Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Doug Shaver · 06-02-2010, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

OK, yeah, it would be great if we knew what Paul's contemporaries were saying about Jesus, if by "contemporaries" you mean people who were writing in exactly the same decade.

I'd settle for some people incontrovertibly writing within a few decades of his time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

But, we don't know, because we don't have such writings.

Well, if we don't have them, we can't use them. Speculation about what those writings would have said if we had them can't count as evidence for how we should interpret the writings we do have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

That is the nature of history--evidence is scarce.

Right, it's scarce, and so whatever we infer from it just could be wrong. Which means we just might have to change our minds if we happen to find some more later on. But until we find more, we do the best we can with what we've got.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

So, we settle on what Christians have said a few decades later.

We settle on it to tell us what Christians believed a few decades later. We don't assume that the earlier Christians had to have believed the same thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

They say that James was a literal brother of Jesus.

That isn't just a few decades later than Paul. That's at least a century after Paul, so far as anyone can prove from the extant paper trail.

bacht · 06-02-2010, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

I think spamandham has clearly stated the major issue in dealing with what Paul says.

Paul's statements were made before any of the ones that people want to inject into his materials to "shed light". It is a blunder to go to later sources and expect that they will make Paul clearer. Things said later cannot elucidate what Paul has said. They may be developments on Paul. They may be reactions or "corrections" or "misunderstandings" to Paul and we have no way of being able to tell...

We only think about the "James the brother of the lord" referring to James the brother of Jesus because of later literature, literature which may have started with this reference in Paul and rationalized it, based on the later notion that Jesus could be refered to with the non-titular kurios...

The notion that spamandham has outlined in the quote of his at the start of this response needs to be appreciated. Given the primary position of Paul's writings in christian literature--there is no christian literature before Paul--, one has to deal with what he says free of the incrustations of later christian dogma. His terms are the earliest we have and we have to eke out their meanings from what he says, not from what later pundits have said based on his writings. There is no way to know the relevance of what the later writers say when considered in the light of Paul. This means that retrojecting gospel into Paul is nothing more than eisegesis...

Thanks spin.

aa5874 · 06-02-2010, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AtheistGamer

lol so how does Paul "open the flood gates to mythicism" if he wasn't pre-gospels? If Paul was post-gospels then that would make the gospels the earliest christian documents. And if they are the earliest christian documents then you should be using *them* to construct your theory of christian origens. Not Paul's writings.

PAUL was the APOSTLE of the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL got his Gospel from the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL has opened the "FLOOD GATES" to Mythicism.

LISTEN to Paul. He was the apostle of a GHOST.

Galatians 1:1 -

Quote:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead...

PAUL got his Gospel from The RESURRECTED DEAD.

LISTEN to Paul in Galatians 1.11-12

Quote:

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ

.

The EXISTENCE of Jesus as a Man is IRRELEVANT to the apostleship and Gospel of PAUL.

The authors of the Synoptics and gJohn supposedly wrote about the LIVING on earth and were supposedly Apostles and disciples of those who SAW and HEARD the LIVING on earth.

PAUL was the APOSTLE of and got his GOSPEL from the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL SAW the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL HEARD from the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL was NOT interested in history of the LIVING, but the mythology of the RESURRECTED DEAD.

The PAULINE epistles are in effect the "Memoirs of the Resurrected Dead".

PAUL has opened the FLOOD-GATES to MYTHICISM.

And, by the way I do not use the Pauline writings for the origins of Jesus believers when Paul claimed he was NOT the first to preach the FAITH, that were Jesus believers BEFORE him, that he persecuted the FAITH, and that he was the LAST to SEE Jesus After he was RAISED from the dead.

In effect, PAUL was the LAST TO HALLUCINATE about the RESURRECTED DEAD.

PAUL was DEAD LAST.

Galatians 1.19 is irrelevant.

spamandham · 06-02-2010, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

Thanks spin.

I second the motion. This was an ideal time to reiterate spin's persuasive argument regarding the best face value understanding of the expression.

ApostateAbe · 06-02-2010, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

... OK, yeah, it would be great if we knew what Paul's contemporaries were saying about Jesus, if by "contemporaries" you mean people who were writing in exactly the same decade. But, we don't know, because we don't have such writings. That is the nature of history--evidence is scarce. So, we settle on what Christians have said a few decades later.

You know the famous joke about the drunk who was looking for his watch under the lamp? He actually lost in in the dark alley, but the light was better under the lamp.

This seems to be what you are doing here - looking for evidence where it is easy to find, not where it should be.

I don't know that famous joke, but I'll take your word for it. If you are presupposing that the drunk lost his watch in the dark alley instead of under the lamp, then the analogy makes more sense. In science and history, we look for clues wherever the evidence is available. I wouldn't throw up my hands when we can't look in the very best places, as you and others may do. Sometimes, when people make analogies that seem ill-fitting, I adjust them to make them better fitting. Allow me:

There are only two places where the drunk may have lost his watch. He can't look in those places, but there are clues in a couple of different places for where the drunk probably lost his watch. He can't look in the dark alley nor can he look in the closed bar bathroom, but one of those two places is where he lost his watch. So, he looks for clues under the lamp and anywhere else there is light. He finds two places in the light that both offer two strong indications of one of those two inaccessible places where he may have lost his watch. Therefore, he makes a conclusion in favor of those two clues.

Do you think that analogy is more fitting or less fitting?

ApostateAbe · 06-02-2010, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

The score is 1 to 0.5. A very compelling way to resolve the issue is to see whether Jesus was reputed to have a literal brother named James. And, yes, he did. In two of the synoptic gospels and in Josephus. I wrote a long post on this point near the beginning of the thread.

I think that makes the score 1 to 6.5, the JC mob taking a very strong lead.

In another thread we are discussing various aspects of the historical method, one of which is primacy. Even scholars trained at Bible colleges typically agree that Paul is primary chronologically as a minimum. If Paul *is* primary not only chronologically, but also in terms of dependency, then it's easy to see how a biological brother of Jesus is *derived* from this very scripture by later writers dependent upon Paul, resulting in a net zero of additional weight from the Gospel James.

That being the case, the entire HJ/MJ discussion should focus primarily on what Paul has to say. Even thousands of gospels would not add up to 13x an assessment based on the original source (6.5 vs 0.5). They can do no better than to boost a primary argument by a fractional amount.

I think the problem for mythicism is many times bigger if the gospels depended on the writings of Paul (which scholars generally do not accept, but that doesn't matter). If the gospels depended on the writings of Paul, then we expect matching beliefs and interpretations, not differences in beliefs and interpretations. That means that the gospel authors would likely have the same belief about James as Paul did. If Paul meant something else, then somehow the gospel authors got it wrong and changed the meaning, but you would have to claim that there was a true meaning of Paul's phrase "brother of the Lord" that went over the heads of the Christians of about the same time period, religion and culture as Paul. It is possible!

ApostateAbe · 06-02-2010, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

It would explain why the case for a historical Jesus seems so terribly weak, you think?

No, it doesn't explain why it is so weak. It's just evidence of how weak the case is, if the best argument historicists can come up with is that when Paul referred to James as "the lord's brother," he just had to have meant "Jesus' sibling."

OK, cool. I know it is somewhat weak in isolation. Thanks.

Be sure to catch the rest of that post.

bacht · 06-02-2010, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think the problem for mythicism is many times bigger if the gospels depended on the writings of Paul (which scholars generally do not accept, but that doesn't matter). If the gospels depended on the writings of Paul, then we expect matching beliefs and interpretations, not differences in beliefs and interpretations.

Maybe, if we assume that Christianity was unitary and more or less unchanging between mid-1st C and mid- to late 2nd C. Note that both Hebrews and Revelation are fairly early texts with an apparently Jewish audience. Paul, if he was an apostle to gentiles, would have had a different focus. Also the gospels bring in the supposed Q source, possibly reflecting another Jewish group.

ApostateAbe · 06-02-2010, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think the problem for mythicism is many times bigger if the gospels depended on the writings of Paul (which scholars generally do not accept, but that doesn't matter). If the gospels depended on the writings of Paul, then we expect matching beliefs and interpretations, not differences in beliefs and interpretations.

Maybe, if we assume that Christianity was unitary and more or less unchanging between mid-1st C and mid- to late 2nd C. Note that both Hebrews and Revelation are fairly early texts with an apparently Jewish audience. Paul, if he was an apostle to gentiles, would have had a different focus. Also the gospels bring in the supposed Q source, possibly reflecting another Jewish group.

Yeah, maybe the gospels relied on Paul, and the gospels still had a drastically different interpretation of Paul than what Paul actually meant. I am not going to deny that it happens. I generally follow the Occam's Razor principle. If later documents depend on earlier documents, then I think those later documents are very good clues to the meaning of the earlier documents. I think, if the gospels seemed to corroborate your preferred meaning of a phrase in Paul, then you would take that as strong evidence, would you not?

Toto · 06-02-2010, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

You know the famous joke about the drunk who was looking for his watch under the lamp? He actually lost in in the dark alley, but the light was better under the lamp.

This seems to be what you are doing here - looking for evidence where it is easy to find, not where it should be.

I don't know that famous joke, but I'll take your word for it. If you are presupposing that the drunk lost his watch in the dark alley instead of under the lamp, then the analogy makes more sense. In science and history, we look for clues wherever the evidence is available. I wouldn't throw up my hands when we can't look in the very best places, as you and others may do. Sometimes, when people make analogies that seem ill-fitting, I adjust them to make them better fitting. Allow me:

There are only two places where the drunk may have lost his watch. He can't look in those places, but there are clues in a couple of different places for where the drunk probably lost his watch. He can't look in the dark alley nor can he look in the closed bar bathroom, but one of those two places is where he lost his watch. So, he looks for clues under the lamp and anywhere else there is light. He finds two places in the light that both offer two strong indications of one of those two inaccessible places where he may have lost his watch. Therefore, he makes a conclusion in favor of those two clues.

Do you think that analogy is more fitting or less fitting?

No.

:banghead:

Here's one variation: joke

The whole point is that the lost watch is not under the lamppost and there are no clues there.

You haven't found clues - you have invented clues.

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