Jayrok

GDon,

I also think it's likely that Paul meant Jerusalem when he says Zion. But I don't necessarily see that he meant the city of Jerusalem in his recent past.

He speaks of Zion as the OT writer speaks of Zion, the holy mountain where God will dwell among his people. It's interesting that Paul relies on his personal interpretation of Isaiah to prove Jesus is present in the scriptures.

Isaiah doesn't say "Those who trust in 'him' will never be put to shame". The stumbling stone is God who has turned his face against Israel because of their idol worship. Those who continue to trust that God will not forsake them will not be put to shame but those who continue to trust in foreign gods will be put to shame, e.g. will stumble on the stumbling block.

Paul insists on using OT Scripture to explain that Jesus is God's son as opposed to using the fact (?) that Jesus had recently claimed to be Son of God in Jerusalem and performed the ultimate feat to prove it, rise from the dead in 3 days.

I often wondered where is the Jewish outrage of Paul's obvious twisting of Jewish Scripture. Then again, the Jews did reject Paul for the most part.

It seems if you take Paul's interpretation of the stumbling block being Jesus in Jerusalem, you also have to take into consideration other passages from Paul.

Romans 11:9-10, for instance: 9And David says: "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. 10May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,and their backs be bent forever."

Paul uses this line from David in the Psalms to support his idea that the Israelites are wrong to seek God through works and David himself is calling them out on it by asking God to bend their backs forever. But David isn't talking about the Jews in the Psalm. He's talking about the foreign kings who are his enemies and the enemies of God. He's asking God to come save him from his enemies and restore Judah and the towns of Israel.

Paul turns the tables and tells the Romans that even David recognizes the Jews are not seeking God. Which is clearly not the case.

What else could Paul have done? Instead of taking OT Scripture out of context he could have pointed to the stubborness of the Jews in Jerusalem when they kept rejecting Jesus, in his recent past. They clung to their rituals and written guidance of how they interpreted the "Law". Jesus showed them that the Law boiled down to Loving God and your neighbor as yourself. He showed them that it is better to heal and assist another human being on the Sabbath as opposed to just being dogmatic about the letter of the Law. He also showed them many miracles and wonders to prove he is genuine.

Paul doesn't use any of that. Instead he takes Hebrew Scripture and twists it to support his sermon against the Jews who believed the Law saved them. Paul doesn't use any of the famous parables of Jesus in how he described the Kingdom of Heaven to the misunderstanding Jews. Paul invokes his own interpretation of OT Scripture to convince Gentiles that the Jews misunderstood the purpose of the Mosaic Laws.

Why not just appeal to Jesus' testimony on Earth? Was the sermon on the mount not useful to Paul?

Another anomaly of Paul is in Romans 10 where he says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (verse 13). Then in verse 14 he asks "How can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent?"

Doesn't these passages seem odd if Paul thought Jesus was preaching in his recent past? How can the Jews believe in someone they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? Really? Paul completely omits any testimony from Jews, believing or otherwise, in his recent past. Paul believes that the Jews have not heard of Jesus' gospel.

How can that be if Paul thought Jesus lived and preached on Earth, in Jerusalem, in Paul's recent past? Did Paul not believe the Jews of Jerusalem, in his recent past, heard of Jesus? To Paul, how could they have heard of Jesus? There were no preachers preaching about the good news of Jesus in his recent past.

Instead Paul continues to refer to the Hebrew Scriptures. In Romans 10:16 Paul says that not all of the Israelites accepted the good news. He then lists a few more bits of Hebrew Scripture.

Where is Paul's mention of the Jews in Jerusalem who rejected Jesus in his recent past? Where is the mention of the disbelief of the Jews who thought Jesus was a magician or sorceror? Where is the mention of the Jews who claimed Jesus was a blasphemer? Instead Paul highlights OT Scripture and words of Moses.

Should he have used Jews in his recent past? Would he have reason to mention unbelieving Jews in his recent past? It seems it would have greatly enhanced his case against the traditional Jews and how stiff-necked they were towards the savior.

Paul could very well have meant Jerusalem when he talks about Zion but it doesn't mean he thought Jesus was denied or misbelieved or crucified in Zion in his recent past here on Earth.

Given the textual evidence in the language of Paul's letters... all of them as a whole, not just a few lines here and there... is it more likely that Paul meant the Earthly Jerusalem, in his recent past, or Jerusalem as Zion in the Hebrew Scriptures?

Toto

Historicist is a made up word that refers to people on one side of the current debate over mythicism. I contend that it is not meaningful when applied to a writer from the 2nd or 3rd centuries who thought that Jesus was a divine or semi-divine entity.

If they thought that Jesus was a spirit who walked on earth, they are so far from the modern idea of a historical Jesus that it makes no sense to call them historicists.

This is not true. Paul describes his trip to Jerusalem and names people. He mentions names of real people. He talks about ordinary details of church organizations.

Again, you use mindset to mean something else.

...

Let me quote you:

I think you have no language skills, and no interpretive skills. You are not interested in the worldview of the early church - you are interested in constructing an argument about how it is really basically the same worldview as ours, except they didn't feel the need to document historical details.

I do not seem to be able to get through to you, and I am giving up trying.

GakuseiDon

Actually, Acts says that they searched Scriptures "to see if what Paul said was so". Acts is a historicist work.

YES. Definitely. Even in historicist works like Acts. Searching Scriptures was much more important to them than supposed witnesses of Jesus.

I think you mean "any interest in the Gospel Jesus's teaching, deeds and earthly life". I think a reasonable picture (even if not definite) of Jesus can be built up from Paul.

I think that this is a fair point, and counts against "historicism".

Yes, agreed.

OK, we are in agreement about what "Zion" means in this context, then.

GakuseiDon

Yes. The Isaiah passages have a meaning separately from the one that Paul uses it for, which is interesting.

It's a good point. I'm not aware of ANY outrage by Jewish writers regarding how Christians used Scriptures, though it must have existed. (Justin Martyr's "Trypho" is an example, and Origen's "Celsus" also, though those were Christian works). What should we make of that?

Yes. Paul is clearly using Scriptures to highlight events after the fact.

Jayrok, the problem I have with this approach is that it is contrasting Paul's Jesus with the Gospel Jesus. I think you see the dilemma in this. IF we knew for sure that the Gospel Jesus was real (or considered real), then yes, definitely we would wonder why Paul doesn't include those things.

But should we start with that assumption?

I'd say no. I was agnostic for most of my life. I've never considered the Bible as the 'Word of God', and must admit I don't even know what that means. I'm not out to prove the Gospel Jesus. So I find that line of argument -- that if Jesus was 'real', he was the Gospel Jesus -- not something worth pursuing.

I'm more interested in the picture we can build from Paul. I totally agree, that if Jesus was a person walking around in Paul's near past, and was someone known for his teachings, miracles and wonders, then we would have to wonder why Paul didn't mention them. But is that the place to start?

If the Jews had not heard of Jesus, then how could they have stumbled?

For Paul, Christ has already come, and the message already rejected, which causes Paul "great sorrow". But, the "word of God" is passed on to the Gentiles:

Rom 9:2 ... I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.
Rom 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,
Rom 9:4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises;
Rom 9:5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.
Rom 9:6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel...

It's a good point, but is Paul blaming the Jews for this? I don't get the sense that he is. If anything, he is trying to excuse them. But something worth considering.

I think "Zion" is being used symbolically here, to mean either Jerusalem or Israel. Paul takes two passages from Isaiah and bangs them together to make his point. Both passages in Isaiah involve Jerusalem and Israel in their context and it seems a deliberate choice by Paul to have "Zion" in the "Scriptural passage" that he manufactures, whatever that is worth.

GakuseiDon

Well, as I said a few times, I'm happy to use another. Or shall we just say, "We don't know what 'historicist' means, but it doesn't mean that."

As long as we use the same word and have the same understanding, I'm happy to use another word. But unless you have a better word in mind, I'll stick to "historicist". Thanks.

OK, it doesn't mean that. What word would you prefer?

Fantastic! Outside of Jesus, can you give me a history of the early church, according to Paul? That would help enormously in these discussions. Time lines would be good, also. I'll ask spin to offer constructive criticism of your conclusions.

Well, one way or the other, I'm genuinely interested in how they thought back then. I think the Christianity of today owes much more to the Fourth Century than it does to the First Century. As you know, I don't think that the virgin birth was part of the original story in the First Century, I'm agnostic about claims of a physical resurrection, and I don't believe that "Son of God" meant the same thing to them as it does to today's Christians.

Toto

I know what historicist means, even if you don't seem to. And I consider it to be an abuse of the language to use that term for anyone in early Christianity.

Pick a more well defined term. You can use proto-orthodox or proto-catholic for those who thought that Jesus was pre-existent; or Arianist for those who thought he was not; or docetist, or ebionite, or whatever.

Are you serious? Paul talks a lot about himself. He gives a clear picture of house churches where people met and had the theological disagreements that you read about. You can tell that there were competing preachers who got to those same churches; that there were women who prophesied.

Now, some of what is in those letters might not be true, but there's a lot of material there. None of it relates to the major political issues or movements of the day, and it is hard to fix a date on Paul more precise that sometime before 120 CE, but Paul has details, human interest - not just quotes from Scripture and philosophical musings.

Certainly if Paul gave the same details of Jesus' life that he gave of his own, and told us that he heard about it from Peter, we would not be having this discussion.

I'm not sure how this relates to the discussion.

And I should remark that Act is not a historicist document. It is a work that is interpreted by some modern historicists as containing historical data, but which can be analyzed to show that it is primarily theological.

Please note that Jesus' only appearance in Acts is post-resurrection, after which he vanishes into the heavens. The chance of this reflecting any historical event is 0.

GakuseiDon

OK. I'll use "proto-orthodox" to refer to those people who thought that Jesus walked the earth and interacted with people at some point in history.

The statement we are looking at is "Paul is a writer for whom history was not in fact important." The very purpose of his occasional letters is to address contemporary issues, so I would expect Paul to talk about contemporary events. What about his personal history or the history of the early Church?

Out of interest, how do you fix a date of before 120 CE on Paul's letters, using Paul as a source?

What are the details that Paul gave about his own life? He was zealous for the law, is one detail. Others?

You seemed to have had me confused with someone else.

Agreed. Not surprising, if the proto-orthodox (and I would argue that Paul falls into this group) were not interested in historical details.

ph2ter

Acts only pretends to be a historicist work.
So, they did not search the witnesses of Jesus and ask them what Jesus told about himself, but rather they searched Scriptures to find out what is written about him. For them Scripture appears far more convincing than Son of God himself walking on earth in front of them. How is that possible?

It is not normal that he did not show any interest in Jesus' teaching, deeds and earthly life regardless of what is written in the Gospel.
Can you find in Paul's letters details about Jesus without embedded mythical ambiguity?
"Born of a woman"? Does there exist someone who is not? Resurrected? Clear fiction.

GakuseiDon

That's my point. If it is pretending to be a historicist work, then why aren't there more details about Jesus? Why are Scriptural passages more important than eye-witness accounts of Jesus's activities?

But that's just it: it IS normal, at least for that period. There are many letters from the first few centuries that are the same. I listed 10 such letters above. If you counted those letters that gave just a couple of basic details, then that number would swell.

Let's be clear: Paul's lack of historical details about Jesus and other historical events relating to Christianity is the norm when it comes to occasional letters written in the first few centuries. Read through the 10 letters I listed earlier, and it will immediately become clear.

So, was Paul writing fiction when he said that Jesus was born of a woman and resurrected, in your opinion?

ph2ter

Only feasible option which I can see is that the eye-witnesses of Jesus' activities didn't exist.

Of course that's normal for the first Christians, because they knew that Jesus was not some person living with them a couple of years before. They knew that the eye-witnesses of Jesus life (before his supposed resurrection) never existed. Some of real eye-witnesses of resurrected Jesus were known to them, but they knew that these witnesses were the only witnesses of Jesus which ever existed. In time the witnesses of resurrected Jesus were confused with the supposed witnesses of Jesus before resurrection.

For him that was reality, but objectively he was writing a fiction.