Duvduv

Isn't it at least interesting that gospel writers attempted to smooth over the contradiction about remission of sin in Luke (with the last 3 verses of the gospel) and Matthew (which adds a few words but not in the last chapter). Why didn't they make the same attempt elsewhere to smooth over inconsistencies?!
The attempt in the gospel is feeble because the gospel itself doesn't explain the doctrine of how this even works:

Luke 24:47
"And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

Then they added into GMatt a verse, but the meaning doesn't sound exactly the same as it does in Luke:

Matthew 26:28
(Jesus said) “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

GJohn 20:23 has an entirely different meaning:
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

And of course forgiveness/remission of sin in GMark has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with ritual purification in GMark 1:4.

aa5874

Again, the phrase "for the remission of sins" is missing from the Sinaiticus gMark [short gMark]


Mark 14.24
Matthew 26:28 The Earliest gMark Jesus story is NOT a story of Salvation by the Crucifixion.

gurugeorge

Why would you expect there to be, such that their non-mention would be significant? What's highlighted in Acts is preaching, voyages, travail, miracle-working, etc. - IOW drama. Why would some occasional letters to churches be mentioned?

Sure, why should that be a problem to my ideas? Remember, I'm saying that "disciples" appears in GMark, but not in Paul.

How do you know that's "earliest"?

Yes, but the question is what was "the Jesus story" in the Pauline writings (even regardless of when they were written)? Was it the same "Jesus story" as found in the gospels?

It doesn't look like it's the same story, since, for one thing, there's no mention of "discipleship" in the Pauline writings, it doesn't look like it's exactly the same story. There are some vague similarities, but that's as far as it goes.

Now, on the historicist hypothesis, reasons can be concocted for that absence; on your "late 2nd century invented fable" hypothesis, reasons can be concocted for that absence. But notice that both you and historicists have to concoct something. I don't have to. I take that difference at face value, and go with the idea that the Pauline writer had a different "story" about Christ, Apostles, disciples, etc., than the gospel writers and the writer of Acts. And I try to understand how such a situation could plausibly have come about.

You're free to read what you like into the Paul writings (such as the concept of discipleship) and make the two sources (gospels and Paul) be talking about the same thing in the same way; but it's just not there, the word isn't there. Nor is the idea of physical witnessing of a risen Christ who lived on earth and preached before his death and resurrection. That's not there in Paul either, it's just in the gospels and Acts.

This is what it means to look at evidence, aa.

outhouse

AA is correct with this statement.

Because the Roman/Gentile God-Fearers are the ones who wrote these legends, and they only knew about Jesus from his death and the oral traditions that generated following his death.

The whole of the gospels and epistles really deal with the last week of the mans life because thats all they knew. 400,000 possible witnesses at passover generated a lot of oral trdaitions.

Jews were made to be the guilty party because, God-Fearers were distancing themselves from Jews who were enemies of the Roman governement.

maryhelena

No, obviously not. The Pauline story is about a JC crucified in a timeless spiritual, cosmic, context. The gospel story is about a JC crucified in a historical time frame.

That there was a pre-Paul gospel story is evidenced by Paul himself:

[T2]Galatians 1:13

For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.

Galatians 1:23

They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”[/T2]

That’s pretty straightforward is it not? The question for the HJ/MJ debate is whether Paul was referencing a historical gospel JC or an ahistorical gospel JC. There is no question about Paul not acknowledging that others were preaching JC before his time. What Paul is saying is that his particular take on things is his own via revelation from JC. He is not saying there was no JC before JC revealed himself to Paul.

The ahistoricists/mythicists have rejected a historical gospel JC, of whatever variant it’s proposers can think up. What they cannot do is reject the fact, upheld by Paul himself, that others were preaching a JC before his time. So, the question is: What type of JC was being preached?

Doherty upholds the idea of an imaginary founder of the Q community. The ‘church of god’ prior to Paul believed in a symbolic or mythological JC - i.e. not a historical gospel JC. Paul’s epistles have upheld this earlier position. His new revelation was to take this imaginary JC idea into a new timeless spiritual, cosmic, context. This new idea did not negate the earlier idea set in a historical time frame - it added to it, it developed it into a more encompassing world view of neither Jew nor Greek.

That is the NT story. A story that develops from the gospel historical time frame into a timeless spiritual context. The story does not run from the spiritual context to a historical context. Yes, of course, anything is possible. But Paul can’t be used to prove that case. The gospel JC crucifixion story does not need the Pauline epistles. But the Pauline epistles need the gospel JC story. The Pauline epistles cannot be used to support the idea, upheld by some mythicists, that the Pauline cosmic crucified JC has been historicized as the gospel crucified JC. That gospel story preceded Paul.

The dating of NT manuscripts has no relevance to it’s storyline. The NT storyline is what it is. Paul follows not precedes the gospel story. Paul is upholding the idea of an imaginary founder figure (Q for Earl) who was 'born of a woman' and from the 'seed of David' - and that is the gospel ahistorical JC story.

gurugeorge

It's evidence of a claim to having had predecessors and it's evidence of things called "faith" and "evangelizing", but the character of those things is what's at issue, and it's not at all obvious that they mean the same things as they mean in the gospels - i.e. the "gospel story".

(It's of interest that those particular passsages don't seem to have been in the Marcion version of Galatians. Additions by Catholics or paring away by Marcion? My feeling is that the Saul/Paul thing and the idea of him as prior persecutor is an interpolation in the letters based on fabrication of Paul as a Jew in Acts, but that would be going too far afield for now.)

As to the rest of what you say, I would rather follow Carrier in saying that euhemerization seems to be the norm in the Hellenistic world in those days - i.e. allegorizing a divine being and "bringing him down to earth" in some way, and I think that is indeed what GMark is, and the rest of the gospel tradition picks up that ball and runs with it, so for this Christian case to go against that trend would require special evidence.

And again, in the wider context of religion in general being based primarily in visions, hallucinations and mystical experiences (e.g. cf. Wm. James' Varieties of Religious Experience), it's much more likely to be that way round. (Note that it could have been a hallucinating human Jesus who was having visions of the divine, and that's probably what most rational people who haven't looked deeply into it think; but since we have no good evidence for a human Jesus - "brother of the Lord" and "born of woman" being the strongest damp squibs the historicists have - or anything purporting to be from his pen, but we do have something purporting to be from another pen that fits the bill, it's probably "Paul" who's the deity-hallucinating main founder, with the work of the Jerusalem Apostles before him fading out of significance with the sacking of Jerusalem.)

maryhelena

Euhermerism relates to historical events or figures being mythologized. If you want to reverse this i.e. to turn mythological figures into human form, you have, in actuality, not only demoted the ‘gods’ but emasculated them. The historical figures died; the historical events past - the mythology lived on. Now, with reverse Euhermerisim it is the ‘gods’ that die in their cosmic setting and the human de-mythologized figure lived - i.e. no more gods. (and the human dies anyway.......) Euhermerism is not dualism: The historical figure becomes mythologized at death. The gods die in order to be historicized. Reverse euhermerism does not allow for one to keep the Pauline JC if one wants a gospel historicized Pauline JC.
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Reverse euhermerization brings 'gods' down to earth in order to destroy them - to eradicate them! If one were to do that with Paul's cosmic crucified JC figure - then one has negated his whole idea of his JC's crucifixion being of salvation value. One has in effect - killed off the Pauline JC! A historicized Pauline crucified JC has no salvation value...i.e. there can be no salvation value in a flesh and blood crucifixion...Such an idea is a monstrous failure of morality. Nope - reverse euhermerism has far too many problems to consider it as having any relevance to the Pauline cosmic crucified JC and the HJ/MJ debate.

aa5874

What??? You are not aware of the evidence that the Pauline writings are late.

It is ONLY in the LATER gJohn that Cephas is identified as Peter which is compatible with the Pauline letters.

Mark 3:16 KJVJohn 1 Galatians 2:9 KJV Only gJohn and Pauline writings refer to Peter as Cephas in the ENTIRE Canon.

The authors of the short gMark, the Long gMark, gMatthew, gLuke and Acts did NOT refer to Peter as Cephas which support the argument that gMark was composed BEFORE gJohn and the Pauline letters.

gurugeorge

There's actually no difference between euhemerization and the "reverse" your man is talking about.

Look at it in terms of a timeline:-

Story about a celestial being -> story about an earthly being

What Euhemerus was doing is precisely what the Chinese were doing. It's a rationalistic approach to celestial myths, saying "oh this must have been a real person at a real time in the past".

Rational people don't believe in woo woo things, so when they see a woo woo story either they just say it's nonsense or they try and "make sense of it" by showing that it was really about x, y, z ordinary things.

It's exactly the same process going on in Euhemerus' mind as went on in the minds of 18th and 19th century scholars with the rise of rationalism, and the "quest for a historical Jesus". It's just a further process of euhemerization, with the earlier gospel version being an earlier partial euhemerization of an earlier purely celestial, purely woo-woo entity.

Except, with Carrier, I'd say that the first known version of it, GMark, is more like an extended metaparable. Just as the parables in the GMark story itself tell mundane stories that have a deeper meaning that pertains to divine matters, so the WHOLE of GMark is an "exoteric" story about a preacher that's a parable for the "esoteric" divine matter. Note how everyone around Jesus (except the demons!) are totally ignorant of his real role - especially his "disciples".

IOW, the writers of GMark knew the celestial story, but hid it in an extended parable - a Gnostic parable. And if you look at April DeConick's book on the Gospel of Judas, you'll see that the Gnostic authors of it stuck pretty closely to GMark, show the "disciples" as ignoramuses, and show the real matter to be different to what they think it is. This is also why GMark is "Pauline" (the gospel takes the same attitude to the first Apostles as Paul does).

And the way that GMatthew (the first proto-orthodox gospel) uses GMark but reverses the "polarity" of the disciples, making them reasonably competent, good students, etc., totally gives the game away. The intent is to take the allegory seriously, and pick up this novel idea introduced in GMark (and maybe an ur-Luke before that) that the first Apostles were personal disciples of the cult deity while He was on Earth, but make them suitable founders of a lineage laid claim to by the proto-orthodox.

And yes, you are right that this creates problems for theology, a tension between the euhemerization and the divinity. That is why Catholicism has alway striven to hold an uneasy balance between the "man" and "God" aspects of the Christ figure. In a sense, Catholicism is mystical and Gnostic too, but it is a form of Gnosticism that has been, as it were, corrupted by the desire to claim a direct lineage going back to personal discipleship of the cult deity. The very heart and soul of the intent of Catholicism/proto-orthodoxy is to have the priest be an intermediary between man and god. In order to do this, it has to find an uneasy balance betwen the "god within" of the original Gnosticism (which requires no intermediary, just initiation and Knowledge), and the "you need us and our lineage to intercede for you" that keeps the dues rolling in. But this last absolutely requires the bogus discipleship lineage, and requires a stronger emphasis on the fleshly aspect of the cult deity, makes him a preacher, gives him a ministry - tropes that in GMark were merely allegorical, become with Catholicism (in GMatthew an GLuke) pseudo-history.

And that's the tail that wags the dog.

gurugeorge

I'm aware of your argument and the evidence you think supports it, but I'm not convinced, as you know.

Not necessarily, in Paul, "Peter" and "Cephas" could easily be two different people (that there was still a tradition within the Christian cult that held them as two different people at least up till 160 CE is shown by the Epistula Apostolorum), and GMark be an early case of mistaken identity, with GJohn being a later example of the same.

Once again, you are just assuming that the NT Canon is cut from whole cloth, and not rather a patchwork quilt of sometimes contradictory texts.

It's a bizarre mirroring of orthodoxy's position ... to disprove orthodoxy! Ingenious, but ultimately needless.