Joseph D. L. wrote: ↑Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:54 pm
And I doubt very strongly that Marcion rejected YHWH completely. His theology is too connected to Judaism to outright exile YHWH.
Well. So, at the end, your interpretation is not so 'radical' how you promised. Your exegesis of the Gospels will differ not so much from the traditional. For example, you would interpret probably the words of Peter in Caesarea Philippi, 'You are the Christ', as a confession by the best disciple that Jesus is really the
Jewish Christ, as Peter confirms.
I would like the traditional exegesis if I have to polemize against a Christian apologist, since RG Price has proved that, even assuming the traditional view, the case for a mythical Jesus is very much probable.
But I have closed with the activity of polemizing assuming the traditional view. It is, frankly, very much boring, to read the Gospel episodes assuming the 'monotheistic' (in opposition to 'dualistic') view of the author. Even if I see still a lot of flaws in my preferred alternative view, I would inquiry under it, i.e. the view that the Earliest Gospel was written by haters of YHWH.
Note that I am not saying that the Origins were pagan or gnostics. Think about Joseph Smith. He has nothing to share with the Catholics, for example. He was the last of the heretics, for a Catholic.
But assume, for analogy, that Joseph Smith had discovered something of IMPOSSIBLE (I am imagining a fantastic story, don't worry
), something that would have drawn necessarily the attention of the entire Catholic Church, something that was too much good to be rejected only because it came from... ...a
Joseph Smith!
Well, so I think that a Gnostic Christian (from Pontus?) wrote deliberately a fictional story where he used the Christ already adored by some Jewish sects, to promote his Gnostic view (of hatred against the Creator, etc).
All that is necessary to assume about the background of this Gnostic author of the Earliest Gospel is what Carl B Smith in
No Longer Jews: The Search for Gnostic Origin, 2004, concluded -
that Egypt following the Jewish Revolt under Trajan (115-117 CE) provides a ripe context for Gnosticism's most unique and definitive innovation, the rejection of the cosmos and the Creator God of the Jews. He argue[d] that individuals closely connected with Judaism--whether Jews, Jewish Christians, or gentile God-fearers--may have responded to the rebellion by rejecting the God and religion that inspired this apocalyptic and messianic ferment. "No longer Jews," they were now free to follow a higher God and way of life.