Gregg

I'm not sure where you're getting this from what I said.

No. The mythicist case says that the Jerusalem apostles, Paul, and the "other" apostles Paul mentions, some of whom preach a "different Christ," all got their gospel from scripture and "divine revelation" not from any single human founder figure. There was no human Jesus Christ at the center of it all ... there were many preachers of the celestial Christ.

Paul may have accorded the Jerusalem group special status because, as I said, he and they agreed on many points of doctrine, they received their revelation before him, and they were based in Jerusalem.

spin

Fuck, do you have any reason to believe that I am a MJer? Of course not. And that's not very strange. I'm not.

What makes you think that the author you are talking about is a follower of Paul, when Acts seems to be not so positive about Paul -- especially his beginnings?

Was Luke written in the first century? Or was it written after Marcion?

Besides, I have no problem whatsoever if the writer believed in a real human founder -- though the term "historical" in this context is devoid of meaning. As I have pointed out elsewhere that someone is believed to be something doesn't make it so.

Take that up with MJers. I believe that they believed fundamentally in a figure who they perceived as real as Ebion.

(A probable invention claiming Nero as a past nasty as he had been for the Jews.)

Guess so.


spin

Chili

What I find interesting here is that you all think that nobody knows what they are talking about and now you even think that I do not know what I am talking about.

Chili

But Christianity is an -ity and not an -ism to be founded. Christianity is a state of mind and the -ism is needed to get there.

mountainman

The "christian" Jerusalem Church is similarly an unhistorical entity.
The first historical entity of any relationship to the Jerusalem
Chuch is the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, Israel,
constructed by "The Basilica Man" in the fourth century.

Conjecture based on the literary tradition set aside, these
are the cold hard and historical facts.

aa5874

And there were Christians, according to Irenaeus, who were followers of a non-historical Christ. Cold hard facts.

SLD

OK, but I can't see how preaching a celestial Christ could possibly be reconciled with traditional Jewish thought of the 1st Century. These weren't people who would've brooked much deviancy in their theology. The Celestial Christ is far too much of a greek ideal. The disagreement seems to center around strict observance of the old law. How could such a group also believe in a celestial christ as it would seem to conflict with basic Judaism? Now maybe they could have accepted a divine revelation that they had received direct from God. But that's what I always thought Jesus was - one of the many messianic figures that claimed revelation from God.

SLD

SLD

Are you saying that Paul's references to the Jerusalem church are merely later interpolations?

Obviously there was no building of a church prior to the 4th Century. But I don't think that's what anyone is talking about.

If these are later interpolations, I'd like to hear the arguments as to why you think so.

SLD

Solo

Well, the best argument for the thesis that "celestial Christ" generated no interest in the Jerusalem congregation of James is that its main proponent, Paul, was sent to preach his doctrine to the Gentiles, who in the traditional Judaic view - shall we say politely - were not up to scratch. We do have some idea how the original Nazarenes viewed Yeshu , because after the fall of Jerusalem, the Jewish proto-Christians detached themselves from the developping Gentile orthodox believers, and later were considered by them as Christian heretics.

Jiri

mens_sana

I don't have any problem with the existence of a Jerusalem Church centered around James and Peter, but I don't have to accept the orthodox version. James was at least tolerated within the Temple until his murder in the early 60s and the "Jewish-Christians" seem to have been tolerated in the synagogues until around the time of Yavneh. If I consider that the "Judaizers" tormenting Paul were somehow connected with the "pillars" in Jerusalem and, therefore, with James, then I have a picture of a sect of observant Jews (kashrut and circumcision) who believed that their anointed son of God had lived among them: an unorthodox version of the Jerusalem Church which pretty much disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem — one that could not object to being coopted by the "apostolic successors." :devil1: