gstafleu

I think I have said a couple of times now that, imho, there is no evidence in Paul strong enough to carry an HJ: what there is is much more easily explained as myth of one type or another. What I was saying in the paragraph you comment on is that, if we would have evidence for an HJ from somewhere else than Paul, then the "earthly" passages in Paul could possibly be seen as consonant with that. I think that distinction is important for this thread.

Nope, I think myth the most likely hypothesis, so I don't expect that. I'm just pointing out that for the earhtly passages in Paul to be strong enough to carry an HJ we would need some details like that (Inana walking in Eridu, Dionysos born from Semele). Which then still would only make it real(M) given the mythical context. For real(H) we would need even more. So maybe this is not important to Paul, fine. We then still are in the position that the "earthly" passages we find in Paul cannot carry any kind of HJ, at best they might be consonant with one if we managed to find one somewhere else.


I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here:

• Rom 15.18-19: … what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, …
• 1 Cor 12.28: And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, ...
• 2 Cor 12.12: The signs of a true apostle were performed among you in all patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.
• Gal 3.5: Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?

1 seems to be a report of revelation, 2 a report of organizational details. 3 and 4 I'm not sure about. They mention signs and miracles as if they were done (by Paul?) right in front of his audience. Do we have any idea what these were? We would need that in order to form a judgment on what Paul is saying here. I don't see any (in 2 Cor 12, btw), hence it so far sounds like hand waving to me (the sound of one hand waving?). Same in Gal 3:5.

Gerard Stafleu

gurugeorge

Spot on Gerard.

The long and the short of it is that there's no reason to read Paul's "historical details" as evidential of historicity as we would mean it. To read them as such is not a prima facie reading - we should not automatically expect to find a historical Jesus on encountering such "historical details" any more than mention of "Dionysus, born of Semele" should, on the face of it, prompt us to go looking for a historical Dionysus or Semele.

To go looking for a historical Jesus (as we would mean it) in Paul is just as laughable as that. Especially given the weight of obviously spiritual/mythical/mystical content to Paul's Christ in the bulk of the Epistles.

That there might be a historical person at the root of Paul's myth is certainly one possible option, but it wouldn't be the first one an unbiassed historian would suspect - there would need to be some contemporary "flag" elsewhere, either in Paul or outside Paul, to make that a live option, preferable to understanding Paul as preaching a universalised version of a novel Messiah concept.

ynquirer

We call ‘a miracle’ every deed that is beyond the (natural) capacities of ordinary men. Do we need an exact description of each miracle? For instance, Cassius Dio has handed the following report over to us:

This is the report of two miracles. There is a description of both of them. Is the description enough? Well, no. It is not enough if you want to be sure that the miracle really happened. You can, for instance, ask whether there was an independent monitoring of the deed, so as to guarantee that is was not a masquerade orchestrated by Vespasian himself.

Therefore, the important issue is not a scientific description of a miracle, but that the audience believed it to be a miracle, which was the case of Vespasian and Paul as well. As gstafleu says, several verses in Paul “mention signs and miracles as if they were done (by Paul?) right in front of his audience.” Were they a farce? We don’t know. We just can believe one way or the other.

Back to the thread, the issue is whether Paul affords evidence of a HJ or of a MJ, not whether there was a HJ or a MJ. (This is the reason why any external evidence of a HJ is irrelevant; the only relevant issue is Paul’s internal evidence.) Now, Paul speaks of two extraordinary things rather than only one. The first one is a man who died to redeem mankind and afterward resurrected; in principle, he might be either a myth or a historical person. The second is a group of men – how many is very difficult to ascertain – that healed and worked miracles right in front of their audience; some of them, but not all, were called ‘the apostles’. What I say is that you cannot assess Paul’s internal evidence as regards the first extraordinary thing without placing the second jigsaw where it belongs.

In several passages Paul speaks of the doubts of the audience as regards the resurrection of Jesus. For instance:

Therefore, it looks like miracles were performed right in front of the Christian audience, and the audience accepted such deeds as authentic miracles – at least, Paul does not reproach the audience any disbelief in the apostles’ miracles as much as he reproaches their disbelief in Christ’s resurrection. IOW, according to Paul’s words – that’s his internal evidence – the Christian audience accepted the apostles’ miracles as authentic while deemed resurrection too great a miracle to be believed in.

To use gstafleu’s own words: it appears from Paul that at least a fraction of the Christian audience deemed Christ’s resurrection to be a mythical accretion of a basically credible personal bio, and they were the more ‘naturalistic’ among the Christians! Accordingly, if one accepts the Pauline speech as authentic it’s evidence that Jesus was a real(H) man about whom other real(H) men discussed whether his resurrection was a mythical accretion – like Augustus’ birth of a virgin.

One may, of course, reject the authenticity of Paul’s discourse. Yet, in no case may Paul be used as evidence of an MJ.

gurugeorge

This isn't about the resurrection of Jesus but about "the resurrection of the dead" in terms of Paul's doctrine, as is evident from the passage that introduces the discusssion:

[12]Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

and from the passage that introduces the next bit of the discussion after that topic has been settled:

But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?"

It's the resurrection of Jesus that's used as proof that the cultic idea of "resurrection of the dead" is a "live option"!

They didn't disbelieve Christ's resurrection, in fact their presumed belief in Christ's resurrection is used to persuade them of the reality of their own resurrection in terms of the cultic "resurrection of the dead".

Even if one were to take your own argument seriously, dead people being brought back to life was not an unknown concept in the ancient world. Empedocles, Ascelepius, Appolonius of Tyana, were renowned for resurrecting people. But Paul is obviously not talking about that kind of resurrection, but about a spiritual (actually mystical) resurrection.

It's nothing of the kind, this is just a ridiculous misreading of the passage. That speech is evidence that some doubted the doctrine of the "resurrection of the dead" as a cultic piece of doctrine - i.e. they doubted the promise of their own resurrection, not Christ's! Paul's argument is a reductio that reminds them of their own commitment to belief in Christ's resurrection, and uses that to leverage their belief in the cultic notion of "resurrection of the dead". Christ's resurrection is a promissory note of their own resurrection.

Paul then goes on to discuss that the resurrection meant is a spiritual thing, not a physical thing (actually it looks to me proto-Gnostic, a veiled reference to non-dual mystical experience, with "death" meaning ordinary life and the ordinary sense of self as the physical body):

[42]So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
[43] It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
[44] It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
[45] Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
[46] But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
[47] The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
[48] As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
[49] Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
[50] I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
[51]Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
[52] in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
[53] For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
[54] When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."

Doug Shaver

I wasn't thinking of any particular proof text, but rather the overall impression that would be created in the mind of a first-century reader who was entirely ignorant of the stories that were later incorporated into the gospels. The question is whether such a reader would suppose that Paul was talking about a man who had at some time, recently or otherwise, lived in this world? Or would he have supposed something else? And if it could have gone either way, what was the typical reader more likely to think?

As for actual examples of explicitly spiritual beings ascending and descending, I don't have time at the moment to do the necessary research, but Doherty's argument that the Ascension of Isaiah is one such looks cogent to me.

aa5874

I cannot find any historian that claimed Atia, the mother of Augustus, was a virgin at the time of conception of Augustus. According to Suetonius, Atia fell asleep and had some type of dream or vision of being impregnated by a serpent. And there is no account that her husband, at the time, denied having sexual contact with her.

Unlike the non-historical account of the virgin birh of Jesus, where the authors of the NT claimed some Joseph denied having sexual contact with one called Mary, but yet she still managed to conceive a god and a man named Jesus.

Where exactly did you get this information about Atia being a virgin at the time of conception of Augustus?

Cege

Not sure what you mean here by resurrections couldn't possibly be performed by men. Men performed resurrections on at least two occasions, at least according to the OT. Jesus performed resurrections in the NT. The NT says that at the moment of Jesus' death there was an earthquake that opened tombs in Jerusalem and as a result many of the dead were resurrected and walked in the streets. The book of Acts records a couple of resurrections performed by men.

What was different and more special about the resurrection of Jesus that Paul believed in than the resurrections the bible describes both before and after Jesus' resurrection?

ynquirer

The less prone to believe in their own resurrection actually deemed Christ’s resurrection as politically correct hyperbole, and this is what Paul reproaches them.

ynquirer

I never meant that. Had you read the whole thread, you would have found these statements, posit by someone else:

And a little below, by the same poster, these:

It is to both paragraphs that I wrote what I did.

ynquirer

The resurrection of Jesus was of a very different quality than those worked out by men. Those in the OT – by Elisha, for instance – are nowhere said to have resuscitated a dead that wouldn’t die again; resuscitated are suppose to have died after some time. Other resuscitations in the NT are not any different. Jesus, however, resurrected to live forever. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?