spamandham

Huh?

Toto

There is no evidence in Paul's writings that Peter or John knew a historical Jesus, and the only evidence for James is the ambiguous phrase, "brother of the Lord," which might mean a biological brother (nor not).

So - no anamoly, incomprehensible or not. If you assume that James was the biological brother, and Peter and John were two of the original disciples who new a historical Jesus, you do have an anamoly - why does Paul consider himself their equal? Why does he not learn any of the mundane details about Jesus and work them into his letters where they would be useful to the argument, instead of using the vague formulaic phrase, born of a woman?

Gamera

Sure there is Toto. Paul includes himself as an apostle. He distinguishes himself from the other apostles because he got his mission from Jesus after the resurrection, while the other apostles got their instructions before. Jesus appeared to all the apostles after the resurrection, but the apparent difference lies in the fact that Paul's only contact with Jesus is post-resurrcetion. Hence:


1 Corinthians 15

1Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Galatians 1:17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

I guess the question turns on what apostle means in Paul's mouth and the timeline he creates.

Apostle seems to mean to Paul a person who gets a mission from God to preach the gospel. It can come directly from the living Jesus or in more indirect ways (his revelation on the Road to Damascus; Andronicus and Junias, who were apparently "appointed" by the prior apostles per Romans 16:7).

But if Paul is preaching around 55 a.d., what kind of apostles were the prior apostles, according to him. It seems they were living before him, but they didn't seem to have a revelation like him. So they either were sent by the historical Jesus or appointed by prior apostles. But they don't seem to have gone back very far in time -- he indicates that there were just a few apostles before him, not dozens of apostles stretching back into an indefinite past.

The most plausible explanation is that James, Peter and John were apostles who knew Jesus while alive (unlike him as he points out), since if they were appointed by other older apostles, you would expect some reference to that. This is especially true given that Paul is eager to distinguish his appointment by a resurrected Jesus over how the other apostles were appointed.

gurugeorge

None of the bolded bits say that those people knew Jesus as a human being prior to his "appearance" to them, that's an importation you're making into the text that's not actually there.

Clearly, the "appearance" could be either the appearance of someone they'd known as a person, or it could just a visionary experience of an entity, straight off the bat (according to Doherty the Greek word used in that context can even mean something as simple as "the reality of him was manifest to them", as in they "got" the Christ).

What you need to make it the first is some indication that prior to the appearance they knew him as a person, but that indication just isn't there.

Another possible (and bizarre) reading (I'm not sure if it's occurred to anybody) is that they thought that this Christ had been a real person who was crucified somewhere in Palestine, sort of anonymously, and then "appeared" to them after his death.

The only other possible link, "brother of the Lord" has been done to death, and is at best ambiguous between "blood brother" and "brother in the Lord" as a religious appellation.

So without that presupposition of the appearance being an appearance of somebody these people knew personally, what it looks like to me is that a Jewish religious community formed around either a visionary/mystical experience, or a novel, Scripture-based understanding of the concept of The Anointed One, or more likely a bit of both. After at first viewing as heretical this small community's revisionist Big Idea (of an Anointed One who had been and done his work rather than an Anointed One who was to come, and moreover an Anointed One who had done his work on a spiritual/mystical sort of level rather than a military/religious level), Paul eventually came to "grok" the idea by himself having a visionary experience of that entity, and then universalised the Big Idea to cover all humankind rather than just the Jews (as the community had initially seen it). (Note: here I am taking the orthodox "Saul=Paul" storyline for the sake of the argument, actually I don't think it's true, but it doesn't affect this outline much either way.)

This explains why Paul wasn't all that fussed about any "human" Jesus, known by Cephas, etc., and only met them briefly. There wasn't any person to know about, it was just an idea, a shared vision, for which Cephas, etc., were no more an authority than Paul, though they were the originators of the idea.

And this is in fact what Paul emphasises in his Epistles - the Jewish Christians had no more special authority than he in the matter. This would be a beyond bizarre thing to say, even for someone who'd had a strong spiritual experience of a recently departed entity, whom those people had known. It would have immediately been apparent to Paul's listeners that the people who had known this Anointed One personally ought to have had more authority than he in the matter, and mere visionary experience in and of itself would not have given him the authority to be an Apostle.

But because the whole thing was visionary/mystical from A to Z, he was in fact no more or less an authority than others who "preached another gospel" - i.e. another version of the "good news" of this mythical entity's victory over death and the Archons. His listeners would have had no problem with his claiming strong visionary experience as authority - passion, integrity and charisma would be sufficient deciding factors for them to believe.

ynquirer

The reason why I said that 2 Cor 5:16 is ‘cryptic’ is because Paul twice uses kata sarka - here rendered by the RSV as meaning “from the human point of view.” Just let me be a little skeptic of your ability to solve that easily the enigma that has puzzled for years both Doherty and his critics.

This utterance is unclear to me. Does it imply a fleshly existence in a sublunar sphere, or else that Paul fooled his readers?

The problem with this interpretation is that it looks like an exercise in ventriloquism - you have Paul say what you want him to say. The alliteration of kata sarka - whatever its dictionary meaning - quite clearly indicates that Paul here puts everyone and Christ on the same footing. Thus, if you say that kata sarka, as said of Christ, means “as a kingly man to come,” as said of everyone the clause ought to mean the same - which yields nonsense.

Let’s translate kata sarka closer to the RSV meaning, “from the human point of view,” say, from the point of view of the desires, concerns, interests and fears of human beings. The interpretation is very different: “We regard no one as a thing serviceable to any human desire&etc., [but as a player in God’s plan]; even though we used to regard Christ as a thing serviceable to human desires&etc., we no longer thus regard him.”

Paul tells us the HJ’s name, his lineage, and how he died. I’d say it is enough.

spamandham

Doesn't it seem odd to you, that Paul uses the expression "appeared to" if he's referring to people who spent a year following Jesus around, particularly when Paul makes no distinction between the type of appearance Jesus makes to them, and the appearance Jesus makes to Paul, which is a vision.

Further, the "500 brothers" demonstrates that the term "brother", as used by Paul, did not imply any kind of kinship. Surely Jesus could not have had 500 actual brothers (unless his dad had many many wives and concubines), nor could anyone who wasn't kin of royalty realistically have 500 cousins either.

Further yet, the "appeared to 500" sounds strikingly like a similar phrase in Acts, which refers to a post-resurrection appearance - yet another claim of visions.

Gamera

I think it's not odd if you assume that Paul sees a big distinction between the living Jesus and the resurrected Jesus (and a big distinction it is). If Paul didn't see a distinction, he would not insist that his gospel came in a special way. We know where he got his gospel (according to Paul) -- from the resurrected Jesus. And that, to Paul, makes him unique among the apostles. But if that's the case then the other apostles must have obtained the gospel not from the resurrected Jesus who appeared to them too, but from the living Jesus. The only other alternative is that the apostles obtained the gospel from earlier unnamed apostles who are never mentioned by anybody at any time, and that seems very implausible.

I have no problem with this. The term in Greek, as in English, has multiple meanings.

I agree. But I think this strengthens the idea that Paul thought of Jesus as an historical figure, since his rendition of the "vision" and his claim of having a unique relationship with Jesus isn't the vision itself, but the fact that he only had a vision, while others knew Jesus in the flesh. Why else would he insist on the uniqueness of his apostlehood if all the apostles only knew Jesus in a resurrected visionary form?

Gamera

I have to reach the opposite conclusion. Paul insists his apostlehood is unique. He attributes that uniqueness to his vision of Jesus. But he tells us (and this accords with the synoptics and Acts) that the other apostles also experienced the resurrected Jesus.

So what's the difference?

The difference has to be Paul's experience was limited to a vision of the resurrected Jesus, while the other apostles not only had a vision of the resurrected Jesus, but knew him in the flesh.

Paul indicates that this has both positive and negative aspects. It makes him "untimely" born, because he didn't know the historical Jesus and wasn't a direct witness to the events that make up the gospel (unlike the other apostles). On the other hand, his teachings don't come from a limited historical Jesus, but a transformed, resurrected Jesus. So his gospel is "complete" in that its meaning is made evident to him, while the historical Jesus spoke in parables and the narrative was unfinished until he was resurrected.

Toto

Read the original Greek. "Untimely born" is the circumspect translation of ektrwma - a miscarriage, a common concept in gnosticism. Paul is saying that he was miscarried, or born too soon - not that he was born too late to know Jesus.

Gamera

I know the etymology, Toto. The meaning however is less certain. Whatever it is, it seems to be negative. As you know the phrase occurs elsewhere and it really doesn't have to do with timing, but freakishness. Paul saw something unusual in a bad sense about how he got the gospel. I can only conclude it was because he didn't get it as a witness to Jesus' life, unlike the other apostles, who did.

What's your interpretation of this curious gloss Paul puts on his apostlehood? Surely it's not that he was an apostle before the others, because he tells us directly that they came before.