The origin of the idea that Jesus had to be a pious man servant of the creator god

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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The origin of the idea that Jesus had to be a pious man servant of the creator god

Post by Giuseppe »

In the attempt to intepret Mark along Gnostic lines, I cannot avoid the following facts:

1) that Mark has an adoptionist/separationist view about Jesus and Christ.
2) that, even if it is really possible to mean the spiritual Christ in Mark as a spiritual being enemy of the Creator God (as coming from a highest god), the fact remains that the man Jesus in Mark is a servant of the Creator God at least when he came from Nazaret to receive the baptism by John.

where did this Gnostic Mark take the idea that Jesus had to be a man and a pious servant of YHWH (even if one possessed by a rival god) from?

Maybe in opposition to the first ebionites who claimed (early II CE) the mere humanity of Jesus (if not of Christ), in opposition to the diasporic Docetic Gnostic Christians.

cleverly, Mark accepted (from the ebionites) the new idea of the mere, human passivity of the man Jesus but preserved the previous rivalry of the spiritual Christ with respect to the god of the Jews.


In whilethime, if for ehuemerization we mean the strictest ''rationalist'' possible meaning (of a reductio of the name of a god to the name of a mere man, not even of a demigod), then (assuming obviously that Jesus was previously the name of a Jewish archangel) Jesus is really euehmerized in Mark, given that he is not different - per degree of humanity - from the other (historical) people who went to John to receive the baptism from him (as confirmed by Josephus).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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