jakejonesiv

Behold the presumed Paul!

He is a self-proclaimed Apostle. He knows next to noting about the man Jesus. At best he has heard a rumor that a Jew known as Jesus-Christ was crucified and appeared in visions.

Either Paul, or someone writing in his name, mentions only the most generic references to the man Jesus-Christ. He was a Jew of the line of David. Maybe he had a brother, the text is ambiguous. He was born of a woman, made of flesh, SARX.

These last is puzzling. Why make an issue of something that does nothing to distinguish Jesus from the rest of humanity? It makes no sense unless someone is preaching that Jesus wasn’t actually a man.

But after that Paul is faking it. He can’t tell what Jesus preached, any miracles he performed, why he was executed, or upon whose orders, or the location of the crucifixion. He doesn’t mention the names of Jesus’ parents, his birth place, or a single person Jesus-Christ had a conversation with during his life. Paul doesn’t know about the gospels or any traditions used to form them.

Instead, it seems that Paul already had a theological framework of a cosmic redeemer in place. It is a transcendent being who descends from heaven to die and rise for the salvation of initiates who, by vicariously participating in the deeds of the god, accrue the benefits made available by his divine ransom.

This indicates that the origin of Paulinism was not Christian, and perhaps not even Jewish except in the broadest and most Hellenized sense of the word. Somewhere in the eastern hinterlands of central and western Asia minor, a nascent Christianity met a mystery cult, and the Christ Cults were born, lead by a legendary apostle.

Paul was an obscure figment until multiple authors began to write in his name. Even mainstream scholars agree that there are at least three different authorships represented; the authentic seven epistles, the Deutero-Pauline schools of Ephesians and Colossians, and lastly the Pastoral Epistles. Pseudonymous authorship is a given in the Pauline corpus. It is less recognized that in the presumably authentic epistles, there is no unity of authorship.

In the second century there existed an alternate version of the Pauline epistles, of which no extant copies survive. Marcion either took an original version much like the one that appears in our Bibles today and cut it down, or Marcion’s version was more original and the proto-orthodox redacted it to counter the Marcionite doctrines they found objectionable. This would explain why Paul’s logic is often convoluted and why he often seems to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Regardless, Marcion gathered the earliest collection of Paul’s presumed letters, along with a shortened gospel that eventually was ascribed to Luke. The priority of Paul is with Marcion.

The Roman church may have heard of this strange brew religion, but it was held at arms length with suspicion. It was dearly loved by heretics, and Paul was the Apostle of the Heretics. This was wild-eyed and dangerous stuff. The heretics rejected apostolic succession, the very pillar upon which the Roman church based the authority of its religion. Instead these heretics claimed that the truth was made known exclusively to Paul by means of divine revelation. This left those who traced their founding back to the Twelve Apostles or the Family of Jesus out in the cold.

The lines of orthodoxy were only beginning to be drawn in the middle of the second century, and that was almost entirely as a reaction against the assertions of the heretics. We must remember that the Gnostic Valentinius was very nearly selected as a Bishop of Rome. Even Marcion was accepted for a time and a hearing was given to his doctrines before being rejected along with his money. Nor should we assign any value judgment to the terms “orthodox” and “heretic.” Orthodoxy and Heresy were determined after the fact by winners of the doctrinal struggles. Orthodoxy would not be fully defined for centuries, and even Tertullian would eventually be labeled a heretic. In the middle of the second century, the outcome was very much in doubt.

Paul, as the Apostle of the heretics, was appealed to by alternative Christianities for other doctrines that the emerging proto-orthodox found themselves battling. The Marcionite version of the Pauline epistles revealed a docetic depiction of Jesus. Jesus is said to have appeared in the form of a man, in the likeness of flesh, a man in appearance but not in actuality.

Those puzzling references noted above (“born of a woman” and “flesh”) are not in the Marcionite version. These phrases are too vague to lend any specificity to the life of Jesus, and were never meant too. They were inserted into the catholic redaction of the Pauline epistles to counter the doctrine of Docetism, and that is all they are good for.

At the same time that Marcion came to Rome and threw down the Apostilicon, the Roman church still had a very fluid gospel tradition. No gospel was known by its current name until about 185 CE. Justin Martyr calls them “memoirs” and never identifies a specific author. His gospel quotes are seemingly a blend of the four gospels later deemed canonical along with other gospel materials. At the crucial point, the crucifixion, Justin dispenses with the memoirs and appeals to a non-extant version of the Acts of Pilate to prove the truth of the events. Justin even takes part in the creation of gospel material when he deduces (for the first time ever by a Christian) from the 22nd Psalm that Jesus’ feet were pierced by nails.

I mention the “memoirs of the apostles” to illustrate the fact the Roman church relied very much on apostolic succession to prove the truth of its doctrines. Originally, it was all the apostles so honored. But when the heretics held up Paul as the ultimate authority, the proto-orthodox responded by elevating Peter to go one on one with Paul. Peter and Paul became the proxy heads of the second century battles between the proto-orthodox and the heretics.

But soon the Roman church developed a brilliant tactic to undercut the heretical Paul. They had a Pauline letter to the Roman church anachronistically praising them for their world renown. Marcion’s versions of the Pauline epistles were redacted to bring Paul more in line with catholic doctrine. The Acts of the Apostles and the Pastoral epistles were forged to tame the heretical Paul and make him into a good catholic, working hand in glove with Peter. (Acts even went so far as to define apostleship to exclude Paul.)

Thus the legendary founders of the two roots of Christianity were made into St. Peter and St. Paul, Catholic Saints, working harmoniously to establish the Roman church. It is all a late 2nd century myth. Irenaeus even had the nerve to create twelve mythical Popes preceding his own. Twelve tribes of Israel, Twelve Apostles, Twelve Popes, and dare I say it, all ultimately from the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

Jake Jones IV

aa5874

What? Too much leeway? I just want you to expose any conspiracy in my theory that the Church produce a fraudulent history of Jesus believers where multiple writers were either partially or wholly fictionalised including Saul/Paul, Ignatius, Clement, Irenaeus and Tertullian.

It is no conspiracy at all that the writers mentioned Saul/Paul, Ignatius, Clement, Irenaeus and Tertullian are witnesses for the Church to make errors appear to be the truth.

Eusebius in "Church History" did use those writers as corroborative sources of his fraud.

jakejonesiv

Yes, you are leaving yourself a "get out of jail free" card. What language did Irenaeus write in? Tertullian? Why do they contradict each other on various (albeit minor) points? Did Eusebius forge so much he forgot, or was it writer's cramp?

You have made the very bold but ill defined claim that the New Testament and Ante-Nicene Fathers were produced "either in whole or in part" by a fourth century forgery mill. (If this is not your position, please elaborate). To support this you have appealed to findings that most skeptical researchers would accept, but pretend that the items are unique to your view.

I can agree that Eusebius is responsible for forging the Testimonium Flavianum (Eusbius' fingerprints are all over the TF, as Ken Olson pointed out) without taking the leap that he (alone or with minions?) forged the vast bulk of Christian writings up to and including his date.

The TF is one paragraph. You are proposing potentially hundreds of thousands of words in various languages and styles (will you predictably say it looks like the work of a single author?) , most of which are ill suited for the only rationale you have given; the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire.

I will restate a question, this time non-rhetorically. You said nothing your tertullian forger wrote concerning Marcion was true. Why waste all that time (5 books at least) inventing doctrines to oppose that which no one believed anyway? He must have been as dumb as a door knob. He should have slept late that morning.

Jake

show_no_mercy

Hey, doesn't the bold part say "Jesus the Good" (Chrestos)?

mountainman

Good question.

Interested parties might want to check Elsa Gibson's

The Christians for Christians Inscriptions of Phrygia

Here the author admits quite openly that:
certain (#2 and #30) of the "Christians for Christians"
phrases look to have been added by a later hand.
(nb: yes, we are talking about "interpolated" inscriptions).

Additionally, there are two main variants, of the original Greek, identified in the spelling of the word "christian". These two main variants are shown in the following summary tabulations in the columns labelled XPIC- and XPHC- (ie: chrestos and christos variants abound). It is not the purpose or the scope of this article to explore this fact further. Rather it is noted that there is no single and unambiguous greek wording, but multiple. It is also admitted that in some of the inscriptions (#2), the "Christians for Christians" is identified as ungramatical.

aa5874

The Pauline writer DID write about Jesus and claimed he got his information by revelation from the resurrected and ascended Jesus.

Paul appears to be a witness for the resurrected and ascended Jesus. This Jesus would tell Paul about his activities on earth.

The so-called Paul wrote more about Jesus than Peter the supposed disciple of Jesus.

Peter's name is attached to two epistles yet he wrote LESS than next to nothing about Jesus. The so-called brother of the Lord, James, in his epistle did not even claim he was the brother of Jesus. There is virtually nothing about the life of Jesus in the epistle called Jude supposedly another brother of Jesus. Jude did not acknowledge that he was a relative of Jesus. Likewise the epistles claimed to be written by John are biographically bare with respect to Jesus.

It would appear to me that the epistles are not primarily biographical but doctrinal or theological.

So of what benefit is it to unknown authors to prop up an obscure figment called Paul.? But in the NT, Paul was not an obscure figment at all and no church writer ever claimed Paul was obscure. Paul, it is claimed evangelised the Roman Empire from Galatia to Rome.

By whose authority did Irenaeus create 12 bishops of Rome starting with Peter in the 2nd century?

You seem to think that Irenaeus was making stuff up on his own while he was writing and that all the heretics did not notice. Irenaeus just created 12 mythical bishops and the so-called heretics just accepted the myths as history.

You seem to think that Irenaeus and Tertullian were alive when books or passages in the books with their names were written.

But Josephus was long dead, when Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 was written.

jakejonesiv

This is the reason Daniel Jon Mahar gives for using Chrestos in his English Reconstruction and Translation of Marcion's version of To The Galatians,
"the spelling for "Chrestos" (=the Good one ) derived from an ancient inscription to a Marcionite synagogue."

jakejonesiv

All four of the canonical gospels were in the hands of the heretics before the proto-orthodox appropriated them.

But the proto-orthodox claimed them abruptly, right about the time Irenaeus was releasing Book 3 of’ "Against Heresies."

There is no adequate evidence for the existence of the fourfold Gospel before Irenaeus, ca. 185 CE. Irenaeus admits that the four gospels have authority because various heretics used them previously. Matthew by the Ebionites. Luke came from Marcion. Mark by the Separatists (i.e. Adoptionists such as Basilides). John came from Valentinus. Irenaeus, AH 3.11.7-8. There is no record that anyone had so much as heard of any gospel authored by Luke before Irenaeus.

This is the first time that it is claimed that Gospel of John was written by John the apostle!

1.27.2 is the very first time that a gospel was ever attributed to Luke, and then it is used to attack Marcion! "Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke." (An observer at the time might reply "Marcion mutilated what? Luke?? Never heard of it!")

Luke was unknown before Irenaeus, but then is mentioned THIRTY times in Book 3 of "Against Heresies"? The conclusion is that this marks the debut of the catholic redaction of Marcion's Evangelion. (They chose the name "Luke" because the legendary Paul was said to have a companion by that name, and the new gospel and it's companion piece Acts was issued to subvert Paul and therefore Marcion).

Irenaeus goes into a full blown sales pitch. He delivers the equivalent of a modern advertisement for the roll out of a "new and improved" product. The proto-orthodox forgers have finished their rewrites, and Irenaeus is in charge of marketing the Quadriform Gospel.

Here is Irenaeus in full huckster mode.

The whole thing is ludicrous until one realizes that Irenaeus is putting the hard sell on the gullible for a new product.

Where just a Book before, Irenaeus could scarcely bring himself to call a gospel by name, he suddenly cannot cease to parade the new alleged authors of the Quadriform Gospel.
"according to Luke, taking up [His] priestly character"
"Matthew, again, relates His generation"
"Mark, on the other hand, commences with the prophetical spirit coming down from on high to men"

In 3.11.9, Irenaeus continues his newly found calling in promoting the four "approved" gospels. The lie is that these four "have been handed down to us from the apostles." At the same time, he attacks the earlier gospels held by those he deems heretics; "But those who are from Valentinus, ... boast that they possess more Gospels than there really are."

Even the proto-orthodox will need to be convinced to accept the new gospels. Since the catholic versions are redactions based on heretical gospels, Irenaeus must appeal to the very Heretics from which the gospels were appropriated!

Jake Jones IV

aa5874

As I read your analysis of Irenaeus in Against Heresies it is even more clear that Against Heresies was not written in the 2nd century but a later date most likely the 4th century.

Once you admit that Irenaeus fabricated 12 mythical bishops then almost immediately you have shown that Irenaeus was not credible and could not have presented this false information to a live audience.

Once you admit that Irenaeus lied about how the Church got possession of the four Gospels, again you are confirming that the writer using the name Irenaeus was not before a live audience, he was not writing to his contemporaries.

"Against Heresies" is from another time zone.

..... An observer at that time might reply, "Against Heresies"? What? Never heard of it?

Irenaeus must have mutilated Marcion in an other time zone, since Irenaeus' mutilation of the truth would have been instantly recognised in the 2nd century.


Irenaeus even documented his mutilation of the truth. According to this backdated fiction writer, the Church began with FOUR Gospels and it was the heretics that later used each gospel to propagate their heresies.

What absurdity! In the 4th century Eusebius in Church History would try and harmonise all the errors of the Four Gospels.

It is most obvious that it was the Church under the authority of the Political Powers that mutilated and harmonised the teachings and texts of the existing sects and claimed it was their own.

These are the words of the writer called Irenaeus, the writer that fabricated 12 mythical bishops and in the process made himself the contemporary of the very Mythical Bishops.

"Against Heresies" is from another time zone, not the 2nd century. The writer using the name Irenaeus was a salesman in the 4th century.

jakejonesiv

HI AA,

Proto-orthodox doctrine evolved over two centuries. We can easily see this development when we read the church fathers.

The writings of Ireneaus fit the second century.

Irenaeus wrote during the time of Eleutherius and COMPILED A LIST containing just the right number of early bishops of Rome (people not having certain knowledge more than a few previous) to have the his current bishop to come out to twelve from the aposltes. Fourth century forgers would not give a flip if a non-existent Irenaues lived in the time of the alleged twelfth bishop or not. This is something the real Ireneaus would concoct.

You say that Ireneuas and Tertullian were forged by fourth century conspirators. Why then, did they disagree on the early bishops of Rome? Couldn't they get the story straight?

Here is Ireneus list from AH 3.3.3:

So, to recapitulate, according to Irenaeus we have
PETER and Paul (mythical founders)
1. LINUS
2. ANACLETUS
3. CLEMENT
4. EVARISTUS
5. ALEXANDER
6. SIXTUS
7. TELEPHORUS
8. HYGINUS
9. PIUS
10. ANICETUS
11. SOTER
12. ELEUTHERIUS

Yet Tertullian clearly contradicted the above list. I am not going to provide the reference to you, because you need to do learn to do some research on your own. So look it up and explain it.

If the catholic church forged Tertullian, why did they create him as a heretic, a Montanist heretic who clashed with Callistus, who subsequently died out of communion? Tertullian also subordinated the Son to Father, and thus was not in accordance with Nicene Trinity doctrine. Now why would a fourth century forger do that?

What about Origen? I haven't discussed him much, but he likewise blows your theories to smithereens. Do you think Origen was forged by the same fourth century conspirators? Be careful how you answer this question. Origen died excommunicated.

What about Cyprian? Was he created by forgery also?
If your theories are true, the alleged forgers of the fourth century were idiots.

Jake Jones IV