jgibson000

But is this what is being claimed?

The issue is not whether, in claiming or assuming historicity for something he mentions in Galatians, Paul intended the whole of Galatians to be seen as something akin in genre to the Jewish War or the Antiquities, let alone that anyone seeing Paul make a claim about something that happened in history as the basis of an argument as to why the Galatians can be assured that they have been redeemed from the curse of the law, is assuming or arguing or concluding that the whole of Galatians is, or should be seen as, an attempt on Paul's part to write an historical account.

It's whether Paul is making historical statements within a writing that he himself knows is not anything like Josephus' Jewish War. More importanly, it's what the Galatians or anyone in the first century would have assumjed was being stated when they heard anyone using the phrase GENOMENON EK GUNAKAI in any genre of writing..

The only thing that is question begging here is the assertion on your part that unless one is writing an historical account, nothing one says can or should be taken as a statement about something that happened in history or an assertion of an fact in history. Or to put this another way: what is the truth value of the claim that statements (not accounts) are/can be viewed as being historical statements if and only if they appear within the works of someone who is intent to write "history"/be a chronicler of events.

The answer is: of no value at all.

Jeffrey Gibson

jakejonesiv

See Bart Ehrman's discussion on pages 238-239 of
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk).

jakejonesiv

Ben,

You are so right. In Job the contrast is between immortal God and mere man.

Job 15.14 asks the question, who born of a woman is blameless and just? You are correct, the context there is mortal or man. And in that context, the answer is no one.

But when we turn to Gal. 4:4, the context is different. The entity in view here is no mortal, it is the pre-existant Son of God.

So when the implied question "who born of a woman is blameless and just?" , the answer is not as in Job no one, but instead Jesus!

But the "Son of God" being "born of a woman" is not a historically verifiable statement. There is no history to be found in this context, only theology. The phrase "born of a woman" is taken from Job 15:14, not any eye-witness knowledge of Jesus' mother or birth.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

Whatever else Paul may have thought about Jesus, he certainly thought that Jesus was mortal. He goes on frequently about how Jesus died. Susceptible to death is the very definition of mortal.

Where does that question appear in Galatians 4?

Rather, the whole point (and Doherty himself agrees with this) is that the savior must become like the saved.

Therefore, since those to be saved were under the law, the son of God was made under the law. Likewise, since those to be saved were mortal humans, the son of God became a mortal human. (Here Doherty pulls a switcheroo, as it were, and claims that to become quasi-human in some demonic fleshly realm that is not really earth qualifies as becoming human in this context; it is at this point that the debate takes a sharp left turn, and we are no longer debating the meaning of the phrase born of a woman.)

That the man called Jesus was the son of God is not historically verifiable. That the man called Jesus was born of a woman is, at least in theory, verifiable.

I would suggest that both history and theology are to be found in this context, and that to oppose the two in such a binary manner is a category mistake.

Ah, so the phrase does mean human, as it does in Job 15.14, even if Paul was inventing the fact.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

In our effort to get at the meaning of a certain phrase in Paul, it is invalid to look for instances of that same phrase in Josephus? If you simply mean that finding instances in Josephus is not necessarily the end-all of the argument, fine. But invalid?

And I am not claiming that Paul was writing history, any more than I would claim that Ezra Pound was writing history in the Cantos. Yet plenty of history is to be found in the Cantos, and I think that history can also be found in Paul.

Here are two questions for you:

1. Did Paul think that the son of God was born of a woman?
2. Did Paul think that the son of God became a human being?

It is my contention that these two questions are synonymous (as indeed they appear to be at first glance). To be born of a woman is to be human; to be human is to be born of a woman.

I have reams of examples of the phrase made [or born] from a woman, or tight variations on that phrase, indicating a literal birth (and thus literal humanity). If you think that these questions are dissimilar, then you will have to produce some examples of the phrase made [or born] of a woman meaning something other than a physical birth; that is, you will have to produce evidence for your view.

Ben.

Solo

I am not arguing. I asked you a question which you are answering with a non-sequitur. There is no "obvious conclusion" you can make on the information you are citing. Logically, you cannot conclude from Paul not knowing Jesus that we was not his contemporary. If Jesus did exist, Saul/Paul may not have been aware of him or his ideas until after he was gone. That is clearly a possibility.

But that is beside the point: what is germane to my query is that - in your own words - Paul's letters prove there was "a Christian movement at the time Paul [wrote]". So his letters are (to the great majority of the scholarly community) a historical witness to Jesus following in his time.

So the OBVIOUS next question (not conclusion) here would be, if we know of no-one who wrote about Jesus Christ before Paul, what accounts for the breakout of mass hallucinations of Jesus at that particular point in time ?

You may consider this a rhetorical question.

Jiri

Toto

"But it should not be overlooked that both passages proved instrumental in the orthodox insistence on Jesus' real birth, making the changes look suspiciously useful for the conflict. In Galatians 4:4, Paul says that God "sent forth his Son, come from a woman, come under the law" (genomenon ek gynaikos, genomenon 'ypo no mon). The verse was used by the orthodox to oppose the Gnostic claim that Christ came through Mary "as water through a pipe," taking nothing of its conduit into itself; for here the apostle states that Christ was "made from a woman" (so Irenaius, Adv. Haer. III, 22, I, and Tertulian, de carne Christi, 20). Irenaeus also uses the text against docetists to show that Christ was actually a man, in that he came from a woman (Adv. Haer, V, 21, 1). It should strike us as odd that Tertullian never quotes the verse against Marcion, despite his lengthy demonstration that Christ was actually "born." This can scarcely be attributed to oversight, and so is more likely due to the circumstance that the generally received Latin text of the verse does not speak of Christ's birth per se, but of his "having been made" (factum ex muliere).

..."

Suspciously useful indeed.

Solo

....nota BENe how likely in a pasage where he exhorts the fallen "sons" in his church to imitatio Christi which he, live, human Paul acts out for them, although he too fell down from heaven or near that (Gal 4:12) ?

Jiri

GakuseiDon

Fair enough.

I think you mean "Middle-Platonic spirit world", then. From what I understand of Plato's idea of forms, he didn't locate them anywhere.

"Middle Platonists" however believed in a supralunar realm that contained incorruptible permanent entities. But the problem here is that there is no evidence that they would have placed suffering and death at the hands of demons in such a realm.

You wrote:

Given what is known of Hellenistic thinking, Paul's references to the Christ's atoning death and resurrection are consistent with his having believed that they occurred in a Platonic spirit world, not the world inhabited by mortal humans.

Can you tell me which pagan writers support such a view, and the passages please?

No Robots

Are you not referring to Gal 4:14:

You despised not, nor rejected: but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.