spin

It means you are doing eisegesis on the text, not exegesis. You conclusion doesn't come from the text.

This is just a series of projections. Zion represents god's dwelling place. It doesn't indicate where Jesus was crucified in Paul. You take one idea out of context -- an HB citation in one Pauline work -- and yoke it together with something talking about the Jews having difficulty with the notion of a crucified messiah in another Pauline work and presto chango Paul must have known Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. That is particularly flimsy.

Of course it's debatable. You seem to be retrojecting your ideas onto the past, not reading what Paul says. Hence you get "earthly-sounding".

I've pointed out his apparently metaphorical use of the term "crucified". How can the world be "crucified"? You can't simply impose what Paul must mean or imply in what he says. His language is not so easily categorizable.

He reflects a Jewish linguistic approach to his writing in which words cannot be taken on what would be for use face value. Words and ideas can be literal or from our perspective metaphorical or even both at the same time. "[E]arthly-sounding" is your prejudice.

But you aren't agnostic in this matter, so can you make pronouncements about what can be agnostic? ie don't project your understandings onto me.

You have crapped on for numerous posts now citing something I said many posts back, yet you pay no attention to the attenuation of my phraseology. I said, "He evinces no knowledge about the teachings; he evinces no knowledge about the miracles; he evinces no knowledge about the life. He just knows the Jesus of the salvific act, Christ crucified." Note the phrase "evinces no knowledge" especially for you? No. You're too busy.

It should be simple: people talk about what they know about and are interested in. Over the span of the Pauline corpus he evinces (note that word again) nothing tangible which indicates knowledge of "a man called Jesus who took part in events in this world of ours".

Still retrojecting your linguistic necessities onto Paul, when clearly his language usage doesn't match what you want it to be. You'd have fun with the gnostics.

Too bad. But as you're not in the position, you don't have to wear the title. Your position certainly is "earthly-sounding".


spin

TedM

If you really meant something other than "Generally Paul knows nothing about a man called Jesus who took part in events in this world of ours", and more accurately would have included the word 'evinces', or replace 'nothing' with 'little' or something like that, then why didn't you just say so when I objected, instead of defending it, since my point was clear enough?

As for not 'evincing' any knowledge of the life of Jesus, that is just wrong and I've given plenty of examples. Whether that is on earth or on some imaginative, unsupported 'sphere' in the sky, is another matter and I don't see where you've shown that it couldn't be on earth. I say it could be on earth and we have little indication that it isn't. You seem to say it can't be on earth since Paul doesn't say it is.

What am I 'projecting'? I'm not saying that since people were crucified on earth, since people live on earth, since Zion was Jerusalem in the OT, since peple die on earth that Paul was referring to earth. I'm saying it sounds that way, and therefore isn't a 'notion' to say such a thing. Do you see the distinction?

To me you are doing the very thing you accuse me of. That's projection. You are apparantly concluding that because Paul's references 'could be' non-earthly, they are. That is not agnostic. That is bias-driven, unless you can demonstrate that your interpretations are highly likely to be correct and have nearly zero chance of being wrong.

I think we are raising the other's ire some here, so if you have nothing new to say, let's just drop it.

ted

Amaleq13

That sounds more like a mythical Jesus than the historical fellow we are trying to identify.

What are you talking about? Only the risen Christ is given an "exalted status" by Paul and he seems to have believed it was necessary that the incarnated Son completely give up any exalted status in order for the sacrifice to work its magic atonement. Where would a Christian community get the idea to exalt the incarnation?

Nope but they don't necessarily support it either if the JBap references are late additions as is generally thought.

Yep and, if Paul can be said to say anything about a HJ, he doesn't appear to have had much in common with the guy featured in Q and GTh except that ubiquitous name.

It seems unlikely to me that one guy can account for all these different depictions at around the same time.

The timeframe isn't all that solid if references to JBap are late additions to Q.

If the name was chosen, it was chosen by a later Christian interpolator. Otherwise, it is the real name of the leader of the Q prophets.

Those don't seem like bad odds to me though I've already expressed doubts about several of the assumptions used to obtain them.

I think your math is faulty but I also think no amount of probability speculation can make the Q Jesus resemble the Jesus of Paul.

TedM

I think I"m getting into repeat mode, but if you'll bear with me I'll try to summarize my viewpoints about the significance of the difference in messages between Q and Paul's Jesus.

1. I agree that Q and Paul's Jesus are portrayed very differently, but if we assume there was a HJ, I think he could have inspired both Q's Jesus and Paul's in several ways:

1.1. He was a known teacher with sayings that inspired Q, but Paul didn't mention his teachings much if any. This requires an explanation for Paul's silence. You prefer (although maybe don't accept) the idea that Paul was deliberately silent to avoid looking inferior to his disciples. I'm not convinced Paul was silent about the teachings, but do find the relative absence of attribution hard to explain.


1.2. He maybe had a small number of teachings, and others were attributable to him to derive a larger Q, perhaps borrowing from pre-existing Wisdom sayings, or just making up the sayings. It was done because of the reputation of the man as having risen from the dead and having been very righteous (both claims by Paul)--inspiring various opinions about who he was. This reduces the expectation for Paul to have alluded much to teachings.

2. If Q attributed sayings to Jesus at around the same time as Paul, I think the odds are against the original inspiration for Q's Jesus being different than Paul's, because they require a name coincidence and a time coincidence given the magnitude of their characters--one is Wisdom incarnated and the other is the Messiah. If Q's Jesus was based on a real person, so was Paul's. If it wasn't neither was Paul's.

3. If Q attributed sayings to Jesus only later--say 70-80AD, I think the chances are against the original inspiration for Q's Jesus being different than Paul's for much the same reason as above, but with the added likelihood that Q was a later Christian creation or adaptation of Wisdom sayings. If Paul's earlier Jesus was based on a real person, Q references the same man, although not necessarily accurately. If Paul's earlier Jesus was mythical, so is this Q's.


Ok, on to your post.


Could be. Imaginary teachings can be based on a mythical fellow or a historical fellow.


I don't mean earthly Jesus was kingly. I mean the name of Jesus was above every other name to them. It wouldn't take much to apply that to him while on earth too. This is such an obvious concept to me that I'm surprised you see it apparantly as so unlikely.


Let's talk about that name again. According to this site (how do you put in a shortcut?) , http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/d...brew_names.htm, here are Hebrew boy names and their meanings, for just those beginning with A. Notice how many names would be appropriate for Paul's Jesus and Q.

AARON, ARON: high mountain
ABBOT, ABBOTT: father
ABBOTSON: son of Abbot
ABEL: breath
ABIAH: my father is the Lord
ABIDA: God knows
ABIEL: my father is God
ABIJAH, ABISHA: the Lord is my father
ABIMELECH: my father is king
ABIR, AITAN: strong
ABISHA: gift of God. Variants include Abijah, and Abishai
ABNER: father of light
ABRAHAM: father of a multitude. Variants include Avraham, Aram, Abarron, and Avidor
ABRAM: He who is high is father. Variants include Abe, Abey, Abie, Abramo, Avram, Avrom and Bram
ABSALOM: father is peace
ACIM: "The Lord will judge."
ADAM: "Of the red earth."
ADAMSON: son of Adam
ADAR, ADIR: noble
ADERET: crown
ADIN, ADIV: delicate
ADLAI: witness
ADLEY: judicious
ADON: the Lord
ADRIEL, ADRIYEL: of God's flock
AGER, ASAPH, ASAF: gathers
AKIBA, AKUB, AKIVA: replaces
AKIM: God will establish
ALON: oak
ALTER: old
ALVA: exalted
AMASA: burden
AMICHAI: my parents are alive
AMIEL, AMI-EL: of the Lord's people
AMIKAM, AMRAM: rising nation
AMIR: proclaimed
AMIRAM: of lofty people
AMITA, AMITI, AMMITAI: truth
AMMI: my people
AMNON, AMON: faithful
AMOS: brave
ARI, ARIE, ARIEL, ARYEH, ARYE: lion of God
ARION: melodious
ARNON: roaring stream
ARVAD: wanderer
ASA: healer
ASHER: happy
AVI, AVIDAN, AVIDOR, AVIEL: father
AVICHAI: my father is alive
AVIDAN: God is just
AVIGDOR: father protection
AVIMELECH, ABIMELECH: father is king
AVINOAM: pleasant father
AVIRAM, ABIRAM: father of heights
AVISHA, AVISHAI: gift from God
AVITAL: father of dew
AVIV: young
AVNER, ABNER: father of light
AVNIEL: God is my rock
AXEL, AKSEL, ABSALOM, AVSHALOM, AVSALOM: father of peace
AZARIOUS, AZARYAH, AZARIA, AZARYAHU, AZRIEL: God helps

Does it still seem a reasonable possibility that Q was based on a real man who happened by coincidence to have the same name as Paul's Christ?


I guess we see it differently. What other than a HJ can account for them? I can't imagine it. To me it makes a lot of sense as long as the guy was widely spoken of and very controversial and not well understood, which clearly by Paul's day this Jesus was.


I agree and it is a potentially strong argument against a HJ, but as I said above I think they both are derived from the same source, which to me is most likely a person who ilicited strong reactions among some of the people of the time.

ted

Amaleq13

Why isn't the Jesus in Q assumed to be the HJ rather than somehow inspired by him?

In addition to neglecting the wisdom for which this Jesus would have been known, he suggests seeking after wisdom is entirely misguided.

As well as what he does say apparently against teachers of wisdom.

Avoiding mentioning their role as disciples would be the primary goal but I wonder how much risk of that would be involved in quoting a famous teaching if it supported Paul's argument. Doherty mentions several specific examples where it really would have put an end to any dispute of what Paul was arguing if he had only quoted a particular saying found in the Gospels. The more famous as a teacher we imagine Jesus, the more unlikely a quote would necessarily connect to former disciples. IOW, the more we assume dependence on them for knowledge of the sayings, the less likely it would be for Paul to quote one.

I would think this might qualify in Paul's eyes as "another Jesus".

The Q Jesus was eventually depicted as God's Wisdom and Son of God. The layered conception of Q seems to offer the sort of progression we might expect. A respected teacher, over time after his death, becomes "mythologized" into the incarnation of God's Wisdom and, eventually, Son of God.

If this guy is who Paul's theology is based upon, all of that development has been abandoned and essentially denied because Paul does not depict the incarnated Son as even a wise teacher. He is a lowly slave of no reputation disguising his true greatness to trick his executioners.

These both seem to be non sequiturs to me in that they do not appear to follow from the previous statements.

Q depicts a Jesus and Paul depicts a Jesus but they really only come together as the same guy in the Gospel stories. You've got a "story" about a miracle-working wise prophet and about whom greater attributions are made over time. You've got a "story" about a Divine Entity who took on a human disguise in order to be the ultimate atoning sacrifice. Then you've got a story (no quote necessary) where the lowly human disguise is replaced by the wise prophet.

Why is Q's assumed to be the inaccurate depiction?

But only after the resurrection.

It seems unlikely given beliefs similar to Paul's. Where would one ever get the idea to exalt the disguised incarnation in this way when the whole point of the disguise was to hide the true nature of the Son?

I'd prefer not to since it seems to me to be based on an entirely misguided notion that the authors of Q made up the name for their leader independent of Christianity. As I've said a couple times already, as an interpolation, the name only makes sense as a Christian interpolation.

Absolutely. Your list doesn't appear to change that at all. "Jesus Christ" still looks like the most obvious choice to identify God's Salvific Messiah and the name, itself, was quite common. I can't remember the number of guys named "Jesus" that Josephus mentions but there are several and, IIRC, at least one was even a messianic claimant or rebel leader. It is unfortunate for our efforts but the fact remains that a coincidence of name is entirely reasonable.

More than one guy and/or more than one interpretation of the Incarnated Son and/or more than one interpretation of the Risen Christ.

How does the stuff the guy did while alive get separated from the beliefs developed about his death and resurrection then reunited decades later?

IMO, that doesn't seem to be a more plausible a scenario than the idea that the resurrection/atonement theology was a completely independent development that was later combined with the veneration of a dead miracle-working, wisdom-teaching prophet.

spin

I didn't. You are still runninmg away with your presumptions. You also talked a lot of subjective hoo-haa about "earthly-sounding" elements of Paul's references to Jesus, refernces which are based on your linguistic desires. So, no, my interest was in your runaway subjectivity.

Total rubbish. You've quoted from a non-Pauline source, you've pleaded that statements in two separate Pauline letters be read together. You could just aas credibly have tied in Peter in your flow of consciousness, after all his name means "rock", doesn't it?

I don't have to. You are the one making all the assumptions about "earthly-sounding" this and that.

You have plainly misunderstood my position. You are trying to shoot a myther, because you won't contemplate other positions.

It could be on earth. You simply haven't demonstrated the fact and won't with your crap about "earthly-sounding" subjectivity.

Amongst other things your unstated linguistic theories. You are also projecting what you want the texts to contain onto them.

I'm sure Hebrew based literature is then full of stuff that might make you think that.

The reason why you are falling over yourself is because you are arguing against what you want to argue against and not what I've been saying. You have happily continued your eisegesis of the text and when called on so-doing, you react not against me but to your imagined myther. That's why you repeated a loose phrase of mine for at least four postings. You are happy with your reconstruction of Paul and only mythers would disagree with you. The onus is on you to do better than this abysmal stuff about what sounds "earthly" to you. It is not an argument at all, but a statement of commitment.

Mythers and hysterical jesusers are a tetchy crowd.


spin

TedM

No, I repeated it because I thought it was misleading and you never acknowledged that fact. I wish you would stop trying to read my motives.

It is plain to see from your first two responses that you either don't know how to address what is said, or you don't want to, so I'm finishing our discussion with the following:

I wasn't trying to prove that it was on earth, spin. I told you in one of the first posts that it takes more than a quick comment or two to do that. I was putting forth an argument, that's all--something you seem to have a problem with because you immediately require complete proof. I have looked at a number of these specific phrases and concluded that the mythers interpretations are pretty far-fetched in some cases, but I don't want to try and demonstrate that at this point. I was only trying to show that from the way it reads it very well could have been on earth and for that reason we can't go around throwing loose phrases like you did that clearly suggest otherwise.

Please respect my desire to get back onto the subject of this thread. You've put in your objections, which have some validity, so there isn't much more to say.

ted

spin

You should learn to read more than you want.

Hanging "what". It's reference is not clear.

You were simply saying it sounded "earthly". Your assumption was sufficient for you. I know you weren't trying to prove it. You didn't need to.

Don't take shortcuts.

Having been on the fence of this debate for a long time, I don't think you are capable.

Naive literalist readings are dangerous. I don't see any sign of your position being any better than the myther.

If you attempt to make a coherent case, I can easily give further criticism. As it is, I just see a furry guy saying, "nothing up my sleave".

I'm on the fence because I know what is there to be mustered as evidence. What interests me most is peeling back all the assumptions about the texts, not going with the received approaches to them as you are apparently doing. Looking for a historical jesus in a literary text is p*ssing into the wind. What we are supposed to be doing is getting not to the church's understanding of the text, the one that often comes easiest to us because that's the one we've lived with most of our lives, directly or indirectly. Do you think Paul would be so equivocal with key terminology, such as the absolute use of kyrios, that here he means "god" and there he means "Jesus"? How could that work in Paul's head or the reader's. How does one know at any given instance which is the intended significance? Yet we have no real trouble with it because we know how to read it thanks to the church.

How much more such baggage must be shed in the quest to get to the "untinged text"? That, I believe, should be our quest, not closing doors because we accept certain positions. Philology really requires us to deal with the text itself (best done with recourse to the original language, for a translation contains assumptions about the text which may not represent the author's intentions). I think jesus mythicism will help us get closer to the texts one way or another: it may eventually prove right, or there again, in trying to deal with its errors, we clarify the texts.


spin

TedM

I think you misread Paul on this. Paul teaches much the same things as Q. Paul's objection to seeking wisdom has to do with wisdom that is of this world, and not of God. Would Paul reject his own teachings of wisdom that sound like Q on the grounds that they are not of God? No.



I agree. It is hard to imagine any scenario in which Jesus is a great teacher that explains Paul's lack of attribution to Jesus. I'd have to go through each of Doherty's examples of where a mention would be expected for a more thorough analysis.



Yes, but that's my very point--it isn't another Jesus. It's the same Jesus intepreted in very different ways by different groups. In a sense it is a mythical Jesus imposed upon a real Jesus. This 'another Jesus' in Q doesn't remove the original historical Jesus, though it might indeed replace him with a mythical one.


Where do you get 'no reputation'? A slave can have a reputation. The implication in your sentence is that it was a dirty trick..hmm.. anyway, in this #2 I said If Q attributed sayings to Jesus at around the same time as Paul,, so I"m not sure how about your layers and their timeframe.

Under #2 still, I concluded
Can you explain? I'm saying the odds are against 2 different inspirations even though they do indeed represent 2 different portrayals. My argument is that it relies too heavily on coincidence of the names and time.


The main point is in the middle of the sentence, not the end. Any inaccuracies could be either in Q or in Paul.


Yes, but though Paul might not have exalted an earthly Jesus he believed had been resurrected, does it really seem all that unlikely that someone else out there would have? Think about it: People are going around saying that God had been a recent man on earth. He was sinless and obedient to God. Does it seem unlikely that people would develop myth and apply it to that man? Isn't that what people claim the gospels are? You seem to keep falling back on how there could have been a specific type of man in the first place. I'm not. I am focusing whether there could have been a man in the first place.


I agree as it pertains to those who have beliefs similar to Paul's. But why impose such a requirment on all of the people of Palestine? We already know from Paul that there was a variety of beliefs. The question isn't whether those who believed similarly to Paul could have accepted a Q or created a Q. The question is whether other people could have, knowing what Paul preached--God had become man and was resurrected, and we are called to live a holy life as that man did. God's wisdom had been revealed through Jesus Christ! That last part is both Pauline AND Q-ish.


Didn't you suggest elsewhere that it is a coincidence that Q used the same name as Paul? Your answer here totally baffles me. If you accept Christian interpolation at a later date, then your original argument falls apart because we no longer have co-existing variety. We have variety, but it comes later when myth had more time to evolve.

A coincidence is by definition improbable in any given event. The list I gave showed that a fairly high percentage of existing names could have been chosen for Q. I gave odds of 1 in 10 earlier. What probability are you giving to both having chosen Jesus? I know coincidences happen, but it seems strange to me that neither Paul nor Q identify this Jesus further--son of, or of Nazareth, etc.. This seems to lowed the odds even more.. Is it not likely that even if Paul knew nothing of the Q folks, they definitely knew of Paul. If so, would they have not tried to distinguish their Jesus from Paul's by identifying him as being a second, different, unrelated person? Yet, we have no evidence of that happening.


relies too much on a coincidence IMO

Which can be applied to a real man believed to have been Incarnated or a myth of such a man

Ok, but we don't have examples of the Risen Christ without Incarnation, do we?

Doesn't this really just come back to Paul, doesn't it? Aren't you just asking how Paul could be silent about the teachings and miracles? Without Paul we might not say that such stuff got separated. Your question also seems to assume that there was a lot of stuff to separate out in the first place, which may not be the case at all. Why not have a Jesus with only a few teachings and one or two controversial incidents which Paul never mentions, who independant from Paul --either at the same time or a few decades later evolves into a wise teacher--inspired by the claims made for him as God becoming a righteous man by whom God's kingdom is ushered in? Why require that during such an evolution all of Paul's theology must be retained?

Ok, but why don't we hear anything about that prophet--where was he from, when did he live, and what was his name? And why do his teachings match a number of those by Paul and the early Christians? Why not a different kind of independant development that doesn't require a prophet who either by coincidence had the same name, or whose name was successfully replaced in the teachings, and who isn't referenced in the Midrash of the time at all? Wouldn't we expect someone who worked miracles and had such wise-teachings and was venerated so much that Christians later replaced his memory with that of their Jesus to be suppported or referenced somewhere?

ted

TedM

Maybe someday.

Ok, maybe someday I'll dig even further. I'm open to learning.

I'm curious. What IS the answer to your question?

I"m all for more clarity.

ted