The Lost Chapter of Epiphanius' Panarion

[Kapyong]

The Medicine Chest of Epiphanius.
Heresy 61, and 81 of the series.
Against Mythicists.

I turn now to the most recent, and pernicious heresy of all - Jesus Mythicism, a foul poison which can only find origin at the hoary hand of the Enemy himself. How can any knowledgeable person not laugh out loud at this ridiculous denial of our Lord's Incarnation on Earth ? Do those vipers not realise that all scholars agree in the Incarnation ? With rightful death at the stake for any who disagrees.

It is a great misfortune, and one might say the worst of hardships, that the despicable, erring founders of this sect come at us and assault us like a swarm of insects, infecting us with diseases, smelly eruptions, and sores through their error concerning Jesus mythicism.

I refer to that despicable Doherty (whose name, translated, means 'spouter of lies') and the Dick who must not be named. Ever followed by swarms of flies and maggots - the Godfreys and the Kapyongs and all their excremental dags and hangers-on.

They be not ashamed to directly call for study and investigation of the ancient texts, as well as their cultural contexts. Without first fully submitting their empty opinions to the wisdom of their bishop in the correct interpretation, according to the Holy Wisdom of the Church.

And I am afraid that merely mentioning the evil word 'mythicism' I may be revealing the whole of this potent poison, like the face of some serpent's basilisk, to the harm of the readers rather than to their correction. Truly it pollutes the ears—the blasphemous assembly of great audacity, the gathering and the interpretation of its dirt, the mucky perversity of this scummy obscenity.

Vipers ! Blasphemers !
It is not even permitted to question the Holy Incarnation, let alone deny it ! Such devil's sowing of doubt shakes the foundation of the whole church, and must be rooted out, leaf and branch and root too.

They extract the foetus at the stage which is appropriate for their enterprise, take this aborted infant, and cut it up in a trough with a pestle. And they mix honey, pepper, and certain other perfumes and spices with it to keep from getting sick, and then all the revellers in this herd of swine and dogs assemble, and each eats a piece of the child with his fingers. True Story.

The Holy Church declares a new Crusade of Truth, and all brothers and sisters in the faith are called to attack mythicists and mythicism where-ever it be found. Our strength and faith will be the antidote to this fatal poison. Let us put on the girdle of god, let us circle the wagons of the lord, until Jesus Truthicism conquers the whole world !

[Stuart]

uh, this belongs in either GRD or more probably the Lounge or nowhere in particular.

[Secret Alias]

The real question for Kapayong is WHY DOESN'T Epiphanius mention mythicists? The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

[Paul the Uncertain]

Kapyong

Bravo

Secret Alias

The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

That's hard to say. Cyril of Jerusalem (writing about 350) understands the Simonian claims to have been that Jesus was a character created by Simon. What Cyril says disambiguates a line of analysis of Simonianism running through Justin, Irenaeus, Celsus via Origen, and in Cyril's view, the author of 1 John. That is, Cyril's Simon didn't just claim Messiahship for himself as a rival to Jesus, but also claimed to be the author of the Jesus character.

Simon has historicity problems, but Simonians strongly seem to have existed. If Cyril is right, they assented to a doctrine which necessarily implies the proposition The person known as Jesus of Nazareth did not really exist.

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... dnt-exist/

There is no strong reason why any early critics' embrace of mythicism simpliciter (assent to nothing stronger than The person known as Jesus of Nazareth did not really exist) would be much noted. It is a bald fact claim, not an argument.

Arguments that bear upon the fact claim do survive (e.g. the Apostles are untrustworthy in general). However the really powerful arguments, the ones that would be much noted because they demand rebuttal, support a variety of conclusions uncongenial to Christianity, not just the one awkward possibility that the founding story is a myth.

For example, when Julian pointed out to the Alexandrian Christians that, unlike his divine Sun, their Jesus has not been seen by them nor by their fathers, did he mean to criticize:

- the relative recency of Christianity,
-the failure of Jesus to return within one generation,
- ...,
- OR, the Sun plainly exists; did Jesus ever exist?

All of the above is a distinct possibility, IMO.

There is an additional complication. If some contemporary mythicist theories are correct, then early on the proposition The person known as Jesus of Nazareth did not really exist would, even if granted, not have weighed against Christianity as such, but only against a hypothetical 'revisionist' historicist sect within the movement. The early mythicist critic would simply have been taking sides in a Christian controversy, not attacking Christianity as a whole.

[Ben C. Smith]

Kapyong

Bravo

Secret Alias

The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

That's hard to say. Cyril of Jerusalem (writing about 350) understands the Simonian claims to have been that Jesus was a character created by Simon. What Cyril says disambiguates a line of analysis of Simonianism running through Justin, Irenaeus, Celsus via Origen, and in Cyril's view, the author of 1 John. That is, Cyril's Simon didn't just claim Messiahship for himself as a rival to Jesus, but also claimed to be the author of the Jesus character.

Simon has historicity problems, but Simonians strongly seem to have existed. If Cyril is right, they assented to a doctrine which necessarily implies the proposition The person known as Jesus of Nazareth did not really exist.

Here is the passage from Cyril:

Cyril, Catechetical Lecture 6.14: The inventor of all heresy was Simon Magus : that Simon, who in the Acts of the Apostles thought to purchase with money the unsaleable grace of the Spirit, and heard the words, You have neither part nor lot in this matter, and the rest: concerning whom also it is written, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us." This man, after he had been cast out by the Apostles, came to Rome, and gaining over one Helena a harlot, was the first that dared with blasphemous mouth to say that it was himself who appeared on Mount Sinai as the Father, and afterwards appeared among the Jews, not in real flesh but in seeming, as Christ Jesus, and afterwards as the Holy Spirit whom Christ promised to send as the Paraclete. And he so deceived the City of Rome that Claudius set up his statue, and wrote beneath it, in the language of the Romans, Simoni Deo Sancto, which being interpreted signifies, "To Simon the Holy God."

This does not strike me as a claim that Jesus did not exist. This strikes me as a claim that nobody understood what Jesus really was (to wit, Simon in a docetic disguise).

If I claim that Abraham Lincoln was really an alien in a human suit, that is not same as claiming that no President named Abraham Lincoln even existed and nobody signed the Emancipation Proclamation or delivered the Gettysburg Address.

The difference can be determined by a thought experiment involving time travel: if we traveled back to the purported lifetime of Jesus (and, of course, if we had plenty of chances to get the dates right), what would we see? A claim that Jesus did not exist, to my mind, would be tantamount to a claim that we would be able to find no such person, whereas the Simonians' claim, per Cyril, would be that we would be able to find a person named Christ Jesus; we would merely misunderstand what we were seeing.

In the long run I do not care what labels (mythicism, historicism, docetism) we attach to these kinds of distinctions, but I think we need to bear the distinctions in mind.

I think a better candidate for an ancient claim that Jesus did not exist can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3119. (Not saying it is a done deal, but it is, if accurate, possibly more in line with a claim that no such person should be able to be traced than it is with what Cyril says the Simonians were claiming.)

[Paul the Uncertain]

Ben

This does not strike me as a claim that Jesus did not exist. This strikes me as a claim that nobody understood what Jesus really was (to wit, Simon in a docetic disguise).

Fair enough. The claim being addressed was:

The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

My counterclaim to that was measured:

That's hard to say.

You and I seem to agree what Cyril's evidence is and that it is deserving of some weight. It suffices that we disagree about the interpretation of that evidence for it to be hard to say whether or not mythicists existed in anitquity.

I am familiar with the Trypho passage. It may be discussing the existence of Jesus, rather than (say) disagreement about whether anybody has been the Messiah yet. As with Julian's jibe against the Alexandrian Christians, a possible interpretation of what reaches us is testimony about the existence of ancient mythicists.

I don't see the Trypho being as clearly that way as you do; you have a parallel outlook about the Cyril. I don't sense we're all that far apart on the conclusion, however, that it's seriously possible that there were ancients who disbelieved that the person known as Jesus of Nazareth really existed, and that some traces of that disbelief have survived.

It's hard to deny that conclusion categorically.

[Stuart]

The real question for Kapayong is WHY DOESN'T Epiphanius mention mythicists? The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

Classic case of modern revisionist thinking. The answer to your question is self evident, if you bothered to think about it.

I was also put off by Kapyong's self promotion, to rank himself among the noted scholars. Hence my comment about it belonging in the lounge area.

[Secret Alias]

Are you saying that if (a) the Church Fathers were looking to condemn the heresies that (b) the charge of denying the existence of Jesus wouldn't be the ultimate 'crime' for a Christian? Seems to me at least to be the logical extension of charging that the heretics venerated a phantom.

[Kapyong]

Gday Stuart

I was also put off by Kapyong's self promotion, to rank himself among the noted scholars. Hence my comment about it belonging in the lounge area.

Noted scholar ?
Pfffft !

I called myself an excremental dag / hanger-on. Dags refer to the shitty wool that follows a sheep's rear-end.

Although I did group myself with Neil Godfrey - he's certainly well above my pay grade, but I do wish I was as well informed and skilled at analysis and argument as he.

Do you usually seek to have a post from someone who 'puts you off' moved away ?
Or does it only apply to Jesus Mythicists ?

BTW -
thanks for getting my name right Stuart
It's always a thrill when someone here manages that.

Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Secret, Alas !

The real question for Kapayong is WHY DOESN'T Epiphanius mention mythicists? The short answer is they didn't exist in antiquity

You are correct, they did not exist. At least, not in the exoteric histories of the day.

Because Epiphanius carefully erased them from profain history, of course. Although he didn't actually exist himself, his name refered to those with over sight of the original conspiracy of silence. A secret brotherhood, hidden for ages past, but now revealed to his true apostles through the revelation of his sun, and a righteous triple espresso.

This Mythicist Brotherhood was kept hidden only by the continuing vigilence of their great stewards through the ages - from Augustine the Hippo, Ebion the Poor, Gregory the Thaumaturgist, John the Scottish Irishman, Arthur Pendragon, Saadia Gaon, Pope Joan, William Tell, Beren Erchamion, Robin Hood, Nicholas Flamel, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim, Robert the Bruce, Elfric de Cranstoun, the Count de St Germain, 0B1 Kenobi, John Dee, Eddard Stark, Isaac Newton, Bérenger Saunière, Ned Ludd, Mary Anne South, HP Blavatsky, Nicola Tesla, John XXIII, Albert Einstein, Karl Jung, Simon Templar, T.E. Shaw, Robert Kennedy, Umberto Eco, Steve Jobs, and finally - he of the Secret Alias.

This underground stream bubbled quietly for a millenium after the destruction of Jerusalem, where it was kept hidden beneath the Temple of Solomon. In the fullness of time the secret treasure was recovered at midnight at the Well of Souls by the crusading Templar diggers and brought back to Europe bringing fame and fortune and flying buttresses. But Philip wasn't Fair, and on that fateful Friday the 13th seneschals all over France opened their secret orders at dawn :
"Arrest ye all Jesus Mythicists ! "

The Mythicists were too smart however, and they escaped on their flying boats to Scotland, Rennes-le-Château, La Merica, Beach & Locach, Sherwood Forest, Casterly Rock, Endor, Java Le Grande, and the Kingdom of Prester John. So like a hydra the Mythicist Monster sprouted new heads all over, even in Europe - from Robert the Bruce and the Scottish Freemasons at Roslyn Chapel, through the Albigensians and the Buggers and even Cathay Pacific.

Until recently the secret was ever kept safe in the hands of the Military-Industrial-Medical-Banking-Media complex, who ensured a new 'Historical Jesus' story hit the TV just before every Easter and Christmas.

But now the time has come - the Pleaides are in perfect alignment with the Olive Tree, and the long-prophesied Trump has arrived :

Paul : " For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and The TRUMP of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. " (1 Thess. 4:16, KJV)

Augustine - " ... because this hour shall be hereafter, because this hour shall be at the end of the world, because this shall be the last hour, shall be at the last TRUMP. " (Sermon LXXVII, 14)

Aurelius Prudentius : " Vain all thy tears, when loud shall sound The TRUMP, when flames shall scorch the ground, When from its hinge the cloven world is loosed, in horrid tumult hurled. " (Hymns, XI. Hymn For Christmas-Day)"

The Trump of God has loosed the cloven world from its hinge, beware the horrid tumult hurled !

Kapyong