Lógos Sokratikós

Yeah right, given the fact that Paul confirms the Gospel story (Galilean, preached, crucified, risen, etc).

It would agree with you if you said "use the Gospels to verify Paul" or "use Paul to verify the Gospels", but the different texts (and I keep out Apocalypsis here... it sounds like someone on LSD :grin: ) do help you understand each other. Imangine no Bible and all of a sudden an archælogist found the epistle to Romans. S/he'd most probably think "WTF!" and would be alleviated to find whatever other NT texts s/he may later discover.

jakejonesiv

Thanks Andrew! :thumbs:

This is what I am looking for. Do you have access to the Greek? What word is used for "calked?" What word(s) is used for "anointed?" Do you happen to know the date of the oldest extant manuscript that contains this passage?

Jake

Lógos Sokratikós

It's a hypothetical number<edit>! It makes all the sense in the world except if you want to find a small meaningless thread to yank at until you can say the sweater doesn't warm you up. It isn't even half wily. Got anything better?

Amaleq13

Careful with the eyerolls or you might end up staring at your own brain.

Paul cannot "confirm" stories that were written decades after his letters and were quite possibly inspired by the very beliefs he expresses. You need independent evidence to obtain confirmation and you certainly don't have that in the Gospels. You will have a hard enough time trying to establish their reliability as it is.

Besides, Paul nowhere "confirms" that the Incarnated Son was a Galilean nor can it be reliably established that he "confirms" the Incarnated Son preached anything to anyone since the few possible references (four?) can just as easily be understood as divinely revealed information from the Risen Christ.

jakejonesiv

Yes, that is how I try to approach things also. It usually leads to a healthy agnosticism.

Jake

Julian

I don't think that's possible...

TedM

Here's the passage using Young's

Let's look at this from a "this was a vision" standpoint:

Note, that the writer doesn't say "the unnamed humble servant". Or "Christ". Rather, he refers to the incarnation as "the Lord Jesus", which is more fitting of a man Paul believed had the name Jesus during his incarnation, as opposed to only after the sacrifice. He may be retrojecting, of course.

Why is "night" specified? Why not day? If crucifixions were almost always done in the daytime (or were they?), might this suggest that "delivered up" wasn't referring to the act of being crucified, since it would then have been more appropriate to say "in the day in which he was delivered up"?

Also, WHO did the delivering up? If it is Christ himself, that seems an odd way to phrase it. It would have made more sense to say "in the night in which He delivered Himself up". It reads as though it is others. If it is others--such as demons, doesn't that contradict the other use Paul has (I forget it now) in which Christ did deliver himself up? EDIT: I see now that Rom 8:32 refers to God delivering up Jesus, so this particular argument is withdrawn.

Don't these problems suggest that the meaning "betrayed" is more appropriate than "crucified"? If Paul had a vision of Christ just prior to his being crucified, I fail to see why the vision would specify that this took place at night, EDIT: scratch " and I see the implication that others delivered him up to be crucified to be further problematic."

Who is Jesus talking to? It seems an odd way for a vision to relate a conversation directed toward future believers--to have them remember him. How does one "REMEMBER" one that he has never known or met? Technically one can't. Rather, the history of the person is honored. If the message were directed toward future believers, I would expect something more like "do ye -- to the HONOR of me." Note too that Jesus doesn't say "this is my body that has been broken for you". Intead it is "that is being broken for you". It is all present tense, as though the people he is speaking to were present AT THAT MOMENT. Same comments for the cup.


In all, if this is a vision, this seems to fit an event believed to have happened on earth and in front of human witnesses, just prior to his being delivered by others to be crucified MORESO than an event in the skies in which the unnamed incarnation delivers himself up as a sacrifice and is telling future believers he has never met to remember him.

ted

Lógos Sokratikós

I always make sure I don't see my own brain. The last time I saw it I was upset at how small it looks...
I don't think you understood the sense of the word "confirm" as I used it. Of course his actions (writing included) were inspired by his beliefs. That's the way with all of us!

I didn't mean that it was proof. By far it isn't. But Paul's Christ story and the Gosppels correspond. And it is important that they do so, since Paul never mentions any Gospel (the books as they've gotten to us, I mean). He says [the Christ story narration he gives] is what he was told (Even Herodotus couldn't do any better. Neither were there any archives from Ha'Aretz or the Jerusalem Post Josephus could read). Ignoring this is a forecast for very bad scholarship -if a scholar were to assume such a thing.

Christ mythologists are so intent on debunking that they miss very important aspects. It's the fate of all debunkers.

You don't have to believe in angels, deities or jinn. Calm, patience and kindness are good for good science. Hurry and hate are unfavorable to it.

S.C.Carlson

Try here:

http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/j...s/apolog1g.htm (First Apology)

http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/j...s/apolog2g.htm (Second Apology)

If your browser looks at it funkily, be sure to reset your character encoding from Cyrillic to Unicode.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Correct. To sup means to have supper. The actual Greek expression used is impossible to render literally into English; it would come out as after the to sup. But it means after the act of supping or after supper.

There are two separate acts described in our passage. The breaking of the bread must have occurred either before or during supper (a simple contrastive deduction). The taking of the cup occurred after supper, according to Paul.

I tell you, I find it very hard to understand your words sometimes. I do not know what you are saying here. I am unaware of having concluded that Paul left the supper out of anything. Out of what? Please clarify.

I have been assuming it was a revelation or vision of some kind. It just happens to be the kind of vision that reveals something concrete about an historical event in the past.

Crossan cites The Perfect Storm at one point in The Birth of Christianity (I own the book, but as it is not in front of me right now I am paraphrasing) to the effect that the daughter of one of the men who went down on the ship told her mother that she had seen daddy (in a dream or vision or something), and that he had told her what had happened on the boat. Her father, in other words, appeared to her in a dream or vision in order to convey information about an historical event with which he had been involved, the sinking of the Andrea Gail.

That is clearly the kind of thing happening in this passage. Assuming the information conveyed in the passage came from a vision to Paul, it was nevertheless information about what had happened during supper on the night Jesus was delivered up. Taking received from the Lord to mean that it was the Lord Jesus himself who conveyed this information to Paul, the situation is exactly analogous to the above example. Jesus appeared to Paul in a vision in order to convey information about an historical event with which he had been involved.

Agreed. Though that is still a possibility, of course, as you acknowledge.

Guilty as charged, and proud of it.

Reading ancient authors without considering the historical context in which they were writing is a common mistake, and one that I take great pains to avoid. Taken to its extreme, failing to take historical context into situation leads to Lutheranism (my apologies to any Lutherans reading this ).

Presumably in order to preserve the meal as a memorial to the death of Jesus. There is no doubt that the historical (according to Paul) event in question was supposed to have an impact (according to Paul) on how the meal was carried out even after the original meal itself.

You mentioned asking Paul a question (about the charge on which Jesus was executed) if you could; try this question: Paul, when was it that Jesus spoke the words do this in my memory? What would Paul answer? Would he say that Jesus spoke those words in a personal vision sometime after his own conversion? Or would he say that Jesus spoke those words over supper on the night when he was delivered up for execution?

Fortunately, we do not have to guess at what Paul would answer; he tells us explicitly:

...the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was delivered up took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said....

Ben.