Thanks. The subjunctive does work better, so I updated that. But the comma is present for an audible pause (I write to speak), i.e. it’s function is auditory rather than grammatical. It causes the reader to pause, and thus appreciate the pause and its impact on the meaning.

I certainly welcome an expert historian more familiar with the texts and their context than us doing a full study of these statements and their indicated beliefs and possible relations to earlier Christian “heresies.”

But I think it is at least evidence that it is possible to be Christians AND mythicists (see in particular the witness of the catholic Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay, who says that, according to these Cathars, the introduction of the ”earthly and visible Bethlehem” was a Catholic reaction against the original true mythicist belief).

And you are right that the ”Ascension of Isaiah does not have many crucifixions”, but it is also true that the 7 crucifixions in 7 heavens may be an effect of the cosmophobic Cathar view potentially based on the AoI: not only the lowest heaven would be the one infested by Satan, but also the other 6 heavens, and consequently every heaven would be in need of being purified by a celestial crucifixion. (I remember that according to AoI’ s cosmology the 6 heavens above the lowest – ruled by Satan – are ruled by the God of the Jews, identified as the evil Demiurge by the Cathars).

This possibility of influence from AoI may be used against the historicist scholar Enrico Norelli, whoose recent reconstruction of the original AoI assumes the birth in Betlehem as authentic (and Norelli’s argument is based on the Cathar knowledge of it, a fact that would be put in doubt just by the evidence here described).

Thank you.

The Latin text does not translate quite the way you are representing here. It is more vague unfortunately. I would love to have evidence like this. But alas I can’t use it.

That is far too late to be useful. And is too incongruous with earlier texts (e.g. the Ascension of Isaiah does not say Jesus was crucified once in every heaven). And is too ambiguous (the idea of multiple crucifixions does not mean there wasn’t one on earth; only that it, too, had duplicates in heaven; which therefore does not establish they actually denied historicity). So we can’t use it.

In some cases the original language does not quite say what you translate. For instance, the first text actually says this John thought the Bible was written in the other world where Adam and Eve were formed (this conforms to the legend I reference in OHJ, p. 195), and though he extends that location all the way to Moses and John the Baptist, he says that Christ’s events were predicted (foretold) in that other world, not that they occurred there (there would be an infinitive of a verb of occurrence in the text if that’s what he meant; and alas, no such grammatical form is there). So when he says everything in the Bible he places “in some sense” (quodam) in the other world, it’s ambiguous what that means. When you go read the rest of the text he says John believed things that imply he accepted historicity (along with the duplicate doctrine). So it’s again too muddled to make a certain conclusion out of.

And again, this is a thousand years too late. That bizarre beliefs like this existed then does not help us establish they derive from earlier, much less original, beliefs. Particularly when they don’t line up (e.g. the Ascension of Isaiah does not have many crucifixions; it does not make Moses and John the Baptist celestial beings, much less demons; and Paul certainly says no such thing, Paul has Moses a historical person on earth; etc.).

About the Argument from Silence you say rightly that the Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence but only when Evidence is expected.

You apply this Argument against a historical Jesus in Paul. And you say that the Argument from Silence is weak when applied to the absence of mythicist ”smoking guns”, or of mythicist beliefs preserved in the evidence (in virtue of the inevitable proto-Orthodox censorship).

Now, I would see apparently a strange contradiction, because just from the Dark Age (the more Christian age of the history) it comes a clear evidence of MYTHICIST Christian belief.

Please read entirely the following quotes (and relative translations):

RANIERO SACCONI,
Summa de Catharis et Leonistis

Item iste Iohannes recipit totam bibliam sed putat eam scriptam fuisse in alio mundo et ibidem esse formatos Adam et Evam.
Item credit quod Noe, Abraham, Isaac et Iacob et ceteri patriarchae et Moyses et Iosue et omnes prophetae et beatus Iohannes Baptista placuerunt deo et quod fuerunt homines in alio mundo.
Item quod Christus natus est ex patribus secundum carnem antiquis supra nominatis, et quod vere assumpsit carnem ex beata Virgine et vere passus est, crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus et resurrexit tertia die, sed putat quod omnia praedicta fuerunt in alio superiori mundo et non in isto.
Item quod in praedicto mundo totum humanum genus incurrit mortem propter peccatum cui obedivit, quod peccatum a praedicto Iohanne principium et causa omnium malorum sicut saepe dictum est supra, et corporibus eorum ibidem sepultis, animae descenderunt necessario infernum, id est in hunc mundum, et ad hunc infernum descendit Christus ut auxiliaretur eis.
Item credit quod ibidem fiet resurrectio mortuorum scilicet quod unaquaeque dei recipiet proprium corpus.
Item quod verus deus dedit in eodem mundo populo supradicto legem Moysi. Ibidem etiam offerebant sacerdotes hostias et holocausta pro peccatis populi, quae secundum legem praecipiebantur offerri.
Item in eodem loco Christus ad litteram fecit vera miracula, suscitando mortuos et illuminando caecos et pascendo de quinque panis hordeaceis quinque millia virorum, exceptis mulieribus et parvulis.
Quid plura? Quidquid in tota biblia legitur fuisse in hoc mundo ipse in quodam alio mundo ad litteram fuisse convertit.

http://digilander.libero.it/eresiemedievali/sacconi.htm

Translation:

Again, this John [a Cathar] accepts the whole Bible but he thinks that it was written in the other world where he thinks that were formed Adam and Eve. He believes too that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the other patriarchs were liked by God and they were men in another world.
So, too, that Christ is born according to flesh from fathers above named, that he assumed a true flesh from the saint Virgin, that he really suffered, was crucified, died, was buried and was risen the third day, but he believes that all this is happened in another world, higher, and not in this one… So too, that the true God gave the law of Moses to the people in that same world. For there were the priests who were offering, for the sins of the people, the burnt offerings and sacrifices according to the law. So too there Christ did really miracles, raising the dead, by enlightening the blind and feeding by five barley bread five thousand men, besides women and children.
In sum, all that is read in the Bible be happened in this world, he put literally in some other world.

And still:

The belief in two crucifixions>/b> is one of their most secret doctrines (est unum de secretissimis eorum). They dare not preach it publicly, for fear that the people will scandalize.
(from Liber suprastella of Salvo Burci)

And still again:

Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis:

They declared that all of the patriarchs of the Old Testament were damned; they asserted that John the Baptist was one of the greatest devils.

Indeed, the good Christ they say neither ate nor drank nor assumed the true flesh, nor was he ever in this world except spiritually in the body of Paul. But for this reason we say “in the earthly and visible Bethlehem”: The heretics believe there to be another earth, new and invisible, and in this second earth some of them believe the good Christ was crucified.

And lastly:

Peter of Verona Summa Book 1 chapter 8 :

sunt et alii inter eos qui estimant Christum non tantum, sed etiam pluries mortuum fuisse, adeo ut dicant quod in ex VII celis fuerit passus et occisus
Translation:
There are others among them who think that Christ died not once, but several times ; and go up to say that he suffered and was put to death in each of the seven heavens

Some questions:

Why just from an age of strong anti-heretical persection comes CLEAR evidence of a Mythicist Christian belief (and not from II CE Christian writings) ? How does it modify our evidence of background?

How do you mean to deal with this real evidence of Cathar Esoterical Mythicism? Is it too late to count something pro or against mythicism ?