Toto

What do we really know about the Ebionites' practices, and can we be sure that they represented the earliest or any significant faction of early Christians? Apparently, there is an ambiguous comment by Irenaeus that led some others to conclude that the Ebionites did a "half communion" with bread but no wine.

link

Iskander

The following was written by Adolf von Harnack (7 May 1851–10 June 1930), a German theologian and prominent church historian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_von_Harnack

Adolf Harnack :History of Dogma - Volume I

“4. In the proclamation and founding of this kingdom, Jesus summoned men to attach themselves to him, because he had recognised himself to be the helper called by God, and therefore also the 64 Messiah who was promised.62 He gradually declared himself to the people as such by the names he assumed,63 for the names “Anointed,” “King,” “Lord,” “Son of David,” “Son of Man,” “Son of God,” all denote the Messianic office, and were familiar to the greater part of the people.64[59]...”


In fact Jesus was not made god by the Christian Church until the 4th century when even distinguished ecclesiastical figures, like bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Constantine, were Arian and Eusebius actively opposed Athanasius. Eusebius was declared a heretic by one of the councils.

It is difficult to separate early Christianity from the nightmare of ‘Christology’ because of the editing of Christian documents to make them fit into the story of the fabricated god, son of an eternal married virgin!

Rick Sumner

Which, even if true, is entirely irrelevant to what I said.


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Duvduv

Check my very first posting when I started
Old Testament Citations in Epistles

Iskander

Please, “speak now or forever hold your peace,”.

Duvduv

Since I am already married I have no clue as to what that is supposed to mean. ;-)

Diogenes the Cynic

Christianity had a Jewish origin. It started in Jerusalem. We have Paul's own attestation for that. I think it's pretty clear that Pauline Gentile Christianity had a completely different Christology from the original Jerusalem movement. I would argue that the Jerusalem church wasn't even "Christian" in any theological sense, just a purely Jewish doomsday sect who thought their crucified teacher had gone straight to Heaven (as opposed to waiting around in the dirt to be raised on judgment day like everybody else), and that he would return as a conquering Messiah.

Paul basically tried to de-Judaize this and make it more universal by packaging it in terms of pagan tropes already familiar to his audience (and to Paul).

As an example, Paul was allegedly from Tarsus. Tarsus had a local deity they worshiped as Herakles, but who was really a hybrid of Herakles and and agricultural god called Sandan. Tarsean Herakles was annually killed by being burned on a pyre, which represented the heat of the sun killing the vegetation, descended into the earth, then returned as the "first fruit" of grain. The Tarseans also considered this god to be a "savior," and Tarsean inscriptions call him "Soter Theos.

Paul repeatedly calls Jesus as a "first fruit," offering and sees his ascension as a meaning that the mass resurrection of the dead is about to occur. He was using a pagan theme (one that he grew up with) to sell a Jewish Messiah to Gentiles.

In my opinion, what Paul taught is not what the original Jerusalem movement taught or believed.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is admittedly only my opinion, but the reason I think so is because they were Palestinian Jews (albeit displaced ones) and did not acquire the pagan overlay of Pauline Christianity. What they practiced is basically what Paul says the Jerusalem church practiced.

Diogenes the Cynic

Crossan says Jesus (or at least the Jerusalem church) probably instituted a communal meal ritual, but that it wasn't a eucharist.

aa5874

So, why do you believe that a character described as the son of God that walked on water, transfigured and resurrected is NOT considered Divine by the author??

You are putting forward the absurd notion that the description of the character as a Son of God that acted Non-human is NOT likely to mean the author presented a Divine character.

Your position is quite unreasonable and without logic since all we have of Jesus is Mythology and NO known actual history.

That is YOUR BIG MISTAKE. We have NO example where JEWS worship MEN as Gods.

Please, please, please!!! All entities considered Myths have elements of myth, magic and non-history.

Jesus of the NT is a PERFECT Myth with ALL the myth, magic and ahistorical elements.

The fact that Jesus of the NT is a PERFECT Myth does NOT at all affect the Historical records of ancient characters.

It is a logical fallacy to put forward the absurd notion that if Jesus is myth then all Historical records of figures of history must be discarded.