Loomis

I’m looking forward to your comments on my previous post.

spamandham

I made no claim to having read your posts, so why would I be dishonest about it now? I had not previously read them, but now I have.

Surely you know the etymology of the name "Jesus"?

Rick Sumner

The problem is that when you are dealing with one man and the marauder, the mind handles the question more objectively. We're comparing items we accord the same weight--50 to 1. When we deal with the infant, the subjectivity plays a greater factor, because we accord the infant more weight. How much more is subjective. Some people still accord the infant less weight than the mass. Some don't.

I'm claiming it's impossible to do so objectively. Legitimacy is a separate issue.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Loomis

Did Paul?

What is it about the etymology of the name "Jesus" that can fix Paul’s abuse of Joel 2:32?

My point is that Paul was unaware of the god behind the title LORD.

It looks to me like Paul didn’t know who ‘the LORD’ was, and he invented Jesus thinking that no one else did either.

Any comments?

krosero

My dividing line has nothing to do with time or the difference between first and second centuries. I’m talking about witnesses outside Pauline mythicism – people whom you acknowledge as not holding that faith. I call them “external witnesses”, that is, people whom you acknowledge as historicists (or pagans, for that matter; anyone will do so long as they’re not one of your proposed Pauline mythicists). In this group, I argued, you find no one talking about Pauline mythicism. I am aware that you do have at least two candidates for witnesses, namely the opponents mentioned by 1 John and Ignatius, and I addressed those in my long essay.

1 John and Ignatius are essentially the exceptions that you present to the silence that I’m talking about, just as historicists present “born of woman” and all other such indicators in Paul as exceptions to the silence that you’re proposing.

There is a lot that can be said about this issue and it’s hard to know where to begin. A basic point first: all the groups marked as heretical that we know about, died out too. No doubt some converted in part; that is one way in which any group might disappear (by losing members to another group). But these other groups were mentioned. Mythicism slips by without mention from the orthodox. So saying that mythicism evolved into historicism does not tell why, except possibly in the earliest witnesses (1 John and Ignatius), it goes unmentioned.

Saying that it evolved into historicist groups, as a general and vague statement, just raises more questions. For instance, if historicists were absorbing mythicists, then the former knew about the latter. They were not far-distant groups that knew little about each other and were consequently silent about each other. 1 John and Ignatius, you hold, were keenly aware of the mythicists. And how could you not be aware of the original and dominant form of Christ-worship? 1 John and Ignatius, you hold, railed against the mythicists who had not converted to the new historicism. These two men hold their opponents in contempt and insist that one should not even pray for them. It does sound like two groups in heated contention. Yet you say that within a few decades one movement, formerly the dominant player, had converted in decisive numbers to a group that held them in contempt and condemned them.

And generally speaking, even when you do have mass conversions, you have holdouts. I no more doubt that some Marcionites converted to orthodox faith than I doubt that some held out for a long time. But because you cannot find late external witnesses to your proposed faith, you have no choice but to argue (not on independent grounds, but because you have no choice) that your proposed group did not hold out for very long at all – and was not even remembered.

There is A LOT more to be said about this, but I wanted to lay out the problem.

Another huge issue, but let me start with a basic problem: you say there is no evidence of HJ belief in these apologists. As so often, you don’t even nod to potential indicators. Let’s start with two: both Athenagoras and another of your chosen apologists, the author of the Epistles to Diognetus, speak approvingly of “the apostle”, and to all appearances, quote from 1 Corinthians.

What do you make of these references, Earl? Who are they talking about? Is it Paul?

This is obscurantist, I’m afraid. I really have no idea what you mean when you say that there was a lot on a plate and that certain ideas were “lost sight of”. Modern scholars can lose sight of something in the ancient evidence, if it’s buried among other things. But for the ancients themselves to lose sight of something among other things means that they confused it – more than that, completely conflated it – with other objects that they did recognize. You’re saying essentially that the proto-orthodox did not recognize what the people converting to them, whom they had formerly condemned, had formerly believed. So people who converted and “became” the orthodox did not remember what they themselves believed?

As you say, and as I proffered in a post above, you used your analogy in a limited way, to make a point about inductive reasoning. I used my analogies in that limited way: to make a point about common sense. My common sense, before I have studied the historical record, is to expect certain kinds of witnesses to Thera’s eruption and to Sai Baba’s career. But the historical record tells me that my common sense expectation is not quite on the mark. That’s the extent of my argument – it was a response to your emphasis on common sense.

Why would he be calling the Gospel writers liars, if Titus is presented as the work of Paul, and Paul preceded the Gospels?

Earl, you wrote above that you can’t remember any arguments against your proposed silences, yet you repeated your silence in Titus, and that is one silence on which you have indeed gotten a response.

If I am saying that Paul belongs to a historicist belief that Christ walked the earth, your objection is, and always has been, that this is putting Paul where he doesn’t belong. This is not the same, though, as multiplying entities. It is merely aligning Paul with a known entity.

Good, we’re in agreement that you ask for at least two entities. I hear you when you say I’m not quite describing the third one correctly, but I think that the idea that Christ was an allegory, never seen on earth, would have struck the minds of the proto-orthodox as a distinct (and offensive) idea.

The heresiologists often were not very good at identifying Gnostic “communities” (see "The Nag Hammadi Library and the Heresiologists"). They attribute certain gnostic ideas to certain heresiarchs and communities; while on the other hand Irenaeus complains that the heterodox were often were right in the midst of the orthodox, like wolves among sheep. But all this just shows that the orthodox did not need a heretical idea to cohere either in actuality or in their perception with an identifiable, separate group. They noticed Marcion, who had his separate church, and they noticed Gnostics who worshipped (so the orthodox tell us) right alongside them.

Noticing and condemning an idea that you find offensive does not require much except coming into contact with the idea.


I still can’t tell whether you’re familiar with my arguments or whether I need to start them from Step 1 each time we debate. I’ve written 14,000 words addressing your theory and I’d like to know if we're on the same page. Have you read my essay (that is, before now), the one I linked to above and which is also published here?

Kevin Rosero

P.S. I would also appreciate answers to my other questions. They’re not rhetorical – particularly not my specific questions about those apparent references in the apologists to Paul and 1 Corinthians.

spamandham

It seems a reasonable induction. Of all the possible names out there, why would the early Christ church pick a name that meant "YHWH saves", to ascribe to a character who's key attribute is that he 'saves'? It's possible that Paul didn't know what the name meant, but it seems unlikely in light of Phillipians 2.9-11. That hymn demonstrates that the name 'jesus' was not just picked out of a hat, but was selected instead specifically because of its meaning - a meaning which necessarily includes familiarity with the name YHWH.

I don't think you've sufficiently demonstrated this. If Paul sees Jesus as the presense of god on earth in some form, then I wouldn't expect him to make a distinction between YHWH and Jesus when he runs across the word 'lord'. Neither would I be surprised to see him use 'jesus' interchangably with 'YHWH', 'El', 'God', 'holy spirit', etc.

Why would you expect Paul to take care to use the word 'YHWH', if Lord=YHWH=Jesus to him? Paul claims to be a leader of gentiles. If that's true, I would expect him to downplay the name of the Jewish god.

It's also possible though, that Paul combed the Jewish scriptures looking for verses vague enough to be attributed to Jesus.

BTW, why do you think Paul invented Jesus? What cult did James and Cephas belong to if Paul is the one who invented Jesus?

spamandham

I suppose that's true.

krosero

But what if you were talking about authors whose arguments directly contradicted or opposed yours? Would you mention them in that case?

I can see myself not explicitly pointing out something that is taken for granted, if it's something that I agree with. But if there are people whose ideas directly contradict mine, I am likely to mention their ideas.

That's the situation we have with Pauline mythicism: it directly contradicted what historicists were saying.

Worse, the two sides shared the same apostles and texts (Paul). Let's say you have a certain view of what E.P. Sanders is saying; some other people have a view of Sanders that is incompatible with yours. Are you likely to mention them or no?

I agree. His argument from silence, logically extended, must make the apologists non-historicists. But because they are so late, it's harder to say that they don't know historicist traditions. The problems do compound with them.

So when Theophilus says this ...

... Doherty's theory requires Theophilus to be speaking about something other than the Gospel of John. For that reason Doherty has proposed that the words Theophilus uses about the Logos were a commonplace of the time, and that the attribution to "John" is an interpolation (and whether interpolations count as multiplying entities, I don't know; it's certainly worth asking).

The problem then becomes, who are the spirit-bearing men that Theophilus is talking about? His sacred authors, per Doherty, are the OT authors. No question, they were spirit-bearing men for Theophilus. But where in the OT do we find those words about the Logos? They're in John -- but if Theophilus cannot be referring to John, then we're left with the suggestion that some non-biblical author wrote those lines and that Theophilus regarded this author as spirit-bearing. Who was that? And where is that text?

These are multiplying entities, by any standard. Even if the missing author and text could be identified, we would still face a complicating factor, because then we have a specific author to tie into Theophilus' faith, and a new set of problems would probably have to be solved.

Kevin Rosero

Ben C Smith

That is correct.

I am not trying to be evasive here. The Jesus-or-Lord issue is exactly what Price and Doherty both use to make the point that I am addressing.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I am in complete agreement with you there. That is, in fact, one of my favorite sayings.

For some, it does not matter at all how close to the gospels we are, since they are relying strictly on Paul. For others, the crucifixion has to at least have taken place in Jerusalem, under Pilate. So long as the conditions are stated up front, what is the difference? In any case, the person making the argument is setting forth a proposition (or more) to be proven.

At this point the discussion begins to get too philosophical, IMHO. I think (and I welcome correction) that someone like Diogenes the Cynic simply thinks (A) that a person named Jesus was crucified and (B) early Christians like Paul thought he had risen from the dead in some way. Discussions about hypothetical men named Jesus who may have suffered crucifixion sometime early in century I really do not come into play.

I do not wish to commit on whether such a suggestion is historicism or mythicism. What does it matter? It is a proposition to be demonstrated with evidence.

As I recall, I did take you up on it, pointing out that Paul predates Jesus son of Ananias. At that point, IIRC, you wrote about postdating Paul, at which time I bowed out, since I was not interested in going off on that matter at that time.

Only because you trust Josephus where you do not trust Christian authors.

Ben.