Clivedurdle

Before Darwin, there were several attempts at an evolutionary viewpoint. Are we in a pre - darwinian stage with MJ?

Can we bring any common themes out of the various attempts?

Off the top of my head they include Doherty, Freke, Ellegard, Atwill, and viewpoints include it was Julius Caesar, Marcion diddit, and the one I personally like but I get loads of ya boo hisses about it - Seneca!

Platonic tampering by proto orthodox priests of docetic gnostic comments feels right.

So Seneca writes a passion play - Nazarenus, and about sixty years later Titus is having real hassles in Palestine and digs it out, gets his scribes to work on it. Parallel Marcion has a vision and writes Paul's epistles, using gnostic and dead sea essene stuff.

Christians beforehand were only Messians - of which there were "legion"! The Eucharist and Didache are only mystical gnostic platonic superstitio.