Ben C Smith

Do you mean that (A) modern NT scholars take the view that there never was any historical Jesus and therefore nobody ever met him? Or do you mean that (B) modern NT scholars take the view that there was an historical Jesus, but he was a hermit whom nobody ever met? Or do you mean that (C) modern NT scholars take the view that there was an historical Jesus, but that nobody who wrote an NT book actually met him?

If C, okay. If A or B, do you mean that most modern NT scholars take such a view? Or do you mean that some take that view?

Ben.

Amaleq13

You are not mistaken though it is more an issue of concepts like "groupthink" or "mass hysteria" than group visions (ie collection delusions).

I think prolonged and intense prayer could be a good way to induce the sort of mental state involved. Even better if the "subjects" were fasting at the same time. Mental exhaustion, lowered inhibitions, sleep deprivation, and (assuming an HJ) the emotional trauma of having one's beloved leader horribly executed in one of the most socially unacceptable ways possible are all factors that could easily lead to all sorts of wacky behavior/thoughts*.




*I apologize for the technical language

dog-on

You guys are just making crap up...

They all got their Jesus the same way, through reading him into the septuagint.

No Jim Morrison desert experience here...

gurugeorge

Hmm, must be something in the air - I recently opened a thread about this section in Corinthians myself! I actually think it's the key passage in the whole of early Christian writing, in terms of the fact that it's a plain statement of a creed, and the earliest we have.

I think the other alternative to the assumptions you mention that makes more sense of the material and gets rid of your puzzlement about "the 12" is that this section shows that the first Christians were a community who didn't know a human being called Jesus at all, but rather had a new concept of the Messiah - that he had already been rather than that he was someone to come - and they thought they'd "seen" this revised Messiah in scripture.

The key, to my mind, is in the Greek word that's usually translated "appeared", which (apparently - I'm no expert, but I've seen this said by an expert, and I'll refer to the article if you want) was used in the Septuagint when speaking of occasions when "God showed himself" in a theophanic sense - i.e. in the world, in events.

So the idea of that passage would be, these guys indulged in deep scriptural exegesis, in the course of which they thought the Messiah had revealed himself to them, in Scripture (i.e. the OT, no gospels at that time having as yet been written), as having already been and done his stuff - so there was no need to wait for him, his good work was already done. This was the "good news of a victory won" of the original "gospel."

This is supported by the emphasis of "according to Scripture". If you read this with the traditional historical understanding of Jesus in mind, it looks like it's saying the historical Jesus fulfilled predictions of him in Scripture, but if you flip the Necker Cube, it has the plain meaning that "according to Scripture, the Messiah died for our sins, etc., etc.", just like one would say "according to the BBC, President Bush said blah-de-blah"

IOW, Scripture is the only place they found him, and it's in Scripture that the Messiah "appeared" to them in this way.

You can double check this by noting that in that passage there's no hint whatsoever that the Messiah they're talking about is someone who was known to any of them personally as a human being. He just suddenly "appears". Any understanding that the entity being spoken of is someone who was known personally to any of the people mentioned is a presupposition that's being imported to the text.

So the upshot is that they did think of their Messiah as historical - they thought of him as having been and done his stuff in the past. But he wasn't a Messiah who had been known to any of them personally as a human being, they just "saw" his having been in Scripture.

(Note also that the Messiah thus revealed to them was also (if you look at the broader sweep of Paul and other early Christian materials) a reversal of the traditional Messiah tropes - instead of someone to come, he'd already been, instead of a military victor, a spiritual victor, instead of a king covered in glory, someone who died the most shameful death possible at the time. Now of course this could be theological construction subsequent to a historical Jesus - i.e. it could be mythopoeia surrounding some obscure preacher - but it's also consistent with some guys coming up with a "neat idea" of reversing the usual Messiah tropes, again, probably because they thought they'd "seen" this in scripture.)

In this context "the 12" hardly matters, it'll just be some jargon term for some of the guys in the original movement, perhaps the key people who originally thought the idea up.

KrisK10

Gurugeorge,

I too think 1 Cor 15:3-7 is a key passage in Christian origins study. Thanks for the MJ suggestion, but I'm interested for the moment in an HJ explanation for the rise of the traditions in 1 Cor 15:3-8 (and the rise of Christianity as a whole). To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I basically see 1 Cor 15:3-7 being the result of a cognitive dissonance reduction phenomena (similar in mechanism but different in details to the Sabbatai Sevi and Millerite movements) followed by a search of scriptures to confirm beliefs and being formative of the "third day" belief. The claim of appearances are pretty much the last thing for me that I'm trying to nail down.

Regarding the word opthe, my study leads me to conclude that it does not in itself lean one way or the other toward a physical appearance intended or a more vague idea of God showing himself in world events. My own biases lead me to take the simple road of an eyeball experience intended and try to explain it from there.

Kris

aa5874

If you assume that the claim of 1Cor 15.5-7 was made while the twelve was still alive, then you have assumed that Matthew and John, thought to be apostles, were still alive.

Now, the early Church fathers claimed that the apostle Matthew wrote gMatthew and the apostle John wrote gJohn, and both of these apostles' rendition of the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection degrade the possibility of any mass dream or vision by the 12.

Matthew 28.16-17 claimed that the disciples went up into a mountain of Galilee and met Jesus and worshipped him.
GJohn 21 claimed Jesus gave the disciples fishing lessons and actually did eat some of the fish with bread in the company of the disciples. And, this author claimed Jesus met the disciples at least three times.

If Jesus was just human and was actually dead, it could not be revealed to "Paul" that this very dead man was seen alive by Cephas and then by the 12, unless he read or was aware of gLuke 24.34, "....The Lord is risen and hath appeared unto Simon"

Only "Luke" and "Paul" wrote about this dead man first appearing to Cephas, or Simon.

Amaleq13

This demonstrably specious claim fails to explain why the "fit" with Scripture is so obviously forced so many times. And the most damning examples is the fundamental tenet of the faith (ie the crucifixion of Christ). There is no more obviously forced imposition of a claim already believed onto the text available.

If what you say is true, we would expect a perfect fit between Scripture and the story but that simply and clearly is not what we have.

KrisK10

aa5874,

My take would be that none of the gospels were written by any of "the 12" referred to in 1 Cor 15:5.

Kris

Mythra

It may seem like I'm shifting the discussion, but I think it's highly relevant to this issue.

This whole thing reminds me of the discussion of the witness statements at the beginning of the book of Mormon. No (rational) person would try and determine the nature of the angelic visitation or whether the witnesses had a group hallucination in which they saw the golden plates. Occam's Razor tells us that people lie exaggerate occasionally, and particularly when they are doing it on God's behalf.

From this site: http://www.exmormon.org/file9.htm

First let's look at the actual testimony of the men known as the Three Witnesses. They are David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris. In the printed statement found in the Book of Mormon, all three of them affirm being shown the plates by an angel, and the LDS church implies that all three men saw the plates with Joseph on the same day. It is portrayed as a physical, tangible, and verifiable event.

gurugeorge

Yes that's definitely another possibility. But I think it's too much of a stretch to posit the same or similar visionary experiences of this Messiah to that list of people. I used to think this passage referred to a kind of mass hysteria or collective visionary experience or something of the like, but now I think Paul is probably the only one who was genuinely visionary, and the other guys simply "saw" in the "Rastafarian" sense (ophthe) an idea. (Rastafarians say "seen" as equivalent to "I understand".)