gurugeorge

Whatever form their Jesus or Christ took, it's sure that all early Christians thought that their Jesus entity had existed and had done some stuff.

For centuries people believed in a spiritual god-man superhero, phantom, whatever, who had existed and had done some stuff.

To them, to all Christians, no matter whether Gnostic or orthodox, no matter how they conceived him as mostly phantom or mostly human, he was historical.

And part of the reason they thought he was historical was because they thought that there were eyewitness accounts.

It's only with the rise of rationalism and the tightening of intellectual and scholarly standards from the 17th century onwards (e.g. Hume) that the NT came to be understood as no longer good enough as historical evidence to prove the existence of a miracle working god-man.

So rationalist people who wanted to keep their religious cake and eat it thought that maybe although the gospels aren't good enough evidence to prove the existence of a miracle-working superbeing (you'd need better evidnece than the gospels to prove such a thing), there might be enough evidence to prove the existence of an ordinary human being, perhaps a teacher or preacher or revolutionary, whose deeds got magnified and whose story got larded over with miracle-working god-man myth.

But there's a fundamental error in that idea, and the fundamental error of the thing is why mythicists keep bringing up the comparison with things like superhero stories, etc.

It's a basic non-sequitur, a fundamental howler, to think that you can take a fantastic story that looks like its historically set, strip away the supernaturalism, and reveal historical evidence for a human being.

Why? Because all the purported historical evidentiaryness of the story was about the miracle-working god-man (or phantom, or whatever). The purported historical evidentiaryness was not about a plain human being as we understand it.

And once the historical evidentiaryness is stripped from the god-man/phantom/whatever story, it can't be automatically plonked on a hypothesized human being at the root of the story. It's all up in the air from that point.

You have to start from scratch - the texts are evidence of something, for sure, but they could now be evidence of a range of things, from an ordinary human being, to a pure myth; from political machinations to theological wrangling. So the investigation has to start from scratch without presupposing the texts are historical evidence of any actually existent (from our point of view) entity.

It's a tricky thing to put into words, and I don't feel I've even done it justice here, but it seems to me crucial to understand this point about the un-automatic-transferability of what I'm calling "historical evidentiaryness" in a god-man story from a god-man to a mere man.

Iskander

A pre-existent Messiah is a belief held in Judaism as in “ The Holy One, blessed be He, prepares the remedy before the wound”

Jesus was a Jewish man trying to persuade Hashem to bring forth the Messiah. This is also mainstream Judaism

Religious Jews write:

They [Christians] were Jewish Christians, a Jewish sect undistinguishable from other Jews. Eventually the orthodox Jews labelled the Christians as ‘minut’ (heretics ) and expelled them from the synagogues.



The Laws Concerning Moshiach : Chapters 11 & 12 of Hilchos Melachim from the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam.

Footnote 5

I find it easier to believe in the existence of an ordinary man, hoping for the intervention of Hashem in the history of the Israelites than the explanations espoused by so many.


NB. ‘Son of god’, –also common belief in Judaism-
– Divine intervention in Jewish history is also a common belief in Judaism—

mountainman

What books did these gnostic heretics author?

The fact remains that we have only one name and that is Leucius Charinus.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

gurugeorge

OK, but what in the entirety of Christian writings, or outside them, makes you think there was such a man?

It's quite possible there was one, but where is the evidence for him? There's plenty of purported evidence for a mythical being, but where's the evidence for an ordinary human being?

aa5874

Up to c 150 CE Mainstrean Judaism taught that the Messiah had NOT come or that if he exist it is NOT known who he is.

Justin's Dialogue with Trypho CXNo Gnostic or Christian of the Jesus ever actually encountered Jesus Christ.

The Jesus character was ALWAYS BELIEVED to have existed.

Again, according to Tertullian, up to the 3rd century, the Jews claimed Jesus Christ had NOT yet come.

Tertullian's Answer to the Jews 13 Again, it is seen that there was NEVER any actual history of Jesus.

The advent of Jesus Christ was ALWAYS a BELIEF--NEVER history.

It is irrelevant whether so-called Gnostics BELIEVED Jesus Christ did exist.

Iskander

I have already provided evidence in support of the existence of a man in #72
http://www.kesser.org/moshiach/rambam.html
footnote 5



In the 18 benedictions of the Amidah a curse was inserted .

http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/mb/63mb.htm

It is easier for me to believe in the existence of a Jewish religious man who lived his life in an alien society 2000 years ago than in the alternative explanations I have read.

Chili

And just what does it mean that Jesus existed as a spirit or a God? and do you ever see spirits flying around? and God figures up there or down here?

All bullshit man and just is not true.

And for mythicists to say what historicists believed has no bearing on how they see Jesus as mythical only.

The difference here is that myth is real and not Disney world material wherein Jesus is timeless and therefore is real to appear again and again in the mind of the believer to lead him back to Eden again as second Adam now.

For this you only have to grasp that we are divided in our own mind between the TOL and the TOK = right and left brain, with left brain being the TOK where only time-as-such is known that makes our existence there temporal, opposite to which we are eternal in our right brain where 'woman' is at, still today in each and every mind.

And that is not a big leap to make as that is what makes thinking possible with inspiration beyond from what they called our heavenly domain or celestial sea where water-walking is done by intuition only, and so is why and how we are divided between heaven and earth.

Gnostics are known to have conscious access to the TOL (right brain) and from there catch those big fish that Peter hauled to Rome (from the post-resurrection fishing trip if you remember), and these are the insigths the gnostics are known to throw at left brain believers to make them special as Christians with special favors from God.

Eusebius called them heretics seeing only snippets of truth and not as water walkers across the entire celestial waters that are as deep as they are wide, which then is the purpose of crossing the sea to make it known that Atlantis is theirs as the heavens above (wherein so the bottom of this sea is the top of Atlantis).

Constantine kicked them out and that was the right thing to do, to prevent them from working the flock as wolves preying on their suffering souls to lead them astray.

That decision was followed by a thousand year rise of the civilization that crashed again after the wolves were set free and now we are half-way down to the bottom again and start feeling the pain, with surely more to come in the next 500 years, and there finally a small remnant will remain to start all over again.

That so then is how civilizations rise and fall with no more to say, except maybe that the Eastern wing of the Catholic church opted for Restrain instead of Reform (after their 1913 revolt), and now is back in their Silver Age while we here in the West are still bombing away to make clear the path for this idol they see, and is expected to come and save them again = their second coming for which Israel is the place where this appearance will be (and consequently is American made and maintained).

To put my own icing on here let me add that they are waiting for Jesus-the-crucified which is not the Christ they are looking for or the Romans would not have crucified him then the set the son of the father free (under bar-abbas there). Instead, they worship Jesus who is the means to the end only, and so is much like 'rebirth remains' also known as placenta in the real world we know.

So now you know how 'fried' they really are, and will not only deliver the king of kings and nurse him as wolves, but also eat his placenta time and time again for ages to come.

Iskander

See #70 and #76
Justin is irrelevant
The Gnostics are nothing
Tertullian is like Justin

aa5874

Apologetic writers have admitted that the Jews had never acknowledged the advent of Jesus Christ so we know that there was never any Jesus Christ in any historical sources of antiquity.

Jesus Christ was always a BELIEF--never history.

This is also reflected in the writings of Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Actual Jewish writings have been recovered and dated to the 1st century and do NOT show any influence at all by a character called Jesus Christ.

Even the Belief of Jesus was NOT known in the 1st century.

Chili

Obviously not, as Jesus was not Christ and never will be either. This is why he never was addressed as Christ in the Gospels, and in fact nobody knew him as Christ in the word story presented.

The reason for this is to remove history from the account wherein Jesus is presented as the means to the end, for which he must be crucified on the cross that he carried as the [Jewish only] sin nature of Joseph the man. So it was Joseph who was the Jew this event happened to in the story.

The cross was the sum-total of his sins upon which the Jew died to set free the man beneath the Jew, so now as heavenly once again in the end, and there John is identified as Joseph the now fully man and no longer human as such.

To note here is that Christ is universal while Jesus as raised and ascended is Christ the particular at best, and thus only eternal below woman (there called Mary) who is infinite as the seat of wisdom above, and hence is crowned queen above all.