GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Thu Mar 28, 2024 6:34 pm
While we don't have the writings of the heretics themselves, we can get an idea of what the heresies were about from the early apologists. No-one as far as I know (purpose of this thread) ever questioned the historical existence of Jesus. There are some interesting passages that have been brought up, so perhaps others disagree. If there had been such a "non-existence" heresy, would the anti-heresy apologists have been expected to mention them? I'd think so.
Unfortunately, the arguments just weren't that sophisticated. We know that Christians refuted the claim that their accounts of Jesus were fabrications (I've cited such statements). But all we have are the statements on one side, we don't really know exactly what was being said.
But most of the writings of the Church Fathers were dealing with claims made by other believing Christians. They were meant to show that other people who worshiped Jesus didn't really understand who Jesus was. So naturally, such people aren't actual doubters about the existence of Jesus, these were all people who worshiped Jesus. And what we can see is that every single group of people that the Church Father's railed against was worshiping some figure described in a Gospel that was similar to the Gospels we know.
What we don't have is evidence of people arguing over the nature of Jesus or existence of Jesus from some basis other than Gospel stories. Any writings we have that appear to have been written by people who didn't know the Gospels, also fail to describe Jesus as any kind of person, so they provide no insight either. There is really only one Jesus person who is ever discussed as that is the character of the Gospel stories.
Even Celsus only knows the Gospel Jesus.
https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ ... lsus3.html
Yes, Celsus makes some claim about the "real" biography of Jesus, but it is evident that these supposed "real facts" about Jesus are themselves just alternative imaginings derived from the Gospels.
"Let us imagine what a Jew- let alone a philosopher- might say to Jesus: 'Is it not true, good sir, that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumors about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins? Is it not the case that far from being born in the royal David's city of Bethlehem, you were born in a poor country town, and of a woman who earned her living by spinning? Is it not the case that when her deceit was uncovered, to wit, that she was pregnant by a roman soldier called Panthera she was driven away by her husband- the carpenter- and convicted of adultery?"
"I could continue along these lines, suggesting a good deal about the affairs of Jesus' life that does not appear in your own records. Indeed, what I know to be the case and what the disciples tell are two very different stories... [for example] the nonsensical idea that Jesus foresaw everything that was to happen to him (an obvious attempt to conceal the humiliating facts)."
But this is not surprising. For example, when it came to the Sibyls, even Pausanias and Cicero thought they we real. Even when railing against the works of the Sibyls Cicero never charged that the works of the Sibyls were all just forgeries.
We Romans venerate the verses of the Sibyl who is said to have uttered them while in a frenzy. Recently there was a rumor, which was believed at the time, but turned out to be false, that one of the interpreters of those verses was going to declare in the Senate that, for our safety, the man whom we had as king in fact should be made king also in name. If this is in the books, to what man and to what time does it refer? For it was clever in the author to take care that whatever happened should appear foretold because all reference to persons or time had been omitted. He also employed a maze of obscurity so that the same verses might be adapted to different situations at different times. Moreover, that this poem is not the work of frenzy is quite evident from the quality of its composition (for it exhibits artistic care rather than emotional excitement), and is especially evident from the fact that it is written in what is termed 'acrostics,' wherein the initial letters of each verse taken in order convey a meaning; as, for example, in some of Ennius's verses, the initial letters form the words, Quintus Ennius Fecit, that is, 'Quintus Ennius wrote it.' That surely is the work of concentrated thought and not of a frenzied brain. And in the Sibylline books, throughout the entire work, each prophecy is embellished with an acrostic, so that the initial letters of each of the lines give the subject of that particular prophecy. Such a work comes from a writer who is not frenzied, who is painstaking, not crazy. Therefore let us keep the Sibyl under lock and key so that in accordance with the ordinances of our forefathers her books may not even be read without permission of the Senate and may be more effective in banishing rather than encouraging superstitious ideas.
-Cicero, De Divinatione 2.54
What Cicero does not say, nor are there any recorded charges of anyone saying, was that the writings of the Sibyls were all forgeries and that there was no Sibyl at all. No one ever said that. Yet today, that is the position of every Classicist. The writings of the Sibyls were pure fabrications attributed to a made up figure who never existed. But no ancient critic ever said that.