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http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/rfset14.htm
This is a great point against Wells:
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http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/BkrvEll.htm
Note that when I listen a fan of Wells say: «Jesus descended already adult to be killed in the recent past, the his permanence on the earth was during the few hours of the his sufferings on the cross, then he died and rose», in another terms, when what is described is a short «toccata and fugue» on earth in the distant past, alas: that is not what Wells argued and it is an idea that is decisively more apt for the descending of the Son in the lower heavens. The "toccata and fugue"'s discorsue assumes, by definition, the cosmogony of the different layers of the spirit world.
Other two objections:
First, if so little was known about this founder figure, how did he fuel the movement and its spread across the empire? Why would a man so obscure (one who is not even spoken of in the role in which he is reputedly so enduring, that of teacher/prophet) have subsequently given rise to visions or convictions that he was divine, had pre-existed with God before the beginning of time, helped create and sustain the universe, and had risen from death and was redeemer of the world? Why would so shadowy a figure drive men like Paul to elevate him to such a cosmic degree, or devote their lives to preaching him?
Second, as a corollary, why did not artificial traditions, in the pre-Pauline phase, develop and become attached to the Teacher? If he was reputed to have been a prophet and teacher, sectarian impulses would inevitably have led to the practice of imputing all the movement's ethical principles, their prophetic expectations, their interpretations of scripture, to him. All and sundry would have been placed in his mouth, and thus when we encounter documents like the Didache, the movement's doctrines and sayings would be attributed to the Teacher (whether he was named Jesus or anything else). Personal histories would likely have been invented and attached to him as well. (Can we believe that such things did not exist among the writers of the Damascus Document, even if they are not recorded or have not survived?) The explosion of Gospels, various Acts of Apostles, dialogues with the teaching Jesus in the Gnostic vein, forged letters, etc., all of which arose from the second century on and were applied to the new Jesus of Nazareth and other figures of Mark's tale, demonstrates the absolute inevitability of such a phenomenon.
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Both of these considerations are similarly applicable to Wells' more general thesis of Jesus as a perceived human incarnation in the past.
Also Marcion considered the his Jesus a perceived - and only perceived - human incarnation in the past (relatively to the time of Marcion, 150 CE). But Marcion, differently from the Wells's Paul, wrote an entire gospel about that perceived - and only perceived - human figure. Why not so Paul, too?
This, in fact, is the other significant anomaly which Prof. Ellegard must address, one which equally applies to the views of G. A. Wells. If the Essenes of the Empire followed the authority of a great teacher and prophet who had lived and died around the late second century BCE (or if Jesus was simply regarded as a man who had lived earlier than the first century), how did the movement end up producing a tale of that founder which was set in the much more recent past of Pilate's time?
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Another serious objection: a «secret» can be hidden by God for long generations only if it happened in heaven, not on earth because otherwise it is not more a secret revealed uniquely by revelations: an oral tradition is required to confirm that the «fact» is happened really in the earth.
If so many aspects of the Pauline Christ clearly parallel the expression of the mysteries and their savior gods, and yet the Christian Jesus was uniquely a savior who had been on earth, either as the teaching, miracle-working Jesus of Nazareth, the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, or Wells' more obscure incarnation, why is no notice taken, or use made, of such a unique distinction from the cults?
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