In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

The original incipit of Marcion was usurped, by Marcion (or by who wrote his Evangelion) from a story talking only about John the Baptist. This conclusion derives necessarily from the fact, already proved independently, that the Magnificat was addressed by the angel to Elizabeth and not to Mary.

In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

To my knowledge, this is one of the best explanations introduced until now about why the Gospel Jesus was placed under Pilate. Another is this.
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

So this solution agrees with Markus Vinzent's solution, only with this difference:

Image

while prof Vinzent thinks that in the real History John the Baptist baptized Jesus (and Marcion knew it from "oral tradition"), I think at contrary that the original story about John the Baptist talked only about John the Baptist, without mentioning at all Jesus.

Marcion was enemy of the sect of the Baptist, hence he usurped their story about their teacher, and modified his incipit, by having this time Jesus descended from heaven and not more the Word of God descended on John.
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

This explains the ambiguity of the relation of our Gospels with John the Baptist:

a mix of hate and love.
  • they hate John the Baptist (as object of cult from a rival sect who was not Christian at all)
  • they love John the Baptist (to use him against Marcion)
Whereas by Marcion, the Baptist was only attacked, never loved not even for a moment!
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

Prof Vinzent wrote:
Markus Vinzent wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 11:43 pm Marcion had a sense for historiography. From this I suggest, he knew of John, the Baptist, just as Josephus knew (even if Josephus' account was edited by Christians later, as we can see from the divergencies between what Origen has to say about this passage and what we know of Josephus from the 11th c. Greek ms.), he may also have known of the links that in his oral sources were present between the disciples of John and that of Jesus, and it was this link that Marcion denied.
(my bold)

Note how even Vinzent concedes that Marcion had someway to falsify his pre-marcionite source about John the Baptist, by denying a presumed link John/Jesus in such source.

In my view, the replacement of Elizabeth with Mary is sufficient evidence that, just as Luke falsified a previous birth story about John the Baptist (replacing his mother with the mother of Jesus), so, some time before, Marcion falsified the same story about John the Baptist (replacing the "word of God on John" with Jesus as the entity descended the 15° year of Tiberius).
yakovzutolmai
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by yakovzutolmai »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:49 pm The original incipit of Marcion was usurped, by Marcion (or by who wrote his Evangelion) from a story talking only about John the Baptist. This conclusion derives necessarily from the fact, already proved independently, that the Magnificat was addressed by the angel to Elizabeth and not to Mary.

In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

To my knowledge, this is one of the best explanations introduced until now about why the Gospel Jesus was placed under Pilate. Another is this.
You don't think John was a mythic figure?
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

yakovzutolmai wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 5:31 am You don't think John was a mythic figure?
About John, I think:
  • that the Baptist passage in Josephus is probably entirely interpolated
What I don't know about John is:
  • if he is a mythic figure, then, in that case, he was probably an anti-YHWH figure (the Mandeans would be his original followers) and therefore the Christianity would have ultimately anti-YHWH origins (our Gospels would have judaized an original anti-YHWH religion);
  • if he was a historical figure, then he would be Theudas/Dositheus/the False Samaritan Prophet slain by Pilate.
I don't know to decide between the 2 points above. Some idea ?
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

Assuming John as a mythic figure, the reasons to think that he was probably an anti-YHWH are:
  • the Mandeans hate YHWH
  • the meaning of 'John', 'YHWH gives grace', appears to be a judaizing ethymology to eclipse the original nature of giver of gnosis, the original "grace", given by John to his followers to return to pleroma. In this sense, the feeding of the multitudes had originally John as giver of loaves and fishes, and the multiplied food served to make the people return to their true original home (the heavenly pleroma). The story has been judaized in our Mark as Jesus (and not more John) multiplying food to allow people to return to their earthly home.
    • Mark 8:2:
      I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat.

      Jesus doesn't mean: "YHWH has compassion", while "John" means "YHWH has compassion". Hence try to replace Jesus with John and you have an anti-demiurgist story: the people had nothing of spiritual gnosis to eat.
  • Apollos in Acts is a gentile figure
Since I know that the idea of anti-YHWH origins of Christianity (via John) scandalizes a lot of people, I would like to think that John was Theudas or the Samaritan false prophet, i.e. that he existed and adored YHWH as supreme god.
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

For example:

It is indeed unlikely that the Jewish document we have just identified stopped after reporting the birth and infancy of the Baptist; it must have contained his entire life, with his speeches, his miracles and his end. Perhaps he attributed as many speeches to John as he did to the Mandeans in the Book of John. It would be surprising, then, if the editor of the Third Gospel, after having inspired the episodes of John's birth and infancy from this document in order to place them in part in the name of Jesus, had then, at the beginning of John's ministry, abruptly ceased to draw from it. The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves is par excellence the miracle of Elijah. Better than to Jesus, the repetition of the miracle of Elijah suited the second Elijah, John the Baptist.

(Robert Stahl, The Mandeans and the Christian Origins, my translation and my bold)
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

René Salm would agree with Stahl when he writes:

we saw that a certain Jonathan was the founder of Christianity. The Jewish rabbis who penned the Talmud several centuries later dubbed him “Yeshu ha-Notsri” ( < Gk. Iesou Nazarene, “Jesus the Nazarene”). They did so under the influence of the Christian gospels that had by the fourth century CE become well-known. The Christian evangelists, however, knew better. Through a series of permutations that need not concern us here, they demoted the figure Jonathan (“Yahweh Gives”) to a secondary prophet, John the Baptist. The Mandeans, however, preserved the name Jonathan/John for their founding prophet.

http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2020/10/ ... ties-cont/

He is also aware about the Samaritan view of John as Dositheus/Theudas, and he reduces also the latter to the same Gnostic/Buddhistic nucleus.

My criticism of Salm are two:
  • The focus on Buddhism eclipses the more correct focus on anti-demiurgism, if the assumption is that John the Baptist has to find "Gnostic" origins;
  • The reduction of the Samaritan view of John the Baptist (via Theudas/Dositheus) to Buddhism ignores that the False Samaritan Prophet slain by Pilate is a serious alternative to be considered (also in alternative to the same anti-demiurgist view of the Baptist).
Giuseppe
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Re: In the 15° year of Tiberius the word of God came to John... NOT on Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

In conclusion, it seems to me that the best research on John the Baptist and Marcion, until today, can't go beyond two (mutually exclusive) views:
  • the Georges Ory's identification of the Samaritan false prophet slain by Pilate with the historical "John the Baptist" and, by extension, with the historical "Jesus" (of which John is the prototype);
  • the hypothesis of an anti-demiurgist tradition behind the mythic figure of John the Baptist, a tradition that was after both judaized and christianized.
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