KrisK10

I'm stumped by something and I have a question and a challenge (folks here seem to like challenges).

If the appearance to "the Twelve" in 1 Cor 15:5 intends a simultaneous appearance experience (one viable conclusion it seems to me), and if Paul in 1 Cor 15:5 is conveying a tradition that was alive in the 30’s only a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion (another viable conclusion it seems to me), then how does one explain the emergence and survival of this tradition at a time when "the Twelve" were almost certainly all still alive and identifiable people that anyone could ask questions of?

I can't find any example anywhere of a claim, made while the subjects were still alive, that is comparable to the claim in 1 Cor 15:5. All attempts at comparative examples seem non-applicable to this Christian example, being either:

1] a probable sociological phenomena associated only with children, such as the sighting of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje (6 kids/teenagers), Fatima (3 kids), Garabandal (4 kids), La Salette (2 kids) (Lourdes was one 1 child).

2] possible drug use (Medjugorje).

3] a physical phenomena tied to a specific object, such as the seeing of an image of a person in the dirt formations on a window, concrete, a piece of toast, or in abnormal light reflections.

4] a group of people seeing something that is not remotely as detailed as the image of a person, such as when thousands hallucinated the sun moving and/or spinning at Fatima and again the same thing in Conyers, Georgia (when they were expecting to see the Virgin Mary).

5] groups of people seeing someone who has been reported dead but is believed by the people seeing him to have faked their death and living incognito (Elvis).

In summary, I can’t find one example anywhere of a tradition in which it is claimed that 3 or more adults simultaneously saw the same dead person, and it wasn’t a case of seeing an image in an object like a dirty window, it didn’t involve drugs, and the adults that this was claimed to have happened too were people with known public identities who were still alive when the tradition was circulating. I (politely) challenge anyone to come up with one example that is comparable to the claim of an appearance by Jesus to the Twelve in 1 Cor 15:5 (or that he was seen by the Twelve).

Kris

Julian

The passage has been frequently taken for a later interpolation, the only reasonable explanation in my mind.

Julian

Solitary Man

It doesn't have to be simultaneous. :huh:

Malachi151

I address this extensively in this article:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...h_followup.htm

It seems to be two things.

1) "The Twelve" is at least is an interpolation
2) The claims of visions are a part of apocalyptic Jewish tradition, no different from what we find in Daniel, the Apocalypse of John, and a number of other Jewish apocalyptic works from this same period.

KrisK10

Thanks for the responses so far. I'm unconvinced that 1 Cor 15:5 is a later interpolation (and I've studied your earlier article Dr. Price), although I admit it as one of many possibilities.

Kris

Solitary Man

Dr. Price? I think you have confused R. G. Price with Dr. Robert M. Price? Unless ol' Malachi here has been holding out on us the whole time.

KrisK10

Oops, I did confuse R.G. Price with R.M. Price! Sorry! R.M. Price wrote an article a couple years ago on 1 Cor 15:3-7 being a later interpolation. It was that article I found unconvincing, I'll take a look at your ariticle Malachi, but based on the responses so far, I take it that no one can provide a comparable example with the assumptions given?

Kris

Toto

Your assumptions:

• a simultaneous appearance experience
  
• a tradition that was alive in the 30’s only a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion
  
• "the Twelve" were almost certainly all still alive and identifiable people that anyone could ask questions of?

seem to be designed to force your conclusion. Do we have any indication that the appearances were simultaneous? I don't think so. Nor do we have any indication that the "tradition" was alive in the 30's - even if Paul's letter was not interpolated, it is usually dated to 50-60. And we have no indication that the Twelve were identifiable to the Corinthians, or that they could ask questions of them.

Malachi151

I don't really address the interpolation aspect in the link, just the apocalyptic tradition aspect.

As for interpolation, I agree that Robert M. Price's isn't the most convincing writeup on the matter, but it should be something pretty easy to see.

#1 The Twelve is not used or even hinted at anywhere else in any Pauline letter.
#2 The same passage is redundant in some of the naming. Its lists Cephas, then the Twelve, in addition to "all the apostles". This seems to overlap quite a bit.
#3 As pointed out above, there doesn't seem to be any support for the idea that the audience would have known who "the Twelve" was.

aa5874

Do you mean "usually believed to be written 50-60" and not "dated" as in carbon dated or some type of radiometric dating process?
Just trying to follow your post.