krosero

If I were to draw an implication from the original absence in Psalm 40 of "prepared a body for me," is that the Hebrews author added it because he was thinking about incarnation -- or that the Septuagint already included such a phrase, in which case we can't say that the Hebrews author was keen to add a body for any purpose (corporeal or spiritual).

krosero

You seem to have missed the point of this thread. I asked for help with drawing out of Doherty's work a positive description of what early Christian theology about the mythical Christ was. There are certainly many people who know Doherty's work better than I do, and I would be glad to be able to get it correct. Of course I'm interested in rebutting his ideas, but if I get his reconstruction wrong and try to rebut that, I will simply be told I've misunderstood it, and the whole process of learning, for everyone, will simply be delayed uselessly. You seem to be interested in laughing, but anyone interested in knowledge should be interested in testing theories.

All the responses so far have engaged what I identified as contradictions. No one so far has said that the actual reconstruction was correct, though I wouldn't want to draw any conclusions from silence And I have heard some arguments here for a non-corporeal mythology of Christ in Paul's mind, although I can't be sure if anyone is taking that as their definite view, much less have I heard a clarification on whether Doherty has this or that opinion or withholds judgment.

I quoted above the two points you made that are relevant to the questions I asked and the reconstruction I offered. Both points seem to suggest a kind of throwing up of the hands. And I agree if all you're saying is that a certain level of certainty cannot be had. But given what we do know, and what we have available in ancient and modern texts (such as Doherty's), a provisional reconstruction can certainly be mounted. The ball is in your court.

krosero

This response, like another one, seems to want this thread to become a competition between HJ and MJ Christianity, to see which one has the more serious contradictions. I'm interested in something else: getting a positive description of Doherty's celestial Christ. It's a very specific goal.

And it's the sort of response that, I fear, could take us very far away from the specific questions and into time-wasting wrestling over how rational or irrational any of us thinks the ancients were (or how rational we think religion is). So unless it's tied into specifics, I'm not going to have much to say about it. But I will give a general answer here.

I am not looking for rationality from the ancients (or from moderns). Both Christians and pagans spoke of mysteries, wrestled with contradictions, and made contradictions themselves. I'm looking for intelligibility, not rationality. If Christians make contradictions in trying to solve the problem of evil, or their theology about love includes a wrathful God, these are not the kind of contradictions I've been speaking about. Nor am I speaking about such things as the mysteries of how disembodied spirits can co-exist in the Trinity. I'm looking for contradictions that would have seemed confusing even to the "irrational" ancient mind: more like two corporeal bodies co-existing in the same body. We don't have an example as absurd as that here, but you get my point: the ancients knew that "corporeal" bodies, however filled with supernatural powers, still obeyed some rules that corporeal bodies always obey.

The ancient mythicists, if they existed, surely must have had a thousand theological disagreements. But I do wonder if an ancient mythicist, regarded well enough to be included in the Bible, in search himself of converts (presumably), can be thoughts of as telling his audience that God, or Christ, nailed something into the cross. In the historicist model (notice the specific way I do bring in the historicist model for comparison), this makes sense, because there are two different scenes in the author's mind: the earthly one, and the one in heaven where the "real" story was more clearly seen.

Most importantly, the "magical thinking" clause is deeply unimpressive because Doherty has put out very specific descriptions of what people were thinking, when they thought it, and how we can detect it in their writings. Their thought was intelligible enough (i.e., it followed patterns) for us to guess what they were thinking at all moments and not just when they were writing: they set down in writing the thought patterns that they adhered to, or tried to adhere to, commonly at any point in their lives. Of course they changed their patterns. But not willy-nilly, and not unintelligibly. A salvation story made sense to their minds for many reasons, but it had to follow basic rules and had to have basic consistency. "You tell me that God sent his Son to the archons, then why are you telling me that God participated in the nailing, or that Christ did the nailing?" "You tell me that he was sent down; what do you mean when you say he was delivered up?" "You tell me he was buried in the lower heavens; what do you mean he rose from the cross and led the demons in a procession?"

I am not, you see, highlighting theological disputes, or the irrationality of the idea of a cross being planted in the heavens. Personally I think the ancients could be very skeptical of such a thing as a cross staked in the heavens; but I've left that alone for argument's sake, conceding the basics of the mythicist model so we can test it.

Basically, when looking for beliefs in an ancient text: if it can be detected, it can be probed for intelligibility. And a model that seems to make sense to the ancients (not to us!) more than a model which presents unintelligible narratives (not merely narratives containing contradictions or unreason) is to be preferred.

If the ancient texts were so magical as to not care about intelligibility, then we could not know anything from them. We would have to say: "The Bible? Forget studying it. The ancients wrote stuff without any consistency; the words they set down were just stream of consciousness, basically whatever they felt like. There are no narratives or theologies in it, per se; it's just words. It's like some of our postmodernist stuff." If that is true, all models of biblical study basically have to pack up and go home.

And certainly the MJ model cannot say, "Let me map out this process for you; I can confidently say that these people, in this region, were thinking these kinds of thoughts, enclosed within certain theological limits, and that evolution was made in the following directions", and then say, when its reconstruction of the past is tested, "Their narratives make no real sense; they have no real intelligibility." That's a ducking of the challenges.

If you disagree with me about that, there is one thing you cannot disagree with: such defenses as the "magical thinking" clause are not impressive and look to other eyes like academic irresponsibility. They also, in Doherty's case, make you feel like someone is trying to pull something over on you.

Amaleq13

Right. It really makes no sense to suggest that the hanged man is even more cursed than being a murderer because nobody takes him down before the next day.

I don't see how it requires that assumption.

krosero

If "lower" is relative to our "physical" reality, then it is physically placed somewhere. You speak of distance: what kind of distance is implied in your words if not a physical one?

And I thought you said this lower world corresponded to ours. If it had a ground, the ground would surely be thought of as visible; it would block the sun. The ancients surely were interested in where such a sphere was placed, if this sphere was thought in any sense to be corporeal.

If I live in the ancient world and I regard a lower heaven as corporeal, I believe it really happened. Doherty may have an explanation, but his two statements are confusing, sloppy, and incompatible as they stand. Shifting this incoherence to the ancients just doesn't work.

I probably should not use the word metaphor without clarifying. I meant, "this is a metaphorical description for something that physically happened." If metaphor has any other sense, I'm not using it. I'd be glad if you could suggest a better word. All I meant was that if all the events are immaterial, there are no physical events which you could speak of through an abstract metaphor consisting of immaterial analogy. It's all immaterial analogy (I think that's your point here too).

So Paul regarded his Christ, and the demons, as immaterial beings? Was this heaven corporeal or not? Did Paul not say, per the MJ model, that this "sphere of the flesh" brought salvation to our lowest, fleshly sphere? That makes some sense if the two spheres share their fleshliness together. But if the lower heaven is purely immaterial, in what sense is it a sphere of flesh? And how is it any more helpful to us than a higher sphere? If they're all immaterial, what need was there for Christ to descend to the lowest heaven?

FYI, it would be helpful if your responses included at least the point of my original statements, so I don't have to quote both my post and yours; thanks.

Can you name any other possibilities that Paul could have had in mind? I hope you won't say that they're limitless. We know nothing of Paul's thought if that's true.

I don't understand: if the sacrificed Christ was a dead man, the Corinthians could doubt it and Paul would object to their doubt; everything makes sense. If the sacrificed Christ was not a dead men (and even the MJ model says that he was dead in some sense), what is Paul talking about?


If the Corinthians doubted the general resurrection of the world at the end of time (and they do ask in v. 35 what kind of body the dead will come back in), why does Paul say that this impossibility would make Christ's resurrection impossible, too (as he does in v. 13)? Because Christ was a human. If he was celestial, the impossibility of the general resurrection of human beings at the end of time would not in any sense make it impossible for him, a supernatural being, to rise from the dead. Especially if he was an immaterial being as seems to be implied (although in that case I don't know what resurrection would mean). What are you saying, that because the resurrection of corporeal humanity at the end of time is impossible, then the resurrection of a corporeal Christ in the heavens is impossible? Why? Doherty says that the Christ story took place in the same realm as all the pagan stories. And those gods were continually dying and rising.

Are you saying that the Corinthians doubted the general resurrection, but believed in Christ's resurrection, and Paul told them, "That does not follow; the first doubt makes Christ's resurrection impossible, too, and then your faith is empty"? But if they bought the resurrection of one man, why would they doubt their own resurrection in him? And Paul is not saying, "Don't doubt your resurrection in him." He's saying, If you will not rise because such dead cannot rise (i.e., if humanity will not rise), Christ did not rise either.

I don't know why you need to ask me this, when we've been discussing the passage: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried..."

krosero

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us - for it is written "Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree".
If Christ became that curse for our sake, what does this mean except that he became the dead man on the tree?

If man and tree are celestial, why is Paul quoting Deuteronomy, which is clearly concerned with the propriety and meaning of such things right here on the earth, in Israel's territory?

GakuseiDon

Keep in mind that Doherty believes that Christianity didn't start with a "Big Bang" (i.e. one historical founder - either Jesus, Paul, James or Cephas), but rather started with a number of groups with a variety of beliefs.

For example:

* Paul was a mythicist who believed in a Christ that was crucified in a sublunar realm, but doesn't mention the Logos.

* Tatian was a mythicist who didn't believe in a Christ at all at the time he wrote his Address to the Greeks, but did believe in an abstract Logos force, which nevertheless had nothing to do with crucifixion.

* M. Felix was a mythicist who didn't mention Christ and had nothing to do with the Logos.

You can probably add the authors of Colossians, Ascension of Isaiah, etc, here as well. IMO Doherty implies a different belief for each author, depending on the author.

What would be interesting is to get Doherty to try to commit to who influenced who. Did Paul's mythicism influence Tatian's or M. Felix's? What would a Logos-centric mythicist say to a Christ-centric mythicist? If there were no apostolic succession, was there a mythicist succession? Were they all unaware of each other?

:notworthy :notworthy

ichabod crane

I think that Paul's references to Jesus' life are basically the minimum possible to serve his theological purposes. He wants Jesus to function in some kind of representative sense, so he has to establish Jesus' credentials at that level (that he was born like us, that he was Jewish). But, his overwhelming concern is with the risen Christ.

I agree with this whole-heartedly; it's exactly what I was trying to say. At this point, though, it seems that MJ-ers and HJ-ers just have to agree to disagree. I suspect that anyone who tries to understand Pauline (or some other early Christian author's) thought as a coherent whole, will not be able to maintain the MJ-hypothesis, even if they do draw insights from it.

The great advantage of the MJ-hypothesis is that it draws attention to, and explains, important features of the texts which previous scholarship often overlooked, or did not regard as important.

The great disadvantage of the MJ-hypothesis, is that it takes those features as being the end of the story, and fails to come to terms with other features of the texts which don't fit the MJ-theory, explaining them away as "inconsistent magical thinking".

Amaleq13

You don't recognize that trying to apply the adjective "physical" to a spiritual realm makes no sense even if that realm is believed to be somehow corporeal and somehow connected to our physical reality?

I understand that you don't like the concept of magical thinking to be taken into consideration but it is clearly relevant whenever you want to try to obtain detailed explanations of the specifics. You seem to want real-world specificity for philosophical/theological constructs and that makes no sense to me.

Metaphysical. It is a "distance" of quality. It is the "distance" between the reality of the shadow and the object creating the shadow.

Yep, in some sort of magical fashion, events in the spiritual realm impact our physical reality.

Please provide the sort of clear, coherent, and explicit ancient descriptions of spiritual realms you believe existed.

I think you are completely missing the point that this spiritual realm is not "physical" but it is somehow corporeal. Angels aren't physical like you and I but they are physical in some sense. I've never read any ancient description that has tried to explain the difference but I would certainly be interested.

When discussing events in a spiritual realm, even one that is somehow connected and similar to our physical reality, I don't know how anyone can do anything except apply analogies or metaphors to describe it. Even if one claims to have visited such a realm in a vision or dream trip, the only frame of reference is our physical reality so the only way to describe it is by way of comparison with our physical reality.

He apparently believed that such entities had spiritual bodies that were somehow corporeal but not exactly like physical bodies. I get the sense while reading Paul, that he doesn't really know how to put into words what he believes about spiritual bodies. Again, your protests notwithstanding, I think this is inevitable when we are talking about ideas that are spawned by magical thinking and that cannot be directly accessed, examined, or measured by any interested party.

I thought that was what I was doing. I'm not going to respond to points that I think are based on a fundamental misunderstanding. I'm going to address the fundamental misunderstanding.

We only know what Paul tells us and our speculations are only limited by what he tells us.

They clearly do accept the resurrection of Christ but, according to your interpretation, they did not accept the resurrection of dead humans. My point was that your interpretation should suggest that they considered Christ to be something other than a dead human. IOW, they could accept that the incarnation of Christ could be killed and raised but they didn't think the same was true of a regular human. Again, I'm not sure yours is the correct interpretation. IIRC, GakuseiDon has argued for a different interpretation more along the lines of what I suggested.

I suppose it is related to the fact that Paul considered Christ's resurrection to be the "first fruits" of the general resurrection. This would seem to hold true for Paul whether Christ incarnated in the lowest heaven or on earth.

I was asking because I am reading Young's Literal Translation and it doesn't say that.

"for I delivered to you first, what also I did receive, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Writings,"

This makes it sound like Paul was referring to the fact that he was the first one to deliver the information to them rather than identifying the information as of primary importance.

Amaleq13

He is a dead man on the tree regardless of one's position. The only difference is where the tree is located.

Why should God not be affronted by a hanged man in the lowest heaven? Why should God not consider the lowest heaven defiled by a man left hanging overnight?

In fact, given that this lowest realm is still greater (in the sense of being metaphysically closer to the highest heaven) than our physical reality, one could argue that God would be more affronted and considered the defilement more curse-worthy because of the location.