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Old 03-03-2010, 09:23 AM   #11
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Default "Delivered up" versus "betrayed"

Hi All,

In talking about the one quote from an Earthly Jesus 1 Corinthians 11:23, the key is to look at the Greek:

Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, ὁ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν, ὅτι ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδετο ἔλαβεν ἄρτον

The word παρεδίδετο can be translated as either "betrayed" or "delivered up"

Paul has used the words παρέλαβον and παρέδωκα "delivered" just before this, so it is most probable that he is referring back to this "delivered" when he is using "παρεδίδετο"

Imagine the sentence "I delivered a letter to you, which he delivered to me and on the night of the delivery, he called me" Now imagine someone taking the word "delivery" and thinking, the night of the delivery is the night of deliverance, which must mean Passover, therefore, I will tranlate the term "delivery" as Passover. The translator writes, "I deliverd a letter to you, which he delivered to me, on Passover night." The whole sense of the passage is changed into something the writer did not mean.

The correct translation has to take into account the two antecendent uses of the term "delivered." Therefore, we should translate παρεδίδετο as "delivered up". When we asked what was deliverd up, it can only be the method of eating in rememberance of God that Paul got directly from God. Thus the translation should be:

"For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered to you the same night in which the Lord Jesus delivered it up. He took bread."

Once we translate it this way, it is obvious that Paul is referring to an event that happened, not at Passover eve (when Jesus wa captured), but an event that happened on the night Paul taught the Corinthians how to give thanks to God. Paul had a visitation from his God Jesus and his God Jesus taught him how to properly give thanks at a meal by breaking the bread and drinking from the cup. Paul immediately gave the information to the Corinthians. He delivered the message from God that very night.

Thus this only quote from an historical Jesus is only a quote from an historical Jesus through a mistranslation.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay
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Old 03-03-2010, 12:55 PM   #12
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Once we translate it this way, it is obvious that Paul is referring to an event that happened, not at Passover eve (when Jesus was captured), but an event that happened on the night Paul taught the Corinthians how to give thanks to God. Paul had a visitation from his God Jesus and his God Jesus taught him how to properly give thanks at a meal by breaking the bread and drinking from the cup. Paul immediately gave the information to the Corinthians. He delivered the message from God that very night.
Awesome argument (:devil1

Yes, this is just the kind of thing that happens. There's a high chance it's happening right now in minor cults dotted here and there around the world. Hushed (or sometimes riotous!) assemblies, with people in trance states doing stuff and saying stuff, "delivering" messages from "gods", "ancestors", "yer auld granny", "spirits", "deities", "demons", etc.

"'tis un phenomenon sociological". There's a fair amount of evidence in Paul that points to these sorts of goings-on. Just look at the glimpse of what went on in their little circles, in 1 Corinthians 12-13. There Paul is describing "what we (ought to) do/be/are like, at one point:-

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12:7 But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all. 12:8 For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; 12:9 to another faith, by the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healings, by the same Spirit; 12:10 and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of languages; and to another the interpretation of languages. 12:11 But the one and the same Spirit works all of these, distributing to each one separately as he desires.
"Pneuma", if I am not mistaken, is related to "breath", considered as the fuel of life - "spirit" in this context means something like inspiration - e.g. your breath catches and you are suddenly inspired to do something wild - run around naked, or what have you. Words or images might come to you - spirits might talk through one, spirits might give advice or warning, or you might just babble away like a baby. This last is notable as verging on a type of mystical practice (inducing "no-mind" states).

This is what these people DID folks. They spent time doing this stuff, they did it together, they did it individually. They were no different from the equivalent of a minor modern-day "New Age" cult, doing spiritualist and mystical exercises. No different from the circles of well-to-do mediums at the root of the Shangqing school of Daoism. No different from the Hermetic circles. And going right back, no different from some Orphic or Pythagorean circles before that (although with the Pythagoreans one is starting to shade into ancient mysticism/philosophy proper, and a more dignified, disciplined and rigorous approach to these things, and an investigation of what their inclusion in the world entails), and the Egyptian priesthood (for a period) before that. Religion often starts as mysticism and/or occultism.

(And of course, they might have done all this had there been a human Jesus, but a human Jesus (equivalent) is not necessary for this sort of startup, so it's not a problem for this theory if one can't be found - as indeed, he can't.)
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Old 03-03-2010, 04:29 PM   #13
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arnoldo

That seems to be making a myth overly complicated. Fiction tends to be simpler and more logical than non-fiction. The fact that Paul seems to contradict himself fits with a real person.
Or a real person who has different dimensions of existence. For example we are all familiar with the evolution of Microsoft Windows from XP > Vista > Windows 7. It would be erroneous to state that one version of windows is unrelated to the other. In the same way the NT presents a Jesus 1.0 who was earthly and meek > Jesus 2.0 who ascended to heaven > Jesus 3.0 who will return to earth.
The NT writings address all three versions and apparent contradictions may simply be the reader failing to distinguish which versions is being referred to.
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Old 03-03-2010, 09:18 PM   #14
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Awesome post! It's quite shocking to see it all laid out in black and white like that.

It's possible to think of Paul as responding to a symbolic crucifixion of a figure who is only transcendent. It's possible to imagine him cognizant only of aspects of "in the flesh" that relate to circumcision and to more general human suffering that's merely paralleled rather than directly experienced by a mystical compound Jesus existing only in the ether. It's possible to imagine him as viewing Jesus as strictly a visionary experience of the metaphysical, and real only in that. These are possible construals, but they're way down on the list after the far more plausible:-

Paul makes the occasional reference to a human Jesus through referencing his sayings in 1 Corinthians, and makes the distinction elsewhere between apostles versus members of Jesus's family, and speaks explicitly of him having suffered a typical Roman execution -- and references so much else that tallies with an account of a human Jesus -- for the plain reason that Paul really did conceive of Jesus as a human being who really lived on earth, whatever other qualities Paul may give Jesus in addition.

That's the earliest evidence we have as to the type of thing that was going on here (and we have it from "Paul"'s own words): we DON'T have direct evidence of any ancient conception of some Jesus suffering elsewhere than on earth; that's merely a far-fetched construal. We DO have positive evidence that AT LEAST Paul did conceive of Jesus as having a human biography. Combine that with the ABSENCE of any unequivocal evidence for any purely symbolic construction on Jesus's sufferings from any of the other earliest texts. Combine that with the distinct referenceS at crucial points in the earliest texts to people intimately acquainted with Jesus, including family members, who knew a human Jesus PERSONALLY. So: there is probable evidence OF a human Jesus, and there is nothing that logically necessitates that there be NO human Jesus (because we can very easily explain how metaphysical baggage was added to Jesus's biography, but we tie ourselves in knots if we try subtracting the plainly human features in the earliest extant texts that bear out the probable evidence we DO have elsewhere of an historical and purely human Jesus).

Chaucer
Ha ha, yes very funny

But I think you're missing the point. We don't have anything in Paul that shows anybody he's talking about knew a human Jesus personally. The only faintest glimmer of hope for historicists is the James/brother reference.
Excuse me:

1 Corinthians 2 - 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

1 Corinthians 9 - 5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

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Old 03-04-2010, 12:16 AM   #15
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arnoldo

That seems to be making a myth overly complicated. Fiction tends to be simpler and more logical than non-fiction. The fact that Paul seems to contradict himself fits with a real person.
Or a real person who has different dimensions of existence. For example we are all familiar with the evolution of Microsoft Windows from XP > Vista > Windows 7. It would be erroneous to state that one version of windows is unrelated to the other. In the same way the NT presents a Jesus 1.0 who was earthly and meek > Jesus 2.0 who ascended to heaven > Jesus 3.0 who will return to earth.
The NT writings address all three versions and apparent contradictions may simply be the reader failing to distinguish which versions is being referred to.
Why can't you present the true description of Jesus in the NT. He was not all earthly, he was primarily heavenly . He was the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin.

Now, Microsoft Windows is not a person, a real person's physical characteristics and actual history cannot be altered like computer programs.

But, after further consideration, I think comparing Jesus to a computer program is a very good analogy.

Jesus was the product of someone's imagination and there are many versions.

What version of Jesus do you have? Marcion's?
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Old 03-04-2010, 03:27 AM   #16
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Ha ha, yes very funny

But I think you're missing the point. We don't have anything in Paul that shows anybody he's talking about knew a human Jesus personally. The only faintest glimmer of hope for historicists is the James/brother reference.
Excuse me:

1 Corinthians 2 - 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
That doesn't clinch a human being, it could still be mere myth. Myths often had references to things happening on earth.

You can't just look at a myth (in this case the mythological entity known as Jesus Christ) and simply assume all the references to the entity in question are euhemeristic, or the story of a man blown out of proportion. You can't blithely take any old reference to this entity that suits you and say "aha, here we have a mention of the actual man behind the myth". It's just a complete non-sequitur. You have to have grounds for the assignation of real-human-being-hood to that portion of the myth - principally, grounding in a reasonable supposition that there WAS such a man, backed by evidence.

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1 Corinthians 9 - 5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?
The word that's being translated as "believing" here is exactly the same word (ἀδελφή, sister) as in "Lord's brothers" (ἀδελφός) - so you tell me - are we to suppose incest is being recommended here?

But actually, of course, translating "sister" as "believing" only emphasises that the term "brother/sister" is a term of art in this context - it could just as easily have been translated say, "believing wife .... Lord's believers". It's just that the translator found it convenient to retain the slight hint that Jesus might have had actual brothers - and after all, nothing in the orthodox story seems to talk about Jesus' sisters. Yet (if we are to believe the term means siblinghood) here they are, in Paul!

No, what's required to give some sort of plausibility to a historical-human-being-Jesus from internal evidence is something in the earliest texts (supposing Paul and Hebrews to be the earliest) that either the narrator or somebody known to the narrator knew personally, actually EYEBALLED, an human being called "Joshua" who they considered to be the "the Anointed One". That, plus some kind of external evidence for such a human being (e.g. mentions in non-Christian sources, or archaeological finds) would immensely proababilify the human-Jesus startup idea. But if there is no such evidence (and nothing has been found to date) then why not shelve an euhemeristic origin for this myth and look to other plausible origin theories that are also consistent with the evidence?
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Old 03-04-2010, 07:09 AM   #17
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Conclusion
It is not that I think Paul's Jesus was exclusively physical, the same way the real Jesus probably was. Paul clearly refers to a spiritual Jesus many times. So, it seems like the most reasonable conclusion is that Paul believed in both.
I agree, but the problem is this still doesn't get us a historically identifiable person, for the way he describes it, he could easily be talking about (for example) an entity revealed in Scripture to the Jerusalem crowd, and revealed personally (in visionary experience) to him. An entity that they/he believed historically existed, but we know in fact didn't (because it came from a) scripture, and b) was encountered in trance states - i.e. it was all in peoples' minds, in one way or another).

I also agree partly with your criticism of spamanham's point about not getting quotes from a heavenly person. Most likely, his visionary Jesus (and we all agree he had one, right - were they just gazing pleasantly into each others' eyes in their encounters? ) would have spoken to him in riddles, as these kinds of visions often do - although I do think it's plausible Paul wheedled some kind of basic biography from his Jesus too - i.e. Paul believed Jesus had been physically crucified partly because his visionary Jesus told him about it ("Know, Paul, that I was crucified by the rulers of this world [&c]" - that type of thing, again, it ought to be a piece of background knowledge of all investigators of these matters that these things happen, strange beings appear to talk to visionaries and dreamers in their visions and dreams). i.e. his visionary Jesus may have given him confirmation of some of what the Jerusalem people suspected they had seen in Scripture (which may be why he went to see them, why he felt there was some link between them and him). At any rate, it's not necessarily a strong objection that we can't find direct quotes - to either the HJ or the MJ positions.

But mostly, again, my main sticking point is that to get any quotes to be words from a historical person, you need reason to believe a historical person was there - if you find one THEN, ah yes, it makes perfect sense, Paul must have been partly responding (albeit in a peculiar, distal, visionary way) to a real human being. The logic has to be that way round, the logical necessity flows in that direction. Otherwise you just have Paul describing what could easily be plain visions, with the Christ figure in them being subjectively real to him, but having no significance for us historical investigators (it doesn't help us find a human Jesus).

In fact, come to think of it, that's how I'd rather think of the argument from silence re. Paul - it's not that it disproves a human Jesus, it just makes Paul of dubious value as evidence for a human Jesus.
If the proposition, that Paul's Jesus is spiritual, is falsifiable, then it seems like it has been falsified. It almost goes without saying that you can "solve" the problem with speculation, but, in the end, one solution has a huge bundle of head-scratchers and the other solution does not. Go with the solution that doesn't have so many head-scratchers. Don't go with an explanation just because you can--you can justify absolutely any position with a little creative interpretation and speculation.
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Old 03-04-2010, 07:23 AM   #18
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That solution is a little ad hoc, I guess. But, is it any less likely than the MJ alternative? Why would Paul not quote from a spiritual Jesus?
The spiritual Jesus would communicate through emotional experience, or secret messages that were not for the uninitiated. How do you communicate a mystical experience?
OK, thanks, details are good. I am a little concerned that it does not make consistent sense. If any kind of spirit, he apparently was not an ephemeral figure. If Jesus could be spiritually born of a woman, spiritually descended from David, spiritually found in appearance as a man, and be spiritually crucified by the rulers of this age, then he was anthropomorphic enough that he could speak and be quoted from. And, this spiritual Jesus character apparently did speak and be quoted from, at least one time.
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In fact, most of your explanations seem ad hoc.

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...

In fact, the family of Jesus was not lost to history. Paul mentions James, "the Lord's brother," the Christian gospels mention Mary, Joseph, the unnamed sisters and the names of all four brothers of Jesus, and Josephus mentions James, "the brother of Jesus." What is the problem again?
The problem is that the family of Jesus disappears from the record after the first part of Acts. (His "father" Joseph disappears much earlier.) They seem to have played no part in the early church. The identification of James the Just with the James who was the brother mentioned in the gospels is problematic.
Yeah, I am thinking they really didn't have much of a part in the early church, except for James. Mary and Joseph apparently played a big role in myth, same as the other brothers to a lesser extent.
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Old 03-04-2010, 07:35 AM   #19
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The spiritual Jesus would communicate through emotional experience, or secret messages that were not for the uninitiated. How do you communicate a mystical experience?
OK, thanks, details are good. I am a little concerned that it does not make consistent sense. If any kind of spirit, he apparently was not an ephemeral figure. If Jesus could be spiritually born of a woman, spiritually descended from David, spiritually found in appearance as a man, and be spiritually crucified by the rulers of this age, then he was anthropomorphic enough that he could speak and be quoted from. And, this spiritual Jesus character apparently did speak and be quoted from, at least one time.
Are you implying that Mythical entities did not talk and were not quoted in stories written about them.

The Father of Jesus, the God of the Jews, was quoted in Genesis when he used the Word, Jesus, to create heaven and earth.
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Old 03-04-2010, 08:24 AM   #20
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The spiritual Jesus would communicate through emotional experience, or secret messages that were not for the uninitiated. How do you communicate a mystical experience?
OK, thanks, details are good. I am a little concerned that it does not make consistent sense. If any kind of spirit, he apparently was not an ephemeral figure. If Jesus could be spiritually born of a woman, spiritually descended from David, spiritually found in appearance as a man, and be spiritually crucified by the rulers of this age, then he was anthropomorphic enough that he could speak and be quoted from. And, this spiritual Jesus character apparently did speak and be quoted from, at least one time.
...
You are mixing up different theories. I do not think that Paul wrote anything about born of a woman, etc.
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