stephan huller

Surely Irenaeus can't mean that the Jews thought Jesus was a God. I can't figure out what the highlighted words mean unless it is that Jesus was thought to be a God by his contemporaries but only afterward was it revealed that he was the messiah of scriptures. What I also found interesting is that this argument is presented as part of a battle within the Church linked to episcopal succession. The fragment against the sect of Artemas (Artemon) reveals the same situation. This material seems to have been written early in the third century.

stephan huller

We can begin to date the passage to late in the reign of Victor (188 - 198 CE) - so perhaps coinciding with the beginning of the reign of Septimius Severus (c. 195 CE). The reason for this is that we know from the Artemas (Aretmon) fragment that the gospels are said to have been corrupted fully by the reign of Zephyrinus (but with an implication that this process began in the reign of Victor). Irenaeus also makes it clear Florinus was a presbyter during the reign of Victor but that eventually he convinced him to throw him out.

I follow Lampe's connection of Irenaeus (AH 4.2) attesting that the anti-Valentinian authors before him had little success with their polemic (non... satis potuerunt contradicere his, qui sunt a Valentino). He judges the reason they had little success was that they were ignorant regarding the esoteric doctrines of the Valentinians (quia ignorabant regulam ipsorum). That corresponds to Victor's ignorance.

I think this means that Book Four was written c. 195 CE.

sotto voce

He didn't intimate that. He merely paraphrased Old and New Testament text— incorrectly, because the humanity of the Messiah, "God, with us," was plain from the Eden allegory, to the Levitical code, to the Prophets. No Jew could have failed to accept that Jesus was his or her Messiah. The miracles, the fulfilment of prophecy, the extraordinary power of his teaching, compelled faith among those familiar with the Scripture and its nuance, even more than Gentiles with little or none of this lore were compelled. But, as predicted/prophesied, not all Jews would accept Jesus as his or her Messiah. In John 6, when they realised what Messiah-hood really involved, most of Jesus' disciples drifted away, leaving just the twelve he had personally selected. It is therefore no surprise that many of those who were never his disciples rejected him.

'"See, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed— and a sword will pass through your own soul— to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed." Lk 2:34-35

And hidden thoughts and motives really were revealed, as we well know.

But then, Irenaeus was egregiously an interloper. Not one of the 'early fathers' (better described as imperial puppets) could have escaped the instant condemnation and contempt of Christians; their evident success betrays the presence of coercive agents within a dying church within the empire. This presence of course was not, is not unexpected:

'But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will surreptitiously introduce destructive heresies.' 2 Pe 2:1

'Certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have stealthily slipped in among you... shepherds who feed only themselves.' Jude 4,12

'I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.' Ac 20:29-30 NIV

It was standard technique for imperial puppets to give impression of loyal following of Scripture, liberally parroting Paul's style, before an attempt to entail obedience upon one's readers, such as this:

There's the fatal error, succession; because, as already seen, Peter, Paul, Jude, and even John, gave sharp warning against placing trust in any leader at all without very careful assessment. Even as they wrote, there were battles with antichrists within the church; and this was before the spies and placemen of the Roman Empire, an invasive potential throughout the empire, had been alerted.

Every congregation had no option but to deal with its own situation autonomously, because no central authority was ever established, and local episcopacy (that was multiple) was locally elected. All that was left them was memory of the apostles, personal or through common lore, and of course their letters, added to other Scripture. By coercion, episcopacy was made monarchical, and eventually, locally absent, being taken over in the pattern of imperial civil administration, and kept on a tight leash by the imperium. This total inversion of the polity of the church was in turn used to totally invert the gospel, permitting the Roman Empire to totally revert to its old paganisms under a Christian banner. It was put to use by totalitarian regimes right into modern times, adopted by the fascist governments of Franco, Salazar and others. Adolf Hitler modelled the Third Reich on neat inversion of the polity of the ekklesia of the Galilean artisan who had stood up in a synagogue to speak freely.

Toto

I think it means that Christ was embodied in or predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, but no one understood the predictions until he actually arrived in the flesh.

But I'm never sure with Irenaeus.

Littlejohn

Hello Toto.

Did you get my message? ..

.

Duvduv

It's impossible to be sure about "Irenaeus" who writes about presbyters, succession of apostles and episcopate backdated into the 2nd century from the emerging church of officialdom of the 4th or 5th centuries.

gurugeorge

That would be no surprise at all.

My (amateur) position has always been that the cult-infighting requirement for a Jesus known personally by the ancestors of one sub-sect of the cult, is the tail that wags the dog of this whole business. ("Your apostle only knew Jesus in vision, our apostles knew him personally, so there!")

Put simply: the idea that Jesus was known personally to anyone (i.e. eyeballed in human form by any of the early people in the movement) is not found in the earlier material.

That claim comes first in the innocent euhemerization of GMark, and then, riffing off that, it appears as a culpable attempt to persuade, by what was initially a sub-sect, but later became "orthodoxy". And then it's read back into the earlier material thereafter.

I think it was all part of a struggle to unify, co-opt and make lucrative, what was originally a more wooly, diverse sort of movement (more like the "New Age" today) - a struggle which met fierce resistance (e.g. Judas gospel) that we just don't have the texts of now.

aa5874

What!!! Please!!! You ought to know how ancient texts are Dated. Your method of dating means that the TF must have been written in the first century because it is found in Antiquities of the Jews and that the Seneca\Paul letters were composed when Nero was Emperor.