Jeffrey Gibson

For what?

The issue is not whether Gnostics believed Jesus was fully human, but, contra mythicists, whether he had a "bodily" existence and a ministry on earth in the 1st century as opposed to being only a heavenly being who never manifested himself on earth, was not witnessed to by other human beings, but only ever existed or appeared in some celestial realm.


Jeffrey

Toto

Historicists are very firm in believing that docetists believed that Jesus appeared in Galilee and Jerusalem, and would have been seen as a human, but was really a phantom.

Freke and Gandy reject this interpretation, and have adopted docetists as early mythicists. See The Jesus Mysteries (or via: amazon.co.uk), p. 119 ff. Their analysis is based on seeing the gospel stories as mythic and not historical.

The docetists are not around to defend themselves.

Jeffrey Gibson

I'm not interested in what historicists say docetists believed. I'm interested in what such texts as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas tell us Gnostics believed regarding an earthly minisitry of Jesus, and whether there is any gnostic text that says that the Jesus the canonical Gospels speak or, or even the Jesus who is their revealer of truth, was never on earth. To my knowledge, there are none.

Jeffrey

aa5874

The gospels of Thomas and Judas have not been dated to the 1st century by paleography so are really irrelevant to the OP.

We do not even have any reference to the gospels of Judas and Thomas by any known 1st century writer.

An author who claimed Jesus existed in the 2nd-4th century do not represent the teachings of the supposed anonymous "Gnostics" that are speculated to have existed in the 1st century without a shred of actual evidence.

The claim of the existence of Gnostics in the 1st century is in a far worse condition than of Jesus.

Sheshbazzar

For you to NAME a Gnostic of the 1st century.

And NAME a Gnostic that admitted Jesus was completely human.

Something that quite obviously is not about to happen any time soon.

Jeffrey Gibson

Why should it? What you are asking for is completely irrelevant to the point at hand, especially since the issue is not whether Gnostics believed that Jesus was completely human (whatever that means) but appeared within history.


Do you deny that the author/compiler of G Thomas and his followers believed that his revealer had an earthly ministry?

Jeffrey

Chili

Jesus was not human at all, except maybe in Matthew and Mark where he was a brother of Jesus to say that he was at least part human there.

Telic vision is required to be gnostic that itself is and remains partial without the efficient and final cause being near in the same way as land seen from the crows-nest must come near for progression to be made.

This is where the Gnostics are wrong in the -ism they formed to see more of the same where now 'falling in love' is equally wrong if love is radiant without shadows to see in others. The idea here is that we must rise in radiance and not look for light in the shadows we see in others, and do you see a difference here? Hence the -ism is wrong.

Purgation is needed for this wherein teleology is severed that claims to account for the totality of beings that makes gnostic-ism a hindrance in the same way as 'falling in love' is looking for light in others in the shadows we see.

In Aristotles "Parts of Animals" he as much as claims that it is wrong to look for life in dead parts of animals in the same way as it is wrong to look of life in dead trees of a forest.

Similar then would be to look in history for Jesus and do theology to find out what he was all about. This would include bible passages that so become like second hand oats to a horse, which here again is what John 5:39 is about that he called manna as second hand bread in the desert.

Sheshbazzar

You can't answer aa's two questions. It is not irrelevant to the point.
You have no evidence from the 1st century of what 1st century CE Gnostic's may have believed,
or even that there were any identifiable 'Gnostic's' in the first century.
You cannot NAME one. You cannot QUOTE one. You cannot provide any evidence for the existence of one.

You have no evidence that 'The Gospel of Thomas' or 'The Gospel of Judas' even existed in the 1st century CE.
An argument based on their content is crap unless you can provide positive and irrefutable evidence that these texts existed in the 1st century CE.
The argument you are attempting to make has a burden of PROOF.
Assertions and deflections will not serve in lieu of providing evidence supporting your assertions.

aa5874

Again, gThomas cannot be used to determine the teachings of anonymous Gnostics who are presumed to have exsisted in the 1st century without a shred of actual evidence.

The author of gThomas is unknown and is most likely a forgery or falsely attributed to a fictious character.

Secondly, it is not even known if gThomas has any real historical value or if it was composed for propaganda purposes.

If someone today were to fabricate some text under the name of Thomas then it would have no historical value--the very same applies to gThomas.

If Thomas did exist in the 1st century he was long dead when gThomas was invented.

Jeffrey Gibson

This certainly wasn't my point. And I do not see that it was Clive's.

Why is this important when the issue as Clive framed it in the OP, and as I've been framing it, is what 2nd to 4th century Gnostics believed about an earthly ministry of Jesus and whether contemporary mythicists share their beliefs on this point.

There's Simon Magus, and Cerinthus, isn't there?

I never said they did. But are you saying that they are not evidence for later Gnostic beliefs?

It is crap only if the argument is about whether there was gnosticsim in the first century and what first century gnostics believed.

On this, see http://books.google.com/books/about/...d=kMgUAAAAIAAJ


But it's not. The argument is about whether contemporary mythicists and "classical" gnostics share the same belief about an earthly ministry of Jesus. Do they?

Jeffrey

mod note: google book link is to First Century Gnosticism: Its Origin and Motifs (or via: amazon.co.uk) by G. van Groningen