EarlDoherty

You are switching horses in mid-argument. Your claim did not relate to the letters. You argued that Acts provides evidence that Paul preached an historical Jesus and not a celestial one. That is a fallacious methodology since Acts was written after the Gospels and at a time when a Gospel understanding was being imposed on pre-Gospel writings. If you cannot keep your arguments straight, it is not worth bothering with you.

If you don't know by now that I don't appeal to any "storyline" in the NT to come up with Paul's celestial Jesus because Paul came before any "storyline" and put together his picture of the heavenly Christ out of disparate elements of scripture, then you are truly not worth bothering with.

You cannot seem to understand that your claim that Paul is not witnessed to before the mid-2nd century (aside from being false) is easily trumped by the fact that if the Paulines and other epistles came post-Gospels, they could not have failed to register something of that Gospel storyline (as gurugeorge has been unsuccessfully beating his head against the wall to get you to comprehend). This argument from silence cannot be discredited, no matter how many capital letters you employ.

If this is part of a storyline based in the Gospels and known to Paul, why then did he say that he got the information "from the Lord", and not from passed-on historical tradition? Why do all the "words of the Lord" found in Paul have the language and tone of personal revelation to himself? What kind of an ass would this writer sound like if he claimed Paul knew of these things through personal revelation when they were supposedly common knowledge through oral tradition? If this post-Gospels writer was working with a known storyline, why does he insist that Paul got his gospel "from no man"?

Do you ever think past your capital letters and your constantly repeated mantras, aa? Mantras put people into a state of somnolence, not provide logical and supportable exegesis.

Earl Doherty

Duvduv

Here is a case where CONTEXT is everything. Since the author implied that the knowledge of Paul about the Christ was acquired directly from Christ, did this therefore imply that others did not know about the Christ? Did it therefore mply that knowledge of the Christ or the Eucharist among the folks in Jerusalem or others who had been in Christ before Paul was lacking because of what Paul received by revelation ? That is never implied.
But in context it does not negate the idea that a physical Christ idea was believed in when these letters were composed.
And SINCE the NT texts were always presented as a SET, there is no proof that the gospels did not exist alongside the epistles from the beginning.
Just as there is no evidence that the epistles were even sent out or received by anyone, replied to, or that any of these communities even existed when the epistles :were written.

aa5874

Your statement is completely erroneous-- A load of BS. I NEVER EVER argued that Acts provides evidence that Paul preached an historical Jesus and not a celestial one.

In the NT, Jesus was the Son of a God born of a Ghost and a Virgin that was crucified under Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem after a trial with the Sanhedrin.

My argument is totally clear. There is NO corrobation at all for early Pauline letters to Churches in the NT Canon and NO claim in the NT, Acts and the Pauline letters that Jesus was ONLY Celestial and NEVER on Earth.

You seem incapable of understanding that Entities that were supposedly on earth can be completely Mythological. Adam and Eve in Jewish Mythology and Romulus and Remus in Roman Myth were all claimed to have been on earth.

Even SATAN was claimed to be on earth when he and Jesus was on the Pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Again, I do NOT accept Presumptions as evidence. You MUST, MUST, MUST provide a source from antiquity for your storyline.

I already know that you made up your storyline.

No source of antiquity that used the Pauline writings ever claimed that the Pauline Jesus was completely Celestial and was never on earth.

The Pauline writer preached that he was a witness of the resurrected Jesus, the Son of God--made of a woman--Not that his Jesus was Never on earth.

Again, you present rhetoric but no credible evidence of antiquity for your claims. The Pauline writings do mention the Gospel story line. In fact, the Pauline letters have more of the Gospel storyline than any other Non-Pauline Epistle.

Again, you are not making much sense. Rhetorical questions are not evidence of anything. Why this and why that is not evidence they may show you are confused.

Why did the Gospels writer claim Jesus was crucified under Pilate in Jerusalem if it was common knowledge he was Never on earth??

Only asses would claim Jesus was born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth, had twelve disciples, did miracles in Galilee, walked on the sea , was on trial Before the Sanhedrin, was on trial before Pilate, was crucified in Jerusalem when it was common knowledge that Jesus was Never On Earth.

If Jesus was NEVER on earth then the authors of Mark, Mathew, Luke, John, Acts and Non-Pauline writings were ASSES.

2 John 1:7 KJV All Apologetic sources were ASSES when they claimed Jesus was on earth if they were TAUGHT by Paul for over 17 years that Jesus was never on earth.

The fact is that you invented the Pauline Celestial Never On earth Jesus using rhetorical questions.

Why did you invent the Celestial Never on EARTH Jesus when it is common knowledge that the Pauline writer claimed Jesus was God's Son made of a woman who BROKE BREAD on the Night he was Delivered up, was crucified, died for OUR Sins, was buried, resurrected on the third day and was SEEN by the disciples, Apostles and over 500 people??

Are you claiming the BREAD was Celestial in 1 Cor.11?? Are you claiming the Cup was Celestial in 1 Cor.11??

You have NO evidence, No corroborative source of antiquity for the Pauline Celestial Never on Earth Jesus.

You do NOT understand the Jesus storyline in the NT

You do NOT understand the Jesus storyline in the Pauline writings---Jesus was God Incarnate and was delivered up to be crucified by the Jews.

Philippians 2

tanya

Earl, I wonder if you could identify the "pre-Gospel" writings, upon which "Gospel understanding" had been imposed, according to Earl Doherty? Do you seek to indicate, that all extant documents have been forged, rewritten, altered, adjusted, or interpolated?

In my opinion, the Gospel of Mark was the first Christian document, and every other document relating to Jesus of Capernaum was created after this document.

I view "Mark" as first appearing in the 140's CE, i.e. following the chaotic dispersal of all Jews from Jerusalem, by the conquering Roman army, creating the opportunity for "revisionists" to offer hope of salvation to a population, stripped of its possessions, its leaders dead or imprisoned, and with the very fabric of society torn asunder. Desperate, impoverished, starving, families in search of any kind of help, would be willing to accept the folderol dispensed by the Christians, in return for food.

:thumbs:

I am also unconvinced.

Perhaps, Earl, you would explain, as gurugeorge apparently was unwilling to comment on my two earlier posts:

a. Why Justin Martyr also does not use the word "disciple";

b. Why Plutarch did not describe Aristarchus' heliocentrism.

Please be consistent.

gurugeorge

Oh yes, I mean I'm arguing against aa, but what he's saying is quite possible; lots of ideas in this area are possible, just some more plausible than others to me, with my own particular background knowledge and prior assumptions. (Mainly, I understand religion as originating in altered states of consciousness, as per William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. That's the absolute bedrock of my thought on religion. Things like religious ideas, concepts, religious philosophy and theology, all depend on, and are secondary phenomena related to, that origin. That's my background of expectation.)

And I absolutely do think the Epistles are composite texts. Scholars are quite sure that the "inauthentic" Pauline letters are inauthentic, and my understanding is that even orthodox scholarship thinks there are some interpolations in the "genuine" letters. Once that's admitted, it's blown wide open as to just how much interpolation, and how many hands, have been involved in the "genuine Epistles". I've also read some of the radical critical stuff that places the Epistles as late writings (though for different reasons than aa does).

It's just that, as a matter of policy, I like to see how much mythicism you can get out of a more-or-less orthodox understanding of datings and timings. Since I don't have the original languages and can't investigate primary sources for myself, I have to rely to a large extent on established scholarship to build up my picture, so I can't depart too far from established dates, times and priorities, because I don't feel justified in doing so. (But of course one has to keep a weather eye open for revisions within orthodox scholarship too.)

It's a peculiarity of this field that, although there's a lot of textual evidence, it's so ambiguous in crucial (! ) places that it looks like certainty is unlikely, and speculation inevitable, until and unless some real "smoking gun" stuff is dug up from the desert one day that could clinch it one way or another.

gurugeorge

Whoa! Not unwilling, just had to find some time to check Justin does actually use the word "disciple" quite a lot in the Dialogue with Trypho, with exactly the meaning one would expect:-

Mathetes is the word used.

There you go, absolutely definite eyeballing-while-on-earth implication there, circa 156 CE.

I don't think the logic is parallel.

Duvduv

Ah.......those texts based on now non-existent single manuscripts that appeared and disappeared in the 15th century.

gurugeorge

"The evidence suggests" nothing of the kind. The evidence makes it possible that there were no Pauline letters before 150 CE, which is why your theory has some plausibility. But there's nothing compelling or certain about it.

Once again, this is not "the Pauline writings" that have been thus dated, but "extant manuscripts of the Pauline writings". Do you not understand that these are two different concepts?

gurugeorge

Bingo. But this type of argument just doesn't seem to register with dear old aa.

Duvduv

What kind of an ass would someone sound like claiming a revelation from the Christ who was common knowledge and refer to those without the revelation as being "in Christ before me"??!!