...if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him

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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...if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him

Post by Giuseppe »

I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.
(John 5:43)
For this reason, they loved him [John the Baptist] quite justly, but they did not keep their love within bounds; for they kept wondering ''whether perhaps he was the Christ''. The apostle Paul warns against inordinate and irrational love when he says of himself, ''I fear that someone might have an opinion of me above what he sees or hears from me, and that the greatness of the revelations might exalt me'', and so on. Paul feared that even he might fall into this error. So he was unwilling to state everything about himself that he knew. He wanted no one to think more of him than he saw or, going beyond the limits of honor, to say what had been said about John, that ''he was the Christ''. Some people said this even about Dosithesus, the heresiarch of the Samaritans; others said it also about Judas the Galilean. Finally, some people burst forth into such great audacity of love that they invented new and unheard of exaggerations about Paul.
For, some say this, that the passage in Scripture that speaks of ''sitting at the Savior's right and left'' applies to Paul and Marcion: Paul sits at his right hand and Marcion at his left.
(Origen, Hom. in Luc., 25)

It is very curious that just around the time when the name of Paul became famous, also the names of the various messianist Jews (John the Baptist, Judas the Galilee, Dositheus) attracted for the first time the attention of the Christians.

It seems that also John 5:43 is condemning the desire of some Jews and Christians to recognize in the human History the identity of the spiritual Christ. He regards this attempt as blasphemous insofar the reputation of the supposed ''Christ'' (John the Baptist, Judas the Galilee, Dositheus and even Paul) contrasts with the strangeness of the true Christ with respect to this world.

This raises the question: was Jesus really euehmerized in a myriad of alleged ''Christs'' before even of really receiving a biography by the first gospel?

Something of the kind:

1) Jesus Myth in Paul and the early Christians before the 70 CE.

2) ''the Christ is here, the Christ is there'', after the 70 CE.

3) the earliest Gospel was written after the 135 CE.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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