jakejonesiv

Unless you are asserting that the resurrection of Jesus actually occurred, then it is a myth.

Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Thanks!

Chris Weimer

Actually, Jake, "myths", at least when Loren and I were hashing out the definitions a while back, could contain an actual event behind it. Myths, at least how I'm working with them (and there's no one single standard for these definitions) are stories unique to a certain culture which reflect the beliefs, thoughts, customs, and practices of that culture.

Then again, it's a very fuzzy boundary between myth and legend (and fairy tale, etc...). Loren Rossen and I went a round over this somewhere, but I cannot find it at the moment.

For the Jesus story, I think it falls better into legend myself, regardless of whether there is truth in it or not.

Amaleq13

The first and the third I think can be safely inferred from other parts of Paul's letters but the same cannot be said of the second. Guess which one I don't accept absent additional evidence?

Strike two on predicting my response. I would not argue that they were not real events but that we simply don't know if they were. I would also consider them truly analogous to what we have with Paul. I would be interested in whether you would obtain similar inferences from them.

Does he? Or is he simply assuming (unconsciously given a "genuine" vision) one based on a connection between Jesus' sacrifice and the Passover Lamb/Yom Kippur Goat? Either or both would easily lead to such an assumption, wouldn't they?

I've already suggested that Jesus was not just speaking to Paul but to his entire community and the entire Pauline corpus could benefit from more clarity on the part of the author so it seems a bit arbitrary to make anything of his ambiguity here.

I think I'm with you right up to the point where you assume there were people in the vision with Jesus. Paul doesn't tell us this and nowhere in his letters suggests that the living Jesus had companions/followers.

It requires a temporal juggling act and that was what I was explaining.

If Paul's "last supper" was derived from the Passover and/or Yom Kippur meals, would that help?

I'm still not clear on the difference between your apostolic meal tradition and the vision-based one Paul taught. Are imagining the meal tradition taught by the apostles to be something akin to what we have in the Didache and the symbology provided by Jesus in Paul's vision is original to Paul?

Patience, young Jedi.

TedM

Ok, gotcha. If 11 and 15 were interpolations, we still don't know that the interpolator knew of disciples from Mark, because he doesn't name them as disciples of Jesus on earth. Given their clear presence in Mark's account during the Last supper, their absence in 11 argues IMO against either 1. an interpolator being aware of them in the tradition or 2. an interpolator both being aware of them and wanting to acknowledge them. Both seem fairly unlikely, which means such an interpolation would most likely have occurred between Paul's writing and the knowledge of Mark's tradition. Seems like a pretty small window.

ted

Lógos Sokratikós

At long last. Thank you for the open minded attitude. The openness to some historicity behind the NT accounts doesn't signify a subscription to any supernatural beliefs, and is a brave stance IMO.

Ben C Smith

I said could, not would. But I think you would indeed plead for agnosticism in such a circumstance.

Even if all we had of ancient Christianity was the Pauline collection, I would posit Pauline knowledge of a last supper of some kind based on our passage. Guess you and I are destined to disagree on that one.

I think I would, depending on the language used.

Let me take one last run at the problem from a different perspective....

Some of it may come down to the matter of articles. Consider the following statement:

The statue Cristo Redentor stands atop a mountain called Corcovado.

In this statement knowledge of the statue seems to be presumed as information already known; the new information that I am really conveying is the location of that statue atop a mountain named Corcovado. Now let us reverse the conditions:

Atop the mountain Corcovado stands a statue, Cristo Redentor.

Now it looks like I am presuming the mountain in order to talk about a statue, as if I have already described the mountain itself and am now going into further detail for somebody unfamiliar with Rio.

I know we do not always press the articles in this way, often for stylistic reasons, but it gives us something to work with.

In our passage Paul says that it was on the night when Jesus was delivered up that Jesus took bread (no article, therefore indefinite, since Greek has no indefinite article), as if he is referring to a known night in order to share the new information about the bread. (This scenario is complicated by the fact that we know Paul has already shared this with the Corinthians, but since he is repeating what he shared the first time, the incidentals and the emphases still line up, I think; hope that is clear.)

Likewise, the supper looks like old information: In the same way, after the supping....

Just as when the little girl tells her mother that daddy told her what happened on the boat, and it turns out that the boat was indeed old information, so when Paul tells the Corinthians what happened on the night of the delivering up, during and after the supping, I think those elements are the old information in the passage. They are the assumed reference points.

Yes, something like that. The Didache meal has no explicit connection to the death of Jesus. I was suggesting that Paul turned a meal without such connections into a meal with such connections based on a personal revelation.

Ben.

Julian

Why would he need to if the gospels were generally available?
Their presence is implied, who else is Jesus talking to? Again, if the gospels were generally available why would he need a ton of detail?
I disagree, however, how much time does a forger need to jot down a few lines? A few hours? A few days? Certainly not years.

In case you are not familiar with this: http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html

Julian

jakejonesiv

Hi Chris,

Good point.
We should consider the term "allegory" also when discussing the gospel story, especially GMark.

Jake Jones

Ben C Smith

Funny how three verses can yield such diverse interpretations.

For Amaleq, the presence of companions is not at all implied in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25, and the passage is most likely genuine.

For Julian, the presence of companions is indeed implied in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25, and the passage is most likely an interpolation.

For me, the presence of companions is indeed implied in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25, and the passage is most likely genuine.

Where does your position fall in this fray, Ted?

Ben.