Ben C Smith

Completely agreed.

And yet big names like Frank Moore Cross argue that the Qumran group was Essene, and most of the literature I have read presumes it.

I was surveying the majority view, Chris. I have no position of my own on the Qumran group.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

Yeah, it's sad that we're still taking the Essene-hypothesis for granted, especially in present times. What it shows ultimately is that those who do have not enough knowledge of which they speak.

Julian

I was thinking of Luke 22:19-20, not 10:7 Am I missing something here?

Julian

Ben C Smith

I was assuming Steve Avery was referring to Luke and 1 Timothy because of another thread in which he expressed similar thoughts about Luke and Paul. If that assumption was mistaken, I hope Steve corrects me and lets me know which back reference he had in mind.

Ben.

spamandham

I know this thread is a year old, but the point has been raised again, and I see that the posters here are still active, so, here goes.

I agree that Paul either viewed Jesus as a historical person, or is using mystical allegory. I won't address these points, since my interest at the moment is strictly with answering the question of whether or not Paul's Jesus is likely a contemporary of Paul (assuming Paul viewed Jesus as a historical human). So...

Paul also refers to 'the 500 brethren' as receiving visions. If James is seen as a blood brother, are not the 500 also?

I don't think it's relevant when Paul thinks Jesus rose, because Paul also talks about going up to the 3rd heaven to talk to Jesus. Paul's vision of resurrection is something other than a bodily resurrection where you remain on earth. So Paul may indeed have believed Jesus rose recently from the dead. If so, that doesn't tell us when Jesus died.

Again, this implies a recent resurrection at best, not a recent death. The harvest includes Adam and Abraham as well, presumably.

1 Corinthians 15.3
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

Is Paul claiming a fullfillment of prophecy here, in which case you might expect 'died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures', or is he directly telling us that the idea of Jesus dying for our sins is derived from the scriptures 'died for our sins, according to the scriptures'? Ben, you know Greek and I don't. Is it clear?

The idea that Jesus did away with the law seems to be uniquely Paul's. Paul harps on the Jerusalem church over and over for still adhering to the law, and the detente they came up with, in which Paul would minister only to the gentiles, is and admission that the idea was not seriously considered by the Jerusalem church. Yet Paul admits to never knowing Jesus personally, so this is hardly evidence that Paul deems Jesus death as recent. Instead, it's evidence that Paul viewed his vision as empowering Paul.

This is the most significant point to support the idea that Paul viewed Jesus as a recent historical figure. I think it deserves it's own thread.

Ben C Smith

Okay. And, just to be clear, I am trying to get at what Paul is thinking. He never explicitly says that Jesus lived a few years ago. But it is clear that he is imagining some timeframe for the crucifixion and resurrection, even if a bit vaguely, since he says that God sent Jesus in the fullness of time and that Jesus died at the right time. The question is what timeframe Paul is thinking of.

You are simply mistaken, unless you are doing something weird with 1 Corinthians 15.4:

...and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures....

(Or unless you think Paul is imagining he was buried only decades or better after his death!)

It is ambiguous. You say you would expect something like in accordance with the scriptures, but that would be the same phrase in Greek as we find in those verses. See Romans 2.6, for example, where the phrase according to his deeds cannot be designating a source of information; rather, it means that a man will receive rewards in accordance with, or corresponding to, his deeds.

That may be so, but it still gives us a clue as to when Paul thought Jesus died. Loosely, if his death did away with the law, and if the doing away of the law is only a recent thing, then his death must be recent.

As for James the brother of the Lord, I agree that he could be called that for some reason other than blood kinship; I hold that blood kinship is the most probable option (mainly because the title does not seem casual, as if it meant brother in the Lord or such, and we have no other evidence of a special group called the brothers of the Lord, while we would need no other evidence of the word brother being used to mean brother).

However, we do not even have to quite accept this point as probable in order for the cumulative argument (in which I used Mark as a foil for Paul) to take effect. (If you are unsure what a cumulative argument entails, please let me know.)

I think this would be the right thread for it.

Ben.

spamandham

Nothing wierd, an error on my part.

I don't see Jesus' death as the direct instrument for doing away with the law, from Paul's perspective. Instead, it seems Paul views his own revelation as the autorizing act for that.

What about the '500 brethren'?

I don't see how anything Mark writes is relevant toward trying to get inside the mind of Paul.

andrewcriddle

Does this passage from Romans 5 imply that the death of Christ occurred only a short time before the beginning of the preaching of the Christian gospel ?

IMO it does. At least what Paul says here about Christ dying for his enemies would be very much weakened, if in fact the benefits of Christ's death only became available after those who had rejected Jesus and put him to death had themselves died and been replaced by the next generation.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

That depends on what Paul means when he says 'we' in the passage. It seems to me he's using it to identify a class of people, to whom he belongs, and nothing more. If that's the case, then there is no implication that the redemptive act happened recently.

How would you expect Paul to have worded it differently, if in Paul's mind, Jesus were a figure from the foggy distant past?


"We kicked you German's butts in WWII" in no implies that WWII happened within the lifetimes' of the speaker or her audience.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

I think you do an excellent job of proving conclusively that Paul never considered Jesus as an historical contemporary human being.

While Earl Doherty spends hundreds of pages explaining the evidence, you simply assemble the relevant passages and let them speak for themselves. This is perhaps a more eloquent manner of proof.

Your trick of giving an opposite interpretation to the passages, saying eactly the opposite of what the passages say, I assume, is to see who is really paying attention and who has fallen asleep.

Take for example your evidence about Paul regarding Jesus as a "real human being in real human history, not from the age of myth." You point out five key passages: 1, Corinthians 15:22,45, Galatians: 3.16, Romans 10.4, and Romans 1.3. These five passages point directly to the conclusion that at least one writer of the Pauline epistles did not regard the Christ as a real human being in real human history but as real spiritual being in a secret and mystical, alternative, interpretive spiritual history, i.e., in a mythological age.

1, Corinthians 15:22: For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.


In order to understand this passage, we need to understand that, biologically speaking, the people of Paul's time considered that sperm contained homunculi -- super-tiny little men. These super-tiny little men also contained sperm containing more super-tiny little men. All men were contained in the original Adam created by God. Paul, by calling Christ "a second Adam" is saying that Christ is not one of the homunculi that comes from Adam. In other words, Christ is not from the human (Adamic) species, but from an entirely different species.

Later, Saint Augustine would argue that masturbation was murder because you were killing all the homunculi that God had created in your sperm by not depositing them in a warm place, a woman's womb, where they could grow to become full-sized human beings.

This passage demonstrates that Paul did not think of the Christ (annointed one) as a contemporary man or man at all, but a figure from the time of creation, the very beginning of history.

1. Corinthians 15:45: And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

If we assume that "Adam" stands for a human male, then obviously Jesus cannot be the "last Adam" for Paul has to consider himself a human male and how can Paul be alive later than the "last Adam". This reinforces what was said above that the creation of Adam and the Christ took place at the same time.

Adam was the first Adam, but he was an experiment gone wrong. Right after him, God fixed things by creating his second and last Adam, the anointed one, a perfect spiritual being not made from the clay of the earth and therefore the real and only true son of God.

Galatians: 3.16: Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. 17: And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.

Here Paul is distinguishing between Jews and Christians. The promise (of eternal life?) was made to Abraham and his seed, the Jews, 430 years after it was made to Christ. So the Christians got the promise first. This indicates that the Christ existed before Abraham and the Jews.

Romans 10.4: For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. 5: For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.

Adam is an inferior being, while Christ is a perfect being. The Jews got the law to bring the children of Adam up to the level of Christ. The "end of the law" refers here to the purpose of the law, not to any time frame. Paul suggests that Moses, in his five books, promotes the idea that by obeying the Jewish law, a man can be a Christ. In this passage Christ should again be read as an ideal man or a true Platonic Man.

Romans 1.3: Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
4: And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

Here Paul is simply saying that the Jews (according to the Flesh) say that Jesus Christ is from the seed of David, while he (according to the spirit of holiness) says that by his resurrection from the dead, Christ was declared to be the son of God with power. Here the writer is saying that concept of the Christ had disappeared, the scriptures were no longer understood. They were dead. The concept of Christ had to be resurrected from the dead writings.

What these four passages demonstrate is that the writer had no idea of a Christ "born of woman, under the law" (a later interpolation), but had an idea of a Christ as a perfect spiritual being created at the dawn of time after Adam (God's second son, so to speak, but his only real son) and forgotten about until God allowed apostles like himself to resurrect (rediscover) him from reading and interpreting the Hebrew scriptures.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay