fatpie42

Well they didn't teach it to him, did they? He could not understand it until the revelation from God. Same principle applies.

Couldn't you say the same thing about Peter and James's epistles? Heck, if all of them got the idea of Jesus from personal revelation, that would count in favour of Christianity. Personally, however, I think that's a little far fetched.

I wasn't saying that you were wrong to say that Paul created the Jesus myth, but I think we need a little more evidence than you have currently provided. That Jesus was a myth seems pretty clear, but that Paul was its originator? Not so obvious...

fatpie42

Which bit of what I said wasn't supported? That "salvation is a big topic with a variety of interpretations" or that "Paul speaks of salvation as the promise of a future resurrection into a spiritual body." I fail to see what you are trying to argue here nor what I have said that you consider controversial...

I don't believe that I ever made any comparison of 'salvations'. All I said was that Jesus myths no more require a historical figure than Dionysian myths. Since they are similar myths why pick one as more likely to be true than the other (especially considering that Dionysos came first).

It doesn't help you demonstrating a historical origin either.

My understanding is that Jesus' divinity is believed to be vital to the atonement and that his virgin birth is often connected with this.

My understanding is that the celebration of Jesus' sacrifice through the Eucharist is a major Christian ritual related to his death and resurrection.

My understanding is that you will have a hard time finding a strongly believing Christian who doesn't think that the resurrection is a vital part of the salvation brought by Jesus.

Which part of this do you find controversial?

Once again you are presupposing your conclusion. Why must we presume there was a historical person whom they were selling as the messiah. Why can't they be stories about a messiah who was only ever experienced through 'revelation' telling that he once lived as a man (and, conveniently, fulfilled the prophecies)?

I never said that Rome never let a criminal go. The Bible says much more than simply that Rome let a murderer go. It says that it was a regular tradition for them to do so! That something like that should only ever have been mentioned within the gospel accounts is absolutely ridiculous.

You mean Pilate, right?

If the only way to understand it is for the gospel writers to have no knowledge of a historical Jesus, doesn't that support my side of the argument?

So let's get this straight. You fully admit that Josephus never mentioned Jesus and yet you think that can't be used as an example of silence. Why the hell not???

If the only mention of Jesus in Josephus is a later addition; that means there is no mention of Jesus written by Josephus. The reason they had to add the later addition was precisely because it was completely absurd for Josephus never to have mentioned Jesus. Josephus' silence was an embarassment to the Christians of the time.

spin

If you assume your conclusion.

I'm sorry but I don't understand any of this. What do the epistles named after Peter and a James have to do with our source material?

What's your problem with Paul claiming information from revelation? He states it as his source and rejects any other source. The revelation could have been in a dream, or a psychotic break, or some sort of overburdening idea that takes control of his thoughts. The important thing is that he claims it alone as his font of information.

Red flag, folks... red flag... red... Paul didn't contemplate his Jesus as mythical. He perceived Jesus to have been real. Unless you are using a very wide and therefore very unhelpful meaning to "myth", you should appreciate the parallel I keep making with Ebion, who didn't exist but was considered real enough by Tertullian, Hippolytus and Epiphanius to argue against in literary form. Was Ebion -- a non-existent eponymous founder of the Ebionite movement -- a myth in your parlance?

As I pointed out to Elijah, there may have been other originators, but Paul didn't need them, so if they existed the were irrelevant. We only know definitely about Paul, so until we get evidence for any other, we may as well conclude that there was just Paul.

You, also, don't trust what Paul says when he states that no-one taught him his gospel. You have what he says and no contemporary evidence to the contrary.


spin

Elijah

Your understanding of the salvation (whatever that may be) isn’t supported. What does Jesus have to do with the salvation that Paul is suggesting? Was he resurrected from the dead into a spiritual body in his mind?
You can’t use a story you have no knowledge of how it was understood to support your interpretation of the Jesus story.
I don’t know what’s controversial; I still don’t understand what you are suggesting. What does his virgin birth do for salvation? What does Eucharist have to do with salvation? What does his resurrection have to do with salvation? What kind of salvation are you talking about and how was it supposed to be achieved through Jesus?
Is that something that was a possible Jewish belief of the messiah or are you speaking of pagan myths which tell allegorical stories?
From his wiki.
Not quite a murder and it may have been a Jewish tradition at the time.
No, I mean a guy who files a plan.
That would be jumping to conclusions.
I don’t admit that Josephus never mentioned Jesus. I said he has a passage that isn’t credible. If a Christian uses Josephus as evidence of his existence then that is wrong, if a skeptic uses it as evidence of silence, that is equally as incorrect. You don’t know what was originally said there. All using Josephus does is show that there is no absence of evidence and there is no reason to ask why didn’t any Jewish historians mention Jesus.

aa5874

Once you admit that the passage of Josephus is not credible then it can be discarded or rejected.

The position will remain the same, Jesus can be still considered a myth until credible historical evidence is found.

Jesus can only be de-mythicised with credible evidence just like Achilles, Apollo, Zeus, or any other myth cannot be historicised except by credible historical evidence.

The onus is on those who claim Jesus existed to find credible historical evidence to support their position.

It is absurd to argue that Jesus existed because all the history of Jesus is not credible. A most absurd argument.

Solo

Who are these mysterious 'outside people', spin ? Who could they possibly be ? Paul curses them to hell and accuses them of 'eidololatria' and 'pharmakeia', among other things !

Really ? says who ? Paul preached the same gospel in both places, didn't he ? There was some "other Jesus" being preached at Corinth and there was someone who was doing mischief among his Galatian converts, trying to talk them into some Jesus other than the one Paul called the Christ and "proclaimed as crucified".

Probably,......so ?

Well, thank you.

I don't think most of the James' crowd had the foggiest, when Paul tried to explain to them what "in Christ" meant. (How would that translate into Hebrew, I wonder ?) But, in 3:1 he qualifies Christ as Jesus.

As I repeated here a number of times, I consider it very unlikely that they thought of Jesus as messiah (it strikes me as more probable that some thought of James the Just that way). There we may be close to agreement.

But you apparently don't want to admit that Paul and the Jamesian missions had a common point of reference in Jesus. That's where we differ. Paul might have created this fantastic mythical heavenly personna which had nothing whatever to do with the ideas and convictions of the historical preacher (of Q, let's say). But he still referenced him and noone else. Nothing else makes sense historically, or cognitively. I simply can't imagine Paul either creating his mythical personna from scratch or as a theological answer to another group's mythical being. (Remember my lampooning Doherty's reading of 1 Cor 2:8 as demons impaling Christ in mid-heaven ? : ' if demons were not demons they would not have molested Paul's abstract')

I think much of Paul's thought is obscured by two things: by his mystical lingo and the later development of the religion he created. The later Christian theology simply could not cope with the Pauline paradox of man and God. It had to be sacrificied. As a result, an apparently insoluble riddle was created of Paul's "silence" on the marvelous deeds of the man Jesus, and his teachings while on earth. Paul had to be dumbed down, flattened and overwritten to harmonize him with a crazy cult of superstitious freaks and empty-headed thrill seekers. Oh well, I suppose it was meant to be that way.

Jiri

Ben C Smith

במשיח, perhaps?

Ben.

spin

You tell me.

These are part of a generic list of the desires of the flesh. There is no indication as to any specific examples of who.

Each place had its peculiar neccesities. Galatia was being intruded upon by legalists. Corinth was a little too apparently pagan mysteric for Paul's liking. You cannot simply mix them. You need to show that what was happening at one place was happening at another, rather than assume it.

The people at Galatia were being pressed about torah adherence. There is no sign that anything about another Jesus in the conflict. Gal 3:1 indicates that there wasn't.

The conflict was apparently nothing to do with Jesus in the actions of his opponents, who were saying "if you want to be Jews, you have to perform the law, eg be circumcised". Paul instead was saying "if you want to be Jews, believe in Jesus, who offers you a loophole from the law."

To the Galatians. He never mentions Jesus in regard to the Jerusalem people. (And I agree with the thoughts about "in christ".)

Might there be here a reason for James being absorbed into christianity as the brother?

I don't see any evidence that James had an already-been Jesus. Messianism of the era was usually waiting for one, even if it were the JtB type of messianism, but I don't think we can know the Jamesian type. So far -- as I can see --, no-one has elucidated Jamesian messianism.

Which came first though, Paul's savior/messiah or the historical (or historicized) preacher?

(I have always argued that 1 Cor 1:8b is an obvious interpolation which helped to confuse Paul's use of kurios -- a word doesn't usually get used with such ambivalence.

We have two basic chronological trajectories here:

Jewish messianism
Jesus
Paul's savior messiah
Gospel development

and

Jewish messianism
Paul's savior messiah
Gospel development

From what Paul says in Galatians the second chronological trajectory can be derived. It is able do describe all the subsequent phenomena, making its brevity preferable according to Occam.


spin

spin

The question I took to be about sense: what would it mean to a Hebrew speaker?

As a way to consider the issue look at a range of instances of byhwh and see that the Hebrew usage there is very transparent. You believe in Yahweh, one sins against Yahweh. By itself byhwh would almost certainly have no special independent meaning, though it is the case with Paul's phrase. Look at the only three examples of bm$yx, in 1 Sam 26:9, 11, 26. You get "against the messiah (of the Lord)". Paul's idea doesn't seem to be from a Semitic source.


spin

Ben C Smith

That is a good point. It was just a suggestion.

Ben.