Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament: the order of books according to Jesus Chri st

[annotate]

Looking forward to a read. Sounds very interesting.

[mlinssen]

We're live.
Kindle, paperback, hardcover - I recommend the Kindle for the 750+ hyperlinks

Merry XS-mas everybody!

Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament: the order of books according to Jesus Chri st

The name Jesus Christ appears nowhere in the Gospels, nor in the Epistles.
The very first and oldest, original Greek texts contain only ΙΣ ΧΣ, some form of shorthand - and nowhere is explained what it means. When it is assumed to be an abbreviation, there is more than merely one possibility; and while there is one word assumed to be the word of choice, there is another one that is almost identical.
A thorough and extensive search through all the books of the Bible will answer the question: what does that mysterious ΧΣ stand for, χριστός or χρηστός? The first word means 'anointed' in Greek, the second means 'good', and it is widely assumed that Jesus Christ is the 'Anointed One' - yet even that phrase does not appear anywhere in the New Testament.
It also is unanimously assumed, by laymen as well as scholars, that the chronological order of writings consists of the Old Testament, followed by the Epistles, followed by the Gospels; nothing could be further from the truth, however, and the search results demonstrate that the order is the exact opposite.
The search also reveals very surprising finds in the Epistles, which in turn initiate an entirely new search, that evolves and unfolds entirely in Egypt - where the true origins of this mysterious ΧΣ are found, upon which the most revealing facts of all present themselves.
Not only the Christian Bible is subjected to close scrutiny: the findings are compared with and verified against the oldest and earliest manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, yet also individual and fragmentary papyri. The earliest Patristics are called to the stand, e.g. Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, as well as more objective witnesses such as the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius. Yet last and most certainly not least, all of the Nag Hammadi Library is unearthed - again - and a deeply buried secret is brought to light.

This all-embracing book upsets many centuries of Bible studies: on the basis of concisely summarized research results that get presented in a clear and transparent manner, possible solutions are offered for the repeatedly surprising and unexpected facts, the most plausible conclusion of which consistently points in a direction that is at odds with the dogma of the Church. The Christian source texts themselves, the so-called Church Fathers and the so-called apocryphal writings all confirm the shocking conclusion: Jesus Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah has no original existence whatsoever, and that carefully fabricated concept dates only from many centuries later.

Sample first chapter and Table of Contents

Publication date: ‎December 24, 2023

[lclapshaw]

We're live.
Kindle, paperback, hardcover - I recommend the Kindle for the 750+ hyperlinks

Merry XS-mas everybody!

Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament: the order of books according to Jesus Chri st

The name Jesus Christ appears nowhere in the Gospels, nor in the Epistles.
The very first and oldest, original Greek texts contain only ΙΣ ΧΣ, some form of shorthand - and nowhere is explained what it means. When it is assumed to be an abbreviation, there is more than merely one possibility; and while there is one word assumed to be the word of choice, there is another one that is almost identical.
A thorough and extensive search through all the books of the Bible will answer the question: what does that mysterious ΧΣ stand for, χριστός or χρηστός? The first word means 'anointed' in Greek, the second means 'good', and it is widely assumed that Jesus Christ is the 'Anointed One' - yet even that phrase does not appear anywhere in the New Testament.
It also is unanimously assumed, by laymen as well as scholars, that the chronological order of writings consists of the Old Testament, followed by the Epistles, followed by the Gospels; nothing could be further from the truth, however, and the search results demonstrate that the order is the exact opposite.
The search also reveals very surprising finds in the Epistles, which in turn initiate an entirely new search, that evolves and unfolds entirely in Egypt - where the true origins of this mysterious ΧΣ are found, upon which the most revealing facts of all present themselves.
Not only the Christian Bible is subjected to close scrutiny: the findings are compared with and verified against the oldest and earliest manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, yet also individual and fragmentary papyri. The earliest Patristics are called to the stand, e.g. Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, as well as more objective witnesses such as the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius. Yet last and most certainly not least, all of the Nag Hammadi Library is unearthed - again - and a deeply buried secret is brought to light.

This all-embracing book upsets many centuries of Bible studies: on the basis of concisely summarized research results that get presented in a clear and transparent manner, possible solutions are offered for the repeatedly surprising and unexpected facts, the most plausible conclusion of which consistently points in a direction that is at odds with the dogma of the Church. The Christian source texts themselves, the so-called Church Fathers and the so-called apocryphal writings all confirm the shocking conclusion: Jesus Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah has no original existence whatsoever, and that carefully fabricated concept dates only from many centuries later.

Sample first chapter and Table of Contents

Publication date: ‎December 24, 2023

Merry XCmas Martijn! Hope you sell a but load of these!

[ebion]

The name Jesus Christ appears nowhere in the Gospels, nor in the Epistles.
The very first and oldest, original Greek texts contain only ΙΣ ΧΣ, some form of shorthand - and nowhere is explained what it means. When it is assumed to be an abbreviation, there is more than merely one possibility; and while there is one word assumed to be the word of choice, there is another one that is almost identical.

If the the New Testament Was Originally Written in Aramaic as the evidence we have presented shows, then nomina sacra is a Greek only problem, and not a NT problem, is it not?

For example: Matt. 1:1 "Jesus Messiah|Annointed One|Christ|Meshicha".

Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament: the order of books according to Jesus Christ
...
the findings are compared with and verified against the oldest and earliest manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus,

You're joking? You seriously wrote that? If you want something old, try the Peshitta; if you want something middle-aged you have Vaticanus, but only if you want something fresh and supple would you use Sinaiticus.

...

Calling Steven Avery...

[dbz]

Merry XS-mas everybody!

• Is it relevant to Linssen's argument, to note the pre-Christian and mundane Greco-Roman act of christing for personal grooming?

Myrrh's scent was popular for hair christing and in the context of religious ritual, may of symbolized the sap from a venerated/mythical tree or species.

[davidmartin]

the book shows there is a statically significant (ie massive) difference between the gospels and epistles
few XS (the derived Christ) in the gospels compared to epistles, and the other way round

it argues the best explanation is the gospels are earlier and subsequently added to the later epistles
this explains the lack of almost anything 'Pauline' in the gospels and why they don't even know who Paul is, they don't know his XS either

in other words the Pauline terminology and theology just isn't in the gospels (or Acts). It's because the gospels predate this later development

he shows using statistics why all the contortions to make the epistles predate the gospels are never going to work, that initial assumption is just flawed from the start. the XS/Chrest/Christ of the epistles is a development on from earlier phase(s)

i think one reason for the confusion is the gospels were added 'to' the epistles and some redaction occurred, but not a wholesale creation by anyone who was closely connected to an epistle using group/community. they did not write the gospels as an 'allegory for Paul' or any of those contortions to try and make the epistles come first when they clearly don't know who he is or the cultic terminology and beliefs of the epistles and in general are a bad fit

[Peter Kirby]

Quoting from the book:

The inevitable question arises: precisely how does Mark pick up the story from Paul (the name generally used to refer to the author of what is generally labelled Pauline epistles), going by the commonly assumed chronological order? When relatively quantifying this particular moment in the alleged Paul-Mark steeple chase, there are nine books that precede Mark which contain 346 ligatures combined, followed by Mark which contains 87, and the percentages are as follows:

TABLE 3 THE HANDING OVER OF THE BATON FROM EPISTLES TO MARK

	ΙΣ	ΧΣ	ΙΣ ΧΣ	ΧΣ ΙΣ
Galatians-Colossians	12% (41/346)	53% (183/346)	20% (68/346)	16% (54/346)
Mark	92% (80/87)	7% (6/87)	1% (1/87)	0% (0/87)

This presumed chronological order displays a desperately disparate mess, making little sense. It’s not merely unconvincing and implausible, it is simply inconceivable: right at this point, instead of one protagonist in one story, the witnesses attest either to four or, at the very least, two protagonists in one story. Alternatively there could be two or perhaps four different stories, each with their own protagonist - and all this can be concluded before reading even one single letter or word.

So this is what Martijn is saying:

This presumed chronological order displays a desperately disparate mess, making little sense. It’s not merely unconvincing and implausible, it is simply inconceivable

To which one can only say that Martijn's argument is a desperate mess, making little sense. It's not merely unconvincing; it is inconceivable how he expected this rhetoric to convince his reader.

Martijn claims:

the witnesses attest either to four or, at the very least, two protagonists

This also is unconvincing and makes little sense. Both sets of texts use both ΙΣ and ΧΣ ligatures (as he calls them), and in each case both obviously refer to the same figure. There is no issue of multiple "protagonists" here.

At least in this passage (which seems important to the thesis), this book desperately needed peer review before being published.

[davidmartin]

i don't see how this rebuts him. it's also not really rhetoric it's his comments derived from his statistical analysis. one should really rebut the analysis if one doesn't agree with the comments. when you did do this it ignores his main point i think

Mark uses IC/Jesus all the time but barely knows Christ (92% / 8%)
the epistles use Christ all the time and their usage of IC/Jesus is much lower (12% / 89%)

so there is a difference in the proportion of the usages between gospels and epistles
i think he is saying that the gospels know Jesus but don't know Christ in the Pauline sense. Some of those few will just be normal 'Messiah's'
conversely the epistles don't refer to Jesus like Mark does (they sure don't know the historical Jesus!)

from this his argument is simple
if the epistles were first then the gospels would reflect the epistle's usage of Christ, but the gospels don't seem to know the epistles (like Acts)
but if the gospels were first then this problem goes away
the path from gospel to epistle is straighter and it just makes a lot more sense

this ties in with someone adding an existing gospel to the epistle collection
really, this is not all that different from the idea the gospels are dependent on earlier sources that also would pre-date the epistles except the gospels themselves predate them
all the attempts to see Mark as an allegory of Paul have been done, why not try it the other way?
it's not like you have to agree with all his conclusions if you do. might not he have a point that the traditional chronology should have an alternative?

[Russell Gmirkin]

I find Martijn’s book to contain an impressive body of research! I don’t know anywhere else where one can find such a systematic and detailed analysis of the nomina sacra.

If one divides his presentation into the four stages of Facts, Hypotheses, Arguments and Conclusions (as I do), his book is well worth reading for his presentation of Facts, especially in the Kindle version, in which you can drill down to sources by following his convenient and ubiquitous links.

Some people judge a book only by its Hypotheses and/or Conclusions, especially if they differ from the consensus view. I appreciate novel hypotheses, if they are well argued. Martijn hypothesizes that the chronological order of the Gospels, the remainder of the NT, the “Christian” LXX, and the Nag Hammadi Library can be determined by their respective use of the nomina sacra. For instance, the Gospels are remarkable for their relative lack of christos/anointing language that abounds in the epistles. Martijn presents very clear arguments that lead to his novel conclusions regarding the order of these texts.

This would perhaps be more convincing if these different bodies of literature were all directly related and could be arranged diachronically, and authored by an essentially homogenous if evolving group down through time. But these literatures may have been to one degree or another synchronic, authored by different groups in different regions who may have been to some extent contemporary and possibly not directly aware of other writings. One may perhaps distinguish between Jewish (“Jamesian”) Chrestianity/Christianity, Gentile (“Pauline”) Christianity, and the Marcionites and other semi-independent groups (including those at Nag Hammadi whose writings uniquely emphasized the Spirit). So I question this line of argument and some of the historical conclusions that follow.

Nevertheless, I would say Martijn’s book is remarkably successful in a second line of argument supporting a subsidiary hypothesis of great originality and significance, namely: that much of which has been routinely translated as Christ (Christos) and Christian in actuality refer to Chrestus (the Good, Goodness) and Chrestian. I personally find his facts and argument throughout quite persuasive on first read. If this result holds up to critical review, a large segment of the early movement(s) responsible for the NT literature and para-literature were devoted to Jesus the “Good” (or Chrestus) rather than Jesus the "Anointed" (or Christ). This is shown not only by the NT and related literature(s) that Linssen discusses but by the secondary testimony from Patristic and Roman historical sources. To my mind this is a game-changer that forces us to read the data with new eyes. Well worth the read, IMHO.

[Peter Kirby]

his book is well worth reading for his presentation of Facts, especially in the Kindle version, in which you can drill down to sources by following his convenient and ubiquitous links.

Based only on his valuable discussion here on the forum, I would surmise that you're right.

I'd still like to take some time to read the rest of the book.

Nevertheless, I would say Martijn’s book is remarkably successful in a second line of argument supporting a subsidiary hypothesis of great originality and significance, namely: that much of which has been routinely translated as Christ (Christos) and Christian in actuality refer to Chrestus (the Good, Goodness) and Chrestian.

And this is one of the main reasons. I'm interested in what he has to say here.