aa5874

What?

The Jesus in Acts is the very Jesus in the Pauline letters.

This is Tertullian in "Against Marcion"5.2

Steven Carr

In Romans 15, Paul writes 'For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.'

Paul writes to Christians to praise the Scriptures as what exists to teach them, and what gives them hope.

Hadn't there been any other teacher, beside the scriptures?

Weren't there any words of Jesus to give Christians hope? Jesus must have said something surely that gave Christians hope.

Perhaps Paul knew that in a 'high-context' society, people had to be told that their religion had scriptures. They were probably wondering what all those books were that their leaders kept referring to.

boneyard bill

I would think that the fact that he died according to scriptural prediction, rather than that he merely died, is a matter of considerable relevance. Even a noble, holy, sacrificial death takes on more significance if it is tied to Hebrew scripture. It means that it's the Hebrew God, not the God of Plato or of the Stoics, for example, who is running the show.

boneyard bill

But it seems to me that a couple of things are being overlooked here.

1. Paul wasn't silent about the historical Jesus. He has quite a bit to say, so much in fact, that we are inclined to think that Mark must have been familiar with Paul's teaching if not with the letters themselves.

2. Paul is writing letters. These letters have a theological purpose and so Paul is only expressing what he considers to be theologically significant.

3. We don't know how many of Paul's letters we don't have. He may have written a great deal more about the historical life of Jesus in a different context.

I don't think we can ascertain very much about Paul's silence because we don't even know how much was his silence and how much is simply the silence of the historical record.

andrewcriddle

Given that none of the canonical Gospels ever explicitly state Jesus' marital status, it would be quite possible for Paul to have known a substantial amount of early traditions about Jesus without being certain whether Jesus had been married.

(IMO the canonical Gospels do present Jesus as a life-long celibate, but this is something implied, not something explicitly stated.)

Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

Even accepting every reference as legitimate that is only barely true. Paul says very little and what he does offer tends to be quite vague (eg "born of a woman").

What scholar(s) makes that argument? It is my understanding that it is the expressed theology that allows the connection. I would be interested to see how the few arguable references Paul makes could support such a claim.

And that is apparently not a living Jesus as opposed to the Gospels in which we find his life was theologically significant.

This point is actually your best against the usefulness of Paul's silence, IMO, but I think you should include his need to avoid giving any appearance of greater authority to other apostles.

This is a weak argument from silence. We can only work with what we've got. It is possible that all of Paul's other letters were chock-a-block full of references to the Gospel Jesus and clear identifications of his disciples as Paul's contemporaries but that isn't a very rational basis for a conclusion is it? I suggest you dump it.

Doug Shaver

Only if you interpret certain of his statements with a presupposition that he was writing about a historical person.

Who is this "we"? I see nothing in Mark that implies familiarity with Paul's teachings or writings.

It is not plausible that in Paul's mind, nothing about Jesus' life or ministry prior to his crucifixion would have had any relevance to Paul's theology.

Data that do not exist cannot be used as evidence for anything.

Evidence that we don't have cannot be relevant to our theories. We have to base our conclusions on evidence that we do have. We can always change our minds if we find more evidence, but until we find it, it cannot be relevant.

Amaleq13

Only if the "real life" resembled the Gospel depiction.

If, OTOH, the "real life" was more as Paul minimally describes it (ie lowly and unrecognized), then there is no implausibility.

Doug Shaver

Two problems.

1. I don't agree that Paul describes his real life even minimally, unless you count something like his mentioning the "fact" that his mother was a woman.

2. Let's stipulate a minimal description. What could have given Paul the idea that a lowly and unrecognized preacher was, or had become, something like a god?

Amaleq13

The post wasn't written in isolation, amigo.

Scripture, I assume. The same place, presumably, that Trypho got the idea that the messiah wouldn't even recognize himself as the messiah until he was anointed by Elijah.