ApostateAbe

Well, in this case, we are talking about whether or not half of the Pauline epistles were actually written by Paul, which really should not be an opinion left dangling up in the air if we want to compare models to see whose fits the evidence the best. I am not asking that we form a conclusion and stand behind it with established certainty. I am only asking that we build models with a level of detail that is comparable to competing models. That is, if you want to claim that your own model is more probable than the competition. If the debate were about some guy that nobody cares about, then the debate wouldn't exist, because we just wouldn't care.

"...but few would insist that we must assume that it's true..."

The words, "assume" and "presuppose," are words that I hear far too often, because they are used even when it is inappropriate to use them, and I am not sure why this is so. Nobody is telling anyone that WE MUST ASSUME THAT SOMETHING IS TRUE OR ELSE THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU. It is about probabilities. Since you brought up the example of extraterrestrial life, there is actually considerable debate on the subject, and members of the debate really are expected to have tentative values for each variable in the equation, even if those values are highly uncertain, because that is the basis for judging the feasibility of the competing ways of looking for life. Millions of dollars are spent in building satellites to look for signals of intelligence, money that could instead be spent on looking for unintelligent life in the solar system.

ApostateAbe

I absolutely agree, and yet we need detailed positions in order to evaluate the relative probabilities of competing positions. See my above response to bacht to get an idea of why. And, in the future, please do not claim that I "do not have any idea what [I am] talking about," because it is both irrelevant and it hurts my feelings. Thanks.

Toto

You are the one who claims that this is a question of the best explanation. If there are three alternative theories that explain the data at least as well as yours, isn't that a good refutation of your position?

How can it be confirmed or falsified? The only evidence in support of Paul's existence in the mid-first century is orthodox Christian doctrine - the letters of Paul, and the Book of Acts, which are contradictory, and which cannot be authenticated to the times claimed.

You seriously need to do more research on the question of interpolations if you are going to base your "model" on the integrity of the Pauline epistles. The question is not as neat and tidy as you seem to think.

Thanks for putting me in such distinguished company, but I don't think you can show that any of us have actually lost any arguments, or that you actually have a grasp of what "scholars" do on questions where there is such a paucity of data.

Since we are not part of that culture, we do not know who wrote the gospels or their intended audience, it is a bit dicey to make pronouncements on what you think is the plain meaning of the text.

Notsri

Contradictory on the matter of Paul's existence?

Toto

Contradictory on most of the claims about Paul and his relationship to other factions of the early church.

It is generally concluded by scholars who are not committed to the basic historicity of Acts because of their religions beliefs that Acts was written in the second century and cannot be used to confirm the existence of Paul. So the only evidence for Paul's existence would be the letters he wrote - for which there is no evidence before the second century, and which cannot be validated as to their date of composition without adding some major assumptions.

Paul's letters do not even give his complete name. "Paul" means "the Runt" and could have been a nickname (as it was for Simon Magus.) Or the letters could have been written in his name, or he could have written short letters which a later editor expanded with signficant amounts of theology.

All of these possibilities are at least as probable, if not more so, than the idea that Paul wrote seven letters in the first century that were preserved with 99% purity. So Abe is basing his theory on a bed of sand.

aa5874

But, the unknown did writers did refer to Hebrew Scripture as their source for the fundamental parts of their story about Jesus and John the Baptist.

For example, the author of gMark used Malachi 3.1 and Isaiah 40.3 in his story about John the Baptist as a fore-runner to Jesus.

Malachi 3.1 Mark 1.2 The author of gMatthew used Isaiah 7.14 to show that Jesus was to be of a Virgin.

Isa 7:14 - Mt 1:23 - So, the unknown authors did show where they got some of the fundamental details about their Jesus. It was from Hebrew Scripture.

The betrayal was derived from Psalms 41.9 and even idea of the ritual of the Eucharist seemed to be from Exodus 24.8.

Jesus need not to have existed for the unknown authors to have fabricated their stories about him, from conception to resurrection.

spamandham

The thing is, I don't have a complete theory. IMHO, no-one does. While it may be fun to develop a model, it's almost certain that any model we develop is ultimately unprovable and substantially wrong. So I don't see any value in trying to do more than develop what you might call "mini models". An example of such a mini-model is the discussion I presented in regard to Mark's little apocalypse. I think it's justifiable to conclude that that particular section of text post dates the Bar Kochba revolt and also demonstrates that the audience of Mark was not reading Mark literally the way you've been trying to do.

The lack of a theory of everything doesn't stop physicists from applying general relativity and quantum mechanics independently. You're expectations that all participants must come to the table with a complete model that explains every nuance are not reasonable in any field, and we're working with a hell of a lot less than the physicists!

I don't know why you feel you must take a stand in spite of the dearth of quality data, but I don't feel the same way.

I don't have an overall model. I just have a collection of mini-models relative to specific points. Maybe someday I'll have enough of those to construct a larger model, but certainly not right now. I do think non-historicism seems simpler as a general framework though, as it does not suffer from what I consider to be fatal flaws in the HJ models:

- there is no need to explain how Jesus' tomb was lost. This is an HJ buster in my mind. It is completley implausible that a Jesus cult founded in the first century by a historical Jesus would have lost track of his tomb, and if they did not lose track of his tomb, they could not have invented resurrection theology, which is the cornerstone of the earliest records of Christianity.

- there is no need to explain what happened to Jesus' family. This is an almost HJ buster. It flies in the face of how modern cults work.

- there is no need to accept that a Jesus cult outlived the death of it's founder. This is simply an improbability. Some cults do outlive their founder, but this is the exception, not the rule.

- there is no need to explain why Paul seems to know next to nothing about Jesus. Even the apologists have a hard time inventing explanations for this one and usually just punt.

- there is no need to explain why Paul explicitly tells us that his gospel and his knowledge of Jesus were received through visions and scripture rather than from other people. Why are you unwilling to take Paul at his word on such a point? How could Paul have gotten away with saying that if Jesus' was his contemporary?

- there is no need to explain why many of the gospel stories are obvious satires (such as the suicidal pigs) or are so obviously constructed from Jewish scriptures (the passion, you know, the event that is supposedly the formative event for all of Christianity...but yet is so obviously constructed from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 rather than from actual events)

.... and many more I've discussed here in the past

I think arguments can be made that certain passages are incongruent with the surrounding text, such as 1 Cor 15. But I do not start with the assumption that the epistles are mostly genuine as a lot of the scholars do. The existence of 6 provenly fake epistles makes that assumption completely unsupportable, IMHO. Given our knowledge that 6 of 13 are probably fake, and without knowledge that the remaining 7 are authentic, a presumption of authenticity for those remaining 7 is pretty silly at best.

To me, it isn't important what is or isn't "authentic". Afterall, *somebody* wrote the epistles, and those writers were clearly early Christian, so the texts nonetheless reveal what early Christians were thinking and can hopefully help us put the puzzle together.

If I wanted to be like the scholars, I would go get the appropriate credentials from some Bible college and start spinning novel tales about who the "real" Jesus was...and I'd probably stop pointing out that history is an art rather than a science.

Josephus tells us in Jewish War 7:1:1 that the temple was demolished, but he does not say it was razed. He then goes on in the same paragraph to make a big deal of the razing of the city wall, suggesting that the razing of the wall was exceptional (and by implication, that the remaining destruction was lesser). Hadrian then ordered the complete razing of the temple mount, ...something which makes no sense if it had already been razed in 70CE.

So while I'm not sure there is any source that explicitly states that the temple was *not* completely razed in 70 CE, this is nonetheless a proper deduction given what the sources do say.

spamandham

I think the context is Hadrian's handiwork, hence I date Mark's apocalypse to *after* those events. Do you think it refers to something else?

aa5874

Once you don't know if Paul was early then you cannot say with confidence that ALL the Letters capture early Christian ideas.

You don't really know what an early Christian idea was.

It may have been the Synoptic Jesus ideas that were early and not the Pauline Jesus ideas.

It must be noted that in the NT Canon that the FIRST Jesus Christ believers were Jews. The Pauline writers were later and even tried to change the earlier Christian ideas in their own story book.

ApostateAbe

If there was a theory of everything that seems a better explanation than quantum theory and the theory of relativity, then you can bet that physicists would accept it. In this subject, if one theory, with the details to match the data, seems to make almost complete sense, then it has an advantage over a theory without the details. When we start to apply the details, then maybe it no longer makes sense. Or maybe it does. We simply don't know how competitive it is until we supply an equal level of detail for each model.

It is easy to play the role of a critic--always criticize the perceived fallacies of the established theory. With enough failures, then such people may believe that the alternative hypothesis wins by default (I see the pattern in the evolution debates, but the comparison is extremely limited). But, actually, the winner is the theory with the most explanatory scope, most explanatory power, most plausibility, most consistency, and least ad hoc explanations. Without the details, then we simply don't know how many ad hoc explanations are required (or how large), nor do we know the plausibility. Almost every historical theory requires ad hoc explanations, and many of the best require a few implausibilities, but it is about which explanations are the best.

Toto and company may not agree with that. They may think that any theory without enough evidence (however much that may be, I don't know) should simply not be declared the winner in any sense. It is an unusual way to do history, despite what they may claim. The uncertainty of the evidence does not defeat attempts to lay claim to the most probable explanations for the evidence, however uncertain those theories may be.
What about the hypothesis that there was no tomb, that it was invented merely to fit prophecy? I don't know if it is generally accepted in the mainline scholarship, but I posited that in light of the perceived messianic prophecy and the description of crucifixion by the poet Pseudo Manetho, so it is not an ad hoc explanation (or else it is a very small one), because it follows easily from the expectations of my own model (that Christians very much tended to invent elements to fit the perceived messianic prophecies). My previous long post contains this same argument, so please don't overlook it. Thanks.
They lived, died, and were later idolized in myth. James shows up in a myth of martyrdom reported by Josephus, he has a letter attributed to him, and Mary and Joseph become mainstays in gospel myth. They don't disappear from history any more than Peter and John, two subsequent leaders of the church. I am not sure exactly what you would expect.

And, here is a point to illustrate the necessity to supply details for your own theory: for an elaborate myth like we see in the earliest Christianity, it is unlikely that it would be the result of developing gradually over time. Therefore, it is necessary to ask: who may have been the person who first came up with the idea of Jesus and the elaborate story surrounding him? Whoever he or she is, would we not expect him or her to be revered by the cult as the revelator, much like L. Ron Hubbard? If the under-emphasis of Jesus' family is a problem, then is it not an equal problem in your model? Well, maybe it would be a problem if you had a model. If you don't have an alternative explanation, then the objection sort of rings hollow.
This is another one of the points. What is your alternative explanation for what Paul says and doesn't say about Jesus? I have an explanation, and I am willing to put it on the table so it can be tested against the competition--Paul was a rival against disciple apostles who personally knew Jesus and were the authorities of his earthly human existence, therefore Paul can claim only to be an authority of the spiritual existence of Jesus. It seems to be a plausible explanation. It is at least a little ad hoc, but that would be a problem only if there is a competing theory that explains the evidence better.
Thank you for that. I tried to do a little research, and I think I found the evidence that would pertain to Hadrian ordering the razing of the temple mount, only it doesn't actually indicate that. It says only that Hadrian built a new temple on top of the old temple site. The passage is Cassius Dio, Roman history 69.12.1, but maybe I missed another historical record. Here is the passage:

At Jerusalem he founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposely made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them; but when he went farther away, they openly revolted. To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light