spamandham

Agreed. Someone in the chain, knew the link between the name 'jesus' and 'YHWH'. It need not have been Paul. But if Paul is not the one that knew it, then he is also not the one who invented the name "Jesus". So, either Paul knew who YHWH was, or he did not coin the name "Jesus". Which do you prefer?

It's the prefix of the name "Jesus".

spamandham

This isn't out of the question in regards to early proto-christian beliefs.

spamandham

{emphasis mine}

I don't see why that poses a problem. All that it implies is that the etymology predates these sources. It's debatable where the epistles fall in this timeline anyway.

Ben C Smith

You said that there was nothing to indicate that Paul was talking about a human being. When the ancients spoke of Hercules, they were talking about a human being. They regarded Hercules as a human being divinized.

If your only point is that we need more from Paul than a simple affirmation that Jesus was a human being, I agree with you; we also need some affirmation of recency or such. But that was not, to my mind, how you worded your statement.

Ben.

gstafleu

Isn't that circular reasoning? We have two hypotheses: HJ and MJ. To confirm HJ (given we have reasoning for MJ) we need (a) evidence that the texts refer to an HJ, and (b) a candidate. You can then not say that the candidate is that person we are looking for. At least not without looking like an uroboros.

Gerard Stafleu

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE=Ben C Smith;4593783]Yes, unfortunately life doesn't hand us smoking guns. Just spent shell casings and GSR on everyone's hands and clothing.

Better addressed by who? The discussion focuses too much on the Paulines, I think. Doherty's argument takes in a whole range of documents.

But on Earl's reading the Ignatia are real tales, and thus, a historical Jesus appeared early. Plus there are the gospels. Again Earl dates Mark conventionally, so "most of a century".....

Finally, the phrase "most of a century" is assumptive. On any mythicist reading the beginnings of Christianity are uncertain. Doherty's weaknesses stem from trying to marry mythicism to the conventional view of the dates and order of composition of the NT texts. Brave of him, but I think it won't work. Hence he inherits the weaknesses of that viewpoint, with Paul writing in the 40s-50s but not being cited as a letter writer for what -- a century?

That particular view disappeared because its original holders evolved into the proto-orthodox crowd when the writer of Luke produced a history for the rising religion. It literally did not exist -- because the other groups all proffered competing Jesi. I doubt the second and third century hesiologists knew jack about the origins of their faith.

Sorry, man. You lost me here. What attack were you expecting? You mean attack Doherty's Logos Christians?

I think the e-silences are compatible with a range of readings, including the conventional historicist ones. I see no reason one couldn't hold to a minimalist Jesus. It's a variant of the Historical Core HJ.

Mostly we have a clash of competing interpretive frameworks, and the only way out is a sound methodology.

And the constant carping on Doherty's views about Hellenistic concepts of the Worlds Above misses the whole point. Let's imagine that Doherty is comprehensively wrong about what the ancient Hellenists thought. It's not relevant. Only Paul can intepret Paul. The whole thing is an attempt to discredit Doherty, not engage the idea. The fact that Doherty suffers such an attack is indicative that his central reading of Paul is in fact correct.

I believe also that gathering evidence from what the philosophes of the day wrote is also incorrect. References to the Hellenistic novels in the serious writings of the day are almost nonexistent, but there they are (sobers one on any argument from silence, eh?) And then there is a whole genre of really wild stuff of which only scraps have been found. It's pretty clear that the common people believed all sorts of stuff and interacted with all kinds of literature that never made its way into the serious works and would have been lost to history if the actual texts had not been preserved. Thus DonG's attempt to collect all that info on who believed what will founder because it collects stuff that isn't relevant -- and also because polytheists don't make systems, so it is pointless to criticize them by relying on systematic evaluation. Earl made the same mistake, I think, but in a different direction.

As always, you have to go back to Paul to interpret Paul, and back to the early Christian epistles to interpret them. Little if anything outside of them bears on them. Paul's Jesus was obviously not whacked on earth, but to specify where he was killed is to attempt to describe what was probably a different experience for all who had visions of the Risen Jesus.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Speaking of smoking guns, the full import of Tabor's raising of Paul's silence on Jesus' marriage really hit me today when I re-read that BCH thread. I noted:


++++++
This "silence" s simply another one showing that Paul knew nothing about any historical Jesus. For he could not have made an argument on marriage and celibacy without referencing Jesus one way or the other.

Imagine that you are Paul and you sit down to write. You pen...

"Now, celibacy beats marriage any day...."

Pause.

Oh shit....Was Jesus married or not?

There is no way that you can write on marriage as a topic without reference to the "historical" founder either way. If Jesus wasn't married, of course you marshal that fact, as Tabor correctly identifies. But the converse is also true -- if Jesus was married, you have to deal with the fact of him happily boinking the nights away with his wife. Either way there is no way that Paul simply ignores the truth.

Because he can't. Because what's the explanation for the silences? That everyone knew the story. Well, if everyone knew the story, then everyone knew whether Jesus was married or not!! So Paul would have been forced to either argue away or use that fact.

There's no getting around it. Mayhap Tabor has identified the smoking gun. LOL.

+++++++++

Let's map it out. If everyone knew that Jesus was married, then Paul has to deal with that fact. If everyone knew that Jesus was unmarried, then Paul could hardly fail to point that out. Even if we take everyone knew to mean only a reasonable sample of the Christian communities, then surely some must have known the marital status of the founder of the faith. I mean today, when Mormons debate marriage, the polygamous marriages of the Founders are definitely a fact in play one way or the other, just as Mohammed's marriages are discussed among Muslims -- and used as fodder by critics of Islam. Marriage is so fundamental to human society that it is hard to imagine how the founder's marital status was not an issue in early Christian communities.....

If nobody knew, then when Paul raised the issue of marriage, the inquiries would have started immediately, and Paul would have been forced to affirm or deny that Jesus was married -- which means that in the letter he would have been forced to deal with the issue -- "Oh, and BTW, Jesus was married/not married." Since everyone knew that Jesus was a historical person, his marital status would have been extremely probative. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine how Paul could have simply ignored it in the passage that Tabor cites.

If Jesus was not married, then that would have been powerful affirmation for his argument, and thus, he could hardly have failed to use it.

Of course, since everyone knew and since Paul was only interested in the Risen Jesus, and ...

Maybe there is an out here -- you know, Jesus' career was too short, or he was too busy, or maybe he was a flaming poofter. Still....

Of course, Hebrews mentions marriage to, in Chap. 13, but Jesus' own marriage doesn't come up as an example, even though the letter admonishes a few lines later what everyone knew, that Jesus had suffered outside the gate -- using his suffering as an example just like those sacrificial animals.

I guess Hebrews didn't feel any need to worry about whether Jesus was married, because everyone knew. That's why 1 Clement compliments the Corinthians on their good marriages, but doesn't mention Jesus' own either way, because everyone knew.....

Vorkosigan

GakuseiDon

I certainly agree that we can't assume every kind of philosophical viewpoint made it into literature, but I don't think the cause is as bad as you make it out to be. Plutarch, for example, catalogued quite a few different viewpoints in his works. There's simply nothing there that would interpret Paul in anything other than a historicist framework. Now, I've always granted that Paul may have had his own ideas about what "in the flesh", etc, meant, but if he is ambiguous on any score, then the more likely explanation is going to be the one that matches with what we know about how people thought in those days.

Doherty also makes it sound like "earthly myths were played out in a mythic realm" was a common concept back then (even if he does this accidently), even though there is no evidence for such a concept. I think this needs to be reality-checked as well. So I see that bringing this up as relevent, though I understand that you yourself aren't concerned by this.

I think that Paul's Jesus obviously was killed on earth. Here is the slippery slope: We know that people in the flesh are killed on earth. We know that Satan has his domain in this world. We know that crucifixion was carried out on earth. We have no information about crucifixion being done in any non-earthly location under the firmament, nor about the expresson "in the flesh" being used to refer to non-earthly creatures. Is there any reason to believe that Paul thought that the crucifixion was done in a non-earthly location, using Paul to interpret Paul? (Or Hebrews to interpret Hebrews, etc).

Clivedurdle

Evidence?

Last time I looked Satan was an angel.

By this world I assume you mean a classic Hebrew World with heaven above the vault and sheol underneath?

I understand the Hebrew universe as having no border controls - god and satan chatting in heaven about what to do about Job for example, Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, the Serpent in the garden of Eden, Lot and Abraham being visited in Sodom.

I think this dividing the universe up is a later idea - it was not there then. Gods walked on water then!

Zeichman

In remote antiquity firmament cosmology was used. In Hellenistic times (including the NT), though, the ball within a ball (to borrow Wendy Cotter's phrase) model of the universe was popular. The Satan-as-ruler-of-the-world view needs to be heavily nuanced in order to be useful or accurate.

You lost me with the "Lot and Abraham being visited in Sodom" comment and fail to see its relevance.