To reconstruct 2nd century cultural literature context of Roman satire in Early Christian texts, it is useful to form a hypothesis that the book of Exodus was written later than Genesis.
The first historical external reference to the name Moses, which appears in the book of Exodus, is given by Philo of Alexandria (See source [2]) who lived c. 20 BC to 50 CE. Philo of Alexandria believes that Moses is a sacred historian that wrote Genesis. He does not mention Miriam, Moses' sister by name, but refers to his sister. Philo does not mention any healing miracle by Moses.
Josephus around year 93 CE also writes about Moses, but does not mention any healing miracle.
The fact that the name Moses is not used relative to this character is counter-intuitive, because e.g. The Temple Scroll found in Cave 11 among the Dead Sea Scrolls frequently refers to Deuteronomy, but omits the name of Moses where it occurs in the text (See source [1]).
It could be because Exodus might have originally been written from a first-person perspective attributed to Moses, or that there was some gap in time between Genesis and Exodus.
This means, that the book of Exodus might have been written at a later time than the book of Genesis.
The idea is that there is a mystery religion using Noah as a savior figure with the book of Genesis as holy text, which later produces a new text Exodus to repair some of the flaws of the story about Noah. Genesis might have been extended around the time Exodus is written to build up the context for the book of Exodus.
- Animals as the exclusive view of life in general
- Not even a single healing miracle - yet a gigantic mass murder by Yahweh
- No use of magic - lack of channeling spiritual energy into performing miracles
In the flood myth which uses Noah as a savior figure, people who wrote the story forgot that most plants can not survive under water for long times. This is probably due to a lack of knowledge about plants and over-focus on animals as representing life in general.
If you read Zoe - The Muse of Aristotle, then there is a hypothesis that The Tree of Life, or Zoe's tree, comes from Aristotle, which was the world's first zoologist.
Aristotle set out to study life on the island Lesvos with his friend and colleague Theophrastus. They decided to split up the work into two parts, Theophrastus focusing on plants, while Aristotle focused on animals. This was the first time in history that human beings ventured out into nature to study it and write down what they found to a such extent. Hence, Theophrastus is credited as the world's first botanist and Aristotle as the world's first zoologist.
Later Aristotle became the teacher of Alexander the Great, which death marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period. Aristotle's works had great influence, but his friend Theophrastus works to a lesser degree. Just a few generations later than Aristotle, the Library of Alexandria was built by people influenced by his works.
The historical context of the influence of Aristotle's works could mean that people at the time were focused more on animals as life, while not having as much knowledge about plants since Theophrastus was a lesser influential figure.
Building on earlier stories about flood myths, the book of Genesis might have been written in the same period as the Library of Alexandria. This could have introduced an error in the story about Noah, where people forget to say anything about plants, that would have died out under the water. Perhaps they believed the plants survived as seeds floating in the water that would take growth after the flood. Yet, this is in contradiction with how plants work because only plants that gave seeds at just the right moment would have a chance for survival. They lack proper understanding of botany, which species could not have re-evolved from scratch in a such short time.
The story of Noah is characterized by over-emphasis on animals as life forms that needs to be saved. Possibly this is a result of philosophical influence at a stage of intellectual development where they have more access to literature about animals than plants. Furthermore, it supports the hypothesis that Genesis was written in connection with the Library of Alexandria, because it would be typical for people in this environment, who focused too much on animals and ignoring plants, to lack the knowledge of people who actually knew a lot of about plants in other places.
If people only had access to Genesis, then their religion would look quite different at this point in time than later when Exodus was written.
There is not a single healing miracle in Genesis. If you compare this with Moses and Jesus as savior figures, then there is much more emphasis on healing miracles.
While the first external reference to the name Moses comes from Josephus around 93 CE, he never writes about Moses performing any healing miracle.
This shift toward believing in healing miracles might have been a result from the Plague of Galen in the 2nd century, from 165 to 180 CE. It is estimated that around 5-10 million people die during this time. Healing miracles might have been a kind of propaganda of mystery cults to represent the plague as punishment from their deities, while also attracting more followers by people who had lost family members to the plague.
The Gospel of Marcion (Evangelion), that is written around mid 2nd century, contains to some extent healing miracles, but it is less detailed than in other gospels. This means that healing miracles were not as important for people in the mid 2nd century. The detailed healing miracles in the other gospels were probably added in the late 2nd century to appeal to more followers.
While Moses as a historical character might have been invented before Josephus writes about him, the idea of Moses performing miracles could have been added to the text, at the same time Early Christians write the detailed healing miracles of Jesus.
So, in this sense, the reference Jesus makes back to Moses about lifting up the snake, could be interpreted as a reference to contemporary literature.
While these are speculations, it does not remove the fact that Genesis does not contain even a single healing miracle. Yet, Yahweh is killing basically every person in the world except for Noah's close family. This tells a lot about how Yahweh would be perceived in the context of a devastating plague in the 2nd century. If Yahweh is not powerful enough to heal, then it means for many Early Christians that he is not worth worshiping. It also explains why many Early Christians saw Yahweh as an evil deity.
There is no use of magic in the book of Genesis. This is in stark contrast to Early Christian art in catacombs that portrays Moses with a staff and Jesus with a wand performing miracles. The staff and the wand are tools used to channel spiritual energy by concentration to make the miracle work.
The easy explanation is that due to the unpredictable nature of the Plague of Galen, people who survived could be sick for some period of time before they got healthy. So, a physician or Magi that heals the sick could explain a death as the inability to concentrate enough or lack of will of deities. With other words, they push the blame over to the patient or to other people than themselves. In the event that a patient recovers, this was considered a miracle performed by the physician or Magi.
During a devastating plague, there was probably a very profitable source of income to physicians or Magi to pretend that they healed people from the disease.
By contrast, in the book of Genesis, people pray to their deity and the deity responds in some way. With other words, they do not bring the physician or Magi into their house to perform a miracle. People have some intuition that prayers do not always work, so they believe the magic performed might help instead.
Overall, this hypothesis solves three puzzles:
- Why Saturninus of Antioch could make a living as a teacher claiming that Yahweh was evil
- Why Marcion of Sinope is contrasting Jesus with Yahweh and making Jesus a savior figure for a better religion
- Why the book of Exodus is so different in mythology than the book of Genesis
The answer to all these three puzzles could simply that the healing miracles in the book of Exodus are written later or around the same time, as when people write detailed stories about Jesus performing healing miracles. They go together because historically, these are not two shifts toward healing miracles, but one shift of redactions. It would also mean that previously, healing miracles were not as prevalent part of this religious tradition.
Another perspective this makes sense is that if you take away the emphasis on healing miracles, then this religious tradition looks a lot more like an ordinary mystery cult from the ancient world. It also makes it easier to explain the spiritual language in the Ancient Greek texts as overlapping with terminology for drugs and medicine.
So, you have Magi that make their living mostly by selling drugs, toward pretending to perform healing miracles during a devastating plague.
[1] See M. O. Wise, "A Critical Study Of The Temple Scroll From Qumran Cave 11" in the Chronology - "Introduction" page 18 of 310
[2] See C. D. Yonge "The works of Philo Judaeus" v. III in the Chronology