jakejonesiv

You right Rick. I didn't catch the point that you were disputing the darn page number until after I made my initial post, so I edited it. Sheesh.

Jake Jones IV

jgibson000

Thank you for this.

I wonder then if you'd agree, then, as it seems you should given the above, that when the author of T. Moses speaks, as he does, of Moses as one who was "prepared from the beginning of the world, to be the mediator of [God's] covenant" (1:14). he was asserting that the entity we refer to as Moses existed in a real sense, with identity, before the creation of the world, let alone before the time of the events described in Exodus?

Or when the author of Jubiless asserts that the Sabbath (2:30) and the feast of weeks (6:17-18) were observed in heaven from the creation that Jubilees that they existed in a real and concrete sense before their observance by Israelites in post exodus times?

Or when the authors of the Angelic Liturgy and of T. Levi speak, as they do, of the Tabernacle as a reality already in heaven from before the creation (4Q400-4007; 11Q5-6, T. Lev 3:4-8), they believe and are asserting that that Tabernacle existed concretly above the earth before Moses erected it during the wilderness wanderings?

Or could it be that, despite the apparently clear claims we find in these writings for the "pre-existence" of this person and these things, these authors believed and were asserting something else about them?

Jeffrey Gibson

andrewcriddle

I'm not convinced that there is an allusion to Psalm 23/24 here. At least the connection woul be much stronger if Paul said king of glory instead of lord of glory.

The other problem is that there is no doubt IMO that Paul believed that Jesus Christ had in some sense divine status; the question is whether or not Paul believed that Christ in some sense preexisted as a divine being before his life on earth. Even if there is an allusion to Psalm 23/24 here I'm doubtful whether it really helps in answering that question.

As Jeffrey has said, one needs to be clear about what one means by preexistence here.

Andrew Criddle

EarlDoherty

Good grief! I can’t leave you guys alone for more than a few days and people are saying all sorts of nasty and misguided things about me. Will someone please have the good grace (or good sense) to realize that when I say various scholars regard “rulers of this age” as a reference to demon spirits, I am not denying that these scholars also have in mind that the demons are working through earthly rulers. Of course they think that. And they think that Paul thinks that, too. They are all historicists. Jeffrey is indulging in his usual antics by imputing to me that I am claiming that Ellingworth, Hering, Brandon, etc., support me (and JM) in that they regard the demons as the direct crucifiers of Jesus. I’m very sure that Jeffrey is intelligent and astute enough to realize that I am claiming no such thing (which doesn’t stop him from misrepresenting me).

We went through this argument over Barrett’s translation of kata sarka in Romans 1:3. I am taking such observations by scholars and using them in my own applications; this is neither illegitimate, nor does it misrepresent these observations. Scholars like those I have quoted realize that Paul is speaking of demon spirits, and admit as such, but they then force onto Paul implications he does not intend, namely that the demons are working through historical rulers. In both book and website article I concluded that discussion with a paragraph which makes it clear that I realize that the scholars in question were doing this, adding earthly rulers to Paul’s thinking. I have to agree with Ted and Jake and Joe that Jeffrey simply throws up these smokescreens, usually a case of misrepresentation like the above, to avoid having to address more pertinent matters. (We still haven’t found out what Ehrman really meant in regard to Galatians 4:4’s corruptions, or why Paul decided to change verbs between 4:4 and 4:23.) This is one reason why I will not waste my time with him.

I might point out two contrasting passages in the Ascension of Isaiah to illustrate a point. In chapter 9, the author says: “the god of that world will stretch out his hand against the Son, and they will lay their hands upon him and hang him upon a tree, not knowing who he is. And thus his descent, as you will see, will be concealed even from the heavens so that it will not be known who he is.” No reference to earthly rulers here, let alone to any earthly content. The concealment is from Satan and his demons in the heavens, who do the hanging. When we get to chapter 11 and the Christian interpolation, we get all sorts of earthly references, including: “And after this the adversary [Satan] envied him and roused the children of Israel, who did not know who he was, against him. And they handed him to the ruler, and crucified him…” Here we have a clear reference to Satan working through the Jews and an earthly ruler (Knibb opines it’s Pilate, though he is not named), and he is crucified in Jerusalem. If the writer/interpolator here quite naturally makes it clear that the demons are working through earthly rulers, why should we not expect the earlier chapter to do so, or Paul to do so, especially when, in all his discussion of the crucifixion, he never makes such a thing clear. (He even implies the opposite, when he says in Romans 13:3-4 that, “Rulers hold no terrors for them who do right…(the ruler) is the minister of God for your own good.” Pilate’s crucifixion of an innocent Jesus would have been in direct contradiction to such a sentiment, and is a strong indication that Paul knew of no such event.)

When it is spelled out, we can recognize Satan working through earthly rulers. When it is not, we are entitled to ask whether scholars are simply reading the later type of thinking into the earlier. That is exactly what they are doing in regard to Paul, and I am going to quote an extended passage from Brandon’s “History, Time and Deity” (p.166-169). Note the sentences I have placed in italics.

Nothing could better illustrate (and I know of no passage in all the scholarly commentary I have ever read which does it better) how historicist scholarship reads into the epistolary record things which are not there and which are based on preconception derived from the Gospels. Brandon has provided (and then ruins, through his injection of Gospel assumptions of his own imagining) the most incisive, perceptive description of Paul’s thinking and that of early, mythicist-oriented, Christianity: how his spiritual, pre-existent Christ and Lord of Glory has undergone his salvific sacrifice at the hands of demon spirits in the heavenly realm who control the lower parts of the universe and divide them from heaven; that Christ’s primary work of salvation is to destroy those powers, rescue the souls of the righteous, free the human race from its enslavement, and reunify the sundered universe. That is the picture the epistles provide, and everything else is artificially imposed upon it, by everyone from Brandon to Ehrman to Gibson.

And they’ve been doing it for decades. Moffat, early in the 20th century, recognized the thoroughly Platonic nature of Hebrews, but of course, he couldn’t stop there: “For the complete sacrifice has been offered in the realm of the spirit…the sacrifice of Christ had been offered in the spirit and—as we might say—in the eternal order of things…it belonged essentially to the higher order of absolute reality….The writer breathed the Philonic atmosphere (of Middle Platonism) in which the eternal Now over-shadowed the things of space and time, but he knew this sacrifice had taken place on the cross, and his problem was one which never confronted Philo, the problem which we moderns have to face in the question: How can a single historical fact possess a timeless significance?” [ICC, xlii, xliii]

Well, the writer of Hebrews never gives any indication that “he knew” of such an earthly sacrifice, nor that he faced a problem Philo did not. Until we stop reading the Gospels into the epistles, we will continue to foist a fantasy on Paul, and on ourselves.

Incidentally, this is a good illustration of the point made (on my behalf) by Joe Wallack. The mythicist case is derived from a comprehensive look at the entire record, putting the Gospels in their place as a minority record, one suspiciously un-historical in so many respects, and examining the wider record on its own terms. The vast weight of those terms points toward a non-historical Christ, and we are left only with a handful of ‘problematic’ passages whose weight is not sufficient to tip the scales back toward historicism. Those passages (Gal 4:4, Rom. 1:3, Gal. 1:19.) are handled “defensively” to use Joe’s term, and there are always ways around them, sometimes quite easily. Despite claims to the contrary, they do not disprove the mythicist case. At the same time, contrary to Jeffrey’s accusation, they are not listed on the positive side of the case, although some can be designated as ‘in harmony’ with it: Romans 1:3 as being derived from scripture, and even Galatians 4:4 if it could be interpreted as indicating the thought of a spiritual counterpart to an earthly ‘birth’—but that’s an argument that has no end, and I’m no longer inclined to press it.

Within a couple of days I will be finalizing and posting my rebuttal article to the ‘Refutations of Mythicism’. It’s a doozy, in three parts. Very long and very detailed, but it had to be, to lay to rest the claim that mainstream scholarship has long refuted the Jesus Myth theory. Along with all the standard arguments, one of the things I have focused on in regard to those writers is their ability to read things into texts which don’t contain them, along with a good helping of other kinds of fallacious reasoning. I trust that those who regularly use the “appeal to authority” to discredit mythicism will have the good grace to take a look at my response and find out if they really know the quality of the authorities they’re trying to appeal to, and the quality of their arguments.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

gnosis92

doherty
i would be interested in looking at this, i take it it will be on your website? do you intend to publish it either in academic press like oxford or cambridge, or in peer-reviewed new testament journals?

jakejonesiv

Jeffrey,

I am asking you to supply your definition of pre-existence as it pertains to the entity we call Jesus Christ. Feel free to support your arguments with any texts you please, but be sure to include New Testament texts.

If you feel that you have already done so, then forgive my oversight, and please restate it here in a clear and consise manner.

Thanks,
Jake Jones

jakejonesiv

Agreed. Jeffey should supply a definition of pre-existence as it pertains to Jesus that he is willing back up with his reputation.

Jake Jones IV

EarlDoherty

Looking at what? I don't know what you are referring to. The quote from Brandon is not on my site, or in The Jesus Puzzle, in its entirety. It is from his book. My references to Moffat come from an unpublished "kitchen sink" manuscript from which I took a lot of The Jesus Puzzle. You'll have to be clearer.

gnosis92

"Within a couple of days I will be finalizing and posting my rebuttal article to the ‘Refutations of Mythicism’. It’s a doozy, in three parts. Very long and very detailed, but it had to be, to lay to rest the claim that mainstream scholarship has long refuted the Jesus Myth theory."

It referring to the above. Will you post it here or on your website? Even better would be an academic press. I would especially be interested in what trained historians like Ehrman and Pagels and Crossan may have to say.

Rick Sumner

If the case was as overwhelming as you suggest it is, one would expect you would have more supporters.

The simple reality is that there are a few passages that are all but dead-solid against you, unless reinterpreted dramatically, which is why you suggest we do so. Those are the "handful of problematic passages" you allude to.

But the "vast weight" you speak of doesn't exist in any quantifiable form, because so many passages are subject to interpretation, for an easy example I've used before, you misunderstand Paul's "mystery", and use it's "revelation" as an argument for mythicism, when it patently isn't--it has to be "revealed" from scripture and God. So intent were you on finding the mythicist case that you missed the forest for the trees--Paul makes what the "mystery" is pretty clear, especially in Romans, a mention of which scores number 2 on your top twenty silences.

For another, you force yourself into odd positions, because your argument from silence sometimes seems to fail to distinguish between authors who know a Jesus and authors who don't. Here are the fuller comments I promised on 2Peter, which are followed up here. In essence, the transfiguration--and more specifically the words spoken at it--are too thoroughly Markan not be owed to Mark. Your assertion on our previous thread--that 2Peter is late so doesn't matter that much--misses the point. Your criteria still can't tell the difference. Another odd position is the suggestion that Tatian was a mythicist. A student of Justin, no less. Who gives no hint of such a dramatic differing of opinion. If you think Paul's silence is loud, the silence of Tatian here fairly thunders. I must confess that I highly doubt you will convince any student of Justin or Tatian of that prospect. But you are really left only two options: Take the odd position, or reshape your argument. Since your clearly reticient to the latter, the ad hoc nature of the former is, at least to me, transparent.

What it comes down to is that the weight you to a given interpretation of a passage, sometimes might be right, sometimes seems a draw, and sometimes the evidence seems to be against you. To declare it a slam dunk evidences either an overactive imagination or an inflated sense of self-worth. Because you certainly do not present an argument without caveat.

Regards,
Rick Sumner