Re: Political allegory in the 'exoteric' legend of Jesus
Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2014 11:00 am
maryhelena wrote:That wasn't my point - my point was the gospels developed separate to the Pauline texts.MrMacSon wrote:.
No mention in that quote from Loman that the Jewish-Christian messianic community had historicized a celestial crucified christ figure - Pauline or otherwise.
Michael Hoffman's summary of
The Fabricated Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight
Hermann Detering (1995)
The Catholic church didn't create the NT books, but redacted them strategically to unite the Petrine Jewish-Christians camp with the Pauline Marcionites (Gentile Christian) camp, resulting in a durable church system. Paul was a reworked Simon the Magician. Simon/Paul had leprosy. Simon/Paul taught gnostic-type anti-cosmos transcendence of and freedom from 'the law' through grace -- such transcendence being 'lawlessness'.
Initially, the Petrine Jewish-Christian camp, or the Petrine Jewish-Christian Catholic Church, tried ways of disparaging Simon/Paul, the proto-Paulines, Marcion, and the Marcionites; Jewish apocalypses so disparage Simon and his anti-law, anti-creator gospel of freedom. But ultimately, the Jewish-Christian camp, or the Catholic Church which forced together the Petrine Jewish-Christian and Pauline gnostic (Gentile Christian) camps, redacted 'Simon' into the Roman-named 'Paul', making the Paul figure compatible with Jewish-Christian faith.
John the Baptist's best follower was the historical Simon of Samaria. Cerdo (in Rome) was a follower of Simon, then Marcion was a follower of Simon after Cerdo. Marcion (from Pontus) doesn't write of Simon (from Samaria), but of Paul. The Roman name 'Paul' means 'small' which the Simonians and later Marcionites mapped to the idea of election by grace rather than law (p. 146). Simon was the "standing, stable, stationary one" (alluding to the timeless unchanging divine realm).
The work involved not invention, so much as redaction of two large groups to hide the fighting between them and pull them all together. Imagine having to join together into an effective congregation the large, popular camps of both Peter and Simon -- redaction of Simon into the NT Paul was needed, to enable this merging of two popular opposed camps. Like the Roman empire, the strategy of the Catholic Church was to forcefully integrate and coercively assimilate those who are opposed, not to annihilate them.