Amaleq13

As Solo has already pointed out, that is not accurate. To the docetic, Jesus was not physical and only seemed to be physical. Marcion, for example, clearly believed that his only "seeming physical" Jesus engaged in activities and with people on earth.

You are, not surprisingly, introducing a bias for the conclusion you clearly prefer at the very start of your alleged "investigation". Such a practice is hardly likely to call into question the conclusion you prefer but, instead, almost guaranteed to obtain that very result (ie circular reasoning).

I have a question about the following quote you offered:
The source of the quote is Drews but there is nothing on that page which connects it to Apollinaris. Does Drews attribute it to Apollinaris and, if so, what is the citation from the original source?

arnoldo

Even so, this allegory is supposed to illustrate a higher truth, namely that the world around us is in part an illusion however that through reason mankind can grasp "truth."
Of course, based on historical written records, right? Ok, so it's not reasonable to conclude that Jesus was a historical figure. Is your theory that he is a purely a fictional character?
Are you talking about Joshua, the person who took over leadership of Israel after Moses died?
Yeah, Yeshua and Joshua are similar kinds of names.
Ok, which "writer(s)" made Jesus a historical person in the fourth century?
Orwellian newspeak.
If Jesus is an allegory, like Plato's shadow's on the wall then, then it has profound metaphysical/philosophical ramifications. At the very least you do agree that this jungian archetype of christ consciousness has had a profound impact of the course of history, right?

Toto

Of course, Jesus could have been a fictional character invented in the fourth century, but still have had an effect on subsequent history. That's not the issue. Other fictional characters have had effects on subsequent history - William Tell comes to mind, Luke Skywalker is a candidate. If you think that Jesus was a Jungian archetype, you are probably a mythicist or a neo-Gnostic, not an orthodox Christian. (Not that there is anything wrong with that. . .)

The quest for a historical Jesus was initiated by Enlightenment thinkers who rejected the idea that there is a "higher reality" or a supernatural. Docetists didn't play by those rules, so it is hard to classify them in Enlightenment terms. Freke and Gandy classify them as early mythicists. Doherty thinks they were a transitional form between early mythicists and later historicists. Modern historicists are sure that docetists thought that there was a historical Jesus, just one who for theological reasons could not be classified as mere flesh. But they are not around to speak for themselves.

Chili

Oops that should say "doing their 40 years and still die nonetheless" and so will spend their eternal portion of life tryig to work out their own salvation --which they never can and therefore will die in the end.

Note here that eternal life is life after rebirth wherein the father and son become one ("the father and I are one") and only need the mother to be brought under the care of this divine union . . . which then is how the Trinity becomes one God in one person.

So Pete, if "40 years and [still] die nonetheless" is the destiny of a 'lifer' it is easy to see how heaven and hell can both be eternal and remain opposites that are known to us . . . or at least are known to those who wrote about it.

mountainman

This is an important point and needs to be underlined. Our reports of christian origins are bound with the literature and we know that this literature that forms early christian period of the pre-nicene epoch extended (hypothetically) from the second century perhaps, to the third, etc.

The second century authors whom we read, encountered the text, and if we are to believe Eusebius, had a religious experience. Others, we are told, by these authors of antiquity, had a different experience. They examined the text, and they did not have that same authodox experience but in fact seemed, or appeared to be observed to articulate "heretical things": that Jesus "seemed" to exist (in the literature) but had no "real physical" existence.

The question should be asked whether this includes the notion of historical existence. What if someone were to read the NT lit in the 2nd century and say "Jesus had no historical existence". Would they be reported (at that time) as a "docetist"?


That is one possibility, or question, yes. They were served with text which they thought (for one reason or another) was not historically accurate, and they said so. How would the later christian historians report this, other than under the banner of docetic belief? (There may be other answers, I dont know).


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

Docetists have been spun together in a big cacoon of heresies by the earliest of the christian ecclesiastical historians and it is they and not I who is doing the saying. I am simply trying to interpret the evidence.

The butterfly did not fly from the cross until the fourth century. It may have been in a pupae stage from earlier centuries, as appears to be the intention of Eusebius' various "histories" and the gathering of the authorship on the matter from the preceeding centuries. It must certainly have been very much underground since, we could say because of the extreme paucity of archaeological evidence, a long way underground.

So that leaves us (for the moment) with the texts and the reports of the docetae.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

See my response to Solo. The purported authors of the second century are not dealing with your man Jesus direct. They are then dealing with a textual tradition in which the nomina sacra for the name of Jesus appears. This is actually two-steps removed from the previous century. Once for the fact that those who are now described as docetists were emergent in the second century, and secondly, that the docetists only had the text of the nomina sacra form of the name of Jesus - this was the same as Joshua's!


Not sure. I made a quick summary of Drews one day and the notes may indicate this to be so. I will try and look it up sometime later, or string search this page on Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus: Arthur Drews (1912) .

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

Even so, this allegory is supposed to illustrate a higher truth, namely that the world around us is in part an illusion however that through reason mankind can grasp "truth."[/quote]

It may also indicate an habitual cycle of returning to the cave. The allegory is the allegory and ten million and four people may take it ten million and four different ways. Think of ground-hog day for example, as an upward spiral.


A great diversity of written records, not a neatly wrapped Trojan Horse.



Spectacularly lavish fictional character of the fourth century still replaying reruns with great novelty at a tax-exempt basilica near you.




Yes.

The Greek word “Jesus” is used in the Old Testament
to translate the (sacred) name Joshua, and in the
New Testament for Jesus of Nazareth.



With the identical "nomina sacra" or abbreviated name of two greek letters.


Constantine, Eusebius and others.


Ancient historians have given up on the ground of the first century to deliver any evidence for the historical Jesus. Everyone knows he became historical in at least the fourth century due to random selection sponsorship out of the millieu by Constantine, who "had a religious experience".

This leaves three options:

1) A theory of christian origins starting in the second century.
2) A theory of christian origins starting in the third century.
3) A theory of christian origins starting in the fourth century.

0) A theory of christian origins starting in the first century has no evidence.




Everything is allegorisable. My focus is on what we may or may not know about ancient history in a strict and critical sense. Metaphysics and philosophy, as much as I appreciate the fields, are separate enquiries to the path of the enquiry in the field of ancient history.



I am interested in the psychology of Constantine, the first emperor to embrace a religion complete with heretics and schisms and all sorts of hoo-har. Did he know what he was getting himself into? As the commander of the army he wanted uniformity. The army marches better to the One True Song. So why did he decide to back a new and strange religion who were splintered by people like the doceticists who had serious problems with the authodox "belief"?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

arnoldo

Constantine was an anti-christ type figure mixing State and Religion. IIRC he also wanted to rebuild the jewish temple in Jerusalem. Instead he helped establish mystery babylon which the book or revelations describes as a whore drunk with the blood of the saints.

mountainman

I have attempted to gather up some references and have posted them here below. None of these have been checked to classical standards at this stage and are to be treated accordingly for discussion.

EXTRACT
THEOSOPHY, Vol. 57, No. 11, September, 1969
(Pages 328-334; Size: 19K)
THE DOCETAE

The theosophist author claims to be citing data in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)



Text and Tradition: The Role of New Testament Manuscripts in Early Christian Studies
The Kenneth W. Clark Lectures
Duke Divinity School
1997
Lecture Two: Text and Transmission: The Historical Significance of the "Altered" Text
Bart D. Ehrman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


Other notes ...

***** (no refs)


Best wishes,



Pete Brown