About the role of Ignatius per Ellegard

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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About the role of Ignatius per Ellegard

Post by Giuseppe »

Reading Ellegard's book, I see an original reconstruction of how the Jesus of the early Christians was euhemerized on earth.

According to Ellegard, Ignatius would be “the originator of the Gospel story” (Jesus - One Hundred Years Before Christ, p. 203)

In particular, he writes:
The fact that Ignatius has given us the first clearly datable mentions about the roles of Mary, John the Baptist, Pilate etc. does not exlude the possibility that those names had begun to circulate in the churches of God. But it was certainly Ignatius' authority that provided them with credibility among the faithful.
(ibid., p. 209)
Interestingly, Ignatius thus occupies a position half-way between Paul and the Gospels not only in his language, but also theologically. He is the first definitely to present Jesus as an early first-century figure. But he does not try to outline a biography of Jesus, complete with both sayings and dees. Nor does he try to dramatise the Jesus story.
(ibid., p. 212)

But why did Ignatius fixed the Jesus's life ''under the governorship of Pontius Pilate''?
Because that was “the time of the 'evangelisation'” (p. 211).

If then a pure gossip euhemerized Jesus and not the Earliest Gospel (who had only to assume a historicist premise to expand the story), why did Ignatius seem to use that paritcular gossip to polemize against other different gossips about possibly other dates of the crucifixion (As discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3330 ) ???

What strikes me is the dual nature of the dating the death of Jesus under Pilate:

1) It serves to legitimize the preaching of early apostles as Paul, and

2) It may serve to rival with other dates of the crucifixion

Were these rival dates incapable of legitimizing the Paul's preaching, in the eyes of Ignatius?

What interest did different dates have to make not precisely the point of Ignatius (that the true Christianity started only with the first apostles as Paul) ?

A possibility is that those dates, if they existed, had a denigrating goal (see the Toledoth Jeschu tradition, for example). The visionary enthusiasm of Paul and of the early apostles, in the absence of a contemporary ''historical'' Jesus (one lived ''at the time of Pilate''), seems to be a typical apocalyptic failure (when seen with the eyes of a contemporary of Ignatius). With a ''historical'' Jesus contemporary of Paul and the first Apostles, their visionary enthusiasm is no longer aimed at the coming future (an end that didnt' arrive) but is focused on their present time, on the just-passed life of Jesus upon the earth. That visionary enthusiasm (read: the authority of Paul) continues to be legitimized not more - as it did historically - in view of a future coming Messiah but in view of a already came flesh-and-blood Messiah.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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