De Evangelische Jozua

Eene poging tot aanwijzing van den oorsprong des Christendoms.
http://www.egodeath.com/BollandGospelJesus.htm
This is Klaus Schilling's summary and translation of Gerardus Bolland's "De Evangelische Jozua" from 1907, available on http://www.radikalkritik.de/Bolland_jozua.pdf. Although Bolland's book lacks chapter divisions and has excursions and repetition, the main thought is quite easy to follow, unlike certain modern liberal theologians of note.
_____________________
The starting sphere of Christianity was the world of strongly Hellenised Alexandrian Jews and Judeophile Greeks in the early Common Era. Jesus was derived from the Old Testament figure, the son of Nun, an identity that was often disguised by thoroughly inept Bible translators who used different terms for the Old Testament and New Testament Jesus. The leading author of that era was Philo Alexandrinus.
The son of Nun was renamed to 'Jesus' by Moses. This name change is dealt with in detail by Philo Alexandrinus: 'Jesus' means the Lord's salvation. It is Jesus the son of Nun, who completed the work of his forerunner Moses, bringing the people of Israel into the Holy Land. So the expectation of the Salvation by God was attached to the name 'Jesus'.
As shown by Philo, God can more easily take human appearance than man can become God, who can take human appearance for those men who pray for his help. But the earthly Israel, although being the Holy Land, may only be seen as a temporary resting place for Israel. The true resting place (katapausis) is in a realm with God, not in this world. So the expectation of salvation is still pending, in the eyes of Philo's school. This is also reflected in the Alexandrian Letter to the Hebrews.
John 5:46 underlines the identity of Jesus of the Christians with Jesus, son of Nun, who has been mentioned in the Torah. Justin Martyr says explicitly to Tryphon that it was his Jesus who already guided Trypho's people into the Holy Land according to scripture.
The same trumpet was played by Clemens Alexandrinus' Pedagogics 1:7. Tertullian also wrote against Marcion that the son of Nun, renamed into Jesus by Moses, was already the anticipation for the future Jesus who establishes the new empire of God. Eusebius draws a similar line from Old Testament to New Testament Jesus.
Moses brought the law, but only Jesus brought grace and truth. This is the gist of various New Testament passages.
John the Baptist was seen as the last link with the Law. According to Luke 16:16, confirmed by Justin's Dialogue 51, Jewish religion was valid until John the Baptiser, and is superseded by Jesus. Matthew's Judaising revamping disguised this. Moses brought the Law, only Jesus brought truth and grace, according to John. The second letter of Clement, another Alexarinising document, sees Jesus as incarnate spirit, whose body is the Christian church.
Thus the Jesus still pending for first century Alexandrian Jews became a completed fact during the second century for the forming Roman church.
Jonathan's Targuma seems to identify the Old Testament Jesus with the Messiah, a warlord king in Jewish expectation, whereas the Gospel Jesus, according to Justin Martyr, was oiled in order to oil and order the whole world.
An important motive is the role of Jesus as a High Priest, underlined by Zacharias 3:1-6. The High Priest is said to be beyond sin, and to serve as a mediator between God and sinful man, as written by Philo Alexandrinus. The High Priest is thus of a hybrid nature, somewhat human, somewhat divine. Philo prays that the High Priest might live within his soul, and within the whole mankind, in order to overcome all pains and evils.
Philo's ideal High Priest is thus the Jewish parallel to the Wise man according to Hellenic philosophies like the Stoa. Many resigned, like Seneca who rhetorically wondered where one would ever be able to find the perfectly wise man.
Philo switches freely between the sinless person and the superpersonal Logos, stressing their close relation. The letter to the Hebrews underlines this. In Mark, Jesus enters a synagogue, upsetting a spirit in the synagogue who apparently fears Jesus as the envoy of God, come in order to destroy the unclean spirit, who represents zealotic messianism.
...