On the link between Capernaum and John the Baptist

[Giuseppe]

We have a Jesus who is marcionite in spirit because:

• He doesn't hate John for the latter's decision to remain in Sheol (= prison, = wilderness).

• He describes simply the difference between a his disciple and John: the former abandons Sheol, the latter doesn't.

Hence, even if John was good, he was evil insofar he didn't want deliberately to abandon the Sheol. He thought that Jesus was a tempter.

Curiously, in Matthew 3:14 we have exactly a John who considers Jesus as a tempter:

But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

This resembles the Peter's will that Jesus didn't die.

[Giuseppe]

It is too much emphasized the fact that John doesn't baptize Jesus in GJohn, but I don't see a so great contradiction, from a Catholic POV, in comparison to Mark and Matthew:

• In Mark, "Mark"'s embarrassment is that John could realize the identity of the baptized: therefore, "Mark"'s solution is that John doesn't know that Jesus "dies" in the baptism;

• In Matthew, "Mattew"'s embarrassment is that John knows that Jesus "dies" in the baptism and therefore Jesus has to persuade him about the legitimacy of happened "death";

• In John, "Catholic John"'s embarrassment is that John knows that Jesus "dies" but this embarrassment is neutralized by omitting the happened "death" and introducing the John's recognition that Jesus, as Lamb, HAD to die.

In all these cases, the embarrassment is the Baptism per se, it is not the baptism by John. Or better, the embarrassment is the baptism by John insofar John is seen as being in Sheol, hence Jesus too.

[Giuseppe]

The embarrassment is that Jesus is already dead - with John as 100% witness of this death - even before that the entire story started, on the earth.

Hence, if John is described as not a real witness of this death, since the latter is transformed as a mere earthly baptism, then the story can start - freely and undisturbed - on earth.

But Celsus says us that just John witnessed the descent of Jesus. And Celsus says us indirectly where John witnessed Jesus: in Sheol!

When you were bathing, says the Jew, beside John, you say that what had the appearance of a bird from the air alighted upon you. And then this same Jew of his, continuing his interrogations, asks, What credible witness beheld this appearance? Or who heard a voice from heaven declaring you to be the Son of God? What proof is there of it, save your own assertion, and the statement of another of those individuals who have been punished along with you?

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04161.htm

Just the phrase:

who have been punished along with you

...implies that John was already dead - hence, he was in Sheol - when he witnessed first the revelation of Jesus as a divine being, by the "baptism".

ADDENDA
Celsus's criticism is: how can a soul in Sheol as John be a credible witness of the divine nature of Jesus?

Clearly, Celsus's Jew wanted a living witness, not the witness of a soul in Sheol.

[Nasruddin]

Maybe Matthew 27:52-53 is a narrative to Jesus' disciples rising from Sheol with him -
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared to many.

[Giuseppe]

Maybe Matthew 27:52-53 is a narrative to Jesus' disciples rising from Sheol with him -
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared to many.

more precisely, that passage is an implicit polemic against what Jesus did in the Earliest Gospel : he ascended to celestial Jerusalem with the souls of the good people, leaving in Sheol only the souls of the just people (just as the demiurge). Matthew reverses the roles: the Just people (=the Saints, ie. the observers of the Law) rise to earthly Jerusalem.

[Giuseppe]

Note also the meaning of Mark 4:11-12 at the light of the fact that Jesus addresses the people while a portion of sea divides them (Jesus being on a boat).

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge.

(Mark 4:1)

Being not on the boat (allegory of the church), the people "at the water's edge" were originally the souls left by Jesus in the Sheol since these souls rejected him. Who is on the boat, has just abandoned the Sheol, ascending with Jesus to heaven.

Hence only to who is on the boat the mystery can be revealed. The implicit corollary is that the Pillars, ignoring the meaning even of the first parable, are mere souls left in the Sheol, not true disciples risen with the Christ.

ADDENDA
My point is that Mark 4:11-12 marks a fatal difference along the lines "outside versus inside" in relation to the church, i.e. the only people who will rise in the world to come, de facto abandoning the Sheol. This assumes the knowledge that Jesus made that distinction between "us" and "them" when he descended to Sheol, testing there who had to remain or not.

[Giuseppe]

GIUSEPPE'S ARGUMENT THAT JESUS NEVER EXISTED:

• 1) Mcn, beyond if written or only used by Marcion, is the Earliest Gospel (per Klinghardt 2015)

• 2) Mcn started so:
  
  In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus the son of the God Chrestos descended into Capernaum...
  
  

• 3) Capernaum == Sheol, per Heracleon and per a possible ethymology of the name, meaning "place of desolation".

• 4) Therefore, per 2 and 3, the incipit of Mcn can be translated as:
  
  
  In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus the son of the God Chrestos descended into Sheol...
  
  

• 5) According to ancient mythology, only the dead people could descend in Sheol

• 6) per 4 and 5, Jesus is already crucified before the descent into Sheol.

• 7) Before the descent to Sheol, Jesus is not descended on earth, because the descent on earth is described in the rest of Mcn.

• 8) Before the descent to Sheol, Jesus couldn't be crucified in Sheol, per 5.

• 9) The only place where Jesus could be crucified, before his descent into Sheol, is not the earth (per 7), is not the Sheol (per 8), but only the outer space.

• 10) therefore, per 9: Jesus never existed. □

[Nasruddin]

Why is the fifteenth year of Tiberius important?

[Giuseppe]

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5024&p=97717&hilit=Tybi#p97717

[Giuseppe]

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad

(John 8:56)

proto-John was written by a disciple of Marcion. For Marcion, Jesus wasn't seen by Abraham on the earth. But in the last times, Abraham has seen Jesus. Where ? In the Sheol. It was in the Sheol where Abraham was expecting the coming of the Messiah.

The gerasene episode in Mark is another episode that was originally placed in the Sheol, then transposed on the earth. The gerasene was originally a ghost just as the Legion possessing him. When the episode was made earthly, it was placed partially at the Resurrection, too. The demons called Legion became the Roman guards at the empty tomb.