The Lost Chapter of Epiphanius' Panarion

[iskander]

Gday Secret, Alas !

The real question for Kapayong is WHY DOESN'T Epiphanius mention mythicists? The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

You are correct, they did not exist. At least, not in the exoteric histories of the day.

Because Epiphanius carefully erased them from profain history, of course. Although he didn't actually exist himself, his name refered to those with over sight of the original conspiracy of silence. A secret brotherhood, hidden for ages past, but now revealed to his true apostles through the revelation of his sun, and a righteous triple espresso.

This Mythicist Brotherhood was kept hidden only by the continuing vigilence of their great stewards through the ages - from Augustine the Hippo, Ebion the Poor, Gregory the Thaumaturgist, John the Scottish Irishman, Arthur Pendragon, Saadia Gaon, Pope Joan, William Tell, Beren Erchamion, Robin Hood, Nicholas Flamel, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim, Robert the Bruce, Elfric de Cranstoun, the Count de St Germain, 0B1 Kenobi, John Dee, Eddard Stark, Isaac Newton, Bérenger Saunière, Ned Ludd, Mary Anne South, HP Blavatsky, Nicola Tesla, John XXIII, Albert Einstein, Karl Jung, Simon Templar, T.E. Shaw, Robert Kennedy, Umberto Eco, Steve Jobs, and finally - he of the Secret Alias.

This underground stream bubbled quietly for a millenium after the destruction of Jerusalem, where it was kept hidden beneath the Temple of Solomon. In the fullness of time the secret treasure was recovered at midnight at the Well of Souls by the crusading Templar diggers and brought back to Europe bringing fame and fortune and flying buttresses. But Philip wasn't Fair, and on that fateful Friday the 13th seneschals all over France opened their secret orders at dawn :
"Arrest ye all Jesus Mythicists ! "

The Mythicists were too smart however, and they escaped on their flying boats to Scotland, Rennes-le-Château, La Merica, Beach & Locach, Sherwood Forest, Casterly Rock, Endor, Java Le Grande, and the Kingdom of Prester John. So like a hydra the Mythicist Monster sprouted new heads all over, even in Europe - from Robert the Bruce and the Scottish Freemasons at Roslyn Chapel, through the Albigensians and the Buggers and even Cathay Pacific.

Until recently the secret was ever kept safe in the hands of the Military-Industrial-Medical-Banking-Media complex, who ensured a new 'Historical Jesus' story hit the TV just before every Easter and Christmas.

But now the time has come - the Pleaides are in perfect alignment with the Olive Tree, and the long-prophesied Trump has arrived :

Paul : " For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and The TRUMP of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. " (1 Thess. 4:16, KJV)

Augustine - " ... because this hour shall be hereafter, because this hour shall be at the end of the world, because this shall be the last hour, shall be at the last TRUMP. " (Sermon LXXVII, 14)

Aurelius Prudentius : " Vain all thy tears, when loud shall sound The TRUMP, when flames shall scorch the ground, When from its hinge the cloven world is loosed, in horrid tumult hurled. " (Hymns, XI. Hymn For Christmas-Day)"

The Trump of God has loosed the cloven world from its hinge, beware the horrid tumult hurled !

Kapyong

a "Mythicist" is nothing more than a person who does not believe in the existence of gods . Is there anything more to it?

[Kapyong]

Gday iskander

a "Mythicist" is nothing more than a person who does not believe in the existence of gods . Is there anything more to it?

The only True Mythicist around here is a Jesus Mythicist

Kapyong

[iskander]

Gday iskander

a "Mythicist" is nothing more than a person who does not believe in the existence of gods . Is there anything more to it?

The only True Mythicist around here is a Jesus Mythicist

Kapyong

"Jesus Mythicist " is an unusual alias, why not a 'plain atheist' studying the history of human thought ?

[Kapyong]

Gday

"Jesus Mythicist" is an unusual alias, why not a 'plain atheist' studying the history of human thought ?

Jesus Mythicist has stuck as the term for those who argue Jesus was not historical.

But it doesn't connect with atheism, I'm not an atheist.


Kapyong

[iskander]

Gday

"Jesus Mythicist" is an unusual alias, why not a 'plain atheist' studying the history of human thought ?

Jesus Mythicist has stuck as the term for those who argue Jesus was not historical.

But it doesn't connect with atheism, I'm not an atheist.


Kapyong

You consider God to exist, but the life of one man to have been impossible. God is real but man is a myth?

[DCHindley]

Gday iskander

a "Mythicist" is nothing more than a person who does not believe in the existence of gods . Is there anything more to it?

The only True Mythicist around here is a Jesus Mythicist

Kapyong

"Jesus Mythicist " is an unusual alias, why not a 'plain atheist' studying the history of human thought ?

Tsk tsk, Isk,

I think one has to make the distinction between someone who doesn't believe in "God" or "Gods" (whether capitalized or not) - an atheist - and someone who thinks the figure of Jesus in the NT and early Christian tradition is entirey mythical - a true Jesus mythicist.

However, one can also not believe that any true "god" (in the most abstract terms, the entity or entities that make the world do as it does, maybe like the Deist's "Prime-Mover who is Unmoved"), would project itself consciously as a "person" - which can also be a subspecies of those called "athiests" but more commonly called "agnostic" despite the fact that agnostics may think one of the available personas of God is true but is just not sure which one it is.

Then too, one can think that the figure of Jesus in the NT and early Christian tradition was based on a real man, but around whom has become attached all sorts of myths and rationalisms of dubious historicity. I'll admit that this is my private evaluation of the mythical nature of our modern perceptions of Jesus. However, I am also an atheist of the kind who recognizes a sort of living nature of the universe who does not think God has a human like personality that expresses anger or rage or has a thing for ruthless justice. I am not an outright denier of divinity, nor a complete mythicist.

Label	No god of any kind	Impersonal god	Personal God(s)
A Real Jesus founded Christianity
A RJ was founder, around who formed Myths		Here I am
Jesus of Christianity is an entirely Mythical construction

I guess I am more "middle of the road" than I originally thought!

DCH

[Giuseppe]

Given the fact that the First Gospel was probably a Gentile Christian text (ergo the Gentile Christians became more rapidly historicists) it is more expected that a survived mythicist sect had to be a Jewish-Christian sect.

Epiphanius says that the ebionites were historicists but they were deceived by a guy named Elxai to believe that Jesus was a Great Angel.

Clearly Epiphanius thought that a historicist belief has to precede a mythicist belief (according to a historicist paradigm), so he inverted the real causal order of events:

The ebionites believed that Jesus was a Great Angel

and only later they became historicists.

[Bernard Muller]

For me,
A RJ had a part in triggering Christianity, around who formed Myths (which became the main part of Christianity).
No god of any kind for me.

The ebionites believed that Jesus was a Great Angel

That goes against what Irenaeus earlier wrote about Ebionites:
'Against Heresies':
Book I, ch. XXVI, 2 "They [the Ebionites] ... repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the law. As to the prophetical writings, they endeavour to expound them in a somewhat singular manner: they practise circumcision, persevere in the observance of those customs which are enjoined by the law, and are so Judaic in their style of life, that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God."
Book V, ch. I, 3 "Vain also are the Ebionites, who do not receive by faith into their soul the union of God and man, but who remain in the old leaven of [the natural] birth, and who do not choose to understand that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High did overshadow her"
And also Eusebius:
'The History of the Church', 3, 27:
"They [the Ebionites] regarded Him [Jesus] as plain and ordinary, a man esteemed as righteous through growth of character and nothing more, the child of a normal union between a man and Mary; and they held that they must observe every detail of the Law. By faith in Christ alone, and a life built upon that faith, they would never win salvation."

Cordially, Bernard

[Giuseppe]

Iraeneus never talked about Elxai.

Elxai’s connections to other groups is again brought up by Epiphanius. Epiphanius says that Elxai had followers who were Nasaraene, Nazarene, Ebionite, and Essene.
This comes very close to my hypothesis: that at the origin of the Nazarenes and Ebionites (historicist Jewish Christian sect) there was a mythicist Jewish Christian sect.

[Giuseppe]

This is another evidence of old skepticism:

I trust [as to you] in the grace of Jesus Christ, who shall free you from every bond. And I exhort you to do nothing out of strife, but according to the doctrine of Christ. When I heard some saying, If I do not find it in the ancient Scriptures, I will not believe the Gospel; on my saying to them, It is written, they answered me, That remains to be proved. But to me 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; by which I desire, through your prayers, to be justified.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0108.htm

A better translation would be:

When I heard some saying, If I do not find it in the archives, I will not believe the Gospel; on my saying to them, It is written, they answered me, That remains to be proved. But to me Jesus Christ is the archive.

The ''archives'' were the historical chronicles of the time, not only the sacred scriptures.

Note how clearly Ignatius is begging the serious question that is being addressed to him. He remembers modern apologists in this.