spamandham

Several well qualified scholars agree with you on that. When Paul refers to his gospel, he's using the expression to indicate a specific set of theology he teaches. When he says his gospel was revealed to him, he's referring to the revelation event of 2 Cor. 12, in which he says the revelations were "surpassingly great". Is the idea that gentiles don't have to be circumcised really "surpassingly great"? It hardly seems so. It's not even interesting.

However, the idea that Christ was crucified and resurrected and that as a result, all who believe will also be resurrected, really is surpassingly great. That's something to get excited about.

No. The revelation of the gospel Paul refers to in Gal. 1 is his complete theology, not just some nit about gentile circumcision. This idea is congruent with the rest of Paul's writings outside the highly suspicious 1 Cor. 15.

gurugeorge

The people he mentions in 1Cor15, or at least some of them. Paul is last in line of a bunch of people who "saw" (i.e. had a religious conversion to the idea of) something.

True, but we know it has something to do with Scripture ("according to Scripture") and something to do with visionary experience ("direct revelation of Jesus Christ"). That's not a lot, but it does give us something to work on.

Just sounds like mystical hyperbole to me. Like tales of incarnations of the Buddha being born magically on a lotus in the middle of a lake, etc., etc.

As I said in our other conversation, some kinds of visionary experience are like the irruption of dream imagery into real life (a bit like schizophrenic hallucinations, although in the case of visionary experience, the mind isn't necessarily troubled or dysfunctional, it's just that "things" are "seen").

Paul is alluding, in passing, to this kind of experience - as with LSD, in religious conversion experience, or low-grade mystical experience, dreams and everyday reality start to blend somewhat; one starts to see apparent coincidences everywhere, symbols take on a certain vividness, etc., etc.

So what? That's all irrelevant if you have reason to suspect that Acts was made up as a political homily. Although some bits and pieces of actual history may well be mixed in there - including, for all I know, something like a "road to Damascus" conversion. But we can be pretty sure that even if there was such a thing, it's been extensively dressed up in Acts, to conform to orthodox requirements (i.e. to conform to the necessities for establishing orthodoxy as the "correct" version of Christianity).

gurugeorge

Yes, of course. That's why these people are unique and distinct.

You have:

1) This group was persecuted priorly by Paul.
2) To be persecuted, they had to have had an odd sort of idea.
3) The idea of a dying/rising Messiah in the past itself perfectly fits the bill for an idea odd enough to get up some Jews' noses. And Paul himself calls the idea "a stumbling block for the Jews". Clearly, he stumbled over the same block himself earlier, when he persecuted them.
4) As a side-point, or a contextual point, we are becoming aware that Judaism wasn't as monolithic as the gospels paint it roundabout that time - Judaism at that time and leading up to that time (cf. Margaret Barker, although I confess I've only read reviews) was quite variegated and interesting, sometimes not even monotheistic, with plenty of room for odd cults.

No, it's a "revaluation of values" of the traditional Messiah idea, a topsy-turvy version of the Messiah concept. But it's not just Paul's, it's what he explicitly shares with the people he mentions in 1Cor15.

I don't see any conflict at all. It's just a question of emphasis. In Corinthians, he's linking himself to the tradition, to bolster his argument somewhat; in Galatians, he's proudly emphasising that he has a direct hotline to the cult figure.

It's like this: someone tells you "X is Y". You don't believe it at first, then you think about it and realise "Ah yes, X is Y!" From whom did you receive the "revelation" that X is Y? In one sense you got it from others, in another sense you figured it out for yourself. Similar thing going on with Paul, only of course it's Earth-shattering stuff, psychologically, and Paul's "figuring it out" involves visionary experience, in which the cult tenets (which he previously had heard of, or perhaps been initiated into) are given to him directly, "from the horse's mouth".

spin

Assuming your conclusion.

If you're not in with the in-crowd, all you need to do is fart at the wrong time.

You sure know where you want to end up. It doesn't matter how you get there.

I think the "are becoming aware" doesn't reflect the ancient indications we have. Josephus was happy to list four varieties.

No, you are just helping to carry the christian dogma. Jesus simply isn't the messiah. He, uh, died. That eliminates him and he did not achieve anything expected of the messiah.

Maybe you'll understand why Galatians is in conflict with 1 Cor 15. He received nothing of his gospel from men.

I received my gospel from Jesus isn't the same as what is being said in 1 Cor 15.

So which is it: he got his gospel from Jesus or he got it from his predecessors (an option which he specifically eliminates in Galatians)?

That's knocking off the corners to make the square peg fit the round hole.


spin

gurugeorge

??? Even if the facts were "helping to carry Christian dogma", so what? Let the facts fall where they may. Actually, the facts do support, to a certain extent, the Christian religious experience. "Historical Jesus" has never been of much importance to rank-and-file Christians anyway, it's the "living Jesus" encountered in their conversion experiences and visionary experiences that counts. That's the way it always has been. The strong emphasis on the "historical" element was just a subterfuge by a certain strain of Christians, in a (eventually successful) bid to take the movement over politically. Plus it is (or rather used to be, until the farce was seen through) something intellectual Christians could beat others over the head with.

But the implication of 1Cor15 is that this group of people thought the other Jews had gotten the Messiah wrong. Here's how I read it:

"that according to the Scriptures the Messiah died for our sins, that according to the Scriptures he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day"

What those original people were saying was "Look, you guys have got this Messiah thing all wrong, we've seen it in Scripture, we've got the truth about this: he isn't to come, he's been; he wasn't famous, he came in obscurity; he has already won his victory, but it wasn't military and temporal, but rather spiritual and eternal." (And the other stuff in Paul fleshes this out - "fooling the Archons" was the whole point of the reversal-schtick, because the Archons were expecting what everyone else was expecting, a great military victor, so the Messiah snuck under their radar and fooled them all.)

Now it's true that orthodox Christians read this somewhat similarly, with the added extra of interpreting the early apostles as people who knew in person some guy who was the basis of the myth, but that's not a necessary implication of the text, it's something generations of Christians have simply read into it.

If Galatians is talking about a visionary experience, then there's no contradiction between first hearing certain "truths" from people and subsequently having them confirmed first-hand from the cultic entity in visionary experience. Obviously, the message Paul got from Joshua had a bit of a twist, it was more universal than the message the Jerusalem crowd were putting out. But there is no logical necessity for the core message to be any different, no logical necessity to have Paul be the first to jam together the dying/rising Soter mytheme and the Jewish Messiah concept.

wavy_wonder1

Assuming I've skimmed the first few pages of this thread correctly, how can anyone say the contents of Paul's gospel as outlined in 1 Corinthians xv is different from the Jerusalem apostles' in light of verse 11?


Thanks,
E.L.B.

Amaleq13

I take into consideration more data and this limits my perspective?

I've repeatedly and clearly described what is incoherent about the story your conclusion produces.

Denial does nothing to refute or even address the reason you've already been given.

I agree the solution is simple but there is nothing of a "ruse" about it. Just logic applied to everything Paul writes about his beliefs.

No, just those bits that Paul claims separated him from his opponents.

Yes, and faith in a crucified and resurrected messiah was not a problem for them.

Denial does nothing to refute or even address the reason you've already been given.

Anyone interested in getting the person to change their belief that they have no obligation would care about arguing against the basis of that belief.

Unless, of course, they shared that fundamental belief and only opposed a particular interpretation of it.

At least one of the people who have publicly had no problem following my "message" is a mythicist. So much for yet another appeal to the "bias" of those who don't accept your argument.

He also says that he was known to preach the faith he once persecuted. Use your brain.

No wonder your story is incoherent. It is sad that your incoherent position forces you to make such foolish statements. :frown:

Because you know he wrote it?

No more than it contradicts 1:23 which is not at all. And this "contradiction", to answer your earlier question, is what you are failing to sell.

You've got nothing new so you've got nothing interesting to say as far as I'm concerned. :wave:

spin

Yup, failing to see the tree for the forest.

You've repeatedly and clearly been incoherent.

Nothing comes of nothing. Try again.

By disregarding the specific, you lose meaning. You can babble on as much as you like about other things, but if you don't deal with the original statement -- as is the case -- all the verbiage is useless.

Including faith in Jesus.

You simply wouldn't know. They apparently didn't even get to it, because Paul's proselytes didn't get to first base.

Again: nothing comes of nothing. Try again.

You don't get to the second hurdle when you can't get over the first.

One is not "a lot".

Umm, what faith exactly was that? Naturally, you just don't know. I have argued that as they were messianists and Paul was now nominally a messianist he was seen as proclaiming the same basic belief. You've said nothing against this.

This bears no relation to what you were purportedly responding to. You simply took it out of context, which is your habit.

As I wrote in the post you were responding to:

Now as Gal 1:11-12 are closely related to 1:1-2, it looks as if it has a good claim to being an integral part of the text.

When you ignore my understanding of 1:23, you don't make a reasoned case. Your slavish reading of 1:23, not dealing with context, is not particularly illuminating.

I wish you had something "new" to say on it. You've been simply supporting the status quo and avoiding the implications of Paul's revelation for months. Stop projecting your own inadequacy. You've got a stance which has no justification: you ignore evidence because it doesn't suit you and drown it with statements from elsewhere, hoping to cover it up. Instead of dealing with the problem, you sublimate it.


spin

spamandham

...because several well qualified scholars have shown vs. 3-11 to be an interpolation. If that's true, then it has no relevance in determining what the Jerusalem sect taught.

Ben C Smith

Romans 10.15 could not have referred to the Pauline gospel originally, since it is of course quoting the LXX, which predated Paul. But are you seriously suggesting that Paul is not using this LXX quotation to refer to his own gospel?

That can hardly be the reason. Rather, it is clearly due to the verb in this case having a direct object (the faith). Here are all the instances of ευαγγελιζομαι in the genuine Pauline epistles:

Romans 1.15; 10.15; 15.20;
1 Corinthians 1.17; 9.16 (×2), 18; 15.1, 2;
2 Corinthians 10.16; 11.7;
Galatians 1.8 (×2), 9, 11, 16, 23; 3.8;* 4.13;
1 Thessalonians 3.6.

* Actually Greek προευαγγελιζομαι, to evangelize (or preach the gospel) beforehand.

Let us break this down. The following instances appear in the RSV as preach the gospel:

Romans 1.15; 15.20;
1 Corinthians 1.17; 9.16 (×2);
2 Corinthians 10.16;
Galatians 1.8, 9; 3.8; 4.13.

That is half the references already.

The following instance appears in the RSV without gospel:

Romans 10.15.

But this is a quotation of Isaiah, and the RSV has simply retained the good news of its translation in Isaiah 52.7.

And the following instances appear with gospel in the RSV, but the Greek actually uses a cognate accusative (ευαγγελιζομαι το ευαγγελιον, to gospel the gospel) or something similar, and the RSV has reduced the potential English redundancy (to preach the gospel as gospel) to one sole mention of gospel:

1 Corinthians 9.18; 15.1-2 (×2);
2 Corinthians 11.7;
Galatians 1.11.

The only use of this verb in the genuine Pauline epistles that has nothing to do with the Pauline gospel is 1 Thessalonians 3.6; here the good news is the Thessalonian steadfastness that Timothy reports, and notice that the RSV does not even have preaching as the verb.

This leaves us with Galatians 1.16 and 1.23. Both of these verses omit gospel in the RSV, but the reason is clear; the verb has its own accusative direct object, and it would be awkward to retain the English direct object gospel in the translation. Note that this awkwardness also applies to Romans 10.15 and to all the cognate accusatives listed above; IOW, this rule explains all the instances cleanly.

Agreed, as we see in 1 Thessalonians 3.6, and if you want to translate all of the instances above as good news for the sake of consistency, I will not stand in your way. However, this generic good news can hardly apply to Galatians 1.23, where Paul is preaching the faith he once persecuted as good news, and where he has already used this verb 5 times (!) in a very short span to refer to preaching the gospel.

I am not seeing it. It still requires explanation. Crucifixion and circumcision have nothing automatically to do with one another (except that both probably hurt). One has to explain in any case why Jesus being crucified means that circumcision is not required for gentile converts.

If by Jerusalem sect you mean the pillars and their followers, then your assumption here goes well beyond our evidence. Paul is clear that they did not require circumcision of gentile converts; they agreed with Paul on that. Where Paul describes eventual disagreement, it is over food.

I did. Thanks.

Ben.