aa5874

I hope you are aware that the Bible itself contains a lot of 'mixed messages'. Until the chronology and the veracity of the written text are sorted out, only through tedious research and 'reading between the lines', can the true message be revealed.

Chili

No, mythical is good. Jesus Christ was not human or he would have been a sinner.

In the flesh means "in being" instead of hu-man which is the condition of being that tells us something about the being.

Those who regard Jesus Christ as human are the antichrist. They are the fundies who worship[ the historical Jesus/Christ.

Clivedurdle

And the difference is exactly?

ynquirer

As far as I know, no one has to date questioned the authenticity of this verse. The interest of it rests with its contradiction with Doherty's claim that "in the flesh" could mean for early Christians "in the flesh of a mythical person." The idea, of a distinctive Platonic description, is that Odisseus, for instance, who was a mythical person, might however be injured and suffer wounds in his flesh within the mythical realm likewise a human being can in the real world.

Nevertheless, the verse quoted in the OP belies this theory, since the whole of it is rendered meaningless as soon as "in the flesh" is interpreted the way Doherty proposes.

Kosh

Mythical = Jesus was just a story that never happened in the physical world

Docetism = Jesus was a holograph that spoofed everyone

Chili

Let me add that human life is the illusion that is not of the flesh since our humanity is built on our left brain wherein we live beside ourself (called "the fall of man" in the Sistine chapel). The son of man is the identity that we left behind when we first became rational beings and slowly but surely began to write our very own life on this tabula rasa that we will defend against the rising action of our own true identity that wants to make itself known before we die.

So really, there is an Odysseus in all of us who really is the man we can be in eternity (which is also a state of mind).

ynquirer

Just a minor correction for those interested in tracking the epistle by themselves. It is not 2 John 7, but 2 John 1:7. Exactly the same idea is written down in 1 John 4:3,

...pan pneuma ho mê homologei ton iêsoun chiston en sarki elêluthota ek tou theou ouk estin kai touto estin to tou antichristou...

1 John 4:3. ... every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ to be the one that has come in the flesh is not of God but of the Antichrist...

The phrase en sarki (=in the flesh) shows the same wording in Greek language as some of the crucial verses in Romans usually cited in discussions on the mythical Jesus.

yalla

I'm reading Bart Ehrman's "Lost Christianities" at the moment and he has a bit to say about I John 4:3-4. Page 223ff.

He is generally, in Ch. 10, talking about forgeries and falsifications.

In the subsection "Antiseparationist Alterations" he mentions 3 examples [the others are Mark 15.34 and Heb.2.9] where he says [or suggests] that the proto-orthodox scribes/church altered texts as a tactic against the Gnostics who differentiated between the man Jesus and the divine Christ.

There is an interesting textual variant [c 2c?] where the words "does not confess Jesus" [see ynquirer post above] have been changed to "every spirit that LOOSES Jesus''.
B.E.: "Those who "loose" Jesus are those who separate him from the Christ, claiming that there were in fact 2 distinct beings instead of "the one Lord Jesus Christ." The change, then, appears to be a falsification designed to attack a Gnostic kind of Christology."

Basically what I read into this is that there were sections within the diverse group loosely named Christianity that had a variety of understandings re JC and that thus there is plenty of room for a mythical Jesus concept somewhere within the multiplicity of beliefs. [For example those, the target of this verse, who do not confess JC as coming in the flesh.]
A multiplicity which later got ironed out to some extent by the victorious proto-orthodox church, as Ehrman terms it.
cheers
yalla

Edit for spelling and to add that Ehrman makes a whole stack of comments about all types of changes so don't judge the book on this one extract please.

ynquirer

The heresy on the spot was adoptionism, whose followers believed Jesus to be an ordinary man that received the Christ at a moment in his life - for many adoptionists, for instance, at baptism in the Jordan, when the Father says, "this is my beloved son..." - and was later abandoned, say, either immediately before the cry of dereliction or at the very moment of his death. Ehrman himself deals with a number of orthodox corruptions of scripture to fight adoptionism in ch.2 of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.

The adoptionists, however, did not question the belief that Christ had come in the flesh; only they thought that Christ had taken over a human body and then left it, while the orthodox view was that Jesus' body had always been God's body, from conception to resurrection. IMHO the adoptionists were as far of believing in a mythical Jesus as the orthodox mainstream.

Therefore, orthodox corruptions of scripture to fight adoptionism would only be of interest to the issue of the mythical Jesus if it could be proved that the texts of 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7 are corrupted, or at least if a reasonable doubt could be thrown on that score. In other words, the theory of the mythical Jesus would be considerably reinforced if the original text were "every spirit that looses Jesus" instead of "every spirit that does not confess Jesus."

Ehrman has proven the opposite proposition, though.

jakejonesiv

It is interesting that 1 John appeals likewise to spirit possessed utterances to prove that Jesus was indeed, come in the flesh. 1 John 4:1.

The words so boldly interpreted as a claim to an eye witness of Jesus evaporate under closer scrutiny.

1 John 1
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word
(LOGOS) of life;
2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it,
and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life,
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto
us; )
3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto
you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and
truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his
Son Jesus Christ.
4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy
may be full.
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him,
and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

This is not an eyewitness account. It is significantly about the Logos. They have heard it through the utterances of "spirits". They have handled it through through the Eucharist. It was manifested (made known) through preaching (the Word, the Logos) and seen with the spiritual eye the eternal life.

The message they have heard of him (verse 5) is not the preaching of a man, but a message from the spirits (through "prophets"), that God is light and that is seen with the spiritual eye.

Now come other alleged spirits, speaking through men. They say that Jesus is not come in the flesh, i.e. he has not spoken through men.

1 John 4
1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the
spirits whether they are of God: because many false
prophets are gone out into the world.
2 Hereby know ye the spirit of God: Every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
of God:
3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is
that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that
it should come; and even now already is it in the
world.

So now we have revealed here, at the time of the writing of 1 John, a particular Christian community that is "spirit based." The spirits/pneumata are said to speak through prophets/profhtai, in the case of the antichrist spirit, pseudoprophets.

Those who deny that the Christ spirit has ever spoken through men quite accurately are called "anti-Christs." Exactly what the "anti-Christian" party was preaching is not clear, most of what is directed against them is mere invective, but obviously they weren't buying any Jesus stuff.

Jake Jones IV