For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

And yet...Justin writing c 160 AD never mentions "paul" in any of his writings...which are extensive.

I had a look for Justin Martyr's works and found -

Justin's first work seems to have been his treatise Against all Heresies [now lost]

His three works are known as the First Apology, the Second Apology, and the Dialogue with Trypho. Irenaeus tells us that Justin Martyr wrote a work against Marcion, which is now lost. Some authentic materials are preserved in the fragments of Justin quoted by other writers, although some of these fragments may be suspect.

The other documents attributed to Justin Martyr listed above - the Hortatory Address to the Greeks, On the Sole Government of God, and On the Resurrection - are of dubious authenticity. They may have been written instead by another Christian author, now unknown. It has been suggested that the Discourse to the Greeks was originally a Jewish treatise.

So, we can't really be sure that Paul not being mentioned is significant.

http://www.egodeath.com/TheFabricatedPaul.htm

BTW, if this happy horseshit did not start with the jews then the "gentiles" were the ones who already had it - and thus did not need any "paul."

I've just read it.

Christianity in its origin was nothing else than a Jewish-Messianic movement ... the figure of Jesus had never existed, but represented a symbolization and personification of thoughts that could only make full headway in the second century. A gnostic messianic community later appeared alongside the Jewish-Christian messianic community. In the period between 70 and 135 CE the two groups opposed one another with bitter animosity.

If it started as a Jewish-Messianic movement the Gentiles wouldn't have had it until somebody told them about it.

Paul was a reworked Simon the Magician. Simon/Paul had leprosy. Simon/Paul taught gnostic-type anti-cosmos transcendence of and freedom from 'the law' through grace -- such transcendence being 'lawlessness'.

Simon the Magician doesn't appear to have had leprosy other than figuratively speaking because Peter called him and his followers spiritual lepers. See Page 127 of Simon Magus In Patristic Medieval And Early Modern Traditions. Simon is supposed to have started Gnosticism but is there any real evidence for his existence? Anyway, on to the next bit.

John the Baptist's best follower was the historical Simon of Samaria. Cerdo (in Rome) was a follower of Simon, then Marcion was a follower of Simon after Cerdo. Marcion (from Pontus) doesn't write of Simon (from Samaria), but of Paul.

Is there any evidence that John the Baptist really existed? After all, he was sent by God to prepare the way for a kinsman who was a symbolization and personification of thoughts. Let's forget that for a moment and go to where we learn of him having Simon as a follower in the Pseudo-Clementine Literature.

The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies give an account of Simon Magus and some of his teachings in regards to the Simonians. They are of uncertain date and authorship, and seem to have been worked over by several hands in the interest of diverse forms of belief.
Simon was a Samaritan, and a native of Gitta. The name of his father was Antonius, that of his mother Rachel. He studied Greek literature in Alexandria, and, having in addition to this great power in magic, became so ambitious that he wished to be considered a highest power, higher even than the God who created the world. And sometimes he "darkly hinted" that he himself was Christ, calling himself the Standing One. Which name he used to indicate that he would stand for ever, and had no cause in him for bodily decay.

So how good was he at magic?

But on the death of John he was away in Egypt for the practice of magic, and one Dositheus, by spreading a false report of Simon's death, succeeded in installing himself as head of the sect. Simon on coming back thought it better to dissemble, and, pretending friendship for Dositheus, accepted the second place. Soon, however, he began to hint to the thirty that Dositheus was not as well acquainted as he might be with the doctrines of the school.[17]
Dositheus, when he perceived that Simon was depreciating him, fearing lest his reputation among men might be obscured (for he himself was supposed to be the Standing One), moved with rage, when they met as usual at the school, seized a rod, and began to beat Simon; but suddenly the rod seemed to pass through his body, as if it had been smoke.

How reliable is the Clementine Literature?

St Clement is also the hero of an early Christian romance or novel that has survived in at least two different versions, known as the Clementine literature, where he is identified with Emperor Domitian's cousin Titus Favius Clemens. Clementine Literature portrays Clement as the Apostles' means of disseminating their teachings to the Church.[1]

There's an idea concerning what this was all about. Simon Magus As A Cipher

The Pseudo-Clementine writings were used in the 4th century by members of the Ebionite sect, one characteristic of which was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle.[20] Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), founder of the Tübingen School, drew attention to the anti-Pauline characteristic in the Pseudo-Clementines, and pointed out that in the disputations between Simon and Peter, some of the claims Simon is represented as making (e.g. that of having seen the Lord, though not in his lifetime, yet subsequently in vision) were really the claims of Paul; and urged that Peter's refutation of Simon was in some places intended as a polemic against Paul. The enmity between Peter and Simon is clearly shown.

The anti-Pauline context of the Pseudo-Clementines is recognised, but the association with Simon Magus is surprising since they have little in common.[22] However the majority of scholars accept Baur's identification,[23]

I suppose it's possible because Yeshu ha Notzri was invented to mock Jesus later on.

Xtians ignore the ramifications of the Gabriel Revelation Stone like the plague.

If true, this could mean that Jesus' followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose on the third day — and it might even hint that they they could have applied it in their grief after their master was crucified.

This idea means accepting that Jesus really existed.

Israel Knohl, an expert in Talmudic and biblical language at Jerusalem's Hebrew University who was not involved in the first research on the artifact, claims that it refers to a historic 1st-century Jewish rebel named Simon who was killed by the Romans in 4 B.C., and should read "In three days, you shall live. I Gabriel command you." If so, Jesus-era Judaism had begun to explore the idea of a three-day resurrection before Jesus was born.

The idea of a "dying and rising messiah appears in some Jewish texts, but until now, everyone thought that was the impact of Christianity on Judaism," he says. "But for the first time, we have proof that it was the other way around. The concept was there before Jesus."

Maybe the idea being explored could have led to Jesus as a symbolization and personification of thoughts.