TedM

Thanks for expanding on this..

Hi Malachi. I normally would agree with you. However, the same kind of language is used on the Gospels when Jesus is referring to his return. He doesn't say he is "returning" or "coming back". Rather than he will "appear". If it is good enough for the gospel writers who clearly were referencing a "return", then I am willing to remove any expectation that Paul refer to it differently.

I would also suggest that the most reasonable/likely interpretation of Hebrews 9:28 is that the appearance for a "second time" is referring to an "appearance" to the same place as the first time, because the implication is that the first appearance was at the time of the OFFERING. If that appearance was referring to something not witnessed on earth, the word "appearance" seems strange to me. If you feel differently, we will have to agree to disagree on this.



Not necessarily to the last question. Jesus is even presented primarily in the synoptics as having come for the Jews. Paul quotes many times from Isaiah passages that support his gospel of salvation for the Gentiles. And, the only other time in Romans that he references a "mystery" is when he is talking about that gospel of salvation.

Here's my thinking:


1. The early Jewish Christians believed in a Jesus who had been crucified, buried and resurrected (Gal 1-2, and 1 Cor 15).

2. Paul stresses that his gospel was revealed to him by God, and not any man. This is therefore probably the "mystery".

3. Nowhere does Paul state that what he knows of Jesus comes from the scriptures or revelation.

4. Therefore the "mystery" is likely not that Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected after 3 days.

This conclusion is supported by a number of passages in which Paul either strongly implies or literally says that the mystery is his unique gospel of salvation to the Gentiles through faith.


Re Rom 10I don't think that is the main point at all. Rather, that faith in Paul's gospel message requires hearing it. He well may have been referring to Gentiles here, since he just had finished referencing them in verse 12, two prior.

re 1 Cor 2
I think Paul is talking generally about wisdom from God here to discern what is of God and what isn't. He does this in much of the first chapter. And he makes it clear that he is contrasting wisdom of men, from men, with wisdom of men, from God. He then provides the example of Jesus in 2:8-9. He strongly implies that those that crucified Jesus didn't have wisdom from God--saying that had they had wisdom from God they never would have crucified him. It seems unlikely that he would switch from giving examples of humans not having wisdom from God to beings other than humans not having wisdom from God without qualifying that fact. No.

Should Paul have referenced Jesus as an example of one having wisdom from God? He does imply this in the last verse, saying we should have "the mind of Christ". Should he have given examples of Jesus' wisdom? It woudn't have hurt, but if the main point Paul is making is that faith in Jesus' resurrection comes from having wisdom from God, then it seems a bit off-point---especially if Jesus didn't make a public issue of why he was getting crucified.


These are the reasons that I don't think we can say that Paul could not have possibly been writing about a Jesus who had been historical and lived 10-20 years prior.


ted

aa5874

There are no known historical records of Jesus, King of the Jews, only forgeries in Josephus.

There are anecdotes of this Jesus in the NT and writings of the Church fathers, if these writings appear to be fundamentally fictitious and erroneous, then Jesus of Nazareth can be dismissed as a fairy tale.

From anecdotes in gMatthew, I discovered that Jesus, the King of the Jews, was born when an apparent fictitious star was seen over a specific building.
I also noted that the genealogy of this King appears to be fiction and useless to link Jesus the Messiah to King David, since the author of gMatthew catergorically claimed Joseph did not have sexual contact with Mary.

But, the author of Luke gives a totally different, but equally useless, genealogy for Joseph, since the author maintained that Joseph had no sexual contact with Mary.

Where is the genealogy for the other man, not Joseph, the man who was erroneously believed to be the Holy Ghost, who may have been the father of the King?

Now, the authors of gMatthew, gLuke and Eusebius all claimed they have information about the date of birth of Jesus the King of the Jews.

Eusebius, in Church History, implied to his readers that the author of gMatthew was a disciple of this Jesus, so his date for the birth of the King should be taken seriously, maybe this disciple talked to Mary.

gMatthew claimed Jesus was born before the death of Herod the great, sometime before 4BCE (See Matthew 2 and Antiquities of the Jews book 17).

Now, according to Eusebius, Luke the Physician is the author of Luke who appeared to be familiar with Paul and other disciples, maybe even Mary the mother.

gLuke wrote that Jesus of Nazareth was born during a census by Cyrenius, sometime around 6CE. (See Luke 2 and AJ 17.13.5)

If the authors of Matthew and Luke could have contacted Mary, the supposed mother, and could have gone to Bethlehem to the very same place where the STAR appeared, then there may have been no discrepancies.

But our problems have just began, Eusebius in Church History claimed the author of Matthew was a disciple and wrote about Jesus from personal experience. Biblical scholars say, apparentlty not, the author of Matthew appears to have "photo-copied" gMark and added other details, and that this unknown person wrote Matthew well after the time line given by Eusebius.

So the date given by gMatthew for birth of Jesus the King may be fictitious or totally unreliable.

In Church history, Eusebius claimed Luke the Physician wrote gLuke, but Biblical scholars are not too sure about that, the scholars think the unknown author of gLuke also "photo-copied" gMark and added details sometime after 70CE.

So, the dates given by gLuke may also be fictitious or totally unreliable.

But quite unexpectedly, Eusebius appear to think that the dates given by gMatthew and gLuke are problematic or unreliable and gives, incredibly, another date which would make Jesus the King to be born on two dates, seven years apart, simultaneously.

Church History 1.5.2, "It was in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus and the twenty-eight after the subjugation of Egypt and the death of Anthony and Cleopatra..........that ...Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem........His birth took place during the first census, while Cyrenius was governor of Syria"

Eusebius is confused, he thinks Jesus the King was born 2BCE and 6CE at the same time.

The confusion and contradiction continues, up to the 4th century, Eusebius cannot confirm the history of the birth of Jesus the King of the Jews, the Messiah, the Son of the God of Moses, Lord and Saviour.

Was it 4BCE, 2BCE, or 6CE or any two or all three, simultaneously?

The historicity of Jesus the King is in shambles, the evidence against the historical Jesus continues, it appears only fiction and confusion can bring him to life.

GakuseiDon

That's an interesting point, Ted. I found this at the end of GJohn, from John 21:20:

20 Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper, and said, "Lord, who is the one who betrays You?"
21 Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, "But Lord, what about this man?"
22 Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me."

The Greek word translated as "come" above is "erchomai". Strong's includes the following amongst the meanings:
http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/l...64&Version=kjv
1) to come
a) of persons
1) to come from one place to another, and used both of persons arriving and of those returning

I see that Paul uses the word elsewhere, in 1 Cor 11:26:

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;
24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me."
25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes.

As my Greek is non-existent, can anyone with Greek language skills hazard a guess whether there are any indications that "return" is suggested (beyond the context itself) where "erchomai" has been used in the passages above?

Toto

Doherty on erchomai

I seem to recall that this has been discussed before.

Jeffrey Gibson

It doesn't?

Might I suggest that this claim be tested by an examination of all the Greek words signifying "return" that come up when one uses "return" as the search term in Perseus' English to Greek Word Search tool.

See here.

And it seems that the claim that ἔρχομαι does not bear the meaning of "return" "come back" unless it possesses (notably unspecified) by "adjuncts" is belied by the fact that does mean "return", "come back" in Bar 4:37; 1 Esdr 5:8; Tob 2:3 BA; Jn 4:27 -- where so far as I can see, it is used absolutely. On this, see the entry on ἔρχομαι in BDAG.

And in claiming as for the claim that "nowhere does any writer attempt to convey the sense of "return." For example, the simple word palin, "again," employed with erchomai, could have served this purpose, yet no one ever uses it", Earl shows himself unaware of Mk. 11:27 and especially John 14:3.


Looks like Earl has once agian not done his homework.

Jeffrey

GakuseiDon

Thanks for the link, Toto (as always!) I'll have a look at it. I can see that Doherty doesn't mention those examples like I gave from John, which is interesting.

Doug Shaver

I could argue not, but even if there are, your sticking quote marks around the word doesn't tell me which level you're referring to.

This is irrelevant, since I have said nothing that presupposes any of them is.

Is that some kind of code?I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

Then please rephrase the question, because I now have no idea what you were asking.

Sure. Given such a work, we can pick out the historical parts by checking other sources. But, for what the gospels relate about Jesus, we have no other sources except, arguably, secular references to Christianity's founder having been crucified by Pilate and, just maybe, his having had a brother named James. None of those references is contemporary, and in every case we have no idea who or what were the writer's sources. Not a single other detail in any of the gospels has even that much corroboration. That means we have no basis on which to separate the facts, if any, from the fiction. Absent good reason to suppose that there are any facts, it is reasonable to treat the whole thing as fiction.

Very well. Just because the gospels are fiction doesn't mean that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist and was not crucified. I'll go with that. However, I don't believe that Jesus didn't exist just because I think the gospels are fiction.

Toto

Hi Jeffrey - perhaps you would like to identify one of those 361 words whose definitions contain "return" that might precisely mean "coming back to a place one has visited or been at before" and then explain why the writers of the gospel did not use that term to refer to the parousia, as opposed to a term that does not clearly signify "return to a place one has been at a prior time".

If there is such a term, Doherty's case would be strengthened, would it not? It would show that the NT translators are incorporating their theological assumptions into their translations. But if you can rule out all of those 361 terms or explain why the gospel writers did not use that term, you will have scored a coup for historicism.

I await your peer reviewed article on this question.

TedM

Edit: Not sure I understand you here...since if there are such terms we dont' see them showing up in Paul's writings...

In any case it still doesn't explain the absence of such terms meaning "return" or the specific word Doherty mentioned (palin) in the gospels in places where Jesus is talking about his return to earth in the end days. For me their absence is enough to remove the expectation that Paul use other words if he was writing about a HJ return.

ted

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, why? The only point under dispute was Earl's claim that "Greek has no specific word for "return" in the sense of coming back to a place one has visited or been at before".

And as for identifying which one of the (as it turns out) many of the ones listed as signifying "return" means "return" in the sense of "come back", I'll let you do that since it will afford you the opportunity of fulfilling the wish that you've expressed here and there to learn some Greek.

Don't know about his case, but it would certainly undermine his particular claims that there is no Greek word for "return" and that ἔρχομαι used absolutely does not mean "come back" (or did you fail to note that one of the words listed as mening "return" was ἔρχομαι?).

<edit>

Jeffrey