Iasion

Greetings all,

Ignatius occupies a special place in Christian history - he is the first to say anything about a historical Jesus - i.e. the very first to place Jesus in time, the very first to name any names - see my page here to see how Ignatius stands out :
<a href="http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Table.html" target="_blank">http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Table.html</a>

Ignatius is the very first to cite these NAMES : Herod, Mary and Pontius Pilate (its another 50 years before anyone mentions the other names and places etc.)

Yet oddly, he does NOT mention ANY other details of the Jesus Story - there is no reference to Joseph, Judas, Lazarus, John the Baptist, Peter, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, r. Jordan, Capernaum, no mention of the events in the life of Jesus, no sayings, no miracles, no baptism, no triumphal entry, no trial, no ascension etc.
He does talk about the 'flesh' of Jesus in very odd ways, as I mention elsewhere. He does talk about being 'raised from the dead' - but its the disciples who are raised - his views are Gnostic, not orthodox.

He shows NOT the slightest suggestion that Jesus is an actual person who lived recently, in fact, he explicitly talks of Jesus and the cross as 'ancient' :
Phil. : " Jesus Christ is in the place of all that is ancient: His cross, and death, and resurrection, and the faith which is by Him, are undefiled monuments of antiquity, "

Ignatius writes in distinctly Gnostic terms - mysteries, initiation, personal passion, attaining Christ himself.

Our copies of Ignatius are known to be corrupt, we have several different versions, all late copies - so our 3 references to Herod, Mary and Pilate are uncertain - we are not really sure what he actually wrote.


So,
here is the punch-line :
according to Kuhn, these 3 names are all corruptions of mythological entities -

Mary = mare (the sea, which means 'matter')
Pontius Pilate = pontos piletas (dense sea (of matter))
Herod = Herut (egyptian monster who threatens the child-god)


Considered along with these points:
* Ignatius wrote in Gnostic terms,
* born of Mare and pontos piletas are Gnostic conceptions,
* Ignatius' are notoriusly corrupt writings
* Ignatius mentions ONLY those 3 names

I think it is reasonable to assume that the original writings DID in fact have mare, pontos piletas, and Herut - and that later these were mis-understood or deliberately falsified into the current Mary, Pontius Pilate and Herod.


Quentin David Jones


P.S.

Here are some relevant quotes from Kuhn's "Who Is This King a Glory" (useful reference, available online) :

Herod:
"There is a perfect match between the flight of the parents of Jesus into Egypt for the safety of the divine child from the Herod menace and a similar protection for Horus. The god Taht says to Isis, the mother: "Come, thou goddess Isis, hide thyself with the child," and the place of concealment indicated was in the marshes of Lower Egypt--bringing the Moses analogy to mind at once! This is pure evolutionary symbology and not personal history. That there is any vital significance in the fact that Jesus fled to Egypt to escape the Herod menace, while Horus had to be saved from the Herut menace in Lower Egypt will probably be shouted down by hostile critics."
"It must be left then to rest upon the strong presumptive probabilities inherent in the situation. It must be held deeply suggestive, however, that the name Herod occupies exactly the same place, role and significance in the Gospel "incident" that the Herut reptile fills in the Egyptian allegory! It is the Herut menace to our young divine souls in the one instance, and the Herod menace to the young divinity in the other"

Pontius Pilate
"... our amazement when we turn to the Greek and find a similarity of name even closer to identity than the Herod-Herut one-- "dense sea" in the Greek manuscripts is given as (pontos pilètos)! "He suffered under pontos pilètos: he suffered under the dense sea" (of matter)."

Mary :
"Now matter, as has been set forth fully elsewhere, was typified universally and ubiquitously in ancient symbolism by water, so that even the name most generally applied to the mothers of the Christs was in whatever language the word for water, sea, ocean. Mary is incontestably of this origin, being Mare, Maria in Latin, and Thallath, "the sea" (name of a Hellenic "Mother of God"), in Greek"

CX

This is absurd. The name mary is rendered in the Greek manuscripts MARIAS and is a transliteration of a Hebrew name. It bears no etymological resemblance to QALASSA the Greek word for sea. That there is a resemblance in the English transliteration of both the Greek MARIAS and the Latin MARE is irrelevant. And to make something of it is senseless.

This is even sillier. Pontius Pilate is well known figure from antiquity. There is both archeological and extra-biblical text evidence for his reign as the 5th Roman procurator of Judaea. Not only that but the etymological significance outlined above is unfounded. In the NT Pilate is only referred to 3 times by his full name (in all other cases he is called simply "Pilate") Twice in the genitive PONTOU PILATOU and once in the nominative PONTIOS PILATOS. The context and case makes clear that a person is referred to. Furthermore the Greek word PONTUS is used twice in the catholic epistles both times the obvious context implies a place name (PONTUS was a region of Asia Minor). That the Latin etymology of the name PONTUS (it is derived from Latin in the Greek) is "the sea" is again irrelevant since it is unconnected to the Greek. The authors of 1 Peter and Timothy are simply referring to a place that has a Latin derived name (since it was part of the Roman empire in Asia Minor). Lastly there is no word PILETOS in Koine Greek.

Ultimately even a cursory check of the Greek texts demonstrates these notions to be unsupportable. I cannot comment on the Herod/Herut connection toher than to say that the Herodian kings are well known historically and fit the picture of 1st century palestine and any similarity between the Hebrew name Herod which would be written in Hebrew and the Egyptian name Herut which would be written in Pharonic heiroglyphics is purely a matter of coincidence.

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]</p>

Iasion

Greetings,

thanks for your comments,

Yes, the Mare part of the argument is pretty weak.

Pardon? so what?
I said nothing about Pontius Pilate not being real - the issue is whether his name is original to Ignatius' writings.

Pardon? so what?
the issue is Ignatius's writings - the very FIRST to mention his name - and in full.

Pardon? so what?
I said nothing about Herod not being real - the issue is whether the name is found in Ignatius's writings.

Perhaps you were in a hurry and didn't read my post properly

Quentin David Jones

Haran

I don't know Kuhn, but Kuhn doesn't know the languages...

Hebrew
------
Mary = Miriam = Rebellion
Herod = Heroic

Latin (Cassell's)
-----
Pontius = Roman Name
Pilatus = "spear/javelin carrier"

I don't think Pontius derives from pontus.
I don't think the word piletas exists in Latin. Even if there is such a word and it does mean "dense", which I doubt since Cassell's gives many words for the english word "dense" and "think" and "piletas" is not one of them, great liberty is taken in adding "of matter"...

I have never seen this. Can you provide the name/number of this manuscript?

Thanks,
Haran

Alexis Comnenus

Iasion,

I fear your argument is already dead in the water and no number of 'what abouts' is going to save it. (CX - <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> ). Perhaps you should try another track.

By the way, Pilate is attested by a contempory inscription from Caesaria and mentioned by Josephus so Ignatius is not the first time he is mentioned. Finally Tacitus mentions Pilate as crucifying Jesus before your dating of Ignatius so it was clearly well known enough to reach the ear of a Roman senator.

Regards

Alex

CX

I read it. I am merely pointing out that NT writings which precede Ignatius clearly use these names without the bizarre Gnostic interpretation you offer. You can counter with your apparent position that the gospels are mid to late 2nd century inventions, but that argument is not compelling (if you'd like to present it here instead making everyone traipse over to your website and sort through it all, we could begin another thread). Lastly the word "piletas" appears to be neither Greek nor Latin so you need to present evidence to the contrary. I don't mean to seem dismissive but your positions and argumentation strike me as so much eisegetical crack pottery despite the fact that I have no particular allegiance to the orthodox position.

CX

Another difficulty I have with your assessment is that in the Epistle to the Trallians, which is regarded by scholars as part of the "middle recension" and thereby the most reliably authentic (mentioned by Eusebius) the context in which we see the names Pontius Pilate and Mary is one wherein the author is speaking against the heresy of docetism and arguing specifically for a human Christ who was crucified and buried. In that framework your hypothesis that Ignatius was actually gnostic is utterly incomprehensible as is the assertion that Mary and Pilate are actually corruptions of gnostic ideas. Ignatius is making a lengthy effort of refuting gnosticism in the very context in which these names occur. Have you actually read the Epistles of Ignatius or are you just picking and choosing bits gleaned from the internet to support your position?

CX

One more thing. You claim that Ignatius is not aware of or concerned with the earthly life of Jesus and yet the aforementioned Epistle to the Trallians says the following:

Now can we please dispense with this ridiculous discussion?

ju'iblex

piletas -noun, : condition of being; makes abstract noun.

this wont help at all though considering his name was Pontius Pilatus, as has been already said by Haran, and his definitions of the words were indeed correct.

Anything is possible when you swap letters in words, as Iasion has shown us very well indeed.

im sure we can think of a hidden meaning for the word "ship" or "disk" too if we tried hard enough and did the fantastic letter exchange technique.

Haran

Thanks. In Latin? What did you look it up in?

Piletus in Spanish means "sink" or "pool" I think...

Maybe Pontius Pilate was originally Spanish and meant something like Kitchen Sink.

Haran