better critiques of mythicism than by Tim O'Neill

[MrMacSon]

My take on this is that [Y'shua/Iesous] - Moses' military lieutenant - took over command of the army when Moses went to the underworld. As such [Y'shua/Iesous] can be directly perceived as a Jewish "messiah figure" - a military savior with respect to the Jewish people. According to the Prophet Isaiah, the Messiah will be a “second [Y'shua/Iesous],” who will “restore the land and … reassign its desolate inheritances” (Isa. 49:8).

The NT authors therefore painted [their Iesous] the messiah as a continuation of the [Jewish 'OT' Y'shua/Iesous] the messiah even to the point of them sharing the same ligature.

I'd agree with that though I'd say the NT authors, collators and editors sought to portray their 'Iesous' the messiah as the ultimate, superior saviour-messiah hero

So the answer to Martijn's question —

In short, is Joshua the very bestest Moses replacement that we know?

— is Yes


As for —

EDIT: all of "your" theory here naturally presupposes an entirely Judaic origin to IS

— NOT NECESSARILY TO NO !

The Judaic basis of the the NT 'IS' could well be—is likely to be—due to Judaising of non-Jewish stories

[MrMacSon]

Yet most importantly it clarifies to me why no one in this world is open to my Thomas story, even though it is the only real story for all of it, completely convincing and irrefutable

It's feasible gospel authors +/- Marcion used the Gospel of Thomas. And you have presented good arguments for that [for some/several logia, at least]

And then Judaising happened. And there might have been a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing before the orthodox NT was formed

[mlinssen]

Yet most importantly it clarifies to me why no one in this world is open to my Thomas story, even though it is the only real story for all of it, completely convincing and irrefutable

It's feasible gospel authors +/- Marcion used the Gospel of Thomas. And you have presented good arguments for that [for some/several logia, at least]

And then Judaising happened. And there might have been a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing before the orthodox NT was formed

Abso-frigging-lutely Mac

But if we accept that first paragraph right here, or at least take up the challenge of proving it either right or wrong, we have acquired a new set of tools to engage with the second paragraph

I don't expect anyone to go belly up just because I posited a few solid cases of direction of dependence - my only end goal is to have Thomas accepted as
1. an incredibly deep text that can set us all free from suffering in every aspect
2. (and as the sole originator of the fictional character IS)

[Leucius Charinus]

My take on this is that [Y'shua/Iesous] - Moses' military lieutenant - took over command of the army when Moses went to the underworld. As such [Y'shua/Iesous] can be directly perceived as a Jewish "messiah figure" - a military savior with respect to the Jewish people. According to the Prophet Isaiah, the Messiah will be a “second [Y'shua/Iesous],” who will “restore the land and … reassign its desolate inheritances” (Isa. 49:8).

The NT authors therefore painted [their Iesous] the messiah as a continuation of the [Jewish 'OT' Y'shua/Iesous] the messiah even to the point of them sharing the same ligature.

I'd agree with that though I'd say the NT authors, collators and editors sought to portray their 'Iesous' the messiah as the ultimate, superior saviour-messiah hero

Well said. Dennis MacDonald says the same thing in his various mimetic treatments of the NT authors modelling - their 'Iesous' the messiah - on the Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies. Jesus is designed as a more superior hero than either Odysseus or Dionysus. The object of the ultimate, superior saviour-messiah hero mission is raised from saving the Jewish nation to saving all the nations of the world, to which the gospel was to be preached.

[mlinssen]

It's feasible gospel authors +/- Marcion used the Gospel of Thomas. And you have presented good arguments for that [for some/several logia, at least]

Thanks Mac. Please observe viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8930&p=140626#p140626 - if you want to traverse all of these for the first half of Thomas, it'll only take you 4-8 hours to scan them. There are some really hilarious ones in there where the usual suspects compare either Coptic Thomas to Greek Thomas or Thomas to the NT and somehow magically manage to find that the least likely and most elaborate route there, that dictates the most dependencies, is the obvious one that clearly demonstrates (cough) that Thomas in fact is dependent on the canonicals or the Coptic a copy of the Greek and not the other way around.
What is shocking is the way in which e.g. Gathercole, Attridge and others consistently falsify both the Coptic and the Greek with the outcome that both mysteriously result in verbatim agreement. It is particularly interesting in the case of the Greek fragments that Grenfell & Hunt, who were naturally unaware of Coptic Thomas, always manage to give a more or less faithful translation that stands in stark contrast with what their academic brethren produced a century later

[MrMacSon]

... I'd say the NT authors, collators and editors sought to portray their 'Iesous' the messiah as the ultimate, superior saviour-messiah hero

Well said. Dennis MacDonald says the same thing in his various mimetic treatments of the NT authors modelling their 'Iesous'

[the] messiah on the Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies. Jesus is designed as a more superior hero than either Odysseus or Dionysus ... the ultimate, superior saviour-messiah hero mission is raised[/elevated] from saving the Jewish nation to saving all the nations of the world, to which 'the gospel' was to be preached.

Exactly.

But MacDonald's propositions are only part of the story : the NT Jesus is a not just a grab-bag of the Homerics, He assumed aspects of accounts of concepts of Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar, Egyptian gods, etc, AND other characters in the NT were created from other characters popular at the time they were first conceived—the 2nd century CE—such as those in the works of Josephus; accounts of Simon [Magus], and possibly Simeon ben Gamliel, Simeon ben Hillel, and other Sim[e]ons; and others, including Thomas, etc.

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, Saul/Paul, etc.

[mlinssen]

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, Saul/Paul, etc.

What's with the Simon in Simon Peter or vice versa?

[MrMacSon]

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, Saul/Paul, etc.

What's with the Simon in Simon Peter or vice versa?

I think it's part of (1) the 'change of names' theme/trope and (2) assuming/conflating previous characters/entities/persons as part of new narrative/s, narratives which became part of The definitive Christian narrative:

... [previous] accounts of Simon [Magus], and possibly Simeon ben Gamliel, Simeon ben Hillel, and other Sim[e]ons; and others, including Thomas, etc.

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, etc.

( I think Stephan is on to something significant with IS initially simply being 'Man' [and I think that commentary-theme, including, if you're right about Thomas being early, was eventually Hellenic-Jewish-ized with Iesous] )

[dbz]

Lane, William L. (2017). Hebrews 9-13, Volume 47B. Zondervan Academic. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-310-58631-9. "It is, therefore, not surprising that the use of the term δημ Ιουργός in v 10 has commonly been read as an indication of Platonism in Hebrews, perhaps mediated to the writer through Philo..."

• ιουργός
• ΙΟΥΡΓΌΣ

• ιησοῦς
• ΙΗΣΟΥ͂Σ

[In] his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says Jesus was God’s agent of creation at the dawn of time (8:6), a belief confirmed by the authors of Hebrews (1:2, 2:9–10, 2:17) and Colossians, who wrote that Jesus was indeed “the firstborn of all creation” (1:15). The author of Hebrews 9 also confirms that Jesus was the high priest of God’s celestial temple in the farthest reaches of outer space—a role we know ancient Jews always reserved for an archangel, usually Michael, or an ambiguous “archangel of many names” (as the Jewish theologian Philo describes it in On the Confusion of Tongues §146–47, which predates all Christian writing). (pp. 31–32.)

• Carrier, Richard (2020). Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ. Pitchstone Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63431-208-0.

[mlinssen]

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, Saul/Paul, etc.

What's with the Simon in Simon Peter or vice versa?

I think it's part of (1) the 'change of names' theme/trope and (2) assuming/conflating previous characters/entities/persons as part of new narrative/s, narratives which became part of The definitive Christian narrative:

... [previous] accounts of Simon [Magus], and possibly Simeon ben Gamliel, Simeon ben Hillel, and other Sim[e]ons; and others, including Thomas, etc.

Hence 'Simon Peter,' Kephas/Peter, etc.

( I think Stephan is on to something significant with IS initially simply being 'Man' [and I think that commentary-theme, including, if you're right about Thomas being early, was eventually Hellenic-Jewish-ized with Iesous] )

Huller has been repeating his "throwing Hebrew solutions at a Greek problem" for decades now, the outcome of which was very predictable even before he started - and that was before it became a real possibility that it was actually a Coptic(-Greek) problem

ⲥⲓⲙⲱⲛ ⲡⲉⲧⲣⲟⲥ appears twice in Thomas, logion 13 and 114. First he sucks up to IS, calling him ⲟⲩ ⲁⲅ`ⲅⲉⲗⲟⲥ ⲛ̅ ⲇⲓⲕⲁⲓⲟⲥ, then he sneers at Mariham asserting that women aren't "worthy of the life". The Petros points at Petra, the singular Rock, but what does the other word point to?

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 3Dsimo%2Fs

It's worth a good laugh though I fail to find a link between Scythians and the mono-minded Simon Peter, portrayed as poster child of Judaism in Thomas