aa5874

But, "Paul" claimed over 500 people including the apostles, saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead, and that some of the 500 have now died.

There is a problem with the heavenly crucifixion. It is clear that Paul is claiming Jesus was crucified and died on earth and was seen by people on earth.

bacht

Why not a group vision? This is the only place where Paul can be construed to mention an earthly Jesus. Wouldn't this have come up in his conflict with the Jerusalem "pillars" described in Galatians? What's to prevent us from thinking of the early believers as mystics, maybe fasting to induce hallucinations?

aa5874

A group what? How could Paul be so lucky.

And what are Paul's "pillars"? I need a source external of Paul to verify his whereabouts.

The Church could not find Paul. No-one really knows who Paul was.

bacht

Yes yes I know. There are at least two ways to play this game, either sift through the texts with the idea that some of it is reliable, or just dump it all as mythology. We all know you don't accept the idea of a single 1st C Paul.


Here's the passage from 1 Corinthians 15:

3 For I delivered to you, as of prime importance, what also I received:
that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
4 and that he was buried,
and that he has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures,
5 and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve;
6 afterward he was seen by over 500 brothers at one time, most of whom
are still alive, though some have fallen asleep;
7 afterward he was seen by James, then by all the apostles;
8 last of all, as to one abnormally born, he was seen by me as well.


Nothing here about Calvary or Pilate. If Paul "saw" Jesus the same way as Cephas and James then it couldn't have been the Galilean prophet we all know from the gospels. If this passage was created later why wouldn't the author have been plainer about the physical presence of JC?

spamandham

Which means it might be fiction. It could just as easily be legend or myth. These are not the same things, and there is no way to tell the difference between them without knowing something about the author and his motives. Fiction is a particular genre of literature in which the author knows that he is inventing an untrue story.

aa5874

The writer called Paul has made it clear that he recieved revelations from Jesus, so that is the way he "sees" Jesus.

And Paul is not interested in a physical Jesus, he wants the readers to believe he was in contact with Jesus who was in heaven.

The apostles saw Jesus on earth, but Jesus, while in heaven, revealed himself to Paul.

But, based on his conversion in Acts of the Apostles, it can clearly be seen that this is all legendary tales. Paul's conversion was faked and his revelations as described are implausible.

Paul, it would appear, had written text about the Jesus story and claimed these very stories were revealed to him, probably sometime after the writings of Justin Martyr and the Diatessaron by Tatian.,

JoeWallack

JW:
I think Christianity started with the belief that Jesus was resurrected. The practical problem is defining "resurrection" here. The easy part is determining the source of knowledge for the resurrection. Since resurrections are Impossible the source must be Revelation. No need to go through ancient testimony and guess what was original, what was edited and what was forged. Even though all this is evidence for the resurrection (with Apologies to Doug) we can still be absolutely certain that it was not historical.

The question is who's Revelation got it started? I see two great houses fighting, House HarKohenen and House ATrinity, I see plans with plans with Jewprints, I see London, I see through RT FRance and I see two possible extremes for the Revelations:

1) Paul has the original revelation that Jesus was resurrected. The historical followers of Jesus did not believe this.

2) The historical followers of Jesus have the original Revelations that Jesus was resurrected. Paul did not believe them until he had his own Revelation.

I suspect that as usual the truth lies somewhere in between. If Jesus had historical disciples than I can practically guarantee that they dreamed about him after he died. They probably thought of him as a martyr to some extent depending on how he died. Therefore, I find it logical that Jesus' historical followers claimed some type of "contact" with him after he died and thought that his death had some type of atonement value. It would also appear that the Law was still important to these followers.

My guess is that Paul flipped their priorities regarding the relative significance of Jesus and the Law. Paul's core beliefs are that Jesus' was fully resurrected in Spirit and his death was the means of atonement. Thus the Ritual Law was not needed anymore for atonement.

This explains the relationship, albeit an uneasy one, between Historical witness and Paul. They do share beliefs regarding Jesus' resurrection and atonement value but to significantly different extents.

Paul's Revelation is quite believable. Nothing Impossible about it. He has a vision that a resurrected Jesus appeared to him and instructed him. Compare the Paul of Paul to the Paul of Acts. Paul's Paul gives us a Possible narrative, where he went, who he talked to and what you should believe. It sounds like History. Act's Paul is long on the Impossible narrative. It sounds like Fiction.




Joseph

Amaleq13

If you imagine that I have ever or would ever argue that the resurrection was historical, I have significantly underestimated the depth of your confusion.

JoeWallack

JW:
Just a dig at what I saw as an inability on your part to distinguish between evidence and proof. As always I have Faith that you consider the resurrection Impossible and despite our differences in this Thread I consider you one of the most objective posters here (Hence my willingness to engage you which I normally don't do here).



Joseph

bacht

There are two supernatural elements at play: belief in resurrection, and belief in eschatology.

The conviction that the end was near is the simplest way to explain Paul's loosening of Torah rules for gentile believers in the 1st C. By the 2nd C the destruction of Judea and the predominance of gentiles in the churches reinforced this tendency.

Or we can just relegate Paul to myth and follow the development of Christian beliefs outside of Jewish circles. Same result: Torah is set aside and apocalypticism morphs into mysticism.