Solitary Man

Paul's claim doesn't explain the Jerusalem group. Your theory doesn't account for the evidence. More steam. Moreover, you never explain what Paul has a vision of, much less what that entails. You assume he had a vision of the whole shebang, when quite clearly that's not what Paul says.

I've already explained the connection from the Pillars to Paul. Just a couple of posts ago.

spin

He acknowledges the existence of messianic groups. The Jerusalem group is the one he turns to for support. He, according to his testimony got nothing out of them. And I can understand that: he wasn't exactly advocating anything messianic.

Without any evidence.

Solitary Man

Why, that's quite wrong. He did get something out of them. He dined with them. He was furious when Cephas stopped dining with the Gentiles. Are you familiar with dining customs of the ancient Mediterranean?

Ah, you're right there. I supplied the evidence in another post. Perhaps you should, ah, you know, read up a little.

Amaleq13

All of which apparently fell under the designation "church of God" so more like one particular group of messianists.

But not because there is any inherent connection to Paul's gospel? It is just a coincidence that Paul's Galatians consider them to be "of reputation"?

No, Paul tells us that they added nothing to his gospel and that they gave him the "right hands of fellowship" to preach it to gentiles.

Yet he was offered "right hands of fellowship"? Even with his unacceptable crucified messiah?

spin

Umm, stick with "assemblies" despite the KJV. A church becomes irresistable distraction.

There's no evidence for any inherent connection. Paul may have made something out of the fact that he was not a lone nutter by referring to Jerusalem, but I don't know.

As I said, they shook hands and got rid of him.

He was massaging the data. He got nothing out of them, except a handshake, which was obviously of great value, as you see it.


spin

dog-on

Is it possible, based on the evidence, that Matthew, reading Mark, simply composed these additions based on his own interpretation of the LXX, his own artistic liscense and maybe his own community needs, since, or so I believe, modern scholarship has moved away from the idea of Matthew being an independent account and is, in fact, based on Mark?

Is it then possible, based on the evidence, that the editor/author of Luke, (while rewriting an earlier version of Luke along with the canonical Acts ), tried to make the gospel a little more historical (as was, perhaps, the tendency, by the second century, among the catholics)?

Is it possible, based on the evidence, that John (possibly a layered document itself and thus more difficult to pin-point) simply rewrote Mark?

Are any of these things, based on the evidence, a possibility?

The orthodox story is about a man NAMED Christus?

Could Tacticus have been referring to a heretical brand of Christianity, like the gnostic Christians for instance, as opposed to the Orthodoxy?

Is it possible, based on the evidence, that Tacticus was simply repeating the story he got from these, or whichever group of, Christians as opposed to using some official record of this alleged crucifixion by Pilate?

Ok.

Then you do accept the very real possibility, based on the evidence, that you may be incorrect as to the reality of what actually occured?



A few references, based on the evidence, that may be relevant, though by no means exhaustive.

Mark is a story about a wandering preacher. John, ditto.
Mark's hero is named Jesus. John, ditto.
Mark's Jesus has some guys follow him around. John, ditto.
Mark's Jesus get's crucified by Pontius Pilate. John, ditto.

Now, unless I misunderstand what the phrase "literary dependence" may mean, I see a quite a bit of it here. Am I missing something?

I didn't mean to ask you to prove a negative.

Cool.

Since we do not have the original autographs of Paul's letters as evidence for what Paul actualy wrote, is it possible that, based on the evidence, these letters could have been changed, by anyone, after Paul wrote them and do we have any evidence of documents having been altered for religious or other purposes, in the ancient world?

Amaleq13

And irrelevant to my point, which stands. Paul is clearly referring to a specific group of messianists.

1. Paul's deliberate choice.

2. Established reputation among those who had already accepted Paul's gospel.

3. Opposition to only one part of Paul's gospel by their representatives.

4. No opposition to a belief you have argued would be rejected by any Jewish messianist. (According to your previous arguments, this should be taken as a strong argument from silence)

5. Representatives described as being afraid of being persecuted because of the cross.

All of this evidence points toward some shared belief and that a crucified messiah was one such shared belief.

You have yet to make sense of this evidence and admit that you cannot while offering nothing substantive against an explanation that does make sense of it. :huh:

They accepted his gospel and approved of it being given to the gentiles but added nothing to it. Why do you avoid accurately paraphasing the text?

Given your previous arguments, he had to have been doing far more than that. He has to have been completely lying and pretending that they didn't reject the notion of a crucified messiah as abhorrent and then continuing the lie by claiming their representatives only opposed the gentile exception and going even further to lie about those representatives being afraid of getting persecuted for their acceptance of the cross.

All these lies and no fear that the Galatians would know that the crucified messiah was opposed and not accepted by either the "pillars" or their representatives?

That just isn't plausible and unsubtantiated assertions that the text means something other than it appears to mean don't help.

I see it that way because that is what the text describes. He claims to have obtained their approval of his gospel to the gentiles and he clearly hoped that would help convince the Galatians that their representatives were not truly representative.

Solitary Man

Anything is possible, what's important is what's probable. The problem with this is that the additions show up in Luke, but not coming from Matthew. Luke often retains an older form of the "additions" in Matthew. Compare:

Mt. Blessed are ye poor in spirit.
Lk. Blessed are ye poor.

Luke made Mark and Q to look like history, yes.

Not based on the evidence, no. The Egerton gospel knows of a distinct Johannine and Markan tradition, but not directly from those gospels.

God is a possibility, but that doesn't mean it's either a) plausible, or b) probable.

Who was crucified by Pilate? While it's possible, which Gnostic Christians were in Rome that Tacitus would have known, whose Jesus had to be crucified by Pilate?

Have you seen Peter Kirby's treatment of the matter?

Possibility? Yes, always. I'm not interested in mere possibilities, though.

Suetonius' Caesar defeated Pompey. Plutarch's, ditto.
Suetonius' Caesar was killed by Brutus and assassins. Plutarch's, ditto.
Suetonius' Augustus defeated Antony. Plutarch's, ditto.

Yes, literary dependence means that one work borrowed from another. You're not accounting for mutual borrowings of a tradition, or even two writers writing about an historical event.

Sure, it's possible, but is it likely? No.

gurugeorge

But "the Messiah" is first and foremost a mythical role. So then, one bunch of Messianists here thinks this guy here fulfils the role, another bunch think another guy over there fulfils the role. What I'm saying is that this bunch of Messianists was unique in looking neither to the present (i.e. being satisfied with any particular contemporary claimant) nor to the future, but thought the Messiah (i.e. "their" Messiah, the Messiah as they believed in him, as they thought they found in scripture) had already been, that it was a done deal. None of them had known him, no claim was being made for any contemporary or recently deceased claimant, but they thought scripture showed ("according to scripture") that he had already been, in some indeterminate but recent-ish past. And the Messiah they thought had already been is fully as mythical as the Messiah to whom the Jews looked for future redemption and military victory (only he's spiritual rather than military, and reverses the traditional Messiah values, which is how he was able to slip past the Archons, who were lying in wait for the military guy - this is also part of the reason for the obscurity of the actual timing).

As to asking "which other"? That's a joke surely? There's no apriori reason why this can't have been a bunch of people with an original "take" on the Messiah concept. If that's where the evidence points (as it does, especially in 1 Corinthians 15), then the fact that there aren't others with a similar idea is irrelevant. That kind of comparison is only valid when looking at initial plausibility, when faced with the bare concepts "Messiah based on human claimant" vs. "Messiah seen in scripture in past". Sure there were lots of the previous, but this might just be the one example of the latter; and if the texts seem to show an example of the latter, howsoever odd and unique it may seem, then that in itself raises the degree of plausibility.

There's no precise placement in time of Jesus in Paul, hence there's no support for a historical Jesus in Paul. Each case has its own burden of proof, and the historicist claim is simply lacking proof. Especially in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, the clearest exposition of the creed, there is not the slightest hint whatsoever that any of the people cited there as being those to whom the Messiah "appeared" (and this term means theophanic "appearing", i.e. the Messiah revealed himself to them - in scripture, obviously, since that's the plain meaning of "according to scripture") knew the Messiah in person, as a human being.

It's not clear at all I'm afraid. Sure, he came to earth, but not in Paul's or anyone else's recent past; plus his earthly victory seems to have been understood (and presumably this is an influence of Platonism) as a sort of dim "copy" of the real victory, which was spiritual, heavenly, archetypal.

Yes there is, there's evidence as shown by Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy, because right from the start you see (proto-)orthodoxy congratulating itself about how they managed to oust already established "heretical" churches. This totally gives the game away.

Q is too conjectural to be evidence of actual teachings. I'm not claiming to be an expert on this, you understand, I'm looking at it from an interested layperson's point of view, and I've been impressed by the degree to which scholars have shown that there seems to be very, very little in any of the Canon that can be understood to be any sort of original authentic voice. As Robert Price has pointed out, what happens is you get one scholar with a hobbyhorse who whittles away one bit, another with another hobbyhorse who whittles away another bit, but no scholars (apart from people like Price and other mythicists) have had the balls to put two and two together and say "well, if this bit here can be plausibly whittled away, and that bit there, then what the hell is left?"

Oh it makes sense alright, better sense than any historicist "trajectory". Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it's my working hypothesis in my own amateur fumblings. I did a more detailed outline with rough dating here, and there's another rough outline here, although I'm constantly trying to refine it. Scholarship is based on Walter Bauer, other Tubingen and Dutch Radical scholars, plus Wells, Price, Doherty and Ehrman as contemporaries.

Solitary Man

Just a quick interruption before I discuss the rest of your post: the messiah is [b]not[/i] a mythic role. The Jews thought that a real person descended of David will restore the Kingdom. That's not myth.