Horatio Parker

Even if one could, it proves nothing. Jesus is appearing to people on earth even now. Do those appearances qualify as an "earthly ministry" or "history"? I suspect a Gnostic would say "yes".

Because first century Gnostics may have believed that the Gospels portrayed historical spiritual events, it doesn't necessarily follow that Jesus' appearances are limited to those stories.

Gnostics (correctly IMO) see spirituality as an internal, not external process.

Sheshbazzar

But it was relevant to my point in response to aa, that we would see Hell freeze over before we would ever get the answers to those two questions from you.

So what do you want, a vote on the matter from each participant and reader of this thread?

My answer to your question is; It depends.

Because all mythicists most certainly DO NOT share the same views and beliefs regarding 'Jesus'.

A mythicist myself, I do not believe there ever was any 'Jesus' of Nazareth, nor any actual person upon whom this mythology was built, so there in my view, never was any such 'ministry', the Gospels are religious mythology. No way that my mythicisim is in any way similar to that of "classical gnostics".

There are other mythicists in this forum who are insistent that the 'Jesus' NT figure is a hyped up account of a real 1st century Galilean apocalyptic preacher, so they do share the gnostic concept that there once was a 'Jesus' of Nazareth' traipsing around Galilee in the first century CE.

So yes, I accept that Gonostic's believed that 'Jesus' was real historical figure, _if a bit weird in his physical composition.

But Gonostic belief has no bearing upon whether there ever was a 'Jesus' of Nazareth.

Chili

I venture to say that Jesus was not heard of in the first century to let skeletons die. The gospels are a fabrication from beginning to end, which had to be true if the entire event is beyond theology for which there is no convention in place with no words to describe the actual event.

It is about metamorphosis wherein the old 'caterpillar' is our human nature that must be left behind, totally with no strings attached so the new creation can soar like an eagle with wings. For this a complete severance and departure is needed from the old to the new that is beyond reason pertaining only to the naked animal man = prior to convention including social mores, tradition and all.

And what is the big deal about being gnostic anyway if it emerges from the great demiurge that demands consolidation to remove 'differentia' to reach the final cause in the end.

In Christendom this would be the gift of discernment wherein the shepherds must look in to see and understand. Their disarray (demiurge of which history is one of them to be sure), is why they were taking turns herding sheep on a midwinter night to say that it was and act of love for life itself with lyric vision as the summation of kinetic visions, there now with 12 shepherds abroad that created the chaos to search for the true light that illuminated each one of them.

Note here that he is re-doing himself that Plato called going from glow to glow looking for yet another glow that illuminated them and there finds himself now with the glow upon him. I.e. the son that we call Christ here today -- and not Jesus to note, who was just there to die on our behalf as the second Adam in us and so now how can there be history in him?

Chili

What Gnostics 'believe' is already a contradiction in terms.

Stringbean

http://cryskernan.tripod.com/gnostic_jesus.htm

It would seem that they believed that Jesus and Christ were not the same thing and yes I am aware that Christ is a title and not a name. Also, see below:

http://cryskernan.tripod.com/gnostic_jesus.htm

Also being a Mythicist myself I do not see a connection. Further more mythicism is not even that old 18th and 19th Century. Now thats not to say that people then did not think he was a myth it's just saying that it was brought to light more during those times.

Also see this:

http://www.netplaces.com/gnostic-gos...gnosticism.htm

Chili

That is a beautiful line here, thank you, to say that James went back to Galilee to what I would call 'suffer some' more, and that equals hell on earth made known as its own opposite to heaven on earth, as distinctly different from Luke and from John.

His followers were those so called Christian who were baptized by [camelhair] coat John 'Billy Graham style,' we can say, as in 'come one and come all and come as you are, I have some [second hand] hoppers for you if you confess your sins first. This, of course is just opposite to Romans 10:10 where "faith in the heart leads to justification and confession from the lips to salvation," if you can see the difference here.

So as opposite received so will their destiny be opposite while fueled by the same fire burning within, except that these now 'seers' as gnostic will never reach the end of their journey that Paul called 'the race.'

Of course gnostic here is by degree depending on "the strength of the wine of Gods wrath poured into the cup of his anger," which never is ours to say but is for them to endure until they die nonetheless, in that as opposite to heaven it will also be eternal as fed from the same source, that Plato called syn-ousia as seer while in the absence of syzen as being one with the matter itself (pragma).

Here is his line on this, Seventh Epistle, 341C:

"Surely it is by no means verbal, as other modes of learning are. It rather emerges in the soul on a sudden from much emergent dwelling (as syn-ousia here) and in living with the matter itself as syzen (with the pragma now), as does something set alight by a leaping fire and forthwith nourishing itself.

The answer here is very simple: "Bar-abbas' is set free prior to crucifixion" so that only the human condition is crucified and not the man that Pilate was looking at. I.e. "We have our law and by that law he must die" that Pilate could not see as not a Jew. To see this clear go to Aristotle's "Categories" where the Being is set apart from its conditions wherein so now the human condition is no different than having red hair or being either male or female or somewhere in between.

And there was no pain and suffering that pertains only to human condition to be crucified here. Pleasure and pain is an illusion given to us in absence of the true light while banned from Eden to make sense perception our guide to know what is good and bad for us while we are there.

gurugeorge

There's confusion going on here.

Bear in mind that this whole argument has its origin in the demythologisation of the Jesus story in the 19th century, and the "quest for a historical Jesus".

It's obvious that the Jesus people believed in for centuries was a myth - a superhero god-man, more or less. It's a myth at face value, always has been. The HJ problem arises from this: was there a human being at the root of the myth, or is it myth all the way down?

Obviously, regardless of whether it's one or the other, or whether he was considered a phantom or whether his human aspect was to the fore, contemporary people believed the entity Jesus was real and had historical impact (from their point of view). That's not in dispute, hence the oddness of your question (and the curious bathos of its triumphalism).

Mythicism, or more broadly, as spin has helpfully suggested, "ahistoricism", is just the denial of the "quest" concept, it's saying that even if you strip the supernaturalism from the story, that won't help you find a human being called "Jesus" at the root of the myth, it's just myth, myth, myth and myth, with a side-helping of myth.

aa5874

Mythicism does not deny at all that there is a Quest.

HJers are physically on a Quest for their Jesus for hundreds of years.

The very fact the HJers are on a Quest for so long must mean that they cannot and probably never will be able to IDENTIFY their Jesus.

They are now learning that the core of Jesus was myth, myth, myth.

The more myth you peel away the more myth you find.

Sheshbazzar

Yeah, but many HJers are still trying real hard to fashion a HJ, by simply excluding any parts of the myth that don't jive with their personal HJ theories, be it the gentle rabbi, or the raging anti-Roman tax protester revolutionary.

Chili

Myth is real only if it is ahistorical, to say that is timeless in time for us to encounter as real.

This is not to say that we must, but is there not a whole lot more to religion than Jesus per se? And so the proper question is: "what I so special about Jesus that the whole world should bow for him now?" And is that not because we/those who are searching for him do not quite believe that he was real?

That sounds a bit crazy to me.