Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 11-05-2012, 12:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

The road, the search for early christian origins, leads to Philo....

The Josephan writer simply gilded the lily...

Philo?? Philo wrote Nothing about Jesus or Jesus Christ or that the Jews worshiped a man as a God or a Jesus story or a Jesus cult, or Paul.

Philo had nothing whatsoever to with a Jesus cult or story in the 1st century.

Examine Philo's On Embassy to Gaius.

Quote:

Your loyal and excellent fellow citizens, the only nation of men upon the whole face of the earth by whom Gaius is not esteemed to be a god, appear now to be even desiring to plot my death in their obstinate disobedience, for when I commanded my statue in the character of Jupiter to be erected in their temple, they raised the whole of their people, and quitted the city and the whole country in a body, under pretence of addressing a petition to me......

Duke Leto · 11-05-2012, 12:46 AM

Here's a philological quandary for you Stephan:

Somewhere, in the boundless volume of school and university essays written since the beginning of Western Academia, some person, somewhere, must have written the single sentence:

"Early Christianity was a religion."

That may imply that the author was pretty stupid, but the sentence's content itself is neither stupid nor wrong.

And your categorical statement demands that everything that has ever been written about Early Christianity is stupid, including everything that has been written when examined on a sentence by sentence basis.

You're also forbidding the possibility that your Marcion of choice wrote anything that wasn't stupid if it was about his own religion,

Huon · 11-05-2012, 01:49 AM

Everything that has ever been written about Adam [the guy of the OT!] and Eve being historical persons is stupid.

Everything that has ever been written about Noah and the Flood is stupid.

Everything that has ever been written about Moses being a historical man swimming across the Red Sea without getting a gold medal at the Olympic Games is stupid.

Everything that has ever been written about Joshua destroying Jericho is not only stupid but horrible. It was a good example for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, among many other destructions.

Iskander · 11-05-2012, 02:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

For those who haven't figured out my exuberance. At the core of early Christianity was a doctrine called redemption. Irenaeus and others describe it as essentially having humanity - under the power of Satan - being purchased by Christ. Everyone knows that the Marcionites had a version of 'being purchased' from the Jewish god by Christ but it didn't make sense. Now we can see that the doctrine of 'switching gods' is already in Judaism. This is important because it shows that the idea of Jesus being a wholly divine figure is a viable theological position. He was called Chrestos (even in Philo). If someone like Philo already had the idea of switching gods and Clement took over that doctrine the Marcionite 'redemption' is now grounded in something other than scholarly bigotry. We can begin to reconstruct a wholly mythical Christianity developed directly from contemporary Judaism. The resultant understanding won't be Acharya S but it will be credible. Anyone can carry this out.

The next question is why did the 'good God' have to die on the Cross? My guess is that this is a reference to the solution:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

The question is how did the Good God unite with the Lord on the Cross?

Many people believe that death is only the beginning of a new life.

Religions are built on the ‘knowledge’ of what afterlife is and how it relates to the brief transitional phase that began on this earth. Those who claim to have the power to make men and women happy or unhappy in the “kingdom of the dead “are malignant vermin.

Clivedurdle · 11-05-2012, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Enfield, Connecticut
July 8, 1741
Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God's visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God's wonderful works towards them, remained (as vers 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. -- The expression I have chosen for my text, their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction coming upon them, being represented by their foot sliding.

The same is expressed, Psalm 73:18. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction."

It implies, that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction.

As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning: Which is also expressed in Psalm 73:18,19. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction: How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!"

Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.
That the reason why they are not fallen already and do not fall now is only that God's appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slippery declining ground, on the edge of a pit, he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.

The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. -- "There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." -- By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment. -- The truth of this observation may appear by the following consideration.

There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. -- He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defence from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God's enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by: thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?

They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" Luke 13:7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back.

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell. John 3:18. "He that believeth not is condemned already." So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is, John 8:23. "Ye are from beneath:" And thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God's word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law assign to him....

You have very strong historical support for your thinking.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.sinners.html

maryhelena · 11-05-2012, 07:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

My point would be - are the gospels in our possessions developments from a lost historical narrative or a mythological/theological narrative, one which supported the redemption myth? I say the latter.

------------------

Quote:

....if I am right, against Doherty and Price – it is not all mythical. The essential point, as I see it, is that the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus’s historicity, refers to a personage who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.”

Can we trust the New Testament?: Thoughts on the reliability of Early Christian Testimony: G.A.Wells (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Going the mystical route for early Christian origins is no better than going the JC historicist route. There is no choice here - its both routes that have to be traveled. History and philosophy. Physical reality and ideas. Like love and marriage - they go together like a horse and carriage.....

We don't just live in our heads - we live on terra-firma. And if there is any relevance at all in the gospel JC story - that relevance relates to how we live in our physical environment. I often have thought - on a very basic level - that the gospel JC story, as we have it today, is the in your face response to a purely mystical interpretation of Christianity.

However grand the intellectual philosophizing - it's our ordinary needs; food in the stomach, warm shoes on the feet, a bed to rest ones head, a roof to call ones own - that have to be accommodated. We need to think - and we need to eat. No choice at all. And if Christianity has any relevance for how we should live our lives - then it will not be asking us to choice between our mind and our belly. It will not be asking us to choose between our ideas and our physical realities.

TedM · 11-05-2012, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Here is proof what early Christians believed about Jesus, that he was a god, that he was a merciful being, that he appeared in the Pentateuch, that the Marcionites believed this and Clement of Alexandria too. The answer to everything:

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...ndria-was.html

I'm not seeing anything I would call 'proof'. Is this still in development?

A few questions:

1. Do you need to establish that Philo believed that there were two Gods like Marcionites believed, or is this unnecessary? I don't see anything in your Philo quotes that indicates he thought Lord and God were two different beings..Rather two powers within the same being.

2. If Clement is telling secrets about Jesus as having purchased believers from the judicial God to the beneficial God, why be secretive?

3. If that is what Clement was saying, how does this take away from the Christian origins of Jesus, as the long anticipated Messiah who would bring salvation? Why does this in any way change the Messiah from being a human to a non-human? There is still the matter of WHEN and HOW he made this purchase, right?

4. What does it matter if some thought the salvation was from judgement from the judging God and others thought the salvation was from 'sins' or Satan? I don't really see the distinction you are making since the judging God is judging those who were under Satan's rule. Can't one --including a Christian-- see the purchasing of salvation as a purchase both from Satan's ownership as well as God's judgement?

Just trying to get a handle on your perspective here. Thanks, Ted

stephan huller · 11-05-2012, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Is this still in development?

Ted, My thought will be 'in development' until the day I die. But this is a decisive proof for those who understand it. Marcion is a beachhead as it were in antiquity. By understanding that one tradition which stands very close to the earliest Roman Church (hence the celibate priesthood undoubtedly). Figure out Marcionitism, figure out 'the early Church.'

Let's start from the beginning. The 'mythicism' that has been popularized until now relies too heavily on pagan conceptions. Sure there is some evidence of such appropriations but it comes too late to explain the appeal of Christianity.

Second of all mythicism tends to undervalue the importance of Judaism. The reason for this is that the Jewish tradition demands an apprenticeship on the part of those wishing to come near. You can't understand the Pentateuch in a scatterbrained manner. It is a system with a clear message. The problem is figuring it out and that demands step by step instruction starting with the ten commandments.

The way that things work so far is that you have basically two models for the origins of Christianity:

1. Christianity is dependent on 'Judaism' and 'Judaism' is defined as an expectation in the future advent of the messiah
2. Christianity is a 'lie' developed from pagan myths

What I have accomplished over the last twenty years is reached a point where I can offer up Marcionitism, perhaps the earliest organized form of Christianity as actually being a third way which has nothing to do with the artificial contrivances of (1) and (2).

Let's start from the beginning (or at least the pathway that I arrived at the truth). Lactantius references those who call Jesus Chrestos rather than Christ and says that they did so because of Aquila's translation of the Bible. He points to Aquila's refusal to translate 'mashiach' as christos. Symmachus does and so does Theodotion but as I noted Aquila and the LXX do not.

If the Marcionite refusal to call Jesus 'Christ' derives from the Jewish scriptures. The next stage in the process is to wonder whether their identification of his as Chrestos had a similar root (remember it is not the same thing to argue for Chrestos via the Scriptures as it is the rejection of Christos). The problem is that most scholars live in this artificial world where there is this thing called 'Judaism' that existed forever.

Steve Mason notes that the very term 'Judaism' is more associated with the second century than the first (the exceptions are New Testament texts which can be argued to have been written or corrected in the era). The idea that there was this thing called 'Judaism' which expected the future advent of the messiah is a pipe dream. The religion of Moses cannot by its nature be limited in this manner to a ethnic culture.

The term shomrim (= Samaritans) is a general term meaning 'keepers' 'guardians' and is used in modern Hebrew speaking Jews in New York to mean 'guards' of a neighborhood. The point is that originally the religion of Moses was non-specific to an ethnos. It was open to everyone who wanted to join. The Samaritans and many other traditions translate all references to ger in the Pentateuch as 'proselyte' so the presence of outsiders was understood to exist from the beginning.

What I am arguing here is that the Bar Kochba revolt changed the religion of Moses. Celsus demonstrates that in the middle of the second century a monolithic designation of 'Judaism' (meaning belief the specifically Jewish ethnos's belief in the future advent of the messiah) and 'Christianity' (the specifically Gentile belief that the messiah had already come in the form of Jesus Christ) was established. I think this was by design and judging from the Latin form beneath the term Christianos was set by Imperial policy in the Antonine administration as a reactionary policy related to the Bar Kochba revolt.

In effect then after the messiah (bar Kochba) had failed and the kingdom of God was lost the administration of Antoninus Pius only allowed for two positions, two 'orthodoxies' - both of which (a) denied the legitimacy of the recent revolt and (b) the original Christian faith associated with 'Marcion.' The potential implication of this 'killing of two birds with one stone' is that Marcionitism and the Jewish messianic movement associated with bar Kochba were somehow related but I can't prove that.

Nevertheless what we do see emerging from this analysis is that the sanctioned forms of religious expression - 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' - are very tightly defined. This is a far cry from what we know to be true up until the bar Kochba revolt. There were dozens of sects. There were sectarian believers in Jesus who were in turn dependent on Jewish sects which by passed the artificial formulation established in the second century with respect to monolithic conceptions of 'Judaism' (the messiah will come) and 'Christianity' (the messiah already came in Jesus).

When we read for instance that the Marcionites (a) rejected applying the term Christ to Jesus and (b) offer up the divine title of 'the good god' instead this was a violation of the established order. While there is no specific identification that Roman law forbade people from specifically believing in Jesus Chrestos, Celsus's work makes explicit allusions to 'Christianity,' Christianity being a voluntary association and a secret voluntary association punishable by death according to the laws of the Roman state. Marcionitism is explicitly referenced throughout according to Origen. It would seem to be the forbidden, secret voluntary association Celsus has in mind. Celsus also seems to offer an olive branch to the 'great Church' which accepted the orthodox doctrines of 'Judaism' encouraged by the Roman state such as we see reflected in texts like Acts etc.

What I am suggesting then is that Marcionitism clearly fits the bill as the Hadrianic (and hence pre-Antonine) Christian faith which developed from what was now a heretical form of Judaism (just as Marcionitism later became a heretical form of Christianity). The Marcionites began with Philo's (and other Jewish sects) belief that god was unknowable but that his two 'hands' the Lord and God (= the just god and the kind god) were stages in the advancement to knowing him.

The initiate (= proselyte) began fearing God and living only in faith. Then, taking cue from Genesis 28:21 and Jacob's vision of the heavenly ladder at Bethel the initiate could move from fearing the Lord to loving and being loved by the kind God. Christianity developed from identifying the apostle's heavenly ascent (2 Corinthians 12) as the fulfillment of the vision of Jacob. Yet necessarily they called this 'the redemption' where they saw themselves as being 'purchased' or 'redeemed' from the just Lord to the kind Jesus.

Once again, the point here is not that this 'disproves' the existence of Jesus but it would seem that (a) because this redemption framework is older than the gospel and (b) that it continues to be expressed in third, fourth, fifth century Church Fathers as a core concept with in the faith it is hard to believe that this ancient Jewish concept of being adopted by the kind God simply supplemented the historical Jesus narrative of the gospel. The crucifixion is interpreted as early as the apostle as the 'redemption' within this ancient expectation associated with Jacob (who in Jewish literature becomes God at Bethel i.e. he sits on top of the heavenly ladder). As I said to outhouse, it is impossible to argue that the gospel did not point to this 'redemption' myth. The redemption myth is older than Christianity. As such it stands to reason that the gospel was created for the redemption (the passing from one hand to another http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...anity-and.html) rather than the other way around. History developed from the needs of myth (i.e. to re-present the traditional conception of 'redemption' in a narrative) rather than myth from history.

Sheshbazzar · 11-05-2012, 09:50 AM

My opinion is a better statement would be;

Everything that Has Ever Been Written About Early Christianity is False.

because it is.

outhouse · 11-05-2012, 09:56 AM

mistakes I believe your making Stephan

are you not purposely narrowing judaism to a very limited view for the first century.

judaism was wide and varied in the first century with beliefs ranging all over the board.

and the same exact statement goes for christianity.

that and using later sources like you love to do, are to far removed from the beginning of the movement, to have anything to do with the beginning of the movement.

FACT, the movement evolved

and you cant use homo erectus to explain any details of robust australopiths

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11-05-2012, 12:46 AM	#22
Duke Leto Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 3,387	Here's a philological quandary for you Stephan: Somewhere, in the boundless volume of school and university essays written since the beginning of Western Academia, some person, somewhere, must have written the single sentence: "Early Christianity was a religion." That may imply that the author was pretty stupid, but the sentence's content itself is neither stupid nor wrong. And your categorical statement demands that everything that has ever been written about Early Christianity is stupid, including everything that has been written when examined on a sentence by sentence basis. You're also forbidding the possibility that your Marcion of choice wrote anything that wasn't stupid if it was about his own religion,

11-05-2012, 01:49 AM	#23
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	Everything that has ever been written about Adam [the guy of the OT!] and Eve being historical persons is stupid. Everything that has ever been written about Noah and the Flood is stupid. Everything that has ever been written about Moses being a historical man swimming across the Red Sea without getting a gold medal at the Olympic Games is stupid. Everything that has ever been written about Joshua destroying Jericho is not only stupid but horrible. It was a good example for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, among many other destructions.

11-05-2012, 09:50 AM	#29
Sheshbazzar Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: On the path of knowledge Posts: 8,889	My opinion is a better statement would be; Everything that Has Ever Been Written About Early Christianity is False. because it is.

11-05-2012, 09:56 AM	#30
outhouse Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Auburn ca Posts: 4,269	mistakes I believe your making Stephan are you not purposely narrowing judaism to a very limited view for the first century. judaism was wide and varied in the first century with beliefs ranging all over the board. and the same exact statement goes for christianity. that and using later sources like you love to do, are to far removed from the beginning of the movement, to have anything to do with the beginning of the movement. FACT, the movement evolved and you cant use homo erectus to explain any details of robust australopiths

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