stephan huller

I think I will stop for now. Nevertheless I think the core of the mysticism surrounding semeia in the Roman army was that they were thought to impress themselves on the person of the soldiers and so he 'carried them about' as he marched off into battle. The idea transferred over to Christianity very early - likely by means of Mark the author of the gospel. In other words, they were not 'added' to the text as a 'new interpretation.' Constantine was building upon something pre-existent albeit perhaps latent in the tradition by the early fourth century.

aeebee50

Thanks, .

stephan huller

Another thing that crossed my mind (pardon the pun) is the account in the Acts of Peter of the disciple being crucified upside down 'like Adam falling from Paradise.' I think the idea of someone being crucified like a man falling from the heights would preclude the possibility of his legs being bound together.









Let's see what the original account says:

Am I reading too much into the tradition that Jesus, Andrew and now Peter were crucified on a saltire cross suspended by a large beam (hence the use of the word 'stauros' = because they were 'suspended')?

stephan huller

Another thing that always puzzled me in the early Church writings was the Syriac Epistles of Ignatius (which I consider to be more original) and the reference to a “pulley” and “rope” to assemble a “building” of the Cross. Have I been too influenced by Hollywood? I just thought a bunch of guys got together and raised a pole with Jesus on it. I never understood the language in the epistle. Why the rope and pulley? Why a “building”?

I am wondering whether the main beam was first planted in the ground and then the martyr was strapped to an X shaped cross and then pulled up (by rope and pully) to the large stake firmly planted in the ground. The Romans were skilled builders. How sensible would it be to start with nailing the guy to the beam, digging a hole, getting a bunch of guys to move the stauros into the hole, lifting it up, filling up the hole with sand.

I don't know. I'm not an engineer. It just seems more efficient to get all the grunt work out of the way the night before (ie planting the main pillar upon which the x was suspended). It's like bringing in the audience before the band sets up the stage for the show. Why do that?

Anyway here is the section in Syriac Ignatius. Maybe I'm reading too much into this one:

stephan huller

I don't have access to the original Syriac but it seems to me that the martyr is envisioned as being pulled up BY MEANS OF the stauros rather than the stauros being pulled up by the pulley and rope being attached to some other object. Am I reading too much into this?

stephan huller

I find it particularly interesting that the Greek text (developed from the Syrian IMO) erases the whole mention of the martyr (= Jesus) being polled up by means of a pulley and rope FIXED TO an already standing stauros. Instead we read in the very same place in chapter nine the following description:

I think someone has obscured the original conception of the martyr already attached to the chiasm (= X) being raised on to an already standing stauros. Notice the reference to the 'pulley' attached to the stauros is gone. The (shorter) Syriac again reads:

The point is that one can't simply assume (as with the Marcionite idiotic scholarship) that someone just removed passages from the Greek to make the Syriac (why on the earth would this even have occurred?). Instead the Greek removed the pulley reference and added more anti-heretical bullshit. Notice also the addition to the 'bearers' of the large t-shaped cross which has to be fixed into the ground with the person already attached to it (with the later conception).

Come to think of it, how does anyone believe that Jesus carried around the massive beam that allowed him to stand firm high in the air when he died in a few hours? Stupid.

stephan huller

I see this is not quite true. The Greek has ἀναγωγεύς "one that brings up from below." Why the ambiguity though? I have always found that the Catholic translator (and editorial expansionist) made unwise choices perhaps to obscure the original meaning. The Greek word for pulley is τρόχιλος since the time of Archimedes. Why not translate the Syriac with the appropriate word? Similarly if the Greek is argued to be original why would the Syriac have rendered something so vague with something absolutely firm and literal. The Syriac is obviously the more original. Vosiius thought the word was pulley long before Cureton's discovery of the original Syriac texts.

stephan huller

David,

Since you were interested in the Platonic roots associated with the chi-shaped cross I noticed that the discussion which introduces the Acts of Andrew in Schneemelcher's two volume Christian apocrypha argues that the depiction of Andrew's death is overtly rooted in the same Platonic material

stephan huller

And then there is the obvious connection with the semeion which protected Cain in Genesis:

1. Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

2. I have also made a collection of their writings in which they advocate the abolition of the doings of Hystera.(2) Moreover, they call this Hystera the creator of heaven and earth. They also hold, like Carpocrates, that men cannot be saved until they have gone through all kinds of experience.

The idea of “abolishing the doings of the uterus (= hystera)” is a citation of the Gospel of the Egyptians cited repeatedly by Clement and probably one and the same with Secret Mark (so F F Bruce)

stephan huller

The Jewish Encyclopedia lists the sources about the Cainites (= those who claimed to be protected by the divine semeion as:

).

A doctrine of the Cainites appears, then, to have been in existence as early as Philo's time; but nothing is known of the same. In the second century of the common era a Gnostic sect by the name of "Cainites" is frequently mentioned as forming a branch of the antinomistic heresies which, adopting some of the views of Paulinian Christianity, advocated and practised indulgence in carnal pleasure. While some of the Jewish Gnostics divided men into three classes—represented (1) by Cain, the physical or earthly man; (2) by Abel, the psychical man (the middle class); and (3) by Seth, the spiritual or saintly man (see Irenæus, "Adversus Hæreses," i. 7, 5; compare Philo, "De Gigantibus," 13)—the antinomistic pagan Gnostics declared Cain and other rebels or sinners to be their prototypes of evil and licentiousness. Cain, Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and even Judas Iscariot, were made by these Gnostics expounders of the "wisdom" of the serpent in rebellion against God (Gen. iii. 5), the primeval serpent, "Naḥash ha-Ḳadmoni" (Gen R. xxii. 12). How many of these pernicious doctrines were already formed in pre-Christian times and how many were developed during the first and second Christian centuries is difficult to ascertain (see Jude 11, "the way of Cain"; Irenæus, l.c. i. 31, 1; 26, 31; 27, 3; Hippolytus, "Adversus Omnes Hæreses," v. 11, 15, 21; Clemens of Alexandria, "The Cainists," Stromata vii. 17; Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl." iii. 29; Epiphanius, "Hæres." xxv., xxvi., xxxviii. 2). Blau with good reason refers to such Cainite doctrines the Haggadah of blasphemy, referred to in Sanh. 99b, as taught by Manasseh ben Hezekiah, the typical perverter of the Law in the direction of licentiousness.

I would add the reference to the Acts of John at the end of Quis Dives Salvetur. The disciple thinks the divine semeion received at baptism is all he needs for “protection” before he falls into a life of sin. Tertullian's On Baptism is another source