stephan huller

The citation of the saying in Tertullian Against Marcion is corrupt. We read in Book One:

The saying - Uxorem proximi tui non concupisces - is corrupt. It is never cited like this anywhere only non concupisces uxorem proximi tui.

aa5874

"Against Marcion" is a massive forgery and was composed hundreds of years after Tertullian was dead.

Any Scholar can examine the Provenance of "Against Marcion" attributed to Tertullian.

1. In "Church History" attributed to Eusebius in the 4th century there is NO mention whatsoever that Tertullian wrote "Against Marcion".

2. In "De Viris Illustribus" attributed to Jerome at the end of the 4th century, there is NO mention that Tertullian wrote "Against Marcion" although Jerome mentioned writings composed by Tertullian.

gurugeorge

Well, yes, I agree - probably because there weren't any.

There never were any disciples in the sense of human beings who eyeballed and spoke with another human being called "Jesus".

There were only ever Apostles of a new concept of the Messiah, some of whom later (post-Diaspora) got mistaken/misremembered/allegorised for/as disciples of that Messiah.

stephan huller

I don't know if that is the reason for the silence. This is what bothers me about this whole mythicist thing. If for instance you are going to study homosexuality, you can't find sodomy disgusting and hope to have an objective study. In the same way if you are going to study the tradition which holds Jesus to be a wholly supernatural divinity, you can't be convinced already that the story is stupid and there is no god.

Why is that? It's not because there is a God. That's up to everyone to figure out on their own. But having strong opinions on something get in the way of seeing nuances in what's possible. I see this demonstrated with religious scholars all the time. The same however is also true IMO with those who hold equally passionate views to the contrary.

Let me say, of course - no let me embolden this - OF COURSE - of course, of course, the first Christians who believed that Jesus was a supernatural who conversed 'friend to friend' with disciples. It would take a Herculean intellectual effort on the part of a chain of scholars - not just one - to deny what is obvious from the literature. What prevents you from seeing this is that you are certain there is no god or that the gods can't walk the face of the earth.

But the Pentatech makes clear that God visited the earth once and conversed 'friend to friend' with Moses. The Qumran literature makes absolutely explicit their expectation for another visitation from God at the end times. Bob Marley and the Wailers - 'Almighty God is a living man.'

The original Christian understanding - even of Paul - was that this visitation occurred. Only people who haven't read the literature could assume otherwise.

aa5874

Again, your claim is completely erroneous. Whether or not the NT Jesus story is fiction the Pauline writer did claim he met the Apostles Peter and James in Jerusalem.

The stories of Paul in Apologetic sources and the Canon claim that the Pauline writer met the Apostles of Jesus in Jerusalem.

The Apostles Peter/Cephas and James were claimed to be disciples of Jesus in the Myth Fables called Gospels.

Galatians 1Galatians 2 You want to ignore additional details of the Apostles in the very Canon to continue with your propaganda.

The Pauline story is "cast in stone". Paul claimed he was a Persecutor of the Church of God and that the Jesus story was preached BEFORE him that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and resurrected on the third day.

1 Cor.15 ONLY NT Scriptures state that Jesus died for our Sins was buried and resurrected on the Third day---ONLY NT Scriptures.

The Jesus story was already composed, known, preached and BELIEVED before Paul was a Persecutor.

Galatians 1:23 KJV

Duvduv

I always think that Galatians overall deserves special attention because of its juxtaposition to Acts even if Galatians too was a composite product of the emerging HJ church. We have to keep in mind that the NT canon were all part of a set, including a set of 4 gospels and a set of the epistles. There is no known information that any Christian group only accepted 3 gospels or 8 epistles, or 6 gospels and 20 epistles, etc.

Thus it would not be hard to see that the authors of the canon felt that all texts supplemented one another.

Ironically the Justin writer who did not name any specific four gospels as part of a set or any Pauline epistles is said to have had a "pupil" named Tatian (who became a "heretic" despite his devotion to his mentor Justin) who somehow and INEXPLICABLY DID know of Pauline epistles, and who sought to merge the canonical four epistles (and no others) that his mentor knew nothing about. This is even more peculiar than the fact of the mysterious Irenaeus knew of 4 gospels and epistles (which he did not think were necessary to harmonize).

Now if all this confusing contextual picture of the attributes of these people doesn't call into question the traditional chronology of the emergence of the church in the 1st or 2nd centuries, I don't know what would.......
Heck, commentaries and homilies on the epistles didn't even show up according to the Church itself until the time of John Chrysostom. Where were they all before that?

"Justin" always gets such short shrift among subsequent apologists, who for all his importance in appealing on behalf of saving his brethren and being a major Christian writer, is mostly mentioned only in passing.

Chili

Peter was faith and Thomas was doubt to make these twins in faith and doubt. And so with no doubt left Thomas will be no more.

James was wrong = hell as seen from above and so will always be Paul's opposite in victory and defeat.

Peter was right and after three years of purgation the apostles were taken-up to become one, and that is why Paul saw none of them now.

Is shows progression and that is why that line is there, that in persecuting his own religion its yield will be assumed into heaven, which is just opposite to you inisting that Paul was a persecutor without end. I see movement here while you do not.

Be reminded that transition is to take only 42 months and the more is understood the less discipleship will remain till finally this man, as animal man, will have 10 horns studded with diadems and 7 virtues remain victorious to him, and those blaphemeous words are the commandments once carved on his soul as if in stone. Read Rev.14:1 on this and then consider that James was the Second beast starting at 11 who ends up with the 666 in verse 18 corresponding to John 6:66, while the other number is John 6.56 that Paul was about.

What he is saying that piece of mind requires the apostles to become fully one so that omniscinece can be the real-ity.

You miss the movement and the song and the dance of the Gospels and keep humping the same verses with no difference to be observed instead critiqued, as if you are riding a wooden horse all by yourself.

Please understand that apostles were ousia's (insights) that make up the full meal in parousia, and so Thomas was like the appetizer to be gone already before the meal started. The other 10 are next with Peter being last, as he will be like a feather in his hat to validate the greatest religion the world has ever known.

Paul is telling you something and is not asking you for your advice.Jesus died for the sins of his world and told us to follow him and do the same for the sins of our world. He never said: worship me, like the second beast in Revelation 14:12 will, and promote with urgency to worship the first beast who's wounds have been healed and now the stigmate wears as a crown. As also John 20:21 put this loud and clear:

"AS the father has send me [in likeness of, while showing his wounds],
so I send you."

. . . which is just opposite to evangelicals ripsnorting away to catch as catch can, which, indeed, is the protestants most favorite sport, and claim valid support right back to John 6:66, while there identified on the anathema side of the real Church in John 6:56.

gurugeorge

Yes but bear in mind the context that mythicism is working in. It's a context where you have a bunch of ancient texts and a modern-day religion that somehow started with them. Those texts have a central figure. Now one camp of interpreters of this think that the central figure, howsoever larded over with mythology and tendentious theological wrangling (as he evidently is), is based in some way on a real human being. One of the things that makes this hypothesis plausible is that it looks, at first glance, like there was some sort of teacher-disciple relationship going on between the cult deity and some of the early Christians. That's the sort of thing that human beings do, and if there were something in Paul that gave the game away that the early Christians he met and spoke about had had some sort of personal, human, face-to-face relationship with the cult deity while he was on earth, then mythicists would have a much harder row to hoe.

But that seems to be what's missing in Paul.

Yes, of course, there are many myths and legends of gods interacting with people, and sometimes clothed in human form. But to show that such a legend has its basis in a real human being, you need something that resembles quotidian interaction. But that seems to be what's missing in Paul.

Now if it were just missing, that could be for many reasons, but the notable thing is that it's missing in amongst a bunch of very positive evidence that the interaction with the cult deity was through scripture and vision (whether or not he was regarded as purely celestial, or some human/angelic or whatevef mix).

The "silence" could mean anything on its own, but when it's in a context of positive evidence for a type of interaction that is non-human, then although it's not a clincher, it strongly suggests that the entity was visionary from the get-go, and was never conceived, till later (till GMark) of having actually been in personal fleshy contact with the earliest Christians.

Yes, He may have had a fleshy aspect in their myth, but there's just no good evidence of "Him" ever having been in fleshy contact with any of them, and that's what the historicist case sorely needs. All the contact we have, the positive evidence of contact we have, is simply spiritual (mystical, visionary, or as we moderns would say, hallucinatory - perhaps due to spiritual exercises or practices or driving themselves mad through poring over Scripture, or whatever).

It's in this context that the more plausible kinds of mythicism operate, in the failure of there to be any positive evidence for a human being, but the success of there being positive evidence for a hallucination.

So then, where does that take us? That's the mythicist's challenge: to seek a plausible, evidence-supported way in which an originally purely spiritual, visionary, mystical entity came to have such a firm biography that has this illusion of being historically evidential of a human being.

When I originally came across Earl I thought that he didn't actually need to go that far into the "celestial being" thing. There's no reason to posit the "crucified in heaven" thing. However, as time has gone on, I've begun to think that the Middle Platonic idea is actually pretty good. But it was never absolutely necessary for a mythicist argument, because yes, part of the legend could easily have been that he sojourned on earth in fleshly form. But as it happens, the more this looks like a sort of then-contemporary "New Age" movement, the more it looks like, yes, indeed, perhaps there wasn't even that element of being here on earth at all, at the very beginning, but that it was initially conceived as a drama played out in heaven that affected things on earth (microcosm-macrocosm relationship, magic, etc.).

Toto

What is the basis for this claim? Marcion' Apostolicon is reputed to have had one gospel and to lack the Pastorals. Another sect, that of Apelles, was reputed to only accept just one of Paul's letters, 1 Corinthians IIRC. The Ebionites only used the gospel to the Hebrews and rejected Paul. Opinions also varied on the epistle ascribed to James, which Luther wanted to dump from the canon.

aa5874

Again, you promote propaganda. You don't really know what you are talking about

The very writings attributed to Justin state clearly that the MEMOIRS of the Apostles were read in the Churches on Sundays. See First Apology.

Justin's First Apology The Christian groups in the time of Justin did NOT have 4 Gospels and a Set of Epistles.

The very very writings attributed to Irenaeus claimed the Ebionites used ONLY the Gospel of Matthew.

Irenaeus' Against Heresies 3The Christian group called the Ebionites did NOT have four Gospels and a Set of Epistles according to "Against Heresies".