Steven Carr

Why is Paul silent about the imminent destruction of Jerusalem ,so central a theme in the message of Jesus?

Even in Galatians 4,when Paul is talking about a free Jerusalem,the mother of us, he never mentions what will happen to the present Jerusalem,although such his heart must have been burning with the prophetic message of Jesus.

I should point out that in
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_J..._Testament.pdf
Wright claims that Paul had an expectation that the days of Jerusalem, as he knew it, were strictly numbered, although he quite forgets to tell us where.

wright writes 'Contrary to the thinking of both scholars and pietists of many backgrounds, Paul was not envisaging the ‘Parousia’ as an event which had to take place in his lifetime, and which would result in the ending of the space-time order. If that were so, how could he possibly write in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 that the church should not be alarmed if they received a letter saying that the ‘day of the Lord had come’? If Paul meant by ‘the day of the Lord’
the end of the space-time universe, the Thessalonians would presumably not need to be informed of the fact via the Roman postal service! Instead, Paul here reflects the early Christian tradition, going back to Jesus himself, according to which Jerusalem was to be destroyed, and according to which that destruction was to be interpreted as the wrath of
God against his sinful people.'



You have to admire the sheer bare-faced audacity with which Wright rewrites the Bible.

The reason why Paul tells the Thessalonians not to worry if they get a letter saying that the hour has come, is because such a letter would be fake,not by him,not because their is no such hour when all will end.

2 Thess. 2
'1Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, 2not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come.'

2 Thess continues '3Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for (that day will not come) until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.'

Paul clearly prophesies somebody in the Jerusalem Temple ,claiming to be God, a prophecy now impossible to fulfill.

If Wright is right, and 2 Thess. 2 is talking only about the destruction of Jerusalem, then it is well hidden. If such were the case, Paul would tell the Thessalonians not to worry about the fake letters going around , because they did not live in Jerusalem, and so are in no danger.

But neither 1 Thessalonians nor 2 Thessalonians ever mention Jerusalem, yet Wright claims that in them Paul is referring to the imminent destruction of Jerusalem.

You have to admire the determination of Christian scholars to find things never mentioned in the text....

Toto

Of course, Paul never heard Jesus speak in RL, so he might never have heard that prophetic message.

When Paul writes about the "present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children" in Gal 4:25, what would you conclude about the date of that writing?

Steven Carr

Based on that quote before 70 AD.

Paul might not have heard that prophetic message.

Perhaps the Jerusalem church never told him that their Lord and Saviour had declared the place they lived in to be doomed in short order.

Perhaps they never regarded it as a major part of the teaching of Jesus.

jeremyp

Is there any real evidence that Jesus ever made a prophecy that Jerusalem was doomed?

I know the gospels say he did, but unless they can be solidly dated to before 70AD, it is much more reasonable to assume the gospel authors put the words into Jesus' mouth after the event.

Steven Carr

The silence of Paul on the subject, given its importance to his theology, is real evidence against.

As an aside Wright has some interesting double standards in
'JERUSALEM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT'
' Contrary to the thinking of both scholars and pietists of many backgrounds, Paul was not envisaging the ‘Parousia’ as an event which had to take place in his lifetime, and which would result in the ending of the space-time order. If that were so, how could he possibly write in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 that the church should not be alarmed if they received a letter saying that the ‘day of the Lord had come’?


If Paul meant by ‘the day of the Lord’ the end of the space-time universe, the Thessalonians would presumably not need to be informed of the fact via the Roman postal service! Instead, Paul here reflects the early
Christian tradition, going back to Jesus himself, according to which Jerusalem was to be destroyed, and according to which that destruction was to be interpreted as the wrath of God against his sinful people. In the same Thessalonian correspondence, Paul asserted that the wrath of God had indeed come upon them ‘to the uttermost’'


----------------

So if a letter writer writes 'the day of the Lord has come', he cannot be referring to a future event, while if Paul writes a letter saying that the wrath of God has come upon the Jews, he is referring to a future event.

Wright also claims that Paul implied that Jerusalem is a Muslim town.

'The present Jerusalem regime is thus declaring itself by its deeds to be
the descendents of Ishmael, not of Isaac.'


Wright continues 'At the same time, however, there is a ‘Jerusalem above’, a ‘new Jerusalem’. Although there are only two other references to this theme in the New Testament (Heb. 12:22 and Rev. 21:2), the way Paul casually introduces it here implies that already in the early church there was a well-established idea of an alternative city, a city ‘to come’, which God would bring to birth at its proper time, and to which his true people would belong. Now this is not a Platonic ‘idea’ of Jerusalem; ‘heaven’ in both Old and New
Testaments is not the place of non-material reality, but the place of God’s present and future reality.'


Wright here simply states that when Paul claims that the new Jerusalem was 'above', Paul was implying that the new Jerusalem was in exactly the same place as the old one.

Clearly Paul really did believe that Christians would not be on the Earth, because the Earth was coming to an end. They would be in Heaven. Paul never singles Jerusalem out for destruction, because all of the Earth, not just Jerusalem would be affected.

Wright's whole fantastic eisegis of Paul agreeing with Jesus that Jerusalem would soon be destroyed and that the Roman Empire would continue is an astonishing way to get around the fact that Jesus prophesied the end of the world within the lifetimes of his hearers.

rlogan

Space-time universe?

Paul was hip to general relativity, I guess.

Steven Carr

Wasn't Wright right to claim that Paul was not thinking of an end to the space-time continuum?

Not that Wright would ever stoop to caricaturing opposing positions, of course.....

WinAce

Not that, per se, but I believe he threatened to destroy the Jerusalem Temple, and it got taken out of context. See the case I made here.

Amedeo

You are perfectly right. In terms of what we read in the Gospels, I feel that Paul was not familiar with Jesus's messianic MISSION. .... The fact is that I find TWO biographies of JC in the Gospels or,,, to be sure, at least three authors of the Gospel contents. So, it becomes very difficult to find out what he actually learned from the speakers of JC. One things is certain: Paul himself has his own theory as to what JC was about, what his mission was. Let me a bit more specific:

From my own study of the canonic Gospels (but leaving aside parts of John because he has his own theory about the identity of JC), I find that the messianic mission was to save Israel [not the world] in the approaching end of the world. The world was to end within one generation [40 years or so]. Thereafter there would be the resurrection of the dead and a universal judgment. The righteous and keepers of the faith would be saved from hell; they would sit at the right hand of God. The messiah, the Christ, came to prepare Israel morally, so that they would enter the kingdom of God. He spoke of it in parables. MOST of his teachings WERE moral teachings and teachings about the kingdom of God.

We do not know whether Paul knew about the purpose of Jesus being born, of the imminent end of the world, or of Jerusalem in particular, but I know that Paul formulated his own theory of The Christ's salvation. Basically: Christ died on the cross to atone for the sins of the Israelites (of the original sin). Thus Jesus appears as the new Adam, the restorer rather than the sinner. (I'll mention the third theory of salvation in a moment.)

We are faced by Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, as the central figure that promoted the conversion of Gentiles. It's clearly understood that the conversion is to Judaism, for Jesus was not the founder of a new religion (whether he was just human or also divine). The new religion, called Christianity or Catholicism, is something that was established by the Gentiles who had converted to Judaism. After the destruction of the Temple and the disbanding of Israel, , the Catholic (universal) church was the replacement of the community of God called Israel.

Paul wanted to make converts and, when faced by certain objections from some of the Apostles, he said that circumcision is of the heart [the mind], wherefore the physical circumcision was not necessary for one to become a son of Abraham (the contractor with God). Now, why would Paul or any other Israelite want to make converts?

There is a very important provision connected with the objective of converting Gentiles: the conversion would be carried out for a limited time only. This provision tells us two things: (1) Paul was not interested in bringing Gentiles into the fold, in order for as many men as possible to be saved on judgment day [otherwise the conversion would have no time limits] and (2) the enlarging of the Israelitic fold was not for ultra-mandane purposes [for a greater population in the kingdom of God to come].

If the purpose of the conversion of some Gentiles was neither altruistic nor ultra-mundane, what was it for??? To induct more people into the armed groups of Israelitic rebels? There were such armed groups, which in practice were directly against the Romans (the protectors of the royal Herods). But the Christian sect of Judaism [headed by Jesus or the Apostles] was not a violent group. Their policy was: Give Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's. So, we are left nowhere.

Paul's Jesus is the messiah who saves (the committers of original sin) by a sacrifice on the cross. A human sacrifice alone could not atone for sin. So, Paul is one of those who began to conceive Jesus as both human and divine. After all, he knew of Jesus as having performed miracles and haing forgiven sins -- which was a blasphemy for the Jews. Jesus is not God himself, but.... John will personify God's creative Word and will say that the Word became incarnated as Jesus! John also said that the divine Breath [Spiritus], which made the statue of Adam alive, is divine. God issued forth the Word and the Spirit, but all three are equal according to the decision made at Nycea in 325.

In the Gospels, there is a Jesus who was royal in nature. Two Gospels give the genealogy of Jesus which trace him back to King David. We also learn that we was born as a king and, therefore as a threat to Herod, who took measures to get rid of the competition. Eventually, Jesus was crucified as... The tag on the cross said it in 3 languages: "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews." There isn't much more that the Gospels say about the royal Jesus; they always report on the messianic Jesus. And so we have the impression that Jesus himself was not concerned with his being a king.

Now, suppose that Jesus formed a group or a band of people for the sake of gaining the royal position, without directly attacking the Herods or their Roman protectors, then we have a Jesus, or the Apostles of Jesus, who might be interested in increasing their ranks by recruiting Gentiles (since not too many Jews were following Jesus). This would explain the limited admission of Gentiles into Israel. However, if the Christian sect was not after using force, what would be the point of having a large number??? How could the enemies or intruders be overwhelmed?

If you can't fight them,...... The rest is NOT, "join them;" the rest is "make them join you." If you can change foreign legions and populations into Israelites, then you don't have any enemies. That's the strategy of converting Gentiles for a limited period of time. Paul's Jesus is both the sacrificial messiah and the king of the Jews. Even if he knew about the Jesus prophecies about Jerusalem and the world, they were really irrelevant to him. Anyway, as Peter said, nobody knows the exact time when those events would come to pass. Apparently the listeners to the oral narrators of Jesus's life and preachings took the words as historic reports and thought: Jesus said the end would come within one generation. The Prediction was made for his own time, not for our time. If it did not occur then, it may occur some other time. (When some Christians predicted the end for the year 1000 or the year 2000, they thought in the same obtuse manner: The end did not happen within his generation, but that means that it will happen within our generation. The urgency of the messiah's message went over their heads... and that's why not too many Jews bothered to follow him. Jesus himself once complained that people did not even believe in his miraculous works!)

The third theory of salvation must come [without presently justifying the point] from some editors of oral biographical stories which they compiled and wrote down in Greek. As the writing of a proto-Gospel took place after 70 A.D., stories concerning the kingship of Jesus were irrelevant to both Jews and Gentiles who had become Christians. Only three sets of information were written down. Apparently the editors interpolated various statements here and there (according to their own Catholic conception of the Israletic church/community) and, most importantly, the made Jesus say things whose foundation is in Greek culture.

At the Passover supper before the crucifixion, Jesus declared that he who eats of his body and drinks of his blood shall have eternal life. He is saved from death. In the Judeo-Christian teachings, there is resurrection, and the scriptural Jesus himself is resurrected. Therefore Paul hails Jesus as he who conquered death. Indeed, had he not resurrected, our faith would be in vain. His resurrection proves his divinity. But the resurrection at the end of the world is never seen as the result of Jesus' mission. Jesus did not do anything so that humans (or israelites) mught be resurrected. "Saving from death" was not Jesus's project. But it is, according to the institution of the eucharist.

The Jesus who spoke and instituted the eucharist at that banquet was none other than Dionysus. The fundamental historic Dionysian rite is a rite of immortality -- what men must do to become immortal (or to be saved from death). The rite consists in the eating of the flesh of Dionysys [called homophagia] and drinking his blood. In actual practice, there is eating of flesh (unkooked meat) and drinking of wine. By ingesting Dionysys (the ever-returning or immortal Dionysus), one becomes like Dionyus -- immortal. In Catholic theology, there is a litlle known branch called "mystical theology." Therein we read that a priest is an Other Christ. Actually any communicant who partakes of Christ becomes an Other Christ -- immortal. A priest, by being consecrated, becomes another Christ in the sense that his RE-ENCTMENT of Jesus at the banquet has the power to transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

ASSIMILATION AND RE-ENACTMENT are the two ancient Greek ways in which one becomes immortal. The re-enactment rite is exemplified by the Eleusinian rite, in which the initiates becomes identical with Kore (Demeter's daughter), who annually dies [is brought to Hades] and annually returns. She is the young life that arises in springtime. Dionysus is the vine that re-lives every spring.

Human immortality in the sense of immortality of the soul is spoken of by the (Greek) Orphics, who conceived that man is naturally composed of a body and an indestructible soul or "astral body", Those who are about to die are instructed: Whe you reach the river Lethe (the river of oblivion), do not cross it [and thereby perish]. Say to the guardian that you are a child of the stars and of the eath, and that you have come to claim your birthright. Then Plato presented some arguments that man has an immortal soul.

funinspace

Yep, another interesting monument of silence. Not that you don't know the next comments, but this is how I see it as well. He's also silent about the miraculous birth, and amazing events around his resurrection. I find it incredulous that he would not have heard those tales from Barnabus and others. Hence, him hearing the tales, if they existed due to his (Jesus') life, I find it equally incredulous that he would not use these as arguments/reminders of the way. Therefore I find it far more likely that they hadn't been fully formulated in the oral tradition yet, and the early tales were much closer to the Gmark in terms of knowledge of events/tradition. So, like the birth and resurrection tales, I would suspect that none of the "destruction of Jerusalem" tales were floating around during the years of his writing. So yes, I am suggesting that they were most likely put out after the events like so many of the other prophecies.


There is another possible explanation. Paul could have thought that this new truth would spread like wild fire thru out the Med. And therefore many would be saved. And only in the later years realized that it would not happen. They may not have thought much at all beyond the Roman Empire. Nor may have he not really considered the implications to hard for all those in distant lands like Persia, England, and India. They could have also held a somewhat differing view of what happens to people who didn't yet get to hear the "good news". If there is any reality to the tales, including Paul's own exposure to the Apostles, then I don’t see how he couldn't have known much of the oral tradition. That to me is a far weaker theory, than the idea that the tale didn't exist at this point.