Amaleq13

Josephus is understood to describe several apparent messianic contenders but none are identified by the title.

Solo

The thesis of "two Jesuses" on which Wells now dwells is improbable. For one thing, we would need to understand how this "confuting" of the two entities came about. I think there is a better way out.

The thing that both sides of this argument (HJ-MJ) love to overlook is Paul's paradoxical argument for Christ and the Cross. It is not that Paul (and I mean, the genuine Paul) did not know anything about the wandering man Jesus. It's that he did not want to have anything to do with him. "But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles." The passage of 1 Cor 18-31 articulates the Pauline paradox of Christ, as a deluded wandering nobody on earth who did and said crazy things and was crucified to be exalted to heaven. The genuine Paul does not bad-mouth Jews for the crucifixion. He views it as a pre-ordained necessity. It was a just requirement of the law (Rom 8:4); no man is justified before the God by the law (Gal 3:11). If Jesus Christ was sent in human flesh, then he was a sinner (!) and was condemned to die. God made him a sinner but he (internally) knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21) because God made him a fool, the last man on earth. If you don't read the gospels' "other Jesus" into Paul this is what you get. Paul would have intensely disliked the Jesus of the gospels who taught "to hate your mother and father" (cf. Rom 1:30) or to live like a bird in the sky with no thought of the morrow. You cannot live like that on Earth because you are flesh which must die ! Even if - or especially because - you are God's only Son !

The redemption was not in the magical effects of Jesus' deeds on earth, but in his death which Paul used to make a statement about the essential meaninglessness of human life lived without spiritual grace.

At any rate, this is how I read Paul's theology.

JS

Mythra

Why does there have to be a historical Jesus that originated the sayings in Q? If none of these sayings had ever been heard before, it might lend credence to a single historical person who started things off.

But Greek philosophers (particularly the Cynics, Stoics, and Platonists) paved the way very nicely for almost all of the sayings of Q.

Didymus

Why is it improbable? You say nothing in your post to show it to be.

Then you and Paul assert that "the wandering man Jesus" existed? Are you suggesting that he was one and the same Jesus, whose teachings and miracles in Galilee were repudiated by Paul? The latter sounds suspiciously adoptionist, as though God didn't ordain Jesus as the Messiah until the crucifixion.

Surely you mean 1 Cor 1 18-31. There is no 1 Cor 18.

Articulates? Come on. You may put such a spin on the passage if you like, but such opacity cannot be called articulation.

From this point on, you veer off into exegesis. Sorry, not interested. But the notion that Paul rejected, rather than ignored, Jesus the Galilean preacher is certainly provocative. I doubt most Christians would find it congenial.

Didymus

Solo

All I am saying is that if you (or Wells) want to hold that Paul's Jesus Christ and the Q preacher are not one entity, you need you show us how they found each other.


I do not assert Jesus of Q existed (though I believe, on the balance of evidence, he did). In my view then Paul did not have to assert his existence, what he did have to do was to repudiate the ridiculous bombast of the followers of an executed fool and blasphemer. He was commissioned by God himself (I believe he believed) to supply the mystical afferent to the Cross, up until then the symbol of shame and defeat, and show it as instrument of God's will and love for humanity. So he talks of the dead "Jesus of Q" in mystical terms. Too hard to imagine, isn't it ?

Surely,... I am human.

Bud, if you want to show me why my idea would not work, please, be my guest, else kindly spare me your declamations. I do not scare that easy.

I believe the intelligent Christians would instantly recognize that I am sincere and my purpose is not to trash their religion. For the rest, well, there is not much I can do, is there ?

aa5874

I was of the understanding that Josephus' text about Jesus were interpolated.

Alf

Ok, so what you are saying is that only among the christians were they so ignorant that they misunderstood and thought it was a name rather than a title?

Doesn't sound like a big issue to me.

Alf

Alf

Because Josephus himself did not believe they were. In fact he was pretty sure they were not as he argued pretty substantially against them all.

As the paragraph where he refer to Jesus as "the christ" is the one that is generally disputed as being originally Josephus it is kinda pointless to use that as evidence in favor of Josephus ever referring to Jesus as "the christ".

Alf

Alf

Given that Josephus has been tampered with by later interpolators it is hard to state exactly what he has said and what he did not say.

Alf

Amaleq13

That is certainly true of the longer reference but the short reference is widely considered genuine. To my knowledge most attempts to reconstruct the former include the reference to "called Christ" and the latter has it as well.

I don't think it involved misunderstanding. When a figure is so completely identified with the title, it is almost inevitable that the latter would essentially replace the figure's name for referencing.

That didn't stop him from referring to Jesus as "called Christ".

As I mentioned above, it is also included in the short reference which is widely accepted as genuine and most attempts to reconstruct the longer reference retain "called Christ".