Juststeve

Toto:

You overstate your case when you say modern literary analysis has shown that the gospels are based on the Septuagint. That suggests that modern scholars think Jesus a fictional character created with the Septuagint as inspiration. Very few modern scholars believe that.

What I think can be fairly said is that the Gospel writers interpreted Jesus in light of the Septuagint, and I would stipulate embellished the tale by borrowing from the Septuagint. That is a far cry from suggesting that Jesus was from the start a fictional character.

Steve

Toto

You are reading that claim into what I wrote. Perhaps I should have said just that modern literary analysis has shown that all of the elements in the gospels can be traced to the Septuagint. The scholars who have presented this case do not conclude from it that Jesus was originally a fictional character.

If by embellishment, you mean create an entire story...

But I agree that this doesn't show that Jesus was a fictional character. Fiction has been written about real historical characters - even complete fiction, not embellished legends. So showing that the gospels are not historical does not show that Jesus was not historical, although it does impact the evaluation of the evidence.

But we've had this discussion before, and it is a digression from the OP.

aa5874

You spread propaganda and BS.

What sources of antiquity support your baseless opinion about Gospel writers?

Please state who wrote a single Gospel and state the date of authorship?

Steve, You have NOTHING. You have NO SOURCES.

You PRESUME your imagination is evidence of the past.

Away with such nonsense.

When did the author of gMatthew claim Jesus was the Child of a Ghost?

When did the author of gMark claim Jesus TRANSFIGURED?

When did "Paul" worship a man as a God?

Steve, stop wasting time with your imagination.

Your imagination is NOT evidence of the past.

Iskander

Juststeve spreads BS?

Aa5874 spreads CS ><

archibald

Aw. I've just come back to my thread. Last time I looked in, there was just your reply, and I thought it was enticing and pithy, not least because I didn't understand it.

archibald

Great. But.....I would really like some more evidence.

As TedM says, what's the basis for thinking there was a cover up? 'What the F you talking about? Would have been at least as easily said as for any other heresy?

Also, if there ever was such a heresy , it's not as if it was long-lived. Why cover over a defeated heresy?

And no one outside the religion seemed to bring it up either. One might think the other Jewish factions might have aired it. Their works wouldn't have been tampered with, surely? Argument from absence, I know.

mountainman

This statement is utterly misleading without qualifications.

For a start the only information about heresies from before Nicaea is furnished by the master heresiologist Eusebius, who likens these heretics to wolves destroyng the faithful flock. Eusebius states that he is going to name these heretics, but fails to do so.

Heretics existed at Nicaea and after ever since. Secondly, starting with Arius of Alexandria in the epoch surrounding the Council of Nicaea, and throughout the following many centuries we are continually informed (again by the orthodox christian heresiologists) about various groups of heretics.

The statement therefore should be amended to something like this ....

We only know about heresies and heretics (before and after Nicaea) largely through the writings of their enemies, the orthodox canon-following heresiologists. Relatively recent manuscript and archaeological discoveries of the writings of the heretics have redressed this balance.

archibald

Personally, I think that passage is not clear. It appears to have been taken as a criticism of docetics, for thinking he came, but not in the flesh.

Regarding aa5874's 'touchstone' argument, no, I really honestly don't think it is any good. Paul may have seen a ghost, but as far as i have yet read, the docetics 'incarnation' was altogether more like an avatar. IOW, looked convincingly like an actual person. Not even sure they thought he couldn't interact, like touching and being touched? How would you nail up a ghost? I stand to be corrected, of course, and this is one reason for starting the thread, to ask, 'what did docetics (or indeed gnostics) actually believe, as far as we can tell?

mountainman

Read the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" and the Nag Hammadi Codices. Whatever these heretics believed, we can be reasonably sure that the heresiologists utterly misrepresented their positions.

The worst case scenario is that a not insignificent percentage of the people believed Jesus was a fictional fraudulent pious fiction character who had first appeared in the Constantine Bible (which went empire-wide, and which advertised a small and insignificent cult - if it existed at all). At this (late 4th century) time only were the future heretics first suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to an instantly high profile figure of a new Greek codex god called Jesus.

When the canon following victors of the conflict wrote their history, they simply forgot to menton there were any controversies over the historicity of Jesus, other than those small minor theological disputes with the heretics such as Arius of Alexandria. Isn't it entirely natural that the whole Roman Empire instantly believed in the historical Jesus after the Council of Nicaea because of the imperial advertising policies (which included the public execution of dissidents and pagan head priests)?

ARIUS: Heresy & Tradition by Rowan Williams


My wager is that Arius was in historical reality a Platonist theologian and not a christian bishop of any variety at all. The victors simly rewrote the history of Arius of Alexandria's role in the reception of the "Christian Canonical Books". Constantine had already pronounced "damnatio memoriae" on the books, the name and the living political memory of that "Porphyrian" Arius.

Either way, there is little doubt that Arius of Alexandria is considered the greatest of all Christian heretics. Any thread about heresies needs to examine Arius, and his evidence.

judge

Toto, as you know there is no evidence, for any "gnostic mythicists".

Why should we belive in them if there is no evidence for them?