gstafleu

Let's consider the "fictional" approach some more, with as example Inana's Descent into the underworld. The reason I would like to do so is the following. When it comes to the historicity of a character an author describes, there are two questions:

1. Does the author think of the character as real?
2. Do we think of the character as real (in the modern "Churchill was real" sense)?

I suppose we could subdivide 1 into 1.a (real as Churchill) and 1.b (real as Harry Potter). In the end, what we are interested in, certainly when it comes to the HJ, is 2. 1, in whatever version, is of course of historical interest, but it is not what the HJ-MJ debate is about. In the following I'll use real(M) as Harry-Potter-real and real(H) as Churchill-real.

When we look at the Inana story, we notice some "earthly" elements. In this case: she visited old Sumerian cities, e.g. Eridu(g). The questions now are:

1. From this, can we conclude that the author thought of Inana as either real(M) or real(H)?
2. Can we conclude that there was a real(h) Inana, an HI?

The second question is probably the easiest. We recognize the story as typical myth and so see Inana as mythical, as an MI. We can hold open the possibility that there was some princess (or whatever) on which Inana was based, but we cannot deduce that from the text (nor, afaik, from anything else). So this option comes with a note attached: do not consider seriously until further evidence is available.

Now to the first question: does the author think that Inana is either real(M) or real(H). We can fairly safely say that the author thinks at least real(M), given the earthly bit of e.g. Eridu. It is hard to say if the author also thought real(H). I don't think that, given the possibility of real(M), we can say the text supports real(H) in any fashion. This is an Ockham's razor argument, I think: we know that in cases like this real(M) is not unusual, so real(H) becomes an extra assumption for which we would need extra (outside the text) evidence.

I think this to some extent answers your question about earthly expression not to be understood in the ordinary sense. The question is: which ordinary sense, the M or the H one? And did the ancient writers even distinguish between these two, or is that (mostly, we'll leave some Greek thought aside) a post-enlightenment concept? In the end what we are interested in is our modern definition of "real" or "historical." I'm not so sure (a) if ancient writers, like the author of Inana (just in case: I know that this is not a correct expression) distinguished between real(M) and real(H), nor if (b) we can see which even if they did, and hence (c) I doubt if trying to find instances of authors who did or did not do so is all that useful.

Maybe that goes a bit too far. There are lots of authors whom we assume at least tried to describe the world in a real(H) fashion, Tacitus e.g. But there are also lots of authors who used real(M), Ovid e.g. in his metamorphoses. In these latter we see lots of descriptions that are at least real(M) but of dubious real(H)-ness. Which perhaps answers your question more broadly: we see lots of both. So we don't have any broadside we can use with Paul, we have to decide that on an individual basis.

Gerard

EarlDoherty

I never said he did. If you’ll check past debates on this question here, you’ll see that I suggested that, since later scribes had their fingers all over this passage (Latin and Greek), and since we have no manuscript evidence before the 3rd century, it was quite reasonable to assume the possibility that during the 2nd century, they in fact inserted the ‘original’ phrases of woman and law. And your observations about Paul’s regular use of ginomai proves nothing. What it does show is that there was Pauline vocabulary which an interpolator could have seized on to create his interpolation. And it would explain why such a scribe would have used ginomai rather than the more natural gennaw in the first place. The former verb used for a simple human birth was always a problem in Gal. 4:4 if authentic to Paul, since the latter verb would have been much more natural to express your “unequivocal ‘born an historical Jew’.”

But we’ve been over all that before, and I’m not getting into a repeat debate on it. Check past threads (maybe a year or so ago?).

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

Indeed.

I doubt that Rowling thinks Harry Potter himself, as an entity, has done anything at all to affect humanity, though of course her books about him have.

So my question for you is: Did Paul think that Jesus himself, as an entity, had won some sort of redemption for mankind by his death and resurrection, or did Paul think only that his gospel about Jesus was doing that?

Ben.

Amaleq13

I have to hope you didn't miss the point as badly as this comment suggests. As should be obvious given the number of times I've repeated it, it is your inclusion of speculation about Paul's source that is the irrelevant extra detail.

You've certainly had a problem focusing on it in response to Ben's very specific request. Instead, you've repeatedly attempted to change the discussion to one about what Paul "really meant". That this entirely misses the point of Ben's request and constitutes a derailment of the thread should be obvious.

No, that is how one obtains a meaning other than the face value of the words and how one ventures off into a tangent irrelevant to Ben's OP.

Here you are assuming (with Ben's "opponents") that Paul meant something other than the face value of the words and, in pursuing that tangent, you continue to fail to address Ben's request.

The "crap" clearly substantiates my claim and the questions you asked do nothing to "clarify" but serve only to introduce yet another irrelevant tangent. We don't need to know who they were or what they taught to recognize that Paul clearly claims to have joined their movement as opposed to creating his own as you have suggested.

You are clearly more interested in discussing what Paul "really meant" than responding to Ben's OP. Start your own thread and quit trying to hijack Ben's.

gstafleu

Oh, I'm sure Paul thought of Jesus as some kind of entity. The question is: what kind of entity. Most of what Paul writes puts Jesus on the level of supernatural creatures like gods, angels and what have you. That makes him a supernatural creature, who certainly is not real(H). To make such a creature real there are two steps. (1) He can remain supernatural but have walked on earth nevertheless, which would make him real(M). The next step is that he is based on a real(H) figure, and the supernatural stuff got attached to him. (Notice that I'm using scientific methodology here, which automatically (and after centuries of debate) assigns anything supernatural to the "unreal." Should your argument require otherwise, you would have real methodological problems .)

In addition to the supernatural stuff, there are a few "earthly" remarks in Paul. Against the background of the supernatural stuff they don't amount to much, they don't make much of a dent however you interpret them. That said, they can easily be interpreted as real(M), something we find in a lot of myth. They are certainly not strong enough to conclude that Jesus was, in Paul's mind, real(H), not strong enough to conclude he based his supernatural Jesus on somebody who really walked the earth. When Paul says Jesus was born from a woman, he doesn't say when or where, so, given the mythical (supernatural, see above) environment, the most straightforward hypothesis is that it was "once upon a time" and "in a country far far away."

What I think you have done in this and other threads is show how an HJ could be harmonized with Paul. But you will have to find the evidence for an HJ somewhere else, what we find in Paul is not nearly strong enough to carry that. Hence you arguments are premature: first find evidence for an HJ, then harmonize Paul.

Gerard

Ben C Smith

And there we are, back to the point of the OP. What kind of entity? I say an entity who was born of a woman, a descendant of David and of Abraham, born under the law, and so forth. IOW, a human, unless you can provide analogous evidence otherwise.

Quite true. But does Paul speak of him in those terms when referring to his human state? Humans who were thought to have become gods and thus ascended into heaven at their deaths were not all that uncommon in antiquity. Some of these humans were also thought to have descended from heaven at conception or birth. That does not mean that the humans in question (such as Augustus) were not thought to have been humans, at least in some way (even if docetic at times).

Virgil asserted both that Augustus was sent down from heaven and that Augustus was of the line of Aeneas. Likewise, Paul can assert both that Jesus was sent out of heaven and that Jesus was of the line of David. In the ancient mind, the two do not contradict.

That is my own position, but it really does not figure into the thrust of the OP.

It is not a matter of one making a dent in the other. The ancients believed both about certain individuals. You seem to be insisting here on an all-or-nothing approach to Paul, taking the majority of his statements and pitting them against the minority. I am not in favor of doing that; that is very poor methodology. On the face of things, it is quite plausible for Paul to write 90% of the time about the heavenly Jesus and only 10% of the time about the earthly Jesus. The most we can get out of the ratio is his own preference or emphasis; we cannot allow the 90% to swallow the 10% whole, as if it did not even exist. 10% is not 0%, no matter how you slice it.

That is a very reasonable conclusion... unless or until we find evidence that Paul thought of Jesus as having existed a little closer in time to himself.

No! First establish terms and method. That is always first. And that is what the OP is about. What does the text itself, on its own terms, mean?

Ben.

Toto

If Harry Potter does not live in a parallel universe, with it's own peculiar laws of magical physics, how would you describe a parallel universe?

There isn't a religion around Harry Potter (yet), but there is a quasi-religion around Luke Skywalker. Do any of the fans who get greater meaning from Star Wars than they do from ordinary historical figures care about distinguishing between fiction and myth? Luke Skywalker was born of a woman (or at least a Hollywood actress.)

I have the feeling that Luke Skywalker may be a better analogy to Paul's Jesus than a historical figure.

Ben C Smith

A parallel universe would presumably not have England in it.

Harry Potter lives in a fictionalized England.

To be clear, Luke Skywalker was not born of a Hollywood actress. Skywalker is a character who was born, within the fictional movie, of another character (Amidala, IIRC). Mark Hammil, the actor, was presumably born of a noncharacter.

Maybe, maybe not. But what does that have to do with the OP?

Ben.

Toto

What does it have to do with the OP? I find this whole thread a bit strange. You appear to want to interpret Paul's words literally, but you know that lots of words written throughout the history of writing are not intended to be interpreted literally, so you are trying to box things up in a way that makes Paul's writing different from all those other fictional or mythical storytelling cases.

But if you think that Harry Potter lives in a real England, perhaps I'll just back out of this discussion.

Ben C Smith

For one thing, George Lucas did not create Luke Skywalker in antiquity!

How is it even possible that you are treating real as a synonym for fictionalized?

Ben.