spin

And of course I can say the same regarding you.

Both of which happened before the period of wide popular diffusion of computers. So let's cut the attempts to miss the point.

So if you strained you could find the "design revolutions" for the brain hardware as well, oh you seeker of perverseness.

There is no doubt. But you seek "experience" at its most basic. Compare your watching of TV with that of a person who has never seen TV before and you'll probably see the person looking for where the pictures went off the side of the screen.

But it's not Paul's reactions that are involved in the problem of reading his texts, but the difference between today's reactions to what he was talking about and his in his own era. It is the modern reader at issue here and how they can get at Paul's communication.

It is exactly that act which causes you to stumble. We don't give a shit about your reading of history. We care about how you can overcome your reading in an effort to understand what happened. Your reading is useless to me. It doesn't need to bear anything more than a fleeting resemblance to what happened.

I tried to avoid them. As I said, Shakespeare used old stories. It is what he did with them that made the plays. Your notion of 'relatively "history free" plot' for R&J captures the source and misses the play.

From the little I have, the more you know about the context of the era ante, the more chance you have of piecing together the presuppositions that inform the texts of the time.

It's strange that, if you had "no argument" to the previous comment I wrote, you couldn't connect it to the problem with your mantra, as your mantra seems to mean that you try to ensure your own non-understanding of the past.


spin

spin

I don't think messianism was a tradition of his ancestors. Remember that a lot of what christians see as messianism prefiguring Jesus is actual just christian misinterpretation, as in the case of Daniel, the suffering servant, and Ps 22. The first clearly messianic material that comes to mind is from the Psalms of Solomon, which were written between 63 BCE and about 45 BCE just after Pompey was assassinated. Most messianist thought developed "off the books", which in itself suggests that it wasn't the product of the traditions. We tend to conflate messianism with the older tradition of apocalyticism.


spin

J-D

I would like to know on what grounds you doubt what I tell you about my own biography. I am not a Christian. I have never been a Christian. I did not grow up in a Christian family. I have never been taught Christianity. I have never studied traditional Christian exegeses.Perhaps it bears repeating. Some things do.If you are aware of something outside my perspective which you think merits contemplation, bring it within my perspective by describing it and I promise to contemplate it.

Nevertheless, simple logic is within my perspective, and simple logic tells me that the larger the number of people who hold a view, the less likely it is to be a bizarrely idiosyncratic interpretation. This follows necessarily from the meaning of 'idiosyncratic'.I used the term 'Christians' in quotes not to describe their beliefs but for the purpose of identification within the context, which I explicitly stated, of Galatians 1:22. The grammatical antecedent of 'they' in 1:23 is found in 1:22, however it's translated. At least one translation explicitly uses the word 'Christians' there, while others refer to 'Christ's churches' or 'churches of Christ'. The text doesn't say anything about their beliefs, and I don't know what their beliefs were, but I do know that there is continuity of reference from verse 22 to verse 23.

I used the term 'Christians' in quotes because I don't insist on referring to them as Christians, although I think, given the wording of translations of verse 22, that the intended reference is clear, and in this context I think that's what matters. If you prefer to refer to 'the people of the Judean assemblies referred to in Galatians 1:22', I'm happy to do the same. My argument is unaffected by the terminological change. I never said I did, so I don't know what makes it seem that way. In a general sense, it would be interesting to know what they believed. But it is not relevant to the argument I've been making, which does not logically depend on the contents of their beliefs.Fair enough. So what does 'Christian' mean to you?Your analogy breaks down. Your statement, of which I was seeking elucidation, was 'Christianity might have started with Paul, but it certainly wasn't christianity then'. An exact grammatical parallel would be 'Computers might have started with Charles Babbage, but they certainly weren't computers then'. That doesn't sound right to me. On the other hand, if we start the construction of a grammatical parallel at the other end of the analogy, we end up with 'Christianity may have started with Paul, but the first wasn't built until circa <insert appropriate date here>'. That doesn't sound right to me either.

In the 'computers' case, the position is that Babbage had the idea of computers, but nobody constructed a physical instantiation until circa 1950. If your suggestion is that Paul had the idea of Christianity, but nobody constructed a physical instantiation until later, then I don't understand how you distinguish between the idea of Christianity and its physical instantiation. I suppose it's possible to suggest that Paul was the first to preach a particular doctrine, but that he never gathered any followers, and that the doctrine only gathered followers later, but I don't yet see the reasons for supposing that.

Possibly what you mean is that the present doctrines of Christianity are not the same as Paul's doctrines, but that they are fruit of a process of development which stretches back to Paul's doctrines. I would agree with that, but then I would also suggest that the first origin of that process of development was not with Paul but somewhere even further back in time. Also, although it's possible to adopt a manner of speaking in which every change in doctrine is considered to be a change from one religion to another, it's not the usual way of speaking.I still don't see how any of this sheds light on the relevance of your remark 'one person's Messiah may be another person's pariah'.

Jewish literature contains different notions of the Messiah, but none of these have ever been actually fulfilled by any person who has actually lived. If it's a necessity for a group to be called 'messianic' that it follows a person who actually fulfilled a pre-existing traditional notion of what a Messiah would be, then no religious movement ever could be called genuinely messianic. I think it's reasonable to refer to a group as 'messianic' if they called somebody a messiah.You haven't explained what you think Paul's notion of 'messiah' was, nor what you think the notion of the people of the Judean assemblies was, not how you infer your explanation from the data.Yes, 'if'! Do you have a reason for thinking we should?No, I've never done that.I don't see why not--that is, I can see that there might be particular reasons why this is true in particular cases, but I can't see any general reason why this should be universally true.On the face of it, verses 11 and 12 look as if Paul is saying that he received a supernatural revelation. I don't know whether you're suggesting that we can't reject the idea that there really are supernatural revelations. I say that there are really are no supernatural revelations: hence, people who say that they have had supernatural revelations can't be speaking the literal truth. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are lying, however. They may be speaking metaphorically. Or they may be sincerely mistaken.

If we consider the possibility that Paul sincerely believed that he had had a supernatural revelation, I don't see any conflict between that and what he goes on to say in the rest of the chapter and in the next chapter. On the face of it, he's reporting that he had a supernatural revelation of the truth of the faith which he had previously persecuted. According to the account given, Paul is insisting that he learned the faith independently of any human source, but that doesn't necessarily entail that the faith he learned was different from that independently held by others. For a believer in supernatural revelations, there would be nothing unreasonable about this.

spin

I in no way implied to the contrary. You need none to still fall foul of the criticism.

Most things don't.

First you need to try a serious analysis of Gal 1:11f, that doesn't include aspersions of fraud or manipulating his thought.

Simple logic is not enough. Refusal to consider the implications of things (such as what the writer says) followed by simple logic on what's left can push you into flimsy comments about idiosyncratic interpretations.

Why insinuate christians into the issue other than to confuse what's being talked about? Christians in our parlance I would have thought was the religion based on the Jesus of the gospels. This is why I used "messianists". The term "christian" didn't exist in Paul's day and it is an anachronism to use it so.

And they are crap. To talk about "churches" in Paul's time is misleading and "assemblies" is a simpler, less biased term. "Christians" is damned silly. The text talks of "the assemblies of Judea that are in christ" (tais ekklhsiais ths ioudaias tais en xristw).

And if you don't know what their beliefs were, you don't know what the continuity was.

And it would at least be transparent.

When you don't know what exactly about their faith is involved, you have no argument.

OK, so the analogy failed to elicit from you the parallel I sought.

It is simply anachronistic to refer to Paul's faith as christianity, though that's how christians would talk of his faith.

I can't get any bigger crayons. What Paul called a messiah simply doesn't fit the Jewish notion.

What are your primary sources for this claim?

That's the major problem with messianism.

What about those who looked forward to the coming of the messiah? Think of JtB's message. Weren't those who accepted it messianic? Think of Apollos.

It's what Paul's messiah wasn't that is important and that I have explained.

Alexandrian priority.

With you apparently precise mapping of it to Paul's faith.

When you come up with functional criteria for doing so, I'll listen.

This seems to be looking past the issue I have already raised about the verses. He says that his gospel, not this bit or that, but the whole kit and kaboodle, came through revelation. It did not come from what he heard from, or was taught by, people. He doesn't allow for claims that he received what he believed from previous believers in Jesus or from any established belief system. It came through revelation. Whatever that means, be it god spoke to him or he had a psychotic experience or even a rough dream, it didn't come from his precursors. That is what you had to deal with in 1:11f. Statements like "If we're going to go by a plain reading of the text of Galatians, it says explicitly that Paul's religion predated Paul himself, most directly at 1:23" don't take notice of what Paul actually says. What you were being asked for in my previous post was to come at the position you eke out of 1:23 given a close reading of 1:11f and its implication for the origin of Paul's gospel.


spin

J-D

Well, how? How do you suppose that I have been influenced by Christian hegemony?Is it your view that my interpretation is an idiosyncratic one? If so, why is that your view?The continuity I referred to is grammatical continuity. The word 'they' in a verse 23 refers to the people referred to in verse 22 as 'the assemblies of Judea that are in Christ'. Both verses are talking about the same people: that's what I meant by 'continuity of reference'.My argument is simply that the text says that the faith Paul preached was the same faith that his predecessors preached. It does say that. The text doesn't say what that faith was, but that makes no difference to the argument. I suspect that you think I have no argument because you think I have no grounds for the conclusion you think I am arguing for, and I suspect that this may be you are mistaken about the nature of the conclusion I am arguing for. That may be my fault. I may have confused you by my choice of words. I will try to choose different words.I accept that people in Paul's time didn't use the word 'Christianity'. That does not prove that the thing did not exist.I still don't see how that's relevant.I have not consulted primary sources on this point.Yes, it's reasonable to describe such people also as messianic. That doesn't change the fact that it's also reasonable to describe, say, the followers of Shabtai Tzvi as messianists, even though Shabtai Tzvi was not the/a messiah.You've said that Paul's concept of the messiah differed from the traditional Jewish one, but you haven't explained how, and more importantly you haven't explained what makes you think that the Judean assemblies did adhere to a traditional Jewish concept of the messiah.I don't do that, the text does that.The use of other available information.Yes, Paul says he derived his message independently of his predecessors. But he doesn't say that the faith he preached was different from that preached by his predecessors. In fact, he says the opposite. The textual account is of Paul having independent access to the same faith as his predecessors. According to the text, the origin of Paul's faith was independent, but the content was the same. To somebody who genuinely believes in God, there is no reason why God can't give the same message independently to different people.

spin

You were born into a western society.

No. It is simply missing relevant information, leaving you to talk about idiosyncratic interpretations.

Umm, your basic claim is one of continuity from they to Paul.

Wot?

But what thing are you talking about exactly?

The continuity. We have Paul's notion of messiah which "they" don't apparently know, so they, with their Jewish concept of messiah, hearing that Paul now supports messianism, can say what is in 1:23. Paul with his misguided notion of messiah can accept their words.

Then I guess you can't know anything substantial about it.

Would you say that the followers of JtB had the same faith as Paul? Both claim to messianists. How were the messianists of the assemblies of Judea different from those of JtB? Could they have been one and the same?

Here I said, "There is nothing messianic Paul's messiah -- except the name. Jesus is not a Jewish military leader who works god's will through temporal means of battle in Paul's writings. Paul's christ a salvific figure."

As the Judean assemblies followed Jewish praxis, they were more Jewish in deed than Paul. Hence it is probable that they maintained the Jewish notion of messiah.

There is no precise mapping at all. It's in your imagination.

Functional criteria are methods you employ of working on the other available information. Not the information itself whose interpretation we differ on. Try again.

Only with your overexertion. What they call pegs may in fact be square pegs and round pegs and you don't seem to care what sort of peg you force into the hole.

As it is independent, there is no necessary continuity at all. We are simply left with what "they" said about Paul preaching the faith he tried to destroy. If Paul taught a nominal messianism, would any party know that that messianism was any different from that believed by "them"? Remember that "they" didn't have any experience of Paul directly. How would they know what he taught exactly??

This may be, but we know Paul's messianism, which doesn't reflect on Jewish messianism, so there is cause to think that his faith was in fact different from the assemblies of Judea "in the messiah".


spin

Solo

why don't you ?


Yeah, yeah, spin...talking through your hat again... you are totally clueless if you believe that software drives the computer revolution. It always was, is and will be the hardware, the processor architecture, the chip density, the telecom pipe and switching technologies (+ wireless) that open possibilities for software. Hell, 64 bit CPUs have been around since 1960's, and in microchip versions (RISC) since eqarly 1990's. Microsoft still hasn't got a 64-bit operating system that anyone would care to buy. So your "need modern software" analogy is a dud. Don't work.


Design revolutions for the brain hardware ? Are you saying that our brain is now ANY different than in Paul's time ? Pray tell ! What Lamarckian sage has been informing you ?



That's the problem, spin, I am talking to you about Sitz im Leben, and your mind is wandering to cartoons. Yes, it's human situation in its most basic, invariant shapes. Kurt Vonnegut described it better than any philosopher I know in the opening of "Deadeye Dick":

I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be repealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that...they never shut up

I suggest that unless you understand what Vonnegut is saying - and I mean really grasp it from within, connect to it, as Frank X. Spinner or whatever they told you your name was - you should not bother with history. You only get more confused. You will be wasting your peephole time.


Naturally, we do not have the target audience that Paul was addressing in the expectations of the imminent collapse of heavens. The ones destined to be saints under Paul's care are now mostly getting psychoactive drugs to get their nirvana. People who do not expect Messiah to beam them up into mid-air, and have no clue as to why that would be necessary, obviously cannot get at Paul's communication. No matter how good their Greek and how many books they read on Paul.

How can I "overcome my reading" ? How can I step out of myself into "historical objectivity" ? Of course, my reading will be useless to you if you believe that human brain has been re-designed, and that the mysterious "unio mystica" of Paul therefore can have nothing to do with common problems observed by contemporary professionals in the field of mental health.


Thank you but that's like saying the more keystrokes a chimp produces on a typewriter, the greater the chance of it re-producing Tolstoy's War and Piece.

What information is relevant to my purpose ? hmmmm....statistically, what chance do you think that Jesus in Luke 6:21 does not allude to manic liberation from depression when he says: Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh..... ?

A generation or two after Luke, the first physician who observed the inter-relatedness of depression and mania, Aretaeus of Cappadocia wrote: In my opinion melancholia is without any doubt the beginning and even part of the disorder called mania. The melancholic cases tend towards depression and anxiety only...if however, respite from this condition of anxiety occurs, gaiety and hilarity in the majority of cases follows, and this finally ends in mania. (cited by J.R. Whitwell, Historical Notes on Psychiatry, London 1936)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul's allusions to his bipolarity and related issues:

You know it was because of bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first; and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn me or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ
Gal 4:13


When I came to you , brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in much
fear and trembling and my speech and my message were not in lofty words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God
1 Cor 2:1-5


I fear when I come again my God may humble me before you. 2 Cor 12:21

For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account’ 2 Cor 10:10

We do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed, that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt we received the sentence of death
2 Cor 1:8-9

I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart
Rom 9:1-2

We wanted to come to you – I, Paul, again and again – but Satan hindered us.
1 Thess 2:18


For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears,….
2 Cor 2:4


For, if we are beside ourselves, it is for God, if we are in our right mind, it is for you
2 Cor 5:5

For even when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn – fighting without and fear within
2 Cor 7:5

And to keep me from being elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.
2 Cor 12:7

If I pray in a tongue my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful
1 Cor 14:14

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death ? We were buried therefore with by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Rom 6:3-5



Jiri

judge

But why would one expect Jewish messainism to be correct when their very own prophets indictaed their shortcomings in this regard.

If one reads the Hebrew bible there seems to be reason to argue that first century jews might well have misunderstood.

For just one short example see Pauls letter to Rome

I dont think it is strong just to argue that because first century jews or even modern ones did not see Jesus as the messiah, it means he was not.

spin

Jewish examples of shortcomings regarding messianism...?

Good joke.

M$YX is a good Hebrew word, a term coined by Hebrew speaking Jews, used in specific ways by Hebrew speaking Jews. They defined what the term means with all its collocations. Live with it. The term got waylaid in this very moment when Paul's muddled usage of the idea was taken on by non-Jewish people who maintained his confusion.


spin

judge

Yes just read the jewish prophets.
It's their own prophets who called them blind and stubborn (maybe the prophets were anti-semitic :devil1: )

But that's what religious people do with their writings isn't it? They take some parts and ignore other parts and build their own theology. It's always tempting, of course, to do this in a way which is favourable to oneself or ones own group.