Mark 15: 20-21 (KJV) "...they ...led him out to crucify him. And they
compel one Simon a Cyrenian, ... to bear his cross."
Matthew 27:32 "As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross."
Luke 23:26 "As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene... and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus."
But here is where Jesus carries his OWN cross:
John 19:17 "So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull ...
So which story is true? They both cannot be. Who was actually there to witness the event?
However, the truth to this story is, Jesus carried no cross at all, It was a crossbar. The "post" of the cross was already planted in the ground. The victim was secured to the crossbar, that was later attached to the "post". Jesus only had to carry the crossbar up the hill to the awaiting "post".
Basilides wrote a completely different scenario. He said; "There is an ancient belief that the man who carried the cross, Simon the Cyrene, was also nailed to it, while Jesus slipped off into a recep-tive and willing Jewish Crowd, thus the Jews saved, rather than
killed Jesus. It was not, however, Christ who suffered, but rather
Simon of Cyrene, who was constrained to carry the cross for him, and
mistakenly crucified in Christ's stead. Simon having received Jesus'
form, Jesus assumed Simon's and thus stood by and laughed at them.
Simon was crucified and Jesus returned to His Father. Through the
Gnosis (Knowledge) of Christ the souls of men are saved, but their
bodies perish.
"Out of Epiphanius and Pseudo-Tertullian we can complete the description this: the highest god, i.e. the Unborn Father, bears the mystical name Abrasax, as origin of the 365 heavens. The Angels that made the world formed it out of Eternal Matter; but matter is the principle of all evil and hence both the contempt of the Gnostics for it and their docetic Christology. To undergo martyrdom in order to confess the Crucified is useless, for it is to die for Simon of Cyrene, not for Christ." The belief of "Basiledes" makes of the "resurrection" much easier to believe, because Jesus never was dead.
Basilides - The earliest of the Alexandrian Gnostics; he was a native of Alexandria and flourished under the Emperors Adrian and Antoninus Pius, about 120-140. St. Epiphanius's assertion that he was a disciple of Menander at Antioch and only later moved to Alexandria is unlikely in face of the statement of Eusebius and Theodoret that he was an Alexandrian by birth. Of his life we know nothing except that he had a son called Isidore, who followed in his footsteps. The remark in the Acts of Archelaus (lv) that Basilides was "a preacher amongst the Persians" is almost certainly the result of some confu-sion. Basilides invented prophets for himself named Barcabbas and Barcoph, and claimed to have received verbal instructions from St. Matthias the Apostle and to be a disciple of Glaucias, a disciple of St. Peter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.jdstone.org/truth/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
