Gordon Rylands: Evolution of Christianity

[Giuseppe]

So Rylands:

In the Gospel of Peter, Herod, after passing sentence upon
Jesus, delivers him to the people, who enact the scene of
crowning, mocking, and scourging, which in Matthew and
Mark is enacted by the soldiers of Pilate. One may confidently
assert that a prisoner formally condemned to death
would not have been spontaneously so treated by disciplined
Roman soldiers. An officer would have been responsible for
him. And the soldiers could have had no motive for so
acting. Jesus to them must have been just a condemned
prisoner, like any other. They could not have connected
with him all the ideas which Christians have about him.
Leading modern critical theologians do not in fact believe
that Jesus ever claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of God, or
the King of the Jews, in which case there would have been no
inducement for the soldiers to crown him and array him in a
purple robe. It is well known that this scene is a close copy
of an ancient rite practised in connection with the sacrifice of
the mock king.1 Hence the statement in the Gospel of Peter
that the actors in the scene were the people is by far the more
likely to be primitive. Luke, who, as critics are aware, had
access to some source or sources not used by the earlier
Evangelists, presents us with an intermediate stage in the
development of the story, stating that it was Herod and his
soldiers, not the soldiers of Pilate, who enacted this scene.

Who says that the Romans are entirely innocent in Mark isn't saying the truth. Because in Mark the Romans are crowning, mocking, and scourging Jesus, not the Jews.

[iskander]

... Who says that the Romans are entirely innocent in Mark isn't saying the truth. Because in Mark the Romans are crowning, mocking, and scourging Jesus, not the Jews.

What has it to do with the evolution of Christianity?

[Giuseppe]

... Who says that the Romans are entirely innocent in Mark isn't saying the truth. Because in Mark the Romans are crowning, mocking, and scourging Jesus, not the Jews.

What has it to do with the evolution of Christianity?

Nothing. Rather it has to do with the "Beginnings of Gnostic Christianity", the Rylands'book where I take the quote above.

[iskander]

... Who says that the Romans are entirely innocent in Mark isn't saying the truth. Because in Mark the Romans are crowning, mocking, and scourging Jesus, not the Jews.

What has it to do with the evolution of Christianity?

Nothing. Rather it has to do with the "Beginnings of Gnostic Christianity", the Rylands'book where I take the quote above.

who has said " the Romans are entirely innocent" ?

the Romans did it
Life of Brian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCDPwMpYDGs

[arnoldo]

According to Rylands the Gospel of Mark is the "expanded" Gospel of Peter for several reasons.

[Giuseppe]

If the Gospel of Peter had not named Pilate, I think that his case would be surely more strong.

But so it isn't.

[Giuseppe]

i see that Rylands agrees with prof Stevan Davies about the Odes of Solomon as evidence of a pre-christianity centered around the mythical figure of a suffering ''Christ'' (not named Jesus).

But how was this Christ named Jesus?

So Rylands:

Something more exalted than a teacher, however powerful
his personality, so long as he is supposed to have been subject
to human limitations, seems needed to account for the facts.
And when we have noted that in the doctrine of various
sects the Christ was believed to have manifested himself in
Adam, Cain, Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
and Moses, we ought surely to find it rather surprising that
the list is terminated by Moses and does not include Joshua,
especially as Moses is recorded (Deut. xviii, 15) to have
promised the Israelites that " the Lord thy God will raise
up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy
brethren, like unto me." This promise, which of course
refers to Joshua, was referred by Christians of the second—
possibly of the late first —century to Jesus. If at that time
the promise was believed to have been fulfilled in a re
appearance of Joshua, it could easily have happened that
we should have no clear and explicit record of the fact.
For if any early writer had intended to say that the Christ
had manifested himself in Joshua, or that Joshua was the
Christ, writing in Greek the only way in which he could
have made his statement would be that " Jesus is the
Christ," since Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua. In the
second century, after the publication of the Gospels, the
statement would as a matter of course have been taken
to refer to the Gospel Jesus.

(p. 151)

Therefore the logic is the following:

1) there was a pre-christian cult about a mythical suffering Christ. EVIDENCE: Odes of Solomon.

2) there was evidence of the fact that in I CE the biblical figures ''Adam, Cain, Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph'' until to Moses were named ''Christ''.

3) by induction, the successor of Moses, Joshua, had to be the Christ, too. The Christianity is only one of a lot of Jewish sects centered around of identification of a celestial Christ with a biblical figure x.

MY COMMENT:

I can accept surely the sound truth of the point 1, in company of the prof Stevan L. Davies.

But which is the evidence of the point 2?

Surely, if the point 2 is proved, then the point 3 is a necessary logical conclusion.

[Giuseppe]

I see that there is evidence (in Hippolytus V:16) that the biblical Joseph was considered the image of the Christ according to Perates.

But Rylands is basing his view especially from another text:

In the Recognitions we find
inconsistent opinions as to the nature of the Prophet which
can be explained most satisfactorily by supposing that they
have been derived from different documents presenting
stages in the development of the doctrine. The inconsistencies
are important because they exhibit a progressive
transition from the Logos doctrine of the Odes of Solomon
to the later specialized dogma of the Incarnation. Accord
ing to one —presumably the earliest opinion —the true
Prophet is the Christ in men. As in the Odes, it is through
the Christ that men obtain Gnosis. Men cannot, says Peter,
discover the nature of God by their intellect ; all that can
or need be known of God can be learnt from the true Prophet
—sc. the Christ within them—in other words, by intuition.
The doctrine is pre-Christian in the sense that it is not
founded upon the person or the teaching of Jesus. It is
quite clear from the terms of the passage previously quoted
from Bk. VIII that Peter is not thinking of the teaching of
any particular person, since he says that even though the
true Prophet be not rightly questioned he is yet everywhere
and within the minds of all men. We find in this literature
a progressive limitation of the indwelling Christ first to the
pious in general and later to a few exceptional persons.
We have in the Recognitions the two statements that the
true Prophet has traversed the centuries from the beginning
of the world, and that the Christ through all generations
has been present with the pious. 1 We are then led on to
the statement found elsewhere, but more explicitly in the
Homilies, that the true Prophet had manifested himself
at different times to certain men of exceptional piety,
mention being made of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.

(p. 138, 139, my bold)

Note 1:

Nam et ipse verus propheta ab initio mundi per saeculum currens
festinat ad requiem. II, 22. Christus, qui ab initio et semper erat,
per singula quasque generationes piis latenter licet semper aderat. I,
52.

This remembers the view expressed by prof Bob Price about the person who, being seen by Christ, becomes himself a Christ. Rylands is saying that Moses or the biblical Joseph (or any other x), by seeing the ''True Prophet'' of Deut. 18:15, ''becomes'' him.