spamandham

From what I´ve been able to gather, it´s because most western historians are Christians. There are a few, such as Robert Price, who have the credentials and wherewithal to match anyone else, who analyze early christianity according to the same standards applied to other historical analysis. In other words, his analyses roll in extra biblical texts...as all such objective analyses would.

GakuseiDon

Then stop doing it! I'm not saying that it would necessarily prove that Jesus was historical at this stage, but it would show that Paul BELIEVED that Jesus was historical. If you want to bring in Roman beliefs, then note that the Romans certainly believed that Hercules was historical, and dated him back to the Trojan war. Some Romans (Herodotus from memory) dated when Dionysus lived on earth.

So, back to my question: If Paul **really did write** that Jesus was born of a woman, and a descendent of David and a seed of Abraham (just like Paul was), would you say then that Paul probably believed in a historical Jesus?

GakuseiDon

Like gurugeorge, you are confusing "evidence for X" with "evidence that Paul believed X". For the latter, it doesn't matter where Paul got his knowledge. He could have gotten it from the back of a cereal box, for all it matters to my point.

So, back to my question: If Paul really did write that Jesus was born of a woman, and a descendent of David and a seed of Abraham (just like Paul was), would you say then that Paul probably believed in a historical Jesus?

spamandham

{emphasis mine}

In direct simple terms, no.

You ignored the latter portion of my previous post, which offered up equally probable (in my mind) alternatives to "Paul believed in a historical Jesus".

Even if we accept that Paul really did write that Jesus was born of a woman (in question historically?), a descendent of David (unsure if that's in question) and a seed of Abraham (unsure again), that still does not imply Paul believed in a historical Jesus, when juxtaposed against the rest of the accepted authentic Pauline writings that sound mystical. Venturing a 'best guess' from my perspective, Paul's Jesus is not a physical human being, or even a spiritual being, but rather, a mystical symbol for Judaism itself.

(I find Price's argument that 1 Corinthians has been heavily syncretized, to include pretty much all of chapter 15, and bits and pieces elsewhere, to be convincing.)

aa5874

How can you determine what an author believed, when you cannot even determine who the author is and the what the author knew at the time of writing?

But there is a problem, the father of Jesus is said to be the Holy Ghost, Paul must have been mistaken, Jesus is not a descendant of David or Abraham, he is probably refering to a mythical Jesus, born of a virgin, as seen in his visions.

GakuseiDon

You seemed to be hedging your bets. "Paul had an epileptic vision or he was lying for personal gain or he was making mystical symbolic references". Only the last addressed my point.

You would need to do the juxtaposing for me, I'm afraid. But I think that you would only be choosing those passages where Paul describes Jesus as being in heaven. At some point, Paul really is talking about a post-crucifixion "spiritual Jesus", but it is those passages where he appears to be talking about a pre-crucifixion "earthly Jesus" that interest me.

OK, that's an interesting perspective, and a reasonable answer to my question. Thanks.

Ted Hoffman

He has just shown that those wouldnt show us that Paul believed that Jesus was historical.

spamandham

Why would you not be interested in the rest of what Paul has to say, to balance against those passages? :huh:

I agree that it's difficult, or perhaps impossible, to determine what is genuinely Pauline and what is not. But if we tentatively accept what scholars tend to agree upon as genuine, excluding that which is under contention (yes, even by the mythicists), it is not at all clear to me that Paul is referring to a earthly historical figure. This is a highly subjective position, I admit, but without a comprehensive supportable theory as to how Christianity developed, I don't know what else to do.

IMHO, it's equally likely that Paul believed Jesus was a historical human, as it is that he did not.

dog-on

Don, are you being funny here? I just spit coffee all over my monitor.


First off Don, there is only the Gospel Jesus. I know that you like to create another Jesu for your arguements, but the only evidence from that time period is text purporting the Gospel Jesus, in one form or another... Later arguments by certain groups, of a less then Pauline Christ, not withstanding.

The passages I regard as interpolations occur in texts that are not referring to your itinerant preacher, but to a cosmic JC. You cannot escape that simple fact. Whatever Paul actually wrote, in the end, the figure he described can only be said to be a mythical construct, at least by any reasonable definition of that term.

ps. To answer your question, if Paul really did write those lines, he must have been one confused individual. These references, of course, are midrashic and so would not necessarily imply belief in a recent visit.

gurugeorge

I don't think you're quite grasping my point: since references analogous to "born of a woman", "descendant of David" and "seed of Abraham" can also be found in a mythical context in the ancient world, they aren't in themselves unambiguously historical references, so even if he really did write those phrases, it doesn't mean he believed in a historical Jesus.

And as to your other point, sure, some ancients historicised some of their myths. Just as some Christians (i.e. precisely the proto-orthodox) believed in a historical Jesus! But we have no independently solid reason to believe Jesus was historical any more than Hercules, even if some ancients thought Hercules historical, and some Christians thought Jesus historical.

If we may step back a bit, my impression is that you seem to want to excise the "woo" element from interpretations of the ancient world. You seem like a sensible, rational person, and the general trend of your comments here and elsewhere is to the effect that the ancients generally had a sensible, rationalist, materialist view of the universe. Gods were considered to be people from ancient times. "Aer" is merely the good old sky we see above us. Just so. No (what you see as modern) "Buffyesque" multi-dimensional nonsense for you.

But I'm afraid you're going to have an uphill struggle with that one. As Doherty says, the whole thing is up in the air (if you will pardon the pun ). There are, in the ancient world, all sorts of interpretations of religion, religious places, characters, events, etc., from the sensible, allegorical, historical ones you often cite, through the devotional, sympathetic, visionary, mystical, to the totally outrageously magic-filled and "woo". And this is exactly the mix, in fact, that you find in Christianity from its earliest days. In that way the various Christian interpretations of their idol are as varied as any pagan, with the strongly historical interpretation being, at first, only one amongst many.

Sometimes ancient myth is "Buffyesque", sometimes it isn't. Clearly, rational, sensible people of the day were no different from you: they couldn't experience their religion in a "Buffyesque" way, so they interpreted it sensibly and rationally. But plenty people in the ancient world still experienced their religion "Buffyesquely", just as they do now. The idea of "dimensions" isn't just some fancy-schmancy invention of television script writers, it's pretty universal in religions all over the world. Take a look at the layered bureacracies and/or layered, detailed heavens of Daoism and some Buddhisms - really no different from "journeys" or "ascensions" of various kinds in visionary writings in OT or NT scripture, or the equally florid creations of Gnosticism. Also note you have the same kind of reaction from sensible, rational people in the history of Daoism and Buddhism, with some writers attempting to bring all that stuff "back down to earth". But the visionary, mystical stuff comes first, because it's always those kinds of cosmologies that are explained away by sensible rational people. It's not as if sensible, rational people come up with any of these weird and wonderful cosmologies off their own bat.

Really, it seems to me pretty obvious. The Jewish Messiah is a mythical entity, I'm sure we can all agree. How does it suddenly, magically make him a historical person if his placement in time is merely switched from the future to the past, and he's given an added dying/rising wrinkle?

And that's all the very earliest Christianity looks like, that's basically the interpretation that suggests itself from the earliest known texts (Paul, Hebrews, etc.) as we have them. Cephas and the Pillars have this novel version of the Christ idea, then Paul gets it (and universalises it). Following close upon the heels of that very earliest form (as the religion is spread by Paul and the apostles to Jews and Gentiles), we immediately (in terms of decades) have a profusion of proto-orthodox, Jewish, proto-gnostic, Marcionite, adoptionist, etc., etc., interpretations.

Just what you'd expect from an idea that at first belongs to a small circle, but is quickly spread to lots of people from various backgrounds, of various levels of sensibleness, rationality, intelligence, visionary and mystical ability and understanding, who all have their own "take" on it.