Elijah

So the Jews didn't understand Jesus as a Messiah but as a supernatural pagan god?

GakuseiDon

To be specific: I am talking about a mindset where even historicists didn't talk about a historical Jesus in the way you seem to have expected them to. You are trapped in a modern mindset that doesn't allow the writers back then to speak for themselves. What if it wasn't uncommon for letter writers to not write historical details about Jesus?

And note that it wasn't just about a historical Jesus. It was about a historical anything. If the epistles in the NT gave historical details about everything concerning the early church except Jesus, then you would have a case. But they didn't. Historical details -- about ANYTHING -- are far and few between. This is the case even in the Gospels. You just have to read the letters to see that. Read through them, and tell me when the early epistles were written. We should be able to tell from the contents, right? Well, we often we can't. Have a look at the main page of the earlychristianwritings and see the date ranges for early writings from the first three centuries or so. The date ranges are nearly all based on small hints that can be found in the texts and vary widely. Why? Because there are few historical details in there.

So, why did they give so few historical details about ANYTHING? THAT is the mindset that we need to keep in mind when reading the early letters.

Here are a list of letters that don't provide historical details about Jesus:

· Clement of Alexandria (182-202 CE): "Exhortation to the Heathen"
· Ignatius (early 2nd C CE): "Philadelphians"
· Ignatius (early 2nd C CE): "Polycarp"
· Tertullian (200 CE): "Ad nationes"
· Tertullian (200 CE): "Against Hermogenes"
· Attributed to 'Justin Martyr' (late 2nd C or 3rd C): Horatory to the Greeks
· Polycarp to the Philippians (early 2nd C CE)
· 2 Clement (130-160)
· Tatian (160) "Oration to the Greeks"
· Minucius Felix (160-250) "Octavius"
· Theophilus of Antioch (180) "To Autolycus"
· Athenagoras of Athens (180) 3 letters
· Unknown (130 to 200) "The Epistle to Diognetus"

Toto, what was of interest to his followers was to show that Jesus was the Messiah, and the only way they had to prove it was by using the Scriptures. Paul wanted to show that Jesus was the Messiah for the Gentiles, and we can see him joining passages from the Hebrew Scriptures together to try to prove this. The Gospel stories wanted to show that Jesus was the Messiah, and so pericopes revolving around passages from Scriptures were developed.

The early Christians' most pressing concern wasn't to show that Jesus existed, but to show that he was the Messiah. You need to free yourself from the idea that Paul had a modern mindset, where any tidbit of Jesus's life was important, regardless of whether they showed he was the Messiah or not. Paul was involved in a war of ideas, using Scriptures to try to prove that Jesus was the Messiah to the Gentiles.

Well, I'm ready to listen. What is your evidence? Paul? But you believe his letters are made up. Marcion? But he believed that Jesus came to earth. So what makes you believe there was a mindset where a historical Jesus would not make a lot of sense? WHO thought that, specifically???

Keep in mind that I'm very interested in how people thought in those days. AFAIK such a mindset where "a historical Jesus came to earth or not did not make a lot of sense" did not exist. Who thought that? If you can demonstrate this, I would be very happy.

Have fun.

Johnny Skeptic

In "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that in 100 A.D., there were 7,530 Christians in the entire world. If Stark is anywhere near correct, that indicates that the vast majority of people in the Roman empire and adjacent areas thought that Jesus did not physically rose from the dead. That does not tell us how many people believed that a historical Jesus existed, but it does tell us that conservative Christianity was widely rejected in the first century, assuming of course that Stark is anywhere near correct.

If Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, it is reasonable to assume that it became easier to "sell" conservative Christianity after the supposed still living eyewitnesses died.

spin

There is no reason to believe that the "churches", or more appropriately "meetings", in Judea believed anything about Jesus whatsoever.

And I don't think Gak has provided any evidence to make one believe that Paul intended Zion to mean Jerusalem (despite the sometime association in Hebrew literature: Zion also has spiritual significances laid on it in the HB). In both cases Paul refers to Israel, which I gather he was alluding to with the HB references to "Zion". The Isaiah citation in Rom 11:26-7 parallels Zion with Jacob (ie Israel).

(It's also interesting how mangled the two Isaiah citations are in Romans.)

I think the whole Zion idea is a rationalization of Gak's in his attempts to find ways to justify the apparently otherwise unjustifiable historical Jesus position of his. (Sorry, Gak, but that's as I see it.)


spin

GakuseiDon

That's fine, spin. I went into this proposing that Paul meant Jerusalem, and invited people to provide other possible readings. The exercise was to see which were the strongest possible readings, and how those readings fit into their overall hypotheses. I've been more than happy to admit that there may be other readings than mine.

Toto

You have decided for your own reasons that some early Christians were "historicists" but didn't mention any historical details about Jesus, so this excuses Paul from mentioning any historical details. . .

This is so bizarre I am tired of reading about it.

Your "historicists" didn't care about history, and most of them didn't know if there was a historical Jesus - so it what sense are they "historicists?" Some of them had to swear allegiance to the idea that Jesus was fully human (but also fully god). But were any of them going to go out and look for the sort of evidence that would impress a 21st century historian? No.

Your list of writers who didn't include any historical details does not in fact help your case. It just shows that history was not in fact important to them.

Evidently all of your so-called historicists. Marcion believed that Jesus came to earth as a phantom. In what sense did he believe in a historical Jesus?

The historical Jesus is a product of the post-Enlightenment Quests and attempts to find a real person behind the religious figure. This would have been heresy in the early church - the idea that Jesus was a mere person who could not walk on water or rise from the dead. Have you wondered why there was no quest for the historical Jesus in the third century?

ph2ter

Crucified, died, resurrected on the third day and ascended to heaven are the only things which Paul shows to know about Jesus.
Those things are in the heart of Christianity, but I don't count them as stories about Jesus life or stories about some real person which lived in the recent past. In the Gospels there exist stories about Jesus which firmly positioned him in space and time. When and where he was born, who were his parents, where he lived, what did he teach, what were his deeds, where, when, how and why he died. The Gospels answered all that questions. Contrary to the Gosples, Paul is completely mute about them. There is no evidence that the writer called Paul was aware of any of those stories or that he answered any of those questions.
So, according to the evidence, the letters are written before the Gospels.

Like I said, that the saviour of mankind came from the Jews, meaning that the Jews are the only people which God chosed for the communication with mankind and for the deliverance.
If he literally meant Jerusalem, then again that does not bear the same meaning which you would like. His mindset was different than ours, and probably for him the myth and reality were inseparable. So when he says that someone was crucified in Jerusalem, that does not necessarily mean that he thinks that some real contemporary person, which was witnessed by people which he knew, was recently crucified there.
Nothing in text shows that he got that data from some witness. Zion is there because he found it in Scripture.

GakuseiDon

But don't you see how your second statement agrees with the first? Consider these statements:
(1) There were writers for whom history was not in fact important AND
(2) Paul is a writer for whom history was not in fact important.

I've always agreed that the question "Why does Paul not include historical details about Jesus?" is a darn good question. Well, I think "We have examples of other writers for whom history was not important" helps to set that question in its proper context. Simply: Many people wrote that way back then, especially when writing occasional letters. This includes authors whom we would consider "historicists". We may not know exactly why they wrote the way that they did, but the fact that we have many examples should be taken into consideration.

In the sense that they believed that Jesus walked the earth and interacted with people. If you would prefer some other term, I'm happy to use it.

Exactly. We need to consider the mindset of the time. To reiterate what I've said previously, Paul not only didn't give details about Jesus that would impress a 21st century historian, he also didn't give details about himself, the early church, etc. If Paul gave lots of historical details about everything else EXCEPT Jesus, that would be one thing. But Paul's writings are consistent with many other writers over the first few centuries, including those we would consider "historicists". This was the mindset back then. How many times have we agreed that we shouldn't try to apply our modern mindsets to the beliefs back then?

IF that mindset did indeed exist, it would be totally wrong (wrong in Toto, in fact ) to expect Paul to have included any of those things.

In the sense that Jesus walked the earth and interacted with people who existed. Again, I'm happy to go with some other term if you think that another term is necessary to avoid confusion.

No, not really, but it sounds interesting. Do you think that they wouldn't have wanted to write about Jesus doing normal things? Only Messianic/godly things?

GakuseiDon

I don't want to pass myself off as an expert, because I'm not. No training, no language skills. I'm just really interested in the worldviews of the people back then, and I enjoy reading through the literature in their English translations. But I think there is more going on than just "he found it in Scripture". Paul actually takes two sentences from separate passages within Isaiah to form his own "It is written" passage.

Paul seems to have had an agenda. At least in this case, he didn't read a passage from Scriptures, then decide that he had found information about Christ. It looks to me like he was trawling through Scriptures to find fragments that he could use to backup a point he was trying to get across. If that was the case, then he was using Scriptures to validate an already existing concept. Perhaps he had gotten that concept elsewhere from Scriptures, or from a vision. But it provides support for the idea that Paul was mining Scriptures to validate ideas not contained within those passages themselves.

Anyway: You've given what you thought Paul DIDN'T mean in those passages. What do you think Paul DID mean in those passages?

ph2ter

Of course that he have had an agenda. The picture of Saviour crystalized gradually. In the beginning, only the sketch of that figure was identified within the Scripture. The puzzle of that figure was completed long after Paul died. So, he certainly was not the only person engaged in that work. Neither was he the first, neither the last. They all 'searched the Scriptures daily to find out' the details about Saviour. It is symptomatic that they did not even try to get those details from the supposed witnesses of Jesus.
Paul completely lacks any interest in Jesus' teaching, deeds and earthly life. This is not natural if Jesus was real human and lived in his own time on earth. It is not possible to deify someone without recalling at least something about that person's life or teaching. Paul is in different position than second century Christians, because he is supposed to be contemporary to Jesus. He should differently treated details about Jesus life than second century Christians.
Evidence points to the direction which says that Paul does not speak about real person which recently died, but rather about fictive person. He and other proto Christians were trying to construct plausible picture of Saviour, which could be in agreement with the prophecies about him scattered across the Scripture.

I think that I already answered what Paul did mean in those passages. That the Saviour came from the Jews (or from the land of Israel or from Jerusalem), but in a mythical sense which for him was not different from reality.