aa5874

Score zero for maryhelena--Josephus PRECISELY corroborated Antigonus.

maryhelena

Looks like Joseph Raymond has taken up the torch re JC being a grandson of Herod. I just had a look at amazon and there is a look see for his book. I searched for Graves and found this footnote:

GakuseiDon

Fascinating, I had no idea. Thanks J-D.

Toto

The Nazarene Gospel Restored (or via: amazon.co.uk) is available for $80.

There's a google books entry that can be searched for snippets, but no preview.

Review by Hyam Maccoby

mountainman

The actual 300 year process of development that was alleged and claimed by the victors in the 4th century appears to us to be lost to history.

Alternatively the actual process may have been very sudden and very unexpected; but the Nicaean victors simply fabricated a false history to support their glorious ascension. This alternative actual process may not be lost to history.

The theological arms race was one of high technology weapons - the codex. The anti-docetists first developed the Jesus bomb.

The anti-docetists had gathered together from disparate fragments of the Supreme Canon an ultimate weapon of mass destruction - a canon following Christian who believed that the Kingdom of Christ was not hence, but now, and that it was time to fight for Jesus. (Jesus himself is presented as saying "then would my servants fight" [John 18:36])

When they suddenly appeared in the Eastern Empire c.324 CE the anti-docetists had both the pen and the sword - the canon and a victorious barbarian army. After the battles of Adrianople and Chrysopolis were lost, the Nicaean generation of docetists took one look at the incoming opposition and fled the field in total disarray - they had no swords to compete against the victors.

It was at this point in the proceedings perhaps that the anti-docetists dropped the Jesus Bomb at Nicaea. It had a devastating impact on the greek intellectual tradition, and many pagan temples just collapsed at once all over the empire. It's effect on the Greek philosophical schools, such as that of Plato, may be gleaned from reading Fr. 5.7 of Philip of Side, Fragments - The Arian Philosopher and the Simple Old Man. (I suggest the simple old man here may have been a simple old centurion)



The theological arms race however was only then entered into by the insidious dissident docetists who are described by the victors as vile Gnostic heretics. These docetists used the pen to strike back at the victorious canon-following heresiologists, and they cloned the stories in the ultimate technological canonical weapon in order to fabricate their own Gnostic Clone weapons of unbelief.

It was a war of codices that may have not lasted 300 years as declared by the heresiological victors, but perhaps as little as 300 days or 300 weeks. The Greek Gnostic gospels and docetic acts may well have been performed in the Greek theatres of Alexandria until they were FORBOTTEN under punishment of death.

Some docetists fell back hundreds of miles up the Nile and commenced an operation to preserve some vile Gnostic heretical material in Coptic which was completed by the mid 4th century and which we have in our possession today as the Nag Hammadi Codices.


Some generations after the Jesus bomb was detonated, Jerome comments that the "world groaned to find itself Arian".
He did not say the world groaned to find itself Christian. This is significant.

Was Arius an anti-docetist after all or was he in historical fact a docetist?
Arius appears to be historically the first multiple-attested "Antichrist".
The anti-docetists declared Arius to be a heretic of the highest calibre.

I do not believe that the canonical Jesus has any more historical reality than Bilbo Baggins.
But I do believe that Arius of Alexandria may have been a docetist before Constantine's anti-Arius decrees and "damnatio memoriae" took effect.

J-D

The part about Jesus being of Herodian descent is one of the ideas from King Jesus that Graves later abandoned.

GakuseiDon

Toto, thanks for the links. Maccoby's review of Graves and how he changed his ideas about the significance of Jesus and his death is fascinating.

jgreen44

In your opinion, was anti-docetism developed/promoted originally as a means to distinguish one political faction from another? And was there something advantageous, in and of itself, about the idea of an historical Jesus? For example was the concept of a god who lived in history more easily embraced by the masses than the concept of a god who lived and died and lived again in some heretofore unidentified spiritual realm?

mountainman

In the 3rd century the Romans had experienced first hand the new vigorous engagements of the new Sassanid Persian army which marched since 222 CE all in step to the One True Monotheistic State Zoroastrian Song. Roman Emperors had been skinned alive and entire Roman legions set to work behind the Persian lines building aquaducts. It was getting embarrassing for the ROmans to admit their religious milieu was not subject to any solidarity for war. Something needed to be done.

IMO see the parallel between Ardashir and Constantine: Creation of centralised State Monotheistic Religions in antiquity.


The masses were illiterate and were read to at the theatre if they could find a seat. Religion for the common people was always true, for the wise false and for the ruler useful. If the ruler defined a religion in the new technology of the codex, and then burnt all other codices - guess what book was to be read aloud in the basilicas to the illiterate? Guess what happened to any "wise people" who thought the book was bullshit?

jgreen44

It seems to come down to: Zoroaster was an historical figure therefore the new Roman god had to be an historical figure.