(April 20, 2014 at 7:59 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Hey, Mark. Thanks for the input.
(I wasn't really suggesting you join here....you could have answered at TTA, there is a lot of cross-pollination between the two... but I'm glad you did.)
Quote:Christians probably didn't exist in the 50s and 60s, as witnessed by Paul's genuine letters. Yet I con tend that they knew nothing of Jesus. In fact I believe that Paul's Christ was not the Jesus that we think we know so well from the Gospels. I strongly suspect that can't prove that where Paul mentions "Jesus Christ" the Jesus has been interpolated into the writing. Paul said almost nothing about what Jesus said or did, which is why I think the above.
Yes, the problem is that all we know of Marcion is what Tertullian and Irenaeus, et al, tell us. Much as the first 3 chapters of luke were later add-ons (much as the last nine verses of mark were added on) we have no idea what these so-called pauline epistles said. We only know what the eventual winners claimed they said.
The whole Chrestus thing is confusing because we have only a few textual references to Chrestus ( and the ones we have seem to be those manuscripts which did not come from monastic sources.) However, we do have archaeological inscriptions - noted above - going way back to Antonia Minor who died in 37 AD and the term Chrestus was used as a Greek name in the Hellenstic world.
So.... we have early inscriptions of Chrestus but not of Christos. And we have early texts which say - or were edited to say - Christos by later scribes. In this I do not ascribe the same level of forgery to those scribes as I do to the obvious frauds of the Pastoral Epistles or the Testimonium Flavianum. I suspect that they genuinely thought they were just correcting the spelling of earlier, more careless, scribes with no intent to deceive.
That was quick! I should have edited my reply before I posted it. I meant to write Christians did exist.
