1:18: “I am he that liveth and was dead….”
“The Jewish nation are very purblind, how and whence the Messias shall arise; and ‘…no man knows whence the Son of man is,’ John vii.27; that is, from what original. It was doubted…whether he should come from the living or from the dead…” [2:43]
“…The Jews had a fancy that the kingdom of the Messias would begin with the resurrection of the dead,…vainly indeed, as to their sense of it; but not without some truth, as to the thing itself: for from the resurrection of Christ the glorious epoch of the kingdom of God took its beginning,…and when he arose, not a few others arose with him….” [2:371-2]
Davies, [227-8] [On the curse of the cross] “[Note 2:..The shame of the Cross was due to its servile associations. As to its cruelty Klausner writes: ‘Crucifixion is the most terrible and cruel death which man has ever devised for taking vengeance on his fellow man’. He refers to Cicero, In Verrem, v.64; Tacitus, Annales iv.3,11….] [Note 3: … Deut.21.23; Gal.3.13. Although Christ died by Roman crucifixion Paul here (cf. Acts 5.30, 10.39) regards his death as on a tree — i.e. it was put in a Jewish context by him and emphasized as something due to the rejection by the Jews. For the Jewish Law, see M. Sanhedrin, 5. See R.T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, pp. 83f., who writes: ‘The Talmud knows nothing of an execution of Jesus by the Romans, but makes it solely the act of the Jews.’…. See also M. Goguel, The Life of Jesus (English Translation =E.T.), pp. 70ff.”
Davies, [300]: “… ‘But the following have no portion therein [i.e. ‘the world to come’]: He who maintains that resurrection is not a biblical doctrine….'” [Quoting b. Sanh.90b.]
[Note 2, p. 300: “The Jewish World in the Time of Jesus, p. 120: ‘The opinion must be rejected that the idea of the resurrection was unknown to the majority of the Jews in the time of Jesus. I believe on the contrary that the great mass of the Jewish population already adhered to it, that only the somewhat sceptical aristocrats of the Temple staff, who professed to hold strictly to the teachings of the Torah openly denied it. The fact that the later Apocryphal books are well aware of the resurrection idea while the earlier ones are silent on the subject proves that it was about the time of Jesus that the new teaching came into its own.'”
1:19. “…write…”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the entire New Testament, stresses that the authoritative Scriptures are those that are written, in direct opposition to the contemporary Jewish doctrine that there was an authoritative ‘oral law’, also called ‘traditions’, that, in effect, negated and contradicted the written Word. Lightfoot quotes from the Talmud: “…The words of the scribes are more lovely than the words of the law; that is, traditions are better than the written law….” [2:40]
1:20. “… the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches….”
Commenting on Jesus words regarding John the Baptist “He was a burning and a shining light”, Lightfoot says:
“He speaks according to the vulgar {common} dialect of that nation; who were wont to call any person famous for life or knowledge … a candle. ‘Shuah … the candle or light of the place where he lived.’ The Gloss is, ‘One of the most famous men in the city enlightening their eyes.’ Hence the title given to the Rabbins … the candle of the law; … the lamp of light.'” [3:300-01]
Davies, [307-8] “‘For in the heights of that world shall they dwell, And they shall be made like unto the angels, And be made equal to the stars, And they shall be changed into every form they desire From beauty unto loveliness And from light into the splendour of glory.” [Note 4: “2 Baruch 51.10.]
“We may assume that it is this same ‘splendour of glory’ that Paul ascribes to the resurrection life. Moffatt writes on 1 Cor.15.41 (‘There is a splendour of the sun and a splendour of the moon and a splendour of the stars–for one star differs from another star in splendour’):’Probably…the remark about one star differing from another in glory [308] is an echo not only of the apocalyptic idea that the stars were angelic beings, but also of his belief in the varying nature of recompense for the shining spirits of the faithful (3.8) whose radiance, as again the Baruch Apocalypse has it,1 varies, like that of the stars in the ageless upper world.’ …. Again the idea of ‘glory’ is associated with the righteous in their risen life in the Ethiopic Enoch 62.15, 108.11, 12.” [Note 1, p. 308:”2 Baruch 51.3, 4f.”]