Originally Posted by stephan huller

Ted, My thought will be 'in development' until the day I die. But this is a decisive proof for those who understand it. Marcion is a beachhead as it were in antiquity. By understanding that one tradition which stands very close to the earliest Roman Church (hence the celibate priesthood undoubtedly). Figure out Marcionitism, figure out 'the early Church.'

Let's start from the beginning. The 'mythicism' that has been popularized until now relies too heavily on pagan conceptions. Sure there is some evidence of such appropriations but it comes too late to explain the appeal of Christianity.

Second of all mythicism tends to undervalue the importance of Judaism. The reason for this is that the Jewish tradition demands an apprenticeship on the part of those wishing to come near. You can't understand the Pentateuch in a scatterbrained manner. It is a system with a clear message. The problem is figuring it out and that demands step by step instruction starting with the ten commandments.

The way that things work so far is that you have basically two models for the origins of Christianity:

1. Christianity is dependent on 'Judaism' and 'Judaism' is defined as an expectation in the future advent of the messiah
2. Christianity is a 'lie' developed from pagan myths

What I have accomplished over the last twenty years is reached a point where I can offer up Marcionitism, perhaps the earliest organized form of Christianity as actually being a third way which has nothing to do with the artificial contrivances of (1) and (2).

Let's start from the beginning (or at least the pathway that I arrived at the truth). Lactantius references those who call Jesus Chrestos rather than Christ and says that they did so because of Aquila's translation of the Bible. He points to Aquila's refusal to translate 'mashiach' as christos. Symmachus does and so does Theodotion but as I noted Aquila and the LXX do not.

If the Marcionite refusal to call Jesus 'Christ' derives from the Jewish scriptures. The next stage in the process is to wonder whether their identification of his as Chrestos had a similar root (remember it is not the same thing to argue for Chrestos via the Scriptures as it is the rejection of Christos). The problem is that most scholars live in this artificial world where there is this thing called 'Judaism' that existed forever.

Steve Mason notes that the very term 'Judaism' is more associated with the second century than the first (the exceptions are New Testament texts which can be argued to have been written or corrected in the era). The idea that there was this thing called 'Judaism' which expected the future advent of the messiah is a pipe dream. The religion of Moses cannot by its nature be limited in this manner to a ethnic culture.

The term shomrim (= Samaritans) is a general term meaning 'keepers' 'guardians' and is used in modern Hebrew speaking Jews in New York to mean 'guards' of a neighborhood. The point is that originally the religion of Moses was non-specific to an ethnos. It was open to everyone who wanted to join. The Samaritans and many other traditions translate all references to ger in the Pentateuch as 'proselyte' so the presence of outsiders was understood to exist from the beginning.

What I am arguing here is that the Bar Kochba revolt changed the religion of Moses. Celsus demonstrates that in the middle of the second century a monolithic designation of 'Judaism' (meaning belief the specifically Jewish ethnos's belief in the future advent of the messiah) and 'Christianity' (the specifically Gentile belief that the messiah had already come in the form of Jesus Christ) was established. I think this was by design and judging from the Latin form beneath the term Christianos was set by Imperial policy in the Antonine administration as a reactionary policy related to the Bar Kochba revolt.

In effect then after the messiah (bar Kochba) had failed and the kingdom of God was lost the administration of Antoninus Pius only allowed for two positions, two 'orthodoxies' - both of which (a) denied the legitimacy of the recent revolt and (b) the original Christian faith associated with 'Marcion.' The potential implication of this 'killing of two birds with one stone' is that Marcionitism and the Jewish messianic movement associated with bar Kochba were somehow related but I can't prove that.

Nevertheless what we do see emerging from this analysis is that the sanctioned forms of religious expression - 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' - are very tightly defined. This is a far cry from what we know to be true up until the bar Kochba revolt. There were dozens of sects. There were sectarian believers in Jesus who were in turn dependent on Jewish sects which by passed the artificial formulation established in the second century with respect to monolithic conceptions of 'Judaism' (the messiah will come) and 'Christianity' (the messiah already came in Jesus).

When we read for instance that the Marcionites (a) rejected applying the term Christ to Jesus and (b) offer up the divine title of 'the good god' instead this was a violation of the established order. While there is no specific identification that Roman law forbade people from specifically believing in Jesus Chrestos, Celsus's work makes explicit allusions to 'Christianity,' Christianity being a voluntary association and a secret voluntary association punishable by death according to the laws of the Roman state. Marcionitism is explicitly referenced throughout according to Origen. It would seem to be the forbidden, secret voluntary association Celsus has in mind. Celsus also seems to offer an olive branch to the 'great Church' which accepted the orthodox doctrines of 'Judaism' encouraged by the Roman state such as we see reflected in texts like Acts etc.

What I am suggesting then is that Marcionitism clearly fits the bill as the Hadrianic (and hence pre-Antonine) Christian faith which developed from what was now a heretical form of Judaism (just as Marcionitism later became a heretical form of Christianity). The Marcionites began with Philo's (and other Jewish sects) belief that god was unknowable but that his two 'hands' the Lord and God (= the just god and the kind god) were stages in the advancement to knowing him.

The initiate (= proselyte) began fearing God and living only in faith. Then, taking cue from Genesis 28:21 and Jacob's vision of the heavenly ladder at Bethel the initiate could move from fearing the Lord to loving and being loved by the kind God. Christianity developed from identifying the apostle's heavenly ascent (2 Corinthians 12) as the fulfillment of the vision of Jacob. Yet necessarily they called this 'the redemption' where they saw themselves as being 'purchased' or 'redeemed' from the just Lord to the kind Jesus.

Once again, the point here is not that this 'disproves' the existence of Jesus but it would seem that (a) because this redemption framework is older than the gospel and (b) that it continues to be expressed in third, fourth, fifth century Church Fathers as a core concept with in the faith it is hard to believe that this ancient Jewish concept of being adopted by the kind God simply supplemented the historical Jesus narrative of the gospel. The crucifixion is interpreted as early as the apostle as the 'redemption' within this ancient expectation associated with Jacob (who in Jewish literature becomes God at Bethel i.e. he sits on top of the heavenly ladder). As I said to outhouse, it is impossible to argue that the gospel did not point to this 'redemption' myth. The redemption myth is older than Christianity. As such it stands to reason that the gospel was created for the redemption (the passing from one hand to another http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...anity-and.html) rather than the other way around. History developed from the needs of myth (i.e. to re-present the traditional conception of 'redemption' in a narrative) rather than myth from history.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

all i was suggesting is that i can prove Marcionitism came from Philo

Originally Posted by outhouse

there it is!

can we make that post #1