Amaleq13

The following was written in response to the original version of the above post which was subsequently reworded while I was responding and I'm too lazy to make any changes .

Who were the Jewish Christians opposing Paul's gospel?

If Paul's "silence" is understood in the context of Doherty's specific argument, it goes well beyond a simple failure to mention so I really don't find any other explanation than the two I mentioned to be credible. Complete ignorance or willful avoidance seem to me to be the only plausible reasons for the way he wrote his letters.

I'm not sure they would have to know what he was doing to make deliberate avoidance a wise move. Any mention of the life of Jesus would invite uncomfortable questions, would it not? Incidently, what you propose here seems to me to make it easier to accept a non-existent HJ. After all, you appear to be suggesting an audience that was unaware of a living Jesus and that such knowledge was entirely unnecessary to accepting Paul's gospel.

I find it difficult to comprehend how anyone could know of a living Jesus but not know that he was the leader of a group of disciples. That seems to bring us back to an innocuous Jesus who would not have obtained any such following.

I assume every man would prefer a message that did not include the requirement of circumcision. If Paul's gospel had nothing to do with the HJ and the Pillars gospel offered nothing different, is the only reason to look for one to obtain an explanation for the original inspiration of the idea? If you don't need one to accept the gospel, why would you need one to create it?

spin

There is no historical jesus detail in the gospels. The gospels have not been shown to yield historical data, especially as they can be shown to yield unhistorical data: who could witness Jesus's temptation? who could witness Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane? how did Peter recognize the other two figures in the transfiguration? how could the birth narratives be so much in conflict? These questions and many more don't allow you to assume that the narrative bore any idea of history, as they clearly point to ahistorical materials. This doesn't mean that there wasn't any, but that the reader has no perspective from which to judge any historicity whatsoever -- and all that historical jesus stuff is just man-handling: how does one test one's presuppositions as to what is historical without having any confirmed historical data?


spin

TedM

Good points, spin. How to separate one story as more likely to be historical than another without external corroberation is the question. It comes down to arguments based on human nature and various forms of internal analysis and some indirect external analysis, I think, but those requiring 100% certainly will never be satisfied.

ted

TedM

Sorry about that, Amaleq13. I realized that I could answer your questions much more directly, so replaced the post with the one that is there now.


Hard to say, but we don't know that it was the pillars and we don't know to what extent any others were influenced by the pillars. What is reasonable though to conclude is that whoever it was was against Paul's conception of how salvation applied to Gentiles.


I"m working on Doherty's top 20 some, but as mentioned in this thread I think we have to always keep Paul's context in mind: He is talking about salvation for the Gentiles, a subject that very possibly Jesus never addressed, as evidenced by an apparant unawareness of it by the pillars. His letters are not biographies, so we have to ask whether certain mentions should be expected by Paul or not, and if not is that evidence against a historical Jesus or is it evidence against a particular kind of historical Jesus.


I think I agree, although I don't know what uncomfortable questions you have in mind that would come up other than perhaps Paul having to say Jesus never addressed a particular issue.. Paul had to appeal to scripture for the message of salvation through faith for Gentiles.


It is curious, but it is entirely possible that they did know, but Paul saw no need to appeal to the issue for his followers to follor Paul's gospel. Again it would help to examine passages where Paul might be expected to mention such disciples. We have 'the pillars' and 'the twelve', but we are missing a description of how they got those names. That's the missing link. Should we expect Paul to have given an explanation of that just as much as we might expect him to have mentioned that they were disciples of the earthly Jesus? I think we should.


Good questions. We don't know that they did or didn't need one to accept it because all we have are Pauls gospels, written some 15+ years after Paul's conversion, and after Paul had visitied those churches. We don't know for sure if they would have accepted Paul's Jesus as Doherty describes him because we don't know that that was Paul's full presentation. I do think the question of what would explain the original inspiration of the idea such that others would embrace it is a great question. It is hard for me to conceive of the movement as taking off among the Jews without a real person and with a 'revealed' death by crucifixion in some other time or sphere behind its beginning, but I may lack proper imagination

ted

spin

I think those who require historical responsibility will certainly not be satisfied with less. "[A]rguments based on human nature and various forms of internal analysis and some indirect external analysis" give you no way of separating history from non-history. In the past it was simply assumed that biblical narrative was historical, so a lot of half-baked histories have been written by religionists. In the scholarly world today, some of this has been pealed off and we no longer accept patriarchal stories or exodus and conquest stories as historical. Even the so-called unified kingdom has no historical foundations whatsoever and the kingdom of Judah doesn't raise its head until the first tributes to Assyria are paid. "[A]rguments based on human nature and various forms of internal analysis and some indirect external analysis" are no substitute for historical analysis based on good methodology. (If you don't agree, let's see how your criteria work on the book of Judith.)

And note that I did not give you the task of "[h]ow to separate one story as more likely to be historical than another", but of "deciding whether a text which has clearly non-historical materials has anything in its core narrative which actually is historical. My approach is to put those things which can be placed neither in the historical arena nor in the historical waste bin on the shelf until better evidence comes along, if it ever does.


spin

TedM

I meant we have no evidence of a variety of different Jesus portrayals prior to Jesus' alleged lifetime. This is interesting to me. If there were all of these Jesus conceptions floating around, where are the writings that specifically talk about Jesus prior to around 30AD? No one claims that Q or the Didache are pre-Jesus, right? Any writings on Wisdom or Logos or the Son of man don't qualify becuase none of them name Jesus. Are we to assume that Mark knew all of the various Jesus traditions that were out there when he picked the time frame for Jesus' lifetime? If he was so ignorant of Palestine geography, should we expect him to have known that there wasn't a Q or Logos document somewhere in Egypt or Syria that talks about a totally different Jesus? IF we assume Q was early, as you say some scholars believe, then why is it still after the year of the alleged crucifixion?

To me the reasonable answer is this: Jesus traditions--those attributed to someone named 'Jesus' didn't begin until after the time traditional Christianity places Jesus in history. As such, something brand new had to happen to suddenly put the name of "JESUS" out there so that sayings in Q are suddenly applied to him, the "Son of man" of Daniel is suddenly attributed to him, and Paul is referencing him. What I'm saying is that these varieties of attributes appear to be given to a person or being named "Jesus" all within a generation or so. This argues against the idea that existing variety of Jesus traditions evolved over a hundred or two hundred years. What suddenly made Jesus be named?

Let's say that Q just came from an idea, real early. Isn't it just as curious that Paul was silent about those Q sayings and deeds by an earthly Jesus? And, if Q really didn't come about until say 50-60AD, isn't that too late to claim it is evidence that there never was a Jesus who said those things 20-30 years prior since someone may have just decided to put wisdom sayings in Jesus' mouth?

Maybe I'm not seeing how Q helps your case. Please elaborate.


It's hard to know what Paul is referring to, but I think it could still have to do with Gentile salvation. What Jesus is Paul preaching? It could be answered many ways--a righteous man, the Lord who saves, the resurrected son of God, the returning Messiah, etc.. It could also be the Lord who saves Gentiles through faith. Those that preach "another Jesus" might be those who say that he is "the Lord who saves Gentiles through committment to Jewish laws and customs". I think the phrase is sufficiently ambigious to be unable to say whether it is referring to something 'much larger' than circumcision. This was BIG, BIG, issue as it was.


I have to review 2 Cor more, but from what I see it is full of Paul defending his authority and his sincerity by appealing to how much he has suffered for his faith. It doesn't speak a lot about what the issue of difference was. However, he does say of his accusers "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I." It appears he is defending himself against Jewish Christians. A possible area of doctrinal dispute is in Chapter 3. Paul talks about the new covenant, beginning with another defense of his authority: verse 6 "our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life."..verses 12-15 seem key: (Young's) "12Having, then, such hope, we use much freedom of speech, 13and [are] not as Moses, who was putting a vail upon his own face, for the sons of Israel not stedfastly to look to the end of that which is being made useless, 14but their minds were hardened, for unto this day the same vail at the reading of the Old Covenant doth remain unwithdrawn -- which in Christ is being made useless -- 15but till to-day, when Moses is read, a vail upon their heart doth lie, [/quote]

It appears to me that Paul is defending against those who claim the Law of Moses remains even after Christ has come, but I agree that he isn't driving home what the differences are as clearly as he does in Galations.

I think he probably didn't preach to the Gentiles. Paul says he was a 'servant to the Jews'. I don't think this weakens a historical Jesus argument, though.

It's time for bed. I'll continue tomorrow.

ted

TedM

Well, this is the imagination thread, so your approach won't work here I would argue that your criteria is so strict it wouldn't even work in a courtroom, just a science lab. That's fine if you prefer that approach. I'm just trying to work with what we've got and recognize that it's full of all kinds of traps--so much so that maybe it won't lead to likely truths at all...

ted

Amaleq13

We know that Paul referred to them having a reputation. We know that Paul referred to them as being the first to preach about a risen Christ. How does such a reputation develop without them becoming known? How does such a belief system spread without the identity of the man who first made the claim becoming known?

If Paul was deliberately avoiding any mention of the living Jesus, any question would be uncomfortable.

What appeal does he make for the message of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ? What appeal does he make for the message of Christ taking on the appearance of flesh so as to be sacrificed?

Off the top of my head, the only reference I can think of that would have been to his advantage would be to mention their failure to understand the teachings of Jesus and, even more advantageous to him, Peter's denial of Jesus. How about mentioning that his brother originally thought he was crazy?

There is no real comparison between titles that are mentioned but not explained and roles that are not mentioned or even implied. This is especially true if the latter presented a very real threat to Paul's desire for equal authority. If that is true, then neither title offered any similar threat. The former would refer to nothing more than the fact they started the movement while the latter would refer to nothing more than representatives of the 12 tribes.

I agree that it is very difficult for anyone in the 21st century to imagine such a notion being accepted. Even setting aside the thoroughness with which most of us have been inundated with the Gospel story, we think of things as either "really" happening at some specific time and place or not. I'm not sure our 1st century ancestors thought that way, though.

spin

Apparently you aren't interested in history at all, otherwise you would understand the sorts of analyses that are actually used in doing history.

Lack of functional methodology leads one to use overdrawn analogies such as courtrooms and science labs. Try reading some historiography.

Knock off with the cliches. "[L]ikely truths" means nothing in this context. Working with what you've got is what everyone does and it should lead you to one of three outcomes: historically supported, historically negated, or insufficient historical data. Truth, whatever that may mean to you, is not the issue, but whether something happened or it didn't. If you haven't got the evidence, and you don't, you can't carry on as though you had, because of your commitments. Crap about human nature is smoke. Much fiction is attempting to deal with human nature, is internally coherent and often makes reference to external information.


spin

TedM

Given Messiah mania, I think it is quite possible that it would only take a couple of incidents and perhaps a claim to be ushering in the kingdom of God to attract attention. I think he got crucified for the temple incident. You asked elsewhere how the disciples could have been taken in with so few incidents, or something to that effect. I think if Jesus had a magnetic personality it only would take a few incidents and some basic teachings to attract a small group of followers, who may have wondered if he was the Messiah or not. Why couldn't the pillars have once been doubters?


There is a very simple answer to this issue: Those that wrote Q had a different idea about what was important about their Jesus than Paul did. That doesnt' mean that they completely created this Jesus or that Paul created his Jesus. If that were the case, why would they be created at virtually the same time in history? It doesn't make any sense. It makes a lot more sense to conclude that they both were projecting their beliefs about what was important about a real person than somehow independantly creating an 'ideal' Jesus out of different philosophies. How do you make sense of this--spontaneous evolution?



Actually, off the top of my head I am only aware of one place where he sort-of defines what makes someone an apostle: 1 Cor 9:1 "am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not see Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord?" If the pillars had met the same criteria as Paul, why does it seem that Paul 'protests too much', and why does Paul need to lay his gospel before them privately, after 14 years of his preaching 'lest I be running in vein'? Why wouldn't he just stay as far away from them as possible since he had formerly persecuted the Jewish Christian church that so venerated the Pillars? The math isn't complicated to me: There was something more that Paul never explicitly says that gave them more authority. His criteria doesn't cover that attributed to the pillars.

The fact that Paul was attacked is evidence that his message was controversial but it appears that he personally was being attacked as an inferior apostle in 2 Cor. Why would that be? Maybe because Paul's criteria wasn't good enough for his attackers. I find it interesting that in 2 Cor Paul spends more time defending his status as a worthy apostle than in defending his position on doctrine. Though it is curious that he didn't answer a charge that others knew Jesus personally, it is equally curious that he didn't describe ANY charge against his status as an apostle, as far as I've seen so far in my review of the book! It does seem like Paul does this deliberately--perhaps because he knows he can't match their claims to authority as eyewitnesses.

ted