Deconstructing Jesus - Robert M. Price...

[geetarmoore]

Thanks to whoever recommended this book to me...

I'm into the second chapter, and I'm finding it a great read!

The transformation of the early Christian church from Gnosticism to Catholic Orthodoxy is a history that until now I've never been exposed too.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the read, and I think it's going to go fast.. I'm only putting it down to make the occasional forum post

Thanks again!

 

[Rufo]

Sounds interesting.

In what way was the early christian church gnostic?

 

[slingblade]

Rufo:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gnostics.html

 

[geetarmoore]

Sounds interesting.

In what way was the early christian church gnostic?

In Any way that you could think.

It seems that every early Christian sect had a different opinion of what Christ was, from a wise man to a not-in-the-flesh spirit.

It wasn't until much later that the Catholic church was able to reign all of these other traditions in under the Orthodox church belief structure.

 

[Rufo]

Thanks both of you, I didn't know Christian Gnosticism had been so popular.

How did the Catholic church manage to unite these sects? They sure don't do it very well today...

 

[geetarmoore]

Thanks both of you, I didn't know Christian Gnosticism had been so popular.

How did the Catholic church manage to unite these sects? They sure don't do it very well today...

Heavy handed tactics, it looks like....

They created one firm new testament text and sent that out around the land. They also burned all of the Gnostic texts they could get a hold of. The Gnostic texts that we have today were buried before they could be burned, and uncovered in 1945...

Teaching outside of the Orthodox cannon was considered heresy... We can assume what happened to people who did that....

 

[jjramsey]

Thanks to whoever recommended this book to me...

It wasn't exactly a recommendation.

How did the Catholic church manage to unite these sects? They sure don't do it very well today...

From the review of the book:

However, some caveats give one pause from adopting Price’s approach wholly. First, there is the problem of the timeframe involved between Jesus and the gospels--can we expect the multiple geneses of Jesus mythologies in the short time between the purported events and our first reports of them? To be sure, the time between Jesus and the New Testament could have produced (and did) a largely fictional story--as Price contends--but could it have produced multiple, independent fabrications from unrelated groups? Evidence from analogous cases from the first century--such as the fantastical stories surrounding Vespasian, or Apollonius of Tyana both of whom apparently really lived--would suggest not.

Price also gives too much credence to the idea that the gospels were written later than is generally supposed (e.g. his contention that Marcion included an earlier version of Luke into his New Testament rather than a redacted version of the canonical Luke). The evidence provided by the last couple of centuries seems too firm to allow this. This resort to late composition also implies sloppiness in the effort to validate the mythological Jesus, for if one posits the conflation of Simon/Peter and the other apostles as independent messiahs into the figure of Jesus based on late composition, one must also address obvious problems, such as how John the Baptist’s story survived relatively intact.

Judging from this, I suspect Price has overstated his case for the Church being quite so fractured.

 

[geetarmoore]

It wasn't exactly a recommendation.



From the review of the book:



Judging from this, I suspect Price has overstated his case for the Church being quite so fractured.

Oh.. Well, thanks for the tip anyway. It came the day I was making an Amazon order, and I threw it on.

About overstating, I don't know.. I've ordered a few books on this, and I'll make my own mind up. So far, the case for a historical Christ is looking really weak.

If the fact is that Christ never existed, then the development of the church is really a moot point, but interesting nonetheless.....