Afghan

Okey doke... as Historicism versus Mythicism seems to be the order of the day today I thought I'd give it a go. I've got to be honest, I'm no historian or textual critic and my Greek is very very rusty. So it would be a bit stupid of me to go in all guns blazing. But that doesn't seem to have stopped a helluvalot of other people.

Cards on table, I'm not particularly impressed with the Mythicist position but, as I say, I'm no expert so my unimpressedness is of a rather vague and intuitive nature. So I expect my concerns about it are rather insubstantial and I pose them out of a kind of snarky curiosity rather than any sentiment of you're-so-wrong-it-bleeds.

Paul, 'e says, learned about Jesus Christ, from Peter and James, the brother of Lord, (Galatians 1:18-20, I believe). So if the HJers are to be believed, these were Galilean fishermen or Nazarene carpenters (perhaps) who trailed around Judaea after a rather cryptic Diogenes-a-like who ended up nailed to a couple of planks of wood having been stitched by the Sanhedrin. Along comes Paul, persecutes them for a bit, gets pissed off at the Pharisees he's been working for, switches sides, has his own rather antinomist ideas about what Christianity is, argues with Peter a bit and then writes a few letters which gloss over the biographical details because well (a) ol' Pete's got that one sewn up and Paul does much better on the Stoic idealism side of it and (b) they rather embarrassingly demonstrate that Jesus was an observant Jew.

Alternatively, if you go with MJers, Peter and James were brilliant syncretists who combined Jewish messianic expectations with Platonic and Stoic idealism and worked in a few mystery cult elements to boot. Presumably these guys who peopled the sublunary realm with Christs and Archons and all that had read a bit of Plato and Philo and few others besides... in Greek as well.

And yet they didn't write a word.

The other people who didn't write a word, according to the Mythicists, were the ones who saw that what was plainly intended to be a bit Platonic mystery being turned into 'historical fact' from around the procurate of Pontius Pilate (praenomen unknown). The other people, who had got it into their heads that it was a 'historical fact', didn't write anything either saying how wrong, stupid and wicked the first lot of people who didn't write anything were. This is slightly puzzling as if there was one thing that early Christians enjoyed doing it was writing about how other early Christians were completely wrong, stupid and wicked.

So how do Mythicists account for these pre- and post- Pauline silences?

And yes I realise that the above reads slightly mockingly. I do not intend to mock the very able scholarship of Mythicists which far exceeds my own. I have just become slightly unhinged byreading the umpteenth inconclusive Martini-dry exposition on κατα σαÏ?κα.

Toto

Where did Paul say this? Actually he said that the risen Christ appeared to him, and that's where he learned everything. Historicists have invented the conversations between Paul and Peter and James, but there is no record of them or reason to think that they existed.

The Mythicists do not figure Peter or James as the originators of Christianity.

We don't know that they were silent. We know that the church burned documents that it didn't like and edited others.

Afghan

So Galatians 1 and 2 are heavily interpolated and Paul actually got it direct from God?

Well then... you have an even longer silence to explain.

Adversus Haereses, for instance, remains intact.

Diogenes the Cynic

Galatians 1:11-12

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul claims in Galatians and in I Corinthians 15 that he received his entire gospel directly from Jesus. In Galatians he claims he met the "Pillars" but he does not claim that he learned anything about Jesus from them and he didn't meet them until after his revelations from Jesus. Indeed, it's not even especially clear who Paul perceives the Pillars to be or how he perceived their relationship to Jesus. Their Gospel characterizations as direct followers of an HJ may or may not have anything to do with how Paul knew or thought of them.

Afghan

Well how do Mythicists think Paul thought of them then?

Edited to add:
And, more importantly, how do Mythicists think Peter and company saw themselves.

Amaleq13

The first to recognize the gospel message hidden in Scripture, the first to have the Risen Christ appear to them and the first to begin preaching the newly revealed gospel.

Afghan

So the gospel and the Risen Christ were innovations of the "Apostles who came before [Paul]" and not Paul himself? These then were presumably literate men if they were able to carry out such a Philo-esque exegesis of Scripture, combined with the more mystic themes of triumph over death and Platonic/Stoic themes of liberation from the carnal sphere.

Diogenes the Cynic

It doesn't have to be that sophisticated. One revelation of Jesus could be enough to start the ball rolling for Paul to do the exegesis.

The origins of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem are still pretty obscure. Burton Mack says that it grew as pretty much a wisdom tradition in small communities who gradually compiled Q and attributed more and more sayings to "Jesus." From there it isn't such a great leap for someone to "see" Jesus in a vision. At this point, it wouldn't even be necessary for Jesus to be seen as the kind of salvic, divine "Christ" that Paul conceived of. He could simply be perceived as a mediator between God and man, as a teacher, a prophet or a looming Messiah (one who is about to come but has not yet). We just don't know what the Pillars really thought or believed but they don't necessarily have to be as they are portrayed in the Gospels. It is entirely possible that Mark "created" the apostolic characters from nothing but Paul's own sketchy references.

Amaleq13

A gospel of the Risen Christ was an innovation of the earlier Apostles. Whether their gospel and Paul's were identical is another question. I think you'll find many "historicists" who think Paul provided his own innovations. Did they approve of Paul's gospel because it was the same or because it contained nothing to which they objected as long as the gentile converts kept the cash coming in? According to Paul, somebody was preaching a "false gospel" as "false apostles" and they appear to have felt it necessary for gentiles to fully convert to Judaism as at least part of their "false" teachings.

TedM

Maybe one revelation to Paul, but Paul didn't live in a vacuum. Paul's gospel that he received from no man wasn't the one that existed among those he was persecuting. Paul surely already knew what those he violently persecuted were claiming. So, Paul's "gospel" was something else. I think he makes it clear in a number of places that it was a message of salvation beyond Jews alone, to Gentiles.

But, what was the message about the pre-death Jesus that Paul had heard? Not clear because Paul doesn't say what others told him about it (if anything), beyond the creed in 1 Cor 15, which starts with Jesus' death..

I find it interesting that Paul seems to have been very concerned with what the Pillars thought, though. He wanted to please them for some reason. And, I find it interesting that when defending his status as an apostle he said "Have I not seen Jesus"?


From what I've seen the case that Mark knew or borrowed from Paul is quite weak.

I find the idea that a historical Jesus who lived around 30AD was ENTIRELY created by writers between 70 and 90 AD very unlikely. The evidence would have to favor much later dates to make that plausible, IMO.

ted