Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
robert j
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by robert j »

What demons? Paul never wrote demons moved the Romans to kill Jesus.
Right, and Paul didn't write in his letters that the Romans killed Jesus either.
Giuseppe
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Giuseppe »

robert j wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 12:12 pm
What demons? Paul never wrote demons moved the Romans to kill Jesus.
Right, and Paul didn't write in his letters that the Romans killed Jesus either.
the idea that the "Jews", or better the "Judeans", killed Jesus for Paul is too much evident as a naive and popular form of euhemerization (in a mythicist paradigm) or of mere propagandistic legend (in a historicist paradigm), to be considered worthy of a serious inquiry, frankly.

It recalls me when, in time of war (I have in mind precisely the Great War of 15-18) , all the people of an enemy nation are considered as an only evil entity.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Giuseppe »

Isaiah 53:2 also says that the Servant of God has to be not so interesting to derive the attention against him (by the his same enemies):

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him.

So also here the only left reason to kill him was the his mere presence as an intruder. The his alien nature in a context of total enmity against him.

Also according to Wisdom 2:12-20, the killers hate the Just one for the his so alien nature.



12 Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is annoying to us;
he opposes our actions,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
13 He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the Lord.

14 To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us,
15 Because his life is not like that of others,
and different are his ways.
16 He judges us debased;
he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.
He calls blest the destiny of the righteous
and boasts that God is his Father.

17 Let us see whether his words be true;
let us find out what will happen to him in the end.
18 For if the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him
and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
19 With violence and torture let us put him to the test
that we may have proof of his gentleness
and try his patience.
20 Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”

in particular, what is hateful of the Just is the his possession of the Gnosis of God. So this recalls the Naassean Hymn:

And Jesus said: O Father, see!
[Behold] the struggle still of ills on earth!
Far from Thy Breath away she wanders!
She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos,
And knows not how she shall pass through.
Wherefore, send me, O Father!
Seals in my hands, I will descend;
Through Æons universal will I make a Path;
Through Mysteries all I'll open up a Way!
And Forms of Gods will I display;
The secrets of the Holy Path I will hand on,

And call them Gnosis.

This resembles also Acts 10:38:

how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

"doing good and healing all", in a previous phase, was to reveal salvific Gnosis. This was given to the same archons, according to Basilides:

The Son of the Archon of the Ogdoad tells the Son of the Archon of the Hebdomad, and he again tells his father. Thus both spheres, including the 365 heavens and their chief Archon, Abrasax, know the truth. This knowledge is not conveyed through the Hebdomad to Jesus, the Son of Mary, who through his life and death redeemed the third Filiation, that is: what is material must return to the Chaos, what is psychic to the Hebdomad, what is spiritual to the Not-Being God. When the third Filiation is thus redeemed, the Supreme God pours out a blissful Ignorance over all that is and that shall so remain forever. This is called "The Restoration of all things".

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02326a.htm

So the original Jesus's ministry was to vehicle the knowledge of the Father in any sphere by him visited before the final sphere where the crucifixion happened.

It was not a disturbance in the temple to cause the crucifixion, but the giving of Gnosis. This was not a miracle or an exorcism, but the partial revelation of the nature of the Father. The archons killed the Son because they didn't want to know.

In this sense alone the "Jews" could replace them as killers of Jesus: by not becoming Christians, they rejected the gnosis, so they became ipso facto killers of Jesus.

Note that the Romans became killers (in the Gospel) just in virtue of their essential blindness.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Giuseppe »

Now, in Paul Jesus gave the gnosis by simply revealing himself as "a man". So he revealed that the Creator was the his Father since only he could make the man "in the his image". There is a strange emphasis, in Paul, about the humanity of Jesus as implying (in proportional measure) the supreme deity of the creator.

So the archons hated Jesus because he appeared as a man and as an intruder.

Because the archons hated, without knowing it fully, in the humanity of Jesus the image of the Creator. They were disturbed by that image.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Giuseppe »

This explains why the anti-YHWH Marcion denied the humanity of Jesus (docetism). If Jesus was not a man, then his true Father was not the Creator.

Logical.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Bernard Muller
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Bernard Muller »

Right, and Paul didn't write in his letters that the Romans killed Jesus either.
But the only time Paul identified "archons", they are Roman authorities (Ro 13:3).
the idea that the "Jews", or better the "Judeans", killed Jesus for Paul is too much evident as a naive and popular form of euhemerization (in a mythicist paradigm) or of mere propagandistic legend (in a historicist paradigm), to be considered worthy of a serious inquiry, frankly.
If it is a reference to 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16, that passage is widely regarded to be an interpolation. Anyway, Jesus, as a Jew, could be killed by humans. I do not see any euhemerization here. However what I think naive and not worthy of serious inquiry, is the unevidenced multiple mythicist theories, requiring riddance of all clear-cut direct "historicist" evidence, starting from Paul's epistles.

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
robert j
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by robert j »

Bernard Muller wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:12 pm
Right, and Paul didn't write in his letters that the Romans killed Jesus either.
But the only time Paul identified "archons", they are Roman authorities (Ro 13:3).
"Archons" is a very general and widely applied term, like the English "ruler". In the NT, the term is used for rulers of the synagogue, for rulers of the Pharisees, for Beelzebub the ruler of demons, for rulers of the Jews, and more. The term is used in the LXX in a similarly wide range as well.

Just because the author of the letter Romans used the term in such a way that can be interpreted to mean Roman authorities, that certainly does not necessarily mean that the rulers of the eon that did not understand the hidden wisdom of God were intended to be Roman authorities in 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8.
Bernard Muller
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Bernard Muller »

to robert j,
Just because the author of the letter Romans used the term in such a way that can be interpreted to mean Roman authorities, that certainly does not mean that the rulers of the eon that did not understand the hidden wisdom of God were intended to be Roman authorities in 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8.
But "archons" is never identified as demons by Paul, but it is for Roman authorities.
Anyway, "demons" is a very biased interpretation of the word "archons" in 1 Co 2:18. But still, it is considered, by mythicists, the best evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus by demons.

About verse 1 Co 2:18: from 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 1 Corinthians 2:16, the ones who do not understand God's wisdom (& his plan) are specified to be humans (ref: 1:20, 22-25; 2:5, 9, 11, 13-14) and not spirits.

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
robert j
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by robert j »

Bernard Muller wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:06 pm to robert j,
Just because the author of the letter Romans used the term in such a way that can be interpreted to mean Roman authorities, that certainly does not necessarily mean that the rulers of the eon that did not understand the hidden wisdom of God were intended to be Roman authorities in 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8.
But "archons" is never identified as demons by Paul, but it is for Roman authorities.
Anyway, "demons" is a very biased interpretation of the word "archons" in 1 Co 2:18. But still, it is considered, by mythicists, the best evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus by demons.

About verse 1 Co 2:18: from 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 1 Corinthians 2:16, the ones who do not understand God's wisdom (& his plan) are specified to be humans (ref: 1:20, 22-25; 2:5, 9, 11, 13-14) and not spirits.

Cordially, Bernard
Do you see me arguing for demons?

I think Paul intended the "rulers" in 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8 as human rulers on earth. Perhaps humans influenced by Satan or demonic forces, and perhaps not.
Bernard Muller
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Re: Another thing that is very strangely missing in Paul...

Post by Bernard Muller »

to robert j,
I think Paul intended the "rulers" in 1 Corinthians 2:6 and 2:8 as human rulers on earth. Perhaps humans influenced by Satan or demonic forces, and perhaps not.
That's what I think also. Except I would drop demonic forces.
I repeat what I wrote long ago:
From http://historical-jesus.info/68.html
"Furthermore, according to Paul, "this age" has only one (not several) demonic entity, "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), likely Satan (Romans 16:20). And the only time when Paul used the word "demons" ('daimonion': 1 Corinthians 10:20-21), it is about pagan gods, not subordinates of Satan.
But it is possible Paul would have thought of Satan as one of the rulers, one who could use humans from afar to kill people as in the book of Job and Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:5 "to deliver such a one [a bad Christian] to Satan for the destruction of the flesh..."
"for 1 Corinthians 2:8, Paul had human authorities in his mind, as the 'archons' who crucified Jesus, with possibly Satan "stretching out""
Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
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