Freethought & Rationalism Archive

show_no_mercy · 07-08-2009, 05:10 PM

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Originally Posted by Jane H

Paul's letters, and Acts, tell us that there was regular contact between the Palestinian and Greek churches (Peter visiting Paul, Paul bringing aid to Jerusalem...) The often suggested idea that Paul could have fundamentally altered Christianity without Jerusalem noticing really needs to be left behind. Just note the fury he caused by suggesting that gentile converts need not follow the Torah.

Paul's letters tell us that there wasn't just "one" gospel being preached. In battling this other (not just "other", but "ετερος") gospel, Paul claims that his gospel is directly from The Man himself, and not from any human being. As opposed to those other gospels being preached. So Paul most certainly could have changed the Christianity in his churches, just as others changed the Christianity he originally preached in his churches.

We really have no idea what was being preached by the apostles to the Jews, we only have what was being preached by the apostle to the Gentiles.

mountainman · 07-08-2009, 05:56 PM

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Originally Posted by Back Again

Was Joseph Smith sane?

Probably not 100%, but he borrowed Eusebius' "Ecclesiastical History"
with what appears to have been zero attribution.

Solo · 07-08-2009, 06:28 PM

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Originally Posted by Jane H

Thanks again for the reply.

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Originally Posted by Solo

I would answer question # 1 by saying...<snip>... the blood curse of 27:15 is not anti-Jewish; this is a classical situation of Jews blaming themselves for calamities as the result of their betraying their (covenant with) God.

Jiri

There are two different strands to my argument. One issue (your#2) is that, if the vanished body claim were late, the Jews wouldn't have bothered with a “They stole the body” approach, but rather would have gone with “Since you keep changing what you believe, why should anyone believe it?”. The only time for a “They stole the body” claim is at the beginning.

But this assumes that Christian opponents kept and published logs of what their rivals believed from generation to generation and from place to place. I don't think this is historically probable. The writing of the editor of Matthew that I presume would have had envisioned reader of his own time and in communities much like his.

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The scenario you outline follows AFAICS is pretty much the six step outline which I discussed. Your solution- a late interpolation- seems to me quite unsupported. Are there any heavyweight scholars who support this theory?

No, I have not seen this argued by any heavyweights. The story is too naive to have been much of interest to scholars who I would place my trust in. The Bultmann school is notoriously uninterested in apologetic material of this sort. Crossan thinks that dogs ate Jesus' corpse, Ludemann said that Jesus rotted in the tomb. But, interestingly, even the more intelligent of the conservative traditionalists tend to discount the story as secondary material. K. Stendhal (in Peake's commentary) says the story has an obvious apologetic motive. William Lane Craig basically finds that admitting the obvious Christian-Jewish "dialogue" the story bespeaks takes nothing from his preferred thesis that the tomb was in all probability evacuated by higher power.

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As for the lack of mention of Jews, a comparison with the other synoptics is revealing. Other than “King of the Jews” (which Matthew has no less than four times), Mark has only two places (7:3, 15:6) and Luke has only two (7:3, 23:51 both different contexts). So it's rare, but present, which is how it is in Matthew (28:15, a different context). So unless you're suggesting the other synoptic “Jew” passages are interpolations as well, Matthew is following their infrequent usage; I see no reason to read anything into Matthew's single usage if we read nothing into their double. So there's no reason to suggest an interpolation. Which in turn means we still have an historical problem which is most readily solved by saying the early Christians believed the body had vanished.

The point I was trying to make was that the generalized designation Jews in 28:15 has pejorative overtones which are not in evidence anywhere else in Matthew.

Jiri

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-08-2009, 07:19 PM

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Originally Posted by Jane H

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

There is no particular evidence that the Jews DID have any kind of stolen body story in circulation at the time of Matthew's Gospel. There is no evidence that the Jews were even aware of a physical resurrection claim. Matthew was addressing an obvious objection that would occur to anybody and framing it as a "Jew" story for demagogic reasons.

Yes, we could collapse 4 and 5 in my scheme, even though there is no evidential reason to do so.

A larger problem is that you have no evdience for step 3. The empty tomb doesn't appear until Mark, and we have no reason to believe it had any basis in oral tradition before then.

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Even so, the time gap I outlined still isn't nearly enough. Further, I doubt those developing the body “myth” would have thought about protecting something they believed true (especially with something they knew was a lie!). The challenge would have come from outside first.

Your "gap" presumes any pre-Markan tradition existed at all for an empty tomb, or a pre-Matthean tradition for any physical appearances.

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Paul never says there was a physical resurrection. He only talks about Jesus making "appearances." He does not describe these appearances as physical, and does not make any distinction between how Jesus appeared to Peter, et al and how he appeared to Paul himself.

Furthermore, Paul actually says that physical resurrections are impossible and calls people "fools" for believing it could happen. he explicitly and angrily says that resurrections are only spiritual events -- that the physical body rots in the grave.

The first claim for Jesus making physical appearances to anybody is in Matthew.

Firstly, to repeat, if Paul or any other early Christians had wanted to mean a non-physical post-mortem reappearance, they kept choosing the wrong word. 'Resurrection' 'anastasis'' had a very, very clear meaning and that was physical.

Just FYI, I do know Greek.

Anastasis means "raising up." Your assertion that it meant only a physical raising up is inferred from Jewish eschatology, not from strict Greek lexicography.

We also don't have to guess what Paul meant by it. He told us very clearly that it happens with a spiritual body, not a physical one.

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Secondly there are places where Paul uses body terminology. For example Romans 10:9 “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”, set in the middle of its context of Covenant exposition, can in the logic of what he's saying only be bodily. To the Jews (and the pagans) he's quoting the OT to, raising from the dead meant only one thing- a body.

And yet, Paul went out of his way to deny that the Jewish eschatological expectations of physical resurrection were correct.

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Thirdly the term Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15 “soma pneumatikon” is a more physical term than the “soma psychikon” he is contrasting it with.

No it isn't.

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The usual translations “spiritual body” and “earthly body” are decent enough attempts to translate, but both carry overtones in English which mislead. A more unwieldy but accurate translation would be “Body using God's Spirit for power” and “Body using God's to-be-withdrawn breath as power”.

This is highly tendentious. Where are you getting this from?

Soma psuchikon means "natural body," or more precisely "breathing body" (not "earthly body," I think you might be confusing that with Paul's phrasology in 1 Cor. 15:40 where he talks about "somata epourania kai somata epigeia" ["heavenly bodies and earthy bodies"], and soma pneumatikon means "spirtual body."

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The resurrected body is the PC mains powered to our current laptop battery powered. Thus in contrast to angrily saying that a physical resurrection is impossible, Paul is saying the exact opposite- it's a physical body.

Sorry, but this is just baloney. Paul says the body that goes into the ground is not the one that comes out. In 1 Cor. 15:50 he says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven." He draws a clear distinction between the "earthly" body and the "heavenly" one -- between the "Breathing" body and the "spirptual" one. You're engaging in some kind of casuistry so convoluted I can't even follow it.

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To be even clearer about this, go to 1 Corinthians 2:15 where Paul talks about the spiritual “pneumatikos” person. In that context, it cannot be other than a person with a body (whose attitude is powered by God's spirit).

The pneumatikos dwells within the physical body. Paul is clearly not saying that the flesh itself is pneumatikos.

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Thirdly, if Paul lists his own appearance from Jesus with the others, this is because he is repeating a list of appearances already given.

Paul himself denies this. he says he learned it from Jesus.

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The word “appearance” does what it says on the tin, being an “appearance”. In the context he has no reason at all to distinguish it from the others.

He has no reason to distinguish it, because he had no reason to think of the appearances to others as any more physical than his own.

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Finally, the claim of the first Christians was that Jesus was alive.

How do you know?

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On the whole, seeing a vision, ghost or a spiritual appearance of someone is a pretty conclusive indication that they're dead.

This is sophistry.

Solo · 07-08-2009, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jane H

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

I would answer question # 1 by saying...<snip>... the blood curse of 27:15 is not anti-Jewish; this is a classical situation of Jews blaming themselves for calamities as the result of their betraying their (covenant with) God.

Jiri

(Two posts for readability!)

Further points on your post:

Paul's letters, and Acts, tell us that there was regular contact between the Palestinian and Greek churches (Peter visiting Paul, Paul bringing aid to Jerusalem...)

I would not describe Peter's poaching in Paul's flock in Antioch as Peter visiting Paul and Paul's bringing (or sending) aid to Jerusalem as evidence of regular contacts between his groups and the Nazarenes of James. It seems clear that Paul hoped to win favour with the mysterious "saints" in Jerusalem (Rom 15:31) who most people naively believe sat somewhere below "the pillars" in the community hierarchy.

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The often suggested idea that Paul could have fundamentally altered Christianity without Jerusalem noticing really needs to be left behind. Just note the fury he caused by suggesting that gentile converts need not follow the Torah.

Fine by me, since I do not believe that Paul altered Christianity. I believe he invented it.

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The discussion, in every part of the NT, is about Jesus resurrection. Everyone it was about bodily existence, not spiritual; from the Jews who argued about it, to the Greeks who thought it a sick joke.

Some Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul. Do you think they found Philo a joker ?

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Never at any stage is Jesus return discussed as allegory or talked about as non-physical.

IIUC there has been much discussion on this very topic. I am not aware that anyone has demonstrated what many claimed to have the final word on.

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Indeed it is very important to understand the change that went on. In C1 Judaism, resurrection was a controversial, fringe element. The hope for the future was vaguely thought about, and generally involved an earthly kingdom. Resurrection was, for those who believed in it, invariably something that happened to everyone at once in the new age.

Well, I for one happen to believe that there were different kinds of resurrectional scenarios alive in Judaism around that time.

It's been nice chatting with you.

Jiri

spamandham · 07-09-2009, 04:09 AM

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Originally Posted by Back Again

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Originally Posted by spamandham

That's probably mostly true. But, is anyone saying that Paul was sane, and that he made up a lie, and then proceded to die for it?

Was Joseph Smith sane?

I certainly don't know, but I have my doubts. I sincerely doubt the sanity of Paul as well. Both men, like so many religious revolutionaries, seem to me to have been highly delusional. ...just a guess though.

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-09-2009, 08:01 AM

Jesus was probably missing a couple of marbles too, at least in something like Ehrman's "apocalyptic prophet" scenario. Attacking the Temple wasn't extremely rational or ordered, especially during Passover.

bacht · 07-09-2009, 08:13 AM

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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Attacking the Temple wasn't extremely rational or ordered, especially during Passover.

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Ba'al, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, `We are delivered!' -- only to go on doing all these abominations?
Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, says the LORD. [Jeremiah 7.9-11]

Jesus was created from scripture.

Diogenes the Cynic · 07-09-2009, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Attacking the Temple wasn't extremely rational or ordered, especially during Passover.

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Ba'al, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, `We are delivered!' -- only to go on doing all these abominations?
Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, says the LORD. [Jeremiah 7.9-11]

Jesus was created from scripture.

The Passion narratives were, but that doesn't mean Jesus was, or that there wasn't a Temple incident. GJohn has an independent account. I think it's entirely possible that Mark went searching through the LXX to find an post hoc explanation for why Jesus went bonkers at the Temple.

sschlichter · 07-09-2009, 10:01 AM

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Originally Posted by lpetrich

Quote:

Originally Posted by Self-Mutation

Evidence for this assertion?

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, and the Roman authorities often left bodies on crosses as an advertisement of how nobody seriously pisses them off and lives.

So if JC had been crucified, his body would likely have been left on the cross, or else tossed in a common grave.

Think of it -- why would a serious criminal and troublemaker be buried in a TOMB???

Why not leave his body out for the vultures and stray dogs?

because someone of means asked for his body and buried it in a tomb.

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07-09-2009, 08:01 AM	#67
Diogenes the Cynic Moderator - Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota Posts: 4,639	Jesus was probably missing a couple of marbles too, at least in something like Ehrman's "apocalyptic prophet" scenario. Attacking the Temple wasn't extremely rational or ordered, especially during Passover.

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