[Help] I'm a White/Christian Magic Newbie

[MorganBlack]

Shit, man, this is all I got from looking at this stuff, mostly out of casual curiosity.

There are no contemporary historical references to Jesus or Christianity until decades after the supposed events. Paul, who was a mystic, is our earliest source for all of it. He never refers to a historical, human Jesus of Nazareth. For Paul, Christ was a spiritual, celestial figure revealed through visions and Merkabah-style mysticism. Paul took the hardened revolutionaries - the Zealots/Sicarii - who were militant nationalists fighting a literal war against Rome, the political rebels of 1st-century Jude , and transformed their narrative into a universal, Hellenized mystery religion. He stripped away the militant Jewish nationalism of figures like Judas the Galilean. That's it. The cool mystical weirdness was just stuff was just part of the Hellenized Greco-Roman world.

I liked Pagels way back when, but most modern scholars - like Michael Williams or Karen Kin - now agree that "Gnosticism" didn't exist as a formal, unified religion. (Been a while , I think there were groups around. ) But mostly it was a category error created by later Church Fathers to group their enemies together. What we call Gnosticism was really just Hellenized Jews and Christians applying Platonic philosophy to their mystical experiences. It was just the intellectual atmosphere of the time. Great stuff, tho, but is also baked-into Catholicism. It's all weird and very complex to unpack , with many factions.

 

[pruner_tipster]

Shit, man, this is all I got from looking at this stuff, mostly out of casual curiosity.

There are no contemporary historical references to Jesus or Christianity until decades after the supposed events. Paul, who was a mystic, is our earliest source for all of it. He never refers to a historical, human Jesus of Nazareth. For Paul, Christ was a spiritual, celestial figure revealed through visions and Merkabah-style mysticism. Paul took the hardened revolutionaries - the Zealots/Sicarii - who were militant nationalists fighting a literal war against Rome, the political rebels of 1st-century Jude , and transformed their narrative into a universal, Hellenized mystery religion. He stripped away the militant Jewish nationalism of figures like Judas the Galilean. That's it. The cool mystical weirdness was just stuff was just part of the Hellenized Greco-Roman world.

I liked Pagels way back when, but most modern scholars - like Michael Williams or Karen Kin - now agree that "Gnosticism" didn't exist as a formal, unified religion. (Been a while , I think there were groups around. ) But mostly it was a category error created by later Church Fathers to group their enemies together. What we call Gnosticism was really just Hellenized Jews and Christians applying Platonic philosophy to their mystical experiences. It was just the intellectual atmosphere of the time. Great stuff, tho, but is also baked-into Catholicism. It's all weird and very complex to unpack , with many factions.

Oh this is all casual curiosity for me. And fun because the actual answers are likely lost (or kept secret by those who know em). That said, yes Gnosticism wasnt a religion and it was a polemical device used to brand anyone an outsider. The Gnostic Informant is an occasionally entertaining YouTube channel on it. I dont think unpacking all this is even possible but just my $0.02