Thus, says (the Docetic), the only-begotten (and) eternal Child from above arrayed Himself in a form to correspond with each individual AEon of the three Æons; and while he was within the triacontad of Æons, He entered into this world just as we have described Him, un noticed, unknown, obscure, and disbelieved.
http://gnosis.org/library/hyp_refut8.htmThis is, says (the Docetic), what the Saviour affirms: "Except a man be born of water and spirit, be will not enter into the kingdom of heaven, because that which is born of the flesh is flesh." From the thirty Æons, therefore, (the Son) assumed thirty forms. And for this reason that eternal One existed for thirty years on the earth, because each AEon was in a peculiar manner manifested during (his own) year. And the souls are all those forms that have been laid hold on by each of the thirty Æons; and each of these is so constituted as to discern Jesus, who is of a nature (similar to their own). (And it was the nature of this Jesus) which that only-begotten and eternal One assumed from everlasting places. These (places), however, are diverse.
When Hippolytus says that Jesus ''existed for thirty years on the earth'', he doesn't mean ''consecutive 30 years'', i.e., only one entire life under Pilate, but 30 docetic separate lives of Jesus on the earth, and only the last year was ''lived'' under Pilate.
Only by assuming 30 previous docetic ''Incarnations'' of Jesus on the earth one can realize why the Docetics were in conflict with each other about who precisely, among these 30 ''Jesus'', was the ''last definitive'' Jesus:
Consequently, a proportionate number of heresies, with the utmost emulation, seek Jesus. Now all these heresies have their own peculiar Jesus; but he is seen differently according as the place is different towards which, he says, each soul is borne and hastens. (Now each soul) supposes that (the Jesus seen from its particular place) is alone that (Jesus) who is its own peculiar kinsman and fellow-citizen. And on first beholding (this Jesus, that soul) recognises Him as its own peculiar brother, but the rest as bastards.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050108.htm
The Docetics had euhemerized their 30 Jesus, each of them in a different place and time. Hence the conflict among these historicist Docetics about which Jesus was the ''historical'' one.
This fact corroborates the Robertson's and Dujardin's view that the pre-Christian Jesus was crucified annually during a sacred crucifixion ritual:
(Ancient History of the God Jesus, p. 62, my bold)Early heresies, such as that of Basilides, who asserted that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in place of Jesus, are often closer to the truth than the story which was eventually imposed as orthodoxy. Several of the heresies of the second century teach a doctrine that on analysis is nothing but the substitution itself.
According to certain Gnostics, Cerinthus in particular, the Christ-God descendend into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism. In other words, the god descended into the substitute. The sojourn on earth of the Christ-God of the Gnostics began at the moment of his consecration, just as Jesus in the course of the ancient rite of Palestine descends into the substitute at the moment of his anointing for the period of the sacrifice.
