spin

It wouldn't help one bit. Paul didn't know Jesus and didn't get his knowledge about Jesus from anyone. While he talks of apostles and apostles of Christ, he shows no sign of having known anyone he could refer to as a disciple of Jesus. If the author of the final version of Acts were not just a tradent of Pauline traditions it would not bring you closer to a historical Jesus.

TedM

I see it differently but thank you for sharing.

spin

In what way do you see the possible acquaintance of Paul by the Acts writer differently so as to justify your notion that it would be "the strongest potential argument in support of a Historical Jesus"?

sotto voce

Because he cannot be a messiah if he is not revived?

If Jesus, known as 'God with us', had stayed in his tomb, there would be no reason to suppose that there even was a valid deity, that there was a spiritual reality that is more real and valid than this existence. For Jews, there had to be a reality to the words of the psalmist:

'You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption,'

or there was no sense to divine writ (Ps 16:10).

Jesus' crucifixion, of itself, meant nothing. Thousands died that way, guilty or innocent.

Jesus' resurrection, of itself, meant nothing but a stunt. There had been resurrections before, and they had ultimately changed nothing.

Jesus' crucifixion, followed by resurrection, had significance, because Jesus was considered to have lived a perfect life, and because death by hanging from a tree (or wood) was considered to be not just physical death, but a curse from God. So the one and only perfect person was cursed, a complete inversion of justice. But, Jesus being God (according to Scripture), and going to death entirely of his own volition, he could not accuse himself of injustice. What this amounted to was substitutionary atonement, Jesus taking the penalty for the evils of everyone else— what is known as penal substitutionary atonement, the theme of the whole Bible from Genesis onwards.

And yet, though the disciples of Jesus knew the words of that Bible, they did not actually understand them. So when it dawned on the disciples that Jesus really had been resurrected, his crucifixion took on a meaning that it had not had, in their minds, before resurrection. Mark's gospel tellingly ends with the initial sign of that realisation, which was fear, rather than the reaction that had made Mark describe his work as 'good news' or gospel. That fear came because a perfect deity had survived, as indeed he had to, and required nothing less than perfect standards; the perception that all sins had been forgiven was absent, until later, when the mood was very different.

There are whole nations of people today who make much of Jesus' resurrection, rather than his crucifixion; but the logic is faulty, because resurrection only demonstrated that the crucifixion represented atonement for everyone's sins. Once one knows about atonement, Jesus' resurrection of itself has about as much significance as the resurrection of Lazarus; and nobody celebrates that. It is taken as some sort of culmination, by fundamentalists who, despite biblical exclusion, like to make a calendar of spiritual events, for the simple-minded, and to keep people simple-minded. Of course, what Paul called 'the offence of the cross' doubtless assists in acceptance of this caricature.

Note that the crucifixion only represented atonement in Christian theology. It is increasingly said or implied that it was the physical pain of flogging and crucifixion that atoned for sins, but this is travesty as well as absurdity. Spiritual penalty accounts for sins, but is totally unseen, with only the cry of the forsaken Jesus to indicate that penalty.

aa5874

Please, which gMark are you reading??? You have invented your own resurrection story.

First of all, the visitors to the tomb in Short gMark 16 did NOT see any body resurrected--they saw an EMPTY TOMB.

In the same Short gMark, the supposed 12 disciples did NOT even see Jesus crucified. Most of them RAN AWAY when he was arrested and Peter was NOT even listed as an eyewitness of the crucifixion or resurrection AFTER he denied knowing Jesus.

In the SHORT gMark, the very last words of Peter was that he did KNOW Jesus and the very last acts of the disciples were that they FLED the scene after Judas Betrayed Jesus at his arrest.

The Crucifixion and Resurrection story in SHORT gMark had NOTHING whatsoever to do with Universal Salvation, or Remission of Sins.

The author of Short gMark does NOT appear to be a Christian and did NOT write Short gMark for Christians.

The Short gMark appears to be PROPAGANDA levelled Against the Jews.

The changes to the Short gMark story have been RECOVERED.

See the LONG gMark, gMatthew, gLuke and gJohn in the Recovered Codices.

TedM

Ok spin, I'll keep it short:

From my perspective, if there was a person who knew Paul well and that person believed in a historical Jesus, it is inconceivable that he would not have mentioned Paul's disbelief in a historical Jesus, had he written about both Paul and Jesus. That's what we may have with Luke-Acts. Adding to the argument is the fact that the presentation of Paul in Acts has him making speeches but saying almost NOTHING about details of the life or teachings of a historical Jesus--very consistent with what we see in the letters of Paul. This adds to the argument that Paul knew about the historical Jesus but was not very interested in that aspect--he was interested in the salvation part.

So, finding reasonable proof of such a person would greatly help to reduce the power of the 'silence of Paul' arguments, would bolster the idea that Paul was very familiar with the historical Jesus, and would provide strong evidence that the historical Jesus was known and preached from the very beginning of Christianity.

aa5874

This has been already discussed many many times.

The author of Acts had ZERO interest in a human Jesus--ZERO.

Let us go through Acts of the Apostles word-by-word, line by line, and chapter by chapter.

1. Acts of the Apostles BEGINS with a Resurrected Jesus that Ascended in a cloud--See Acts 1

2. The disciples are told to WAIT for a Holy GHOST to get POWER to preach the Jesus story.--Acts 1

3. The Holy GHOST came like a "Hurricane" and filled the disciples with POWER.--See Acts 2

4. When SAUL heard from the Resurrected Jesus--Saul was Blinded like a Bat.--See Acts 9

An human Jesus had NO value in Acts--it was the Holy Ghost that Started the Jesus movement in the Myth Fable called Acts.

In the Pauline letters, Jesus MUST resurrect for Universal Salvation regardless of how he died or whether or not he did exist and did miracles.

In the Pauline letters, Jesus MUST be non-human--a Myth. The Pauline Gospel MUST have a non-historical resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15:17 KJV We cannot go through the same thing over and over. There must be a cut-off point. The Pauline Jesus was a Myth Fable.

Time to move on. The evidence is not going to magically change.

In Galatians 1, the Pauline writer claimed his Resurrected Jesus was NOT human and that his gospel is NOT from an human being.

1 Corinthians 15:15 KJV

TedM

I said Luke-Acts. Not just Acts. Read what I wrote again--the author I'm talking about would have had to write both Luke and Acts for my argument to have merit. If you believe a different author wrote Acts than Luke, you have almost zero scholarly support. Almost all scholars believe that the author of Acts also wrote Luke--which clearly was about a historical Jesus. So, the author of Acts --if he also was the author of Luke-- had a HUGE interest in a human Jesus.

This is a misleading comment, because you can say the same thing--and have--for the Canonical Gospels--which support (rightly or wrongly) a HJ.

No, he never said Jesus didn't walk the earth resembling a human like others. In fact he implied that Jesus ate food prior to his crucifixion. And, Paul's 'gospel' was that of salvation through faith to everyone including Gentiles, so it is true that his gospel was not from a human being. So what? That doesn't mean human beings never told him about the human-like historical Jesus.

No need to reply. I simply had to correct your errors, which are numerous in quantity and continual in revelation.

Adam

The Consensus you're relying on, Joe,
Is weakening regarding gMark being the underlying source. First, most everyone finds that a Passion Narrative came first. Second, scholars are finally catching up with the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1947 and its evidence that the Gospel of Thomas shows that Q material is in gMark. Going beyond that, however, I have argued here on FRDB (with Vork and spin disagreeing wildly but not convincingly) that the Aramaic Q material (identifiable as Twelve-Source in gMark by its lack of exact verbal parallels) thus extends into much of the narrative in gMark as well. See my final paragraph in my Post #3 in Splicing Q and John
and its link to my expanded argument for my fifth eyewitness: Gospel Eyewitnesses CF Post #5
Also gMark has three chapters that came later before the version known to Luke. That makes only a minority of gMark having the exact verbal parallels to gLuke that identify it as the Petrine material that preceded gLuke but was later than the Q material that I call qT. All the qT was available to Luke directly and would have been in the final gLuke even if gMark had never been written.
In my new thread
"Early Aramaic Gospels" I mainly rely on Luke and John and limit my passages from Mark to just the qT material, practically the only place we find supernaturalism that disqualifies inclusion in my "GattA" (Gospel that even Atheists cannot automaticlly reject for containing portions that by their principles could not have occurred. Happy Toto?).
Not to mention that Consensus scholarship does not support you and Vork that gMark was written to denigrate Peter. Almost everyone else thinks of Mark as containing Peter's humble admission of his faults.

I havn't figured out your typo yet. Was "treif ending " supposed to be "grief ending"?[OK it's "brief"]

TedM

brief