dog-on

We do have Philo and while he speaks of things eerily similar to what became some of the base theology of Christianity, there is no mention of the well known godman.

But, that is really beside the point, I guess.

aa5874

Philo's philosophy is no way close to the beliefs of the Jesus cult.

Philo worshiped ONLY the God of the Jews.

Those of the Jesus cult worshiped some entity called Jesus who was the offspring of the Holy Ghost and was executed on behalf of the Jews for blasphemy.

Davka

More anti-Pharisee than flat-out anti-Jewish, really. But I see your point.

There is the Gospel of the Nazoreans, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Dating these is contentious, just as dating the NT Gospels is contentious, but they would appear to be fairly contemporaneous.

dog-on

Do you have any authorial attributions for these writings?

dog-on

I disagree.

Davka

All three are considered to have been written by Jewish Christians. The attributions are no more solid than any attributions of New Testament writings, however.

If you follow the links I provided, there are multiple reference sources for each of these extra-canonical Gospels, including loose attribution. The Gospel of the Hebrews, in particular, would seem to be Jewish in origin. It is also the most "heretical" of the three Gospels.

dog-on

Thanks.

skepticdude

Mirror-reading Galatians should give you a good idea of what original first-century Jewish Christians believed. See esp. Galatians 2. Peter and "even Barnabas" were convinced by the Judaizers to abandon Paul. The Judaizers must have presented some powerful arguments against Paul to justify such apostasy. And the opposite of Paul's position would be "you must be circumcised and keep the law, or ye cannot be saved."

So while there is no written epistle from a Judaizer, the fuctional equivilent of one is found in mirror-reading Galatians.

There's more in the NT on what the original Jewish Christians believed:

First, if Jesus offered salvation to Gentiles just as much as he offered it to Jews during his earthly ministry, what gospel did the "apostles and elders" of Acts 11 convert to, that they found it scandelous that Peter should fellowship with a non-Jewish Christian? They certainly had not converted to the gospel we have today. That Jesus had no problems with Gentiles and fellowshipped with them. The racism of the apostles in Acts 11 is either entire fiction, or testifies that the original authentic Jesus was less amenable to the idea of Gentile salvation then the current gospels say.

Second, the idea that these Jewish apostles and elders converted to a gospel still lost to Christianity today is proven with the last quote. After hearing Peter's story of a vision, the quieted down and marveled that God has therefore granted salvation to Gentiles...

...why was Gentile salvation such a new unanticipated shocking thing to the apostles? Easy, because the Gentile-friendly Jesus of today's gospels does not accurately reflect the real Jesus. Acts 11 shows that the Paul-friendly author of Acts did an imperfect job of sanitizing Christianity to support Paul's version of it. If the gospels we have today reflect what was original written, there would be no reason whatsoever for "apostles and elders", i.e., the most mature of the original Christians, who allegedly also had spiritual gifts of discernment, etc, etc, to have decried Peter's fellowshipping with a Gentile believer.

With such split in original Christianity, and assuming the Judaizers really did follow Paul around upsetting his churches, we may assume they wrote epistles against Paul to their own congregations, and of course, since Paul won the verdict of history, it is no surprise that no writings from original Judaizers survive. Given ancient Christians enough centuries to burn everything the winners don't like, and you aren't gonna be left with too much.

aa5874

What is the basis for your disagreement?

1. Philo wrote nothing about Jesus of Nazareth.

2. Philo only worshiped the God of the Jews.

3. It would have been very unlikely for Philo to have worshiped a man as a God.

4. Philo did not write that the Word, the LOGOS, was Jesus of Nazareth.

5. Philo did not write that the LOGOS died and resurrected for the sins of mankind.

There is nothing "eerily similar" to what became some of the base theology of Christianity in the writings of Philo.

The primary base for the Jesus story was Hebrew Scripture taken out of context.

dog-on

I think Galatians was a Marcionite document. I think Acts was a Catholic document.