archibald

And I have never worked out why that appears to be the coincidence it is.

spin

Rubbish. You don't even understand that I was simply showing that TedM's logic was unfounded. Doh!

Like how he refers to it so frequently in his discourse with the Corinthians over the claim of no resurrection.

Let's list those given reasons:

.

That's what I came up with. How about you? Several reasons.

archibald

I haven't time to more than briefly browse this now, but it does seem reasonable to guess that wherever the number 500 came from, it was probably a gross exaggeration.

Maybe I can get into this tomorrow.

I have never yet explained to myself why it had to be from later on. I am slightly familiar with the arguments, but, why couldn't it have been a sort of urban myth, or Paul trying to over egg (again?*), or something he had heard and swallowed gullibly.

I guess at the other end I'm wondering, who would think that they could put 500 in there, when even the later Gospels don't go there?

Anyhow, just questions. I do accept it sounds odd.


* Possible eggy candidate: 'I didn't get my info from any man' :]

night night.

Toto

I think you are confusing something or taking it out of context. I posted a link to an article by Robert M. Price.

archibald

My bad. It was Price. In the article you posted at the start of the thread. :redface:

archibald

Toto,

Also (I really am going to go now, lol)

I suppose it depends (again) what we/Paul meant by gospel here. Maybe thee's no over-egging. :]

TedM

Ok, I will give one last response (hopefully):

Paul has no need to 'remind' them of the naked fact that he has preached to them about Jesus' resurrection. He had already mentioned the crucifixion 8 times, and atonement three times, and in 6:4 "Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power." Why in the world, in the final chapter of the book would Paul need to 'remind' his readers that he had told them simply that Jesus was resurrected when that would have been like saying: "I remind you now that you I preached to you that Jesus was resurrected"? Totally unnecessary and useless.

The only sense then in 'reminding' them would be to tell them what accompanied the naked facts: What he told them to originally get them to believe.


Do you think Paul didn't 'trumpet' the resurrection to the Corinthians? HOW he trumpeted it in no way affects the conclusion--ie Christ hasn't been raised if there is no resurrection. You have no argument here.

There it is in blue and white and you can't see it! He admits that the proclamation of multiple people would be in vain if their message is wrong or false. He need not say "BUT OF COURSE JESUS WAS RAISED BECAUSE ALL THESE PEOPLE SAID IT" any more than he would need to say "BUT OF COURSE JESUS WAS RAISED BECAUSE THE SCRIPTURES SAY SO AND I SAY SO". Why? Because the Corinthians weren't questioning whether Jesus had been raised--so why defend it? His defense is rhetorical--IF you believe B then A would be wrong. It isn't: A isn't wrong because of x,y,z. He need not say that because they weren't doubting it.


Ridiculous. Same comments as above. Again, you aren't reading what is right before you: "we testified of God that he raised Christ". That's the resurrection witnesses: WE--he and the others that he mentioned. Again, without the verses in question the 'WE' contrasts with only Paul's gospel: "I preached to you".


same comments as above. Paul is simply telling them of the meaning of the resurrection--without it there is no hope for their own resurrection since Christ was the firstfruits. He has no reason to appeal to the witnesses for that.

Paul immediately circles back to the implications of the resurrection of Jesus for the resurrection of man. He simply asserts that Christ has been raised and he doesn't appeal to scripture, revelation, insight, visions, or appearances. YET he surely preached at least one of those. You seem to be implying that the witness testimony would be so overwhelmingly important that he would need to appeal to it once again even when there is no evidence that the Corinthians needed convincing of the truth of the assertion! All he does is re-assert and move on to the implications of the real issue: resurrection of Corinthians.

You simply have no case here.

spin

You're being naughty.

There is no relevant content here, TedM. And this is just plain wrong:

But he doesn't. There is no discussion of salvation, the crucifixion or the point of the whole shebang. In short there is no setting out of the facts of the gospel. There is only your forlorn hope that the resurrection witnesses can sneak in under the heading of gospel reminder.

You didn't make sense. The point you were supposed to be responding to was that despite the resurrection witness you believe to have been in the text before this point, Paul is saying "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;" But you say that the witnesses were there, so why is Paul arguing here as though they weren't? If the witnesses were included, there was no need to say "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;" for all he had to do was say, "Look, you dummies, all these people have seen christ resurrected." He does not. His discourse in no way shows signs of knowing about the witnesses.

Unsupported assertion.

Stop trying so hard to pervert the text. You seem to be mixing two plainly separate issues. The first regards those who proclaimed the gospel including himself and colleagues, as well as Apollos and Cephas, all mentioned earlier in the gospel. And the second are the resurrection witnesses.

And stop shouting.

As I pointed out, he simply doesn't refer to them anywhere in the discourse. When you provide information, you are supposed to use it in your discourse. You don't leave it to putrefy.

This is unrelated to what I said. What Paul said and you've omitted, is: "some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead". This is the touchstone for Paul's discourse. This is what the introduction was leading to and what Paul is arguing against. As he goes on to say immediately after that, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;"

Your argument is with Paul, not me.

Those comments above, as I have indicated, have no basis.

You seem to forget that Paul has already indicated who the "we" is. You're back to confusing those who proclaimed the gospel to the Corinthians with the witnesses.

Nothing comes of nothing.

He has not appealed to the witnesses at all. They are simply there between the introduction and the discourse.

You have in no way dealt with Paul's lack of reference to the witnesses in his discourse. You misunderstand the reference to those who proclaimed the gospel to the Corinthians. You have tried to argue that v.1 requires a statement of the gospel, yet when pushed to say what that gospel is, you reduce it to people witnessing the resurrected Jesus. That certainly is not the gospel. You want from me what you cannot provide yourself. That should tell you that your line of thought is not functional.

...that you can understand in your apologetic need to defend the integrity of the material.

All these points stand:

1. As is the cases with intentionally inserted interpolations, the material is more important than its context.
2. The material interrupts the discourse. And I have shown that v.12 is related by language and concerns to vv.1-2.
3. It does not directly relate to the disourse, as shown by it seemingly not being used in the discourse.
4. It contains linguistic issues that render it unlikely to have been written by the writer of the wider passage, here the inappropriate use of "received" and the weird self-deprecating abortion reference that is so out of place with Paul's set aside at birth by god notion.

TedM

And now I'm going to get naughtier..

You think he had a need to remind them that Jesus was raised from the dead?


1. "Christ died for our sins" is a statement regarding salvation.
2. the issue the Corinthians had was the resurrection. 3-11 discusses the resurrection.

That was certainly more sufficient for the ensuing discussion than simply saying 'I remind you of the gospel'.

There is no evidence anyone was requiring proof of Christ's resurrection. Therefore there was no need to appeal to the list.

So why list them? To remind them of what they first believed. 'we preached and so you believed'. In Paul's mind as soon as they start to question the resurrection of men they should naturally start questioning the resurrection of Jesus himself (even though they weren't apparently) so he needed to re-establish the fact of their initial belief to make his argument--the fact that Jesus was resurrected. Once that is established he can move on to answer their question about resurrection of men.


???

There is no way to know if you are right or if I am. But, the context supports me more than you not only in terms of proximity (just mentioned multiple witnesses as opposed to scatterred mentions of various people in earlier chapters), but in terms of his language (using WE instead of just I as used on your parsed version). Why didn't he start verse 1 with "WE" instead of I, spin? I might point out that verse 11 sounds very Pauline and is a perfect segue into verse 12:
"Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. ". So, how is my view a perversion of the text?



You aren't thinking outside of your box. If you see an occasion for Paul to appeal to the reasons why the Corinthians should believe in that Christ was resurrected(I don't), then you still have a problem: He didn't appeal to any reasons at all. I claim the occasion wasn't there because they already believed and Paul knew that. You reply: Then why mention the witnesses at all? I reply: see above.

spin

You're not a fast learner, are you? And your selective response doesn't help your cause.

He talks about it in vv.12ff, if you hadn't noticed, so he sets up his reminder in v.1 and goes on immediately to deal with the problem. Now you want to claim that he sticks in the witnesses to intervene between the intro and the argument, then it might be nice if he acknowledged the fact that the witnesses and their testimonies were said. He doesn't. They are in fact irrelevant to his argument, as are your comments above to this.

I've already dealt with your claim. Reminding someone of something doesn't need any rehearsal. It is your only means to justify the insertion of material that Paul doesn't reference later.

:banghead:

Try something like, "Corinthians, you say that people don't get raised, but christ did, as the apostles and the 500 clearly witnessed. If he was raised then resurrection is obviously real. But you say there is no resurrection, which means christ wasn't raised, but the witnesses show that that is not true: christ was raised, so, once again, resurrection is real."

Why do I have to elucidate such an obvious point??

The explanation comes immediately after the statement that garnered your question marks:

It's right there in Paul's language: "(14) our preaching is in vain... your faith... in vain... (15) we testified that god raised christ..." This is the proclamation of the gospel to the Corinthians. The "we" and the "our" refer to the proclaimers.

Worse still the "now" (δε) in v.12 (as is the case in v.1) is not temporal but a getting to an argument, which makes sense if he is introducing the argument, but you'd like to believe that the presentation of the argument started back in v.3.

These witnesses did not proclaim the gospel to the Corinthians. Paul supplies that causal relationship in v.14, "our preaching,... your faith" and that indicates that he is not referring to the witnesses who saw christ after his death, but to the proclaimers who would be misrepresenting god by proclaiming that christ was raised by god.

Your thinking outside the box is from another box that isn't directly related.

That should make you think about your claim about vv.3-11. These witnesses are your albatross. Not appealing to reasons is certainly not a problem to me. He's trying to talk the Corinthians down from thinking there is no resurrection for the ordinary dude and the fact that he gives no tangible reason is a sign that he had no tangible reason, ie no witnesses.

I did and found no substance.

You naughty boy.