A mere congetture about Chrestos and the separationist Mark

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Giuseppe
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A mere congetture about Chrestos and the separationist Mark

Post by Giuseppe »

It has been argued that the Pagans called Christus as Chrestus, meaning wrongly that the Christians adored a god named "Chrestus", u.e. Good, Useful. And that the Christians themselves, in a second time, wanted to profit from this misunderstanding, by equating their Christ with the Chrest par excellence. The equation is behind the interpolated phrase in the Testimonium Taciteum.

As the argument goes, the trajectory seems to be evident from Mark to John, in the fact that in Mark we have a passional Jesus called Christ - not decisively a Chrestus -, and in John an impassible Jesus Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas"): surely worthy of being called Chrestus.

But the identity Christus/Chrestus, apparently expulsed by the gate from the Gospel of Mark, enters again in it insofar in proto-Mark there are clear traces of a Separationist christology: in this case, it is the impassible Christ, hence the ChrEstus, who is separated from the carnal and passional man Jesus.

En passant, note that the Barabbas episode is a subtle parody of separationism, insofar there also we have an impassible "Son of Father" (the criminal Barabbas) who abandons his previous "possession", the carnal "prison" where he was temporarily entered, now in the story a Roman prison.

Hence the more genuine trajectory in evidence is from a cult of Christ as Chrestus de facto if not by name, where the emphasis is on the impassibility of the victim, to a cult of a Christ suffering man adopted by God and later catholically identified with the Son of God.


But we know already the probable origin of separationism: it is allegory of the role of separator held by the cosmic Cross called Horos, who separates any passion from impassible spirit. And where the "superior Christ" was crucified. In heaven.

It is a full Gnostic view.

But if we remove the carnal Jesus, we are left with the only "superior Christ". The suetonian impulsore Chresto dates to a time preceding the first gospels.

The corollary seems to be that the only original invention of "Mark" (author) is the introduction of the man Jesus as representing the carnal passion from which the impassible ChrEstus had to be contaminated for a short time.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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