Toto

krosero - for "recently deceased" you are relying on this passage, (which some consider an interpolation in any case)

[B]1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (New International Version)

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

If you read what this says, Jesus died and was buried, and was raised on the third day "according to the scriptures." Then (who knows how long after?) he started appearing to people. There is no indication how long after he was raised that he appeared to the first of this group, or how long there was between the first appearance to Peter and the last to Paul.

This passage is very problematic for believers, because it is so hard to reconcile with the post-resurrection appearances in the gospels, and because Paul uses the same word for appearances for the other witnesses and himself - indicating that Jesus appeared as a vision to these people.

You are right when you say "I don't believe this picture I've painted has a chance of convincing a skeptic."

Clivedurdle

If the Pauline Epistles are pseudepigrapha(?), when might they have been written?

Clivedurdle

ps

Umm, who decides what is and what is not pseudepigrapha? Why are not all texts treated equally?

krosero

What you've offered here, including the linked essay, is essentially a challenge to the truthfulness of the passage, something I was not even pushing. I do say that there is a plain reading of the text -- not modern fundamentalist, but traditional for nearly two thousands years, and still defensible by HJ scholarship -- in which Paul testifies that Christ appeared to his own biological brother, and that Paul subsequently met this brother. I recall reading in one of Doherty's works that we have no indication Paul was speaking of a recently deceased person. When referring to other questions in Paul, such as whether Christ was born of a woman or buried or participated in any human activity, Doherty indicates that there is a traditional reading and then there is his own reading -- so when he brings up the "recently deceased" question and says that there is no indication of such, I don't hear him saying that he has a new interpretion; I hear him saying that no indications are to be found. I heard you saying the same thing above in this thread: no scholars have found it. The general argument seems to be that Paul's Christ -- whether in his cosmic role or his participation in seemingly human activities -- is entirely unrooted in time. There are no timelines in Paul; his Christ belongs to an unspecified time in the past. That is a serious misrepresentation of the data -- my only point here. In fact the plain, traditional reading has Paul testifying that Jesus died and appeared to his own biological brother, which means that Jesus and James were contemporaries; and Paul testifies to meeting James. There IS a "recently deceased" indication in Paul's authentic letters (and there are no manuscripts missing the relevant indications); Doherty should speak instead of a having a different interpretation, for which he needs only to invoke his argument that James is not a biological brother. At least then the data is fairly represented.

You say there is no indication how much time passed before the appearances to the first in the group, but they took place before the appearance to James, Christ's contemporary. How long before that and the last appearance to Paul? Well Paul does not say precisely -- but he testifes to meeting with James, making these two men also contemporaries. That is the primary argument for an indication of "recently deceased".

The supporting argument is that Paul says, "Now that Christ has been raised," indicating a recent event, the resurrection -- and he places that event "on the third day" after the death. The primary argument rests on "brother of the Lord" being biological; the secondary on accepting the phrase "on the third day" to refer to a span of two or three days. You can challenge these per Doherty, but you can't say the plain meanings don't exist.

The final and most general supporting argument is Paul's sense of urgency about a new event having occurred which has ushered in an urgent span of time in which some brothers in the Lord, to the confusion of some, have not tasted the final expected harvest and have fallen asleep: Paul's sense of a recently inaugurated time span expected to be brief and expected to end with Christ's return.

Do you deny, not that there are believable indications of a recently deceased person, but that there are plain indications of Christ's life and appearances occupying a relatively brief and recent time span? (I'm talking about Paul's language, not his ultimately believability).

spin

Let us assume the report is Pauline.

There is no evidence whatsoever for a real human christ. Paul defines the death as according to the scriptures. One doesn't need a real human christ for that. He was buried and raised on the third day, according to the scriptures. Who needs a real human christ for that? The scriptures were sufficient. It was all outside Paul's experience. He never saw anything. He was not a witness. It was merely all according to scripture. After that we have the appearances which require no real human christ. After all they are just appearances, ie he was "seen".

This appearance stuff is after all a third bite of the cherry: god fails to create a perfect world, Jesus fails to do the job when alive of reaching those who could choose to be saved, so now we get the appearances: "look you wouldn't believe me when I was alive. Go ahead, stick your finger in that."

No real human Jesus was necessary. If you believe in incorporeal appearances then fine: you don't need a real human christ either. I personally have difficulty attempting to fit the incredible into history, when there is no way of verifying it. One deals with the incredible only when it is more incredible not to do so.

Then how do you date the death of christ from such a passage. The events are only according to scripture, at least until after his death, and it is the life up to the death that we are interested in that we want to attempt to place in history. If we cannot date the hypothetical death of that hypothetical life, what use is it here in this thread?


spin

Amaleq13

No, it challenges the basis for the traditional interpretation of the passage.

Your primary argument relies on the assumption that James is the literal brother of Jesus. I agree that, if we accept this assumption, Paul can be understood as indicating a timeframe but we've seen that this assumption does not have a firm foundation. We really don't know what Paul meant by "the brother of the Lord" and the reference in Josephus identifying James as the brother of Jesus has been shown to be, at the very least, suspicious. Origen tells us that James was called "the brother of the Lord" because of his piety and virtue rather than being literally related. The Gospel stories certainly don't lend this assumption credibility either since they feature a different James as one of the three primary disciples from the one Paul describes as one of the three identically named "pillars" of the apostles. In fact, Mark's story depicts Jesus' entire family considering him crazy.

So, contrary to your primary argument, it is not clear that the James Paul describes as a "pillar" of the apostles was the literal sibling of Jesus so we really can't say that Paul provides a timeframe for a living Jesus.

Toto

The might have been written (or extensively rewritten) in 139 CE by Marcion or by a group of people. See The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles

This served a lesson to other freethinkers.

krosero

The NT authors probably did attest to certain things on prophecy alone. You certainly don't need a human Christ to justify the phrase "according to the scriptures." But certainly human beings can perceive an event (a death, or a resurrection) and say that it was according to the scriptures. That sort of searching back through your own belief system for connections with your present-day experience is very common. And it must have been common for a people whose concept of salvation history was that God intervened in real history and spoke about further interventions still to come, in the scriptures (per their belief).

But in any case these are points about the truthfulness of Paul's witness. I'd still like to know if Paul provides his own timeframe.

I attempted to date the death via Josephus and Pilate. My current point is about how far back in time from his own life Paul is speaking when he speaks of Jesus Christ. I don't think there's a way to use JUST Paul's letters and get the date of Christ's death.

Since Paul did not write the text of Josephus, the "James passage" there has no bearing on whether Paul regarded James to be a biological relative.

Origen says that St. Paul "calls this James the Lord’s brother, not so much on account of his kinsmanship or their companionship together, as on account of his character and language." That does not contradict Paul's conception of James as Jesus' kin: it seems positively to say that such a conception existed in Paul's mind but was much less important than Paul's regard for a person's human character and spiritual strength. To Paul, flesh was nothing as compared to spirit.

And again, Origen's opinion on Paul's thought, while relevant, could not have come from personally knowing Paul but from reading his letters and studying the same other data that we have.

It's been said that Paul's Jesus and the Gospels' Jesus, partly because they are described differently, are not the same person or cult figure. Here the argument is that Paul's James and the latter James (of Mark 6:3 and parallels, and Acts) is not the same person. My own position is that the ancient traditions developed. I believe that the Gospel Jesus is Paul's Jesus, though I don't believe that Paul would have found everything in the Gospels familiar (or possibly even correct). Same with James: by the time of the Gospels he's not an important figure anymore; his Easter vision is not mentioned, and Luke gives far more attention to Paul and Peter. Here we have hints that the Jerusalem church, perhaps the whole mission to the circumcised, was waning or in eclipse by the time of the Gospels; and we have one small indication that Paul's letters were written before the Gospels, since Paul still accounts James as one of the pillars, while the Gospels do not (this is a minor argument, though; it would need other supports).

But the Gospels do offer support for Origen's picture of James as someone whose kinship and companionship with Jesus were much smaller than his ultimate character: he thought Jesus was crazy during his lifetime. He was not much of a brother to Jesus at all while he lived.

Many arguments call the "liberal sibling" interpretation into question. I'm asking whether the literal sibling interpretation exists, whether it has not been the dominant one in Christian history, and why Doherty speaks as if no indications of a recently deceased person are to be found in Paul's authentic letters. Perhaps because Doherty believes Paul to have regarded Christ as incorporeal, then it follows that the James in Corinthians is not a kin in Paul's eyes. But obviously the historicist view of Christ and James, and the traditional view of their relationship as laid out in Paul, is old and widespread.

Traditional view or not, "brother" can certainly mean a literal sibling, whatever else it can mean.

And if nothing can be proven about Paul's view from Corinthians alone, there are still my secondary arguments above.

spin

I can't see this as having anything to do with the passage I was analysing nor of Paul generally.

Certainly, but it has nothing to do with a real human christ, nor with any means of dating Paul.

But not about the integrity of the information.

No, of course all the substantiated events of the past are available for use.


Indeed it doesn't reflect on the matter, but Paul doesn't claim that James was Jesus's kin. Origen can give his interpretation. You can give yours, but all Paul says is "James the brother of the Lord", whatever that may mean to you, considering that Jesus appeared to 500 brothers. Were they biological? A term such as "the brother of the Lord", in Hebrew Ahijah, is not a transparent term and you shouldn't treat it as such until you can show a solid reason for your analysis.

But that is not substantive help in understanding "the brother of the Lord", especially in the context of the 500 brothers.


spin

andrewcriddle

Caear's Household was based on bright young slaves of various ethnic origins trained at the Emperor's expense, and employed in Imperial service typically being manumitted at 30.

Despite their importance to the Empire such freedpersons were regarded by traditional Romas like Tacitus as not genuine Romans.

The dubiousness of genuine freeborn Romans towards non-Roman religions (which apart from Patrician circles may be exaggerated anyway) does not seem likely to apply to these often ethnically non-Italian ex-slaves.
I don't have Meeks on hand. From other sources, Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Tertullian mention Christians of the Imperial Household.

There are a succession of explicitly Christian inscriptions on graves of members of the Imperial household from c 205 CE onwards.

This evidence is rather late for our purposes but it is worth noting that most of the surviving very early (before 235) explicitly Christian epitaphs are of members of the Imperial household.

The earlier evidence is more ambiguous, Euelpistus martyred with Justin in the 160's was an Imperial slave.

It has been argued that the names of Clement of Rome and his messengers to Corinth Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito suggest an association with the Imperial household but the evidence is weak here.

It has been argued that the reference to the 'household of Narcissus' in Romans 16 refers to the Emperor Claudius' freedman, and hence to the Imperial jousehold. (I'm obviously not suggesting Narcissus was a Christian only that some of his staff may have been.)

Hence we have hard evidence for the Imperial household from 200 onwards having an unusually high proportion of Christians, and weaker evidence that this situation goes back way before 200 CE.

One might argue that Christianity was highly attractive to such people in the 2nd century for reasons that did not apply in the first but this does not seem particularly likely.

On a more general note, I'm dubious about whether one can meaningfully and usefully discuss the date of the Pauline letters using only evidence within them, if one starts regarding relevant information within the letters as interpolations. The fact that the letters lack clear internal signs of date is obviously true under such a procedure but not particularly interesting.

Andrew Criddle