krosero

In 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11, Paul attests to the fact of visions other than his own, visions that preceded his. He could not learn of them except through human transmission. Barring divine knowledge, Paul could not learn from a personal vision that Kephas had seen the Lord. He had to learn it by a report from Kephas or someone else who knew. Doherty is therefore plainly incorrect when he states on p. 44 of The Jesus Puzzle that Paul's “received� in Corinthians must refer to visionary transmission like the one in Galatians 1:11-2 (where Paul says "I neither received it from any man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.") The Corinthians "received" must, rather, refer to human transmission, and may refer obliquely to Paul's confirmation of the creed in his own visions.

I say 'confirmation' because whatever Paul's personal vision contributed, the content was the same as that of which Paul says, “whether it be I or they, so we preach� (v.11): namely that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. How does Doherty propose that Paul’s “visionary� receipt of a part of the Corinthians creed came to match what others were preaching? It’s possible, even probable, that Paul simply was converted to claims about Christ that he had been persecuting. If so, we see that he learned of these claims from human transmission first. If he did not pick up these claims from his environment, he could not have received the claims in their essential form in a personal vision – or at least I don’t see how Doherty could say that he did. Rather, Paul claims that the creed he gave the Corinthians is what was preached by he and “they� – certainly a reference to other apostles, and probably an understood reference to the men named in the creed, that is, Kephas, James and the other unnamed apostles. The point is, there is nothing in Paul’s letters, as Doherty agrees, indicating a division among the apostles concerning more than the circumcision and dietary issues. Certainly in speaking to the Corinthians, it seems to be a given for Paul that the creed is not under dispute no matter who of the apostles preaches it to them.

In short, the whole Corinthians creed was received by human transmission. Whatever was seen or felt in a personal vision such as the one in Galatians – namely that Christ lived, and that God had sent him – merely corresponded to what Paul had heard from human contact. It did not contradict what other apostles said, and could therefore not have been anticipated in a personal vision.

If I might add something about Galatians: Paul is being truthful when he says that he received nothing essential from his meetings with the apostles in Jerusalem (Gal 2:6). He knew of the content of their creed already (if not before his conversion, then certainly before the Jerusalem meetings), and he was shown the truth of their creed at his own conversion, as well as in subsequent visions.

The latter point is key, for Paul attests to having many visions. Unless we suppose that he learned nothing in the post-conversion visions, and that he simply went over the same details that he had seen or felt at his conversion, we can presume that some of his message was attained in other visions. If we presume the fertility of the religious imagination, it's practically a given that the entirety of Paul's gospel, in all its details, was not contained at any single moment or any single period of his life. The "receiving" of the gospel which he refers to in Galatians was, therefore, not the entirety of his knowledge, in all its details. As noted, he learned that others had experienced visions, and he learned the content of their visions, from human transmission; and he must have learned many other things in his own later visions. His knowledge in Corinthians can easily come from others without a necessary contradiction from Galatians.

Aspirin99

If I understand your concern, you think that Doherty thinks that Paul learned that others had visions of Jesus through his own visions, and not by word of mouth? I went back and breezed though:

http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/supp06.htm

It seemed to me he was only saying that about the Gospel message, not more mundane oral transmissions. Did you have a specific quote? Or maybe I'm missing your point.

krosero

Certainly Doherty would never say that you could learn of other visions through your own vision. On the page you linked to, he mentions that impossibility, just as he mentions the illogic of Paul's saying that he learned in a personal revelation of Christ's first appearance to him, Paul.

But I did not write that Doherty believed the impossibility, or even that he overlooked its illogic. I wrote that he called the "receiving" in Corinthians a visionary one. On p. 44 of his book he says, "Paul's 'received' in 1 Corinthians 15:3 must mean 'received through revelation.' " He does not get into the problem that Paul has mentioned visions, experienced by others, as part of what he received. Clearly you don't learn about such things from your own personal vision. Talking that out problem, as I did, reveals not only the plain fact that you learn of such things from other people, but also that you can't anticipate the content of their visions unless you have a very similar religious experience. Paul's experience does seem to be similar to that of the apostles; nothing in Paul's text suggests that dying and rising were in dispute: but the rational reason for this is that Paul knew of the claims already through human transmission, when he was persecuting Christians. Doherty says on the linked page that perhaps "for our sins" was Paul's personal contribution; but that would be a huge contribution, not likely to receive lazy assent from other passionate disciples. As noted, what Paul reports in Corinthians seems to be a creed: an agreed-upon common statement.

So Doherty is in error when he says that the "received" in Corinthians "must mean" visionary revelation. He would have been on better ground if he had said that the dying, burial and rising came in a vision; but he says only that the "receiving" is visionary. The receiving can mean a vision, if anything was received in that way. But it's illogical to claim that Paul only received it that way. Surely Paul knew the claims he was persecuting. Surely he was converted to them on his own, and heard them later from the Jerusalem apostles -- who gave a blessing to his gospel, per Galatians 2:1-9.

Doherty tries in the linked essay to carryover the revelatory sense of "received" to cover the claims about dying and rising but not the appearances. And yet his own translation does not support this.

3 For I delivered to you, as of prime importance, what also I received:
that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
4 and that he was buried,
and that he has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures,
5 and that he was seen (ophthe) by Cephas, then by the twelve;
6 afterward he was seen by over 500 brothers at one time, most of whom
are still alive, though some have fallen asleep;
7 afterward he was seen by James, then by all the apostles;
8 last of all, as to one abnormally born, he was seen by me as well.

He notes that verse 5 begins with "and that", and he makes nothing of "and that" beginning verse 4 (which is the second claim in the list, and therefore naturally the first to be introduced with "and"). He says nothing about "and that" ending at verse 6, which uses "afterward." I have not studied the formation of this creed, but it looks very much like the agreed-upon creed stopped with the appearances to the Twelve. Everything after that, we know about only from Paul's letters. The appearance to 500 may have been a commonly agreed upon teaching, but it doesn't seem to be creed-like, certainly not when it starts to talk about brothers who have since fallen asleep; and it begins, as noted, with "afterwards," as if it were the first of Paul's supporting arguments or afterthoughts. Doherty tries to make a division between central claims and afterthoughts at v.5 without linguistic evidence.

And he speculates idly, as he concedes on the linked page, about Paul writing this letter carelessly. So Paul was being careless about one of the central teachings, in a letter where he was keenly aware of how sloppy the Corinthians were being in their understanding of his teachings. Right.

NOGO

I think that the doctrine received stops at verse 4. That is all the items that are claimed to be according to scriptures.

I do not think that the appearance to Cephas is "of prime importance"
If it were we should expect the Gospels to say the same but they do not.

I believe that Paul is not writing but dictating his letter to someone and this type of ambiguiety should be expected.

krosero

But the burial is not counted "according to the scriptures," which cautions against using the phrase as a marker between doctrine and additions. If a creed could include things not said explicitly to be in the Scriptures, then the appearances can be such things. A burial is implicit in a death-and-rising. If Jonah's deliverance from the whale was the resurrection, his 3 days in the belly was his burial. In the same way, rising back to life certainly implies being seen. Jonah was seen. If you're not seen by anyone, it would be more accurate to say that you stayed dead rather than returned to the land of the living.

Luke does say Christ has appeared to Simon, and he says it in such a way as to allow that the appearance to Simon might have been the first. John gives Peter an important role at the tomb. There are signs of the appearance to Kephas in the Gospels, though none of them treat it as of the same importance as the dying, burial and rising. The Gospels have their minds on their own things. Certainly the women at the tomb do not appear in the creed. If the Gospels could add things, could they also not diminish or even fail to mention other things? Personally I'm of the view that Peter was less important to Christianity as a whole in the time of the Gospels than he was when Paul lived. It had become a largely Gentile movement by then, and Paul's work was sowing fruit, while the Jerusalem church was destined not to flourish. At the very least, Peter was not that important to the authors of the Gospels (Luke certainly cared more about Paul, and John more about the beloved disciple).

This may come down to every person's call. It may depend on how careful, and what kind of person, you think Paul was. Yet I would think that Paul was very eager to get his own teachings explained clearly at any time, but especially if he thought they were being misunderstood or cast aside.

NOGO

The burial is not counted "according to scriptures" because Paul does not mean that there is a passage in scripture which has the Christ buried and nothing else. This piece goes with the rise the third day and therefore Paul is thinking about a passage which has Christ buried and risen after three days.

Still the point is that wherether it was Peter or anyone else who say him first all that Paul is trying to say is that Jesus resurrected. The proof is not part of the creed.

Perhaps, but I do not think that Paul envisaged this kind of argumentation on his teachings. Paul teaches doctrine from scriptures. I doubt that Peter having a vision of Christ can be found in scriptures nor that this is important for believer to believe as long as they believe that Christ did resurrect. If this belief was based on scriptures I would think that Paul would have no problem.

krosero

Probably there is no passage that has burial and nothing else: burial is always attended by death, and the passages that the Church used always dealt with vindication. Jonah has a deliverance, and it has something that may be regarded as a burial, or as death. The question of what any single passage in the scriptures contained, or even which one Paul was thinking of (or rather, which one the Church that formed the creed was thinking of), doesn't go very far here. Death, burial, and vindication are all prefigured in the scriptures. Surely vindication always implies some kind of death, burial, or being brought low. These things all go together, and all are found in the OT.

If it was not important for the Corinthians to accept, Paul would not have mentioned it. Supports to matters "of first importance" are still quite important. Everythng that Paul mentions between his introduction to the creed and his summary, "whether it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed", are matters of high importance, regardless of what the preached creed actually was. Everything between the introduction and the summary forms a block -- creed plus supports -- and then the extremely critical question is dealt with, "But if Christ preach as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?"

For Christ appearing after death, any appearance of God's glory in the OT, or vision of God's return to his people after a dark moment, will do. Peter's name will not mentioned, but certainly Jesus Christ's name is not the same as Jonah, or the same as anyone else thought to prefigure him. If God returns to his people after a dark moment, he will be seen by them. As I can't stress enough, being seen is practically part of the definition of being raised. As you say of the burial, there was no single OT passage which contained such a vision (a vision of God's return to his people) and nothing else. The burial and the appearance are not said explicitly to be according to the scriptures; but they're both implicitly a part of death or rising -- and I think the death/burial implication is much looser than the rising/appearance implication.

All these questions about the form of the creed, while important, do not change the fact that Paul received all the information from human transmission. The creed, and possibly many of the appearances, would have been known to him before he even converted. That is still the central issue I'm raising: what kind of "received" is Paul claiming, and what does Doherty claim it was?

NOGO

You are saying that it was impossible for Paul have gotten information like "Jesus appeared to Peter" via inspiration. I certainly agree.
But there is a definite difference between that and the "Christ died for our sins". Even if a man did die how were they able to figure out that this death was FOR OUR SINS except through interpretation of scriptures?

You see you have mixed bag of goods here.
Some come from scriptures and some come from human experience.

The question now is this.
Is the part "according to scriptures" have any basis in reality?
Your point does not settle this.

Please see this thread.

My take on Paul's silence

guy_683930

There are at least 2 possibilities for Paul's use of 'received' in this section of 1 Corinthians:
1. He received it by revelation.
2. He received it by speaking to Cephas, or another member of the Church.
If it is the first possibility, done. Nothing here to question the MJ case, it supports it.
If it is the second possibility, Paul could have received the information from a group of people who had visions of the risen Christ, not from any knowledge of a historical Jesus. This is very likely the case if it is (2), if 1 Peter is taken as somewhat indicative of the school of thought around Peter. The writer seems to only know of the mythical Christ, rather than any knowledge of a historical founder of the religion.

cass256

How did Paul know the light in the sky really WAS "Jesus", and not an "angel of light"?