Re: The Gospels

Responses below:

tina carson wrote:

> Second, Yes, The Jesus Mysteries DOES explain the origin of many of
> the Christian mythos, ie the stories of virgin birth, born in a
> stable, died on a cross, etc that apply to at LEAST two other
> religions that predate Christianity and were practiced in the area, ie
> I'm not talking about South American religions that the Jews would
> have had no knowledge of.

I wonder how much of this was gleaned from Frazer...just curious.

> Third, Yes, I am stating that some of the Nag Hammadi scrolls are
> more accurate than the 4 canonical gospels. Specifically, I cite the
> fact that the Council of Nicea and subsequent councils specifically
> denounced and persecuted Gnostics. The Nag Hammadi scrolls were
> gnostic. Jesus was a gnostic. The 4 canonical gospels disguise that
> fact, but many tell-tale signs show through, ie the sign of the fish
> for Christianity, and the story of throwing out the nets, Jesus tells
> them when. These are gnostic derivatives specifically Pythagorean
> stories. I'll go into more detail on them if you like.
> tina

The "Fish" symbol isn't really mentioned in the Gospel accounts and we
don't know that it was ever used by Palestinian Christianity around
Christ's time or immediately afterwards. The Greek word for fish,
"icthus", was seen as an anagram for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior"
and then, of course, there's Christ telling the apostles he'd make them
fishers of men. So while the symbol was meaningful to early Christians,
I don't know how widely the Fish symbol was employed in the first
century outside of Greece and Rome, and I don't think there's any
evidence for it's use by the disciples while Christ was alive. While it
may or may not be emblematic of gnostic influences on early
Christianity, it doesn't tell us anything about Christ.

Even beyond this, literary parallels don't establish dependence of one
source upon another. I'm studying William Blake pretty intensely, and
he's a virtual hodge-podge of literary allusion. Thing is, his poetry
doesn't read like patchwork or seems derivative at all, even when you're
familiar with the possible source material. The fact that he borrowed
symbols doesn't mean he understood them the same way his sources
understood them.

Belief by association is a very weak form of argument and even weaker
scholarship.

Jim

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Received on Tue Aug 5 14:28:26 2003