Didymus

Chapter and verse, please. If Paul had said that, we would not be having this discussion. Unless of course, you mean "contemporary with the Risen Christ," which we all are according to Christian theology.

Sorry, maybe it's not so obvious that Jesus would journey to the very heart of Judaism, its spiritual center, to deliver a New Covenant to mankind, just as Abiathar delivered the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (1 Sam 15, 16). Paul seems to have been completely unaware that, when he traveled to Jerusalem to visit "the Pillars," he was also visiting the place of his savior's crucifixion and resurrection. He certainly makes no mention of it.

But unlike the gospel authors and the millions and millions of Christians that followed them, from Irenaeus to Mel Gibson, Paul wasn't concerned about how, when and where these events took place? Is it conceivable that he wouldn't even mention any of that in passing? Just once? What are the odds?

I can't think of anything less "historically appropriate" than inventing facts for which you have such thin evidence. Aside from the very late and unreliable accounts that appear in Acts, if you have evidence of "traditions about Jesus' life and death".... "already spread in the pre-Pauline period," I'd like to see it. There is no clear evidence of Christian writings prior to Paul's. Thomas and the Q sayings source might have been in circulation at the time of Paul, but neither includes either biographical material or anything about a crucifixion. They consist entirely of pericopes and sayings, none of which appeared in the Pauline epistles.

Who made that rule?

You can't possibly know that. In point of fact, you cannot provide any evidence whatsoever that anyone in Paul's congregrations knew anything about Jesus' life beyond the main points mentioned by Paul in his epistles.

Didymus

Didymus

You seem to be operating under the assumption that Paul's congregations simply must have known about the life and teachings of Jesus. While we can't absolutely rule out that possibility, there's no evidence of it either, and nothing to infer it. There's no reason why a fledgling cult couldn't have gotten along without belief in a recently descended god/man. A Risen Christ was enough for Paul; it would just have to do for his congregations.

I'll turn the question around: Why would you assume that Paul's congregations in the Diaspora had a full and correct picture of Jesus' life, teachings and crucifixion? They possessed, to our knowledge, nothing in writing about Jesus' life. (After all, that's why the gospels were written!) Distances were great. Communications were poor. Books, and even readers, were scarce. Gentile converts would have grown up without the LXX and thus without the prophesies and messianic traditions. And, aside from "church tradition," there is no evidence of any gospel teachers' presence in Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia or even Rome at that early stage - the 50's. As far as we know, they knew only what Paul told them, which was virtually nothing.

Keep in mind that the gospel story - Jesus' life, teachings, miracles and crucifixion - is the core of the Christian message, especially when new and prospective converts are involved. How likely is it that Paul, in epistle after epistle, would ignore all that? What missionary starts off with Pauline theology?

If the answer is "none other than Paul," then that's because theology was all he had. He didn't have those captivating stories that Mark, writing in the 70's or later, brilliantly reconstructed from scripture and the oral tradition. Which, by the way, goes a long way toward explaining the fact that Christianity didn't "take off" until the gospels were published and circulated in the second century.

Didymus

Postscript: TEKTON means carpenter. But you knew that.

Didymus

The "connection" between Paul and the gospels does exist, but it's very tenuous. It's as though Mark had read or heard a few of Paul's letters, forgot most of what he heard, and nonetheless pressed on with the "good news" about a historical Jesus. He didn't, however, forget to cast some of the early church leaders as Jesus' disciples.

Didymus

The Bishop

If Doherty dates Mark to 80CE, I simply don't understand why he can possibly begin his "Conspiracy of Silence" on these grounds:Let us acknowledge it is a peculiarity of Paul's never to make reference to Jesus as a teacher, or a miracle worker (apart, very obviously, his own Resurrection miracle) or to mention any superfluous Gospel characters such as Mary or Pilate. Or in fact anything, pretty much, except the promise of Eternal Life. He is only one author, after all, so his particular concerns can simply be defined as "Jesus the bringer of Life". Disregarding Paul, then, we find almost everything else in the Christian library except maybe Jude and Colossians, was written in the period that the Gospels existed. 1 Peter, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonains, the three John Epistles and Revelation, 1 Clement and Didache, then, are being singled out as having been silent on certain essential facts of Jesus's life, and yet the Jesus stories were out there already. What this means, surely, is that the silences are not in fact significant!

The Bishop

Didymus, you are just making and reinforcing my point! If they only knew what Paul told them, why the hell would they even consider themselves Christians? What would have convinced them? Certainly not Paul's writings on their own, at least not as we have them. The Gospel, as you point out, is the "heart of the Christian message". Since Paul is clearly writing to extant believing Christians, they must therefore have derived their belief from that very Gospel tale. (The Gospel being the oral tales of Jesus's doings, plus potentially the Q book of sayings, but I'm not married to that).

Why does the knowledge of the Jesus story have to be "full and correct"? Even to this day the vast majority of Christians could probably only recall to mind the major points of the story, and it's quite certain they would get them wrong. Ask a Christian today what happened when Jesus was born, and you will probably hear about shepherds and farmyard animals and three kings in a stable, all worshipping the newly born Christ child. The story as told in the NT, however, has neither shepherds nor animals present at the birth, which is not described as taking place in a stable. Neither is there evidence that the indeterminate number (not three) wise men (not Kings) were there until some time later, possibly when the child was as much as a year old. So, "full and correct" does not appear, at least to me, to be a requirement.

All of which indicates the oral nature of the Jesus story.The Evangelists found it important to tell the story of Jesus's life in terms of OT prophecy and messianic traditions, that is why the written Gospels we have are structured the way that they are. It doesn't make any sense to imagine that an oral tale would have included any of those elements, which would simply have held up the story.

It's rather strange to assume that Paul told them "nothing" based on what he wrote in his Epistles. He wrote "nothing" in his Epistles because they already knew the story. It's these lacunae that actually form the evidence and inferences that you seem to regard as missing.

What missionary indeed? Thank you again for proving the point. They must have had a Gospel tale in advance. "Someone died and rose again, therefore he was a God" is just not sufficient to have converted anyone to belief in him.

All of which, incidentally, is irrelevant to whether Jesus actually existed.

Zeichman

I've yet to see anyone who makes the claim that Jesus' name means this verify that it would have been interpreted as such by Hellenistic communities. "Iesous" is nothing more than a transliteration and may have been meaningless to Paul's gentilic converts. Wouldn't it be much more plausable that that his name would be "Soter Christos," if this is how his name was interpreted? My name means "Christ bearer," but no one who hasn't taken Greek knows or cares. Is there any evidence this wouldn't be the same in the first century CE?

Your bold claim that the Kurios of "Kurios Iesous Christos" would have meant Yahweh, should be backed up. Kurios, as I'm sure you know, had many meanings, let alone non-divine figures in early Christianity. (Matthew 13:27, 27:63, etc.)

The Bishop

Yes, I do. I meant that translating tekton as "scholar" was one of the "holes" in Wilson's own thesis as to the life and death of Jesus.This is very badly worded. I should have written it as follows:

Wilson claims that tekton meant "scholar" (an idea he might have got from Geza Vermes). He also speculates, contrary to the consensus of the skeptical and conservative Christian scholars, that Paul actually met Jesus, in fact he even identifies him as the "Servant of the High Priest", whose ear gets cut off in the Gospel of Matthew.

EDIT: Hey! My 100th post! :wave:

No Robots

The Bishop:

I still don't get what you mean when you say that Wilson's book was a "turning point" for you. Perhaps you had the same experience I did. I read it early in my days of "historical Jesus" research. I was sickened by its poor quality. All the same, I continued looking, hoping that someone had written a decent book on the subject. I did eventually find what I was looking for, and more.

The Bishop

No, no I can't really say that I found its quality to be sickeningly bad, in fact I think its an excellent book, and a very good read. I don't agree with everything Wilson says, but he's a good (and highly respected) literary writer, and I found the book very enjoyable.

If you can tell me what exactly you found so "sickeningly bad" you had to turn to Brunner (in translation, I assume) for compensation, maybe I can re-examine it.

Never mind about the "turning point" thing, I just wanted an excuse to bring up Jesus by A.N. Wilson in the context of this discussion. My opinion certainly hasn't been changed, only reinforced.

No Robots

I bought Wilson's book thinking, "Wow, here's a well-known popular writer taking on this topic. This should be great." It was a terrible disappointment. Reading it was like going up to a table laden with food, and then finding everything was plastic. I felt that it offered no insight at all. In retrospect, I can see that what I was looking for was a phenomenological analysis that would explain the enormous impact of this man. I don't think Wilson comes close to dealing with this adequately.

It wasn't a case of "having to turn to Brunner." I'm not sure why you phrase it that way. Do you know something of Brunner? I discovered him by doing a library catalog search of "philosophy AND Christ". I have since, out of interest in him and his work, learned some German; and I have read Unser Christus in the original. I can tell you that the English translation is first-rate.