DCHindley

Oh my ... I was passing out human flesh like candy to a bunch of zombies this Halloween. You don't think that ... I, uh, .... :constern02:

Uhhhhhh ... uhhhhh ...

jakejonesiv

Hi Sheshbazzar,

I wonder, has anyone ever made the argument, even tongue in check, that Jesus was a zombie or ghoul? It seems that with all this eating flesh and drinking blood, and refusing to stay in his grave, this would be a no brainer.

AA is always screeching that Jesus was a Ghost. Well, what if???! Ghost stories were quite common in the Roman empire in this era, and there are certain similarites that I don't think have been examined.

Jake

Sheshbazzar

http://photobucket.com/images/zombie%20jesus/

www.zombiejesus.com

http://www.facebook.com/ZombieJesusLives

'Don't delay! Buy Zombie Jebus and you will receive a absolutely free first edition copy of The Night of The Living Dead Zombies! The true story of the very first Halloween!
Three principal things have occupied most my waking hours over the last week;

Digging out, breaking up, and disposing of the ancient and petrified horse-manure in my barn.
(And there is no harder horse-manure to remove than that which is well embedded in Kentucky's Bible Belt 'clay' )

Taking down all of the old concrete block walls surrounding the cemetery on my property. Yes, even on Halloween evening.
(I still have to fill in the collapsed graves, and so to say, rebury the dead)

And participating in this forum. And the three do fit together very well.

And that is not a tenth of my story.




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stephan huller

In any event, I would like to continue to develop an appreciation for Clement's unique text of 1 Corinthians. Here's a striking parallel I discovered while going through the Biblindex site looking for Clementine references to 1 Corinthians - the Letter to Theodore! The opening lines of to Theodore are listed as a witness for 1 Cor 8:1:

Now many of you will say - what does this have to do with anything? Well first let's note how idiotic it is to suggest that to Theodore is an obvious fake.

Clement has a very peculiar and very unique manner of employing material from John's Apocalypse. As noted here he chooses to insert a few words here and there especially in conjunction with 1 Corinthians. In this case the citation from Revelation 2:24 about knowledge from Satan in the context of 1 Corinthians 7.5's reference to 'temptation by Satan' which Clement cites quite often:

and again:

The point then is that it is hard to argue that Clement didn't author to Theodore owing to his employment of a few words of Revelation in the context of a discussion of the familiar material from 1 Corinthians. Once again:

Indeed when we return to our discussion of Instructor Book 1 Chapter 6 we find an identical stylistic signature of Clement of Alexandria. In this case it is in the context of 1 Corinthians chapter 13:

Now many of you may be wondering what the context of the employment of the isolation expression from Revelations is here. The answer is clearly the transition from 'child' (= Alpha or 'beginning') to 'man' (or 'end' = Omega). Tn this case 1 Cor 13:11:

This is a powerful argument for identifying Clement as the author of to Theodore but it also opens the door to the idea that to Theodore is itself a similar development of ideas in 1 Corinthians. I will show this next ...

stephan huller

The next part of the puzzle - taking a look at all of Clement's references to Galatians which according to Biblindex are:

stephan huller

Having worked with the Biblindex before I know I will find that at least some of these references will be to multiple lines from Galatians (but only the first line is credited). As such even when we subtract the references to Hypotyposeis (which Photius and Arethas knew was not written by Clement) and the Excerpta e Theodoto (which clearly was not written by Clement but a gnostic named Theodotos and which is no more 'Clementine' than Clement's Quis Dives Salvetur is 'Origenist' given that the only known manuscript of each was preserved through a collection of another author other than the original writer) I imagine we will settle to around 60 or so Clementine allusions to Galatians.

Given that the Clementine references begin 2:19 (or three lines from the end of chapter 2) we see there are 29 lines in chapter 3, 31 lines in chapter 4, 26 lines in chapter 5 and 18 lines in chapter 6 of our existing Galatians text, the 60 or so references to Galatians by Clement here follows a basic pattern already established in my study of Romans and 1 Corinthians that Clement generally cites more than half of the material from a given text known to him.

stephan huller

Another example of Clement thinking ideas from 1 Corinthians carry over to Galatians:

Clement clearly here interprets the passage from Galatians with 1 Corinthians 3:8 - 9 in mind for he immediately adds the bit from Psalm 51 which is all about the temple sacrifice ritual (it concludes May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar."). Clement's point is that Paul has in mind the concept of 'house of God' not 'domestics of God' or 'family of God' (the idiomatic expression). As is his custom he takes passages literally.

If material from Galatians actually formed the original ending of 1 Corinthians (as I suspect) the author is showing good form by returning to concepts introduced at the beginning of his discourse.

stephan huller

Notice also the strange allusion to 1 Corinthians in Tertullian's reworking of some original source (probably Syrian) dealing with the very section in Galatians we are speaking about (i.e. Clement's first reference to material from Galatians around Gal 2:19). Most scholars fail to recognize that Tertullian is alluding to a Marcionite rejection of our whole section very similar to Clement's omission as we just saw. Just look at his language and his use of 1 Corinthians chapter 9 as the basis to the pseudo-history of Galatians 2:

I find it not only interesting that the whole of this section hinges on a connection with 1 Corinthians chapter 9 but moreover that there is almost no reference to whether or not a given passage was actually in the Marcionite text. Indeed the reference to Luke 3 cannot possibly be argued to be Marcionite. Moreover it seems as if Tertullian is only using his text to disprove the Marcionite claims from a rival text.

stephan huller

And conversely and interestingly Tertullian's discussion of the First Letter to the Corinthians naturally brings forward references to Galatians. At the beginning of the section he apologizes ignoring (or not knowing) the superscription of Galatians - "my preliminary remarks on the preceding epistle called me away from treating of its superscription, for I was sure that another opportunity would occur for considering the matter, it being of constant recurrence, and in the same form too, in every epistle." But this is curious in that Tertullian begins the Against Marcion series with an acknowledgement that the contents of the books have been revised not once or twice but at least three times. Surely Tertullian could have changed the section on Galatians and likely did. The reason the superscription isn't referenced isn't because the contents were written in stone.

Then there is an extended comparison between Galatians chapter 4 and 1 Corinthians chapter 12 later in the work:

Perhaps the most powerful argument in the whole book at the end of his treatment of 1 Corinthians. Tertullian clearly and unmistakably connects Galatians to what we have determined is the very last reference of material from 1 Corinthians in Clement's New Testament - i.e. 1 Cor 15:50:

Remember the context here. Tertullian is attacking the Marcionite canon with arguments from his own version of 1 Corinthians (i.e. not the Marcionite text). The heretics always cite with approval 1 Cor 15.50 and clearly take this to mean the 'stuff' made by the Creator isn't good enough to attain the kingdom of God. In order to prove to the Marcionites that this is an incorrect interpretation he has to connect 1 Cor 15:50 with what is in the Catholic canon, material from the Letter to the Galatians. Why? Because their canon must have connected the arguments (i.e. as one letter) in the same manner as Clement's text seems to suggest.

stephan huller

I have long noted that the opening words of Against Marcion make absolutely clear that two subsequent editors (Tertullian being perhaps one of these) have cut up and rearranged/reworked an original treatise against Marcion which is now lost undoubtedly of a Syriac provenance. It is simply laughable that most scholars trying to figure out the Marcionite canon have so desperate so as to close a blind eye and assume that ALL the passages in Tertullian Books Four and Five can serve as a 'road map' to the original Marcionite text. Indeed there are clear places where Tertullian is practically shouting at the top of his lungs that the material in his text should be preferred to the Marcionite text, or that in spite of what the Marcionites claim we should believe this passage etc.

I think what we have to do is literally mark out where Tertullian says Marcionites changed something or where Marcionites interpret a passage in a particular manner (and not rhetorical language where Tertullian is addressing his readers through the Marcionites) and look and see if these passages show up in Clement's writings. There are far less references to the Marcionite text in Tertullian than people actually think.