Apollos - Apelles

[Stephan Huller]

And then you have to wonder. If Jesus is so real and historical why is the first generation after his death dominated by two men who claim to be him and provide us with all information about this alleged 'man'? Paul isn't just the original source for the gospel (so Marcion) and the letters and also the religion of Christianity but he's a guy who claims to be the man he's writing about 'Christ is in me' 'Christ speaks in me' etc. This is f--- up. But people want to pretend the gospel is history. God bless them all, but they are fooling themselves. The only real people are the twin Christian founders Peter and Paul (or 'Simon' and 'Mark'). Simon (Peter) seems to have been the first to arrive at the idea of the god of Israel coming to earth to warn the Jews about the impending end to their religion but Peter ('Mark') perfects that understanding - so much so that nothing of Peter's gospel remains.

[Stephan Huller]

And so the question arises - what was wrong with Peter's original gospel? Why did even the orthodox fail to revive it when they were reconstructing their 'faux' apostolic tradition?

[Stephan Huller]

and on another side note Maranatha Peanut Butter really is the best in the world. Batch roasted together, the peanuts just taste better (because they aren't all different consistencies).

[Peter Kirby]

Understanding this is all hypothetical play.

1- This is the standard form of the story of the discovery of writings supposedly written long ago but which are actually pseudepigrapha.

.

I think if they were going to be writing pseudepigrapha, they would have rhetorically applied them to a single person instead of a community, which often list the different co authors involved in each epistle header.

Maybe a single person with more provenance then Paul.

This question also brings date of authorship into the mix, as well as date when the movement actually could have started.

It is unlikely these text were produced after the fall of the temple.

Even if one toyed with the idea, what date is one going find for the origin of the movement ?

If your'e toying with the idea, consider it under the conditions that the movement were pre-70, that there was a historical Paul (decide on his likely name, whether it is Paul or not), that the historical Paul was pre-70, and that the pseudepigrapha contain fragments of authentic Paulines (e.g., 2 Corinthians 8 and 2 Corinthians 9, as analyzed by Hans Dieter Bietz).

There is indeed a spectrum of options. You could decide that some of the entire letters are actually from Paul, even if it is just Philemon.

The important thing is to consider it.

That "it is unlikely that these text were produced after the fall of the temple" sounds more dogmatic than evidentiary.

[perseusomega9]

I wonder where the Ignatian corpus fits into all of this? A competing(rewrite) of Paul? A man of multiple names Proteus/Peregrinus/Paul/Simon writing books considered scripture late in the 2nd century per Lucian? Is it just a coincidence a lawyer named Tertullus in Acts is Paul's prosecutor?


But yeah, Paul's letters are clearly pre 70 and it's evident which order they were written...

[Peter Kirby]

By the combination of several leaps of intuition and conjecture, there is a circumstantial case to be made for the identity of Ignatius Theophoros the fictive letter-writer, Proteus Peregrinus the parodized religious man, and the Polycarp cited by the church fathers and given a martyrdom account. And in this view the epistle actually attributed to Polycarp is not the one by him but rather a weak cento of canonical phrases, from someone authenticating the letters of Ignatius and decisively severing the man from his pseudonym. I might have written about this hypothesis, but I can't find it if I have, and I don't know whether I have found it all contained somewhere else. I can find myself discounting it!

Huller:
http://radikalkritik.de/Huller_Peregrin.htm

Parvus:
http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/sho ... 646-2.html

Some more conjecture:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=170

Andrew Criddle throws some much-needed water on the whole thing:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=96

Regarding the writing and publication of Paul's letters (as pseudepigrapha), there is both internal and external evidence for a post-70 date. The evidence has been assembled by many critics, most lately by Detering and Price, and has been mostly ignored. I do not dare make a piecemeal go of it, since most people are eager to shoot it down as a hypothesis, and so it requires a more ambitious exposition. Yet it's there if you allow yourself to consider it.

[Stephan Huller]

I don't know if this is too far off topic but I was thinking about Peregrinus/Polycarp/Nurono (= Ignatius). Let's us take for granted for a moment that the figure written out originally as ΙΣ in the manuscripts is a transposition into Greek of the original Hebrew god 'man/fire' (eesh = אשׁ means both). Apelles (you know I would find a way to bring this back on topic says the Christian god is 'the fiery angel' of the OT. He's a Marcionite. But doesn't this help explain why Peregrinus/Polycarp/Nurono (= Ignatius) managed to attract such a following? It's just that scholars haven't seen it before.

Jesus was a 'fiery angel' according to the Marcionites. He was 'the man (אשׁ) of war' in Exodus (cf. Ephrem Against Marcion III). If you look at what I argued in my paper published in the Journal of Coptic Studies what two letters do we find etched into the oldest relic from the Alexandrian Church:



had

The two letters on the left are older and different from the rest of the inscription. It's a long story but what is now a mirror writing inscription which says 'Mark the Evangelist of Alexandria' originally simply had two letters in inverted order (= אשׁ).

In other words, Paul (Mark) and Peter (Simon) said they were Jesus incarnate or redividus. Celsus implies all the Christians continued to do this into the second century (i.e. walking around claiming they had been crucified unto the world quoting Paul another Jesus wannabe). But how do you take this to the next level? How do you get yourself heard above the din of the crowded field of other Jesus wannabes? Peregrinus/Polycarp/Nurono (= Ignatius) figured it out - he set himself on fire to demonstrate he was man and fire (= אשׁ) or 'Jesus.' It was genius. Too bad he had to die in order to accomplish his goals.

[perseusomega9]

Since this is all conjecture and no serious scholar would take this seriously and we know Paul wrote all 13, 10, 7, 4 of the epistles attributed to him with only a few strongly attested text critical interpolations and glosses, does anyone think that the Ignatian epistles were written to supplant the Pauline writings with another competing letter collection to various churches?

[Stephan Huller]

One should also read this:

https://books.google.com/books?id=jonvG ... ia&f=false

I think the inscription is clearer here especially the two different layers to the inscription:

[Stephan Huller]

Moses's vision is the same as Jacob's. Ezekiel the Tragedian writes:

Moses: I had a vision of a great throne on the top of Mount Sinai and it reached till the folds of heaven. A noble man was sitting on it, with a crown and a large scepter in his left hand. He beckoned to me with his right hand, so I approached and stood before the throne. He gave me the scepter and instructed me to sit on the great throne. Then he gave me a royal crown and got up from the throne. I beheld the whole earth all around and saw beneath the earth and above the heavens. A multitude of stars fell before my knees and I counted them all. They paraded past me like a battalion of men. Then I awoke from my sleep in fear.

Raguel: My friend, this is a good sign from God. May I live to see the day when these things are fulfilled. You will establish a great throne, become a judge and leader of men. As for your vision of the whole earth, the world below and that above the heavens – this signifies that you will see what is, what has been and what shall be

The throne is elsewhere described as being 'in glory' because it is on fire. 2 (Slavonic) Apocalypse of Enoch 2 Enoch 39,3-6 depicts the patriarch who, during his short trip to the earth, retells to his children his earlier encounter with the Face. Enoch relates:

You, my children, you see my face, a human being created just like yourselves; I am one who has seen the face of the Lord, like iron made burning hot by a fire, emitting sparks. For you gaze into my eyes, a human being created just like yourselves; but I have gazed into the eyes of the Lord, like the rays of the shining sun and terrifying the eyes of a human being. You, my children, you see my right hand beckoning you, a human being created identical to yourselves; but I have seen the right hand of the Lord, beckoning me, who fills heaven. You see the extend of my body, the same as your own; but I have seen the extend of the Lord, without measure and without analogy, who has no end