The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

MrMacSon wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:17 pm Moreover, re -
Giuseppe wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2019 7:05 am
The Jesus Legend was a gentile Gnostic thing.
.
-- Gentiles would have included followers of Egyptian mystery religions, which were spreading and growing throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD/CE.
When I say that Gentiles caused the Jesus Legend (by merely writing the Earliest Gospel euhemerizing the previous Jewish Mythical Jesus), I mean precisely Gnostics on the margin of Judaism, not Gentiles tout court (because otherwise even the Romans of Titus could euhemerize the mythical Jesus!). I accept fully this description of these Gnostics who became Christians in the early II century CE:

We may now return to our question about the identity of the biblical Gnostics and put the question rather differently. What kind of people were attracted to the Gnostic viewpoint, but felt that they had to express it, partly at least, in terms derived from the Jewish Bible? What kind of people wished to reduce the pretensions of Judaism, but could do so only by engaging fully in the Jewish sacred writings which they found it imperative to reintrepret, rather than to ignore?
The most likely place to find our quarry is in the penumbra surrounding Judaism, consisting of people on their way in or on their way out. These are basically Gentiles who are attracted by Judaism enough to study it or to seek acquaintance eith knowledgeable Jews. Some pursue their study far enough to become actually converted to Judaism, but find Jewish observance too strenuous or too alien, and lapse. Others only reach the status of 'God-fearers', attend the synagogues in this capacity, but eventually become resentful of the inferior status accorded them. Others never actually declare or renounce allegiance to Judaism, but, having become the targets of Jewish missionary activity, acquire a considerable smattering of Jewish knowledge, and feel constrained to formulate some attitude towards Judaism. Such marginal people develop ambivalent feelings towards Judaism. On the other hand, they feel it to be a force to be reckoned with; on the other hand, they feel a certain resentment at the impudence of this barbarian faith in professing to be superior to the spiritual claims of Hellenistic culture; or, if they have gone so far as to succumb to Judaism for a while, they feel a corresponding need, after lapsing from Judaism, to justify their reversal of attitude and to reassert the superiority of the Hellenism from which they had temporarily defected. The most likely place to find such people in numbers sufficient to give rise to a distinctive religious grouping is Alexandria, where Jewish missionary activity was confident and even sometimes aggressive. The unease at such activity and the need to fight suscettibility to it, or to justify withdrawal from it after initial acceptance, could lead to a religious movement that contrasted the superior spiritual quality of Hellenism with the materiality and this-worldly stance of Judaism, while at the same time Accounting for Judaism and explaining its proper place in the scheme of things.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 31-32, SCM Press, London)

Hence it is excluded 100% any possible connection with Egyptian myths at the origin of Christian Gnosis.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 9:15 am
MrMacSon wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:17 pm Moreover, re -
Giuseppe wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2019 7:05 am The Jesus Legend was a gentile Gnostic thing.
-- Gentiles would have included followers of Egyptian mystery religions, which were spreading and growing throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD/CE.
When I say that Gentiles caused the Jesus Legend (by merely writing the Earliest Gospel euhemerizing the previous Jewish Mythical Jesus), I mean precisely Gnostics on the margin of Judaism, not Gentiles tout court ...

umm, Gnostics on the margins of Judaism are generally said to have originated from and been most active in ... Egypt! -->>
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 9:15 am
I accept fully this description of these Gnostics who became Christians in the early II century CE:

...The most likely place to find such people in numbers sufficient to give rise to a distinctive religious grouping is Alexandria*, where Jewish missionary activity was confident and even sometimes aggressive. The unease at such activity and the need to fight susceptibility to it, or to justify withdrawal from it after initial acceptance, could lead to a religious movement that contrasted the superior spiritual quality of Hellenism with the materiality and this-worldly stance of Judaism, while at the same time Accounting for Judaism and explaining its proper place in the scheme of things.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 31-32, SCM Press, London)

Hence it is excluded 100% any possible connection with Egyptian myths* at the origin of Christian Gnosis.
* umm, Alexandria is in ... Egypt!


As for -
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 9:15 am ... (because otherwise even the Romans of Titus could euhemerize the mythical Jesus!).
- that doesn't follow ie. it's a non-sequitur.


I don't know what Maccoby means by 'biblical Gnostics', but the rest of his commentary is valid, though this passage doesn't make much mention of Jews leaving or essentially leaving then mainstream Judaism and engaging with religions they would have come in contact with in Egypt -
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 9:15 am
We may now return to our question about the identity of the biblical Gnostics and put the question rather differently. What kind of people were attracted to the Gnostic viewpoint, but felt that they had to express it, partly at least, in terms derived from the Jewish Bible? What kind of people wished to reduce the pretensions of Judaism, but could do so only by engaging fully in the Jewish sacred writings which they found it imperative to reintrepret, rather than to ignore?

The most likely place to find our quarry is in the penumbra surrounding Judaism, consisting of people on their way in or on their way out [or both]. These are basically Gentiles who are attracted by Judaism enough to study it or to seek acquaintance with knowledgeable Jews. Some pursue their study far enough to become actually converted to Judaism, but find Jewish observance too strenuous or too alien, and lapse. Others only reach the status of 'God-fearers', attend the synagogues in this capacity, but eventually become resentful of the inferior status accorded them. Others never actually declare or renounce allegiance to Judaism, but, having become the targets of Jewish missionary activity, acquire a considerable smattering of Jewish knowledge, and feel constrained to formulate some attitude towards Judaism. Such marginal people develop ambivalent feelings towards Judaism. On the other hand, they feel it to be a force to be reckoned with; on the other hand, they feel a certain resentment at the impudence of this barbarian faith in professing to be superior to the spiritual claims of Hellenistic culture; or, if they have gone so far as to succumb to Judaism for a while, they feel a corresponding need, after lapsing from Judaism, to justify their reversal of attitude and to reassert the superiority of the Hellenism from which they had temporarily defected.

The most likely place to find such people in numbers sufficient to give rise to a distinctive religious grouping is Alexandria, where Jewish missionary activity was confident and even sometimes aggressive. The unease at such activity and the need to fight susceptibility to it, or to justify withdrawal from it after initial acceptance, could lead to a religious movement that contrasted the superior spiritual quality of Hellenism with the materiality and this-worldly stance of Judaism, while at the same time accounting for Judaism and explaining its proper place in the scheme of things.

(Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism, p. 31-32, SCM Press, London)
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

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MrMacSon wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 12:09 pmI don't know what Maccoby means by 'biblical Gnostics'....
April DeConick uses the term to mean those who practiced a Gnostic spirituality specifically with respect to the Jewish or Christian scriptures, as opposed to those who practiced a Gnostic spirituality without reference to the scriptures (pagan Gnostics are one example she gives). Maybe Maccoby means something similar.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:56 am but I have derived it from the Jewish text Odes of Solomon not from Egypt.
Così è (se vi pare)!

If anything it is derived from the Genesis Flood account, with the waters delivered from God, cleansing away the earth from evil to allow righteousness to thrive again.

I never once said that baptism was absolutely lifted from Egypt. But to ignore it as a potential source is to be willfully obtuse.
If you are unable to realize the qualitative difference in terms of evidence about Christian origins, then you can't be forgiven for your idiocies.
Where did Gnostic Jews derive their philosophies from? If Philo, Ezekiel the Tragedian and Artapanus are anything to go off of, it was Plato, whom they styled another Moses.

And where was Plato taught his philosophy?

Oh, yeah, Egypt.
It seems that the your only knowledge of the matter is reduced to what a modern judaizer goes saying in this forum about a presumed imaginary ditheist (!) Marcion (as opposed to a real historical dualist Marcion) and to bullshit acharyan astrotheology, in addition to a strange and disturbing fixation on Bar-Kokhba and Cyrene. Vade retro.
We can argue over our particular interpretations as long as we want and we still wouldn't get anywhere. But Jesus Christ man are you a smug bastard. (Or should I say, Bar-Abbas?)

If you feel so certain about your interpretations than maybe you should run the academic course and let them take a look at them. I doubt even they would make sense of it.

Also, my interest with bar Kochba and Lukuas is due to the fact that I view them as the Hebrew Messiahs that eventually became Jesus, which makes more sense than your absolutely insane and labyrinthine theories about "judiazers" and euhemerism.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by MrMacSon »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:09 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 12:09 pmI don't know what Maccoby means by 'biblical Gnostics'....
April DeConick uses the term to mean those who practiced a Gnostic spirituality specifically with respect to the Jewish or Christian scriptures, as opposed to those who practiced a Gnostic spirituality without reference to the scriptures (pagan Gnostics are one example she gives). Maybe Maccoby means something similar.
Cheers Ben. I wonder how often scholars such as DeConick differentiate Gnostics in terms of pre- and post- early Christianity ...



fwiw, I think 'pagan' is a term coined in the 4th century AD/CE (for people who practiced polytheism) -

"The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church. Elsewhere, Hellene or gentile (ethnikos) remained the word for pagan; and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace."

Peter Brown, Late Antiquity, 1999

Apparently Tertullian uses the term in relation to a Christian but meaning civilian, in De Corona Militis XI.V.

According to Alan Cameron, in The Last Pagans of Rome, NY, Oxford University Press [link to google books], paganos did not take on religious connotations until the 4th century. The Persecution of paganism under Theodosius I began in 381 AD.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

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Yes, "pagan" is a late word as applied to those who were neither Christians nor Jews.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by Joseph D. L. »

The possibility that John the Baptist is a later reversal of roles is, to me, is near certain. John alone seems to recognize a tradition in which John does not baptize Jesus. Observe from John 19:30-34:

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

The blood and water that issued forth from Jesus is the blood of the New Covenant, and the new baptism. It is from this baptism that Paul remarks in Romans 6:3-4:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

This is antithetical to a baptism through John the Baptist, as it's a baptism through the death of Jesus that is invoked.

But what was this baptism exactly? Beneath the veiled innuendos, I believe that it was being anointed with the sperm of the Christ.

Think, the cross is itself a strong symbolism of a phallus, and the piercing of Christ upon the cross is a symbolic act of circumcision. Paul himself may be inferring this himself with his complaints of his "thorn of my flesh" being an allusion to his circumcision.

This is the act that Jesus ministered upon the youth in Secret Mark: the holy anointing that allowed him to receive the new life.

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Joseph D. L.
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by Joseph D. L. »

So what does this mean for Marcion? How does this apply to him and his system?

It seems intuitive to suppose that Marcion rejected the YHWH inspired Ten Commandments in favour of the earlier Laws delivered from Elohim to Noah, or the Noahide Laws. In fact, Pauline doctrine is very similar to these laws or tenets. What's more, it was these particular set of laws that gentile proselytes were required to follow in substitute for the Laws of Moses, which were held only by actual Jews. So any argument that Marcion was spreading a gentile form of Judaism (Christianity) is hereby rebuffed. The Jews already had a system of proscriptions for gentile converts. Marcion (himself likely a proselyte) merely promoted these inclusive laws, as opposed to the exclusive Laws of Moses.

Next we go to the claim made by Tertullian and Rhodo, that Marcion had ties to a ship-making family. This is an example of the kind of veiled argumentation taking place in these texts (or just a basic example of smear tactics.) Marcion obviously was not a shipwright in the literal sense. He was the new Noah; the church, the new Ark. Even the cross can be seen as the mast of this ship. (Early church writers also make comparisons between the cross and ship-masts.) So it is Marcion who man's the helm of this church amidst the deluge of a new baptism.

This is why a certain someone's ideas and theories are entirely frivolous. There was no such things as gnetile Christianity, or "judiaized" Christianity. To say so shows an unabashed ignorance of the history and development of Judaism.
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by davidmartin »

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
A good example of Paul's confusing theology which i don't think even he understood
At a fundamental level it makes no sense at all, none. He argues for opposite things at the same time
to this day i don't know what the heck he is going on about, but Jesus actually makes sense
Marcion's edits were probably just to remove the confusion!
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MrMacSon
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Re: The crucifixion as form of death derived from the baptism of the god Jesus

Post by MrMacSon »

Joseph D. L. wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:29 pm ... Marcion obviously was not a shipwright in the literal sense. He was the new Noah; the church, the new Ark.
That's an interesting proposition. Has anyone else proposed it or taken it up?

Joseph D. L. wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:29 pm Even the cross can be seen as the mast of this ship. (Early church writers also make comparisons between the cross and ship-masts.)
Can you provide the passages (or at least the names and works of those early church writers)?

Joseph D. L. wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:29 pm ... There was no such things as gentile Christianity, or "judiaized" Christianity. To say so shows an unabashed ignorance of the history and development of Judaism*.
* Did you mean Judaism? or Christianity? (I doubt whether there were many clear divisions as well, if at all).
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