Didymus

Jerusalem surely had great iconic significance. It would be essential for Paul to make a pilgrimage, however belated, to the seat of Judaism, the purported source of his faith. Of course, "pilgrimming" was different then; Paul made no mention of the holy places.

Paul may have visited a few stalwart members of the "church of God" in the city. And they probably talked theology into the night. But that's not evidence of a thriving community. A tiny, struggling one, perhaps.

Didymus

Sparrow

Well there comes a time when all the evidence that can be beaten out of the horse has been gathered and it's time to turn one's attention to a horse of a different color.

Do you suppose linguists in 2000 years will look at the previous sentence as referring to a horse that's kata sarka? Spiritual, Physical or Fictitious?



Did you say something similar to some Danish cartoonists recently?

J-D

According to the gospel accounts, if that’s what you want to go by, popular response to Jesus was what alarmed the religious hierarchy and prompted them to move against him. But why do you want to go by the gospel accounts? Why are they now the standard you want to judge by?Indeed they don’t make sense. Why then would you want to use them as a standard to judge by?What’s that supposed to mean? What risks are you talking about?Are you suggesting that estimates of likelihood shouldn’t be made at all? But then, how would you describe what you are doing in this discussion? You’ve admitted you don’t have airtight proof, so you can only be discussing likelihoods.Obviously background information influences estimates of probability. The question, which you seem to be evading, is which of two scenarios is more likely given what background information we have.Once again, I don’t know why you’re dragging the gospel into this. I didn’t say anything about the gospel. Nor do I take the gospel ‘as gospel’, so to speak. I posed a question about which of two scenarios, one of which was the one you had just hypothesised, was more likely, and although I didn’t say so explicitly, I meant this to be understood as asking which was more likely against the background of general historical, psychological, and sociological knowledge. Perhaps you don’t feel capable of making such an estimate. I do.Exactly what I think. And that is exactly why I considered your scenario of the crucified deranged man to be, not impossible, but less likely than the alternative I mentioned, given general background knowledge and in the absence of specific additional evidence bearing on the point.How do you know that James the Just had no following? Josephus’s account refers to others accused with him: the fact that he is named and they aren’t suggests to me the likelihood that he was a leader and they his followers, or perhaps subordinate leaders. And incidentally, if this group weren’t Christians, who or what do you think they were and why do you think they would have been accused?

Didymus

Hmmm. Sounds like the opposite of the criterion of Embarrassment. If it goes down too easily, be afraid!

Yes, the connection seems to have been made without difficulty, at least among gentiles and God-fearers in the Diaspora. It seems to have been an idea whose time had come.

Of course, Palestine Jews were written off early on. They knew firsthand that something was fishy.

Nor would a VMJ. Keep in mind that Paul is writing in the Diaspora 20 years after the alleged crucifixion. So Jesus at that point is, in terms of firsthand knowledge of his life, a "mythical/spiritual being."

I have been well-persuaded by Ben C Smith's arguments for a literal reading, which start with http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...99#post3454599 cf.

If it's taken literally, Gal 1.19 is almost as troublesome to the "virtual MJ" idea as it is to standard MJ theory, to which it's fatal, IMO. So far, I have not found any "difficulty" in VMJ that's more problematic than BOTL. (This does not say that there isn't one lurking in the bushes!)

AFAIK, this is the only time in the entire NT where the writer claims to have met with a living, breathing eyewitness to Jesus' life. So it's very tempting to view it as an abberation, a fluke of some kind. A well-evidenced interpolation theory would solve a lot of problems, so I'd certainly like to hear your reasons for tossing Gal 1.19 into the Pseudegraphia Dumpster. Can you cite sources on this?

But, assuming that we must take it literally or "near" literally, how can it be explained in light of the virtual MJ idea? It seems like we're once again forced to conjure up unevidenced scenarios. But at least in virtual MJ Paul is allowed to think of Jesus as a human being. (As George Bush might unabashedly point out, human beings have brothers!) Here are some possibilities:

Scenario 1. Literal: James was the surviving brother of the man who was crucified. As the stories surrounding his brother grew, he carried on in Jerusalem as a church leader.

Leaving aside the "stories" part, that's the standard Protestant Christian position, minus certain implications (see below).

But wait! The virtual MJ idea posits that Jesus' actual life story was unknown. Wouldn't James have known about his brother's life? Wouldn't he have confirmed historicity and corrected false beliefs?

The answer is "not necessarily." At least not unless we work from a whole boatload of weak assumptions: all brothers keep in touch; all brothers are raised together; all brothers know what has happened to their siblings over the years. In fact, it's possible, if unevidenced, that the first time James met his brother Jesus as an adult, was in Jerusalem just before the Trial. But there's a problem with this, too. Neither Paul nor the gospel authors hint at such a "long lost brother" scenario.

Scenario 2. Near-literal: James, a leading figure in Jerusalem when Jesus arrived there, realized that this saintly man was in trouble and tried to protect him in a brotherly fashion. To accomplish that, he could have even claimed Jesus was his brother.

In either Scenario, VMJ permits Paul to refer to James as "the brother of the Lord" without implying that he met with a man who had been Jesus' companion during his earthly ministry in Galilee. And of course, there'd be no worries about Paul claiming to have met the brother of a mythical being.

Whenever it's necessary to speculate like this, it's a problem for the theory. But no Jesus theory is without such difficulty. As I've said, at this stage this approach to BOTL seems to me the least problematic. And there may be other VMJ-friendly approaches that I haven't thought of.

Yes, I think it is a very difficult issue for MJ. And one that is solved nicely by VMJ.:blush: But who knows? Maybe the ethnicities of the Middle East have divided up the uberwelt and are up there amongst the spheres, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons, praying for divine retribution, etc.!

Didymus

Didymus

C&V re "popular response," please.

I don't; they are not; they don't, and I don't. But you brought them up!

I'll recast this, to clarify:

The former, inasmuch as the allegedly preserved "memory" doesn't exist. It has turned out to be fiction derived from the OT and other ahistorical sources.

There is always a risk of believing that a high-probablility event took place when it actually did not. And the further risk of basing far-reaching conclusions on that belief. There's a lot more to say about this subject, but I'm not interested in spending more time responding to your post.

Again, the VMJ scenario. I hope you are satisfied now. But I don't understand why a rude accusation was necessary.

Fine. But you hypothesized that "the memory of a crucified preacher would be preserved after his death by those who followed him in life." Silly me, I took that to refer to the gospels. If that sentence does NOT refer to the gospels, exactly what preserved "memory of a crucified preacher" do you have in mind?

If you know about James' following, and what they did, and what they believed, by all means share.

Didymus

J-D

I don't have direct evidence. What I have is indirect inference from, what seems to me to be, for reasons I have touched on in other posts, the difficulty of constructing an account of the origins of the Christian religious movement which doesn't begin with the following of a historical individual in Palestine.I would be interested in seeing evidence for a starting locality for the origins of the Christian movement in the Diaspora. Or an indirect inferential argument in support of such a locality, for that matter.

dog-on

Didymus, regarding 1 Galations 1:18-20:

Here it is from the NIV, starting at verse 17:

17nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

18Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. 19I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother. 20I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

Verse 20 is referrencing verse 19 and (maybe 18 well). Why does Paul need to add verse 20? He makes no other comment regarding this so called "Lord's brother" and this so-called meeting was made irrelevant, especially in light of verses 11-12:

11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

The other odd thing is what Paul says in verses 22-23, which could read, "And was unknown by face to the churches...":

22I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23They only heard the report: "The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." 24And they praised God because of me.

Verse 21 seems to break the flow, since verse 22-23 seem to refer back to verse 18 and seem not break the flow if 18-20 weren't originally there:

21Later I went to Syria and Cilicia.


In Galations 2:1 the word "again" [palin] would then also be an addition. The account of the meeting with the "Pillars" and the events surrounding it seem more like a first meeting. If Paul had, indeed, met Peter earlier, it doesn't seem like they actually spoke about their "gospels". Which would also seem strange considering who these guys were.

I think that verses 18-20 are a later interpolation that the Orthodoxy used to "rehabilitate" Paul of the letters to the Paul of Acts.

dog-on

Take a look at this:

Frank R. McGuire: Did Paul write Galatians? 1967-68

http://www.radikalkritik.de/in_engl.htm

I don't think that, at this time, it is necessary to go quite as far with the argument as McGuire, but he does raise valid points concerning the whole Paul/Jerusalem problem. This and the issues I point to in my previous post should lead one to at least seriously consider interpolation as likely.

dog-on

Didymus, I read the Ben C. Smith's argument in the link you provided. Though his argument could make sense if the passage is original (even in this case it would not be conclusive), he completely fails to address (from what I read), what is evidently, a strong case for interpolation in Galatians.

Didymus

Thanks, dog-on, for the summary and the link. I'll spend some time with McGuire's article and let you know what I think. I'll also try to ascertain what others think about it.

I must admit I'm favorably disposed, since an interpolated Galatians would eliminate (what I think at this stage is) the biggest difficulty with VMJ. But that's obviously not a sound reason to accept McGuire. It has to stand or fall on its own merits.

Didymus