The Damascus Document of Qumran by Chris Albert Wells - the smoking gun of Christianity origins or Isis, the Goddess of Healing?

 https://www.academia.edu/s/5fa128e32f?source=ai_email

As 1QpHab [the Damascus Document of Qumran] previously, the text’s audacity raised hostility from rival Essenian factions, the tensions resulting once again in a change of paradigm from a heavenly actor to an earthly prophet scheduled for a trial.........

 The repeated antagonisms between community factions—celestial utopia versus the historical nucleus of the founder’s execution—concerned Essenian writers, not yet Jewish-Christians....Thomas as an early Jewish-Christian text subjected to the canonical gospels (as logia 13 mentioning Simon-Peter and Matthew seems to indicate), meaning that the Jesus of the Thomas wisdom sayings, be it a later edition of Thomas, is held to be the Jesus of the synoptics: a Jewish prophet. Inverting primacy, meaning the gospel’s reliance on Thomasine Jesus sayings has also able partisans[1]. Martijn Linssen, departing from Jewish-Jesus interactions[2] prospected a radically different approach where Is or Isus in the Coptic Thomas represented a different sacrality, a Greek/Coptic deity,[3] and not the Jewish prophet Jesus, unlikely to have been recorded under a divine name by supposed early Jewish-Christians. If originally unrelated to the biblical Jesus, how and when did the divine Coptic Isus and selected Coptic sayings reach the gospels?

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[1]        Detlev Koepke “The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas” (Metanoia 2021) considers the sayings as Jesus’ original teachings that spread to the gospels.

[2]        Martijn Linssen. “Absolute Thomasine Priority” Academia.edu 2019

[3]        The Copts kept the name IC or IHC sacred, an overlined nomen sacrum. IS or Isus may be related to IaSo the Greek goddess of healing. However, as Copts, therefore Egyptians, the name could be related to  Isis, the goddess of revival. (Personal note from Linssen)...........

 Replacing Yahweh’s envoy Yeshua by Isus the sacred and divine Son of the Father, Marcion could start introducing divine Hellenistic mysticism[1] into a Palestinian matrix. Marcion’s decision, turning away from the Jewish Pontus community, was possibly influenced by Hadrian’s imperial decree imposing Greco-Roman culture at the expense of Judaism after suppressing the traumatic Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 CE. Yeshua eliminated, recording selected Coptic sayings known to Marcion via Ephesian Gnostics and Valentinius increased the wisdom and authority of the divine Son Isus.

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[1]        A. Harnack, Marcion the Gospel of the Alien God, p.82:  Marcion declares Jesus Christ is “the Son of the Father, by nature God” closely replicating the Gnostic’s “God’s Word that is His Son Isus”

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 As non-Jewish wisdom, it would be very unlikely that the sayings were initially connected to the biblical Jesus—a Jewish prophet—implying that the Greek name Iesus (Ἰησοῦς) was conceived later than when Marcion incorporated Isus

 fascinating....

 Chris Albert Wells is a university teacher and professor of surgery who currently lives on the French Riviera.

 Celsus, a Roman philosopher and observer of early gospels wrote around 175 CE soon after Marcion’s days. As a privileged observer, he stands as a contemporaneous and extra-biblical witness. His arguments survive in Origen’s Contra Celsum written c. 248 CE.[1] In Contra Celsum 2.27 we learn that the attempted gospels were revised in their first written forms three, four or many times, remodeled to refute objections. Celsus does not refer to four Gospels as a collection and knows of no individual canonical evangelist’s name.

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[1]        Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 6.36.2)

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  neither Jesus nor Yeshua are recorded in the early gospels where the overlined nomen sacrum Isus survives in its primitive form. The Coptic/Gnostic IC or IHC still appears in Greek—IΣ or IHΣ—within the fourth century Christian Codex Siniaticus and Vaticanus and the fifth century codices, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi and Bezae

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 The biblical Jesus reached prominence later than Hippolytus (170-235) Origen (185-254 CE) and Cyril of Jerusalem (315-387) for whom the ‘wisdom sayings’ [Sermon on the Mount] were heretical.

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 Iesous was initially connected to the biblical Joshua giving the new name a renown Scriptural antecedent. The connection is publicized in Justin’s Dialogues that mentions nineteen times the prophet whose name was changed, “Jesus (Joshua)”, and in Adv.Marc. Book 3 ch. XVI[1]. Justin and Tertullian already equating Jesus (unrecorded in early Christian codices) with Joshua implies later redactors defending new policies. Neither connect Jesus/Joshua to the wisdom sayings but to the Creator’s Christ and Scripture implying a broader commitment: securing the counter-reform.

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[1]        The earliest Dialogue manuscript dates to the 14^th century. Works of Tertullian come from medieval manuscripts, none older than the late 8^th century.

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Thomas personified the unwanted twin/alternative Hellenistic mystery sayings derisively labeled “The ‘Gospel’ according to Thomas.” These are the sayings, the twin teachings, that the early Syriac church and church fathers condemned as heresies, meaning non-Jewish teachings.

Rome astutely converted the disputed sayings into early Jewish-Christian wisdom by enlisting Thomas within the synoptics’ twelve[1] thus eclipsing the heretical Syriac Thomas. In a disputed text, (Eusebius HE 1.13.1-22) Edessa is connected to the synoptic gospels via Jesus sending the apostles Thomas and Thaddaeus to Syria[2].

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[1]        The evangelists were not known before the later second century. John becoming the favorite disciple and gospel writer is also necessarily, as Thomas, a later updating.

[2]        Walter Bauer “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity” (Ch.1, Edessa) considers “the story designed to establish apostolic origins to obscure Edessan Christianity’s heretical roots.” Bauer had incorrectly generalized the Christian map according to early Western pro-Judaism under Rome’s influence and Eastern Marcionite predominance.

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