Another serious mythicist of the past: Gilbert T. Sadler
Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:50 am
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_T._Sadler
From a (very superficial) rapid (by now) reading of the his works available online:
He was a proponent of the Gnostic origins of Christianity.
He was a Radical Critic about the Pauline Epistles (in a book) while conceding at the same time the traditional view (in another book): a sign of an open mind.
The crucifixion was an ancient Gnostic symbol: the intersection between the Infinite and the Finite.
The mainstream Jews (and even Paul) persecuted the early Christians so this fact became the "crucifixion of Christ by the Jews".
The latter point is interesting. If Paul preached a "crucified Christ", then what was a "scandal" for the Jews was just the preaching of the fact that the same Jews crucified the Christ! This may explain the Talmudic hate against Jesus: the Crucifixion story was the euhemerization of something so abstract as the Jewish opposition to the early Christians.
I would like to inquire better this idea without anti-semitic dicothomies, please (even if I realize that in the past scholarship the presumed spirituality of the early Christians was seen in opposition to Judaism as a rather suspect"natural" fact).
From a (very superficial) rapid (by now) reading of the his works available online:
He was a proponent of the Gnostic origins of Christianity.
He was a Radical Critic about the Pauline Epistles (in a book) while conceding at the same time the traditional view (in another book): a sign of an open mind.
The crucifixion was an ancient Gnostic symbol: the intersection between the Infinite and the Finite.
The mainstream Jews (and even Paul) persecuted the early Christians so this fact became the "crucifixion of Christ by the Jews".
The latter point is interesting. If Paul preached a "crucified Christ", then what was a "scandal" for the Jews was just the preaching of the fact that the same Jews crucified the Christ! This may explain the Talmudic hate against Jesus: the Crucifixion story was the euhemerization of something so abstract as the Jewish opposition to the early Christians.
I would like to inquire better this idea without anti-semitic dicothomies, please (even if I realize that in the past scholarship the presumed spirituality of the early Christians was seen in opposition to Judaism as a rather suspect"natural" fact).