RE: What were Jesus and early Christians like?
March 9, 2015 at 4:28 pm
(This post was last modified: March 9, 2015 at 4:29 pm by TimOneill.)
(March 9, 2015 at 4:16 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:(March 9, 2015 at 3:39 pm)TimOneill Wrote: No, gnosticism seems to have been a later, second century development.
Not according to the Bible.
Quote:1st John 4:1-3
2nd John 1:7
Yes, I'm well aware of those passages. Those epistles are pseudepigraphical and most scholars date them to the early second century.
Quote:Apparently the Docetics were such a problem as to warrant not one but two condemnations in what became canonized in scripture.
Docetism and Gnostism overlap, but are not the same thing. And see above about the dates of 1&2John
Quote:It makes more sense that the various gnostic sects came first.
Why? There is nothing to indicate this in any of the Pauline material or in any of the earliest gospels. The only hint we get of it is in the anti-Docetist passages you quote above from the early second century.
Quote:It makes no sense that devoted followers of Jesus, who had lived within recent history, decided to make up a fantasy that he only existed in a spiritual realm.
Docetism doesn't say he "only existed in a spiritual realm". Nor does any form of Gnosticism. Both have a purely spiritual Jesus visiting the material realm in historical time. So I'm not sure what you're saying here.
