>>Thanks for the info on Irenaeus and Jesus living to 50, 282. It does indeed look like a significant issue. But when you wrote that I "refuse to do [my] own homework and would rather rely on the very person they [I'm] disputing to dig up the information for [me]" you misconstrue the situation. First off, I wasn't disputing you, I was asking for your evidence (as you have done innumerable times in these threads); secondly, I wasn't disputing you, I was interested in learning more about something I had never run into before; and in the third place, you wrote that we should "remember" this, which is dang hard to do if one has never heard it before.<<

Fair enough. I'm sorry for berating you. I've been quoting sources all along and it seemed no one cared--so I figured they knew it already or they didn't care about it. I would think anyone would find it of import and give it careful consideration. It doesn't matter what they think of me. Look at the info, if you're interested--delve more deeply into it. Christianity/Gnosticism are far more fascinating and informative than most people ever dreamed. And that's only counting what has survived. Far more has undoubtedly perished.

>>As for Irenaeus getting away with heresy (if this is what it was), doesn't surprise me at all. The Church (you said "Roman church bishops" but I'm not sure there's any reason to call him "Roman") was a lot less centralized, a lot less authoritarian, and a lot more open to diversity in a variety of areas in the second century than it was in the fourth after it was bought out by the Empire.<<

The Church still had the idea of heresy back then because Irenaeus condemned gnosticism (his word, btw) as heresy (which actually means "choice"). But apparently, the belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion and lived to age 50 was okay within the Church. That would indicate that much of the Roman Church came from Papias whom they asserted knew Polycarp who was certainly mythical. We're not even sure when Papias lived--early or mid 2nd century.

Papias stated that Mark was an interpreter for Peter and that his account was accurate in the episodes recounted but were out of order. Papias doesn't elaborate on what was out of order in Mark's narrative. We do know that Mark has no miraculous birth story (or any birth story) and the earliest versions ended at 16:8 thereby cutting out the resurrection. He seemed to have Luke but we can't be certain how similar it is to today's but likely was not in narrative form in his day. He claimed Matthew was written in Hebrew. Irenaeus is the first Church Father to mention the four present gospels sometime around 180 or later. Papias's fragments mention no crucifixion. As with James's epistle, he may not have heard of it. Irenaeus appears to have combined the crucifixion with Papias's material by having Jesus survive the crucifixion in order to live to age 50. We have no indication that Papias believed that or had ever heard of it. So Papias apparently believed in a very different Jesus than today's orthodoxy. But then so did Irenaeus.