Toto

What happened to the "flesh" in Romans?

hjalti

Right, because we don't want people to think that Paul wanted to be rescued from this body of death

stephan huller

I have always believed that the term goes back to the Aramaic besora and that some of the terms might not have been entirely negative (owing to the fact that besora is the root behind the original Aramaic term 'gospel').

Steven Carr

'... sarx is a notoriously difficult term to define and translate.'

Well, if you are going to read the writings of religious maniacs, you are going to find it hard to understand what they are talking about.

Surprisingly , somebody who thought Satan was tormenting him, that he had visited the third Heaven, and that dead people spoke to him , often wrote things that sane people cannot grasp the meaning of.

Toto

How does besora relate to sarx?

stephan huller

Bissar to bring tidings is the denominative verb derived from basar 'flesh, skin.' It is supposed that the original meaning has something to do with 'affecting the skin' i.e. to make flush. In Syriac we have the stem in the transposed form sabbar and the Syriac sebarta = gospel is the equivalent of the Hebrew besora, Arabic bisarah. I won't get into the etymology of the term 'gospel' but I strongly suspect that it developed from the call that traditionally was made six months prior to the Jubilee year. Hence Jesus's appearance in the synagogue at the beginning of the gospel referencing Isaiah chapter 61 (a narrative that appears in a very different form in Clement of Alexandria's citation - some secret gospel presumably).

The point here is that the Greek is CLEARLY not the original language these ideas developed. The purpose of Christianity as I see it was to perfect the flesh. Look at Origen's self-description as the Adamantine one. It has to be an allusion to the idea in Ezekiel 28 that Adam had skin as hard as diamonds.

I know that people will point to Origen making statements about the fall of Satan but I even see here a way of avoiding the original myth which was that Adam was the creator who fell from the highest heaven. The Marcionites as I noted elsewhere had this idea (i.e. that the Creator repented after Jesus's crucifixion). This was REAL heresy. The one thing that Clement and Origen must have known is that you can't make references to the Creator being imperfect or redeemed by/through Christ. But I think that was the original scenario. It goes back to Daniel the prophet as I pointed out in another post and his physical state (which was common to all leading Christians of the early period).

I think the various rituals of Christianity were intended to make the initiate invicible. You still get this at Polycarp's martyrdom (I am not so sure Polycarp wasn't originally from the heretical side of the equation - his disciple Florinus clearly thought so). Remember that story about Pope Demetrius of Alexandria standing in the fire unharmed. This is a common feature in Christian martyriums and I think it has something to do with the rituals supposedly changing the flesh so it was 'adamantine' (was this also a play on words in Greek?).

The point again is that I am not so sure that 'flesh' was bad in the original Christian formulation. I always approach the Pauline texts as expanded Catholic versions of lost Marcionite originals. Christians eat Christ's flesh at Church. This has to be a core ritual. What's up with that? It must emphasized originally that his flesh was of superior substance which is consumed so as to sustain the recepient.

Then we go back to the gospel in Aramaic being etymologically related to the word flesh. I think the term originally meant 'announcement of the Jubilee' but in the sense of a messianic Jubilee in which the promise of a 'perfect work' (Deut 32.4) was finally completed. Anyone interested in the origins of Pauline thought owes it to himself to read Marqe the Samaritan's exegesis of Deuteronomy chapter 32 (the 'great Song' as it is known among the Samaritans). It is very, very Pauline. The basic idea is that Moses predicted the coming of perfection which implies that the revelation given to Moses wasn't.

Littlejohn

One way, this, too 'simplistic' for to mean the exegetical work! ... Just as they 'simplistic' are the theories that would have a totally mythological nature of the catholic-christian doctrine, with a Jesus never existed, but syncretically modeled on mythological figures, pre-existing the birth of Christianity.

And all this because, APPARENTLY, there would be not sufficient quotations on the part of contemporary erudites of the pagan world about Jesus of Nazareth ...

Paul of Tarsus (and NOT ALREADY 'Paul/Saul: a character absolutly distinct from the first one!) was a gnostic, as gnostic was Jesus of Nazareth, founder of the 'gnostic-jesuan' church, and NOT of the catholic-christian one, as it would like the 'holy' counterfeiter fathers! ...

The one of the body (ie flesh or 'sarx') as a 'shell' corruptible and therefore a source of sin, from which all souls had to get rid, in order to reunite themselves to the primordial 'ONE', identified, in practice, with the same 'Pleroma', was a concept typically gnostic.


Greetings


Littlejohn

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Littlejohn

".. was a typically gnostic concept."

This gnostic concept was absolutely incompatible with the concept of the "resurrection" (hence the incredible falsehoods about the patristic imposture, with regard to the Jesus' resurrection!).

However, it was not incompatible with the concept of 'Reincarnation', 'cultivated' from a part of the gnostic-jesuan Church, because of the influence of the pythagorean gnosticism in the gnostic formation both Jesus of Nazareth, and John the Baptist, his teacher.

The reincarnation, however, was seen as merely a 'phase' of the vicissitudes of the soul, aimed at reuniting itself with the Pleroma of 'provenance'

Jesus was a 'reincarnationist'(*), as also John the Baptist was reincarnationist, from the school of which Jesus came from (see also the reincarnationism by Simon Magus, who was also coming from the same school: namely, the one of John the Baptist).

In the canonical gospels is mentioned clearly the issue of reincarnation, where it is said that John was considered the reincarnation of 'Elijah' (a blatant lie, because, sure enough, John was regarded by his followers as a reincarnation of Enoch: the JUST THAT WALKED with God!).

Idem for what it regards Jesus of Nazareth, defined in the same evangelic context as the reincarnation of John the Baptist (sic!!). Actually, Jesus, almost certainly, was regarded by his followers as a reincarnation of Seth, namely the 'SON of the MAN', where the 'man' in question was Adam and NOT God !!...

Perhaps the reference's model, for what concerns the reincarnation, it was the Buddhism (**), according to which those that had 'balanced' the 'karma' could definitely achieve the 'Nirvana', about which the Pleroma of the western gnostics was an almost specular version. On the contrary, those that had the 'karma' unbalanced (more 'sins' that good works)they were forced to 'reincarnate', until the 'karma' came to equilibrium.

For the western gnostics of Palestine, this meant having reached the 'perfection' or the 'resurrection'. In fact, those who had reached this stage (see Jesus of Nazareth: but, in turn, also John the Baptist, teacher the first one), were also called 'risen again by the dead', where this last were nothing more than the 'ilico' or the 'psychics' also, who had not yet reached the gnostic perfection.

The 'ilico', ie the materialists, were not interested in the issue of salvation, according to affirmation by the gnostics themselves. The 'perfects', ie 'risen from the dead', they were also called 'saviors', as they were able to lead to the salvation the others 'elected' by the sect.

The holy forger Fathers of the christian origins, mystified all the one by mean of the incredible assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected 'physically' from the death, taking advantage of the notoriety by a fact of which Jesus became the protagonist during his staying in Rome !....


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Notes:

(*) - it should not therefore surprising that Origen and other fathers of the early church (see Clement of Alexandria) were convinced reincarnationists, since that was just the one the model of the jesuan preaching.

(**) - A philosophy about which Pythagoras probably came into contact during his trip to the East. We must not forget, also, that Alexander the Great conquered most of western India, starting from the territory that is today known as Afghanistan and ending with the Kashmir and the Punjab. After his death, in such areas were formed of Hellenistic kingdoms that survived for some centuries, hence the stimulus by the Greek scholars to visit those remote areas almost 'legendaries'.


Littlejohn

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Littlejohn

From the above, it should be obvious, then, at least for those willing to retain credible what I'm exposing, that Paul of Tarsus absolutely can not have been neither the 'inventor' of the catholic-christianity, nor the author of the letters that are commonly assigned to him, although in the historical reality this character wrote more letters even of those are to him accredited

As I have said on other occasions, there is even a document, the original of which is dated in the second half of the second century and is considered authentic by the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities themselves, which allows you to guess, practically, that Paul can not have been the writer of the epistles to him attributed! ...


Littlejohn

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