angelo

Excuse me, but your naivity is showing! :constern02:
There has never been a living witness to a historical Jesus who lived to tell about it. All that's written about the man is third hand hearsay.
Robin Hood probably had more historicity than any man god.

Sheshbazzar

This claim appears doubtful, reading various commentaries on 2nd Peter indicates that there is a strong consensus among scholars that the author of this text is not at all whom he purports to be, and that the text is actually pseudepigraphical, based upon many internal evidences.

Thus even the very first verse, by implication, begins with the writers deliberate deception, the lie, that he, the author is,
"Simon Peter, a servant and Apostle of...."
When what he writes will reveal him to be an impostor engaged in a willful and deliberate lying deception.

"For we did not follow cunningly devised fables..."

The question might be asked then, if the author is -not- "Simon Peter" as he falsely claims to be, What then was being followed?
In other words, anyone that accepts that this text is a pseudepigraphical composition by pseudo-anonymous author(s)
has no reason to believe that the author(s) were ever present at any of the events that they claim to be the "eyewitnesses" to.

Thus, if the writer(s) were reporting anything witnessed, it could only have been at best, second hand accounts that they had heard from others.
But in representing that "Simon Peter" is the writer, and that "we" were the "eyewitnesses" they make themselves to be both liars and false witnesses.

Interestingly, this word "Eyewitnesses" occurs in other Greek writings, where it is the title or degree applied to those who have attained the third and highest degree of the "Eluesinian mysteries" as "spectators" into "heavenly" mysteries and rituals.
Which application would have nothing to do with being "eyewitnesses" in the sense of actually physically -seeing- or "witnessing" to any material "resurrection" of any fleshly Jewish christ the cult figure.
It certainly appears that what was originally to have been comprehended and appreciated on a heavenly, spiritual and philosophical level, was overtaken and reduced to the rags, and to the flesh of a corporeal living/dead zombie, and a sick promise that everyone that eats of his zombie flesh, will also get to become a living/dead zombie, and rise up out of their graves just like all those living/dead zombies did that wandered around Jerusalem after their graves were opened.


Really it is sad, even pathetic, that one of the highest spiritual and philosophical attainments of the Greeks, was so subverted, brought down, and so utterly mongrelized by the lying improvisations of the Judeao/Gentile christ cult.
But worse is how mankind has been, and still is being deceived and screwed over by these lying false "witnesses".

Clivedurdle

Has anyone looked at 2 Peter as a gnostic text? If eyewitness relates to the mysteries...

Might the cunningly devised fables be the hj heresy?

Sheshbazzar

The one thing that is virtually certain, is that the writer(s) of 2nd Peter, was not "Simon Peter the Apostle"
and that they -"we", were not in any physical sense "eyewitnesses" to a resurrection of, or physical ascencsion into heaven of, any actual and physical first century Jewish rabbi by any name.

LogicandReason

Eusebius says as much in the 3rd book of The History of the Church:

Eusebius tells us that they know this is not Peter's writing but because it is valuable it was kept. How much more do you need than that 'evidence' of the early church making arbitrary decisions about what became the NT?

arnoldo

Clement, whom Paul may have referenced in Philippians 4:3. . .

. . . writes the following about the Apostles

Is Clement also a myth as well?

Sheshbazzar

In my view yes, the letter called 1st Clement was fabricated by the Catholic church, just as were most other "early christian writings", that these pious forgeries are solely dependent -upon each other- to present an appearance legitimacy and of authenticity, in support of each other is not the least bit surprising.
They were all products of the same early christian forgery mill. There is no external non- christian attestation to them. They have long been foisted off on the gullible, who are willing to start from the faulty premise that they simply have to be genuine.
The situations revealed in 1 Clement are reflective of the views and concerns of a much latter than 1st century church. This forged letter was fabricated as a tool to legitimatize, and to establish the primacy and the authority of the Roman Catholic church over all others, and that is exactly how it was used in the centuries afterwards.
I don't buy what they are peddling, this deceiving, lying, thieving, and murdering, cult. Emperor Julian also saw them for what they were.

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey and Roger,

You are both very much aware that my opinion is that the extracts quoted by Eusebius of the "many books Porphyry wrote against the christians" were authored by Eusebius himself, on order of Constantine, so that the neopythaorean and neoplatonic literature of the academic Porphyry could be justifiably destroyed by fire. Porphyry IMO never heard of christians (like everyone else!!) Eunapius (a renegade pagan) wrote the following about Porphyry:
So my position is that he did not change his opinions as he grew older at all. He remained a Hellenistic academic until the end. And he dod not write many books against the christians as Eusebius claims, but that Eusebius forged anti-christian polemic to stir up the political situation and to denigrate the status of Porphyry's literature at that time in the epoch of ancient history. Only fragments remain because Eusebius only needed fragments of anti-christian rhetoric to get a christian reaction against them. It was politics. Constantine has the christians. They are the good guys. The pagans have Pythagoras and the Hellenes. The chief Hellenic academic is framed (post-humously? unless he lived until 312 CE) for anti-christian authorship after Eusebius forges comments in the name of Porphyry. How does Eusebius do this?

Here is what Roger has to say about the author whom Roger believes is Porphyry ....

Here we have Roger reacting to the anti-christian rhetoric (not of Porphyry) but IMO of Eusebius. Christians have reacted and danced and sat enchanted listening to the stories of Eusebius since the beginning because the package of christianity was tendered to the world across the one true editor's desk. Just how intermingled is the HJ and Eusebius only time will tell. My bet is that the historical jesus was fabricated by Euseubius with an 'idiot-boy' literalism as his tool to debunk non-christians. Eusebius was supported by his emperor, and after Nicaea, with a controversial consensus, by the three hundred and eighteen founding church-fathers of Nicaea. Many of whom it appears were Arians. (Another thread). The new and strange religion was not new and stange at all ... Once upon a time when Augustus was Caesar .....


Best wishes,


Pete

Jeffrey Gibson

So what? The matter at hand is the fact that you read the text you quoted as if it was from "Porphyry" when the page you cribbed the quote from clearly states that it wasn't.

Whether or not the works of Porphyry were forged doesn't change the fact that you misread and misunderstood and misattributed what you quoted.

Jeffrey

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,

When you can ask the same questions of Eusebius as you here ask of me, then we will be on the same playing field. I'll be waiting. If I purposefully misunderstood and purposefully misattributed Porphyry then you might get a first hand understanding of what Eusebius was doing, but with supreme imperial backing. The presentation that the apostles were inventors is a clever moebius twist to the one dimensional history of the christian fiction, provided by Eusebius forging Porphyry to admit the "idiot-boy" simplicity of the scam.


Best wishes,


Pete