I’ve been reading Richard Carrier’s recent post about Docetism. Docetism, as you’ll know, is the idea that the Christ’s human body was illusory. Carrier questions whether this idea existed as a belief system in ancient times; the term, he says, was invented by modern theologians to describe a few vague notions that appeared only towards the end of the 2^nd century.

He finds no evidence for Docetism as a movement at any time and certainly not when the books of the New Testament were being composed. Along the way, however, he discusses 1 Timothy 1:3-4, written either in the late first or early second century (and therefore not by Paul who died in AD 64):

…Command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work – which is by faith. (My emphasis)

‘Myths and endless genealogies’: interesting. What could these myths and genealogies be? Where were they to be found? In what way did they promote controversial speculations? How did they deplete faith?

The ‘myths’ are mentioned again in 2 Timothy, also not written by Paul but by someone using his name, again in the late first or early second century:

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Not, you’ll note, ‘(they will) turn aside to false doctrines or heretical teaching’, which is how this verse is usually interpreted and applied by nit-picking evangelicals today, but ‘they will turn aside to myths‘. Some in the early second century church were being distracted by such myths – spurious stories about Jesus – and the writer(s?) of 1 and 2 Timothy feel compelled to warn against them.

The author of 2 Peter, who certainly wasn’t Peter/Cephas, issues a similar warning in his letter of 80-90:

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

What can these myths have been? What ‘cleverly devised stories’ about Jesus were circulating in the late 1^st century and early 2^nd? There were no ‘Docetic’ texts at this time, no ‘Gnostic’ ones, none of the more far-fetched, downright weird gospels, which all appeared later.

The use of ‘genealogies’ in 1 Timothy is a clue. Which documents with ridiculously contrived genealogies were circulating in the churches of the late first and early 2^nd centuries? We know of none – apart from Matthew and Luke’s gospels. Could the forgers of 1 & 2 Timothy and 2 Peter be referring to these? Did they object to the fictional backstory Matthew, Luke and Mark had created for their heavenly saviour? Were these the myths to which believers were turning to instead of gazing heavenward at the ‘majesty’ of the celestial saviour who was soon to come in power to the Earth, as 2 Peter 1:16 suggests?

It certainly could.