Chili

But Christians are solitary individuals and can't be wrong. It is when they look for a reason to flock that they are wrong.

Julian

For a Valentinian exegesis/commentary I can recommend The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters by Elaine H. Pagels (or via: amazon.co.uk) for a very interesting look at how a gnostic mind works when interpreting biblical texts.

Julian

Chris Weimer

Actually, that was probably the case. But that doesn't negate the church fathers outright, does it?

hatsoff

This conclusion seems likely given the unanimous testimony of the church fathers that Jesus and his first disciples were Jewish. According to the timeline given by both canonical Acts and apocryphal traditions, Paul came at least a decade later, and disputed with established Christian leaders concerning the role of Judaism in Jesus' teachings. He was the first that we know of who wrote Christian literature, and everything else seems to have followed from his initial framework. Even the Gnostics were heavily influenced by him.

But of course we can never know for sure if any of that is true. For all we know, Jesus may have never existed!

mountainman

Slowly, very slowly, it will gradually dawn on the collective
mind of mankind, that there is a very reasonable possibility that
Jesus was fabricated by the same wicked men who fabricated:

* the unanimous testimony of the church fathers
* and of the first Galilaean disciples
* the timeline given by canonical Acts
* the timeline given by apocryphal traditions
* the testimony of disputes with purported "established Christian leaders"
* the testimony of prophecy of the ancient Hebrew sages in the NT.
* the testimony of purported Christian literature in the pre-Nicaean epoch.
* the references of purported authors of antiquity to pre-Nicaean christianity
* the writings of the Gnostics (these were a purely literary tribe)
* the TF, and other interpolations into extant literature.

It may gradually become self-evident that the history of antiquity
is more faithfully represented by a history in which the fabrication
of the Galiliaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness in the
fourth century, and that the period 0-300CE, here referred to as the
pre-Nicaean epoch, was in fact characterised with far more integrity,
from an histriological perspective, as culminating with the Second
Sophistic. (ie: as far as the Roman empire was concerned, christianity
did not exist until Constantine built the Basilicas, and staffed them
after Nicaea ..... archeological citations start in earnest after Nicaea,
but before this date are based on many other inferences).

Behind the fabrication of the Galilaeans is the calumny
of the work of Apollonius of Tyana, whose works and
philosophy and religious historicity match perfectly the
ground of the Second Sophistic --- simply the Hellenic
culture in its "Commonwealth of the Roman Empire".

There was an ADD and a DELETE in the fourth century.
Apollonius was DELETED, Jesus was ADDED. History was
perverted (eg: Josephus) to allow citations to a false timeline
which never existed prior to the fourth century dictatorship.



Pete Brown

hatsoff

That's not a reasonable possibility at all. There's just no convincing evidence that there was ever a fourth century conspiracy. Sorry, man.

BH

I think it is very probable, though it doesn't necessarily destroy all other theories.

Look at how Christianity has changed over the last 100 years in the United States.

At one time pretty much ALL denominations:

-thought it was wrong and shame for a woman to preach from the pulpit, but most do now

-most believed using instruments in worship was a sin, but 99.999% use instruments now. Even the Church of Christ is going instrumental in lots of places.

-most demoniations taught they were the "one true church" whereas most are eucemenical and participate in each other's services.

Ask the average Christian today what things were like 150 years ago and they probably would know it was a lot different then. Take a small group of "originial Christians" who don't make a lot of converts because of some doctrinal peculiarities and one innovator who drops the more offensive doctrines/practices and what do you get? The new group growing and growing and eventually displacing the old group. It even gets to the point then ew group becoms so obscure over time it can appear to the folks in the newer group that they actually were the first group and the original group broke off of them!

mountainman

Theories of the History of Christianity involving Fraud & Fiction
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_006.htm



Pete Brown