Kosh

NO, not another JM thread!

I can't believe I've missed this in all the JM discussions, and I only noticed it now because of a TV show on the anti-christ. But look at this:

2 John 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.

I don't see this in any of Doherty's main points (and I haven't read the book). Has this been discussed as well and I just glossed it? Talk about poisoning the well!

aa5874

Within years of the so-call resurrection of Jesus Christ, the author is worried that people might find out that Jesus was fictitious.This is phenomenal.

The authors of the NT really had the non-believer in a box. In matthew 12: 32.... 'but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.'

The non believer did not stand a chance.

Her pinkness saves

now that seems to be an odd thing to say.

blkgayatheist

He discusses a similar verse in the first epistle of John. Strange verse indeed. again what we would expect is "those who do not acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ..."

Wilfried Dornwald

This is directed against the docetic gnostics who flatly denied that Jesus came in the flesh. It is a present participle because it stresses the continuing fact of the incarnation.

ynquirer

Good point, though its ultimate value critically depends on the dating of 2 John, which for the time being is uncertain.

In a sense, it is. For Doherty’s theory—for whoever has read his book with a modicum of care—is not simply that Jesus was a fictional character. Beyond that, Doherty contends that Jesus was preached by his earliest followers—such like the writers of the epistles, Paul’s and James’ among others—as being a mythical character. And this does not seem to be the message conveyed by the writer of 2 James.

Really? I would like “those who do not acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ the in flesh (and I mean human flesh, not flesh as possibly embodied—according to twentieth-century writers—in gods wandering in sublunar epicycles).” I would be much more reassuring, wouldn’t it?

Chili

There is a difference between a non-believer and a deceiver. A non-believer never believed while a deceived warped the story into something it never was.

"Coming in the flesh" adds reality to the myth that can be ours as a long lost son of man who was created in the image of God.

ETA, well yes, in the incarnation. If Christ is the man we must become Jesuits (brothers of Jesus as son of man) to become fully man as Christian. Jesus would be the transition or Galilean period between human and Christ (except that we call it purgatory when this purging takes place).

aa5874

This verse refers to all those who regard Jesus as mythical, that is those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ was Human are the Antichrist.

I wonder if this verse was written around the time of the Marcionites. Marcion claimed, see wikipedia, that Jesus Christ came directly from heaven to a place called Capernaum and began to preach. He rejected the virgin birth story.

gnosis92

Scholars believe this verse applies to docetisim, not that jesus was mythical but had no physical body

Julian

We had a long and somewhat ugly discussion about this verse a while ago: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=147685

Julian