spin

Paul doesn't give any report from this meeting with the pillars about their knowledge about Jesus.

It was Cephas and he was apparently of the party that wanted the Galatians to observe the torah, yet, Paul points out to them, wasn't following it himself. And he adds for the Galatians sake "we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ." This knowledge of Jesus separates us from them.

To be precise, he takes pains to claim that he didn't get his Jesus gospel from any human being. His gospel was superior.

I don't know.

Some kind of messianic group, whose representatives didn't act like they'd heard anything that the gospels report of Jesus, given their torah performance.

It's plausible, but there's no evidence to support it. It's eisegesis.

And there was a large component of Greek in Galilee, so the name ιησους, found on grave markers, could have been the name.

It is more parsimonious that Paul didn't know much about Jesus except his salvation role and that no-one else knew anything about him.

It's possible, but still eisegesis.

Dunno what CST indicates.

Paul's Jesus was a human by necessity. How else could there be a suitable proxy sacrifice for the sins of humans? He had to be the seed of Abraham, born of a Jewish woman, of the line of David, and he had to be worthy to take away others' sin. Paul knew almost nothing else. It doesn't matter whether Jesus existed or not: he wasn't necessary to the process at all, for once the necessity of Paul's savior was spread to his proselytes, it was as good as there having been a real personality behind their belief and they were none the wiser. We've seen a small example of the process with the reification of Ebion, who almost certainly never existed, but among a few church fathers developed a hometown, travels, disputes, and personal doctrines. With a much larger community of contemplation and speculation, the process with Paul's Jesus would have been faster and much more productive.

You could be right, but I don't think you (we) can know.

gurugeorge

But he does report elsewhere that Jesus "appeared to" them in the same sense as he "appeared to" Paul.

Hence (triangulating that with Hebrews, April DeConick and Maragaret Barker) we have a small sect, remnants of an older Temple cult, who believe in a celestial Joshua/Jesus intermediary Archangel/celestial High Priest/Son of God type of deal. This being has "appeared to" them (in visionary trance and through scripture-bothering) and it has also "appeared to" Paul (in the same way). It has told Paul that its schtuck is universal rather than just Jewish, but the older guys just didn't get that memo.

That's exactly how it all fits together - unless you want to say that the Corinthians credo is wholly fabricated (which I think you do?) If that's fabricated, then it would be true that Paul says nothing at all about any previous beliefs re. Jesus by the Pillars, etc.

aa5874

Why are you sounding like a Fundamentalist?? Please, are you NOT aware that supposed visions and are the least likely method to obtain credible information??

The Pauline NEVER wrote that he was a Contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Pauline character wrote NOTHING of Nazareth, Nothing of the Life of Jesus from personal knowledge.
It is NOT plausible at all that a RESURRECTED BEING could have spoken to the Pauline writer UNLESS we are dealing with Fables.

Now, let us be reasonable.

Would it NOT be completely IDIOTIC for Paul to have made FALSE claims within a few years of the death of the Jesus character even if he did NOT live??? It is most unlikely that Paul could have preached that a Jew was the Son of God for over 17 YEARS in the Roman Empire. Even in the fiction stories called Gospels, Jesus was EXECUTED in less than a day after he claimed he was the Son of God and Christ.

It is just NOT logical for a JEW, a Pharisee, the so-called Paul, would have preached with Other Apostles that a Jew was Crucified for the Salvation of Roman Ctizens long before c 70 CE.

The Pauline claims about his Jesus are EXTREMELY signioficant--Jesus, a JEW, BORN of the Seed of DAVID was the Son of God, the Messiahy. Lord and Savior.

A JEW was in ROME and told Roman citizens to worship a charater Born of the Seed of David as the Son of God before c 70 CE????

Please, the Pauline letters are fiction and Implausible. Paul DREAMED up his stories--they never happened as he claimed.

It is virtually impossible for a resurrected to have given the Pauline writer any valid DATA.

Diogenes the Cynic

So what? The question (as I understood it) was only about whether anybody had heard of Jesus before Paul. Obviously the Pillars had, even if they made him up.
Sometimes, but Paul calls him Peter as well (repeatedly in Galatians). Same difference.
That was exactly my point. Why would he invent imaginary Pillars simply to say he fought with them and he disagreed with them?

Paul didn't know anything about the Gospels either. The Gospels are irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. They were not produced by the primary movement, or even the secondary Pauline movement, but by tertiary (and quaternary and quinary) movements decades after Paul was dead, and they shed no light on the first beliefs (even if Jesus is mythical).
Eisegetic into what text?
The ubiquity of Greek in Galilee is overstated, especially outside of the Decapolis, and I would say that a an Aramaic speaking, Palestinian Jewish sect is far more likely to have used a common as dirt Aramaic, Palestinian Jewish name as is, than use the Greek transliteration for it. The latter suggestion is so tendentious as to be absurd, in my opinion.
I disagree. This adds on an entire conspiracy theory to something that can be easily explained by just accepting the prima facie claims made by Paul that Jesus was born kata sarka, had a mother, was crucified by earthly rulers, had a "brother," etc.

Eisegesis into what text?

Sorry. Common Sayings Tradition. All those sayings had to have had authors. No reason some of them couldn't have gone back to the same preacher.

And you accuse ME of eisegesis?

Paul could just as easily have used a real crucified preacher to all of that same effect. It's the Hollywood "based on a true story" strategy.

I'm not one of those claiming to know.

aa5874

Well, Paul did NOT do what you claimed in his story. The Pauli8ne writer CLEARLY stated that he was NOT the Apostle of a Human being, that he did NOT get his Gospel from a man and that Jesus was the Son of God.

The Pauline writings Corroborate the Gospels that Jesus was NOT human and was NOT ever claimed or argued to have a human father by Apoloogetic sources that used the Pauline writings.

Apologetic sources that used the Pauline writings claimed Jesus was FATHERED by a Holy Ghost.

See "Against Heresies" attributed to Irenaeus.

See "On the Flesh of Christ" attributed to Tertullian.

See "Against Celsus" attributed to Origen.

spin

Paul tells us nothing about the pillars having knowledge of Jesus. He doesn't mention Jesus in his narration of the events. He only mentions Jesus to his Galatians.

The only place we find Peter is in a post-Pauline statement of Peter's authority in Gal 2:7-8. Paul talks of Cephas in 1 Cor and most of Gal. Cephas is the lectio difficilior and there is no coherent reason that Paul would suddenly stop using the term he'd used everywhere else and start using Peter.

To claim it is the same difference is rather cavalier. The Epistle of the Apostles lists both Cephas and Peter as apostles.

Who has said anything at all about inventing imaginary pillars other than you??

If we can say goodbye to the gospels here, then you only have Paul and he doesn't help you.

You are reading this notion "this original group was fixated on the crucifixion of some genuine person (probably named Yeshu or Yeshua)" apparently into Gal 2.

I didn't quite talk about ubiquity, but a perusal of writers such as Horsley should help you understand that there was a large Greek speaking contingent in Galilee, as large Greek landlords had possession of the area for a few centuries and cities such as Sepphoris were Greek centers.

It wasn't a transliteration. People had the name, as grave markers indicated.

You are trying to foist a conspiracy theory on me?? You seem to have missed my position, which was stated later in the post you have responded to. Paul never met Jesus, he says he got his Jesus gospel from god, and there are no signs that non-Pauline messianists believed in Jesus. At the same time Paul's theology requires a human Jesus. He is a logical necessity as I explained later, including having a mother and being crucified by earthly rulers. Being born κατα σαρκα is just more of the same logic, which I've talked about elsewhere.

The claim about Jesus having a brother is merely your folly, though it is popular. Scholarship isn't really about popularity.

Jesus being a "real person" is your injection.

True. But then there's no reason any of them went back to Paul's Jesus.

What exactly am I reading into the text?

Yes, he could, but that's the dilemma. There is no need or evidence for him to have done so. My position has always been that there is no evidence to help you to choose between the two positions. For me both historicism and mythicism are trainwrecks. They are ontologies lacking the support of an epistemology, meaning that they are useless positions.

You claim to believe that Jesus was real. Are you just asserting the view without it being knowledge?

Logical

A reasonable analysis, I think. There are many examples in history of figures who come along after the fact, and announce that they discovered the true meaning of a religion, to the surprise of its existing followers. Smith and Muhammad are two such figures, and the religion of Jehova's Witnesses is built on such a premise.

There are also religions that are derived from a mixture of two preexisting ones. The Druze and the Sikhs mix Islam with Hinduism.

Paul might have mixed a Jewish sect with Greek and Gnostic elements, to which the original sect's followers objected, hence the conflict recorded in the New Testament, and that led Paul to announce that he had direct access to Jesus and had no need to take instructions from Jesus' existing followers.

I wonder if both the mythicists and historicists are right, in the sense that Paul's religion itself is a mixture of two, previously independent religions: the celestial Christ religion and the earthly Jesus religion. And that's why you see evidence for both in the Pauline letters.

Will Wiley

Do we ever find evidence for a religion that had a solely celestial christ? Pauls theology requires an earthly man.

spin

The significant point here is that it is Paul's theology that requires an earthly man. That requirement has nothing to do with any facts about a real person. The person required to slay the minotaur has to be an earthly person for it is only earthly people, son of Athens, required as sacrifices to the minotaur who are let into the labyrinth. An earthly man is required by the minotaur narrative, just as an earthly person is required by Paul's theological narrative.

Grog

We all start with a set of assumptions. That you want to hide your assumptions is interesting to me. Or maybe you don't recognize them.

We have quite a lot of documentary material to work with. You must make some assumptions related to that, at least. And those assumptions will shape your views on a the theoretical construct of modern bible scholars regarding the so-called historical Jesus.