The self-evident emergence of Christianity PDF

Preview

Summary

The self-evident emergence of Christianity Absolute Thomasine Priority, Part IV ©Copyright 2022 Martijn AT Linssen, MA Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 The gospel of Thomas.....

Description

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

Absolute Thomasine Priority, Part IV

©Copyright 2022 Martijn AT Linssen, MA

Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 The gospel of Thomas....................................................................................................................... 1 Marcion’s Evangelion ....................................................................................................................... 3 The New Testament..........................................................................................................................5 Chrestianity...................................................................................................................................... 8 Anti-Judaism .................................................................................................................................... 9 Christianity ...................................................................................................................................... 11 Rewriting history for the sake of the present and future .............................................................. 12 The core strategy behind both Paul and the gospels .................................................................... 13 Aftermath ........................................................................................................................................ 14 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 17

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

Introduction Many, many years ago, I stumbled upon the Gospel of Thomas. Fast forward thousands of hours and over 3,000 published pages - the majority of which are my own - and I have developed a theory regarding Christian origins, the outline of which I will present in this document. The aim is not to address the general public or the casual reader - the intended audience here consists of those with years of experience concerning matters such as the Synoptic Problem, Pauline epistles, Markan priority, Latin loanwords in the NT, Marcion, Christian origins, nomina sacra, and the Nag Hammadi Library (NHL), to name a few. A proposition - yet a carefully elaborated one - is what this theory is. When I wrote my Absolute Thomasine Priority I really had no idea about any of the above, yet it was clear that Thomas preceded the NT. That was what textual criticism demonstrated, like it or not. This time, however, I will present what was missing then: a reason for the NT containing those 72 copies of Thomasine logia; a proper - and solid - business case for incorporating the (selective) content of Thomas into the (quite different) context of the NT

The gospel of Thomas The gospel of Thomas (Thomas) is the start of it all. I have never liked spelling ‘gospel’ in full, and always at least assign a lowercase letter to that strange Old English word that is so inherently tied to Christianity; gōd spell. So I just call it Thomas, as it most certainly is not about Christianity, nor about any Jesus that we know - in fact it is not only not about Christianity, but even against Judaism; Thomas is a vehemently anti-religious text, a text that also rejects other “schools of thought”. Thomas is a text about self-realisation, self-salvation; introspection is what it teaches (the kingdom is of your inside and she is of your eye - logion 3) and it openly rejects typical Judaic habits such as fasting, praying, giving alms. Upon close and objective inspection the text is ferociously antiJudaic and the disciples serve to present Judaic ideas and platitudes, only to be burnt down to the ground in response to those. There are 600 pages of Complete Thomas Commentary detailing the first half of logia, and those show how Thomas tells us that we’re dualised, divided, separated - yet don’t consider ourselves sick. We - each of us - are the sons (plural, indeed!) of the living father, we are the Ego and the Self - or, like he says, ϫⲟⲉⲓⲥ and ϩⲙϩ̅ⲁ̅ⲗ̅. as I translate those as ‘slaveowner’ and ‘slave’. We once were the father, ‘been made one’, yet we grew up and became two - we in fact created those two ourself, and now we are ‘ourselves’; and there are certain points where Thomas

Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 1

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

treats multiple persons as if they were one (e.g. logion 30), and that is exactly the crux of his sayings and his central message. Yet 72 of those logia have parallels in the Synoptics - how is that possible? How can Thomas be about these soft, spiritual and metaphysical topics when the NT undeniably is religious? Or is it? What helps, is that Thomas is very cryptic at first sight, especially in the usual (mis)translations, e.g. logion 4: IS said he will not hesitate, the human who is old in his days, to question a little child who is seven days young, because of the Place of life, and he will live: there are many first who will become last and they come to be a single one.

That is a riddle, isn’t it? Why the lack of hesitation? What on earth will the question (and the answer) be? And who will live? Hard to tell, isn’t it? Why is this translated the way it is, are there no alternatives? IS said he will not delay, the human who is old in his days, to make cease a little child who is seven days young, because of the Place of life, and he will live: there are many first who will become last and they come to be a single one.

Two words translated differently, in a perfectly legitimate and grammatically sound way: the old man will ‘make cease the little child’ - stop him from growing up - and as the child is only 7 days old, there is great haste involved as only one more day would be a relatively great part of the child’s life. And if the child doesn’t grow up, it will live. That surely still is riddling, yes but in a sensible way: growing up likely is dangerous (as will turn out to be the case in just a few logia), so it must be ceased - and quickly. A different logion serves to demonstrate how an apparent riddle can also cease (sic) being a riddle. Logion 35: IS said there is not strength of one to go inward to the house of the strong and take him by force, Unless he binds his hands: Then he will turn outward his house.

That is more than puzzling: it is evident that one needs strength or force to handle a strong man, but there is no need to do so once his hands are tied - even an adolescent could handle a strong man in that state. Why is this translated the way it is, are there no alternatives? IS said there is not strength of one to go inward to the house of the strong and take him by forearm, Unless he binds his hands: Then he will turn outward his house .

One word translated differently, in a perfectly legitimate and grammatically sound way: and from a riddle we have arrived at something very sensible; if you want to take a strong man by the forearm, yes it would surely make a very great difference if his hands were tied! Naturally, Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 2

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

this logion has its copies in the NT, unlike the previous one, and no translator has ever looked beyond the boundaries of his own self-induced confinement. Really, seriously, no one? No, really not - the confirmation bias among Coptologists, Egyptologists and even amateurs who took up the translation of Thomas is of such magnitude that no one ever came up with this incredibly straightforward translation. And when the pivotal word ϫⲛⲁϩ is looked up, the dictionary reveals that ‘forearm’ is even the primary translation, with ‘force’ merely a secondary one. One last logion, to demonstrate how the usual Thomas translations are not only uneventful, or wrongly harmonised with their inaccurate Christian copies in the NT - but even are deliberate and outright falsifications. Logion 96: IS said: the reign of king of the father, she is comparable to a woman who took a little first-milk, she hid him in a dough; she made him be some great loaves. He whom there are ears within him, let! him hear

One word translated correctly, in a perfectly legitimate and grammatically sound way; Thomas very clearly and unambiguously says ‘first-milk’ or ‘colostrum’, and not ‘leaven’. This can be verified with a simple click by anyone as every word in my Translation is linked to an online dictionary. No one can assume they have read Thomas unless they have consulted my translation, and I cordially invite everyone to disagree with anything in there - yet after two years and thousands of views no one has made a case so far, and while I have challenged other translators regarding their interpretations, their response has been either absent or evasive with not one of them providing arguments that my translation is wrong. Why does any of this matter? Of the 72 logia in Thomas that have parallels in the NT, 59 can be found in Luke - and the general consensus these days is that Luke is nothing but a redaction of Marcion’s Evangelion

Marcion’s Evangelion I follow Matthias Klinghardt and Markus Vinzent and call Marcion’s Evangelion *Ev for short but let me start by saying that I doubt most of what the so-called “Church Fathers” claim: their business (case) was to make propaganda and to defend their stronghold at any and all cost. It is evident (and duly noted by these two who went before me) that the various “witnesses” to *Ev disagree with one another’s claims in the vast majority of cases, and I have doubts about the very existence of any person named Marcion - yet I am quite convinced that there was a movement prior to Christianity, and that it was “called Chrestianity”. A reliable and verifiable witness to that is found in the Nag Hammadi Library that indisputably tells us of Chrestos and Chrestians and Chrest-ness; the 52 codices contain some 165 occurrences of ⲭ̅ⲥ̅, and 35 Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 3

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

instances of ⲭⲣⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ, ⲭⲣⲏⲥⲧⲓⲁⲛⲟⲥ and ⲙⲛⲧⲭⲣⲏⲥⲧⲟⲥ. Only the gospel of Philip narrates (twice) of ⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲓⲁⲛⲟⲥ, Christian, and only towards the end; it is evident that Philip narrates of a chronological order and evolution there, and he speaks to us on the brink of Chrestianity and Christianity - yet his and all other NHL translations simply say Christ or Christian, and in all of the 5,000 pages published by Brill there is only one single (and diffuse) comment to the Chrest-translated-as-Christ matter. It stands beyond reason that a) the current translation of any NHL text is unreliable and greatly coloured by Christian bias, just as b) there likely was a grand movement of something that can be considered Chrestianity and likely was even called that way. Was there a Marcion? I highly doubt it, because it would be a very convenient way to tackle and address something like Chrestianity; how does one handle a movement but by its leader? How better to ridicule something than by ridiculing someone who represents that very something? I doubt the existence of a Marcion (regardless of the additional implications made, such as e.g. Marcion raping a virgin), precisely because more than a century separates the alleged “peak dates” for Jesus (30 CE) and Marcion (144 CE). Yet regardless of the shape, length and history of a movement, there was a text, and that text is important - as it contained a great amount of what was in Thomas and what was also in the NT; yet not all, as far as we can tell. There is Thomasine material in the NT that likely is not present in Marcion (like the parable of the seed and the weeds) and Matthew especially seems to have tried to increase the Thomasine material, for instance Matthew 13:44-48 where he very quickly and hastily throws in three complete Thomas logia in just a handful of verses. What did Marcion look like? Matthias Klinghardt has created a fabulous and magnificent reconstruction in his more than 1,400 pages of The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels. What Harnack wrote was heavily biased and Roth’s is not much better, yet Klinghardt’s work addresses all questions, especially the critical ones like the wondrous remark in Luke 4:23 (Berean Literal): And He said to them, “Surely you will say to Me this proverb, ‘Physician heal yourself! Whatsoever we have heard has been done in Capernaum, do here in Your hometown also.’”

In Luke, Jesus hasn’t been in Capernaum; it is only in Luke 4:31 that he first goes there, whereas in *Ev his story starts in Capernaum - making this verse in this very place a perfect fit for *Ev yet a most contradictory and inexplicable anomaly in Luke. Harnack doesn’t comment on this most remarkable event, which indubitably deserves attention, and neither does Roth, and that fully discredits the both of them; BeDuhn has a small footnote on the matter in reference to what others think about it and leaves it at that, while including the fragment in his reconstruction in between square brackets.

Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 4

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

I follow Klinghardt’s reconstruction, as well as Vinzent’s great use of that in his Christi Thora, yet deviate from it at two points: *Ev highly likely did not contain the Tiberius dating “In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when Pilate was governing Judea”: there is ample attestation to it but there’s quite a lot of it really. It serves no purpose to Marcion whereas its benefits to Christianity are undeniably essential 2) *Ev highly likely did not contain a resurrection - and that is pivotal and it will be discussed in the next chapter, and it will serve as the working thesis for it 1)

The New Testament When looking at Mark we find a much more palatable redaction of *Ev than in Luke, because Mark’s is a rather short one: it takes the death of Jesus, and adds only 17 verses to that, whereas Matthew adds 36, Luke 63 and John 68: Mark 15:37 But Jesus, having uttered a loud cry, breathed His last. 38 And the veil of the temple was torn into two from top to bottom. 39 And the centurion standing opposite of Him, having seen that He breathed His last, thus said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” 40 And there were also women looking on from afar off, among whom also were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the least and of Joseph, and Salome, 41 who had been following Him and had been ministering to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other ones having come up with Him to Jerusalem. 42 And evening having arrived already, since it was the Preparation, that is, the day before Sabbath, 43 having come, Joseph from Arimathea, a prominent Council member, who was also himself waiting for the kingdom of God, having boldness, went in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 And Pilate wondered if already He were dead. And having summoned the centurion, he questioned him whether He had died already. 45 And having known it from the centurion, He granted the body to Joseph. 46 And having bought a linen cloth, having taken Him down, he wrapped Him in the linen cloth and laid Him in a tomb which was cut out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the tomb. 47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph were watching where He was laid. Mark 16 1 And the Sabbath having passed, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that having come, they might anoint Him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb, the sun having arisen.

Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 5

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

3 And they were saying among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” 4 And having looked up, they see that the stone has been rolled away; for it was extremely large. 5 And having entered into the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe, sitting on the right; and they were greatly amazed. 6 And he says to them, “Do not be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, the One having been crucified. He is risen! He is not here! Behold the place where they laid Him. 7 But go, say to His disciples and to Peter that He goes before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.” 8 And having gone out, they fled from the tomb, for trembling and amazement had seized them. And they spoke nothing to anyone; for they were afraid.

Women, women, and nothing but women. The bold parts emphasise their presence in these verses and of the 16 verses following Mark 15:39, they participate in 11 - and the remaining 5 serve Joseph burying Jesus. Yet what do we conclude from this? Jesus dies, the veil of the temple splits and the centurion proclaims his divine status - and verse 38 and 39 are evident “Judadditions” to *Ev by Mark (we’ll get to those later). Verse 15:37 in itself is a fine open ending really, or rather, a pretty closed one - we only think it is open because in our mind and memory the story continues with 16:9-20. But that certainly wasn’t the case in the first centuries and the earliest Codices that we have, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (+/- 350 CE), who don’t have it - whereas Bezae and Alexandrinus (+/- 400 CE) do, yet the consensus is that the text of 16:9-20 is decidedly non-Markan. Mark initially ended at 16:8, and when we look - really look - at what’s there then it is evident that after the death of Jesus the women are forcefully pushed onto the scene; Mary gets named only once in Mark 6:3, Mary Magdalene appears here for the first time, and Salome appears only here and in Mark 16:1 - in all of the NT. Three women make a cameo appearance; that is very suspicious. When we observe their role, we see that it starts right after the death of Jesus and follows through until the very end of Mark - and if we consider that to be a little story in itself, then what is the conclusion, what is the summary, loosely translated? The women witnessed it all; then Joseph buried Jesus and when those same women went to check on his grave they got told - by an angel no less - that he had risen; yet instead of telling anyone they ran! That is what Mark wants to tell us, and that is really all that he wants to tell us: verse 38 and 39 are merely ticking off the Scripture box while the burial is of no consequence either because it is a requirement for the resurrection scene, and it is evident how neither isn’t elaborated on until in Luke, Matthew and (especially) John. As always, the reason for this little story by Mark lies in another story, and that story is the very reason for all of Mark’s story, and that very story Martijn Linssen

8-4-2022 6

The self-evident emergence of Christianity

2022

is the story as it is told in *Ev: Mark is the very first copy of an *Ev-like text and apart from adding a plethora of Judaic elements (“Judadditions”) from the Tanakh, he also changes the outcome of *Ev, the final end: *Ev didn’t tell of a resurrected Jesus but of an executed Jesus, a very dead Jesus. A completely and definitely dead Jesus, with all hope lost forever; most certainly not a happy ending at all but a frustrating, devastatingly sad and utterly unfair ending. An ending that either makes you cry bitter tears or fills you with rage. Yet such isn’t the story that Mark wants to tell, he wants to tell a quite different story, one with a much less grizzly outcome; there is hope, there is light, in and after all of this darkness: Jesus lives! So the story he invents for that is that everyone believed - nay, incorrectly assumed - that Jesus died because the damn women simply botched it, they forgot to tell that they got told by an angel that Jesus had risen. So Jesus surely didn’t die, not at all - on the contrary! Jesus lived, he lives!! Rejoice!!! And when we pay a visit to Luke, we see th...