“Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Sun Aug 05, 2018 9:00 am What is this evidence? Well clearly, for instance, Irenaeus reports that an unnamed group read the gospel of Mark as if Christ escaped and Jesus was crucified. How can that square with the Son of God escaping crucifixion and someone named Jesus dying on the Cross. Clearly all the evidence available to us assumes that 'Christ/Chrestos' was the Father. If Christ escaped crucifixion it's hard to square that with someone named Barabbas where barabbas = 'son of the Father ' escaping crucifixion.

How can Christ/Chrestos be the Father if Christ/Chrestos is an anthropomorfic figure? The only way I can accept this identity Christ = Father is in the way proto-John explains it: ''I and the Father are one''. And you can't deny that proto-John is a dualist Gnostic Gospel. Christ is the Father but he is also the Son of the Father in proto-John.
However you interpret this evidence having 'barabbas' which equals Son of the Father escape crucifixion doesn't make a lot of sense.
This is only a my hypothesis (advanced only in the first post of this thread). It is not what Couchoud says.
Couchoud argues that Barabbas is the parody of the marcionite/gnostic Christ in a time when there was not still a Gospel fusion between the Jesus Son of Father and the Jewish Jesus Messiah. That fusion appeared impossible since the Jesus Son of Father was enemy of the Jewish God: a very blasphemous idea.

Thirdly, you don't actually report what Jerome said about the variant 'barrabban.' In fact you use it to say that I am an apologist like Justin merely because I am not a zealot for Couchoud odd theories. You make it seem as if Jerome 'thinks' or 'argues for' barrabban and you assist your attack against Jerome by just citing a third hand source rather than Jerome's original testimony. The reality is that Jerome says that barrabban is derived from first hand textual evidence.
I see a great contradiction in the your method. You are the same person who wrote that we don't have a pagan scientist who described any Christian sect of the time. Well, just you now say that Jerome is a figure very similar to that scientist. And the reason would be that Jerome is based on first hand textual evidence (was it even a Gospel of the Jews). I have pointed out in the Couchoud's quote the more interesting feature of Jerome, the real reason because he takes cure to find "first hand textual evidence" abour Barabbas: the embarrassment for the strange fact that a robber and a murderer is called "Jesus Barabbas" where "Barabbas" means "Son of Father". The coincidence (Jesus + "Son of Father") is too much impossible to be a mere coincidence, so it is NOT a coincidence.
So now as an anti-Semitic 'mythicist' you are left in a bind. There is textual evidence from the fourth century that a gospel read barrabban. What do you do? Of course you will persist in your religious devotion to Couchoud. The Marcionite gospel, Couchoud your 'spiritual high priest' tells must have read barabbas which means 'son of the Father.' Maybe Jerome was reporting an ancient gospel. But it is a Judaizing gospel you would argue I guess. Anything Jewish would necessarily be inferior to something Marcionite - so who cares about Jerome's evidence.
It is amazing how you and Jerome are arguing in the same identical manner, in order to avoid the reading 'Jesus Son of Father" for 'Jesus Barabbas'. I am saying that this your insistence on other ethymologies (insistence that you share with Jerome) different from the my ethymology for Barabbas is strongly expected if you want to avoid that Barabbas is an anti-marcionite parody of the Son of Father unknown to the Jews.



Ah, but you see where your fixation on Couchoud has led you! Like any religious apologist you prefer what a 'modern spiritualist' tells you rather than the evidence itself.
It is precisely because Jerome gives evidence of a different interpretation (Bar-Rabbas rather than Bar-Abbas) that I am inclined to suspect that Jerome is strongly wrong.

Maybe if you had picked up a translation of Tertullian's Against Marcion you had read about the Church Father's reporting. Maybe Couchoud did too.
Tertullian called the marcionite Christ a ROBBER:
Then the things which the Father delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since all His things are good; whereas he is no longer good who has invaded another's good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching robbery of another's goods

And Barabbas is a ROBBER.

Yes! You fist pump in the air. You see, you say, Barabbas is 'a good man' - that is Chrestos. It all fits perfectly ... except for one thing. You didn't check the Latin original.
Your is a straw-man fallacy. Couchoud is not arguing for "Barabbas = the marcionite Christ". Couchoud is arguing for "Barabbas = the PARODY of the marcionite Christ".

The strangest enigma we should resolve about the Barabbas episode is the fact that the freedom of Jesus Barabbas coincides with the death of Jesus called Christ. Pilate could crucify both, Barabbas and Jesus. Instead, the precise point of the evangelist is that only one was the crucified. So he betrayes the clear evident insistence of the Judaizing apologist: the crucified Son of Father is the Jesus "called king of the Jews". The same point of the titulus crucis: THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Your hypothesis "Jesus Bar-Rabbas" can't explain why this Jesus Bar-Rabbas must be NOT crucified.

The bottom line is that Couchoud's theory suddenly falls off the rails. Let's see whether you demonstrate yourself to be a scholar or a religious zealot. Do you finally admit defeat?
You have proved very well that you don't know even the Couchoud's view.
Couchoud is arguing for Barabbas being a Judaizing PARODY of the marcionite Christ, not for Barabbas being really the Christ adored by the marcionites.
No people can adore a robber as their own Son of Father. But a deity can be despised as a ROBBER if that deity is enemy of another deity.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Secret Alias »

So you have nothing whatsoever to say regarding the reading BARRABAS in the only report we know has anything to do with the Marcionite reading of the passage and its implications on whether the Marcionites called the man bar Rabbas or bar Abbas? Really? That's very convenient. Following your consistent pattern - IGNORE EVIDENCE CONTRARY TO YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. Also the fact that Tertullian in his report about the Marcionites HAS THE SAME READING AS JEROME whom you claim is irrelevant to the discussion about whether the man was originally called bar Rabbas or bar Abbas?

Giuseppe. I think you should stop pretending you are not a fanatical religious zealot. If you were an actual scholar of Marcionism rather than an idiot who simply wants to model a group around his mythicist beliefs you'd have to see a pattern regarding the (Old) Latin readings of the gospel and Marcionism and acknowledge at least that it is highly probable or at least probable that the Marcionites read 'BARRABBAS' rather than 'BARABBAS.' With that your theory ends.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:11 am Also the fact that Tertullian in his report about the Marcionites HAS THE SAME READING AS JEROME whom you claim is irrelevant to the discussion about whether the man was originally called bar Rabbas or bar Abbas?
I dont' claim that it is ''irrilevant to the discussion''. I claim that it is strongly expected that, once the Christian X (X = marcionite or proto-catholic) accepted the story of 'Barabbas' in the his Gospel, then he has to find an apology to remove the embarrassment (confirmed by Origen) about the name of this robber: 'Jesus'.
So the fact that the Jerome and Tertullian improvise themselves as philologists to find other etymologies for 'Barabbas' other than that embarrassing (=Bar-Abbas, 'Son of Father'), is strongly expected on the my hypothesis. Even if there was in some version 'Ba-rabbas' and not 'Bar-Abbas', this is evidence that Bar-Abbas was for them a source of embarrassment (especially if you add the matthean version 'Jesus Bar-Abbas').

Please confess: also you don't like the presence of Bar-Abbas.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

Pilate could crucify both, Barabbas and Jesus.

Instead, the precise point of the evangelist is that only one was the crucified.

The reading 'Bar-Abbas ' is able to explain this enigma.

Not 'Bar-Rabbas'.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

In addition to this, since 'Bar-Abbas' was a judaizing parody of the marcionite Christ, it is natural that the marcionites would have preferred other readings (for example, your 'Bar-Rabbas') different from the parodistic anti-marcionite 'Bar-Abbas'.

So any your 'evidence' of different ethymologies can only limit itself to do precisely the my case: that 'Bar-Abbas' is a judaizing attack against Marcion.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

Really, now that I think better about it, I can explain very well the presence of 'Bar-Rabbas' (='Son of the Teacher') in the marcionite (later) versions.

'Bar-Rabbas' (=Son of Teacher) was the marcionite way to neutralize the anti-marcionite 'Bar-Abbas' (=Son of the Father) and to cast it in a anti-catholic offence: the not-crucified Messiah was the 'Son of the Teacher', i.e. the Jewish Messiah (the 'Teacher' par excellence of the Torah being YHWH). Clearly the earlier version was the anti-marcionite 'Bar-Abbas': because the marcionites would have chosen a better term to qualify the Jewish Christ, rather than merely 'Son of Teacher'. They chose 'Bar-Rabbas' because it was the more similar word to the previous 'Bar-Abbas'. They had to play with the rules of the game already set by the Judaizers in this case: they found 'Bar-Abbas' and converted it in the best way as 'Bar-Rabbas' to return the favor.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Secret Alias »

So you thought that the Marcionite name of the thief was BARABBAS.
You develop or accept a theory which assumes that the name of the thief was BARABBAS
THEN you find out that Tertullian reports the name as 'BARRABAS.'
THEN you subsequently make up a whole load of excuses.

Why isn't one of the possibilities in light of this discovery that your theory is wrong?
Basically what you're telling us that:

1. You're right
2. All you have to do is arrange the evidence in the best way for your theory to be right
3. Go back to 1.

This is the way a religious fanatic behaves. Not a serious researcher. Why isn't one of the possibilities when you get it wrong, that the whole theory is wrong?
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:04 pm So you thought that the Marcionite name of the thief was BARABBAS.
no. Bar-Rabbas is the marcionite name of the robber. While Bar-Abbas is the name of the robber for the judaizers.

Bar-Abbas is more old than Bar-Rabbas.
Is it more clear now?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Secret Alias »

But what does it take to disprove the theory? I am just curious. If I say 'I expect to uncover a buried treasure in my backyard.' And then I dig up my backyard and there is no treasure. At what point do I have admit I was wrong there is no buried treasure in my backyard? What does it take?
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Ulan
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Re: “Abba, Father” as two distinct deities, not one

Post by Ulan »

If we leave this Barabbas/Barrabas controversy alone for a moment (I can see points for both explanations), how does the specific mention of the insurrection in gMark figure into this hypothesis? For me, this would rather point at Barabbas/Barrabas being a stand-in for the Jewish idea of the warrior messiah. This, together with the allusion to Yom Kippur, would rather square with gMark being closer to Marcionite ideas (as commonly suggested) than with anti-Marcionite propaganda.
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