gnosis92

Is there any early Christian heresies whose beliefs match up with Doherty & mythicist description of how early Christianity started?


For example, Paul wrote against the Judaizers in his letters, those who say you must observe the law. Epistle of James emphasizes the importance of Law as does GMatthew. Not surprisingly, the Christian heresy hunters identify a heretics called the Ebionites who were indeed Judaizers.

Marcion and the Gnostics were docetists who believed that matter was evil, that the soul is trapped in evil matter, so Christ did not have a physical body, but a spiritual body. They did believe that Christ was seen and interacted with human beings, not quite what mythicists believed in.

Is there any independent record in early Christian heresy hunters of a group of early Christians who could be described as Christ mythicists?

Toto

Isn't this getting a bit duplicative? How many threads on Doherty do we need? Have you asked this question of Doherty?

gnosis92

Not directly.

Toto

Doherty gets his ideas of the earliest Christianity from such documents as the epistle to the Hebrews. He thinks that the docetists were a transitional form between the early mythicists and much later historicists. By the time the heresy hunters got busy in the second century, these early mythicists had evolved into docetists and gnostics of various sorts.

So the heresy hunters and the early mythicists never crossed paths, per Doherty's theory.

Does that answer your question? If not, why not ask it directly of Doherty?

Solitary Man

No, there aren't. He tries to read Hebrews and Paul as being "mythicist" but has to really twist the text apart in order to do so.

gnosis92

I have wondered if docetism and mythicism represent some kind of evolution or trajectory of thought.

How would the idea of Christ as Paul's private revelation transmute to the idea that matter is inherently evil?

Vincent Guilbaud

gnosis92 asked:
I see two ways to resolve your question gnosis92
and to know the relation between an heavenly spiritual Savior and the denial of the Flesh.

1 - Google
Try with 'paul evil flesh'.
Then, click and read about any link.

Flesh, the Source of Sin
http://www.stpauls.net/Ecclesia/Apostolic/3.5.html
But according to Paul flesh, or human nature, in contrast with spirit, or the divine nature, is evil in its present state, whatever may have been true of it originally. God alone is holy; man is sinful always and everywhere. [Cf. Rom. 5:12 sq.]

But the evil flesh or nature expresses itself necessarily in desires or lusts, [Rom. 7:7; Gal. 5:16,25] and those desires, bring the expression of an evil nature, are evil or sinful, and that too even though a person may not yet have come to self-consciousness and may not yet have taken cognizance of them. [Rom. 7:7 sq.]
...

Paul's Argument on Law, Flesh and Sin
http://nov55.com/rel/arg.html
The Spirit and the flesh are not able to coincide together in unity. Jesus taught that man will either serve God or mammon (cf. Matt. 6:24), that he would not be able to serve both. Paul, earlier on in Galatians, made reference to this same idea when he first addressed the Galatian churches (cf. Gal. 1:10)

2 - the Epistles

1 Corinthian 15 42-52
So is it with the resurrection of the dead.
What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being";
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust;
the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust;
and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brethren:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Lo! I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet
....
and many others

Doug Shaver

Are you asking whether they existed or whether there are any extant documents that record their beliefs?

Roger Pearse

If there are none of the latter, is it not meaningless to discuss the former?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Doug Shaver

If Doherty's hypothesis is correct, then Paul's writings are the latter, but that raises the question of how much sense it makes to call them heretical.