jjramsey

No, it is an omission of something that would disrupt the rhetorical flow and would not tell the Corinthians something that they didn't already know. Paul's omission does not, as you say, "invite confusion."

And judging from the record that we have, the established meaning of kata sarka was not "in the realm of fleshly spirits." Whatever you think kata sarka meant when Paul wrote it, it is clear that later Christians who came shortly after Paul assigned a very different meaning to kata sarka than you do, and one that is not far off other known uses of kata sarka in non-Christian literature. If Paul had used kata sarka to mean "in the realm of fleshly spirits," then he had used a phrase that was very easy to misunderstand.

Ah, but the problem is that this isn't quite what Paul does. He also writes, in verse 15:45, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam (became) a life-giving spirit." You label this as a mistranslation, but "soul," though, is the correct translation here, since the word it is translating is psuche. If Paul is primarily contrasting the solid and physical with the spiritual and ethereal, then he has hopelessly muddied matters by contrasting "soul" and "spirit," since neither one is solid stuff. If his point is to contrast the corruptible with the incorruptible, then the solidity or lack of same is beside the point.

The problem is that 15:44-49 does not contradict it, as you think it does. It simply doesn't discuss it at all. Your argument here,

is problematic. If you are trying to indicate that ginomai implies that Christ was always "a life-giving spirit," then you are putting more weight on ginomai than it can bear. If you are not doing that, then your argument is irrelevant, since it does not rule out Christ having had a physical human body before later becoming a "a life-giving spirit." There is nothing in the passage to "unring the bell," so to speak, that was rung by Paul invoking the firstfruits metaphor earlier. Jesus' own resurrection is not discussed here, but considering that Paul already mentioned it at the beginning of chapter 15, such a silence is underwhelming.

dongiovanni1976x

Amen. I completely understand. Here is a question that troubles me a bit though: Although retrojecting our own predispositions upon alleged historical events is inevitable and those are only intensified when such events pertain to ones political and religious beliefs, what is the major obstacle preventing a non-Christian from being “more” objective than his Christian counterpart when analyzing and weighing the pros and cons of a HJ or a MJ? Is it just personal pride? I am doing my best to truly not hold any biases but I don’t see what is so compelling about the MJ position that puts it on par with the traditional HJ position. (I will attempt to elaborate on this in response to your other questions below)

What do you mean by ‘“crib” from the past in order to show the past’?
The commonality of the name is what makes it inconspicuous- it was insignificant. Jesus was a common name for Hebrews of the period. This in and of itself is inconspicuous. It is a name of no real significance because of its commonality. If I had to venture a guess and determine what would make people believe in some powerful healer I would assume that a more majestic and less common name would be used, yet all the sources to this Jesus share this common name.
Matthew has an angel instruct Joseph to name his illegitimate child, Emmanuel in verse 23 of the first chapter but just two verses later they call him “Jesus” a far more common name.
The Nazorean reference you refer to only adds more credibility to the HJ position. Why do Luke and Matthew differ on explaining why this child was born in Bethlehem when they seem to know that their audience knew he was from Nazareth?
In Luke, Mary and Joseph leave to go to Bethlehem because of an unheard of and never recorded worldwide Roman census and return to their home about a month or so later (2:39; ref to the law in Leviticus 12). Matthew essential agrees with the census but seems to imply that Bethlehem is where they were from initially. The wise men find Jesus in a “house” not a manger or a cave (2:11), Herod orders the slaughter of the innocents- those children two and under (indicating that Jesus was significantly old enough to warrant children up to two years of age) and after Joseph fled to Egypt and is informed that he can return home (i.e. presumably Bethlehem) he decides against it because Archelaus, Herod’s son, is ruling there and decides instead to go to Galilee in a town called Nazareth.
Thus the embarrassing nature of these conflicting accounts seems to demonstrate that Jesus was known as a resident of Nazareth but that the early followers of the Jesus movement needed to explain how it is that he fulfilled the scriptures as coming from the root of Jesse- i.e. being from Bethlehem.
I grant that these stories could have been inventions by two unrelated authors to fulfill something about an mythical figure. But unless I am have a reason to posit such an idea it seems historically sound to assume that this person was historical.
I just meant that extra-Biblical sources demonstrate that Pilate was a real person and Roman crucifixion was a real Roman practice that was rather embarrassing to the victim- especially one who was to be revered. The fact that such an event is reportedly to have had happened to this Jesus person only lends more embarrassing credibility to the concept of a HJ versus an entirely fabricated one.
The same way we date other ancient texts and with the same rate of reliability. Much of it is speculative but it is safe to argue that the majority of experts on the subject conclude that 52-64 cover the writings of Paul, 65-75 is a good date for Mark, 80-90 for Matthew and Luke and 90-110 for John.
What are the best arguments against the traditional dating of these texts and how strong are they in your opinion?
I do not understand why if the man admits to persecuting the followers of Jesus we can’t use this as a fulcrum from which to fix a date on the man. That is unless you already are assuming that Jesus was not a man to begin with and retroject his “followers” to an early age. But what reason would you have to posit this? Here is yet another example where Occam’s razor can be applied- Why posit this additional assumption in the first place?
I agree. I just think that it requires more assumptions based upon “we don’t know for sure” scenarios and therefore the more plausible explanation was that Jesus was a real man, crucified for sedition, was believed to have been raised from the dead, caused a devout Jew to question the veracity of the circulating claims and felt he had a special mission himself. It is not a hard story to swallow but the MJ version, though entire coherent, seems to take just a few more gulps to get it all the way done.

spin

I seem to be having repeated conversations today.
(I have found some scholars actively trying to subvert their own tendencies to retroject, trying to work against them.)

Ultimately there is no difference. A scholar works with methodology and it is what leads to the results. A scholar abandons positions that don't reflect the evidence. It may be possible that a non-religious scholar may be less biased than a religious scholar, but what happens if that non-religious scholar has ulterior motives?

I have seen nothing historical in any sense about the historical Jesus. I only see implications of the existence of a group of believers whose beliefs need to be conttended with.

It's the ugly dirty process in the trenches with the ancient literature trying to decide what is what the text said and what is what has been put on the text. If you can eke out the text you have a historical datum. In dealing with christian and Jewish literature we have been told for so long what it means that we have to circumvent that education wherever we can.

A name doesn't lose its significance just because it is common. The name Jesus is heavy with implications. Not the least being that it was the name of the person who according to the bible led the Jews to the promised land. However, the name means "Yah saves" and naturally Jesus came into the world to save. But more, one of the prophecies used about Jesus in Mt 2:23 is based on a reference to Jdg 13:5,7, which talks of an earlier saviour, Samson, who would be a nazirite all his life (church fathers seemed to frequently confuse nazirite with nazarene) and who would save Israel.

This logic doesn't seem to help us at all, being modern rationalisation, isn't it?

It's not a part of the original gospel tradition, at least going on the fact that it's not in Matt's major source, Mark, and Luke shows no interest in the Isaiah reference, which of course has nothing to do with Jesus and is based on a misunderstanding of the original text.

I have argued here that Nazareth is not original to the gospel but is one of the latest strata of the gospel tradition. (Try a search of the archives.) Nazara is an earlier version of an attempted name for a hometown of Jesus, but then Marcion doesn't know it: he believed that Jesus came down (from heaven) to Capernaum, the town that Mark thinks is the hometown of Jesus. Nazara of course didn't exist but was a back-formation from nazarhnos, a term found four times in Mark, but was so puzzling to Matt that it was left out, only to have another form of it reinserted later, nazwraios.

Matthew knows nothing about Nazareth initially. Joseph's home town was Bethlehem, where he had his house and where he took in Mary to hide her from the world and where the baby was born. No, Matt certainly does not agree with Luke.

Crap. You are confusing Matt and Luke, as has been done for centuries.

Nazara. As you see the two stories are completely different. Luke has an idyllic story of Jesus when he was old enough being presented in the temple. Matt has them hiding out in Egypt at that time, in order to fulfill a prophecy.

Oh, gawd, not the silly embarrassment rubbish. What embarrasses some people doesn't embarrass others. This line of thought is pure modern retrojection.

It should be obvious that at least one is wrong. Starrt from there. We have different communities with their different stories. Paul tells us that there were different gospels circulating. Perhaps he's right. The infancy stories are prime evidence of the sort of thing.

The stories about Robin Hood mention King Richard and his brother John. So what? You're repeating the conventional junk at the moment.

Gosh, we've got the crystal ball out today. This stuff is all out of a hat. The earliest secure reference to a gospel is the one that Marcion was supposed to have bowdlerized of Luke, which means that the gospel of Luke has some affinities to the one that Marcion was hawking in the eyes of Irenaeus.

There are no tangible arguments for the datings.

There seems to be a little too much reading of Acts into Paul's statements.

If one starts with assuming Jesus, then you base your conclusions on the assumption. You cannot assume Jesus when there is no direct historical evidence for the figure. You start with what you know, not from what you don't know. That leads to meaninglessness.

Do you have problems positing that Zeus was a real person who walked the earth, conning young women into having sex with him through various ruses?

I find I'm being shod into taking a MJ position, but what's this rubbish about being crucified for sedition? Even the gospels claim that Pilate could find nothing wrong with Jesus. That's just rationalisation on the part of who thinks that. They want it to make sense so they fit it into some sense.

Do you find many people believed to have been raised from the dead in ancient literature?

Well, first you have to accept a fellow who reputedly raised others from the dfead and performed numerous miracles, but when it came time for him to shuffle off his mortal coil those people who apparently saw him do miracles conveniently forget, and all the sources agree on this. We know next to nothing about your real man other than that he went around doing unreal things. Now fine, if you want to arbitrarily pick and choose, ooh, I like that bit, but not this other one, then you can arbitrarily apply Occam's razor to those bits and happily forget about the rest. But we only have the literature and we don't know what that literature really is. I'm not prepared to be so arbitrary about it and decide that some bits suit my palate more than other bits.

I have to explain why the earliest gospel, Mark, has a section which is, against his usual style of little sections (mainly miracles and wonders) grouped into bigger ones, presents the passion as a single unified liturgical entity with a very strong oral component. Where is the history in this stuff?


I'd rather sit on the fence and leave all the rash decisions to others.


spin

jjramsey

More on the firstfruits metaphor of Paul....

"Firstfruits" is a reference to a harvest, and speaking of the firstfruits of the resurrection implies likening the general resurrection to a harvest, in this case, a harvest of human beings. The firstfruits of a grape harvest are grapes, and the firstfruits of a fig harvest are figs. It would follow, then, that the firstfruits of a harvest of human beings would be at least one human being. Hence, describing Christ as the firstfruits of the resurrection implies that he is human.

EarlDoherty

Assuming that this is something the Corinthians would already know is begging the question. That is the issue under debate, and nothing in this part of 1 Corinthians (or any part of it for that matter) indicates with any clarity that the Corinthians already know that Christ had a material body. The direct interpretation of 15:44-45 indicates that he did not, and your excuse that Paul doesn’t mention a necessary element simply because he didn’t want to break up a rhetorical flow is extremely weak.

It seems very difficult to get ideas across to certain people here, no matter how many times I repeat them. There was no “established meaning” of kata sarka in the sense of it always meaning the same thing. Paul’s varied usages of the phrase show that. And I keep repeating ad nauseum that I have never said that Paul used it to mean, literally, “in the realm of fleshly spirits.” It means “in regard to, in relation to” the realm of flesh (which extended from the moon to earth), which can encompass, in some cases, the nature or activities of demons and descending gods who inhabit or enter that realm. Any further objections from you which don’t recognize or understand the meaning I am actually giving this phrase, will be ignored.

I don’t know if you are basing this on my article excerpt, but you are misunderstanding what I say is a “mistranslation”. It is not “soul” but the “became”. The last Adam, Christ, did not “become” anything (see below). And in any case, “soul” is not the correct translation here of psuche because it is also used, as I pointed out, to refer to the life-force within a physical body; it is the essence of human life on earth, virtually synonymous with the concept of “ a living body”. So Paul is not contrasting soul and spirit, he is contrasting body and spirit, the physical and the spiritual. It only becomes muddled in your insistence on giving it a modern connotation of “soul” in a manner Paul doesn’t intend. And how could he, in an argument which is directly focused on physical bodies of humans becoming spiritual bodies? The “soul” in the modern sense (since it is not regarded as part of the body, but in essence a spiritual thing) would be meaningless and confusing in such a progression. And the fact that he never directly compares the alleged progression of Christ from psuche (as material body) to spirit, with that very progression in humans Paul is arguing for, can hardly be ‘explained’ by some appeal to rhetorical flow. Its usefulness would have far outweighed any such dubious reason for leaving it out.

I’m glad to see that you agree the question is entirely missing from this passage, even by implication. However, I maintain that my discussion illustrates that Paul’s dichotomy would simply not work if any presumption of Jesus previously in a human body lay in the background. In regard to that discussion you say that it,

You haven’t demonstrated that. I am not speaking of theoretical definitions of the verb, although virtually all of those imply origination, happening, be made or created, take place, even used as “born,” which certainly involves no previous state. But in the sense of turning from one thing into another, much less so. Rather, I am speaking of the sense of the passage. And that passage can indeed bear the weight of requiring a meaning of “always” having been a spirit.

Yes, it does rule it out, not by lexiconal definition, but by an analysis of the passage itself. You ignored my argument that being in parallel with the idea of Adam egeneto a living psuchen—which can hardly mean he turned into one from some previous state—that this invites the same meaning for the parallel statement about Christ, that he originated (like Adam “originated”) as a spirit, not that he was turned into one. But I can’t force you to see and accept my arguments, so I will leave it up to others to evaluate the issue for themselves. I may just leave off this endless back-and-forth discussion, and leave you with your insistence on “to-may-toe”. It’s taking up too much of my time.

And isn’t it funny that throughout the epistles and other early documentary record, so much of what orthodoxy wants to see in it is attainable only by a vast amount of indirect and often tortured argument as to what is “implied” or what would “follow” in all these passages. The direct route seems never to be taken.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

Geetarmoore

Yes. Exactly. That is why I so enjoy your hypothesis, Earl. It is Occams razor. It seems that the establishment is too eager to disregard what Paul actually wrote, in lieu of what he must have known, but decided not to write about. If we were just talking about Paul, it would be mysterious enough - but, there are also elements of several non Pauline epistles, and even writings of early apologists that seem to have this same idea of Jesus. It's just too much to apologize away - yet, they try.

Thanks for your contribution to these threads.

jjramsey

The point, though, is that if the Corinthians did know, he needn't have bothered to state it. Paul was appealing to Jesus' resurrection as a common ground between himself and the Corinthians.

No, it indicates nothing of the sort. ginomai doesn't have the force needed to get 15:45 to say what you want it to say.

The problem is that this element isn't necessary to mention. The Corinthians already knew of Jesus' resurrection, so he didn't need to discuss it in detail. Also, the hint from Paul's use of the firstfruits metaphor and the typical meaning of "resurrection" would itself imply that Christ had a body.

Very well, then. The fundamental problem is the same. If you are contending that kata sarka means "'in regard to, in relation to' the realm of flesh (which extended from the moon to earth)," then you are contending that kata sarka means "in regard to, in relation to the sublunar realm," since the sublunar realm is the realm that extended from the moon to earth. kata sarka, then, is still regarded by you as a reference to a region of space, in this case, between the earth and the lunar sphere, rather than a reference to flesh itself. Yet you have no evidence that kata sarka was used this way.

If Paul is not contrasting soul and spirit, then it is awfully strange that he is pitting those two terms in a contrasting parallel.

I didn't ignore your argument at all. I am not arguing that 1 Cor. 15:45 itself implies that Jesus changed state, only that it does not rule out that Jesus changed state, which makes your point about Adam not having changed state irrelevant. The change of state is implied (elsewhere) simply by describing Jesus as having been resurrected, which is a change of state in itself.

It is you who is trying to make verse 15:45 say that Jesus did not have a material body, when the mere statement that Jesus was resurrected implies that he did. It is you who is underplaying the force of "firstfruits." It is you who is trying to read a reference to the sublunar realm into kata sarka when the phrase has no history of such an implication and Paul doesn't so much as even mention spheres. It is you who elides over the difference between "brother of" and "brother into," writes "Christ had to be 'of David’s stock'" while ignoring the implications of what that means, misuses C.K. Bartlett ... Shall I go on? Talk about "indirect and often tortured argument"!

Clivedurdle

This is the historical jesus who changed state to resurrected we are discussing is it?

jjramsey

Not quite. For example, just because Paul believed that Jesus was of David's stock doesn't mean that the HJ really was of David's stock. However, a prerequisite for being David's stock is being human, so for Paul to believe that Jesus was of David's stock implies that he believed that Jesus was human. Similarly, to be resurrected implies that one had to be able to have a body that could be brought back to life. Since Paul had to have believed that Jesus had resurrected, that implies that he believed that Jesus had a body.

Of course, in and of itself, this establishes what Paul believed. The next question is what is the most parsimonious explanation for why Paul believed it, which for various reasons that I think I've mentioned elsewhere, leads to an HJ.

Ted Hoffman

jjramsey, every time you repeat the claim that "the Corinthians already knew", you need to be attentive to the fact that you should demonstrate that "they already knew".
You have repeatedly been asked what you would consider "evidence". This is an interpretation. What "evidence" do you have that kata sarka was used any other way? Carrier has considered Doherty's interpretation and the orthodox interpretation and ruled the latter as "barely intelligible".
Neither does it have the force needed for it to say what you want it to say. Paul is clearly stating the difference between a natural and a spiritual body. An ambiguous reference to Christ's appearance on earth is also present in Galatians.
Ernest De Witt Burton writes regarding Gal 4:4:
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 1st Ed., 1968 reprint, p.217-218.