter alia, that the intricate connections between the Akedah and the crucifixion, which have attracted scholarly interest for a long time, can be documented as having started very early. Indeed, there is reason to believe that they are reflected in significant fashion in the New Testament. James Swetnam's monograph on Jesus and Isaac, in particular, has highlighted the deep significance of the Akedah in various writings of the New Testament, besides its obvious central role in Hebrews 11.17-19.⁵³ Swetnam has also offered a detailed status quaestionis, the results of which need not be repeated here.⁵⁴

The most seminal article on the topic, however, remains Israel Lévi's study of the connection between the Akedah and the death of Jesus, published in 1912.⁵⁵ Lévi was seeking to refute the argument of Abraham [End Page 280] Geiger. According to him, the significance of the Akedah in the Jewish liturgy of the New Year (Rosh ha-Shana) was a later development, which had taken place in late antique Mesopotamia and which reflected a Christian influence on rabbinic Judaism. Although Lévi's study has been criticized for his anachronistic use of Jewish liturgy, he was able to show quite convincingly that the Jewish sources relating the Akedah not only to Passover—as for instance in Jubilees (ch. 18), a text from the third century B. C. E.⁵⁶ —but also to the Rosh ha-Shana ritual (prayers as old as the first century C. E.) could not possibly have been redacted under a Christian influence. Moreover, Lévi showed that the old identification of the place of the Akedah as the Temple Mount pointed not only to temple sacrifices but also to the Messiah, while the ritual connections between Isaac and the blowing of the shofar on Rosh ha-Shana were directly linked to messianic prayers. The cumulative evidence showed, argued Lévi, that the sacrifice of Isaac (or rather his binding, or akedah) was conceived, before the emergence of Christianity, as having a merit which could save Israel from the consequences of its sins.⁵⁷ Further studies followed the path opened by Lévi. Hans Joachim Schoeps and Geza Vermes, in particular, made a more systematic analysis of targumic sources, without changing in any drastic way the picture drawn more than ninety years ago by Lévi.⁵⁸ Both Schoeps and Vermes insisted on the significance of the Akedah for some of the earliest Christian texts and doctrines, such as Paul's epistles (Schoeps) or the formulation of the Eucharist (Vermes). In the [End Page 281] conclusion of his study Lévi argued that Paul combined the Akedah and Isaiah 53 in his conception of Christ's redemptory death: "Once Paul had accepted the principle of the divine Sonship of Jesus, the transposition was obvious, God took the place of Abraham, and Jesus that of Isaac. At the same time, the redeeming virtue of Isaac's sacrifice was transferred to the death of the crucified one."⁵⁹

It is the almost undisputed consensus that the Targums represent major testimonies of Jewish conceptions in the later part of the Second Temple period. (On the other hand, the Targums remained living literature for more than a millennium, and it stands to reason to assume later accretions from the rabbinic period.) The four versions of the Palestinian Targum essentially agree in their interpretation of the Akedah.⁶⁰ The connection they see between the Akedah and Passover is clear: Isaac is considered to be a sacrificial victim—who may even have been actually sacrificed—and Abraham prays that his own obedience and Isaac's consent be remembered. Other early sources corroborate these conclusions. Thus, the lengthy and somewhat romantic passage on the Akedah in Josephus' Antiquities contains most of the essential features of the targumic tradition.⁶¹ [End Page 282]

The early date and the importance of the redemptory conception of Isaac's sacrifice are quite striking. Moreover, this sacrifice is sometimes perceived (in direct contradiction with the biblical text!) as Isaac's voluntary self-immolation and as having actually taken place. This material has, I believe, dramatic consequences for the sacrificial theology expressed in various texts of the New Testament. The fact that this theology can only be properly and fully understood within the context of the Akedah has already been pointed out many times since Lévi's article. It appears now in even stronger light. The Akedah was indeed so obviously present in the minds of Jews in the first century C. E. that the story of Jesus' redemptory sacrifice must be seen directly in its light. There is no doubt that Lévi's conclusion regarding Paul should be both sharpened and also applied to other New Testament texts, beyond the Epistle to the Hebrews. To give just one (but central) example: "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin from the world" (John 1.29) seems to be directly related to both the paschal lamb and Isaac, whose sacrifice, according to Jewish tradition, also happened at Passover.⁶²

There were, then, two possible Jewish interpretations of the Akedah, one (following the biblical text) according to which Isaac had been bound but not killed and the other according to which he had actually been immolated. Scholars, however, all seem to accept as a premise that the earliest conception of the passion of Jesus had been predicated upon his death—and resurrection. If, as it seems, the first Christians were keenly aware of Isaac as a typos of Christ, there existed also, prima facie, another possibility for essentially exegetic minds: namely, that Jesus, just like Isaac, had not really died on the cross but had been saved in extremis by his father and replaced by a substitute sacrifice, just as Abraham had replaced his own son by a substitute sacrifice. While this suggestion, which strikes me as logically plausible, cannot be proven, it should be accepted at least as a working hypothesis. The obvious implication of this [End Page 283] hypothesis is the existence of a docetic interpretation of Christ's passion at the very origins of the new faith. I shall presently seek to strengthen my case with some circumstantial evidence from Philo of Alexandria.

IV

When dealing with the traditions on the meaning of the name "Isaac" as laughter or joy, as reflected in Clement and Origen, I postulated that these were Jewish Alexandrian traditions. Indeed, Jewish Hellenistic literature, or its remains, has kept for us various references to Isaac. Fragments of both Demetrius the Chronographer (in the third century B.C.E.) and Philo the Epic Poet (at the turn of the second century) reflect an interest in the figure of Isaac.⁶³

Such traces, however, remain quite scarce. By far the most obvious and significant source for the passing of Jewish Hellenistic traditions to the early Christian authors is of course Philo. Let us then review some of Philo's perceptions of Isaac, which might prove highly relevant to our present task. Sadly, the figure of Isaac in Philo does not seem to have attracted much attention. This is perhaps due to the puzzling fact that Philo's treatise On Isaac has not survived, nor have the passages of his Questions in Genesis dealing with Genesis 22 (the chapter relating the Akedah). Gleaning through Philo's works, however, brings some remarkable contributions to our theme.

For Philo, Isaac, who is presented as carrying the wood to his own sacrifice, was not actually slain.⁶⁴ (To be sure, the fact that Philo moves freely between the literal and "historical" registers demands an extra caution on our part.) Philo knows that the name Isaac means "laughter"—in Chaldean, he tells us. He comes back to this meaning of the name on various occasions, in different contexts.⁶⁵ Isaac not only means "laughter" but also "happiness."⁶⁶ For him, indeed, Isaac's name is connected to the fact that "laughter is the outward and bodily sign of the [End Page 284] unseen joy in the mind, and joy is in fact the best and noblest of the higher emotions."⁶⁷ As such, Isaac is "the only example of freedom from passion beneath the sun," higher than Abraham and Jacob, and purely spiritual (asômatos).⁶⁸

Such references are enough to point to the origin of Clement's and Origen's etymologies of Isaac's name. But for Philo, Isaac (alias laughter) is happiness personified, or joy, i.e., laughter in bonam partem, the good emotion of understanding; and he reflects the nature of the incorporeal God, who has no passion and is perfect happiness and bliss.⁶⁹ More explicitly even: "Laughter is the outward and bodily sign of the unseen joy in the mind, and joy is in fact the best and noblest of the higher emotions. By it the soul is filled through and through with cheerfulness, rejoicing in the Father and Maker of all."⁷⁰ Philo goes further:

For God is the Creator of laughter that is good, and of joy, so that we must hold Isaac to be not a product of created beings, but a work of the Uncreated One [ergon de tou agenètou]. For if "Isaac" means "laughter," and according to Sarah's unerring witness God is the maker of laughter, God may with perfect truth be said to be Isaac's father.⁷¹

Philo comes back elsewhere to this striking teaching: that God, not Abraham, is Isaac's father, showing full awareness of his audacity: he opens his interpretation of Gen 21.6 ("The Lord hath made laughter for me . . .") by stating:

This is a "holiest teaching," to be heard only by initiates [ô mustai!]. The "laughter" is joy, and "made" is equivalent to "beget," so that what is said is of this kind, the Lord begat Isaac; for he is himself Father of the perfect nature, sowing and begetting happiness in men's souls.⁷²

The idea that God, rather than Abraham, is Isaac's real father, according to Philo's esoteric teaching, is surprising enough. But this is not all. In his treatise On the Cherubim Philo has a long paragraph introduced with a reference to a "divine mystery" reserved to "the initiated who are worthy to receive the holiest secret."⁷³ Here Philo uses, obviously, the [End Page 285] language of the Greek mysteries, which he often does as a façon de parler, in allegorical fashion as it were. In any case, this language, which should not perhaps be taken at its face value, does reflect the seriousness of his intent. The gist of this "holiest secret" is the following: while men and women have intercourse in order to beget children, God sows virtues. "When he begins to consort with a soul, he makes what before was a woman into a virgin again." The first and best example of a woman who became a virgin again—in order to conceive from God—is Sarah before she conceived Isaac, God's Son.⁷⁴ The idea of Sarah's virginal conception of Isaac is certainly not a slip of Philo's pen, as it were. Philo's introduction clearly shows that he is quite aware that he is going to present a higher, esoteric interpretation of Moses' work. Moreover, the same teaching appears at least one more time in Philo's works.⁷⁵

The perception of Isaac as Son of God and born of a virgin, by a contemporary coreligionist of Paul, brings us to reconsider the idea of Isaac as typos of Jesus. The conclusion seems to impose itself that there existed in first-century Judaism, or at least in some trends in Hellenistic Judaism, a conception of Isaac, alias laughter, Son of God, born of a virgin.⁷⁶ If Isaac had been offered in sacrifice by his heavenly Father for the redemption of his people and had escaped death, all the elements needed for the emergence of a docetic theology of Jesus, having escaped suffering on the cross, were present at the very origins of Christianity. These elements might well have been known to some of the first Christians, toward the end of the first century, who could hardly have avoided thinking of Isaac and his Akedah when reflecting on the crucifixion of [End Page 286] Jesus. For the first followers who believed that Jesus had sacrificed himself willingly for the sins of Israel, his figure could not but evoke instantly that of Isaac. The acceptance of Jesus' death, and its transformation into the cornerstone of Christian theology, was the invention of Paul's religious genius. But it was not the only possible interpretation readily available.

Philo's De Isaaco seems to have been lost quite early, as Ambrose of Milan, in his own work on Isaac, comments mainly on Song of Songs.⁷⁷ Had he had a copy of Philo's work at his disposal, he would no doubt have followed it, as he did in other occasions.⁷⁸ We do not know why the De Isaaco disappeared. A long time ago Erwin Goodenough speculated upon the reasons for the lack of preservation of Philo's De Isaaco and of the passages on Genesis 22 in his Questions in Genesis. Unfortunately, the fact that he remained unable to substantiate his speculation on any real independent evidence prevents us from building anything upon it. Goodenough argued that the disappearance of the Philonic texts on Isaac might not simply have been due to the vagaries of ancient manuscripts in late antiquity. Goodenough claimed that these texts might have disappeared on purpose, as Christian scribes found what Philo said about Isaac to be unacceptably close to what was said about Jesus Christ in the Christian tradition.⁷⁹

If my analysis is convincing, Christ's laughter as it appears in some docetic traditions reflects the fact that very early on (in the first century) some (Jewish) believers in Jesus and in his redemptory role considered him to be, as it were, Isaac redivivus. In a second stage, when the docetic [End Page 287] attitude became more or less identified with gnostic dualism and antinomianism, Christ's laughter received a new turn, as it came to reflect his sarcasm at the failed efforts of the forces of evil to kill him. To be sure, there are different kinds of laughter of Christ. It would be the goal of another study to attempt a taxonomy of these laughters, also in other traditions such as some Arabic Sufi texts that describe the laughing Issa (Jesus) in bonam partem in opposition to the stern figure of Yahya (John the Baptist).⁸⁰

Obviously, I do not claim in any way that such a view of things is exclusive of other directions in the search for the origins of "Docetism." Neither do I claim that the identification of the historical origins of a phenomenon is enough to understand its character, later evolution, and nature. There is certainly a possibility of conflation or meeting between two different interpretive directions. What I do claim is that in some way the figure of Isaac was central in this regard. For first-century Jews the figure of Isaac, in relation to both his sacrifice (whether accomplished or not) and his miraculous birth, had reached a very high stature. In contradistinction to Greeks, for instance, Jews were living not only with their myths but in them. Their myths had a historical significance, and history was Heilsgeschichte. The constant re-presentation of the biblical myths in Jewish cult and liturgy reflected (and still reflects) what is usually called "the exegetical mind." Such a phrase is of course correct, but remains perhaps rather pale and does not express clearly enough the constant mythopoieic power of this obsession to insert the present (literally) into the cast of the past.⁸¹ When we speak of the Jewish origins of Christianity, we usually mean that many of the stones of the new religious monument built by Paul and the first generations of Christian thinkers and writers were Jewish stones. Traditions such as those retained by Philo about Isaac born of God and of a virgin are cause for some dizziness; for it would mean that much of the building itself, not only most of its stones, was a Jewish creation.