EarlDoherty

(continued from earlier post)

Don quotes me on another Pauline passage about the end-times and how past and future relates to it:

What the heck is this ‘reading orthodoxy into Paul’? These are natural questions and puzzlements when encountering the lack of any sense of an historical Jesus in Paul’s presentation of how the past moves through the present and into the future in his picture of salvation history. There is nothing amiss per se with Paul focusing on the future and the coming general resurrection. But when he does that in a context of surveying the past state of the world and its long pain and search for salvation, yet ignores any role for an incarnated Jesus in the recent past in the alleviating of that pain and the fulfilment of that search, pointing solely to the future coming of Jesus (not a “return”), this is a distortion of orthodoxy that invites only one explanation. For Paul, that future may be the “main event” (though even that would be curious), but surely the incarnation of God on earth, during which the very acts of salvation took place, ought to merit some small mention and perceived effect!

Within this distorted picture, Don moves on to two aspects of the language used in it: the term “parousia” and the verb “erchomai” (“coming”). I have pointed out that the language never presents the specific idea of a “return” rather than a “coming” which seems to be for the first time. (That is directly conveyed in Hebrews 10:37, a passage which Don fails to address.)

“Parousia” is used in the general literature, especially non-Christian, to mean “appearance” in the sense of a king, dignitary, etc. putting in an appearance on a given occasion, with no intended meaning of having been there before, even if he has. It also can be used of a god revealing himself during some rite or epiphany. Again, ‘returning’ has nothing to do with it. Don questions whether the use of this particular term in relation to Christ’s coming appearance at the end-time should be considered unusual, and that I haven’t provided support for it being unusual. In fact, he appeals to its usage in the Gospels as rendering it not unusual, since this is in a context in which ‘return’ is clearly an understanding.

First of all, in regard to “parousia” itself, I have not declared the term itself unusual, even in the Gospel context. By the time the Gospels were written, the term was established to refer to the expectation of the imminent arrival of the Son and the Kingdom. The evangelists were not about to change the term simply because it did not entail the idea of return and should thus have been considered unsuitable. But taking the Gospel context, in which ‘return’ is a valid understanding, and thinking to transport it into the epistle context in which such an understanding is anything but clear and is the very issue under debate, is to beg the question by reading the Gospels into the epistles, a common strategy. Don accuses me of making “no attempt to analyse the usage of the word in the wider literature,” by which, of course, he means the Gospels. It is true that I did not in the book make the point I have just made about the use of “parousia” in the Gospels, but the argument still stands that in the epistles there is no necessary implication of “return” in any of its terminology.

The other piece of that terminology is the verb “erchomai” (to come, to go, to pass). It’s a general verb of movement which relies on its context for more specific meaning. Don says:

Again, the “context supports it” only in the Gospels. Claiming that for the epistles is to beg the question. Don provides examples in which the context of having been on the scene before is a given; it is plain to see. These situations also have much less import than the situation in the epistles. If Jesus in Mark’s Gethsemane scene “comes” twice to his disciples and finds them sleeping, rather than “returns” to them, we can see this as simply Mark’s preference for language. Whereas, in an entire body of literature by early Christian writers who regularly point to the future ‘coming’ of Jesus as a long-awaited event, as something which will transform the world and finally assuage its pain—especially in conjunction with other language which speaks of Christ as a long-hidden secret only now revealed in scripture in the time of these writers—this is a much more significant silence than if Luke in a parable has a nobleman ‘coming’ home to his servants after an out-of-country trip, rather than ‘returning’ to them.

Don claims that Gal. 3:19 (“It [the Law] was added because of transgressions, till the seed [Christ] should come [erchomai] to whom the promise was made”) makes it clear that Paul regarded Christ as having come already, so everything else he says has to imply ‘return.’ He does admit that I explain Christ’s ‘coming’ as the coming of the Spirit of the Son, through revelation and his newly perceived spiritual presence in the world, as in 1 John 5:20. His counter to this? Personal incredulity: “I can’t see it.” He also overlooks all the other times in which Paul and other writers speak of Christ’s arrival in their time as a ‘revealing’ rather than an incarnation or life on earth, all the times that the void on an HJ in their descriptions of the faith and the course of salvation history is plain to see. And right in Galatians 3:23 and 25, Paul specifies that the present time is characterized not by a coming of Christ, but by a coming of faith.

Thus, I would maintain that my analysis of what Paul says and does not say is hardly a case of me forcing the texts to mean what I want them to mean. This is often the plaintive mantra of those who much more determinedly than I, and based on far less textual support, force the epistles to be talking about what they want them to be talking about.

Don next addresses the thorny question of the source of Paul’s gospel. Did he get it from revelation, as he seems to state in Gal. 1:11-12, or did he get it, in contradiction to the latter, from other men? Was it a mix? Dissenters will often point to the fact that there were other apostles before Paul, that they preached some of the things he did, and so on, making it strictly impossible that Paul could claim that everything he preached was original to himself. But I have often discussed this issue (including in JNGNM) by pointing out that we cannot expect or bring some kind of mathematical principle to it. Paul is quite capable of fudging, of making a claim which is not entirely accurate, of putting his own self-serving twist on things during an emotional discussion or debate. He certainly felt himself to be the prime apostle of his time, directly in contact with Christ himself, attuned to him, understanding scripture like no one else.

I stand by my reading of Galatians 1:11-12 as encompassing much more than simply the issue of circumcision. Don tries to restrict Paul’s “my gospel” to what he has to preach “to the gentiles”, to only those things which would apply specifically to gentiles, more or less the application of the Jewish Law to non-Jewish believers. But Don himself refers to Pauline references to his “gospel” which include things much broader than this. Galatians 1:16 has Paul declaring that he has been appointed to teach the gentiles about “the Son” that has been revealed “in him” by God. In 1 Cor. 15:3-4, the essence of his “gospel” is that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he rose on the third day. These are elements not specifically relating to gentiles. Even if others were preaching similar things (which he admits in 1 Cor. 15:11), we are well capable of believing that Paul felt that his own ‘take’ on the basic beliefs about the sacrificial Son was superior to that of others, and was the product of his own superior understanding and reception through revelation. This indeed, is what he states in 2 Corinthians 11, where those who “preach another Jesus” (some scholars recognize that this cannot be a reference to the Jerusalem apostles) are, like himself, claiming their source in revelation, not in historical tradition. And not only is this not in any context of the Law’s application to the gentiles, the phrase itself, “another Jesus,” can hardly refer simply to Paul’s views about that application of the Law to gentiles.

Thus Don has presented a very weak case for the following:

In order to deflect my contention that it is utterly incredible that Jews could have elevated Jesus to the status of the very Son of God, sharing in his nature and titles, if they had been speaking of a recently crucified human being, Don questions the meaning of the term “son of God.” This is a common stance of modern critical scholars (not that I am styling Don as such). To demonstrate that it need not be so lofty a concept, Don quotes a number of uses of the phrase in various epistles. The problem is, they are examples of the phrase applied to human beings whom Paul is addressing or referring to. Such as:

There is no doubt that the phrase was widely used to apply to human beings who, by virtue of their faith or deeds, had entered into a close relationship with God. But that the phrase could be used of the concept of an actual only-begotten, emanation—Son—of God himself is clear from Christian orthodoxy (and even Philo). The question is, in which manner did the early epistolary record regard and speak of Jesus? I have answered this many times. To what “son of God” in Don’s sense did anyone ascribe the creation of the universe as in 1 Cor. 8:6, or the sustaining of the universe as in Colossians 1:15-20? To what other human did they ascribe the salvation of humanity by his death and the subjugation of everything in the cosmos, good and evil, every knee bowing to him? Even when the Gospels came along, the early Synoptics render their symbolic Jesus nowhere near such lofty heights, and it took some time in the melding of epistles and Gospels for Jesus of Nazareth to take on such an elevation, for the Jesus of the Gospels (in large part based on the Q ethos) to catch up with the Jesus of the epistles. In the face of contrary evidence within the epistles, modern scholars have tended to downplay Paul’s Christ to make him more in keeping with Mark’s Jesus. In the process, they are forced to ignore much of what is said of Christ in the epistles.

Yes, there is a certain degree of what might be styled adoptionism in the epistles, but that has been determined by scripture, especially Psalm 2:7’s “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” which originally referred only to an anointed Hebrew king or Israel collectively. (Neither was ever given the role of creator and sustainer of the universe.) The early Christ cult, deriving its spiritual Son and Messiah out of scripture, were led to apply certain scriptural passages to him, such as being of the seed of David, or having bestowed upon him special status as a consequence of his death and rising, as in the Philippians hymn. That included Sonship, but only in the sense of his full power and recognition as such, not as previously lacking the nature of pre-existent emanation/Logos of God, something which he always possessed. When Colossians defines the Son, or when Hebrews 1:2-3 does so in similar language: “made heir to the whole universe” may be meant to reflect that post-death exaltation as in Philippians, but “through whom he created all orders of existence: the Son who is the effulgence of God’s splendour and the stamp of God’s very being, and sustains the universe by his word of power,” such things are hardly post-Good Friday and post-Easter developments, hardly the adoptionism of a Jesus of Nazareth.

How, in the face of passages in the epistles like these, critical scholars can declare that the early apostles and writers of the Christ cult did not regard their Jesus as the pre-existence Son/emanation of God, is beyond me. It strikes me as neither critical nor scholarly. It has rather served to get around the difficulties inherent in the epistles and the conflict this creates in the Christian record.

Don appeals to critical scholarship which has been guilty of this watering down of the epistolary Jesus. He quotes James Dunn on the interpretation of Philippians 2:6-11. That interpretation is strained, and moreover has no support in the text itself. It approaches that text from the point of view: how can we give a different cast to this passage? Not surprisingly in the hands of creative theologians, it is read as a form of Adam Christology, despite the fact that there is no reference to Adam here; and this human interpretation of the descending-ascending Jesus in the hymn is notably missing in Paul’s chief Adam passage, 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. (Nor can it confidently reside in the term “man” in other places when the latter is, in both Jewish and pagan thought, a widespread component among mythical entities in the heavenly dimension.)

Don says, “Interpreted this way, Phil 2:6-11 is no longer about a divine man.” Yes, when one is determined that it will not be allowed to. Dunn makes no reference, let alone deals with, the exalted language descriptive of the Son in other epistolary passages, such as referred to above. And again, I will raise the all-important question about the epistles: if they are indeed referring to an historical man who was ‘adopted’ into mundane sonship after his death and rising on earth, how can that man, his personality, his teachings and deeds, his life on earth, be totally ignored as though they no longer or never existed, or could contribute nothing to understanding or justifying his elevation? Why is Dunn’s Philippians hymn completely silent on any item to do with that earthly life, while forced to repeat the idea of taking on the likeness of human form three times when the hymnist could have devoted two of those lines to something about an earthly Jesus? Why are all the hymns silent on an earthly life?

We might note that this downplaying of the epistolary Jesus is a relatively recent phenomenon among scholars. It was hardly in view in the early part of the post-WWII phase of NT scholarship. Rather, it arose as critical scholarship became more sophisticated, more secular, more aware of the problems in interpreting Jesus across an ever-widening array of early Christian records and the analysis of them. The box has been exploding, but mainstream scholars still insist on rearranging and reinterpreting the pieces from inside its old confines. They resist seeing that the walls of the box have collapsed.

Well, at least Jesus didn’t say that James the Just had created or now sustained heaven and earth! There is a huge difference here. The Gospel of Thomas is using hyperbole to highlight the importance of a human being, known and accepted as a human being. Passages like the Colossians hymn and the opening of Hebrews are defining the Son and making no identification to a human being. And they can hardly be styled as hyperbole. This is Greek Logos and Jewish personified Wisdom philosophy.

Finally, Don claims that the language used of Moses by Philo of Alexandria is “highly reminiscent of that used of Christ.” Well, no it isn’t. Philo says that Moses, when he died, was taken up to heaven to put on immortality and take on Godlike qualities. From Life of Moses I, Philo is quoted:

Here, once more, Don is being an atomist. First of all, in the second sentence, Philo is not saying that Moses was referred to as “Father and Creator” (which it looks like Don may be wishing to imply). Rather, the “appellation” is in regard to “god and king” which follows. And with whatever degree of metaphor Philo is using those terms (he makes it in relation to the Jewish nation), he is hardly saying that Moses was God, or was begotten of God in the sense of being a part of him; nor does he style him creator and sustainer of the universe. All that would have been blasphemous to Philo. (Which invites the question, why wasn’t it so in regard to the early Christ cult if they were speaking of a human man, a point they never address?)

Don rounds this off with his favorite mantra:

Unfortunately, Don’s appeal to “the wider literature” is usually to something which never seems to prove his point. And it’s a handy dismissal, is it not, to simply say that what we would expect of an ancient writer is never valid, as though they were some alien race from another planet having nothing in common with us in the way of expression or circumstance. Don overuses this ‘out’ with little if anything in the way of justification.

P.S. The following point I meant to address, but lost sight of it along the way. I will tack it on here rather than try to fit it into the above post. This is one of those items Don has taken from Ben C. Smith's textexcavation site:

To address this, I will quote from Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (p.260):

The final Part 4 of Don' review I will try to get at in a week's time.

Earl Doherty

mountainman

Thanks Earl !

For these open and comprehensive responses to GDons Review of your book "Jesus: Neither God nor Man".
Also recent evidence from NHC may interest you here (Evidence for Doherty's World of Myth...)

Best wishes,


Pete

EarlDoherty

Thanks.

Toto refers to Helmut Koester's Introduction to the New Testament, vol.2. Curiously, that was the very first book I chose to read once I embarked on a serious study of the question of Jesus' existence in the early eighties.

Earl Doherty

TedM

Thanks Earl. I've been looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these issues regarding Paul. Just a couple of comments:

You wrote:

I think it surely can. It is such a vague term, it can mean anything pertaining to Paul's gospel, which I believe Paul makes clear over and over was primarily about Jesus' resurrection enabling the salvation of Gentiles through faith. THAT was Paul's Jesus: The one who enables salvation for everyone. Anyone who preaches "another Jesus" is preaching about one that doesn't enable Gentile salvation.

I don't find it incredible at all, and here's why: If the recently crucified human being were believed to have been raised from the dead and to have been the long-expected Messiah, then the prophecies filled in the gaps for Jews like Paul: This person now sits at the right hand of God, and enables the salvation of mankind. Why in the world would not some Jews not apply their own cherished scriptures to this man and come to the conclusion that he was the Son of God?

To me given the above assumptions it would be incredible to NOT conceive of such a belief to have developed, and very quickly by some people.

Do you think it is incredible that some Jews 2000 years ago could believe
1. a man had been raised from the dead?
2. a man was the Messiah?

If not, then what part of the story do you find to be so incredible (in the sense of unlikely)?

thanks, ted

EarlDoherty

Ted,

So you are saying that when Paul accuses rival apostles of "preaching another Jesus" this can mean that Paul is accusing his rivals of "preaching that the gentiles are required to follow the Jewish Law"?

If you can see the latter in the former, then you are capable of reading anything into anything. (This, of course, has been the practice of traditional scholarship since time immemorial.) The problem with this kind of approach to language is that discussion becomes impossible and textual criticism loses any foundation in the meaning of words. You have shown that debate between us is pointless.

Earl Doherty

TedM

Not specifically, but I don't see why not since that one of the primary issues that Acts and Paul's other epistles state his rivals objected to in Paul's Gospel.

But, that is only part of what I'm saying. It gets to the heart of Paul's message. It isn't about eating and circumcision nearly as much as it is about salvation being available to all through faith in the resurrection of Jesus:

Since that is the primary gist of Paul's gospel wasn't about WHO JESUS WAS as it was about WHAT THE RESURRECTION MEANT it makes a great deal of sense to conclude that Paul's reference to those who 'preach another Jesus' is a reference to those who 'preach another gospel'.

We don't need a historical Jesus to see this as reasonable Earl. Jews were used to being God's favorites for the last thousand years and were looking forward to a period of everlasting peace in Zion, conquering their enemies. Some fellow Jew starts saying that Jesus--historical or mythical--was for Gentiles would get those Jews mighty upset. It is quite reasonable to see why Jews who believed in the resurrection would preach 'another Jesus' -- one whose resurrection was for Jews only.


It's not a matter of 'reading anything into anything'. It is looking at the wider context of what Paul's Gospel was about and who his rivals were.

I haven't seen your textual criticism of that section of Paul but I sure wouldn't place much emphasis on 3 words when the surrounding text is rather vague, which it is. Rather, I'd look at the bigger picture--what was Paul's gospel about and what do we know ELSEWHERE about his rivals.


I noticed you didn't answer my other question regarding the impact a belief in the resurrection of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah might have on some Jewish people, and how they might deify such a figure rather quickly. Why do you think that would have been an unlikely reaction and what do you think would have been a more likely way for things to have played out under this scenario?

EarlDoherty

And that is exactly what I did in my posting, and the wider context was much beyond simply the issue of the gentiles and the Jewish Law.

The other question is this: if all Paul meant to say in 2 Cor. 11:4 was a reference to his gospel concerning the gentiles and the Jewish Law, why didn't he say so? Why use the phrase "preach another Jesus" if what he meant was "preach that the gentiles must follow the Jewish Law"? Why can't any of these writers ever say plainly the things which orthodoxy maintains they mean?

You have also failed to take into account the context of this passage. Though he is frustratingly unspecific, Paul is complaining that rivals have come to Corinth and won over the hearts of his own converts, who seem to have regarded them as "superlative". They preached another Jesus--you prefer "another gospel." What was that other gospel? It had to disagree with Paul's, obviously. How? It declared that the gentiles (such as the Corinthians) did have to conform to the Jewish Law? This would win them preference in the hearts of the Corinthians? Ted, you're making no sense.

And I didn't answer your other question because it was a blatant piece of question begging: accept the orthodox picture and then ask how the Jewish people would have reacted. I prefer to start from the side we do know: that the Jewish people would have had apoplexy if a man were declared to be God; and that no Jew who hadn't witnessed it himself would believe anyone who declared that a crucified man had risen from the dead. As it happens, the epistles agree with me, in that no one among those writers ever makes such statements.

Anyway, this is as far as I'll go with you. I'm not getting sucked into having to deal with another like Don. Debating either of you is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.

Earl Doherty

TedM

Why do you continue to minimize that issue? That was a major problem Paul faced. I'm not saying that was the sole issue but that issue IS directly related to what what Paul's gospel is all about. That's why I provided those verses. It is a major oversight on your part to minimize that issue.

I think the lack of clarity of the text is a problem for all who try to interpret it.

Very possibly. Paul's gospel wasn't just for Gentiles in Corinth . Jewish Christians likely would have favored a more 'Jewish' gospel of Christ. Paul's gospel was for Jews and Gentiles alike. I don't know if you regard the latter part of Acts as somewhat historical or not, but I think Acts 18 paints a portrayal of Paul's gospel in Corinth that is favorable to my position:

Paul, according to this passage wasn't just a preacher to the Gentiles in Corinth. Not by a long shot. He would seek out the Jews FIRST. There is no need to assume that in Corinthians those that found favor in 'superlative' apostles were non-Jews. It makes sense to me that those apostles were preaching about a Jesus whose death and resurrection were primarily to advance the cause of Jews in a way that was contrary to Paul's gospel of Jesus.


It is strange to me that you would consider how Jews would have reacted to a simple 'crucified man', but you would not consider how Jews would have reacted to the more orthodox picture of that man having been reported to have been resurrected, reported to have been the Messiah. How can you make a judgment about the viability of the orthodox position if you refuse to consider it?

I don't know how you can claim to know the mind of all Jews at the time. The Pharisees believed in resurrection without personally having witnessed it. We don't need to conclude that people were declaring a physical resurrection here, although IMO such claims would have intensified the speed of deification.

Paul said Jesus was the Son of God. Paul also said Jesus was a man who was raised from the dead. You just don't read it 'plainly'.

That's fine. I don't have the time anyway. Thanks for your replies.

Toto

Digression split here - aaa5874 vs. TedM

sschlichter

does higher criticism ignore even immediate context these days?

at the very least you can surmise that those preaching another Jesus were jewish. Can you not?

2Co 11:22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.