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Shape-Shifting Jesus in Ancient Egyptian Text


Still Waters

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A newly deciphered Egyptian text, dating back almost 1,200 years, tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before.

http://www.livescien...cient-text.html

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Well that could mean that all those depicitions of a white Jesus aren't as incorrect as they seem!

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I always knew he had the decency in him to have married Mary ..... what would the neighbors have said .... them going about like that all over like that

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...and He's been shape-shifting into a slice of toast etc ever since.

(only kidding, God)

Edited by Eldorado
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Another signature ridiculous headline thread. This one's worth writing about, because retrojecting horror movie cliches onto Jesus and Christians ("Zombie Jesus," "Cannibal Catholics") is so pernicious as "religious discussion."

Owen Jarus is a known "popularizer" (less charitably called "spin doctor," and there are less charitable names than that) of serious scholarship he has little or no clue about,

http://owenjarus.com/

As even Jarus feebly grasps, the scriptural idea is not that Jesus changes shape, but rather that different people see Jesus differently on different occasions. Although Origen's Contra Celsum (Book II, short chapter 64) mentions the idea, its source is the ordinary canonical scriptures.

Incidents of seeing Jesus differently abound in the canon. The most dramatic is the Transfiguration, found in all three synoptics. The post-resurrection personal appearances also feature incidents of Jesus going unrecognized by close associates, including the dramatic paired recognition scenes of John 20, Mary Magdalene's (where the initial failure to recognize is explicit) and Thomas' (where it is bundled in with an examination of the wounds - why? If the wounds had healed, Thomas couldn't recognize the man before him as the one who was killed?)

Put aside that the recognition scene was a staple of ancient storytelling, and that to have a recognition scene, you must first have a failure to recognize. In real life, the comic-book "superpower" of looking differently is granted to an entire profession of natural men and women, actors, and is a charism much valued by them.

For instance, there is a legend that Spencer Tracy managed the title-transformation between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde without makeup. The example is interesting, because it is not entirely true. If you watch the classic 1941 film, you can see that it a makeup effect... in part.

>

It is attested that Tracy did strive to minimze the makeup aspect of the transformation. It is also attested that the degree of his success varied for different observers. Somerset Maugham, for example, supposedly couldn't tell the two Tracies apart when he visited the filming one day and only that day, although those on the set working closely with Tracy could - think about what that says about how the "superpower" actually works.

Bottom line: there is no "shape sifting" Jesus in any Christian tradition, there is no "zombie Jesus" either, and there are no Catholic weekly "cannibals." What there is here is a hack "free-lance" writer padding out his clippings file with lurid BS.

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Because shape shifting is the only part of the story of Jesus that doesn't make sense...

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Well it is further evidence that Jesus was an actual physical being. Personally I believe he is the son of god. However it is nice to have further references from the time he lived which are outside the bible which was written long after his death and has been continually edited since.

Well it is further evidence that Jesus was an actual physical being. Personally I believe he is the son of god. However it is nice to have further references from the time he lived which are outside the bible which was written long after his death and has been continually edited since.

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I love the fact that the researchers believe this version of events cant possibly be true because people back then would not fully understand the story of what happened....... as if the current known 2000 year old story is somehow factual?!?

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The people in the past cooked the books as if they don't do it now and they couldn't think straight pathetic excuses when our scholars don't like that that disagree with their beliefs.

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The text in question is supposed to be 1200 years old. The Gospel narratives found in the Bible are first century A.D. I would put much more credence in them. If you do not consider them to be the Words of God, than at least realize they occurred much closer to the actual events.

While I do not believe that Jesus was a "shape shifter" it is interesting that after His resurrection various men and women did not recognize him until he revealed Himself to them. This could be because they saw Him die and were overcome with grief, of because He somehow prevented them from recognition. In another even he walked right through a crowd who was intent on stoning Him, how is uncertain. Perhaps it was no more than the force of His personality, we may never know.

Then there is the Mount of Transfiguration, when His entire appearance changed shortly before the Crucifixion.

A more difficult thing to understand is how Jesus appeared inside a house with the doors and windows locked after His resurrection. There are various scientific theories as to the number of dimension that exist, some think 10, others an infinite number. But if you believe in a transcendent omnipotent God, then He by definition must exist in all possible dimensions. It might be a simple matter to change from one to another and back again and suddenly appear to be elsewhere. A bit like a three-dimentional object moving through the 2D world of Flatland (if you are not familiar with Flatland, Google it.)

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While this certainly tells us nothing of the historical Jesus (being written, or at least dated, 800 years after Jesus' existence), it does tell us much about the Christian movement (at least one sect of it) in the Egyptian area of the 9th Century AD. Of particular note is the day of Jesus' arrest as Tuesday, rather than Thursday. It has always been my view that Jesus was arrested on Tuesday, and that the Thursday arrest was simply based on the celebration to pagan fertility rites, which Christianity appropriated in order to appeal to pagan audiences. This document may reflect a world which had not yet fully accepted the assimilation of pagan traditions into Christianity and thus more closely resemble the biblical accounts, which suggest Jesus as crucified on Wednesday.

The idea of Jesus as a "shape shifter", as 8bits helpfully informed me, appears more to be a case that different people see him differently at different times, rather than the headline stealer of this article. Now this doesn't really resemble the biblical Jesus while he was alive, but it does bear some similarity to the Jesus post-resurrection, the one to whom people had entire conversations with before suddenly realising who he was. So this text, if accurate, may represent a non-traditional (read "heretical") sect of 9th Century Christians who somewhat blurred the distinction between the pre and post-resurrection Jesus narratives - I'm sure they existed. Certainly it is historically possible, considering the Church did not hold domineering control over 9th Century Egypt the way later Christianity did in other parts of the world (post-10th Century Europe, for example).

Just some food for thought, in any case :)

~ PA

Edited by Paranoid Android
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Well it is further evidence that Jesus was an actual physical being. Personally I believe he is the son of god. However it is nice to have further references from the time he lived which are outside the bible which was written long after his death and has been continually edited since.

Jesus was supposedly born before 1 A.D...this text is around 1200 years old..so approximately around 800 A.D (even if we assume the guy in whose name it is written is true..then it is still 400 years later)..It is like me writing something on Robin Hood and a few centuries later someone finds the text and claims that it is proof that Robin Hood was an actual physical being.

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Jesus appeared before a large crowd of faithful followers. He removed his robe and draped it over a cage containing a rare white tiger. He spoke the holiest of words, pulled back the robe and lo, the tiger had disappeared. In it's place was a scantily clad woman with blond hair and very large breasts.

His followers took this as a sign that he was truly the Son of God.

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shapeshifter thing is rubbish as is this text most probable it was judas. there is mithra belief in jesus propagated by paul who never met jesus and was viled by jesus closest followers regarding his prophet hood if israel could release those precious documents which they never will it will confirm his real mission especially the prophecies of the times were living in

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shapeshifter thing is rubbish as is this text most probable it was judas. there is mithra belief in jesus propagated by paul who never met jesus and was viled by jesus closest followers regarding his prophet hood if israel could release those precious documents which they never will it will confirm his real mission especially the prophecies of the times were living in

Paul (whose original name was Saul) did indeed meet Jesus on the Damascus road (see text below). For proof I would offer his life prior to conversion and after. Prior he was venomously hateful to The Way (as early Christians were known) and felt it was blasphemy against God. He persecuted believers and had them put into prison, if not executed. He was there in approval at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. After this encounter on the road he became the greatest proponent of Christ and Christianity of his day, writing some 3/4 of the New Testament. He was beaten, starved, stoned, jailed, ship wrecked, and finally executed for his faith. It is true he was not trusted at first by the other disciples, his reputation had preceded him. But after conversion and assurance by those who had seen his life change he was welcomed by them.

Acts ​9:1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

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It's funny that people call this unlikely to have happened or the discovery of these texts doesn't mean these event happened but alot of people believe what happened in the bible is really what happened.

Edited by IBelieveWhatIWant
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It's funny that people call this unlikely to have happened or the discovery of these texts doesn't mean these event happened but alot of people believe what happened in the bible is really what happened.

Why's it funny? The texts in the Bible are less than a century removed from the event. This new text is dated 800 years after the event. Whether the events in the Bible happened or not, certainly you have to agree that an extra 700 years between the authorship makes it much less likely to contain any new information not already known about the actual events of the 1st Century AD.
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PA

Why's it funny? The texts in the Bible are less than a century removed from the event. This new text is dated 800 years after the event. Whether the events in the Bible happened or not, certainly you have to agree that an extra 700 years between the authorship makes it much less likely to contain any new information not already known about the actual events of the 1st Century AD.

The rubber stamp doesn't work in this case, since the document is uncontested as arising from the Alexandrian church, a Christian community continuously in witness (except for brief periods underground during persecutions) since apostolic times. When you get called on the decades-to-a-century delay of the canonical writings, you are quick to emphasize the reliability of oral tradition among a rag-tag bunch of competing free-lance Jesus preachers. You cannot turn around now and decry the reliability of a focused institutional transmitter of Jesus lore.

These are not "gospels" and would never have been confused for Gospels. The pseudonymous attribution is to a figure who was born centuries after Jesus, Cyril of Jerusalem, a Fourth Century peri-Nicene Orthodox homilist. Dude commented on Gospels, he didn't write new ones, and this document which commemorated him came centuries after he had died.

Doctrinally, the Copts are Nicene but not Chaldean. That's an important detail in understanding these sermons: they believe that Jesus suffered and died under Pontius Pilate, just as much as any other Nicene Christian. They do, however have distinctive ideas about how Jesus' person managed to combine a divine and human nature in one being.

The sermons as a whole are full of matters of Alexandrian flavor. The phoney headline "shape shifting" baloney refers to Origen (Contra Celsum Book II, "chapter" 63 and 64), a late Second and early Third Century Alexandrian apologist.

He wasn't "confused," as you suggested in an earlier post, he was answering Celsus' objection about who received post-Resurrection visits. Origen's answer was that Jesus' earthly mission was all of one piece, and had always featured selective appearances, not because Jesus shifted shape, but because other people differed in what aspects of him they could experience.

Origen's argument may make little sense to a Chalcedon-adopter like yourself, maybe, and that's why you thought he was confused. However, Origen's argument makes a great deal of sense in the context from which would arise the distinctive christology of Alexandria. I do think that his extending the notion to Judas' band of merry men was a strecth on Origen's part, but the point he was stretching wasn't so very unreasonable in and of itself.

Bottom line: "Oh, they're confused, poor dears, and they lost the plot centuries after the fact" simply doesn't apply to the Alexandrian church. Nor does it make any sense to treat sermons about the Gospels as if the semons were supposed to be new Gospels.

Of course, in rebutting this specific instance of your ever-ready "relative delay" argument, I do not mean to concede that it is otherwise a reliable guide to truth. It doesn't apply here, that's the hitch. How much it helps when it does apply is another controversy for another thread.

Edited by eight bits
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paul was related to the roman goverment before and after his demonic vision believed and propagated his own brand backed by the goverment that jesus was the son of god the close follower's of jesus who were with him understood his teachings were angered by paul preaching propaganda they never heard. paul himself said see how i persecuted the jews and profited out of there religion jesus teaching was monotheism like moses iv come to fulfill not destroy the law.who new better the deciples who were with jesus or paul ? and while paul preached, jesus faithfull deciples were persecuted guess by who ? many gospels were burn't just because it wasn't paul version does that mean these gospels had no origin ? while being persecuted by paul and the roman goverment ? the infancy gospel of jesus gospel of st thomas etc,etc,

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