archibald

'Unbelievers' (and indeed pious fiction) could refer to him not being the messiah, for example, or not having risen from the dead, or any number of things.

Toto

April DeConick's analysis of the Gospel of Judas is Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (or via: amazon.co.uk).

DeConick has a section of her website devoted to the book

mountainman

Eusebius was referring to the Arian controversy. This narrows the field somewhat but again there is a spectrum of opinion about what the Arian controversy was really about. It seemes to have arisen whan Constantine turned up in Alexandria with the Bible, and persisted for centuries. Arius of Alexandria is considered to be the world's greatest Christian heretic, and the Arian heresy was running on the top of the heresy charts for centuries (until it was finally ERADICATED by the SWORD.

mountainman

Cool.

Could the 12 demon apostles gathered around the head sorceror actually look at Jesus in the eye?
Apparently not according to the text.

mountainman

After Nicaea one reason would be that the heresiologists were stamping out unofficial opposing opinions. The opinion that there was no historical jesus was officially not to be tolerated.


It would not have been easy to say this to Arius of Alexandria who apparently was well read in the scriptures and a logician of some reknown. Arius had obviously read the gospels and yet became the greatest heretic to ever walk the earth (if we are to follow the academic ratings - Rowan Williams et al).

Massive arguments against the words of Arius, drawing ad nauseum on the bible were engaged, and are still engaged by theologians and academics alike. It is reasonable to suspect that the political context of the words of Arius were not reported faithfully.

The evidence suggests, as Toto points out, that the heresiologists (I think purposefully) failed to provide an accurate description of the beliefs of heretics such as Arius of Alexandria and the mass of "Arian" heretics who echoed his words over the following centuries, and also such as Mani and the Manichaeans. It was expedient for the 4th and 5th century heresiologists simply to keep statistics on the decreasing number of Christian heretics in he empire by categories. The heresiologists have a reputation for pseudo-historical accounts - we have only to compare the pseudo-histories of Mani written by the christian heresiologists "Hegemonius" and "Ephrem Syria" to the recently discovered Manichaean histories of Mani to perceive this fraudulent misrepresentation of history.

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archibald

MM,

There are so many ways in which this is just ambiguous

The remainder of the passage talks about earthly this and that, crucifixion, Jesus having died, been nailed up, blood, flesh.....I really don't think we should take this as a spiritual-only Jesus.

Except in the same way perhaps that Paul seemed to, that Jesus is spiritual, at the time of writing, because he was no longer alive in the world, on earth. And 'our generation' not thinking that Christ 'is alive' (present tense, at time of 'our generation' writing)....it could be anything. And overall, it appears to be at odds with a lot of the rest of the text, not to mention Gospel of Thomas.

archibald

Yes, but was the Arian Heresy a 'spiritual Jesus only' heresy, that's all I want to know here.

archibald

I don't think anyone is really disagreeing that the texts we have today may have failed to provide an accurate description of the heretics. What has not been demonstrated, at all, yet, is that any misrepresentation was likely to include misrepresenting that they were 'mythicists', in the sense which would be important to present-day mythicists, that is to say those who think Jesus wasn't seen as having existed on earth in some form.

Toto

No, it was not. Arius believed that the Son was subordinate to God, when the orthodoxy was that they were equal.

Arius is one of Pete's hobby horses.

gurugeorge

William Tell is a good recent one. Of ancient myths, Herakles probably. The Olympian deities in general, who are constantly traipsing about the Earth (perhaps more like the versions of the "Christ" myth in which the human form is a magical apparition). Going further afield, Laozi is a notable example (probably no such person - but virtually deified at some points in Chinese history). The founding teacher of the Dzogchen lineage in Tibetan Buddhism (Garab Dorje - very murky historically, name has no resemblance to any known Indian teacher of the time when translated back into Sanskrit, apparently, yet was supposedly famous at the time).

Any number of myths from the past. Euhemerism is not the default, logically necessary explanation for myths. (Although it's interesting that the Church Fathers were particularly interested in an euhemerist explanation of Herakles.)

IOW sure, some myths probably started with real people, other myths started with visionary experiences, other myths were deliberately invented, perhaps as allegories; other myths started like "urban legends" and just growed, often as post-hoc explanations of culturally evolved practice and/or ritual. Or any combination of the above.

Many of the entities in the myths were believed by some people, at one time or another, to have really existed.

Some myths have mythical entities coming to earth in human form, or animal form, or plant form.

So on any account, there's nothing particularly remarkable about the Christ myth as we have it. What's remarkable is the amount of pseudo-historical detail that accreted around it (gospels - actually really only one gospel, in several forms, GMark).

IOW, even if there was an HJ, it's almost certain that none of the stuff in GMark (and therefore none of the stuff in any of the other gospels) bears any relation whatsoever to him, apart from the very basics.

Explanation of the pseudo-historical bumph is in fact MORE of a problem for HJ-ers than it is for MJ-ers. (Since, if there was a guy, why don't we have his bio, rather than a later, made up one?)

Sorry, rambling, will stop ...