So what exactly is a ‘Christ’?
“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” - Matthew 3:16
“[For Hippolytus, this ‘Christ’ or ‘the Perfect Man’ – according to Mandaean doctrine ‘the Demiurge standing above the cosmos’ – descended on numerous individuals. This is a quasi-Gnostic doctrine. For the latter, in the ‘aeon’ we have before us, the descent of this ‘Christ’ or ‘Perfect Man’ on ‘Jesus’ occurred in the form of a dove – the picture disseminated in the Gospels. Hippolytus ascribes the same ideology to ‘the Elchasaites’ who seem to be a later adumbration of such groups as well as to one ‘Cerinthus’, referred to by all these heresiologists, who was said to have taught ‘the Ebionites’. This doctrine of ‘the Perfect Man’ or ‘Standing One’ is also abroad among Shi‘ites in Islam even today, albeit in a slightly different nexus, which seems to have developed out of the persistence of many of these groups and the central notions they all seemed to share in Northern Iraq. In Epiphanius, some two centuries after Hippolytus, these ‘Naassenes’ are called ‘Nazareans’ or ‘Nazrenes’ – the ‘Nazoraeans’, who go into the élite Priest Class of Mandaeans. For him, they exist even before Christ – as do our so-called ‘Essenes’ at Qumran – and are coincident with other similar groups he calls Daily Bathers/ Hemerobaptists and ‘Sebuaeans’ (thus).]”
Eisenman, Robert (2012-10-11). James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Kindle Locations 11645-11654). Watkins Publishing LTD. Kindle Edition.
And why is this heretical?.
“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” - Matthew 3:16
“[For Hippolytus, this ‘Christ’ or ‘the Perfect Man’ – according to Mandaean doctrine ‘the Demiurge standing above the cosmos’ – descended on numerous individuals. This is a quasi-Gnostic doctrine. For the latter, in the ‘aeon’ we have before us, the descent of this ‘Christ’ or ‘Perfect Man’ on ‘Jesus’ occurred in the form of a dove – the picture disseminated in the Gospels. Hippolytus ascribes the same ideology to ‘the Elchasaites’ who seem to be a later adumbration of such groups as well as to one ‘Cerinthus’, referred to by all these heresiologists, who was said to have taught ‘the Ebionites’. This doctrine of ‘the Perfect Man’ or ‘Standing One’ is also abroad among Shi‘ites in Islam even today, albeit in a slightly different nexus, which seems to have developed out of the persistence of many of these groups and the central notions they all seemed to share in Northern Iraq. In Epiphanius, some two centuries after Hippolytus, these ‘Naassenes’ are called ‘Nazareans’ or ‘Nazrenes’ – the ‘Nazoraeans’, who go into the élite Priest Class of Mandaeans. For him, they exist even before Christ – as do our so-called ‘Essenes’ at Qumran – and are coincident with other similar groups he calls Daily Bathers/ Hemerobaptists and ‘Sebuaeans’ (thus).]”
Eisenman, Robert (2012-10-11). James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Kindle Locations 11645-11654). Watkins Publishing LTD. Kindle Edition.
And why is this heretical?.
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