yalla

I'm not sure.
See post #122 this thread.
[I'd like to keep it isolated from 1Tim.]
Excommunication, shunning, exile, a ritual involving any of these all seem possible but I can't see a role for Satan in those.
Literally it seems to quite starkly order death, what else could 'destruction of the flesh' mean?
But that seems a little extreme for such that receives so little atttention in Paul, I would expect ordering a murder to warrant some justification.
Comment?

GakuseiDon

Remember though that Paul is a Christian, and Christians simply wouldn't order someone killed for going against God's laws. :angel:

The whole context of that passage is interesting:

1 Cor 5:1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even *named among the Gentiles--that a man has his father's wife! 2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. 3 For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord *Jesus.

6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed *for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner--not even to eat with such a person.
12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? 13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away from yourselves the evil person."*

The last is a reference to Deu 17:7, which does indeed talk about killing the evil-doer. So I guess that you have a prima facie case there that Paul means that such a person should be killed.

In that context, I'm not sure what "deliver over to Satan" means. Withdraw the protection of the church? Hand over to the government? Ritualized killing? Whichever it is, Paul is hoping that it leads to the salvation of the spirit "in the day of the Lord Jesus". Perhaps a ritualized death leads to possible salvation? The Romans in the Second Century certainly thought that Christians practised ritual human sacrifice, so perhaps this is evidence for it.

Clivedurdle

But I see xianity as a Greek Jewish pagan cult! And I agree that many people believed - and still believe God is historical. Muslims definitely believe Allah exists for example. Xians believe God and Jesus are real or historical.

But that does not make Hercules or Jesus or Zeus real in the same sense as Augustus.

Please explain again your thinking - this is the root of the matter.

LGM

He would if he was created in the Christian god's image.

GakuseiDon

If Xianity was a Greek influenced Jewish pagan cult, and the pagans thought that their gods had a genesis on earth, would that be evidence for or against a historical Jesus IYO?

In the Second Century, the Christian apologists attacked pagan beliefs about their gods. They thought that many pagans who placed the stories of their gods on earth actually believed their gods lived and died on earth. Many of the apologists were trained in pagan philosophy -- it seems a strange omission to ignore a pagan belief of gods living and dying in a "spiritual realm".

I suspect that if Paul believed as Doherty claims, the pagans of the time would have pulled a Gary Coleman: "Jesus was crucified where? Watchya talkin' bout, Paulus!" Or if the pagans believed as Doherty claims, the Second Century apologists would have pulled a Pauline Hanson: "Please exPLAIN!"

(ETA) You know, most people here have probably read Justin Martyr's comment, which goes along the lines "We propound nothing new or different about Jesus than you guys do about the sons of Jupiter". It's a favorite with mythicists. But there are implications there about what Justin thought about pagan beliefs which I suggest don't support the "gods living and dying in a spiritual realm" concept.

Clivedurdle

God walked in the garden in the cool of the evening. The children of Israel followed the cloud by day and the fire by night. In those days the sons of god had intercourse with the daughters of Adam. Satan spoke to Jesus in the desert.

I do not understand your point.

GakuseiDon

I don't understand what you are talking about, I'm afraid. :huh:

Gregg

But, G'Don, you now have to explain why the pagans did not question why they should believe that an obscure Jewish rabbi they never heard of, who apparently never said or did anything worthwhile before getting himself recently crucified as an enemy of the State, was really the Word incarnate and the savior of the world.

Keep in mind that even if the pagan cultists believed that their gods had committed their sacrificial acts on Earth, it was in some distant and mythic past. They weren't claiming the events had happened just a few years ago under a well-known Roman governor.

Allow me to use the Vikings again as an example. Whatever the origins of their beliefs about their gods, at some point all Vikings believed their gods had a divine origin, were ultimately spiritual beings (even if they had flesh-and-blood bodies after a fashion) and dwelt in Valhalla, the Viking heaven. These gods would eat, drink, fight, bleed, die, and come to life the next day to do it all over again.

Do you honestly believe that 1st-century people would find the idea that heaven has several levels, that the closer you get to Earth the more "earthlike" the heavens get, that the lowest heaven is ruled by demons, and that a divine being of near-limitless power could descend to this lower heaven, take on human characteristics, and suffer and die at the hands of the demon rulers, that unbelievable? We know, from the Ascension of Isaiah, that some of them did believe things almost exactly like this. (And since there are copies of the Ascension that do not include the birth narrative, it's likely that was a later addition.) Do you think they would make THAT big a distinction between a god making a sacrifice in a distant, mythical past on Earth, and a god making a sacrifice in heaven?

You accuse mythicists of applying modern concepts of "other dimensions" to ancient people. Again, I urge you to put the word "dimension" and all those quantum-physics concepts it implies out of your mind. It is you who are applying modern thinking to ancient people, if you think they would regard as crazy a man who said his god was sacrificed in the lower heavens, if you think they would be saying things like "Look up there, Paul! It's just empty air and a bunch of clouds! There's nothing to eat or drink, nothing to stand on, no place to sit, and certainly no place to be stuck on a stake and then buried!" (They ridiculed the crucifixion, true, but not for the reasons you have them ridiculing it.)

It isn't until Mark and some of the other gospels are written that we have any inkling of people ridiculing Christianity on the basis that they worshiped a crucified criminal as a god. There is no hint that Paul or any other of the early Christians had to defend their faith from this accusation. Again, why did not Christianity's earlier detractors attack the faith on this basis?

What you seem to want is some examples of other people believing exactly, precisely, what we say Paul and the early Christians believed. It isn't enough for us to say, "Well, we know ancient people believed this, and this, and this, and this, so is THIS really a stretch?"

You know, I'm not even trying to convince you that the mythicist case is correct-- I'd just be thrilled if you admitted that, with all the crazy things we know without a doubt 1st century people believed in, it is not that implausible that Paul might have believed what we say he believed. Especially when that is not all there is to our argument--we're not just saying, "Other people back then believed all this stuff, so why couldn't Paul believe this thing?" We provide other evidence that may not "prove" like a smoking gun that Paul believed what we say he believed, but does make it plausible, perhaps even, dare I say it, reasonable, to think that he may have believed what we say he believed.

Clivedurdle

Quite simple, the Bible is full of stories of gods interacting with humans. When did any of these stories correspond with reality, especially ones of gods being born of virgins and resurrecting.

I see an evolution of god stories - christ started as a heavenly god - not sure if spiritual is a useful word to describe a cosmology in which heaven and earth are both assumed to be true, (and heaven more real than this shadowland) and later stories humanise this god by making up stories of him on earth, like killing a child who bumps into him. If we are discussing this Jesus we really should include all the stories about him, not leave half of the stories out because they are not in one version of the fairy tales.

Gregg

This is where I just can't figure you out, G'Don. You insist that we're applying our interdimensional, quantum-physics, Twilight-Zoned thought processes to ancient people because we use terms like "spiritual dimension" and "spiritual realm." Perhaps these terms do not precisely define how the ancients saw those "places where the gods and spirits lived," but we are just trying to explain their thinking in a way modern people can grok. It's completely undeniable that ancient peoples of all cultures populated the heavens, even the air they breathed and the trees. rocks, waters, and animals about them with invisible gods and spirits, imps and sprites and cherubs. They envisioned vast pantheons of gods and vast choirs of singing angels up in the sky amongst the clouds. They envisioned mighty, brawny gods with battleaxes eating, drinking, fighting, dying, up on some rainbow bridge in the sky. Yet you think people would make fun of Paul for believing something that is actually pretty mild by comparison with a lot of other ancient beliefs, that a god could descend to the lowest heaven, take on the likeness of a human being, and be killed by demon spirits.