DCHindley

Originally I just wanted to find out where arguments ended, as there seem to be so many digressions. While engaged in that task, I started to notice that in clear "digressions" of any length had those two characteristics (God without a definite article, and Lord with the definite article to refer only to Jesus/Christ), and that the connected arguments had pretty much the opposite characteristics, and appeared to have to do with gentile Justification. None of the christological digressions appeared to contribute to the connected arguments, but often in fact contradicted them. I have to reserve the right to use observations about the two groups of text in untangling the more difficult sections.

And boy did I ever try to salvage Jesus, or Christ, as in some way relevant to these connected arguments. In the beginning of this investigation, I was a faithful, although inquisitive, Christian. It was not what I wanted to be the case, but what I believed the evidence was telling me.

"It" was what Paul had originally instructed the Corinthians. I probably should have said ""i.e., He hadn't changed the good news he himself received, and passed on to them."

As I had said, there must have been some sort of "faithful gentile reconciliation" movement previous to Paul. What is funny is that everyone finds it impossible to believe that Christianity had nothing to do with Paul's efforts to legitimize the reconciliation of Jews and faithful gentiles. Based on hints about "that Day" it was likely an eschatological expectation coupled with the idea of the resurrection of the just in the inauguration of a blessed future age. There were gentiles who wanted to be part of that.

However, it does not appear that the Jesus movement had anything to do with these future hopes. I think that the belief was that God would bring this age to fruition without human intervention, and that any messiah would be leading it after it was inaugurated.

Paul's movement was city centered, and integrated into existing society. The Jesus movement, on the other hand, originated in rural Judaea, promoting the inauguration of a messianic age by human intervention. Those who I think radicalized it were once gentile converts to Judaism, circumcised and all, who in response to the failure of the Jewish rebellion of 66-74 CE, came to the realization that things could not happen as they had been taught. They had already burned their bridges with their relatives and now many Jews looked upon messianic converts with a good deal of suspicion.

Rather than believe that their belief in the messianic age was in error, they rationalized it away as God's just judgement on Jews for their wicked thoughts of rebellion, and Jesus must have had a different function in God's plan for history than what those evil Jews had taught them. Enter Jesus as a redeemer.

DCH

Notsri

The more "complex paraenesis" tends, to my knowledge, to be largely limited to letters from members of the philosophical sects, and appears in somewhat less sophisticated form in a fair number of the early Christian letters, including those of the apostle Paul. The brief familial letters of, say, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, on the other hand, rarely contain paraenesis, and if so only in a very simple, succint manner.

But the point was not that they "couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't or didn't write them"; rather, it was simply that there is no evidence they did, and a bowdlerized version of Paul hardly seems credible evidence to the contrary.

In any case, the Jewish letters stemming from religious interests which do survive, do not contain the type of lengthy and sometimes discursive paraenesis of the apostle Paul, but are brief and merely administrative in purpose, being used to regulate halachic practice. Notice Yerushalmi Maaser Sheni 5:4:

[Rabban Gamaliel] to our brethren, those of the Babylonian diaspora, those of the Medean diaspora, and those of the Grecian diaspora and all the rest of the diasporas of Israel, may your peace increase! I inform you that the lambs are tender and the doves are thin and the time for the ripening [of the grain] has not arrived. Therefore, it is proper in my eyes and in the eyes of my colleagues to add to this year thirty days.

Or Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:6:

[Rabban Gamaliel] to our brethren, residents of Upper Galilee and residents of Lower Galilee, may your peace increase! I inform you that the time for the removal has come, to separate the tithes from the olive vats.

Also, from an earlier period, 2 Maccabees 1:1-9:

The Jewish brethren in Jerusalem and those in the land of Judea, to their Jewish brethren in Egypt, greeting, and good peace. May God do good to you, and may he remember his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, his faithful servants... In the reign of Demetrius... [w]e besought the the Lord and we were heard, and we offered sacrifice and cereal offering, and we lighted the lamps and we set out the loaves. And now see that you keep the feast of booths in the month of Chislev, in the the one hundred and eighty-eighth year.

These letters then find their nearest Christian analogue in the Jerusalem council's encyclical letter of Acts 15:23-29, but, obviously, not in the Pauline letters. Again, your version of Paul would be entirely unique for that period, so far as the evidence goes.

archibald

Hi again DCH. :]

My initial reaction is '?'

Because I can't say I noticed digressions.

Well, this is getting back to my specific query. Basically, I don't quite understand what you mean, or what significance should be attached to, 'God without a definite article, and Lord with the definite article to refer only to Jesus/Christ' Can I just clarify that I'm willing to admit that my not understanding may have, at least in part, to do with a shortage of expertize in Greek. However, I hope I'm not immune to the benefits of having things explained to me. :]

Specifically, I was also asking how this operated in relation to the rather extended passage from 1 Cor 15: 3-8. So, I was hoping you could clarify.

And to repeat myself, I trust you accept that it's reasonable for me to be initially skeptical, until such time as some experts (in Classical Greek, for example) respond to your theory, and/or until there is some corroborating evidence of the Pauline scenario you think pertained (i.e. the 'evidence' referred to in the post above mine). Otherwize, you have a rather unique explanation.

Part of what I want to know is, is your methodology for detecting interpolations a good one and/or does it deviate from, or fail to apply, any commonly accepted methodologies for detecting interpolations?


Yes, but what was this 'it'?


Must have been?


I take it there is evidence.

Well, I don't know of anyone who thinks that Christianity had nothing to do with it. I believe that most people think that Paul integrated Jesus into it, not because it was a digression, but because he integrated it.

This is the hub of my query about 'digressions'. If Paul was a Jew, perhaps developing a personal version of Jewish theology, and Christianity was originally a sect within Judaism, then..........him bringing Jesus into the mix is not a digression at all, and if we take Jesus out and are left with something more plainly Pre-Jesus Jewish, that doesn't strike me as something we wouldn't obviously expect.

So, I think your analysis, at the moment, seems to hinge heavily, not on such speculation, but on this Greek Grammar think indicating wholesale interpolation by a different author.




I am unclear as to why you think it likely (if you do) that this 'Jesus Movement' did not predate Paul, and additionally, was not the sect he originally persecuted, then joined.


Right. So are we at least agreed that it was likely Jesus existed and that he was the messiah of this messianic age?

I think you mentioned that you have him as some sort of Royal claimant. Perhaps the two aren't mutually exclusive. If you think they are, and that he was a Royal claimant but not an eschatological prophet, then on what evidential basis would you make this distinction?

Cheers,

A.

DCHindley

Letting go of the idea that any key to unlocking the Pauline puzzle has to do with Christ doctrine, for me, was extremely difficult. Even those who have treated all of the Pauline letters as forged also think the clues to why they were written has to do with analyzing the Christ doctrine.

I think they signify differences of authorship.

Why do you think he has to say so? Presumably the recipients already knew. However, he goes into an exposition about resurrection, so we can probably assume it had something to do with that.

Which part do you mean? The connecting dots part or the definite article part? There are several definitions of "interpolation" out there. What they all have in common is that they interrupt the flow of the text. They range from scribal glosses to commentary to wholesale insertion of one to three word phrases

I thought what I pointed to was evidence.

Naaah. As I noted earlier, the christological material does not have to be there to make the case that faithful gentiles are declared righteous in God's sight. Gentiles being declared righteous on the basis of their faith in God's promises to Abraham don't advance a theology that regards Jesus' death as vicarious atonement for sins. As the former statements are the only ones that form a connected narrative, I feel that they should be considered the primary message.

Actually, I did not say that the Jesus movement did or did not predate Paul. I only said that a member of the Jesus movement that came to be known as Christians at some point interpolated Paul's letters to make them "Christian". If you look at the interpolations in isolation, they are erratic and not especially in tune with one another, but certainly view Jesus as a divine redeemer figure. These beliefs are implied in the Gospels and Acts. Hebrews, which makes its appearance late in the transmission history of the Pauline corpus, was written to explain them in a rational way. To me, that suggests that the interpolator operated after Paul, but before the writing of Gospels/Acts (which may not have been aware of the interpolated Paulines), and Hebrews, which honed the Christology of the letters to a fine polish. Thus, there is demonstrated a progressive development of christ doctrine, from wild (Pauline interpolations) to mild (Gospels & Acts) to refined (Hebrews).

Since it is incumbant for me to explain where such a movement came from, I have to turn to Jesus as a teacher about the coming of a messianic age, which some at least of his followers thinking he himself might be leading it in as the messiah, after whose death came to believe Jesus would be resurrected to lead in the messianic age, and some of these ultimately became so disillusioned by the failed rebellion and the social effects that it brought that they had to reinterpret Jesus again, this time choosing the role of a heavenly redeemer. (puff, wheeze, man, try to say all that in one breath!) This is not too far off of the reconstructions of NT scholars.

DCH

archibald

I'll start with this , because it seems crucial to the overall discussion between you and me, from where I'm coming at it.

Yes, I do not see anything particularly controversial here.

It's true that I did originally think you were advancing a proto-myther case, even when you opted for 'royal claimant' (by which I initially thought you meant instead of eschatological prophet, but apparently you didn't).

However, I did also get the impression (and maybe I am wrong again here) that some other posters were taking your 'wholesale interpolated Paul' and incorporating it into their myth cases. That, if true, wouldn't be your fault, but since I'm sceptical abut MJ, it may still be a reason for me to want to (respectfully) drill into your scenario.

{..drilling sound from offstage....}

Yes, but precisely why do you necessarily think this? I mean, most scholars who have scrutinized the Epistles, and in some cases agreed that there is pseudepigraphicism (phew. Is that actually a word? Probably not) going on, do not seem to think so.

And, in relation to 1 Cor 15 3-8, how come you bracket a lengthy passage, whereas elsewhere you only bracket a word? I mean, I can guess, in principle, that you would say the larger passage needs to be removed because it's inherently associated, but I'm not sure how you make the decisions about where to cut and where not to cut on evidential grounds, rather than because it fits your scenario beforehand.

I'm not yet even clear on why you think the same writer couldn't have used both forms of address, in different textual contexts. Also, is there a pattern in other texts which suggests that this was not the done thing?

This is fine, as speculation.

However, I do have to say that there would appear to be LESS of a digression if the material was left in. This does not rule out a 'swop', but if anything, postulated swops are arguably one tiny step further in the direction of speculation, and away from parsimony.



Yes, but how much can a reliable methodology rely on 'interrupting the flow of the text'? This would seem to leave the matter so wide open to subjective perception and interpretation of what the flow of the text 'should' be that it's hardly a persuasive tool.

And it must be noted, as far as I am aware, that for almost all academics, and certainly this is the case for relatively inexpert little ol' me, the text seems pretty coherent with the material left in.

It seemed to me you merely painted a possible scenario. Though there may be wires crossing between us.


I accept your right to have a theory. And I note your caveats about it being your personal view. I'm just still wondering why I should consider it likely. :]

Cheers,

A.

archibald

I am having a bit of genuine trouble getting my head around this bit.

Are you saying......that Paul originally wrote to, say, a bunch of Romans who didn't believe in Jesus, or it seems any Christ or even actual messianic claimant, but then later, another bunch of 'Jesus movement' Romans heavily interpolated his letters, and that something similar happened in several other geographical locations, before the Gospels were written, and that the non-Jesus bunch morphed/melted away, leaving no trace?

Or do you think that the interpolaters got their hands on an early compiled set?

No, you don't seem to mean the latter.

But, if you are not saying the former either, are you then saying that he wrote to a bunch of churches who did know of a Jesus/Christ but that he just never mentioned this sort of thing even once when writing to them?