Doug Shaver

It certainly was a common belief within the scholarly community when Asimov wrote that book, and it still is.

yalla

Paul does not use the term christians.
You have imported from it outside Paul.
It carries a weight of meaning that may not be appropriate to that time and place. Therefore it should not be used to constuct a bridge between then and later. It presumes a connection.
Paul did not know these groups before or after his conversion/revelation whatever.
The groups he knew were outside Judea.
He says so in the line you quoted above "unknown by face to the churches in Judea".
So whatever they believed he could not have known it from them. "In Christ" really does not tell us much at all does it?
You are correct, you have assumed.

And what does 'some knowledge' mean?
A common knowledge that JC was 'mythical' as you suggest?
Have you converted to Dohertyism? Sorry, cheap shot, but I couldn't resist.
But it does show the dangers of making assumptions.

See the problem started with Gerhardsson who uses Paul to try to establish that there is an oral tradition connecting a real live JC, with followers, to the first of the gospel writers and the descriptions therin are at least partly due to such oral transmission.
But Paul specifically denies such and attributes his kerygma to revelation and existing scripture.
He spefically allows no room for oral tradition.
Vehemently in fact.
Only Paul knows the true gospel, anyone saying anything different to Paul, even an angel, is to be accursed [Gal 1.8].
cheers
yalla

GakuseiDon

Well, I'm not saying that Paul called them "christians" -- that would be silly. I'm obviously saying that Paul called them "early christians".

Tell you what -- YOU supply a name for how you and I can refer to them. It doesn't affect my point AFAICS. Make sure that it incorporates the "in Christ" concept and that you don't import it from outside Paul.

Fair point, but as long as my assumption is reasonable that's fine. There is so little hard evidence around that any case will need to be built on assumptions at some stage. But I think we can talk about assumptions in terms of being reasonable or unreasonable.

No problem. In this case, it wouldn't matter if Paul believed in a HJ or an MJ, if Paul persecuted the early Church then it is reasonable to assume that he knew something of their beliefs before he had his revelation.

Really? The groups "in Christ" in Judea describes Paul's persecution of groups in Syria as "He who formerly persecuted US". What does that imply about the Syrian groups' beliefs?

"Churches of Judea which were in Christ" is Paul's own description. Do you really want to claim that Paul meant anything other than the groups were followers of Christ (as Paul perceived Christ to be)?

I agree, but IMO the gospel according to Paul included the idea that Christ came for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. It is that part that came by revelation. If it is reasonable to assume that Paul persecuted the early Christian church, then it is also reasonable that Paul had some knowledge of early Christian beliefs before he converted.

lpetrich

Earl Doherty's Jesus-myth hypothesis is that all the Gospels are like this common view of the Gospel of John - theological allegories rather than literal biographies.

I also don't recall him saying much about the Gospel of John; he says much more about the Gospel of Mark and "the lost Gospel", Q.

spin

Don't roll your eyes, Gak. The anachronistic use of "christian" to describe the disparate followers of Paul's ravings is only polemical. We still really don't know what relation Paul and his brand of messianism had with the groups that came under the aegis of christians, whenever that happened. Acts is even harder to date than the Pauline corpus and features more obvious layering of scribal activity and diversity of sources. Until we can date Acts, we have a lot of trouble using the term "christian" for any early period. We don't really know much about what the pillars were on about that Paul was so disenchanted with them, who were supposed to be the mainstream of the time according to later christian tradition.

How about Pauline Quasi-Di-Theists or PQDTs or even Pequodts?

Reasonableness is not a sufficient criterion to be useful. Fiction, fraud and other forms of non-history are built on reasonableness.

We really haven't attempted to plumb the theology of those people who were supposedly the mainstream religion when Paul functionally repudiated them ("what they actually were makes no difference to me" Gal 2:6bi). He does say that "those leaders contributed nothing to me." The best one can say, I think, is that they seemed to have been Jewish messianists. We still have to deal with the appearances after Jesus's death, including to the elsewhere unattested 500 brethren. Who was Cephas that he wasn't part of the twelve? And who were the twelve, given the supposed 12 man being Judas (who was off the field at the time)?

Does Paul give signs of having persecuted the early church??

Does Paul's overused term "in christ" allude to anything other than messianic groups (from whom he might cadge followers)? And again, where does Paul indicate that he persecuted anyone? (Here is the problem with trying to use Acts when it is undated and its relevance unverifiable.)

What do you think Paul meant by the word ekklhsia other than groups of believers?? Does the phrase "Churches of Judea which were in Christ" contain anything more than "groups of messianic believers in Judea"?

Why? Wasn't it sufficient that he held the notion that the messiah must have been while he wasn't looking? Then with the messianic speculation that came fundamentally from the Hebrew literature and groups like those which produced the DSS did he need more?


spin

Steven Carr

But the manuscripts of Luke were harmonised to make them harmonise with Paul!


'And taking bread, giving thanks, saying ,'This is my body that is given for you. Do this in my remembrance. And the cup likewise after supper, saying 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood that is poured out for you'' Why does the RSV have these famous words by Jesus as a footnote? They are not in Codex Bezae , from the 5th century.

Probably because they were not original to Luke's Gospel.

The phrase 'for you' occurs twice in that verse , but nowhere else in Luke-Acts. The word for 'remembrance' occurs nowhere else in Luke-Acts and nowhere else does Luke use the term 'the new covenant'.


More importantly, nowhere else does Luke say that Jesus died 'for your sins' or 'for you'.

Luke , in the Gospel or in Acts, had many opportunities to say that Jesus died 'for' anybody or 'for' anything, but he consistently spurns them all. For example, in the famous 'prophecy , Isaiah 53, Luke in Acts 8 ignores 53:5 'wounded for our transgressions', or 53:5, 'bruised for our iniquities' or 53:10, 'an offering for sin'. As Luke never says that Jesus died 'for our sins', why would he add those words in Luke 22:19-20? If he did write those words, why would any scribe have dropped them? It is clear that the RSV is right and they were not original to Luke's Gospel.

Once again, we have an early manuscript which drops words which no scribe could have left out as unimportant.

And the words , once again, contain non-Lukan language, but language which appears elsewhere in the New Testament, and which does not really fit well with Luke's theology?

No Robots

Interesting. Thank you for making this comment. It isn't directly pertinent to the question of Paul's use of tradition, though.

Vorkosigan

Perhaps not, but it is directly pertinent to Gerhardsson's ability to locate that use, right?

Vorkosigan

No Robots

First, let me say that this intervention is more of the same evasive meta-criticism that I complained of earlier. Second, I think you should be concerned about your own ability to correctly read Gerhardsson. Lastly, on the question of the textual history of Luke's description of the Last Supper, it should be sufficient to say that this constitutes in itself an entire field of enquiry. I would direct the attention of those interested to this introduction. On the Codex Bezae mentioned by Carr, we have this:

Codex Bezae gives us practically a different edition of the book from the one found in other manuscripts.