Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

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lsayre
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Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by lsayre »

I've watched and listened to this interview twice now on YouTube, and I'm excitedly drawn to a conclusion that Stephan (our Secret Alias) has uncovered some seriously interesting and perhaps totally unique insight into earliest foundational Christianity (as well as the Judaism of that time) that I find fascinating!
Stuart
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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

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mlinssen
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Transcript (literal)

Post by mlinssen »

The literal one as provided:

Transcript
0:05
[Music]
0:23
[Music]
0:37
hello everybody welcome to easter valley podcast today i'm joined by stephan huller
0:42
and today we're going to be talking about his article this chapter in the book varieties of jesus methodism
0:48
did he even exist it was edited it was edited by john w loftus and robert and price
0:54
they included several chapters in there from from multiple different offers and seven huller is one of the offers i
1:00
contributed to the book and the specific chapter he wrote in there is an article titled
1:08
the jewish myth of jesus that's what we're talking about today
1:14
hi so welcome to history valley thanks for having me of course
1:20
so i watched myself with this question um you pointed out the gospel mark is
1:26
not a biography of jesus but more like a mythology more like a a text
1:33
built on jewish myth uh and you also point out something to do with alex of alexandria egypt
1:40
discuss that uh what do you mean by that well i mean yeah if you look at
1:47
um irenaeus who is the person who uh all of our information about the true
1:52
gospels comes from um there is implicitly the idea that there were four
1:58
principle evangelical witnesses to jesus and uh
2:03
they each had a succession or at least a a uh you know
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an order that came from at least john and the others are implicit and the only
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locale that seems to be uh to claim to have a uh inheritance from mark is the
2:24
alexandrian sea they claim that they mark came from
2:30
rome and settled in alexandria and brought with him the gospel that is what the
2:35
cops of egypt believe today
2:44
when you say that one has to commit to a mental jump to find jesus's name in the manuscripts and
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you point out in the article that's uh i s ihs and ih
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that's what we see and what we see in the manuscript is pretty much is the greek
3:03
and one that's i was just pointing out a moment ago that you were saying that one has to commit to a mental jump to find
3:10
the the full name of jesus in the text so jesus doesn't really appear as jesus
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per se in the manuscripts what would you say is the
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implications of that and what do you what do you think that's going well it's a very big topic and it's uh
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an idea that i've been working on for about 10 years and it it basically comes down to the
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fact that um irenaeus again my my favorite uh ancient writer
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um actually goes so far as to say that jesus is not the name of the savior you know the the he is
3:48
writing in greek so he says that there are those presumably valentinians or perhaps marcosians
3:56
who take great interest in the name jesus and say that it it adds up to the letters add up to 888
4:03
and he doesn't just uh deny the importance of
4:08
gematria he says explicitly that jesus is not the name of the savior
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and that is a hebrew name and he you know goes on to
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you know attack other forms of gematria what's interesting is that irenaeus seems to be dependent
4:29
upon justin martyr and justin martyr in one place says
4:34
that the name of the savior in hebrew means man
4:39
and that gave me the idea about 10 years ago
4:44
that when you look at iota sigma in the nominative form of the uh what is
4:50
presumed to be an abbreviation of the name jesus that it could be re
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read by an ancient greek as a preservation of the hebrew word for man
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which is ish and i had this idea and the more i looked
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the more i saw that um oregon of alexandria uh literally um preserves or says that
5:14
i guess it's one point in his letter uh he says to that um the hebrew word from man is spelled with
5:20
the same two letters iota sigma so i have you know since the article that
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you saw in in that variety of mythicism book i have compiled a list of the references
5:35
that say that the or at least imply that name of the
5:40
savior is man and it would include justin irenaeus
5:46
and oregon at the very least and then we have to go back to philo of alexandria who says that the
5:53
second god of israel is named man and also his uh sort of um
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you know nonsensical etymology of the word israel as meaning a man seeing god where
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the first two letters of israel and greek are again iota sigma so
6:15
my presumption was or at least the beginning of my investigation was what
6:20
if jesus or joshua was a later
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idea and that originally philo's second god who he calls man in
6:33
greek uh was jesus the or the the savior that
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christians call jesus today and i have developed an argument to that
6:45
effect and you know people can judge it as they want but i think that when you have
6:51
people like philo and justin and irenaeus and oregon you're at the beginning of christianity
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or at least christianity as we know it and i think it's a persuasive case and
7:02
people can judge for themselves so with that being said
7:10
do you think that that jesus the jesus character
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was based on a person that could that was crucified by pilate or do you take the memphis position that uh
7:23
he did not exist you know i'm canadian so i'm sort of wishy-washy i i don't know the truth is
7:31
i don't know all i can tell you is that if you were to compile all the early
7:38
christian writers and you were to say what is the common thread
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between markian justin irenaeus
7:50
clement oregon all the early christian writers it wouldn't be
7:57
jesus the name jesus a wouldn't be son of mary it wouldn't be born of a virgin
8:04
the common denominator between all of these ancient writers is that the guy who appeared in galilee and
8:11
judea was the same man who dined with abraham
8:17
who met isaac in a field or at least stood with isaac in a field wrestled with jacob was in a field again
8:25
with joseph was there when joseph was secretly the president when his brothers didn't know he was there was in the
8:31
burning bush with moses who was on the mount sinai who was with uh
8:37
joshua when he was about to conquer jericho and then you have to ask yourself
8:42
if we're to say what is more true what is more universal the
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answer would be that the god man who is known to philo
8:55
and in hebrew ish the samaritans identify him in the same passages as as
9:02
philo that this character is more universally acknowledged to be
9:09
the savior of christianity than a son of mary or a son of a virgin
9:15
among all our ancient sources so i think that's a persuasive argument
9:22
you also pointed out in the book that um that you when you look at margaret
9:28
parker and what and her work and and on this like okay jesus son of
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god god has never called the lord in the new testament jesus is a lord throughout the new
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testament and so yeshua uh or yahweh son of el is the equivalent
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to baal said elion
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so in this situation are you equating
9:57
marduk sanopia and ball son of el yon to yahweh son of l in that case
10:03
and another question i'll add on to that is does this indicate to you
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that jesus is really a euhemorization of yahweh
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is that what this is what's going on you know to be honest with you there's just so much evidence and and and every
10:23
for instance um you know a while ago there was you know this revelation or this important discovery
10:30
that you know in the rabbinic writings there were reports of heretics that said there were two powers in heaven
10:37
and um in the jewish sources there is this notion even
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later than philo that um that you know there was an old man and there
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was a young man and um there were two powers and there was a merciful power
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and there was a just power um i do i feel i feel like i would like
11:02
to avoid speculation and just deal with the facts the facts are that philo was a jew
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and he said there were two powers that in the rabbinic reports where there
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are two powers or they're said to be a heresy that advocates two powers that
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they sound a lot the heretics sound a lot like justin or mark yar
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both marcion and justin think that the man of the pentateuch who as i
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mentioned earlier did all the things with the patriarchs was the the main character in the gospel
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so already there you have this notion that what you want to call judaism or
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samaritanism or whatever you want to call it that there was the ground for a
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second power that was a man or anthropomorphic
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that was expected to interact with humans at the end of time
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and so um all i can say from my point of view is
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that at the end of the second century again for reasons that involve speculation
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um there was this counter force that said that um that wanted to flatline all the
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uh israelite religions so for instance you have in samaritan's
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sources around the time of communists that uh alexander aphrodisias apparently
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went to the samaritan people and had a debate about whether there was one god or not and at
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the end of the debate he didn't like the outcome and he murdered all the samaritans and it's a long story and it it's preserved in a 14th century
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samaritan source then at the same time you have uh in jewish sources um
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you know the their patriarch judah who's friends with the emperor taking greek baths and reshaping the
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jewish religion and introducing the concept of the the lord of the world or you know the
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cosmocrats are into uh jewish religion and then at the same time or or the similar time you have
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irenaeus who is just dogmatic about there being one god in christianity
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and that even where you see in the old testament that there is this god man
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that really there's he's just the father uh father's with him and there's only
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one god so alan brent who is my absolute favorite new testament scholar
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um makes you know a very compelling case that in the early 3rd century as a
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prelude to the collapse of the roman empire you know the emperors were just obsessive about reinforcing their
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authority and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think that christianity succumbed to
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this influence and one of the results was that we don't speak as we don't
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speculate about uh jesus being this old testament second power of god
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and i think that the early church fathers knew that to be true the evidence from their writings suggested
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it was true and i think that the eventual emphasis of jesus
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as a son of mary as a born from a virgin uh came to emphasize his historical
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human birth i don't want to bore you too much but if you actually look at aaron asks the way
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he develops in book three of against heresies you can see that even there it's not
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clear that the the man born of a virgin was named jesus the name jesus does not appear
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as often as you think in the writings of irenaeus and i would even argue that if
15:00
you read book three you could imagine that he believed that the baby that came from mary was named
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man so i mean it's all a subject of debate i'm the first person to write about this and
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hopefully i will stimulate new uh interest in this but i think that
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there were early christians like markion like justin
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who would go into their churches and venerate a second power of god or a second power that was named
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man and later that being was named
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jesus but not originally does the name
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being man does that remind you at all of the son
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of man well you know that's it's aramaic um but
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um you know daniel daniel's vision is often used in the two
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powers literature as denoting the you the younger power and um obviously one
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could see that you know there was a scenario where the old man was a man and the son of man and
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really in all the writings whether you look at nagamati and you look at the writings of the you know the
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heresyologists there are as many formulas for uh how one was called mad and one was
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called son of man and who was man uh but my belief
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because i always think mark young was the earliest i think mark young was the earliest uh
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uh christian i i think that that marchionne preserves the earliest form of christianity
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and interestingly enough from uh the armenian sources on marchionne there are
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a lot of parallels with guess who with with justin martyr uh both of them
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imagine that a man of war which you know in hebrew again is an ish
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uh descended right after the crucifixion descended into hell and liberated the
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souls that were captured there and in marchionne's version of the myth it was 30 generations of souls 29
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generations of souls but both just justin and
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marcion have the same extra you know canonical understanding of this
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cassette um uh justin uses the psalms to get there and i would argue that that
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martial uses the book of exodus to get to exodus chapter 15. um
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and my my belief would be that you know hashtag
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it's it's a great story to have a human being that we can all relate to who was born from
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a human mother and you know it makes it's something that seems reasonable
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but when you look at the christian religion what they're claiming is can be
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accomplished by uh their savior is supernatural to the highest degree that people can be have
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their flesh changed the people can be translated to heaven that the promise of god to abraham to make us children on
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stars meaning in philo's interpretation that we literally live as stars in heaven
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those beliefs require a god they don't require a man so
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while it's outlandish to modern sensibility that uh there wasn't someone
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named jesus i find it equally uh incredible to believe that ancient people thought a
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human magician could accomplish the things that are credited to jesus so
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you you pick your uh you pick your poison do you really believe that a human being
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was turned into a god capable of the most amazing things possible or was an amazing god brought
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down the level of human being to make him seem uh less contradictory to
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monarchism and i believe the latter but you know case obviously has been made
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for the other but um the reason i call it the jewish myth of
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jesus is that i find what i'm proposing to be
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more compatible with judaism and samaritanism i believe it's easier to believe
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that the jewish and samaritan tradition of a man hidden in the pentateuch narrative
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i believe that's the german seed of the gospel rather than an actual historical figure
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who somehow fulfilled old testament prophecies about a christ
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but again that's my opinion you pointed out that you think that
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martian is basically the earliest of the christians
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so that in mind do you think that the first new testament writings were written in like
20:12
the 130s 140s 80 no i i to me
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again it's you know the reason why i started this conversation by saying i don't know all the answers is because i
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think anyone who claims they could know all the answers slime there's just not enough evidence there's very very little
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evidence like there's a forum that and we've all been on these forums i guess and there's a guy who has this theory
20:36
about constantine inventing christianity in the fourth century and while it's a ludicrous theory and
20:42
while you know it's easy to see why he's wrong the actual pieces of evidence that can
20:48
destroy that theory aren't that numerous you know there are very few actual
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obvious got you you know uh a piece of it like like a scrap of the diatestron from uh
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uh europa uh jury europa so
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um i believe that it makes more sense that the gospel was
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written after the first jewish war however
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i'm not sure of it and i could be wrong but to me why why comp you know there's just the
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prophecy of daniel seems in rabbinic sources or early rabbinic sources in christian christian
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sources josephus there seems to be a tradition that it is applied to
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the first jewish war uh i don't see as clear evidence that it
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applies to the second jewish book i understand the uncertainty and that is
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also why i framed my questions by um articulated by saying what do you
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think not not not necessarily what do you know i understand i understand your your
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position on that so this has all famous next question
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um when you say that marcion is the first christian
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are you basically where do you where do you when do you think the book of acts was written
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because acts does mention christians and many scholars will second century mid sex mid-second sin okay
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um do you think in that case that luke acts made use of the lord's
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gospel because there are different theories about that some think that the lord's gospel or the gospel of
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martian is an edit of the gospel of luke sometimes every
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way around or some say they both use common sources what is your position on that i think whenever we discuss
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these sort of things we have to go back to the ground of where they came from which is irenaeus i
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mean erenas uh i'll start with this that i read a
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really interesting paper recently which um was arguing that in irenaeus the
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gospel is more of a commentary on the scriptures than it is scripture
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and that uh irenaeus lowers the value of the gospel for
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marchionne the gospel is the divine word and i i don't mean to bore
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your your listenership or your viewership i think you're boring anyone well you never know i mean no one in my life is
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abused and stuff but um the you know even in judaism and
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samaritanism what is holy writ is a fiercely debated subject for instance
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the samaritans preserve my favorite jewish uh uh writer
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historian uh you know uh theologian is uh abraham heschel and
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he wrote a book called uh the divine tour the heavenly torah and um
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he noted that originally only the ten commandments were holy were the holy they they came
24:13
from heaven the the pentateuch itself wasn't
24:20
on the same level of holiness then over time especially in jewish sources
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you know you you raise the pentateuch and then by the time of of of of the talmud
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you actually think that the gemara where where gemara and and and and torah disagree
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go with gemara so what is holy can change over time and i
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think that the christians were of the opinion
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that the ten commandments were the only heavenly torah and they lived
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in a time where in the jewish community there were other torahs there were other
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acclaims for what was holy and that the gospel originally was
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and again this is speculative you know i mean could be wrong but i believe that
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the main character in the gospel is the person who gave moses the ten commandments
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so the irony of course is and this is from the book of john but it's still applicable that the jews didn't
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recognize him leads to their condemnation only makes
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sense if he's the god that the jews knew or the israelites knew in former generations
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so again i go back to this important notion of the foundational concept that
25:47
somehow and you get this also from uh clement of alexandria where he cites some apocryphal literature associated
25:54
with peter that that somehow who their god was was lost on
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the jews and it sounds anti-semitic but at the same time
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the samaritans you know there's there are these notions of solomon creating the the temple with
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demons and keeping them bottles and then in the gospel or at least in in uh
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in in the ditestron that or the testosterone that uh jesus or you know
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the savior goes to the very place where the bottles are kept at the beginning the pool of soil
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i think there was this tradition that somehow judaism had lost its way
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and it represented a corrupt form of the religion and had to be destroyed
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and that you know that that jesus or the the man jesus whatever you're going to
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call him when he appears there uh in jerusalem the notion is he's going to destroy
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this religion and you know people say oh that's just anti-semitism archaeon that's horrible
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but the samaritans you know the samaritans while they don't have this virulent
27:11
anti-jewish position they would have said no we we have the right place you know you
27:18
over there that's like you know that's a false altar the real altar and the
27:25
the word jerusalem does not appear in the pentateuch you know i i know you know i i'm i'm my
27:31
mother's jewish i have a jewish background but the reality is that i don't know what
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jewish people say to that i mean there is no reference to jerusalem in the first five books of the old testament
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it's just it's not there so you know the location where all the
27:48
acts are happening is in northern israel around shechem and
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um the the the place where justin mother interestingly enough is from and
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i think that you reason i support i i think markion is
28:03
closer to the truth is i think there's a way that you can imagine
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in that time being anti-jewish but not being anti-semitic that i think that there was
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an inter faith rivalry there was a feeling that the jews had
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departed from the acknowledgement of two powers of the
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acknowledgment of the ten commandments as being the only heavenly torah like i i i might
28:34
probably boring everybody but um people don't know this but the book of
28:39
exodus in its uh earliest form um
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was different than the book of exodus that is we now have you know the masoretic text that um
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the uh there were you know uh the samaritans the text of
28:57
exodus at qumran and also i believe uh the earliest jewish commentaries on exodus
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all emphasized the fact that the israelites saw one god on sinai
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and heard another god in heaven now subsequently
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the line these lines that parallel what is now written in deuteronomy were taken
29:24
out of exodus in our editions but again that there's this accusation that the
29:31
samaritans have against the jews for altering the true religion and i think
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some of this was passed over to the markianites
29:44
do you think that the christians were originally called the isham i ask this
29:50
because in the article you point out that epiphaneus mentions the issue and that some scholars think that the
29:55
essence derives linguistically from them but you also think that that term is connected to the
30:02
early christians well i'll be honest again i i mean i'm
30:07
just gonna bio biographies because um you know i i'm you know i was never
30:14
i never knew anything about christianity really i i grew up and uh i was you know as i said i had a holocaust survivor
30:20
mother my father was german who and anyway we used to go to uh
30:26
a german club that was run by the catholic church called coping and that's where i was introduced to christianity and my first thought was
30:32
isn't it odd that i mean i was very young so it was a strange thought for a young young boy to have that christianity is the name of
30:39
the religion but it's not called jesus entity like it's not a religion named after the founder i
30:47
mean christ is a title it's a generic title so it always struck me from a young age
30:54
how unusual it was that a religion which was supposedly developed around a historical person
31:01
named jesus isn't named after jesus and i mean we call it manichaeanism you
31:07
know we we the london is about mark united ism uh but it's not
31:12
jesusanity so um my guess would be it is possible that
31:20
when we make mention of the essenes it is
31:25
at least possible i don't know if it's probable but it's possible that it was a
31:30
reference to people that venerated um the god man i mean there are alternative
31:35
suggestions there are healers there could be fire worship i mean there's a whole host of explanations and i don't
31:42
claim to be authoritative or to have evaluated things but sometimes when
31:47
you're compiling a theory you you know you selfishly look at arguments that
31:52
might buttress your point of view and if it was true that uh the essenes were named after
31:59
uh the god man then it would help my case
32:06
would you connect that with ferdinand because in 30 knock
32:12
it says that jesus not jesus not jesus it says that enoch
32:18
who became metatron is lesser yahweh
32:23
could this be a part of the two power system and this dualism and judaism that you've
32:29
been talking about i mean obviously people have made that argument before and um
32:35
it is true that there is a wealth of literature uh originally jewish
32:40
that uh and i i even think that one of the names of of uh
32:47
of the god or the enoch is uh i think he's called um
32:53
the youth and um you know the prince so there are there is overlap and um
33:02
you know let's face it i mean there are endless reports and and beliefs
33:08
uh well i mean one interesting thing it pops in my head because you just threw it out at me was you know that there in
33:14
hebrew there there are two uh instances or ways to describe
33:20
uh you know the the disappearance uh one of i mean i guess not in hebrews or the others but um in one case um
33:28
enoch is said to uh disappear uh and then the description of the
33:34
messiah in in uh um in daniel
33:40
chapter nine is that he uh you know he was uh he could be he was killed uh it says he was
33:47
killed and and and uh disappeared in and i always thought
33:53
that you know it reminded me at least of the empty tomb because um
33:59
you know somehow the the followers of jesus go
34:05
and the empty tomb in itself is the conclusion of the gospel of mark i mean originally so
34:11
that you leave on this note that the tomb is empty i mean i'm just free thinking here but it always reminded me
34:19
of uh the prophecy of daniel but interestingly no orthodox source
34:26
ever connects uh daniel 9 26 with the empty tomb but
34:32
again if mark ended on that note it must have been powerful enough that it
34:38
meant something to the community and i i mean you just bring up uh uh the the case of uh enoch and for some
34:45
reason i just you know i i i was thinking in hebrew that that uh he reminded me of the empty gospel uh the
34:51
md2 you also associate uh just to go about
34:56
the file of alexandria for a moment uh you associate the nativity story with philo in terms of uh looking at looking
35:03
for the looking for the nativity story's origin um
35:09
what is it in philo that you saw that reminded you of the nativity story oh my god see this is this is my worst quality
35:15
my worst quality i'm in this interview i'm trying so hard to stay focused because whenever i start writing you
35:20
know that that paper i wrote originally it was like four pages long it was short it was concise and then i decided i
35:28
better i better and there were many versions of this paper so um and one of them was
35:34
that the word ish in hebrew means husband as well as man and
35:40
there are serious scholars like you know real uh knowledgeable people
35:45
who know that uh in philo especially there's a preservation of the notion of god
35:53
as player you know like he's not just like we always because we're chris you know
35:58
christian background we always imagine you know the the the virgin birth in this sort of
36:06
sterile you know divine fiat but the truth is that
36:13
a lot of serious scholars have devoted uh time and energy to the idea that god
36:19
was literally impregnating all the women in the bible or at least in the pentateuch like like for instance
36:26
um you look at the story of abraham i mean he couldn't make a baby whatever reason i mean whose fault it is
36:33
you know even in in today's world when a couple can't have a baby you know there's a feeling of who can't make the
36:39
well whatever god says she's gonna have a baby and she has a baby and then i think with
36:44
cain uh there's the notion that um uh god god impregnated eve
36:51
um there's this consistent notion of miraculous births in the um
36:59
in the pentateuch which is attributed to the fact that ish
37:04
means husband and not in our sterile english sense of husband but you know uh
37:10
sperm implanter that they his he's like so masculine
37:16
that he causes women to have babies you know it's like a like again i'm sorry i'm in the real world
37:22
this is i can say this but it's like a rapper you know who's bragging about how he makes babies everywhere that that
37:28
that this is that i'm so masculine that where i have children everywhere and
37:33
this was the notion some would argue that the ish in in in the uh
37:40
in the petite was responsible for me for the the children against another
37:47
example i mean free thinking but when the brothers of of of joseph
37:54
uh meet him right in the hebrew text they don't know
37:59
he's their brother which is odd because why don't they see
38:04
i mean if i met my brother 20 years later i know it was my brother but there was this notion that
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they only saw the ish covering his person and disguising them
38:16
and then afterwards he allowed them you know to reveal who he was and in that
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narrative uh there is a line that says that we are
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sons uh we're all sons of each and augustine
38:34
reads a similar line from i believe the psalms
38:40
as meaning sons of christ so my point is that
38:46
there is this greek culture of christianity
38:51
that had very little knowledge of hebrew that was trying their best to understand
38:57
the jewish or the samaritan origins of christianity but couldn't do so i believe because
39:04
of their lack of ability in hebrew and i think that there is reason to
39:10
believe that there was a jewish samaritan underpinning to
39:16
christianity maybe in the period that dark period between uh the destruction of jerusalem and
39:22
let's say middle of the second century and i think there were a lot of ideas being transmitted in aramaic or in
39:28
hebrew in greek and one of those ideas gave birth to or
39:35
gave rise to the virgin birth because in the virgin birth the notion is that
39:41
somehow jesus or man was born from the womb of
39:47
of of married and there you know
39:52
justin says that there's the accusation that you're stealing from the pagan myths and he doesn't like that you know i
39:59
think i think he uses the example of perseus um but
40:04
i found it uncanny when you read philo how he's at home with the idea of god
40:11
giving birth to our or god having the the women in the bible give birth to
40:18
these sons who he says in his promise to abraham are going to
40:24
be translated as stars in heaven so it is not unthinkable and in my first draft of the paper
40:30
i included this argument that you know um that the christians believe they're
40:36
going into the sky you know they believe that when they die they go up to heaven which is always
40:42
the highland as they say in german and i don't think it is
40:48
unthinkable that there were it was a precedent and i know that philo explicitly says this and
40:55
clement who read philo and oregon who wrote follow that they believe that
41:00
the promise made to abraham you know and paul the promise of of you know the
41:06
promise that that was made to abraham the promise made to abraham is that we're going to be stars in heaven so
41:12
you know um as jews we believe that you know there's some special thing that
41:19
we have in our genes that you know separates us from all of humanity again i think that was because there was
41:26
this belief that god himself is our ancestor that that
41:32
you know uh abraham and and isaac and jacob and the sons of of jacob
41:40
were 12 the constellations that you know that there is this notion of a heavenly
41:47
israel a heavenly community you know is it true but it was a tradition
41:58
if we go back to marcion for a moment and then after that i'll ask my final question
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um when he said that marcion is closer to the truth the core
42:09
tenet or uh yeah the core tenant of mars united theology is okay jesus is a son
42:14
is the son of a greater god and yahweh is the evil one he's the devil
42:20
no i i don't think so i i i think that you actually you know i i saw i'm canadian i always go with the
42:26
averages if you average out the testimonies of uh the early sources of mark yawn more
42:33
of them say that he believed in the same kind of two powers as philo a just god
42:39
and a merciful god and irenaeus even says at one point markia um you know martial has a a a uh
42:46
more tolerable view uh you know explicitly says the just god the just power and the
42:54
merciful power of course irenaeus says or erenes says that's wrong there's only one god and he's confusing everything
43:01
but marcion and justin had very similar understanding
43:07
certain interrupt go ahead
43:12
so when you say that marcion is closer to the truth it's because of the two power concept
43:18
that he uh that he discusses well i mean that would be a selfish reason i the reason i think he's close
43:24
to the truth it's because you know papias says when you look at what papia says he says
43:31
um again this is a complex argument and i don't bore everybody but um he says
43:36
okay there's a gospel of mark and mark got the order wrong and then
43:42
matthew came later tied it to the dominical uh uh oracles
43:47
the the old testament prophecies and that's better he improved the gospel
43:53
but i notice that um in in against machine churchillians
44:00
against marketing on book three very similar things are said about mark
44:05
young's gospel and and also in book four because one of the accusations against
44:11
marchionne is you ruined that things happen uh uh ad hoc in his gospel that john the
44:17
baptist just appears out of nowhere there isn't the baptism scene and
44:22
there is the constant accusation against markian that his gospel lacks taxes that
44:28
that it's not ordered the right way and that one of the accusations against marchionne's lack of order
44:35
is he doesn't connect all the stories back to the dominical oracles that's why i mean
44:43
again i don't know your listeners or readers uh or ears but book four is a
44:48
systematic drilling of arguing every single passage in the mark
44:54
in marchionne's gospel or what's claimed to be mark on this gospel or it can be traced back to
45:01
old testament prophecies and in every instance it's like here's the scripture here's the scripture so
45:08
in a lot of ways you can see that the the criticism that
45:13
ps makes about mark it turns out to be
45:19
the same criticisms of marchionne and against mark yard so my assumption rightly wrongly is that
45:25
the gospel of mark in some form whether it's protomark or a variant
45:32
of mark is the mark united gospel i mean that's my supposition other people have argued
45:38
that and the reason is well there's many reasons but my reason is
45:45
the similarity that pbs's approach against mark becomes
45:51
italian's approach against mark young i'm sorry to interrupt you again but go ahead
45:58
i don't think you uh interrupt me but um anyhow uh my final question uh for today is um
46:07
how do you what do you think caused christianity to originate what
46:14
what happened what were the circumstances that you think might have been the case that originated christianity okay um i i'm gonna use
46:22
this opportunity to get christian people not to hate me so i'm gonna say this i think christianity is
46:29
a sublime religion i have no dislike for the religion i think its
46:35
aims and objectives were among the most noble i think my own personal belief is that
46:42
it's some sort of platonist philosophical jewish milieu you know educated people
46:50
that this notion of creating the ideal society
46:56
you know of creating the perfect heavenly angelic world on earth
47:02
was dreamed up and i think that they created a myth that supported
47:09
making people better making civilization work in a way like the angels and i i
47:16
you know it's it's it's my belief um i think that the monastery the monastic
47:21
communities are earlier than people recognize i think that you know if you look at what
47:26
eusebius says all right part of it might be exaggeration and nonsense i mean but he
47:32
says that philos essenes are the early christians now
47:39
is that a fact probably not but it's not
47:44
beyond the realm of possibilities in some broader sense insofar as
47:50
i believe that um judaism
47:55
samaritanism christianity were all trying in their own way to make
48:01
the perfect society for people like they were trying to um
48:07
or at least they thought when they read plato that there was a compatibility between
48:12
plato his idealism his republic and the aims and objectives of both judaism
48:18
samaritanism and christianity that there was you know whether
48:23
what's the line did plato violinize or did philo platonize that you know there
48:29
is this nexus of you're in a in a pagan or or a heathen culture
48:35
where you know uh uh uh not just sex but cruelty
48:41
uh social inequity social injustice were rampant
48:46
and at the time many people thought that
48:51
order was needed some sort of divine in interference to create a better world
48:58
and you know for whatever reason christianity emerged as the answer that triumphed and yes there is
49:05
uh you know uh many reasons to say oh look how corrupt
49:11
it was and how bad it was in the fourth century and in the fifth century and you know and look how they treated the
49:18
heretics and but if you ask yourself i mean it was nietzsche actually
49:23
who i i mean i don't know where he says it but you know i read it when i was younger but his notion really was that
49:30
christianity and judaism did improve humanity even nietzsche said
49:35
that that that you know that um something was lacking in
49:41
paganism uh a sense of um you know love that compassion for human
49:47
beings and my own belief is that yes the gospel is probably a myth
49:56
but it's a beautiful myth and it's a myth that i think is very seductive and very
50:04
it's hard to hate christmas it's hard to hate people being kind to one another
50:10
and it's the hope that humanity can be improved now whether or not it's true
50:16
whether or not humanity was improved can be improved whether it's good to be evil
50:21
these aren't my questions i'm just saying you asked me how what is christianity how did it arise i think it
50:29
arose from the platonic jewish
50:34
hope for social improvement
50:40
well thank you for joining me today and i thank everybody in the live chat for their participation and their interaction and continued support of my
50:47
channel thanks again for joining me thank you yeah of course
50:55
hello viewers thanks for watching this video from the history valley youtube channel please don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell and if any
51:02
of you wish to proper support this channel please consider checking out this channel's patreon page and becoming a patron and or donate through paypal or
51:09
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mlinssen
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hello everybody welcome to easter valley podcast today i'm joined by stephan huller and today we're going to be talking about his article this chapter in the book varieties of jesus methodism did he even exist it was edited it was edited by john w loftus and robert and price they included several chapters in there from from multiple different offers and seven huller is one of the offers i contributed to the book and the specific chapter he wrote in there is an article titled the jewish myth of jesus that's what we're talking about today hi so welcome to history valley thanks for having me of course so i watched myself with this question um you pointed out the gospel mark is not a biography of jesus but more like a mythology more like a a text built on jewish myth uh and you also point out something to do with alex of alexandria egypt discuss that uh what do you mean by that well i mean yeah if you look at um irenaeus who is the person who uh all of our information about the true gospels comes from um there is implicitly the idea that there were four principle evangelical witnesses to jesus and uh they each had a succession or at least a a uh you know an order that came from at least john and the others are implicit and the only locale that seems to be uh to claim to have a uh inheritance from mark is the alexandrian sea they claim that they mark came from rome and settled in alexandria and brought with him the gospel that is what the cops of egypt believe today when you say that one has to commit to a mental jump to find jesus's name in the manuscripts and you point out in the article that's uh i s ihs and ih that's what we see and what we see in the manuscript is pretty much is the greek and one that's i was just pointing out a moment ago that you were saying that one has to commit to a mental jump to find the the full name of jesus in the text so jesus doesn't really appear as jesus per se in the manuscripts what would you say is the implications of that and what do you what do you think that's going well it's a very big topic and it's uh an idea that i've been working on for about 10 years and it it basically comes down to the fact that um irenaeus again my my favorite uh ancient writer um actually goes so far as to say that jesus is not the name of the savior you know the the he is writing in greek so he says that there are those presumably valentinians or perhaps marcosians who take great interest in the name jesus and say that it it adds up to the letters add up to 888 and he doesn't just uh deny the importance of gematria he says explicitly that jesus is not the name of the savior and that is a hebrew name and he you know goes on to you know attack other forms of gematria what's interesting is that irenaeus seems to be dependent upon justin martyr and justin martyr in one place says that the name of the savior in hebrew means man and that gave me the idea about 10 years ago that when you look at iota sigma in the nominative form of the uh what is presumed to be an abbreviation of the name jesus that it could be re read by an ancient greek as a preservation of the hebrew word for man which is ish and i had this idea and the more i looked the more i saw that um oregon of alexandria uh literally um preserves or says that i guess it's one point in his letter uh he says to that um the hebrew word from man is spelled with the same two letters iota sigma so i have you know since the article that you saw in in that variety of mythicism book i have compiled a list of the references that say that the or at least imply that name of the savior is man and it would include justin irenaeus and oregon at the very least and then we have to go back to philo of alexandria who says that the second god of israel is named man and also his uh sort of um you know nonsensical etymology of the word israel as meaning a man seeing god where the first two letters of israel and greek are again iota sigma so my presumption was or at least the beginning of my investigation was what if jesus or joshua was a later idea and that originally philo's second god who he calls man in greek uh was jesus the or the the savior that christians call jesus today and i have developed an argument to that effect and you know people can judge it as they want but i think that when you have people like philo and justin and irenaeus and oregon you're at the beginning of christianity or at least christianity as we know it and i think it's a persuasive case and people can judge for themselves so with that being said do you think that that jesus the jesus character was based on a person that could that was crucified by pilate or do you take the memphis position that uh he did not exist you know i'm canadian so i'm sort of wishy-washy i i don't know the truth is i don't know all i can tell you is that if you were to compile all the early christian writers and you were to say what is the common thread between markian justin irenaeus clement oregon all the early christian writers it wouldn't be jesus the name jesus a wouldn't be son of mary it wouldn't be born of a virgin the common denominator between all of these ancient writers is that the guy who appeared in galilee and judea was the same man who dined with abraham who met isaac in a field or at least stood with isaac in a field wrestled with jacob was in a field again with joseph was there when joseph was secretly the president when his brothers didn't know he was there was in the burning bush with moses who was on the mount sinai who was with uh joshua when he was about to conquer jericho and then you have to ask yourself if we're to say what is more true what is more universal the answer would be that the god man who is known to philo and in hebrew ish the samaritans identify him in the same passages as as philo that this character is more universally acknowledged to be the savior of christianity than a son of mary or a son of a virgin among all our ancient sources so i think that's a persuasive argument you also pointed out in the book that um that you when you look at margaret parker and what and her work and and on this like okay jesus son of god god has never called the lord in the new testament jesus is a lord throughout the new testament and so yeshua uh or yahweh son of el is the equivalent to baal said elion so in this situation are you equating marduk sanopia and ball son of el yon to yahweh son of l in that case and another question i'll add on to that is does this indicate to you that jesus is really a euhemorization of yahweh is that what this is what's going on you know to be honest with you there's just so much evidence and and and every for instance um you know a while ago there was you know this revelation or this important discovery that you know in the rabbinic writings there were reports of heretics that said there were two powers in heaven and um in the jewish sources there is this notion even later than philo that um that you know there was an old man and there was a young man and um there were two powers and there was a merciful power and there was a just power um i do i feel i feel like i would like to avoid speculation and just deal with the facts the facts are that philo was a jew and he said there were two powers that in the rabbinic reports where there are two powers or they're said to be a heresy that advocates two powers that they sound a lot the heretics sound a lot like justin or mark yar both marcion and justin think that the man of the pentateuch who as i mentioned earlier did all the things with the patriarchs was the the main character in the gospel so already there you have this notion that what you want to call judaism or samaritanism or whatever you want to call it that there was the ground for a second power that was a man or anthropomorphic that was expected to interact with humans at the end of time and so um all i can say from my point of view is that at the end of the second century again for reasons that involve speculation um there was this counter force that said that um that wanted to flatline all the uh israelite religions so for instance you have in samaritan's sources around the time of communists that uh alexander aphrodisias apparently went to the samaritan people and had a debate about whether there was one god or not and at the end of the debate he didn't like the outcome and he murdered all the samaritans and it's a long story and it it's preserved in a 14th century samaritan source then at the same time you have uh in jewish sources um you know the their patriarch judah who's friends with the emperor taking greek baths and reshaping the jewish religion and introducing the concept of the the lord of the world or you know the cosmocrats are into uh jewish religion and then at the same time or or the similar time you have irenaeus who is just dogmatic about there being one god in christianity and that even where you see in the old testament that there is this god man that really there's he's just the father uh father's with him and there's only one god so alan brent who is my absolute favorite new testament scholar um makes you know a very compelling case that in the early 3rd century as a prelude to the collapse of the roman empire you know the emperors were just obsessive about reinforcing their authority and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think that christianity succumbed to this influence and one of the results was that we don't speak as we don't speculate about uh jesus being this old testament second power of god and i think that the early church fathers knew that to be true the evidence from their writings suggested it was true and i think that the eventual emphasis of jesus as a son of mary as a born from a virgin uh came to emphasize his historical human birth i don't want to bore you too much but if you actually look at aaron asks the way he develops in book three of against heresies you can see that even there it's not clear that the the man born of a virgin was named jesus the name jesus does not appear as often as you think in the writings of irenaeus and i would even argue that if you read book three you could imagine that he believed that the baby that came from mary was named man so i mean it's all a subject of debate i'm the first person to write about this and hopefully i will stimulate new uh interest in this but i think that there were early christians like markion like justin who would go into their churches and venerate a second power of god or a second power that was named man and later that being was named jesus but not originally does the name being man does that remind you at all of the son of man well you know that's it's aramaic um but um you know daniel daniel's vision is often used in the two powers literature as denoting the you the younger power and um obviously one could see that you know there was a scenario where the old man was a man and the son of man and really in all the writings whether you look at nagamati and you look at the writings of the you know the heresyologists there are as many formulas for uh how one was called mad and one was called son of man and who was man uh but my belief because i always think mark young was the earliest i think mark young was the earliest uh uh christian i i think that that marchionne preserves the earliest form of christianity and interestingly enough from uh the armenian sources on marchionne there are a lot of parallels with guess who with with justin martyr uh both of them imagine that a man of war which you know in hebrew again is an ish uh descended right after the crucifixion descended into hell and liberated the souls that were captured there and in marchionne's version of the myth it was 30 generations of souls 29 generations of souls but both just justin and marcion have the same extra you know canonical understanding of this cassette um uh justin uses the psalms to get there and i would argue that that martial uses the book of exodus to get to exodus chapter 15. um and my my belief would be that you know hashtag it's it's a great story to have a human being that we can all relate to who was born from a human mother and you know it makes it's something that seems reasonable but when you look at the christian religion what they're claiming is can be accomplished by uh their savior is supernatural to the highest degree that people can be have their flesh changed the people can be translated to heaven that the promise of god to abraham to make us children on stars meaning in philo's interpretation that we literally live as stars in heaven those beliefs require a god they don't require a man so while it's outlandish to modern sensibility that uh there wasn't someone named jesus i find it equally uh incredible to believe that ancient people thought a human magician could accomplish the things that are credited to jesus so you you pick your uh you pick your poison do you really believe that a human being was turned into a god capable of the most amazing things possible or was an amazing god brought down the level of human being to make him seem uh less contradictory to monarchism and i believe the latter but you know case obviously has been made for the other but um the reason i call it the jewish myth of jesus is that i find what i'm proposing to be more compatible with judaism and samaritanism i believe it's easier to believe that the jewish and samaritan tradition of a man hidden in the pentateuch narrative i believe that's the german seed of the gospel rather than an actual historical figure who somehow fulfilled old testament prophecies about a christ but again that's my opinion you pointed out that you think that martian is basically the earliest of the christians so that in mind do you think that the first new testament writings were written in like the 130s 140s 80 no i i to me again it's you know the reason why i started this conversation by saying i don't know all the answers is because i think anyone who claims they could know all the answers slime there's just not enough evidence there's very very little evidence like there's a forum that and we've all been on these forums i guess and there's a guy who has this theory about constantine inventing christianity in the fourth century and while it's a ludicrous theory and while you know it's easy to see why he's wrong the actual pieces of evidence that can destroy that theory aren't that numerous you know there are very few actual obvious got you you know uh a piece of it like like a scrap of the diatestron from uh uh europa uh jury europa so um i believe that it makes more sense that the gospel was written after the first jewish war however i'm not sure of it and i could be wrong but to me why why comp you know there's just the prophecy of daniel seems in rabbinic sources or early rabbinic sources in christian christian sources josephus there seems to be a tradition that it is applied to the first jewish war uh i don't see as clear evidence that it applies to the second jewish book i understand the uncertainty and that is also why i framed my questions by um articulated by saying what do you think not not not necessarily what do you know i understand i understand your your position on that so this has all famous next question um when you say that marcion is the first christian are you basically where do you where do you when do you think the book of acts was written because acts does mention christians and many scholars will second century mid sex mid-second sin okay um do you think in that case that luke acts made use of the lord's gospel because there are different theories about that some think that the lord's gospel or the gospel of martian is an edit of the gospel of luke sometimes every way around or some say they both use common sources what is your position on that i think whenever we discuss these sort of things we have to go back to the ground of where they came from which is irenaeus i mean erenas uh i'll start with this that i read a really interesting paper recently which um was arguing that in irenaeus the gospel is more of a commentary on the scriptures than it is scripture and that uh irenaeus lowers the value of the gospel for marchionne the gospel is the divine word and i i don't mean to bore your your listenership or your viewership i think you're boring anyone well you never know i mean no one in my life is abused and stuff but um the you know even in judaism and samaritanism what is holy writ is a fiercely debated subject for instance the samaritans preserve my favorite jewish uh uh writer historian uh you know uh theologian is uh abraham heschel and he wrote a book called uh the divine tour the heavenly torah and um he noted that originally only the ten commandments were holy were the holy they they came from heaven the the pentateuch itself wasn't on the same level of holiness then over time especially in jewish sources you know you you raise the pentateuch and then by the time of of of of the talmud you actually think that the gemara where where gemara and and and and torah disagree go with gemara so what is holy can change over time and i think that the christians were of the opinion that the ten commandments were the only heavenly torah and they lived in a time where in the jewish community there were other torahs there were other acclaims for what was holy and that the gospel originally was and again this is speculative you know i mean could be wrong but i believe that the main character in the gospel is the person who gave moses the ten commandments so the irony of course is and this is from the book of john but it's still applicable that the jews didn't recognize him leads to their condemnation only makes sense if he's the god that the jews knew or the israelites knew in former generations so again i go back to this important notion of the foundational concept that somehow and you get this also from uh clement of alexandria where he cites some apocryphal literature associated with peter that that somehow who their god was was lost on the jews and it sounds anti-semitic but at the same time the samaritans you know there's there are these notions of solomon creating the the temple with demons and keeping them bottles and then in the gospel or at least in in uh in in the ditestron that or the testosterone that uh jesus or you know the savior goes to the very place where the bottles are kept at the beginning the pool of soil i think there was this tradition that somehow judaism had lost its way and it represented a corrupt form of the religion and had to be destroyed and that you know that that jesus or the the man jesus whatever you're going to call him when he appears there uh in jerusalem the notion is he's going to destroy this religion and you know people say oh that's just anti-semitism archaeon that's horrible but the samaritans you know the samaritans while they don't have this virulent anti-jewish position they would have said no we we have the right place you know you over there that's like you know that's a false altar the real altar and the the word jerusalem does not appear in the pentateuch you know i i know you know i i'm i'm my mother's jewish i have a jewish background but the reality is that i don't know what jewish people say to that i mean there is no reference to jerusalem in the first five books of the old testament it's just it's not there so you know the location where all the acts are happening is in northern israel around shechem and um the the the place where justin mother interestingly enough is from and i think that you reason i support i i think markion is closer to the truth is i think there's a way that you can imagine in that time being anti-jewish but not being anti-semitic that i think that there was an inter faith rivalry there was a feeling that the jews had departed from the acknowledgement of two powers of the acknowledgment of the ten commandments as being the only heavenly torah like i i i might probably boring everybody but um people don't know this but the book of exodus in its uh earliest form um was different than the book of exodus that is we now have you know the masoretic text that um the uh there were you know uh the samaritans the text of exodus at qumran and also i believe uh the earliest jewish commentaries on exodus all emphasized the fact that the israelites saw one god on sinai and heard another god in heaven now subsequently the line these lines that parallel what is now written in deuteronomy were taken out of exodus in our editions but again that there's this accusation that the samaritans have against the jews for altering the true religion and i think some of this was passed over to the markianites do you think that the christians were originally called the isham i ask this because in the article you point out that epiphaneus mentions the issue and that some scholars think that the essence derives linguistically from them but you also think that that term is connected to the early christians well i'll be honest again i i mean i'm just gonna bio biographies because um you know i i'm you know i was never i never knew anything about christianity really i i grew up and uh i was you know as i said i had a holocaust survivor mother my father was german who and anyway we used to go to uh a german club that was run by the catholic church called coping and that's where i was introduced to christianity and my first thought was isn't it odd that i mean i was very young so it was a strange thought for a young young boy to have that christianity is the name of the religion but it's not called jesus entity like it's not a religion named after the founder i mean christ is a title it's a generic title so it always struck me from a young age how unusual it was that a religion which was supposedly developed around a historical person named jesus isn't named after jesus and i mean we call it manichaeanism you know we we the london is about mark united ism uh but it's not jesusanity so um my guess would be it is possible that when we make mention of the essenes it is at least possible i don't know if it's probable but it's possible that it was a reference to people that venerated um the god man i mean there are alternative suggestions there are healers there could be fire worship i mean there's a whole host of explanations and i don't claim to be authoritative or to have evaluated things but sometimes when you're compiling a theory you you know you selfishly look at arguments that might buttress your point of view and if it was true that uh the essenes were named after uh the god man then it would help my case would you connect that with ferdinand because in 30 knock it says that jesus not jesus not jesus it says that enoch who became metatron is lesser yahweh could this be a part of the two power system and this dualism and judaism that you've been talking about i mean obviously people have made that argument before and um it is true that there is a wealth of literature uh originally jewish that uh and i i even think that one of the names of of uh of the god or the enoch is uh i think he's called um the youth and um you know the prince so there are there is overlap and um you know let's face it i mean there are endless reports and and beliefs uh well i mean one interesting thing it pops in my head because you just threw it out at me was you know that there in hebrew there there are two uh instances or ways to describe uh you know the the disappearance uh one of i mean i guess not in hebrews or the others but um in one case um enoch is said to uh disappear uh and then the description of the messiah in in uh um in daniel chapter nine is that he uh you know he was uh he could be he was killed uh it says he was killed and and and uh disappeared in and i always thought that you know it reminded me at least of the empty tomb because um you know somehow the the followers of jesus go and the empty tomb in itself is the conclusion of the gospel of mark i mean originally so that you leave on this note that the tomb is empty i mean i'm just free thinking here but it always reminded me of uh the prophecy of daniel but interestingly no orthodox source ever connects uh daniel 9 26 with the empty tomb but again if mark ended on that note it must have been powerful enough that it meant something to the community and i i mean you just bring up uh uh the the case of uh enoch and for some reason i just you know i i i was thinking in hebrew that that uh he reminded me of the empty gospel uh the md2 you also associate uh just to go about the file of alexandria for a moment uh you associate the nativity story with philo in terms of uh looking at looking for the looking for the nativity story's origin um what is it in philo that you saw that reminded you of the nativity story oh my god see this is this is my worst quality my worst quality i'm in this interview i'm trying so hard to stay focused because whenever i start writing you know that that paper i wrote originally it was like four pages long it was short it was concise and then i decided i better i better and there were many versions of this paper so um and one of them was that the word ish in hebrew means husband as well as man and there are serious scholars like you know real uh knowledgeable people who know that uh in philo especially there's a preservation of the notion of god as player you know like he's not just like we always because we're chris you know christian background we always imagine you know the the the virgin birth in this sort of sterile you know divine fiat but the truth is that a lot of serious scholars have devoted uh time and energy to the idea that god was literally impregnating all the women in the bible or at least in the pentateuch like like for instance um you look at the story of abraham i mean he couldn't make a baby whatever reason i mean whose fault it is you know even in in today's world when a couple can't have a baby you know there's a feeling of who can't make the well whatever god says she's gonna have a baby and she has a baby and then i think with cain uh there's the notion that um uh god god impregnated eve um there's this consistent notion of miraculous births in the um in the pentateuch which is attributed to the fact that ish means husband and not in our sterile english sense of husband but you know uh sperm implanter that they his he's like so masculine that he causes women to have babies you know it's like a like again i'm sorry i'm in the real world this is i can say this but it's like a rapper you know who's bragging about how he makes babies everywhere that that that this is that i'm so masculine that where i have children everywhere and this was the notion some would argue that the ish in in in the uh in the petite was responsible for me for the the children against another example i mean free thinking but when the brothers of of of joseph uh meet him right in the hebrew text they don't know he's their brother which is odd because why don't they see i mean if i met my brother 20 years later i know it was my brother but there was this notion that they only saw the ish covering his person and disguising them and then afterwards he allowed them you know to reveal who he was and in that narrative uh there is a line that says that we are sons uh we're all sons of each and augustine reads a similar line from i believe the psalms as meaning sons of christ so my point is that there is this greek culture of christianity that had very little knowledge of hebrew that was trying their best to understand the jewish or the samaritan origins of christianity but couldn't do so i believe because of their lack of ability in hebrew and i think that there is reason to believe that there was a jewish samaritan underpinning to christianity maybe in the period that dark period between uh the destruction of jerusalem and let's say middle of the second century and i think there were a lot of ideas being transmitted in aramaic or in hebrew in greek and one of those ideas gave birth to or gave rise to the virgin birth because in the virgin birth the notion is that somehow jesus or man was born from the womb of of of married and there you know justin says that there's the accusation that you're stealing from the pagan myths and he doesn't like that you know i think i think he uses the example of perseus um but i found it uncanny when you read philo how he's at home with the idea of god giving birth to our or god having the the women in the bible give birth to these sons who he says in his promise to abraham are going to be translated as stars in heaven so it is not unthinkable and in my first draft of the paper i included this argument that you know um that the christians believe they're going into the sky you know they believe that when they die they go up to heaven which is always the highland as they say in german and i don't think it is unthinkable that there were it was a precedent and i know that philo explicitly says this and clement who read philo and oregon who wrote follow that they believe that the promise made to abraham you know and paul the promise of of you know the promise that that was made to abraham the promise made to abraham is that we're going to be stars in heaven so you know um as jews we believe that you know there's some special thing that we have in our genes that you know separates us from all of humanity again i think that was because there was this belief that god himself is our ancestor that that you know uh abraham and and isaac and jacob and the sons of of jacob were 12 the constellations that you know that there is this notion of a heavenly israel a heavenly community you know is it true but it was a tradition if we go back to marcion for a moment and then after that i'll ask my final question um when he said that marcion is closer to the truth the core tenet or uh yeah the core tenant of mars united theology is okay jesus is a son is the son of a greater god and yahweh is the evil one he's the devil no i i don't think so i i i think that you actually you know i i saw i'm canadian i always go with the averages if you average out the testimonies of uh the early sources of mark yawn more of them say that he believed in the same kind of two powers as philo a just god and a merciful god and irenaeus even says at one point markia um you know martial has a a a uh more tolerable view uh you know explicitly says the just god the just power and the merciful power of course irenaeus says or erenes says that's wrong there's only one god and he's confusing everything but marcion and justin had very similar understanding certain interrupt go ahead so when you say that marcion is closer to the truth it's because of the two power concept that he uh that he discusses well i mean that would be a selfish reason i the reason i think he's close to the truth it's because you know papias says when you look at what papia says he says um again this is a complex argument and i don't bore everybody but um he says okay there's a gospel of mark and mark got the order wrong and then matthew came later tied it to the dominical uh uh oracles the the old testament prophecies and that's better he improved the gospel but i notice that um in in against machine churchillians against marketing on book three very similar things are said about mark young's gospel and and also in book four because one of the accusations against marchionne is you ruined that things happen uh uh ad hoc in his gospel that john the baptist just appears out of nowhere there isn't the baptism scene and there is the constant accusation against markian that his gospel lacks taxes that that it's not ordered the right way and that one of the accusations against marchionne's lack of order is he doesn't connect all the stories back to the dominical oracles that's why i mean again i don't know your listeners or readers uh or ears but book four is a systematic drilling of arguing every single passage in the mark in marchionne's gospel or what's claimed to be mark on this gospel or it can be traced back to old testament prophecies and in every instance it's like here's the scripture here's the scripture so in a lot of ways you can see that the the criticism that ps makes about mark it turns out to be the same criticisms of marchionne and against mark yard so my assumption rightly wrongly is that the gospel of mark in some form whether it's protomark or a variant of mark is the mark united gospel i mean that's my supposition other people have argued that and the reason is well there's many reasons but my reason is the similarity that pbs's approach against mark becomes italian's approach against mark young i'm sorry to interrupt you again but go ahead i don't think you uh interrupt me but um anyhow uh my final question uh for today is um how do you what do you think caused christianity to originate what what happened what were the circumstances that you think might have been the case that originated christianity okay um i i'm gonna use this opportunity to get christian people not to hate me so i'm gonna say this i think christianity is a sublime religion i have no dislike for the religion i think its aims and objectives were among the most noble i think my own personal belief is that it's some sort of platonist philosophical jewish milieu you know educated people that this notion of creating the ideal society you know of creating the perfect heavenly angelic world on earth was dreamed up and i think that they created a myth that supported making people better making civilization work in a way like the angels and i i you know it's it's it's my belief um i think that the monastery the monastic communities are earlier than people recognize i think that you know if you look at what eusebius says all right part of it might be exaggeration and nonsense i mean but he says that philos essenes are the early christians now is that a fact probably not but it's not beyond the realm of possibilities in some broader sense insofar as i believe that um judaism samaritanism christianity were all trying in their own way to make the perfect society for people like they were trying to um or at least they thought when they read plato that there was a compatibility between plato his idealism his republic and the aims and objectives of both judaism samaritanism and christianity that there was you know whether what's the line did plato violinize or did philo platonize that you know there is this nexus of you're in a in a pagan or or a heathen culture where you know uh uh uh not just sex but cruelty uh social inequity social injustice were rampant and at the time many people thought that order was needed some sort of divine in interference to create a better world and you know for whatever reason christianity emerged as the answer that triumphed and yes there is uh you know uh many reasons to say oh look how corrupt it was and how bad it was in the fourth century and in the fifth century and you know and look how they treated the heretics and but if you ask yourself i mean it was nietzsche actually who i i mean i don't know where he says it but you know i read it when i was younger but his notion really was that christianity and judaism did improve humanity even nietzsche said that that that you know that um something was lacking in paganism uh a sense of um you know love that compassion for human beings and my own belief is that yes the gospel is probably a myth but it's a beautiful myth and it's a myth that i think is very seductive and very it's hard to hate christmas it's hard to hate people being kind to one another and it's the hope that humanity can be improved now whether or not it's true whether or not humanity was improved can be improved whether it's good to be evil these aren't my questions i'm just saying you asked me how what is christianity how did it arise i think it arose from the platonic jewish hope for social improvement well thank you for joining me today and i thank everybody in the live chat for their participation and their interaction and continued support of my channel thanks again for joining me thank you yeah of course hello viewers thanks for watching this video from the history valley youtube channel please don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell and if any of you wish to proper support this channel please consider checking out this channel's patreon page and becoming a patron and or donate through paypal or through super chat during a live stream thank you

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MrMacSon
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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by MrMacSon »

from ~7.35 in


"... if you were to compile all the early Christian writers and you were to say, ‘what is the common thread between Markion [Marcion], Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, all the early Christian writers?’ It wouldn't be Jesus, the name Jesus. It wouldn't be 'son of Mary'. It wouldn't be 'born of a virgin'.

"The common denominator between all of these ancient writers is that the guy who appeared in Galilee and Judea was the same man who dined with Abraham; who met Isaac in a field, or at least stood with Isaac in a field; wrestled with Jacob; was in a field again with Joseph; was there when Joseph was secretly, ah, present when his brothers didn't know he was there; was in the burning bush with Moses; who was on the Mount Sinai; who, ah, was with, ah, Joshua when he was about to conquer Jericho.

"And then you have to ask yourself, if we're to say, "what is more true?, what is more universal?”

"The answer would be that the god man who is known to Philo; and in Hebrew, Ish; the Samaritans identify him in the same passages as, as Philo: that this character is more universally acknowledged to be, ah, the savior of Christianity than a son of Mary or a son of a virgin, among all our ancient sources ..."



from ~11.26:


"Both Marcion and Justin think that the man of the Pentateuch, who, as I mentioned earlier, did all the things with the patriarchs; was the main character in the gospel."


from 14.41:


"... if you actually look at Irenaeus, the way he develops in Book Three of Against Heresies, you can see that even there it's not clear that the, man born of a virgin was named Jesus.

"The name Jesus does not appear as often as you think in the writings of Irenaeus.

"And I would even argue that, if you read Book Three, you could imagine that he believed that the baby that came from Mary was named ‘Man’."


from 16.44:


I think that Markion preserves the earliest form of Christianity.

And, interestingly enough, from, ah, the Armenian sources on Markion there are a lot of parallels with, guess who? With Justin Martyr. Uh, Both of them imagine that a man of war which, you know, in Hebrew, again, is an Ish, descended right after the crucifixion. Descended into hell and liberated the souls that were captured there. and in Markion's version of the myth it was generations of souls: generations of souls.


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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by MrMacSon »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:03 pm
from ~11.26:


"Both Marcion and Justin think that the man of the Pentateuch, who, as I mentioned earlier, did all the things with the patriarchs; was the main character in the gospel."


Just before this Stephan talked about the two powers in heaven (and after,* too)

from 10.30 (but watch from ~10.00):


"... in the rabbinic writings there were reports of heretics that said there were two powers in heaven.

"And, in the Jewish sources there is this notion, even later than Philo that...there was an old man and there was a young man and there were two powers. And there was a merciful power. And there was a just power ...

"The facts are that Philo...said there were two powers. That, in the rabbinic reports where there are two powers; or there’s said to be a heresy that advocates two powers: ... the heretics sound a lot like Justin or Markion/Marcion.

"Both Marcion and Justin think that the man of the Pentateuch, who, as I mentioned earlier, did all the things with the patriarchs; was, this, the main character in the gospel.

"So, already, there you have this notion that, what you want to call it, Judaism or Samaritanism, or whatever you want to call it, that there was the ground for a second power, that was a man or anthropomorphic, that was expected to interact with humans at the end of time."


* from ~13.57:

" ... we don't speak ... we don't speculate about, ah, Jesus being this Old Testament second power of God.

"And I think that the early church fathers knew that to be true [ie. that 'Jesus' or the forerunner to Jesus was the Old Testament [concept], second power of God]. The evidence from their writings suggested it was true."


then, from 14.41:


"... if you actually look at Irenaeus, the way he develops in Book Three of Against Heresies, you can see that even there it's not clear that the, man born of a virgin was named Jesus.

"The name Jesus does not appear as often as you think in the writings of Irenaeus.

"And I would even argue that, if you read Book Three, you could imagine that he believed that the baby that came from Mary was named ‘Man’."


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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by MrMacSon »

from 15.16


" But I think that there were early Christians, like Markion, like Justin, who would go into their churches and venerate a second power of goh- or a second power that was named ‘Man.’ And later that being was named Jesus. But not originally.

15.40
Does the name being ‘Man,’ does that remind you at all of the Son of Man?


"... Daniel, Daniel's vision is often used in the two powers literature as denoting the you-, the younger power, and, um, obviously one could see that, you know, there was a scenario where the old man was ‘Man’ and the son of Man. And, really, in all the writings, whether you look at Nag Hammadi, if you look at the writings of the, you know, the heresiologists, there are as many formulas for, ah, how one was called ‘Man’ and one was called ‘Son of Man’ and [for] who was ‘Man’ ..."


The Naassenes are said to have honored "above all others the “Human” and the “Son of the Human.” This Human is androgynous. They call him “Adamas.”." (Refutation of All Heresies Book 5)


Use of the terms "Human" and "Child of the Human" [by the Naassene Preacher, who M David Litwa dates toward the end of the second century CE.] may derive from Ophite Christian influence or from Monoϊmus. The same terminology appears in Monoϊmus: Ref. 8.12.1-14)."

M David Litwa Found Christianities


see viewtopic.php?p=135276#p135276

[Monoimus]
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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by mlinssen »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:26 pm "And I think that the early church fathers knew that to be true [ie. that 'Jesus' or the forerunner to Jesus was the Old Testament [concept], second power of God]. The evidence from their writings suggested it was true."
(From the vid of course, not your own statement, Mac)

A real apologist, and a true Judaiser at that. Does he mix in the words historical and historical records as well?
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Re: Stephan Huller's recent interview by Jacob Berman

Post by MrMacSon »

mlinssen wrote: Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:10 am
MrMacSon wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:26 pm
"And I think that the early church fathers knew that to be true [ie. that 'Jesus' or the forerunner to Jesus was the Old Testament [concept], second power of God]. The evidence from their writings suggested it was true."

(From the vid of course, not your own statement, Mac)

A real apologist, and a true Judaiser at that. Does he mix in the words historical and historical records as well?
The full discussion (I transcribed this video, as I often do with interesting propositions and discussions like this, several days ago) :


11.26
"Both Marcion and Justin think that the man of the Pentateuch, who, as I mentioned earlier, did all the things with the patriarchs, was the main character in the gospel.

"So, already, there you have this notion that, what you want to call Judaism or Samaritanism, or whatever you want to call it, that there was the ground for a second power, that was a man or anthropomorphic, that was expected to interact with humans at the end of time.

"And, so, all I can say, from my point of view, is that, at the end of the second century, again, for reasons that involve speculation, there was this counter-force that said that wanted to flatline all the Israelite religions.

12.21
"So, for instance, you have in Samaritan sources, around the time of Commodus [r.176-92AD] that Alexander Aphrodisias apparently went to the Samaritan people and had a debate about whether there was one god or not. And, at the end of the debate, he didn't like the outcome and he murdered all the Samaritans. And it's a long story and it, it's preserved in a 14th century Samaritan source.

"Then, at the same time, you have, in Jewish sources, their patriarch Judah who's friends with the emperor, taking Greek baths, and reshaping the Jewish religion; and introducing the concept of the Lord of the world or, you know, the cosmocrats into Jewish religion.

"And then, at the same time (or the similar time) you have Irenaeus who is just dogmatic about there being one god in Christianity. And that even, where you see in the Old Testament, that there is this god man: that really there's, he's just the Father; Father's with him. And there's only one god.

"So Alan Brent, who is my absolute favorite New Testament scholar, makes, you know, a very compelling case that in the early 3rd century, as a prelude to the collapse of the Roman Empire, you know, the emperors were just obsessive about reinforcing their authority, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think that Christianity succumbed to this influence.

13.57
"And one of the results was that we don't speak as, we don't speculate about Jesus being this Old Testament second power of God.

"And I think that the early church fathers knew that to be true. The evidence from their writings suggested it was true. And I think that the eventual emphasis of Jesus, as a son of Mary, as born from a virgin, came to emphasize his 'historical human birth'.

"I don't want to bore you too much but if you actually look at Irenaeus, the way he develops in Book Three of Against Heresies, you can see that, even there, it's not clear that the man born of a virgin was named Jesus.

"The name Jesus does not appear as often as you think in the writings of Irenaeus.

"And I would even argue that, if you read Book Three, you could imagine that he believed that the baby that came from Mary was named ‘Man’ ...

15.16
"But
I think that there were early Christians, like Markion, like Justin, who would go into their churches and venerate...a second power that was named ‘Man.’ And later that being was named Jesus. But not originally."


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