MrMacSon wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:30 pm
That's an interesting proposition. Has anyone else proposed it or taken it up?
Not that I'm aware, although I do remember reading someone who believed Paul's letters show an influence of the Noahide Laws.
Can you provide the passages (or at least the names and works of those early church writers)?
Justin Martyr,
First Apology, ch. 55, Symbolism of the Cross:
For consider all the things in the world, whether without this form they could be administered or have any community. For the sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship.
Tertullian in
An Answer to the Jews:
Of course no one-horned rhinoceros was there pointed to, nor any two-horned minotaur. But Christ was therein signified: bull, by reason of each of His two characters — to some fierce, as Judge; to others gentle, as Saviour; whose horns were to be the extremities of the cross. For even in a ship's yard — which is part of a cross— this is the name by which the extremities are called; while the central pole of the mast is a unicorn. By this power, in fact, of the cross, and in this manner horned, He does now, on the one hand, toss universal nations through faith, wafting them away from earth to heaven; and will one day, on the other, toss them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.
Minicius Feliz,
Octavius, ch. 29:
Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it. We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched. Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.
Hippolytus,
The Antichrist, ch. 59,:
But we who hope for the Son of God are persecuted and trodden down by those unbelievers. For the wings of the vessels are the churches; and the sea is the world, in which the Church is set, like a ship tossed in the deep, but not destroyed; for she has with her the skilled Pilot, Christ. And she bears in her midst also the trophy (which is erected) over death; for she carries with her the cross of the Lord. For her prow is the east, and her stern is the west, and her hold is the south, and her tillers are the two Testaments; and the ropes that stretch around her are the love of Christ, which binds the Church; and the net which she bears with her is the layer of the regeneration which renews the believing, whence too are these glories. As the wind the Spirit from heaven is present, by whom those who believe are sealed: she has also anchors of iron accompanying her, viz., the holy commandments of Christ Himself, which are strong as iron. She has also mariners on the right and on the left, assessors like the holy angels, by whom the Church is always governed and defended. The ladder in her leading up to the sailyard is an emblem of the passion of Christ, which brings the faithful to the ascent of heaven. And the top-sails aloft upon the yard are the company of prophets, martyrs, and apostles, who have entered into their rest in the kingdom of Christ.
What's more, the ship was used in the early church as a symbol for the church itself.
The nautical imagery around the church is prevalent in these writings. It just seems conspicuous to me that the arch-heretic
par excellence, Marcion, should be viewed as a mariner with such blatant symbolism.
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).
No, I meant that the idea that Christianity was overtime infused with Jewishness is fallacious, and why Giuseppe should be looked at as a charlatan. Christianity was but another phase--"modernized", if you will, but still organic--strand of Judaism.