Jayrok

What if this last supper didn't occur on Earth? Were there ritual meals in other pagan religions? If there was a ritual meal with Mithras, did Mithras have this meal on Earth or in other heavenly realms in the worshippers' minds?

Amaleq13

True enough and do the same for the Gospels but don't forget to actually consider each example according to the logic of that explanation. IOW, does each example of "fulfillment" make sense as coming from Scripture or are some connections so weak or strained that it seems more likely the process worked in reverse?

Keep in mind that the reversed process does not require that the story element be historical. It only requires that the author believed it to be true before searching Scripture for a "prophecy".

dog-on

Kinda like those Rapture Ready guys?

Amaleq13

Yes.

andrewcriddle

Although you are right that the Didache version of the Eucharist has major differences from Paul it is IMO more distinctively Christian than you indicate

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

Actually, Paul doesn't give direct references. Occasionally he will refer to specific prophets like Isaiah, but mostly he will just refer to "Scriptures". Sometimes it isn't certain what Scriptures he is referring to (e.g. 1 Cor 15). And Paul doesn't appear to have problems taking passages out of their context, banging them together, to support some point he is trying to make.

There are questions here that I think need to be addressed, and I was hoping that the "competing hypotheses" thread would have been the place. But anyway:

There is a question of what information Paul is deriving from Scriptures, and what information he is using Scriptures to confirm. Paul refers to current events on occasions and uses Scriptures to expand on them, so we have examples of the later.

There is also the question of why Paul has so few historical details (and I will repeat, not just about Jesus but about things in general).

For me, the crux here is that neither of these questions necessarily affect historicity. We have examples of proto-orthodox writing in the same manner as Paul. It is special pleading to say that Paul could not be proto-orthodox based on how he wrote, but most mythicists don't appear to go beyond stating their conclusions based on those two points, regardless of the fact that we have proto-orthodox writing the same way.

GakuseiDon

Paul himself said that he persecuted Jewish Christians (assuming that is what he meant by "churches of God in Christ") and put it down to his zealousness for the law. So early Christians appear to have been noticed by Jewish authorities. But they were a small group, and so didn't attract that much notice. We are lucky to have that reference in Paul, and we only have that because Paul joined their ranks.

Yes.

No. My argument with Doherty is that no-one ever seems to have believed that their gods acted in a "fleshly sublunar realm". (That's not just my argument. Many others have made the same point.) An earthly Jesus is still compatible with many forms of mythicism. But Doherty's version is simply unsupported by the evidence, and in fact, the evidence we do have is against him.

Note that he is shortly releasing a second edition of his book, so perhaps he may have found evidence for his position, or modified it to remove the problems.

I don't think that we should start with Paul believing that Jesus was a real human being in Jerusalem in his recent past. We should start with what Paul actually says. Even then any conclusion is dependent on assuming that Paul has reached us untouched.

A lot of that makes sense, even in a historicist setting. But it is at that point that we need to look at other passages. The issue here is that Paul gives every indication that he believed that Jesus was a man on earth: "born of a woman, born under the law", "seed of Abraham", "come from the fathers [Israelites] according to the flesh". How do you reconcile these passages with a non-earthly Jesus? (I'll agree that they don't prove that Jesus was historical, merely that they seem to suggest that Paul thought that Jesus was on earth at some point).

ph2ter

The fact that the Eucharist in the Didache is distinctively Christian and the fact that it lacks connection with the Last Supper account which can be found in the Gospels and in 1 Corinthians is actually an argument for the later invention of the Last Supper account.

Jayrok

Not wanting to derail this conversation into a discussion of The Jesus Puzzle, but my question is how, in your view, did those cultures believe their gods acted out? Did they believe they really lived on Earth? Or did they acknowledge the gods were all spiritual or totally mythological?

Did those other cultures have manuscripts of stories where their gods ascended through layers of what they'd consider heaven? I think Earl points to works such as the Ascension of Isaiah to develop the mindset of the era. Though I could be off on that.

True enough. How is it even possible to know his works reached us as he intended when he sat to write? At the end of the day, what is it that he actually said?

If that is what Paul actually wrote. It would be helpful if he had taken his description of Jesus further.

andrewcriddle

There may be two issues here
1/ Is Paul's account of the Eucharist a later development ?
2/ Did the original version regard the Eucharist as instituted by Jesus ?
Even if 1/ is true 2/ could also be true.
It may be relevant that the Western text of Luke 21:17-20 presents an Eucharist instituted by Jesus but lacking many of the distinctively Pauline features and with some resemblances to the Didache version.

Andrew Criddle