When I wrote the above, I had in mind one of the endings of Mark:FJV wrote:I do not believe there was a Jesus-savior-god.Charles Wilson wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2019 5:02 am
You, FJV, believe that there was a Jesus-savior-god, seen by the populace as such.
There was a man called Jesus son of Saphat, quite extensively mentioned by Josephus, who is staged as a godlike figure in the antedated, encoded gospels. With his charisma, social inclination and ethnic profile he gathered a revolutionary army around him and a lot of Jewish refugees expelled from regions with a non-Jewish majority. They saw him as a σωτήρ, a benevolent leader, but not as a God.
Mark 15: 39 (RSV):
[39] And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
Now, it appears the I am twice wrong. I mis-characterized FJV's position and I also assumed that the Son of God must also be a god, in the same manner as "...only begotten Son" is the sum-total of possibilities for a God-On-Earth (Adopted sons are also a possibility since Claudius adopted Nero).
If the thesis is the Roman Thesis then the possibilities must accrue to a Roman valuation (or Transvaluation) and we must ask if there are alternative understandings in the Roman Pantheon of god-like understandings.
There is one and it is that the "Jesus" story is the story of a demi-god. "Jesus" was the son-of-god by a Judean woman and the Holy-Spirit (ummm...Domitian, revealing his authorship while in control of the Roman Court). See Also: Testimoneum.
CW