GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:58 am
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:45 pmNot just so the historicist interpretation.
Could I ask you not to call it "the historicist interpretation", please? It suggests to me that the argument is that a historical Nero (Satan or not) killed a historical Peter. I'm not arguing that AoI is evidence for any kind of historicity.
I think that AoI is evidence of the (legend of the ?) anti-Christian persecution
by Nero in Rome.
It's clear that AoI has a Christ/Beloved who probably descended to earth in any extant version.
No, it is not clear
for me. The AoI has a Christ/Beloved who probably descended to the lower heavens as the place of the his crucifixion on a ''tree''.
But as I've said many times, an earthly Jesus does not necessarily mean a historical Jesus. There are mythical arguments that have an earthly Jesus, for example GA Wells' Paul's Jesus.
GA Wells never quotes the Ascension of Isaiah in his books, to my knowledge. Probably he thinks that his author knew the Gospels. Rather, Roger Parvus is a mythicist who argues for an earthly Jesus in AoI.
Similarly, I don't know if Peter being killed by Nero is a historical event.
I
know that for the author of the AoI the killing of Peter by Nero is a historical event.
So you are not arguing that in AoI it is spiritual forces that killed Peter? That seems to be the implication of your earlier comment "Clearly Nero/Satan has "with him" all the spiritual "powers of this world". As with Peter, so with the "they" who crucified the Son on the tree."
I am not arguing that in AoI Peter is killed
directly by demons.
Peter is on the earth (we know it from the pauline epistles), ok? So whoever killed Peter
directly, he was on the earth. So the AoI says that the killer of Peter were
earthly forces - the Romans - lead by a particular
human ruler (
only the latter being really Satan masked as human being). I am arguing that the
''powers of this world'' who were allied with Satan in this episode were spiritual beings. They were not behind Romans, they were
with Satan.
It is sufficient that only Satan is said to be behind Nero, to make that event an earthly event.
Because otherwise,
if there was not the construct ''in the form of a human ruler'' related to Satan, I should think that Peter is killed in the outer space.
In your view, who killed Peter according to the AoI? Was it spiritual forces, even if indirectly? Or was it a humanoid Nero/Satan, with spiritual forces not involved?
who killed Peter were Romans of Nero. We know that the Romans killed directly Peter on the earth (from the only AoI) because it is mentioned that the killer of Peter is Satan
''in the form of a human ruler'' (who could only be Nero, based on other evidence, but this is a different discussion about what is that ''other evidence''). But the fact that according to the AoI the killer of Peter is Satan, doesn't mean that ''all the rulers of this world'' (what is a parallel of the term ''they'' in the Son passage) are Romans: no, they are only demons who are allied with Satan. But only Satan is masked as human being.
So in the Son passage we have that who kills
directly Jesus is not Satan, but
''they''. Satan is behind
''they'', since the latter, and not the former,
''crucified the Son on a tree''. Based on the parallelism with the Peter's passage, who are more probably
''they''? They are the
spiritual ''archontes of this world''.
Satan isn't said to be ''in the form of a human ruler'', nor ''they'' are said to be ''in the form of human rulers'' so the default interpretation is that the Son's event is not on the earth.
Basically, I am applying a particular
strong form of the Argument from Silence:
1) if the author wants to specify that a killing happened on the earth, he very probably has to specify that the killer is
''in the form of a human ruler''.
2) the killer of Peter is Satan
''in the form of a human ruler''.
3) So the author wants to specify, via point
2, that Peter is killed on the earth.
4) the killer of the Son are the spiritual archontes lead by Satan and neither Satan nor
''they'' are
''in the form of human rulers''.
5) So the author wants to specify, via point
4, that the Son is killed
not on the earth.