Separationism = anti-docetism

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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Separationism = anti-docetism

Post by Giuseppe »

So the separationist view of the ancient readers of Mark:

1. Cerinthus, again, a man who was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught that the world was not made by the primary God, but by a certain Power far separated from him, and at a distance from that Principality who is supreme over the universe, and ignorant of him who is above all. He represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler, and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus suffered and rose again, while Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being.
I wonder where in the (so-called) First Gospel one can realize that the man Jesus Nazarene was ''more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men''.

Reading Mark's reference to Jesus coming to purify his sins, one may think the opposite.

But then you realize that the risen, and therefore vindicated by God, man in the Empty Tomb episode is not the Christ (who, being never died, never rises), but just the man Jesus Nazarene. This is equivalent to an implicit divine approval of the his being ''more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men''.

The ancient separationist Christology seems very much similar to the modern historicism:

Separationism in Markmodern Minimal Historicism
divides the man Jesus from the spiritual Christ divides the historical Jesus from the theological Christ
makes Jesus a known person, while makes Christ an unknown beingmakes the historical Jesus a (presumed) known person, while makes the theological Christ an unknown being (empirically speaking)
insists that the man Jesus was ''more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men''. insists on the ''innocence'' of the man Jesus, even when he is represented as a seditionist: for example, a scholar proponent of the latter view called the his Historical Jesus a proude patriot of the Jewish freedom (I go to memory)
keeps alive the hope that ''not everything'' is myth.keeps alive the hope that ''not everything'' is myth.

I don't think that this table is only fruit of the my ''interpretation''. The Mark's separationism has so much in common with modern historicism, that the suspect is raised that they are both answers (of their own time) to a radically different view:

the view that Jesus was not the ''more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men'' and was not even a man at all.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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