Word: christe
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...Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." That verse from the Epistle to the Hebrews has always been a little wistful, never a guarantee of theological peace even in the generations immediately following Jesus' ministry. The very division of the biblical canon into Old and New Testaments was the result of a ferocious debate over the nature of Jesus around the year A.D. 140. And as Christians multiplied, they would produce competing visions of Jesus, ranging from the Christ worshipped today to a tripartite Jesus who lived on the moon to a Jesus in Central Asia who merged...
...formidable scholar of Scripture and a devotee of the teachings of St. Paul. A wealthy shipowner from what is now the Black Sea coast of Turkey, he made a large contribution to the struggling Christian community in Rome and then proceeded to enunciate his vision of Christ. The kind and good Jesus, he declared, could not possibly be the Son of the implacably just, harshly rational God of the Jewish Prophets. No, that was the wrong God, merely the creator of this world. Jesus was the Son of an unknown and greater God, who out of completely unreasonable kindness...
...argued, was the true source of salvation. For many Gnostic Christians, Jesus only appeared to be man, for the God of this world is the master of matter, and Jesus could not defile himself by actually materializing. Indeed, he was spirit and only seemed to die. Gnostic texts have Christ appearing to Peter as the Crucifixion is taking place, joyfully transcending all this world could hurl at him. The Resurrection becomes moot...
...MANICHAEAN CHRIST...
...West, however, was not the only target of Manichaean missionaries. The religion flourished throughout Central Asia, where surviving texts preserve a Jesus who was merged with the Buddhist deity Maitreya, the Boddhisatva of the future, who, like Christ, will come at the end of the world. As the centuries passed, this Manichaean-tinged Maitreya would inspire millenarian revolts in China, one of which helped bring down the empire of Kublai Khan in the 14th century. The leader of the successful rebel coalition rewarded his allies of the "Bright" religion by naming the new regime after their faith--Ming-chiao...