The New Testament canon is the list of books that belong to the New Testament, the Christian part of the Bible. The Catholic canon of 27 books, now accepted by most Christian churches, took shape between the years 140 and 367.
By the late 100s there were four main Christian sects:
- Marcionites – said only Paul understood Jesus, that his other Apostles were too Jewish in their thinking. Over a hundred years after Jesus, c. 140, they made the first New Testament: an edited gospel of Luke and ten letters of Paul.
- Gnostics – said Jesus had a secret message for the chosen few – and had “secret” gospels to match.
- Montanists – followed the prophet Montanus of Phrygia, who was receiving new messages from God!
- Catholics – said its churches were founded by the Apostles, that it was universal.
The Catholic Church:
- To fight the Marcionites it created its own New Testament, one that featured several Apostles.
- To fight the Gnostics it said Catholic teachings and writings were public, claimed the Gnostic gospels were made up, forgeries!
- To fight the Montanists it claimed that revelation from God ended with the Apostles.
This led to a New Testament made up of writings that were:
- ancient – no new revelations!
- apostolic – written by Apostles and their hangers-on, like Peter’s Mark or Paul’s Timothy.
- universal – widely accepted by its churches.
- orthodox – supported Catholic teaching and practice.
In practice “orthodox” mattered most.
For example, if a writing did not fit Catholic teaching, it was suspected as a forgery – surely no Apostle would write such stuff! Goodbye Gnostic gospels! On the other hand, it may have accepted the letters of Titus and Timothy too readily because they beautifully supported Catholic teaching. Scholars now say they are forgeries.
By 200 these 19 books were pretty much accepted in Catholic circles:
- 4 gospels:
- Matthew
- Mark
- Luke
- John
- Acts of the Apostles
- 13 letters of Paul:
- Romans
- 1 Corinthians
- 2 Corinthians
- Galatians
- Ephesians
- Philippians
- Colossians
- 1 Thessalonians
- 2 Thessalonians
- 1 Timothy
- 2 Timothy
- Titus
- Philemon
- 1 John
In the 200s and 300s the following books appeared in some but not all Catholic New Testaments (the eight in bold now appear in all):
- Epistle of Barnabas
- 1 Clement
- 2 Clement
- Didache
- Book of Hebrews
- Shepherd of Hermas
- Epistle of James
- 2 John
- 3 John
- Apocalypse of John (Revelation)
- Epistle of Jude
- Acts of Paul
- 1 Peter
- 2 Peter
- Apocalypse of Peter
- Wisdom of Solomon
The most hotly disputed books were Revelation and Hebrews. Revelation was championed by churches in the west but was suspected to be a forgery in the east. Hebrews was the other way round. In time both were accepted, east and west. As it turns out, both were forgeries!
In 367 the list of the 27 books appears for the first time, in the Easter letter of Athanasius. It became generally accepted.
But it was not the last word:
- Churches in Syria in the 400s still did not accept Revelation, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.
- Luther in the 1500s did not accept Revelation, Hebrews, James and Jude.
- Churches in Ethiopia added:
- Sirate Tsion
- Tizaz
- Gitsew
- Abtilis
- 1 Dominos
- 2 Dominos
- Clement
- Didascalia
Source: Mainly Bart D. Ehrman, “Lost Christianities” (2003), Henry Chadwick in “The Oxford History of Christianity” (1990) and ethiopianorthodox.org.
– Abagond, 2013.
See also:
You all do know Jesus was a black man right? Freemasons know this.. other occult illuminati type dudes know it too.
Sir Godfrey Higgins says Jesus was a negro.. and many others ask the question
“would they worship a negro God”
I’ll get the link later…but yeah.. white Jesus is new.
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^^^^^ Someone forgot to take his meds this morning…….
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Please read up on sir Godfrey higgins and Kersey Graves
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@ luckylarrysilverstein: Comment deleted for being way off topic.
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@ luckylarrysilverstein
Get a clue.
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Abagond, was there a group actually called “the Catholic Church” back then? (Or Katholikos or something?) I know that “catholic” means universal, but was that the actual name?
You are Catholic, right?
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There is as much evidence that the Christian Savior was a black man, or at least a dark man, as there is of his being the son of the Virgin Mary, or that he once lived and moved upon the earth. And that evidence is the testimony of his disciples, who had nearly as good an opportunity of knowing what his complexion was as the evangelists who omit to say anything about it.
In pictures and portraits of Christ by the early Christians he is uniformly represented as being black. To make this more certain a red tinge is given to the lips; and the only test in the Christian bible quoted by orthodox Christians as describing his complexion represents it as being black.
Solomon’s declaration, I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem’ (Sol, I, 5), is often cited as referring to Christ. According to the bible itself, then, Jesus Christ was a black man. Let us suppose that at some future time he makes his second advent to the earth, as some Christians anticipate he will do, and that he comes in the character of a sable messiah, how would he be received by our Negro hating Christians of sensitive olfactory nerves. Would they worship a Negro God?
-Kersey Graves
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Sir Godfrey Higgins informs us that “In all the Romish (Catholic) countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa —to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.
“There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some remains of the worship of the black virgin and black child are not to be met with. Very often the black figures have given way to white ones and in these cases the black ones, as being held sacred, were put into retired places in the churches, but were not destroyed, and are yet to be found there…
“When the circumstance has been named to the Romish priests they have endeavored to disguise the fact by pretending that the child had become black by the smoke of candles; but it was black where the smoke of a candle never came and, besides, how came the candles not to blacken the white of the eyes, the teeth and the shirt, and to redden the lips? Their real blackness is not to be questioned.
-Sir Godfrey Higgins
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OFF TOPIC: Was Jesus black?
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@ Paige
By the late 100s it was calling itself “Catholic” to set itself apart from the other sects, which it saw as heresies. So my use of it above is not anachronistic, not me reading history backwards or being Catholic-centric (a danger since I am Catholic).
On the other hand, if you asked, “Where’s the Catholic Church?”, like in asking for directions, that might have seemed an odd thing to say before the late 300s.
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This timely event taking place this month in the UK may of interest to this discussion:
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“…AN EXPOSÉ ON CHRISTIANITY WHOSE TIME HAS COME…”
This may not necessarily be a victory for Atheists. But for those of us looking for up to date researched evidence to show why belief in “Jesus Christ” as part of a Christian based religion is nothing more than pre-programming nonsense. This coming event may soon to be of historic importance…
Isn’t it time we dropped or at the very least stopped willingly programming our selves, children and families with this political (non-spiritual) indoctrination?
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@ luckylarrysilverstein: Comment deleted for being spam.
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@ Albmont: Comment deleted for being off topic.
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@abagond:
“Was Jesus black?”
No, he was semitic jew living in the first century Palestine. His hair was more than likely black and wavy/curly, his eyes brown and his complexion on the brown side.
But if the question is meant to be read as “Did Jesus look like afroamericans or africans, commonly called as blacks?” then the answer is of course not.
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@mussandrad:
I recommend a visit to Italy or any where in the Levant and see the images yourself. He nor his mother are not depicted as black. To claim they are depicted as black is as falsifying as the more recent depictions of Jesus the Nordic athlete in the west and particulary in USA since 1800’s.
As for the Black Madonna: its roots are not in christianity at all. Check the old egyptian statues and you will find the original image in there.
The Black Madonna worshipped in southern France and particulary worshipped by the gypsies of Europe is also known as Sara, who according to the legend was the servant of Mary the Mother, who came to southern France after her husband Jesus had been killed as a refugee, with the child of Jesus.
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Clarifying: Mary was the refugee, not Jesus.
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Hey… I never saw the dude.. that’s not even my religion.. I just post what “respected white scholars” wrote.
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When you say semitic Jew… Do you mean like Ethiopian? Because lately I hear how Ethiopians are dark skinned Caucasian Jews. Lol
Either way… Dude looked more like me than the brad Pitt looking guy everyone worships
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Btw Sam I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, as nobody knows what he or anyone in biblical times looked like. I really just wanted to show that black Jesus isn’t an afrocentric idea.. its been written by old white 19th century freemasons and occult dudes. And there is no way in hell they are afrocentric
Also Sam, if you can debunk these freemason writer/historians please do
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@mussarand:
I was just responsing the claim that Jesus was depicted as black by artists. He was not, nor was his mother. Not in Italy, Greece, or Jerusalem for that matter. Nor in various orthodox churched and icons. Any one can see it just by visiting those places and taking a look of the original paintins, murals and mosaics.
As for the masons or occultists, I think I let them have their fantasies intact. After all, there is one american religious leader, very respected indeed, who claimed that his followers will be lifted in the Heavens and he also gave a specific number how many. And another, also american, who created his own religion, which is more than any Hollywood crack pot screen writer could have invented, and which is based on his own scific fantasies.
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@mussard:
Ok, I take on yoru challenge.
Let as assume for starters that there was a jewish man called Yeshu, who was born sometime 6 BC to 3 AD. His mother was jewish woman whom we know as Mary. Now, Mary came from an old jewish family, actually which was related to king David trough her granfather. Now, how this woman could have been what we call black? She could not have been. There is nothing in her family tree to suggest this.
So how could have her son been a black man? Only if God himself was black or, as in the stories outside the bible and christian canon tells us, his biolgical father was a black man. Now that might have been the case IF we did not know who this father was. But we do.
In the judaic tradition, and some occult traditions, there is a claim that father of Jesus was a legionnaire named Pantera. Some have guessed that this is a reference to egyptian god of Ra, but it is not. Historically it was just a name, not that rare among the legionnaires. It simply means a panther.
So who could have been this legionnaire named Pantera? Fortunately for us in october 1859 in Bingerbrück Germany railroad workers stumbeled into an old cemetery of a roman legion. Among the tombstones was one which had the following depiction:
“Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera
Sidonia annorum LXII
Stipendiorum XXXX miles
Exignifer
Cohorte 1 saggitariorum
Hic situs est.”
“Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, from Sidon 62 years old, served 40 years, former standard bearer, from the first cohort of archers, rests hier.”
Now the name means this: name Tiberius comes from the emperor Tiberius. The name Abdes means a servant of God and was commonly used to mark jewish legionnaires. He came from Sidon, in which, according to the biblical stories, Jesus had relatives. The Gospel of Mark tells how Jesus visited Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon. Why? Perhaps to visit his relatives from his fathers side.
The legionnaire father would also explain why the identity of Jesus father was hidden or had to be kept hidden.
Anyway, there is more historical proof that both of Jesus parents were jewish than “ethiopian” or “african” or “egyptian” etc. So I stick with my version: Jesus was not black but a semitic middle eastern jew, trough and trough. Semitic peoples meant earlier the people and tribes of middle east area, not ethiopians.
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I have yet to come across a better historical researched account of the creation of the New Testament than this. Among other things what this historical account shows is that it makes no sense to even conceive of Jesus Christ as Black?
Particular when you realise the basis for the Roman conspiracy to invent a Messiah…How would it have served them to invent a Black Jesus?
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@ sam
?
Whatever the ethnic appearance of Jesus, many Christians don’t like facing up to Jesus being a Jew… :-//
That has been so for centuries and centuries. Assigning “race”, racializing and de-racializing Jesus is old as the hills, so nothing new there — this is just political circumstances and culture at play…
That Jesus lived and died as a Jew, is somehow unpalatable.
In Luke’s gospel, I recall 2 things:
1. mention of his uncle Zacharias, a Jewish priest, and,
2. that Jesus is circumcised on the 8th day. That is Mosaic Law.
For Jewish male children, a crucial and defining rite of the covenant. Circumcision wasn’t a requirement of early Christianity, more than that, it was condemned by the Church Fathers.
Here is Chinese Jesus: http://picchore.com/people/chinesus/
@ Kwamla, your link/comments are rather fascinating.
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Trust you, at least, Bulanik, for being open and reasonably informed to want to investigate new and current research in this area. Rather than simply relying on regurgitating the entrenched dogma of the past.
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One thing which is missing in many accounts of the roman-jewish relationships is this: according some reseachers and historians, the Jerusalem Temple was the biggest money maker (among all of the temples of those times) anywhere in the sphere of roman influence. The volume of money going trough the Temple was staggering and surpassed those in Baalbek and Rome itself, so there was the economic motive in both conquering the Palestine in the first place but also destroying it later.
What many people do not understand in the story of Jesus (weather it is fictional or not) is this: when Jesus and his followers attacked the Temple and occupied it for a whole day, they stopped the biggest money making machine of that era for a whole day in the busiest business season (peschar). That act was not just a minor hassle of some ragt tag bunch of religious fanatics, it was a truly powerful revolutionary act in an international scale (the romans got their cut from the Temple business as well). They litterally occupied the Wall Street of that era and stopped it. For the powerful that would have been motive enough to eliminate him no matter what else the man was or had been preaching.
The money changing operation functioned around the sacrificial lambs and doves. One had to buy those for money but because the currencies were from all over the world from Parthia to Britannia and had different values and qualities from time to time, the Temple accepted only the shekel and half shekel of Tyros which had the stable silver quantity. So every other currency had to be changed to these before the sacrificial objects could be bought from the Temple itself, since it was the Temple which provided these.
Obviously the Temple took its cut from the money changing operation which was run by private companies and currency exchangers and via Temple the Rome took its share from this too. Unlike in the stories there were not money lenders in the Temple but currency trading business, currency exchange if you will, and it was gigantic business. During the pescher hundreds of thousands of jews from around the world came to Jerusalem and everyone dropped at least ten shekels into coffers. That counts easily for millions.
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Christianity (like all religion) is bullshit and there was never a figure named or known as Jesus Christ ever in history. Also the bible is an anthology of ignorance and psychopathology of goat herders and other peoples who had not one inkling of the knowledge or even understanding we posses today. interspersed with some interesting tidbits. Sure the bible may have some wisdom or knowledge or name dropping of actual places (and overlaying fictional events on them). But I wouldn’t eat a hundred dollar truffle if it was covered in feces. (get the analogy?)
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So I guess my comment was too controversial to leave up. Huh abagond? When it comes to issues of faith you are just archaic as the racist ideas and people you attack. Did Jesus even exist? All evidence points to no. Not only did the magical Jesus everyone believe in not exist but even the so-called “historical” Jesus. There are contradictory and varying accounts. And even if Jesus did exist his life has made the world more of a problem. Keeping to christian canon has not made the world a better place. It has worsened it.Not to mention christian texts are artificial formulations both of men who sat in Rome and compiled the texts and both of the goat herders and primitives who wrote the text themselves.
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@ Bronson
My apologies. I restored your comment. I thought you were a first-time commenter and deleted it as that of a probable troll since it wound up in moderation.
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@ Bronson
Jesus is as well-documented as anyone else of his time.
When people approach this question they make two mistakes:
1. They apply double standards, holding accounts of Jesus to a much higher standard than those about, say, Socrates or Alexander the Great.
2. They assume that miracles are impossible. They reason from conclusions to what they will accept as evidence. That sort of reasoning is backwards and not self-correcting.
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@ sam, you said this about Jesus’s Cleansing of the Temple:
Certainly!
When the stories of the religiously devout are told, they have to be eliminated and history has to be re-written if they become too overtly political.
Look at Martin Luther King (and Malcolm X). Dr King was always concerned about the poor. But, when his message started to be about the unified mobilization of poor people in his country — I think that was when he became truly dangerous.
What had the Temple become in Jesus’s time? What was it really?
It had probably become an institution of oppression and subjugation.
There’s the theory that with the advent of farming advances like the use draft animals and the plow, crops increased, and resulted in a surplus.
How best to make use of this over-produce?
If the peasantry handed over their hard-earned surplus for nothing, then there would profit. Just tell them this was how you appeased the gods, and this would be cow that would always give!
Therefore, the temple was no more than insititutional indebtedness to Yahweh. See some MODERN parallels with wage slavery and held to ransom by banks?
The temple was tax collector agency: a religious loan-shark, even — crushing the poor and keeping them passive. The sense of exploitation was blinding to those it oppressed through crushing obligation.
*
Of course, I am imposing a modern and secular interpretation over ancient times. I have no idea what “sacrifice” really meant or felt like for those who did it at that time, in that place.
*
Nevertheless, this story resonates with me, because I believe that this incident existed, as did this political provocateur called Jesus for the reason that the meaning of this story has been changed to appear ONLY religious.
This, I believe is a deliberate manipulation to obscure, to mislead, and to exploit. This story has much to say about the capitalism we now know that squeezes every drop of life-blood from the planet, the animals and most of the humans that dwell on it, all for the benefit of the elite minority.
This parable also puts me in mind of England’s 17th century “Diggers”.
They were called Diggers because they believed in economic equality, as it is written in the Book of Acts:
They were “levelers” who wanted to reform the existing social set up, with an agrarian lifestyle centred on small and egalitarian rural communities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levellers
William Herzog wrote about the parables as subversive speech. His argument is that their original and dangerous meanings were rubbed out by the powers that be. Therefore Jesus’s life is useful because parables were not only a form of social analysis, but also a form of theological reflection.
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@ sam, previous comment in moderation, but do you know of other religious movements or communities who followed this “leveling” ideal?
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@abagond But we have definitive proof of Alexander the Great and credible proof of even Socrates’s existence. Although later on Socrates was used as an allegorical motif to serve Plato’s own devices. Jesus however, we know little to nothing of. Only strange tales written of an individual long after his death. If such a man even existed than he was no different than the countless rebels and trouble makers who went against Rome and is surely not worthy of any sort of fawning, doting or worship. I also do not understand the motive behind worshiping someone who is exactly like us. Jesus was a man, not divine and is therefore no different from you or me. Why worship him? Also why cling to a text(s) written by people like you and me? I don’t get that about the religious. Every person today has the privilege of tremendous up to date knowledge yet cling to archaic texts and archaic practices of archaic cultures. Very strange.
On your bit about miracles. Yes it is an assumption to assert that miracles are impossible though we have no definition let alone an example of what a miracle is. If a miracle is something that simply violates what we have deduced as physical laws or tendencies then it is still not a miracle as it still happens in the realm of physicality and is therefore not in violation of anything. When you try to give credence to miracles you run into that glaring paradox.
,
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@Bronson:
True, we know very little about Jesus the Man but most historians today accept that a jewish man Yeshu did exist. Question is: who and what he was?
There were many miracle workers even during his life time, Geza Vermes names few, who also woke up the dead, walked on water etc. but what was it in this man Yeshu which made him exceptional enough to remember later on? Yes, his name was attached to a new religion, but what was it originally?
For starters, he was direct descendant from king David, straight davidian family line, and thus he had legitimate claim to the throne of Israel. So the romans were not lying when they called him The King of the Jews when they executed him.
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@bulanik: Sorry, I do not.
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@ sam
There’s clearly A VERY BIG story behind the New Testament that has not yet been revealed to us.
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@bulanik: I think so too.
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@ sam,
Something that always struck me as surprising was that as central as Jesus is to today’s Western civilization — we even set time to his birth and death — he seemed practically invisible to the ancient world.
From what I’ve read so far, mention of his name, life and impact was hardly gratuitous!
Can you think of any “pagan” writer raking him over the coals? Was Jesus begin hotly debated by his contemporaries in far away lands?
Can you think of any examples?
*
There are a couple of inconsistencies that stick in my mind:
As we know, there were/are, many lost Christianities from the earliest days or early centuries of the Church — depending on which early writings are taken up and trusted. For starters, I heard there was one belief that a malicious deity created the world, and another — that Christ never died at all. There are others, of course, so, there was picking and choosing from the beginning.
The New Testament that was eventually agreed upon as semi “official” is full of contradictions and unexplained-ness. For example take Jesus’s conversation with Pontius Pilate during Jesus’s trial, when the 2 men were alone together. How can we know the content of their exchange?
Who was privy to this private conversation and transmitted it to the world?
Or, take Mary and Joseph. Apparently, 2 poor peasants that that make the most important of journeys. Did this journey have any eye-witnesses?
So, who documented the event after the fact?
In modern times, if someone has Christian faith, and has no serious issue with inconsistencies of the New Testament, then they must EDIT it as they go along to arrive at an understanding. Thus, THEY have to make and define their own gospel.
Doesn’t this devalue the ‘originals’?
Aren’t they validating the bits they like, and cherry picking elements that have personal appeal?
Yet people base their lives around this book, the word of God, and they can be pretty strict about it, too.
It’s good that many Christians are interested in the ancient origins of their Holy books, its evolution.
Perhaps the greatest successes of Christianity has been making Jesus into God, rather than just a Jewish son of God.
This was the great theological achievement of early Christianity.
Jesus may not have started out as divine, but as he as became more and more divine, he became less and less of a Jew to the point that Jews were no more than demons.
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@bulanik:
What little we know, Jesus was not much of a topic among the pagans during his life time, assumingly as he was just one of the executed jews who had risen against Rome.
But later on, during the first centuries of the religion Paul created out of him, pagans philosophers and comics mocked this new religion of being superstitious and doing what it was accusing the other mystery religions doing, that is worshipping the idols etc. They also pointed out that Jesus had been a mere man, not god. They also pointed out how this new religion was similar to the other Man God religions of the time: Mithra, Adonis, Attis etc. all of whom were childs of divine, Mithra even had 12 disciples and those worshipping Mithra had their own holy communions and quite similar services as the christians did.
Actually many practises of christianity are from pagan religions almost directly, such as eating human flesh and drinking the blood, both of which were absolutely denied in the jewish customs. Also human sacrifies were forbidden in jewish religion after Abraham but part and parcel of pagan worshipping for much later periods. Roman gladiator spectacles were part of that same traditions. The key point in christian religion is the sacrifition of Jesus and drinking his blood and eating his flesh, which echos the pagan practises of the old.
Jews themselves always maintained in their tradition that he was just a man and accused him of “magic”, meaning he was a trickster and had been preaching wrong kind of judaism, which he had: he was against the Temple system.
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@abagond
Marcionites were also a sort of Gnostics and probably in certain respects the most radical ones who pushed to the extreme the idea of Gnostics about the “higher God” and “Demiurge”, If for many of Gnostics the Demiurge was some imperfect being below God, but in some way still emanating from God, for Marcionists “the evil God of Jews” and the “Good Father of Christ” had no connection at all and and were irreconciliable opposites, the former is implacably evil creator who creates the first people and himself punishes them for their quest for Higher Wisdom(the episode with the serpent and apple), while the Good Father and his son Jesus are heavenly beings who have not created the humanity, but are ready to save them from the captivity and assume them into the Higher Reality.
Valentinians, on the other hand, differently from Marcionites were strongly bent towards elitarism and esotericism, and had complicated teachings fully understandable only to intellectuals, from the other hand, they were far more moderate and conciliatory. The had not the twofold binary opposition of Marcionism, but rather a tripartite scheme God – Demiurge – Satan, and respectively pneumatics(Valentinians themselves) – psychics(the broad church of Ireneus and other proto-orthodox) – hylics(pagans) the latter were doomed to damnation, yet the “psychics” in the eyes of Valentianians were elligible to a sort of “second sort salvation”. This was unacceptable to Ireneus and his friends proto-orthodox. For them, the only group deserving salvation were they, proto-orthodox, “the real church of Apostles”, while Valentians were heretics doomed to Hell.
The Gospel of John has also strong gnostical overtones – Jesus accuses Jews that they do not know the “True God” and that “their Father is Devil”, yet he strongly opposed the idea of docetism – namely that Jesus’ humanity and physical body was only apparent. John proposed the idea of Jesus as a “Pass-over Lamb” who fullfills and completes the animal sacrifices mandated by the Torah. Obviously, the bodiless sacrifice would make no sense. That why John curses as heretics all those who deny that Jesus has came “not in a body”. For this reason his Gospel was accepted by the proto-orthodox.
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