EarlDoherty

Dear Ted,

I have to say that I find most of your counter-arguments quite strained, very much like the ones you offered against my Top 20 Sounds of Silence. They also suffer from the same overall flaw of your previous effort, in that you do not take into account the cumulative effect, but treat each one as though it exists in isolation, as though there are no other cases requiring the explanation as well—let alone a couple of hundred of them. (Vork pointed out this feature of the HJ approach in his chart.)

“God sent his own Son”…So that, you say, involves an automatic assumption that he could not be other than sinless. To you, perhaps. To an ancient Hellenistic recent convert? The gods he was familiar with committed sins right and left. In any case, your argument is like J. P. Holding’s classic: nobody ever says things that people already know. I think we all can recognize the fallacy in that. Your “reasonable inferences from his writings” is more of the same. Everyone understood. In any case, the whole argument falls flat, because are you telling us that every single thing in every one of Paul’s letters represents only things that he has never told his readers before or that they didn’t have some understanding of already?

You also have ignored my larger point, that such a subject (not only about being “sinless” but walking in the flesh vs. the spirit, that flesh by nature, according to Paul, is corrupt) would need qualification in view of Christ’s own human flesh and his walking in the flesh, regardless of whether everyone knew or understood why that flesh was sinless.

Your quote from Hebrews is not accurate. Here it is following the literal Greek:

“Since therefore the children have partaken of blood and of flesh, also he himself shared in like manner (paraplēsiōs) the same things…”

The Greek word means “similar to, like, coming near, resembling.” Yet another statement of the “likeness” idea. Funny how that’s so consistent, and so odd. But it fits squarely into my whole picture of the descending god taking on the spiritual equivalent of human likeness, so this passage doesn’t bother me in the least. Funny, too, how right in the previous verses, he illustrates this ‘taking on of similar blood and flesh’ by speaking of how Christ calls all believers his brothers: not by quoting anything he said on earth, or even in the past, but by quoting scripture as Christ speaking in the present. Does all this sound like a concrete statement of an historical Jesus assuming actual human flesh? It doesn’t to me. And my reading is backed up and supported by everything else in that vein throughout not only this epistle, but every other epistle of the New Testament.

You ask wouldn’t “being in the likeness of sinful flesh” in the mythicist sense also raise questions? If the understanding was that this “likeness” was in the spiritual world, I don’t think it would cross any believer’s mind to wonder whether Christ had the opportunity or temptation to commit any sins there. All he did was enter the sphere and get crucified. Where was the scope for sin in such a situation? Whereas if he had lived 33 years on earth in actual sinful flesh the opportunities were endless. I think the believer could distinguish between those two situations and not be led to raise questions in regard to the mythicist one. Besides, there is an important semantic difference. If the thought is “the likeness of sinful flesh, then it is not really the sinful flesh. If I physically resemble my brother, that doesn’t mean I am susceptible to doing everything that he does, especially if I don’t live on the same planet. Whereas, in the HJ scenario, Paul is really in trouble and needs to explain himself. If 8:3 means “Jesus of Nazareth took on actual sinful flesh,” that word “sinful” is directly allotting a characteristic to Jesus which has to be explained as not applying, as not operating in him. If I were a “clone” of my brother, and he’s corrupt and lustful and all those things Paul attributes to “flesh”, then I am in trouble, for people will suspect that I might very conceivably follow in his ways, or at least be tempted to. That is what Paul needs to explain.

You raise one legitimate point. 1 John 2:6 does say “walk as he walked,” which I had forgotten (though I discuss it in my website article No.2). It is definitely a reference to Jesus, not God, because it uses the term “ekeinos” to refer to him, one of several times the writer uses it to refer to the Son—(a curiosity in itself, which I address in my article as well.) Still, the thought is a bare statement, standing alone. It also stands in some incongruity with the previous verses, which are all about God. This spells an addition in a later stratum, which several other verses in this epistle also betray. (This is not the same as “interpolation” which I am not claiming, and 1 John is acknowledged by critical scholarship to be a layered document.)

You mean such as he does in a similar thought in Romans 1:19-20? “For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them.” (No Jesus telling us anything about God—remember that? It’s my Top 20 No. 1!) Or talking of Jesus in Romans 16:25-27? “…through my gospel and proclamation about Jesus Christ, through God’s revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages, now disclosed and made known through the prophetic writings…” Or Paul saying he got his gospel from no man but through revelation—meaning based on scripture? Or all Paul’s and others’ appeals to scripture to demonstrate this and that and everything else that they say about Christ? Or even Barnabas as late as the early 2nd century saying that God through scripture has revealed to us the things of the past, present and future—including about Christ? Things like that?

Not the same. Once this principle is established at the outset (and among gentiles the whole idea is already ingrained through the type of salvation philosophy found in the mysteries), there is no need to restate it—as long as nothing is presented which would create some kind of contradiction or confusion. Such as, in the HJ scenario, Christ taking on sinful flesh and yet somehow not being sinful. This is a good example of the sorts of issues that arise and embody anomalies and yet are never explained. That’s the sort of thing you need to look for specifically in regard to the MJ scenario. I can only think of three. Romans 1:3, 9:5 and Galatians 4:4. The first two I have dealt with adequately in my various recent posts. As for the third, I think that to someone’s question of “But Paul, how can someone be in heaven and still be born of woman?” Paul could have answered in either of two ways: “Because it’s in scripture, stupid!” or “What do you mean? I never said that!”

You juxtapose Romans 9:3 and 9:5, and ask why Paul didn’t explain that kata sarka is here applied in two different ways? Because it wasn’t. “According to the flesh” means the same in both cases: ‘in relationship to the flesh’. It’s just that the first was a human-human relationship, the second a divine-human relationship. The nature of the relationship may be different, but the use of the phrase is essentially not. (Did you read my recent long post on this thread, August 20 #4719857?)

Ted, surely you are not going to appeal to that tired old timeworn ‘explanation’ yet again, which has been discredited so often?

Earl Doherty

Johnny Skeptic

Ted, what prophesied Jewish Messiah, book, chapter, and verse if you please?

TedM

It would have been clearer to you probably had I said "the allegedly prophesied Jewish Messiah". Given that wording, some references may be descended from David, stumbling block to the Jews, suffered for Israel, etc..

TedM

Earl,

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. I respect the fact that you know more about these issues than I do, and I know it must be tiresome to have to re-address issues you have addressed before. I haven’t read all of your articles (I’ve read many) so am unaware of your position on certain verses. Someday maybe I’ll get around to reading through the rest of them. I really do appreciate your patience with that.


For the most part I was not attempting to make a case in this recent post, but was interested in your take on a few verses. Your point is well-taken though. It is easy to cherry pick from a few verses without properly perceiving the accumulative body of evidence. I’m not sure that is what I have done in the past or not, because there are many verses that when taken at face value or in the absence of further clarification could reasonably be seen as presenting an accumulative body of evidence for the orthodox view. And, so far from what I’ve seen of what constitutes accumulative evidence for your theory, although it includes some very good observations about what is there and what isn’t there, it also requires what I still feel are some unusual interpretations of quite a few of the "orthodox" verses without any explanations that I would expect to support them, so I remain unconvinced.


I agree that is not a strong argument. Paul is silent about why Jesus was sinless, if that is what he believed. It’s a valid point. But it does assume that Paul believed God’s Son was sinless--which to me is the likely position a God-fearing Jew of the time would have. Their God was not comparable to the Hellenistic gods. I did offer up the possibility that maybe Paul believed that prior to the obedience of the cross Jesus was a sinner too--since he had something like sinful flesh. As I said if that was the case there would be no need to explain such a position to an ancient Hellenistic recent convert.


I made 2 inferences.

One is why Jesus could be sinless, which I just addressed above.

The other was with regard to your question about how Jesus could be sinless yet constitute sin. Paul does assume that his Roman audience understood what a Paschal lamb sacrifice was. He doesn’t bother to explain Passover, the firstborn status of the lamb, the lamb purity, or the meaning of the lamb sacrifice. Therefore, when he calls Jesus “our paschal lamb” who has been sacrificed I think it is quite reasonable to infer the answer to your question, and to assume that everyone in fact did understand that a sinless Jesus could "become" sin by becoming the sacrifice for sins, since he assumed they understood what a paschal lamb sacrifice was..




If by your phrase “need qualification” you mean Paul should have said--at least once--something along these lines: “Of course, His own flesh was not sinful, which is why I use the term “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, because we know that Jesus walked a holy life on this earth, as attested to by those who knew him. And we further know this because his flesh which became corrupted by the sin of others on the cross, died, but death could not contain him. He was raised back from the dead because he alone was sinless. For God dwelled within him, and God alone is Holy. ”

Something like that definitely would have been helpful. It would pull many pieces together.

But, should we really expect that much? Does it really “need” qualifying? Paul talks a lot about flesh and how sinful it is for his readers, and how they are to live holy lives which accompany faith in Jesus so that they too can be raised as Jesus. He only specifically mentions Jesus’ own fleshly body in such a discussion about the sinfulness of flesh in Romans 8, as far as I see. While further qualification in that one chapter would have been nice, since it is in just one place in his writings (I think) I’m not inclined to see the lack of something such as what I wrote above as particularly significant. Where else does the context require Paul to have talked about Jesus’ own sinful flesh on earth? And, isn’t it possible he DOES do this, but simply doesn’t provide specific examples, in the following three verses?:

Rom 13:13-14 1 Cor 11:1 1 Thess 1:6Why was clean living such a priority for the early Christians? Why did they believe that Jesus served as an example of clean living if all he did was get crucified?



Is there a better word that means “in the exact same manner” that you think would have been more appropriate had Jesus had human flesh?

I alluded to the possible reason for the use of “likeness” above. His physical flesh was the same in appearance, but if Jesus was sinless then the idea of “sinful flesh” applying to Jesus’ own flesh is confusing and potentially misleading: Flesh corrupts and dies BECAUSE of sins committed within it. If Jesus was sinless, he didn’t really have the exact same kind of flesh (ie, flesh of sin) until he “became” sin on the cross--only then could his flesh become corrupted and die. A simple solution is to refer to a sinless human being as having flesh which resembles that of a sinful human being, since the idea of “flesh” itself denotes sinfulness.



Your assumption appears to be proven wrong by the other verse I quoted in Hebrews 4:15 “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, and yet without sin”. And again in 12:3 “Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility from himself.”

To this author he didn’t apparently only “enter the sphere and get crucified” and he apparently was given many opportunities (“in every respect has been tempted”) to sin, and had to endure hostility from others who were sinners.

Where indeed was the scope for sin in the sphere of flesh that you subscribe to, Earl?



I don’t know enough to comment, other than to point out that this is an example of what you said doesn’t exist. Your explanation may be accurate. I don’t know how strongly the layering theory is supported, but as it stands this seems to add to the numerous other examples both in Paul and elsewhere that suggest Jesus had some kind of life prior to his crucifixion, whether that was on earth or in the sphere.



No, I’m talking about what Paul knew of Jesus, not what Gentiles who lived prior to Jesus could have known about God. This verse doesn’t apply to my point here, nor did I think you applied it properly in your Top Silence #1, as in both places the context doesn’t support your expectations.


The mystery is most likely that of Gentile salvation, not the revealing of the life and death of Jesus. Paul’s gospel also--that of Gentile salvation. Paul didn’t appeal to scripture to describe Jesus’ actions at the Lord’s Supper.

What I’m pointing out is that nowhere does Paul say that ALL about Jesus’ life is known through the scriptures or revelation. He refers to scriptures and revelation to support his gospel of salvation for Gentiles, but where does he actually say that the example of Jesus’ purity, his temptations, his obedience, his crucifixion, his being buried, and his raising from the dead are based on scripture, and scripture alone?

In fact, he mentions Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection many many times, but to my recollection never once even quotes a scripture for support of any of those basic events! Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection were EVERYTHING to Paul yet he only mentions scriptural support once, I think, in 1 Cor 15:3, without providing a quotation. To me, this points out the fallacy of having expectations for what Paul should or should not have written.


Was Paul odd in his omissions about Jesus’ life. Yes, I think so, in some cases. Does this mean Jesus never lived on earth? Maybe. Or, it means just Paul was odd. Which, he was.



I appreciate your answering this here, although you no doubt have elsewhere. But, to me this sounds much the same as the orthodox argument which you reject for why Paul doesn’t talk about Jesus’ life much, if any: Everyone understood already. Doesn’t your quote above equally apply here?:
I can think of many more because I am not convinced by the explanations for the others.


Thanks. I had missed that. Very nice summary of information.

So, you agree that 9:5 is an anomaly for your position--ie Paul didn’t explain. Your explanation may be correct. It seems to me that not only is it an unexplained reference that sounds very orthodox, like Rom 1:3 and Gal 4:4, but that the expectation for an explanation should be even higher than for Rom 1:3 and Gal 4:4 than if 9:3 were not present. The fact that he uses the same phrase just 2 verses earlier to denote a human-human relationship bumps up the expectation that he would address 2 things:

1. The nature of the divine-human relationship is (such as would be helpful for Rom 1:3 and Gal 4;4).
2. The fact that it was a divine-human relationship in contrast to the just-mentioned human-human relationship using the same “according to the flesh” phrase.


I’ve not seen the arguments against it. Paul writes what he writes. He says that he determined to know nothing more that Christ and him crucified, among the Corinthians. In other words he decided intentionally to limit his presentation of information about Jesus to the basic issues that pertainted to their (Gentile) salvation! This is in perfect harmony with the odd omissions we see in his overal body of work, that you are so adept at finding!


Here’s my overall take at this point:

1. There are odd omissions of detail about Jesus‘ pre-crucifixion life and followers.

2. There is a striking lack of either scriptural or anectdotal support for the most basic elements of what was most important to Paul about Jesus--his crucifixion, death, and resurrection.

3. There are many passages that sound like he may be referring to a human being on earth, with clear scriptural support.

4. There are many others that sound like a human being on earth with no stated scriptural support, though that could be tied back to scripture.

5. There are some others that sound like a human being on earth with no apparent tie back to scripture.

6. There are a small few that appear to tie him to actual persons (James, the Jews, 1 John) with no apparent tie to scripture.

7. There are a few that sound like they may be referring to a being that is human-like but who is interacting with beings in another sphere.

8. There are none that I know of that sound like a human-like being in another sphere with clear support.


What is one to most reasonably conclude from that?

Thanks again,

ted

EarlDoherty

That’s the understatement of the year, Ted. There are so many places in all the epistles, not just in Paul, where some clear statement “would have been helpful.” Too bad neither Paul nor anyone else ever gives us any. Cumulative effect only happens when one opens one’s mind to it, and isn’t constantly making excuses for each isolated case. I still can’t see you moving away from that position. As in:

This is all so vague and obscure as signifying that Paul was thinking about the human Jesus “as an example of clean living.” Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is much more obviously a mystical idea equivalent to Paul’s regular idea of being “in Christ”. Your second and third verses could just as easily be a general reference to Jesus’ holiness, in the same way that God is holy in 1 Peter 1, without either of them ever having engaged in “clean living.” The problem has always been that you and others have recourse only to these quite vague and ambiguous passages which never come close to clearly supporting your contentions/wishes.

I can think of many words and phrases that could have been employed in Hebrews 2:14 that would have been immeasurably clearer and descriptive of your assumptions, such as:

“…also he himself took on in his human body (on earth) the same blood and flesh as we have…”

But this gets us into trouble theologically speaking, doesn’t it? It also sounds like some kind of precursor of docetism. Isn’t the idea that Jesus took on human nature fully? Maybe Paul wasn’t up to speed with modern theology, or even post-Nicaean theology. In any case, this kind of subtlety is surely the very thing that would need explicating by Paul.

First of all, this is quite a different epistle, with a lot of different thought, than the Paulines. We don’t even know in this case if the author envisioned Christ entering any specific sphere in order to be crucified because unlike virtually every other early cultic document, there is no focus on his death at all. The important event, the “sacrifice” is Christ entering the heavenly sanctuary to offer his blood. In any event, I think you are once again reading into the text a more specific meaning than one is justified to draw from it. Let’s look at the verse’s context:

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

What would once again have been helpful here is a clear reference to the circumstances and type of body in which he was “tempted in every way”. And in fact, you will note that I was forced to use the past tense. Why does the Greek actually have the perfect, “has been tempted” as though it is still going on, or is somehow a timeless kind of condition, rather than something pertaining to a life lived (and now over) in the past? This effect is strengthened by the previous phrases, which talk of the high priest we “have.” And where would the writer get this idea, that his spiritual heavenly high priest was one who “has been tempted”? I think I hardly need to spell it out. From scripture. Absolutely everything this author has to say about Christ is derived from scripture, and that can be (and usually has been) identified by commentators even when such a derivation is not stated. I won’t speculate on what passage(s) in scripture gave him this particular idea, but I have no doubt there is one that could be so interpreted. (Isaiah 53 doesn’t say the Servant was tempted, but it does state more than once that he was sinless, and this in itself was probably the main if not sole source of the idea throughout the epistles that Christ was without sin.)

Let’s look beyond that passage into the start of Chapter 5:

1 For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins…(The writer goes on to talk about what high priests on earth do in offering sacrifices for sins in the Temple.)…5 So also Christ did not glorify himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to him, “Thou art my Son”…just as He says also in another passage, “Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Interesting, don’t you think? Christ from verse 5 is set up in parallel (as he is throughout the epistle) to “every high priest taken from among men.” Wasn’t Christ “among men”? Isn’t there a lurking anomaly, a contradiction here? Didn’t his sacrifice take place on earth, on Calvary? It certainly seems as though “earthly high priests” are being contraposed to a “heavenly high priest” with no thought that the latter had been on earth—just as we find in Hebrews 8:4 which virtually tells us outright that he never had been. And note that this writer knows of Christ becoming the heavenly High Priest through scripture. In fact 4:14, as quoted above, says that “we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens.” This doesn’t necessarily rule out that he had been on earth, but isn’t it odd how no author can ever tell us clearly and directly, no matter what the context, that in fact their Christ had been on earth, in a human body. Not only have none of them been “helpful”, they’ve been inordinately uncooperative and maddeningly obscure!

I suggest you have a look at my comprehensive discussion of this verse in my Sounds of Silence Appendix. See 17. Hebrews 12:2-3 about 75% of the way in. Once again, it involves scripture, something recognized by commentators, as I indicate.

I see you subscribe to Rick Sumner’s very dubious interpretation of what Paul (and pseudo-Paul) everywhere means by “mystery” as applied to Christ. I think I have demonstrated that his case is incoherent and not supported by the texts, and have no further intention of addressing it.

Admittedly he doesn’t. But he does state the principle, clearly and often. His gospel comes from revelation, it is kata tas graphas, the gospel of the Son is found in the prophets, and so on. I’ll settle for that. He often quotes scripture for points that are somewhat lower on the scale of importance, perhaps because these things he has not spelled out before, and he needs to provide illustration. The key points were already familiar, which in fact he states in 1 Cor. 15:1f, “I remind you of the gospel I preached to you…that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,” i.e., as we know from the scriptures. Clearly, he has itemized those scriptures to them before.

You missed my distinction, and its context. In the context of the preaching of a Christ crucified in the mythical heavens, once this principle is established, there is no need to repeat it, unless something else said by the preacher seems to contradict it, or is incompatible with it. Then that anomaly needs explaining. That is not the same as your idea that something doesn’t need referencing when everyone already presumably knows it. How Christ could be in sinful flesh and yet not be susceptible to sin is an anomaly and needs explaining. That Christ was allegedly crucified on Calvary and yet no one (Paul refers to Jesus’ “death” 58 times) ever happens to mention any place on earth for that crucifixion, never shows sign of anyone ever going there, often casts the crucifixion in a spiritual world context involving demons spirits, is not the same thing. There is a difference between what is needed, and what is natural, given the alleged circumstances. Everyone supposedly knew that Jesus taught certain ethical principles, but just because everyone supposedly knew that does not mean that no one would ever refer to such a thing, let alone in contexts where they were supposedly quoting those very teachings—sometimes putting them down to God, rather than Jesus (as in 1 Thes. 4:9).

I think it is clear that Ted will keep coming up with objections and counters which I will then answer, those answers being something he will then dismiss as inconclusive. Such a process is too time consuming to continue indefinitely, so I will more or less end my side of it here, although I may pick up on the odd individual point. However, what I want to do in the next couple of days or so is outline another observation about a telling silence in the epistles, somewhat akin to the silence on Jesus living in a human body but being immune to sin, but this one relating to everyone’s favorite other passage, Galatians 4:4. This, too, is a new realization on my part.

Earl Doherty

TedM

I don't have the desire to spend time going back and forth any more either, Earl, so I too am willing to consider this interaction closed for the most part.
I would be curious as to your take on my current assessment of the overall picture of the evidence. (The 8 items at the end of my post).

In any case, thanks for your reply.

take care,

ted