MrMacSon wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:54 am
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."