When precisely the divine Christ gave the right password to the archontes/priests

[Giuseppe]

So Marcion's Gospel:

66 And as soon as it was day,
the body of elders of the people,
and the chief priests and the scribes,
was gathered together,
and they led him away into their council, saying,
67 If thou art the Christ, tell us.
And he said unto them,
If I tell you, ye will not at all believe:
68 And if I also ask you,
ye will not answer me, nor let me go.
69 From henceforth shall the Son of man be seated
on the right hand of the power of God.
70 And they all said, Art thou then the Son of God?
And he said unto them,
Ye say it, because I am.
71 And they said, What further need have we of testimony?
for we ourselves have heard of his mouth.

http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel6.html#Betrayed

What is strange is the difference with the answer given by Jesus in Mark 14:62 :

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven

Marcion talks about the Son of Man who ascends to his Father, while Mark talks about a Son of Man who descends from the his god creator.

This may be a clue of the divine Christ abandoning the earth just in that precise moment.

The priests allegorize the archons who can give free access (towards the upper heavens) only to the souls who give the right passwords as keys. Jesus has just given the correct password: the priests believe him the Jewish messiah and so the true Christ has fulfilled his mission: to move the archons/priests to crucify the wrong person (his simple hologram and/or human recipient on the earth). Hence the true Christ can enjoy the final crucifixion of the his earthly mirror, by sitting comfortably in heaven to see the spectacle.

Note that this is extraordinarily coherent with the idea that the Pilate episode was added later to insist with more interested emphasis that Jesus is the Jewish Christ (against Marcion). In this way the new password given by Jesus to the archon/Pilate ("you confirm that I am the Jewish Christ") is the denial of the password given by Jesus to the archon/priest ("I am the Son of God sitting with my Father already from this moment").

So Mark replaced 'Son of God' with 'Son of Man' and an ascending (to Pleroma) with a descending (in the sublunar realm)

[Giuseppe]

This may well be the origin of the Irenaeus's report about the divine Christ seeing impassible (presumably, from the upper realm) the fate of the his abandoned earthly recipient Jesus in the hands of who allegorized the "rulers of this age": the priests.

To answer to the accusation of deliberate falsity by the divine Christ, his earthly avatar was transformed from a mere hologram to a man, a pious Jew son of Joseph and Mary (even if still distinct from the divine Christ).

[Giuseppe]

The passage of Mark 14:36

“Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

is a prediction of the fugue of Christ just before the his trial before Pilate.

Curiously, in Marcion's Gospel Jesus answers "TU DICES" both to priest and Pilate:

70 And they all said, Art thou then the Son of God?
And he said unto them,
Ye say it, because I am.
...
3 And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews?
And he answered him and said, Thou sayest.

If my thesis is correct, that the Christ had abandoned the man Jesus just when he had answered :

From henceforth shall the Son of God be seated
on the right hand of the power of God

("Son of Man" is an interpolation)

...then the man Jesus, being already under trial, could only answer "you accuse me of these things". He was only a doomed man the identity of which could only be given to him by the his accusers themselves. He couldn't deny what they wanted to hear from him.

In this sense the fact that the murderer Barabbas is freed adds irony to the fact that the true Son of Father (the Christ, proclaimed as such by God himself during the baptism of the man Jesus: Christ was the Son of Father, not the man Jesus) was already been freed even before the Pilate's trial. (I am assuming here the authenticity of the Barabbas episode, even if I would follow Couchoud to consider it an anti-marcionite interpolation).

[Giuseppe]

So Robert M. Price interprets Romans 13:1-7 :

1Let every immortal soul be humble before the authorities arrayed above him! For there is no authority except under God, and the existing ones have been ordained under God. 2So whoever resists the authorities has opposed himself to the order established by God, and such opponents will receive condemnation. 3For the archons do not frighten people away from good deeds, only from evil! Do you want to be free from fear of the authorities? Do only the good, and you will have its praise! 4For it is God’s servant assigned you for good. But if you are doing evil, then you are right to be afraid; for he is not afraid to use the sword God has supplied him, being God’s servant, an avenger of wrath to whomever practices evil. 5This is why it is necessary to submit—not just for fear of wrath, if I have given that impression, but for conscience’s sake. 6This is also why you pay them tribute, for they are constantly engaged in worshipping God. 7So render to all their due, to human leaders taxes and tolls; to the authorities honor, and to God holy fear.

Many scholars take this section to inculcate servile obedience to secular government in the interest of bourgeois Christianity. This interpretation is based on understanding “archons” and “authorities” as earthly governments, and “every soul” to denote “every individual.” Read this way, the passage does seem Catholicizing in vocabulary and conception and would be later than its context. There is nothing particularly implausible in such a reading. But if one translates it as I do, then what we are dealing with is a Gnostic text, a preface to secret information such as is attributed to the Risen Jesus in numerous works like the Pistis Sophia. There Jesus tells the initiate what to say during one’s heavenly ascent (at death) to successfully pass by the vigilant archons manning the ramparts of the spheres separating the world of God from this sublunar mudball. As for verse 6, in Gnosticism one pays the successive planetary archons, in the course of one’s journey back to the Godhead, upon exiting their respective spheres. One does so by setting aside the elements originally derived from each sphere (physical, ectoplasmic, astral, etheric, psychical). Such preparatory exercises represent, in Schmithals’s view, which I am adopting here, a decadent, second-stage Gnosticism. In the real thing, the simple realization of one’s divine selfhood was enough to catalyze instantaneous satori. One had no need of secret handshakes and magic words.

(The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 187, my bold)


In particular, it is interesting the phrase:

One does so by setting aside the elements originally derived from each sphere

...since it explains why, just in the same time, the divine Christ answers (with the correct password) to the priests (allegory of the vigilant archons) and abandons the man Jesus to ascend to the right of the Father.


The man Jesus is the "element originally derived from the earth", of which the divine Christ has to remove from himself in order to ascend to upper heavens.

Not coincidentially, the moment when the beating starts, the beaten man is Jesus, and not the divine Christ (since the latter had already abandoned the former to his tragic fate).

[Giuseppe]

It is interesting to observe that according to Ehrman

https://books.google.it/books?id=lcrUAw ... rk&f=false

On the cross Jesus cryed:

My God, my God, Why have you mocked me?

...meaning that not only the scribes and pharisees were mocking Jesus, but also God himself!

This is in line with the fact that according to Irenaeus, the separationists said that the divine Christ was laughing about the tragic fate of the man Jesus on the cross.

Ehrman says that at any case "mocked" instead of "abandoned" is a later reading, since the evangelist explains the midrashic source from the Psalm explicitly, where "abandoned" is the reading.

The point is that I think that the precise moment when the divine Christ abandoned Jesus was in 14:62 (where the original reading was something of much similar to Luke 22:69). Therefore Christ, having already abandoned Jesus by that time, could only mock him on the cross.

The scene resembles very much the same outline of the Hypostasis of the Archons, where the Archons lust after the spiritual Eve and she gets away by turning into a tree (apparently the Tree of Knowledge); then the Archons rape a cloudy mirage Eve. It more clearly parallels elements of Greek myth where Hera was rescued but got assaulted in her cloudy form.

Therefore the same difference between Eve and her cloudy form is the difference between the divine Christ and his carnal recipient, Jesus.

This analogy with Eve may explain perfectly why the divine Christ had to be not crucified differently from the his carnal twin Jesus.

Hence the next logical question is: why does Christ mock Jesus on the cross? What could lead him to mock about a mere crucified man?

[Giuseppe]

According to this scholar, the laughing Christ served to remark even more the his distance from the carnal man who suffered and was crucified in the his place.

it is clear that they did not describe a laughing Jesus in order to make him more human. In a number of Gnostic texts, it is precisely the dualism, that emphasises the separation of the spiritual from the material and non-Gnostics’ failure to understand this distinction, that serves as basis for most examples of Gnostic laughter (Gilhus 1997:71). Nor did Gnostic texts just want to change Jesus from the object to the subject of derisive laughter in order to underline his superiority in regards to his enemies and followers.41

The laughter of Jesus in the Gnostic writings rather has a disruptive and conformational rhetorical aim as his laughter is primarily directed at those who misunderstand him. In the Gnostic writings, the ones who misunderstand him the most are his own followers, who think they know who he is but who do not possess the true knowledge of his identity. The description of the laughter of Jesus emphasises that the opponents (orthodox Christianity) of the Gnostic movement had misunderstood him (especially in regard to the meaning of the crucifixion) whilst only the Gnostics had the true knowledge of who he was (cf. Ehrman 2006:111–112). The laughter of Jesus thus had a disruptive function in regard to orthodox Christianity and a conformational function in regard to the Gnostics themselves. It was the same sort of critical laughter used in the rhetoric of the 2nd century (Gilhus 1997:70). It was thus not playful, but consequential, as it wanted to give the Gnostic Jesus the last laugh.

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/2034/4539

This sounds a bit puzzling to me: the scholar is saying basically that the man Jesus was mocked by the divine Christ because of his ignorance about him. But here the point is slightly different: the man Jesus realizes that the divine Christ is laughing about him. This is partially a recognition, not just an expression of ignorance.

Unless the carnal Jesus was deluded in the his last hope: he believed that the divine Christ who possessed him was the Christ of the Creator god, while he was really the Christ of a higher God, the Unknown God of Marcion and of the Gnostics.

As such, having given the his confidence to the Creator and not to this Higher God, the man Jesus was rightly abandoned to his fate, without possibility of redemption.

[Giuseppe]

If the resurrection was missing in the Earliest Gospel, given that in it even the divine Christ was never suffering nor crucified, then this version of the story, even if very old, hides at any case a version not of a previous gospel, but of the original Christ Myth, where the "Lord of the Glory" - not a historical being - was really crucified by the demons. Directly in heaven (because only an earthly scenario would have provoked ipso facto the immediate need of a carnal twin to be crucified in the place of the "Lord of the Glory" (so much the embarrassment is linked with an earthly scenario of the crucifixion, to be basically quasi a his second nature).

[Giuseppe]

It is fantastic! I have found at least a scholar who agrees with me, contra Ehrman, that the original reading of Mark 15:34 is "why have you mocked me?" and NOT "Why have you abandoned me?"

For example, we read in Mark 15:34 that Jesus says, quoting Psalm 22:1, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" These words are very useful for the separationist argument that Christ came upon Jesus at his baptism and left him at his crucifixion. So, Ehrman argues, early orthodox scribes changed this verse to read (as it does in a few manuscripts) ‘why have you mocked me?" However, several scholars have suggested that mocked is not a later alteration, but what Mark originally wrote, I believe that Mark took mocked from Psalm 69:9; in his narrative of Jesus’ death, Mark weaves together Psalms 22 and 69, as he does other Old Testament passages elsewhere in his Gospel. The reading in most New Testament manuscripts can easily be explained by the influence of the more familiar Psalm 22:1 or Matthew 27:46.

So the explanation of this variation is to be found not in the efforts of some imagined unscrupulous second-century orthodox scribe but in the writing of Mark himself, and in his rich and creative theological reflection on the story of Jesus. When we read these two psalms over and over, the one about godforsakenness and the other about shame and reproach, we can hear the stories they tell and sense the theological and literary power of Mark’s fusing them together to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death

https://www.religion-online.org/article ... e-scribes/

So I am persuaded that my interpretation is correct: the divine Christ has abandoned the man Jesus in Mark 14:62 and then the same divine Christ has mocked the man Jesus in Mark 15:34.

This is pure Separationist Theology at the most degree. The dualism is absolute between the divine Christ and the man Jesus.

Proto-Mark is really the Gospel used by the Irenaeus' opponents, who divided “Christ” from “Jesus.” Christ, they said, was a divine spirit-being from the heavenly realm (the Pleroma, or “fullness”) who did not become really incarnate, so he could not really suffer. He was not truly human, but either only seemed to be human or temporarily inhabited a human named “Jesus.”

The mockery of the crucified Jesus by the same divine Christ is equivalent alone to a denial of the resurrection of the man Jesus and in this Proto-Mark is surprisingly similar to Acts of John:

97 Thus, my beloved, having danced with us the Lord went forth. And we as men gone astray or dazed with sleep fled this way and that. I, then, when I saw him suffer, did not even abide by his suffering, but fled unto the Mount of Olives, weeping at that which had befallen. And when he was crucified on the Friday, at the sixth hour of the day, darkness came upon all the earth. And my Lord standing in the midst of the cave and enlightening it, said: John, unto the multitude below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds, and gall and vinegar is given me to drink. But unto thee I speak, and what I speak hear thou. I put it into thy mind to come up into this mountain, that thou mightest hear those things which it behoveth a disciple to learn from his teacher and a man from his God.

http://gnosis.org/library/actjohn.htm

The conclusion is inevitable that if the Christ was euhemerized just by who was so embarrassed by the his crucifixion in the previous myth (to the point of denying his suffering and his crucifixion and to the point of denying even any identity with the crucified Jesus even after the latter's death) then the previous myth could only have Jesus crucified by demons in the lower heavens in order to not share that same embarrassment felt by the author of proto-Mark.

Hence the Barabbas episode was introduced by a judaizing interpolator not because the Gnostic opponents preached that their Son of Father was crucified and not the Jewish Christ (Couchoud's hypothesis), but because the Gnostic opponents preached that the man beaten, condemned and crucified was different (as already abandoned in Mark 14:62) from the real divine Christ, the true Son of Father.

In this way the proto-orthodox readers of the edited Gospel of Mark are secured, by the interpolation of the Barabbas episode, that the beaten man is just Jesus "called Christ" and not Jesus "who is not Christ".

[robert j]

It is fantastic! I have found at least a scholar who agrees with me, contra Ehrman, that the original reading of Mark 15:34 is "why have you mocked me?" and NOT "Why have you abandoned me?"

For example, we read in Mark 15:34 that Jesus says, quoting Psalm 22:1, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" These words are very useful for the separationist argument that Christ came upon Jesus at his baptism and left him at his crucifixion. So, Ehrman argues, early orthodox scribes changed this verse to read (as it does in a few manuscripts) ‘why have you mocked me?" However, several scholars have suggested that mocked is not a later alteration, but what Mark originally wrote, I believe that Mark took mocked from Psalm 69:9; in his narrative of Jesus’ death, Mark weaves together Psalms 22 and 69, as he does other Old Testament passages elsewhere in his Gospel. The reading in most New Testament manuscripts can easily be explained by the influence of the more familiar Psalm 22:1 or Matthew 27:46.

So the explanation of this variation is to be found not in the efforts of some imagined unscrupulous second-century orthodox scribe but in the writing of Mark himself, and in his rich and creative theological reflection on the story of Jesus. When we read these two psalms over and over, the one about godforsakenness and the other about shame and reproach, we can hear the stories they tell and sense the theological and literary power of Mark’s fusing them together to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death

https://www.religion-online.org/article ... e-scribes/

So I am persuaded that my interpretation is correct: the divine Christ has abandoned the man Jesus in Mark 14:62 and then the same divine Christ has mocked the man Jesus in Mark 15:34.

This is the worst kind of an appeal to authority on your part.

The author of the essay you cite here is identified as an interim Episcopal pastor. Psalm 22:1, with “forsaken”, provides a good fit with Mark 15:34 but all the author provides is, “I believe that Mark took mocked from Psalm 69:9; in his narrative of Jesus’ death, Mark weaves together Psalms 22 and 69, as he does other Old Testament passages elsewhere in his Gospel.”

OK, that’s what he believes, but he provides no arguments or evidence to justify that belief --- why is Psalm 69:9 a better fit here than the nearly verbatim Psalm 22:1? The author concludes his essay that comes across as an apologetic work with, “Whereas Ehrman’s journey in textual criticism has led him to increasing skepticism, my own has brought me to increased confidence in the New Testament documents and in the central figure to whom they bear witness.”

The author of the essay does claim, “However, several scholars have suggested that mocked is not a later alteration, but what Mark originally wrote …” However, no scholars are identified or cited. It is customary to identify or cite scholars used to support an argument so readers can evaluate their arguments and evidence for themselves.

I don’t deny that such scholarly arguments might exist. But just claiming they exist is woefully inadequate.

[Giuseppe]

This is the worst kind of an appeal to authority.

The author of the essay you cite here is identified as an interim Episcopal pastor.

I am aware that the quoted author is probably an apologist. But I have quoted him as evidence that Ehrman may be questioned relatively easily about the point.
From my POV, I think that, being Mark notoriously an author who very rarely quotes explicitly the scriptures, then there may be more than a reason to raise a suspicion about the originality of Mark 15:34, since the proposition 'My God My God why have you forsaken me?' is an explicit quote from OT scriptures (at least compared to other episodes in Mark that are midrash from OT).