Diogenes the Cynic

Discounting what part of Paul's text? What words?

No, but Paul doesn't claim that Jesus "trotted around," or that he ascended after seeing Paul. I think Paul presents all of the "appearances" as being post-ascension with no physical interlude, and without necessarily even an earthly one since Paul tells us nothing of the nature of these "appearances," there is no reason to think they couldn't have seen Jesus in the clouds, or an a Heavenly throne or in some other otherworldly context. Robert Price, for instance, thinks the Transfiguration might have been the original vision (with Moses and Elijah being the other two prophets taken straight up to Heaven [this is not a claim made in the Tanakh for Moses, but is a popular belief about him attested by Josephus and the Babylonian Talmud]).

So no, I don't think the Pauline author claims that Jesus appeared to everyone (or anyone) and then ascended, I think he's saying that Jesus ascended first, then started making appearances. I don't believe the author is asserting that anyone saw Jesus either physically resurrected or literally saw him go up to the clouds, I think he's saying "we all saw Jesus after he died [though the nature, details and context of these claimed "appearances" is completely lost to us, so we can't make any assumptions about them] therefore he must have been raised to heaven.
A problem in what way? He is using those words to refer to different things. He got his information by way of an apocalypsis. In another part of the same letter he says that Jesus "was seen" (optanomai) by Cephas and Friends, then by Paul himself, who uses the same word optanomai for himself that he uses for the others, and he claims no intervening period of physical resuscitation and/or ascension in between.

I'm not seeing a contradiction here.
Not in 1 Cor., but he does use the word explicitly to refer to Jesus in Romans, and specifically identifies it as prefiguring the resurrection of everybody else (Rom. 6:5).

εἰ γὰρ σύμφυτοι γεγόναμεν τῷ ὁμοιώματι τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἐσόμεθα.

"If we are planted together with him in the likeness of his death, so shall we be in [his] resurrection."

Paul says over and over that Jesus is the "first fruit" of the coming resurrection. That is, in my opinion, not something Paul got from the Jerusalem group, but was his own inference (derived from and vigorously defended as a divine apocalypsis sent to him personally) of whatever the Jesus "appearances" were.

spin

The resurrection wasn't seen by anyone. The writer's only guessing that Jesus had been raised from the dead. So what's the difference between Jesus being raised and Jesus being a ghost?

God revealed Jesus to Paul according to Gal 1:12, 15-16, revelation, not appearance. The writer of this passage doesn't get the difference. Paul is specific that he became acquainted with Jesus through a revelation. There was nothing before that.

Paul seems to give us the sort of event his revelation was in 2 Cor 12:2. He was caught up to the third heaven. The stuff in 1 Cor 15 are pedestrian sightings.

We can certainly say that Paul's vision of Jesus was in the third heaven. I don't believe he knew anything at all about sightings of Jesus.

This isn't clear to me. Are you saying he had an apocalypse and he had a sighting of Jesus? These are two separate events? If so, he had the apocalypse first, right? That's when Jesus and his gospel was revealed to him, right?

We were talking about the veracity of 1 Cor 15. I know Paul uses αναστασις elsewhere and one would expect Paul to use it in 1 Cor 15:4, if he meant resurrection. He has no problem in 15:12ff. It's just another small indication of suspicion.

Diogenes the Cynic

What is the difference between saying Aunt Helen went to heaven and Aunt Helen physically came back from the dead?

Paul does not say anyone saw a physical manifestation of Jesus, or that anyone saw him ascending to Heaven, or that jesus appeared to anybody before he went to Heaven.

Paul is guessing that Jesus was raised to Heaven (in the same way people now talk about the deceased going to Heaven), not that he was physically resurrected, and walked around and then sailed up to the clouds. Paul says he was "raised," and then appeared to people and told Paul that everybody else will also be raised.

Why can't a revelation come in the form of a vision?

Paul doesn't say that. Paul doesn't tell us anything about their content at all. if they were visions of Jesus in Heaven, like Paul's own, then those would lend themselves to an inference of an anastatic event without necessarily being explicit in the experiences themselves.

"I dreamed that I saw Jesus in Heaven."
"He has been raised! We are next!"
Not even his own?

I don't think it's possible to recover a psychological history of his process, but I will say that I think his apocalypse was not that the others claimed to have seen Jesus after the crucifixion, but that the appearances meant that Jesus had already been raised as a precursor the mass resurrection and judging of everybody else.
There is very little semantic difference in Greek (like the difference between "raised" and "roused," but he does use anastasis virtually exclusively for the mass resurrection on judgement day (even when he uses it for Jesus, he ties it to the resurrection of everybody else). This would indicate to me, if anything, that Paul did not think Jesus had been physically resurrected, only that he had gone to Heaven.

aa5874

This is what I find so disturbing. The Pauline writer was NOT certain at all how he met Jesus and REPEATED the UNCERTAINTY three times yet spin is certain.

There is NO such thing as an actual Third Heaven. The Pauline writings are sources of myth.

2 Corinthians 12:2-3 KJV It is clear that Paul cannot recall. Paul has pleaded the "FIFTH". Paul needs a good "Lawyer".

All of a sudden, in 2 Cor. the Paul writer gets Amnseia.

Now, when were the Pauline writings composed??? Who SAW Paul write a letter???

It was NOT the author of Acts. That author did NOT acknowledge Paul wrote letters to churches but stated Paul and his group were "Post-men" for the Jerusalem Church.

spin

You can guess Paul is guessing, but he says that he was caught up into heaven for his perception of Jesus, so obviously for Paul Jesus was raised and was not a ghost.

The question should be why is it a sighting and not a vision? And why doesn't this verb appear anywhere else in Paul's writings but 1 Cor 15:4-8?

But a vision can appear to someone according to Acts 16:9.

He certainly doesn't call them visions or revelations, nor does he hint at a change of locale upwards.

Gal 1:12, 15-16 is clear.

Wot? His apocalypse regarded Jesus. It was according to Paul's timeline after the resurrection and he goes on to argue that Jesus was the first raised, becoming the last Adam. (1 Cor 15:45)

What's all the stuff about the perishable body becoming an imperishable one? (eg 15:54)

Diogenes the Cynic

What about it? It shows he didn't believe in physical resurrections. He believed that bodies rotted away like seed pods, and that "spiritual bodies" grew out of them.

aa5874

It is most amazing how you ignore the Pauline writings just to speculate.

The Pauline writings are Canonised because the author's Christology are compatible with the teachings of the Church.

This is most basic.

The teachings of the Church is that Jesus Bodily resurrected and then Commissioned the disciples to preach the Jesus story.

ALL over the Pauline writings it is claimed Jesus was raised from the dead.

A Pauline writer claimed he would be a False WITNESS if Jesus was NOT resurrected.

1Co 15:15 The Pauline writer is claiming to be a WITNESS of the bodily resurrected Jesus.

The HJ argument is just a vicious debunked circle.

outhouse

You do realize that dreams and visions in that time were viewed as reality. ??

This would also include visions from fasting/starvation, and drug induced visions.


Paul writes about paul and what paul thinks his theology should be based on mythology.

I dont give a hoot what it is, visions, fiction, mythology, paul was playing his own gig and because he was literate were stuck with all this mess.

aa5874

Do you understand that people of antiquity BELIEVED Jesus was Bodily resurrected and Commissioned the disciples to preach the Jesus story???

Please, you need to get familiar with the NT and forget about your Imagination.

Mk 14:27-28 Mark 16.6[ People of antiquity BELIEVED in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Mark 16

spin

No, it doesn't. He says that the perishable puts on the imperishable, the mortal puts on the immortal. The σωμα ψυχικον (earthly/natural body) is raised a spiritual body. You still have a body. The resurrection is physical, just better quality.

Something like that. And the witnesses to this brand new, squeaky clean body of christ should be expected to alleviate the necessity of the contorted logic as to how if there is no resurrection then Jesus was not raised found in 1 Cor 15:12-19, if Paul had had any such knowledge of the sightings. Instead, all he has is his own personal revelation. He is silent about those witnesses to the event of christ being raised that he is trying to justify through mere logic.