bacht

Right, like Claudius' expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Any god-fearers or Christians in the synagogues would've looked the same to the authorities. But Paul does mention hostility from fellow Jews most of the time rather than the state (Acts is a different kettle of fish). This would be logical if he'd been preaching a torah-free gospel for the gentiles.

Amaleq13

No, he doesn't. He claims his gospel was obtained through Christ and no man. There is no good reason to assume Paul's "good news" included everything he knew about Jesus.

You are sneaking your conclusion into the argument with this conflation.

spamandham

Romans 1:1-3

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son...

Gal. 3:8...22

The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."
...
But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

It seems fair to me to conclude from these passages, that the relevant aspects of Paul's gospel were derived in large part from the scriptures. It's true that we don't know what else Paul might have known about Jesus, but there is no validity in assuming it's more than he states.

Toto

Jake Jones has made this argument. I don't have a link to where he has argued this, but perhaps he will see this and drop by, or you can PM him: jakejonesiv

or search for the threads that he started in BCH, such as this one.

Solo

Well, that was my point except it was asked as a question. If the figure and the manner of its death were mythical - and surely Jesus would not have been mythical the same way as Moses or Enoch were - would the Jewish assemblies have been "enraged" by Paul, or, in the same vein, would Paul before his conversion persecuted the Jesus-professing Church of God ?

Jiri

spamandham

Were they really enraged at Paul for preaching that some dude was crucified?

According to the writings of Paul, Jewish Christians had abandoned the law, which Paul also holds in low esteem. This would have been sufficient cause for the death penalty among Jews, and surely it's disrespect of the law that gets Christians in trouble with Jews.

bacht

"Mythical" may be a misleading term here. I think Jesus was very real to Paul and the others, but in the spirit world, beyond normal time and space. As the Son of God he had a different nature than Moses or Enoch who awaited resurrection at the end time (it's all woo to me anyway)

If Paul was teaching gentiles in synagogues that the torah was null then surely Jews would object. A messiah crucified in shame (as opposed to a warrior struck down) was not standard Jewish eschatology, though resurrection seems to have been a fairly popular belief.

spin

For fuck's sake I wish you'd at least read the thread a little more than falling over your first response. Look at this:

You have now already had two negative responses. I've tried to give my interpretation of what the text indicates. You are performing eisegesis. It's not there. You are inventing. You made it up. How many other ways have I got to say it to get the idea across? You're being creative. The text doesn't allow you to have such an idea. You're not reading in context. Get it?

Eisegesis. And you show no attempt to deal with how Paul uses "we" through the passage (and the letter as a whole).

So you just want to talk mythology at me.

And so?

And so? Do you agree with the fact that Paul never knew a Jesus and so was not a witness to him or not?

I'm interested in history, what is history, what is not history. History is the study of what can be shown through the evidence from the past of the past.


spin

Amaleq13

Thanks presumably to the revelation from Christ, yes.

I'm rejecting the opposite assumption hidden within the conflation but you are simply wrong that there is no validity to assuming he knew more than his gospel.

Paul persecuted before he converted and it is entirely valid and logical to assume he knew what they believed. It makes no sense to pretend he knew nothing about the beliefs he persecuted.

GakuseiDon

It depends on when Paul thought that Jesus lived. If Paul indicates that Jesus was someone who lived fairly recently, and Mark places Jesus in the same time frame, then we have evidence much stronger than for someone they both believed lived 500 years prior.

So, when did Paul probably believe that Jesus lived? I think the strongest case is for "fairly recently". I took these notes from a post by Ben Smith. Note that the timing works for some points regardless of whether Jesus was a man or some "cosmic spirit":

1. Jesus must have lived after Adam, since Paul calls him the latter Adam (1 Corinthians 15.22, 45).

2. Jesus must have lived after Abraham, since Paul calls him the seed (descendant) of Abraham (Galatians 3.16).

3. Jesus must have lived after Moses, since Paul says that he was the end of the law of Moses (Romans 10.4-5).

4. Jesus must have lived after David, since Paul calls him the seed (descendant) of David (Romans 1.4).

Evidence that Paul regarded Jesus as having lived recently, within living memory, as an older contemporary:

1. Paul believes he is living in the end times (1 Corinthians 10.11), that he himself (1 Thessalonians 4.15; 1 Corinthians 15.51) or at least his converts (1 Thessalonians 5.23; 2 Corinthians 4.14) might well live to see the parousia. Paul also believes that the resurrection of Jesus was not just an ordinary resuscitation of the kind Elijah or Elisha supposedly wrought; it was the first instance of the general resurrection from the dead at the end of the age (1 Corinthians 15.13, 20-28). When, then, does Paul think Jesus rose from the dead? If, for Paul, he rose from the dead at some point in the indeterminate past, then we must explain either (A) why Paul thought the general resurrection had begun (with Jesus) well before the end times or (B) why Paul regarded the end times as a span of time stretching from the misty past all the way to the present. If, however, Paul regarded the resurrection of Jesus as a recent phenomenon, all is explained. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the general resurrection and thus the ultimate sign that the end times were underway.

2. Paul expects that he might see the general resurrection in his own lifetime (1 Corinthians 15.51). He also calls Jesus the firstfruits of that resurrection. Since the firstfruits of the harvest precede the main harvest itself by only a short time, the very metaphor works better with a short time between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the rest of the dead, implying that the resurrection of Jesus was recent for Paul.

3. There is, for Paul, no generation gap between the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15.4). Furthermore, there is no generation gap between the recipients of the resurrection appearances and Paul himself; he is personally acquainted with the first recipient of a resurrection appearance (1 Corinthians 15.5; Galatians 1.18). Is there a gap between the resurrection and the first appearance? The flow of 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 would certainly not suggest one; however, I believe we can go further.

Paul claims that Jesus was the end of the law for those who have faith (Romans 10.4), that he was raised from the dead in order to justify humans (Romans 4.25), and that this justification comes by faith (Romans 5.1) in Jesus (Romans 3.22). Paul also claims that no one can have faith unless he first hears the gospel from a preacher (Romans 10.14) who is sent (Romans 10.15). Finally, Paul acknowledges that it was at the present time (Romans 3.26) that God showed forth his justice apart from the law (Romans 3.21), and that the sent ones, the apostles, were to come last of all (1 Corinthians 4.9); he also implies that the resurrection appearances were the occasion of the sending out of apostles (1 Corinthians 9.1; 15.7, 9; Galatians 1.15-16). If we presume that, for Paul, Jesus was raised in the distant past but only recently revealed to the apostles, we must take pains to account for this gap; why, for Paul, did Jesus die in order to end the law and justify humans but then wait indefinitely before making this justification available to humans? If, however, we presume that, for Paul, Jesus was raised recently, shortly before appearing to all the apostles, all is explained. That was the right time (Romans 5.6).

4. Paul writes that God sent forth his son to redeem those under the law in the fullness of time (Galatians 4.4). It is easier to suppose that, for Paul, the fullness of time had some direct correspondence to the end of the ages (1 Corinthians 10.11) than to imagine that the fullness of time came, Jesus died, and then everybody had to wait another long expanse of time for the death to actually apply to humanity.