TedM

But does 1 Cor 15 take care of James? And why--unlike Acts--would an interpolator see any need to do so? Sure he is listed after Cephas (though not named as Peter as we see all throughout Acts), but he need not be listed at all--just like in the gospels.

Solo

They do...all I am saying is that they are different 'dead'. When, e.g. Matthew 11:5 says the 'dead are raised' the reference is to the apocalyptic traditions that go back to Qumran. ('My spirit is imprisoned with the dead' 1QH). The dead are not literally 'dead', just kinda listless.

Geza Vermes wrote that the 'dead' epithet refering to someone deeply depressed was quite common in first century rabbinical Judaism. Note also that the Matthean 'sign of Jonah' applied to Jesus' resurrection refers to a story in which the protagonist is not said to be dead. He was swallowed up and in a state which Mircea Eliade aptly described as regressus ad uterum.

Best,
Jiri

dog-on

1 Cor 15 is not there to harmonize Paul with the gospels, it is there as part of the Acts harmonization.

TedM

Really? Acts doesn't name mention Cephas, it names the 11 remaining disciples, it never mentions a resurrection appearance to James, it says nothing about an appearance to 500. The alleged 'harmonization' sucks. It could easily have explained any one of those things in a way that really does show an attempt to harmonize.

Solo

Τhere is more:

4. The Pauline corpus does not know the Twelve and his view of the apostolic office (e.g. 2 Cr 11:12-13) is not consistent with an appointment of such a body by a historical founder in Paul's time.
5. κατα τας γραφας 'in accordance with the scriptures' (3 & 4) is a turn of phrase unknown in the corpus. Paul uses 'scripture' in singular regularly. Passages where plural occures (Rom 1:2, 15:4, 16:26) are of questionable authenticity. (It is Mark who uses 'grafai' specifically to conflate the tanakh by Paul's letters. Mk 12:24 refers to 1 Cr 7:7)
6. και οτι εταφη 'that he was buried' (4) is unknown to Paul's corpus and, if the 'burying' implies resurrection of Jesus 'in flesh' as the raising on the 'third day' suggests, the idea is antithetical to Paul's teaching (1 Cr 15:50). At any rate, the third-day formula is otherwise unknown to Paul and at odds with his schema, as he clearly associates 'resurrection' with phenomena of 'sensing eternity' (sponsored most likely by complex seizures in the temporal lobe), not with reversing clinical death.

Best,
Jiri

spin

Paul doesn't use the information--nowhere does he mention the appearances--, so your claim of it being a reminder is simply vacuous. The passage even spends time insulting Paul and you're fine with that. Some reminder.

This passage, vv.3-11, supplies what Paul doesn't: specifics of resurrection appearances, appearances that don't enter the gospel tradition until after Mark. These appearances represent a later form of christianity, which has already had appearances in Mt and Lk.

Paul does not rehearse the gospel for the Corinthians. He clarifies a specific issue that he eventually spends a long chapter over, what resurrection is all about. This is what he is getting at in vv.1-2, a prelude for the long discussion about how Paul sees resurrection, without one reference back to an appearance.

One is saved by the gospel, as long as you hold firmly to its message. This is what the Corinthians haven't done. They've lost track over resurrection. This is what Paul takes them to task over from v.12.

You know Paul doesn't refer to the appearances, nor does he use them in any way in his long argument.

Worse, the appearance to Paul was nothing like any of the others. They are the post-resurrection stuff of the later gospels. Paul's is of a different kind, not an appearance at all, but a revelation. He didn't see Jesus walking around and I don't think such an idea would have made any sense to him. The post resurrection rerun human body Jesus of the gospels does not reflect the heavenly resurrection body of Paul's thought.

It is certainly what gives him the status to be an apostle, but nowhere in the passage does he suggest that anyone else has seen Jesus. Paul is called to be an apostle through the will of god (1 Cor 1:1): god gave him a revelation.

Common sense is what has got you in this mess, where you have concocted ideas that don't fit with Paul in order to defend vv.3-11. Apologies are usually based on common sense.

Abortion, least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, a power-packed two verses out of eight.

But you forget that you've shown to mention by Paul of those appearances in his arguments about resurrection. And although you've tried to deal with παραλαμβανω, you haven't shown an understanding of the issue, preferring to rely on shoddy sources (the sorts of sources that conned you about εκτρωμα).

The relationship between giver and receiver is shown in two genuine Pauline uses of the verb, Gal 1:12 "I didn't receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but from a revelation of Jesus Christ." And 1 Cor 15:1, "the gospel I proclaimed to you, which in turn you received". God to Paul, Paul to the Corinthians. The receiving is from someone of higher status. Even Phil 4:9 gets the idea, "Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me". This is clearly from teacher to pupil. The Philippians have an example in Paul.

The normal word for "receive" is λαμβανω. παραλαμβανω goes beyond the simple idea. If Paul just meant ordinary old "receive", why didn't he just say it, instead of using this one that indicates other things in the giving relationship??

It smacks of organized church doing damage control regarding Paul who is too important but too idiosyncratic, so he has to be kept, but needs to be brought down a notch or two, perhaps in the wake of Marcion who was big on Paul. It was certainly in place late that century because Tertullian I think knows it.

archibald

OK Jiri, but weren't we comparing Hebrews with Paul in Galatians/1 Corinthians?

One thing that strikes me is a possible similarity between the start of Hebrews 6 and the start of 1 Cor 15, inasmuch as there is in both a ' brief reminder of previously covered stuff' with 'resurrection' featuring.

In which case, how do you decide that it's a different dead and that 'the resurrection of the dead' in Hebrews 6 does not substantially recall a similar, or same, 'principle of doctrine' (that the dead will be resurrected as Jesus was) in each?

archibald

Which translates as 'I Spin would expect him not to make something known again even though he says that's what he is doing, and I expect him to use this reminder in a certain way, namely treating it as if, once having been said, it was an evidential fait accompli and the Corinthians need not have any further need of faith, even though of course they still would, since these were only reports which they would have heard second hand. Furthermore, I spin think he should have restated his restatement of a few verses earlier in order to conclusively prove this to me, spin, even though he doesn't tend to restate even his own witnessing in this way. And by the way, he switches to plural for no apparent reason, even though the preceding text gives a good one.'

Or what Paul does supply, if they aren't an interpolation. Assuming a conclusion much?

Or alternatively, they are not elaborated on much by Mark, other than 'Jesus himself sent them out', which might be a tricky thing to do when dead.

Unless it's not an interpolation.

Right. So they've lost track over resurrection. Which is why Paul might have reminded them of it.

If it's an interpolation, you would be right.

Doesn't need to. Doesn't tend to. Even in relation to his own.

Though he does state it categorically, without a rhetorical 'if', in v20. Suddenly there's no 'if' again thereafter. It's as if it was just a temporary digression, a rhetorical device.

Strawman. Where does Paul say that the witnessing by the others is different to his? Where does paul say that anyone else saw Jesus walking around? Granted, the Gospels might have said it this way, but if Paul didn't, is there a conflict? He, er, doesn't. So there isn't.

In your scenario, the cult managed ok for 14 years, or whatever, without anyone believing or preaching that Jesus had been resurrected. That he was just dead. Or alternatively, just 'believing' he had risen from the dead without having any reason to think this, or having any persuasive tools to preach about it with. And when Paul does eventually turn up, the fact that someone has, uniquely, actually seen Jesus is incredible news to them, and Paul of course notes this astoundingly unique distinction in Galatians (doesn't he? He doesn't imply their stories match?) and makes the most of it throughout his epistles, by claiming (why wouldn't he?) that he was the only one ever to see Jesus. It all makes sense.

Solo

You imagine that Paul's "conversion" consisted in his adopting a set of beliefs which he disagreed with, one of which was a belief that Jesus was resurrected.
I, OTOH, believe this is the standard church dogma which you will not be able to square with Paul's writing. Paul's conversion was given by what he internally grasped as the spiritual experience of the risen Jesus. But he never accepted the messianic expectations of Jesus and/or his posthumous following. I showed you on two quotes from Hebrews that some of the Jesus-professing communities did not think of him as posthumously resurrected, as Paul did. He was just an idol thought to have been rehabilitated in heaven who sits with God preparing the restoration of Israel. For the Jerusalem-allied Jewish believers Jesus was no more resurrected than Moses or Enoch.

No you are not getting it, Ted ! Paul, it seems, invented the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

He had his own experience of Jesus which he believed came directly from God. He did not need to listen to other people about what Jesus said (on earth). He had it from directly from the resurrected horse's mouth, so to speak.

Jesus apparently told Paul, that the world was at an end; that he was going to beam up the true and worthy souls, and retrofit them with a glorious body like his own which Paul's overheating brain sensed when making Jesus' acquiantance in third heaven. This kind of narrative was unknown in Judaism: the resurrection of the dead was always looked upon as something in the distant future (e.g. Martha in John 11:24), but Paul deployed it in his schema of the imminent collapse of the world.

Strange, I get to it from anywhere. Try again !

Silent ? Isn't resurrection what the whole chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians is about, Ted ? Why all this torturous exegesis of the OT, and the assurances that the brethern who dropped dead before parousia were covered by the plan, why the poetry of the ineffectual 'death' sting' if, why, indeed, does Paul complain about those who say there is no resurrection of the dead ?

Oh Lord, I am trying to be meek and patient !

So, you wish to believe you killed my argument. Anything else you consider substantive in your argument ?

Yeah, someone once wrote something like that to me before. I think it was Chili.

Ted, as I told you, I do not question your ability to follow dutifully the suggested references in your bible and then claim they make perfect sense. The Kings' two passages are standard to Heb 11:35 - everyone can see that.

But do you not understand the difference between the "dead" who just seem to be (,or might as well be,) dead and those who really are dead ? Surely, in neither of the two prophets actions, nor for that matter, in the story of the Jairus daughter, the raised individuals were in rigour mortis. (BTW, isn't that why in Mark the audience breaks out laughing when Jesus announces she was "not dead, only asleep" ?)

If you do not see the relevance of this for the debate you have engaged me for days, you are telling me that you intend to waste my time.

I am sure you did not mean to say quite that, but I take it as most other ideas from you here, as a revealing statement about your confusion.

Obviously, we have some issue with comprehension here...:huh:

You call it speculating; I call it analyzing. But, you will be forever running out of cliches trying to interpret sayings like the one in Heb 11:35 or figure out the internal dispute illustrated by two passages:

Rev 20:5-6 The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.

2 Tim 2:17-18 Among them are Hymenae'us and Phile'tus, who have swerved from the truth by holding that the resurrection is past already. They are upsetting the faith of some.

You cannot give me a coherent view of what this is about. All you can do is try to spoon-feed us your maladapted orthodoxy and swear it makes perfect sense.

If there is judgment day, you might be.

He said he "planted" at Corinth. But, I accept we all interpret the text according to our wits.

All I am saying is that to grasp what "resurrection" of Jesus meant, you would have to understand what "resurrection" meant. It is not as simple as you think it is - obviously. Peter, John and James witnessed the raising of Jairus daughter in Mark, and yet they do not know what rising from the dead should mean after Jesus transfigured for them (Mk 9:10). How could that be, Ted ?

...a point on which the shepherd and the sheep are no doubt in perfect agreement ! :huh:

All Paul says directly of Cephas in Galatians is that, as a so-called pillar in Jerusalem, "he added nothing" to Paul's standing, that he stood "condemned" (2:11) for his "hypocrisy" (2:13), and that he was not "upright about the truth of the gospel" (2:14).

Anything that I missed that could give credence to your pious verities ?

On a point of fact, you admitted after some back-and-forth between us, that part of the 1 Cr 15:3-11 may have been interpolated, namely the bit about being the 'least' of the apostles and 'unfit' to be one.

But what the heck, you want to do more of the snake dance, you go right ahaead !.....

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

You have ADMITTED that I am right so what is this nonsense about "the bourgeois squeamishness of the Bible translators, who know that their market is dominated by elderly women".

We are dealing with CONTEXT not with age or gender.

Your treatment of Bible translators is both untimely and a miscarriage of fairness.