Gamera

To reach this result, you must redact the current Pauline corpus and assume interpolations and forgery. I'm simply not going there with you. The corpus we have mentions Jesus as living person who was crucified by Pilate in Jerusalem and who was the Son of God and in some sense God himself.

But of course even assuming your position, my point remains. If Paul depicted Jesus as some kind of ethereal somebody not related to the Jesus Peter and James knew, you would think that Peter and James might have disagreed with him on that and sent out a little memo on the matter, such as "Guys, don't listen to Paul -- he thinks the Jesus we knew wasn't the messiah, but that some other Jesus was, so on'tday istenlay aulpay

Gamera

This is off topic and I've given my best shot elsewhere. There's other issues in Christianity beside this particular one, Johnny. Move on.

Diogenes the Cynic

No it doesn't. Where is Pilate in the Pauline corpus (I'm sure you know that 1 Timothy is inauthentic)? Where is the empty tomb? Where is any indication of a physical resurrection? It's not even clear that Paul understands Jesus as a historical figure at all. Even if the authentic corpus is accepted as unredacted, there is still no claim of a physical resurrection resembling the claims of the Gospels.
This is some sort of weird strawman. Arguing that Paul's Jesus was not the one known to the Pillars is assuming facts not in evidence. How do you know that the Pillars didn't view Jesus exactly the same as Paul did? There is no evidentiary basis for your assumption that Peter and James would have disagreed with Paul, and this would still hold true even if there was an HJ.

In point of fact, I haven't argued that Paul necessarily believed in a purely ethereal figure, I've only argued that he does not ever say that Jesus was physically raised from the dead. He said Jesus appeared to people after the crucifixion. That's a much more ambiguous claim, especially since he draws no distinction between Jesus' "appearances" to the disciples and his own visionary experiences.

Theoretically, a Historical Jesus could have been crucified, some of his followers could have had visions of him after his death, and Paul could have had similar visions. In that scenario, The Pauline corpus would not contradict the the Jerusalem group at all.

To put it simply, there is no basis for any assumption that the Pillars themselves believed in a physical resurrection. We don't know what they believed. They left no writings. Paul is the only source we have with even secondary value and Paul doesn't say they believed in a physical resurrection. He actually doesn't tell us much about them at all that's very useful. We can't really tell what their relationship was to Jesus or how they perceived him or even if they thought he was a historical person (Yes, he calls James "the brother of the Lord," but it's far from a lead pipe cinch that he was denoting a literal blood relationship).

Clivedurdle

You are assuming with "in some sense God" a classic hybrid or mythical beast. Why should anyone assume, with the non existence anywhere of these conjoined supernatural natural beasties the existence of this one?

Interestingly this thread seems to come to the conclusion that if Peter and James accepted Paul's teachings, they were happy with a gnostic Christ in heaven!

Doug Shaver

First, it's a circular argument. It assumes the occurrence of events that could have been witnessed.

Second, it makes additional unsupported assumptions about the extent and nature of the scrutiny that the gospels would have gotten shortly after they were written.

Gamera

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic;3834959]Like I say, to reach your result you must redact and edit. I'm not going there. We have a corpus of works which are Pauline. I refer to them and their conception of Jesus.

We know that the pillars didn't object or rather have no evidence of such objections. So it appears the pillars, who must have read Paul, agreed with his characterization of Jesus.

Well, you did so through redaction. But in any case, the pillars didn't object to his claims, so they didn't see his characterization of Jesus as incompatible with theirs. And they should know.

It's six of one half a dozen of the other from my perspective.

Unless the pillars where totally cut off from the oral traditions and mss that become the gospels, this seems impossibly ornate.

Gamera

[QUOTE=Clivedurdle;3836512]No, I'm asserting that apodictic statements about God are not really meaningful and it shouldn't surprise us that statements about Jesus' diviinity are ill defined. There is very little one can say about an infinite diety that makes much sense.

I would reach the opposite conclusion, since Paul clearly rejects every major element of gnosticism.