ynquirer

What wondrous reactions? Rational discussion, language analysis, and fact evaluation?


This is a good assessment:

Toto

I don't object to scientific investigation of Biblical literature. But surely "scientific" does not require that you believe that there is a historical basis for it.

gurugeorge

They would be wrong because we know Aquinas believed in a historical Jesus. We know he was a member of a Christian church that stressed a historical Jesus, he was part of a tradition in which Jesus had for several hundred years believed in a historical Jesus.

We don't have the analogous necessary knowledge about Paul.

ynquirer

There are billions of galaxies out there existing independently of whether or not we know of them.

Knowledge of truth is not the condition of it. At best, knowledge of Aquinas' belief in a historical Jesus ought to be a warning for mythicists to be a little more careful in their suppositions about Paul.

gurugeorge

I don't really want to go into that angle in this thread, which is about not-the-argument-from-silence But for the sake of the argument I'll say that it's what I mentioned: in order to show it, you'd have to have some kind of proof that the entity that "appeared" to Cephas, etc., had already been known to them as a human being. That's the thin thread on which all of this hangs, really - it's the assumption, starting in the proto-orthodox interpretation of their religion, and carried on right through to orthodox scholarship nowadays, that the later, historicised-into-the-recent-past Jesus of the Gospels is someone whom those early Apostles mentioned by Paul had at one time known personally, as a human being. But that's just an assumption - there's no evidence for it in any of the earliest texts. No evidence at all.

Correction: some people believed that (under the influence of Stoicism and Epicureanism perhaps). But you wouldn't use those beliefs as evidence that Hercules did in fact live during the Trojan war, etc., etc., would you? Why should you believe it from Christians?

Well he believed in a spiritual being who took on a fleshy body, but that's saying nothing different than what Greeks believed about their deities, who could appear in different forms, etc.

gurugeorge

We're not talking about a supposition about Paul here, we're talking about NOT having a supposition about Paul.

ynquirer

In the context of the present discussion, not having a supposition about Paul is identical with not inferring from his silence that he believed in a mythical Jesus. If that is your position, I agree.

spamandham

Christology is obviously well, well, developed around the concept of a historical Jesus by the time of Aquinas. That process was pretty much complete by the 2nd century according to typical datings. So it would be absurd to apply the same type of analysis to Aquinas - we know a priori that his concept of Jesus was that of a historical person crucified by Pilate, etc.

The point in question, is where was Christology at the time of Paul? This is an important question to answer, if possible, in regards to understanding how early Christianity evolved.

GakuseiDon

I apologise if I'm not sticking to the OP, but the question of whether there is a silence in the early letters is interesting. I think that without the Gospels to compare with, such a case is almost impossible to prove.

So, assuming that Paul and others are referring to a HJ (I know that you disagree that he is), and that we can't "read the Gospels" into them, (1) are there any silences, and (2) where should those silences have been filled and why?

OK, so this would be an example of silence. Where should Paul have mentioned this, then, and why in those locations?

You shouldn't. But if Paul is the odd one out, AND someone is trying to claim that Paul was NOT the odd one out (not that I know whether this applies to you yourself), then that should be noted.

To be specific: "could appear in different forms **on earth**". If Paul believed that Christ was a spiritual being who took on a fleshly body, and you want Paul to have comparable beliefs to the Greeks, then the conclusion would favor that Paul believed Jesus appeared on earth (not that this would prove historicity alone however). But Paul vs pagan beliefs is a discussion for another time, perhaps.

spamandham

I agree that is possible that Paul is referring to a being who he believed to have taken concrete human form. I lean toward mysticism, but remain formally agnostic on the point at present.

But in the broader question of trying to understand Paul's Jesus, when would you suggest, did Paul's Jesus walk the earth?

IMHO, if Paul did indeed believe this, then he viewed Jesus as a figure from the distant/indeterminate past. This to me seems the best alternative to mysticism as to why Paul seems to know basically nothing but creedal aspects of Jesus.

A better position, to me, is that Paul's Jesus is Isaiah's suffering servant - the anthropomorphizing of the Jewish people. Paul uses mystical language, like Isaiah did, not because Paul believes he is referring to an actual earthly human, but because those who he was writing to knew what he meant.

The only reason we know Isaiah's suffering servant represents the nation of Israel rather than an actual human being, is because he explicitly tells us that in Isaiah 49! Otherwise, we might be having the same discussion regarding Isaiah.