NOGO

Ok, but then the Lord's Supper and the fact that any Christian gets inspiration directly from Jesus must also have been approved. What that tells me is that the apostolic tradition reflected in the Gospels did not exist in Paul's time and it is therefore no wonder that Paul never quotes Jesus.

This conclusion is not just based on the Lord's Supper. There are many other differences between the Gospels and Paul. I will post them when I find time. The one that I am working on now is the fact that Paul and Hebrews both say that Jesus obtained the title of "Son of God" after his resurection. This has many ramifications as you will see.

NOGO

How so?
I have already admitted that Paul must have gotten his information from somebody. What I am saying is that that tradition includes a Lord's Supper which is at odds with what Christians believe today.

Therefore the tradition which Christians have today was created after Paul.

"My case" as you put it does not rest on the meaning of one word not will it fall on the meaning of one word. There is just too many things that point in that direction.

NOGO

If I may add ...

The expectation that someone such as Paul would quote a saying or teaching of his "Lord" is of course very reasonable. But it is far stronger than that.

The whole point about the Lord's Supper is that the bread is the word or teachings of Jesus. That is a very strong theme in the gospels. "Take this for this is my body" is talking about the body of the word of God or teachings.

Paul is saying this bread is inspired.
The Gospels say that this bread came out of the mouth of the man Jesus passed on through apostolic tradition.

That is why Paul never quotes Jesus and never preaches on the basis of Jesus' saying as most Christian preacher do today.

I cannot put it in any clearer way. Paul's letters do not jive with the Christianity which started with the Gospels.

GakuseiDon

NOGO, I know I've only quoted half the paragraph, but I think this is a point that Doherty doesn't address.

If it is reasonable to expect that Paul would quote from a saying of the Lord, then wouldn't this apply to a MJ as well as aHJ?

In fact, the Lord's Supper is the only direct quote of the words of Jesus I can find off-hand in Paul (I'd appreciate anyone letting me know of others). There are a few other references to Jesus giving commands (e.g. divorce) but they are not quotes.

It is simply arbitrary to suppose that this supports an MJ.

I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning. Are you saying that Paul didn't think that Jesus actually said that, even on a sublunar plane?

GakuseiDon

"No good reason"??? I think we will have to agree to disagree on this. To be frank, that is the arbitrary view that I find throughout Doherty's writings. If Christianity started as a vision-based religion, I think it is reasonable that the first person to see (or at least promote) those visions would have been singled out as the most authoritative source. Yet there is nothing in Paul's writings to indicate that authoritative source. It is "a conspiracy of silence", if you like.

Granted, that is a point in Doherty's favor... and probably the main one. Of course, I'm tempted to just answer "there does not appear to be any good reason for him to either know of or report the details of anyone talking to the living Jesus"... but, to a certain extent, I think that is true. Paul believed that he had been commissioned esp by Jesus to preach to the Gentiles, and his letters were focussed on that. And that Paul barely quotes the words of Jesus at all is almost as much a problem for Doherty (IMHO).

Yes, indeed. For Paul, the significance of Jesus's life was His death and resurrection. This was the focus of Paul's gospel.

You said that Paul "makes repeated and explicit statements denying learning anything from it (anything like an apostolic tradition)". I've already said that Paul said he got his gospel from revelation, probably from his first vision.

Now where are his "repeated denials of human sources" and "repeated and explicit statements" that he didn't learn anything from any other source? It seems like an incredible statement to make.

Because Paul was focussed on the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul only ever saw the Risen Christ. Even Doherty says this: http://www.humanists.net/jesuspuzzle/supp06.htm:
Of course, if Paul's gospel should have included statements from a living Jesus, then why not from a Risen Jesus?

According to Paul, Jesus made a comment about divorce. Is that something you'd expect from a living Jesus, or a Risen one? I suggest it is more consistent as something coming from a worldly one.

Yes, and if the kerygma repeated in 1 Cor 15 is genuinely by Paul, those are the beliefs he had heard but did not believe. The revelation was apparently that those beliefs were true. In this sense, Paul is saying that his gospel is what he came to believe was true and that belief did not come from any man.

As I have pointed out (and Doherty admits), some believe that Paul's statements about the Lord's Supper are exactly that.

Well then, give me an example from the Gospels on what Jesus said on the subject. If there were no know apostolic tradition on the subject, then why is what Paul said a problem?

It didn't (at least Paul's gospel), but that doesn't address my point. Given that Paul believed that the Risen Christ had appointed him to preach to the Gentiles, I would say that Paul would have considered that a greater source than the apostles, even if they had known Jesus personally.

Toto

The faction of the early church that was victorious did not preserve all of the documents. We do not have James' side of the story, or Peter's. But you can read in Paul's letters that there was a lot of controversy, false doctrine, etc., that he rails against.

The Spuriousness of So-called Pauline Epistles Exemplified by the Epistle to the Galatians

the_cave

Quite possibly, but you can make a lot of arguments from a purported lack of documentation! Which is not a very good way to make an argument...

Quote:

But you can read in Paul's letters that there was a lot of controversy, false doctrine, etc., that he rails against.

Yes, there were clearly a lot of unnamed controversies running around. But some of them at least can be accounted for (dietary laws, etc.), and you would think that something as big as the ritual of the Lord's Supper would have cropped up somewhere besides the letter to the Corinthians...

Quote:

The Spuriousness of So-called Pauline Epistles Exemplified by the Epistle to the Galatians

Ah, yes, a Dutch Radical scholar, I believe...well, it seems to me he isn't just calling into question Paul's authorship of that passage in Galatians--he's calling into question Paul's authorship of anything! And he seems to be doing so by accepting the account in Acts as the authoritative account...but it seems to me that most scholars would not accept it as such nowadays! Of course it's possible that Paul didn't write Galatians (or 1 Corinthians, for that matter), but the consensus is still that Paul did indeed write those letters. Until that changes, I'll stick with that theory.

Amaleq13

Yes, "no good reason" and you haven't provided one so far. You are free to disagree but you have not provided any rational basis for your disagreement. Even the content of Paul's own vision wasn't considered relevant to his arguments. The appearance alone confirms that Christ is risen and that is the whole point of listing them.

Wrong. Paul clearly indicates that the men who are listed as first witnessing the Risen Christ are of "high reputation". Given that Paul dismisses that reputation as irrelevant, it cannot be due to their former role as followers of the living Jesus but only due to the fact that they were the first witnesses/proclaimers. It is not the content of the visions that is important but the "fact" that they occurred.

I find that position entirely incredible and contrary to the actual behavior of Christians after the Gospel stories first appear. What Jesus is alleged to have said while living becomes, for Christians, the ultimate argument against disagreement. The problem for HJ proponents is that this is a late development rather than early which is how you would expect the faith to grow given an historical originator.

Yet Paul repeatedly denies obtaining his gospel from any man and explicitly denies that the Jerusalem group added anything to it. You, OTOH, have yet to provide even one credible reason for Paul to fail to include any teachings of the living Jesus in his gospel. That he was focused on the death/resurrection of Jesus is not sufficient given the numerous statements about his coming death/resurrection in the Gospel stories. Either none of those statements are genuine or Paul has deliberately and inexplicably avoided clearly relevant pre-resurrection teachings in his gospel.

Who is to say that any of the revelations Paul claims to have obtained came in the form of "statements"? Why not simply an overwhelming spiritual "feeling" that a given thing is true?

My expectations are irrelevant. Paul appears to be referring to information or understanding revealed by the Risen Christ.

As NOGO has already pointed out, that is simply not credible. What, exactly, are you attributing to Doherty? He clearly considers Paul's story about the Lord's Supper to be divinely revealed. It is only in the kerygma of 1Cor15 that Paul is understood to be using "received" in a sense similar to rabbinic tradition and he significantly deviates from that practice when he fails to identify his source.

Paul is talking about identifying commmandments as coming from the Lord. Jesus gives many commands and teachings in the Gospel stories but Paul never appeals to them in support of his arguments. Please read Doherty for the specific examples.

I agree that Paul would consider the Risen Christ a greater authority than former disciples but you are still missing the point. Paul never makes that assertion and he clearly would need to in order to convince anyone else. Instead, Paul behaves as though the apostles are in no way superior to him with regard to the authority of their teaching.

NOGO

I assume here that you are arguing in good faith because I definitely get the impression that you are avoiding the fundamental issue in my arguement.

Ok I accept that Paul's reference to the Lord's supper may be seen as a quote of the HJ or the Risen Jesus.
This, however, is a trivial matter in the balance of things.

Let me try again.

Let's assume for the argument that the HJ did exist and he did teach and he did say that the bread was his body.

So you are saying that Paul is quoting him in this and only case.

But what about his teachings?

If Jesus' teachings are the bread from heaven that SAVES?!?!
THEN

1. Why is Paul not using them?
The reference to divorce is not enough!
In many instances Paul prefers to quote the OT rather than Jesus. For example "Love one another". The "bread" in the Gospel's Last Supper is ignored.

2. Why does Paul claim that his letters are from Jesus although they contain, as you have pointed out, mudane issues not related to Jesus' life.

3. Why does Paul claim that every believer that has received the Holy Spirit has access to God/Jesus?

4. Why is the Lord's Supper a "free of all" where every believer gives his received inspiration.

5. Why does Paul claim that he did not receive what he knows from any human? He also says that the secret about Jesus was revealed through scriptures.

Paul's entire emphasis is away from the bread which could only have been received through apostolic tradition (Jesus' teachings) and completely toward the bread of present day inspiration.

Paul puts emphasis on the death and resurrection and not Jesus' teachings.

Why is this a problem with the HJ and not the RJ.

That is a simple thing to answer.
Paul's Jesus died and resurrected and then communicated with his followers through inspiration and revelation from scriptures.
The Gospel Jesus was teaching and working miracles during his life and then died and resurrected.

In the first case you would expect that different people would get different messages unless it came from scriptures (and even then). Divisions in Paul's circle of friends surface in many places.

In the second case you would expect the emphasis would be on Jesus' teachings and not in inspired revelation and there would be no divisions or none worth mentioning.

NOGO

GakuseiDon,

I do not believe that the Lord's supper is an historical event.
I place it in the realm of myth.

Basically if you belong to a sect who shares the bread from heaven in the form of inspired messages from a God who is associated with the Word of God, you would have a myth whereby that God tells his disciples to share the bread in remembereance of him.

Why do I believe this?
Because what Paul says fits this perfectly and is at odds with the synoptic Gospels and present day Christian tradition.

Then there is John's Gospel.
John's Gospel is a sort of middle of the road story.
It speaks of a human Jesus who impersonates the word of God from heaven. When Jesus says "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you cannot enter the kingdom of God" or something like that. What he means is "unless you accept my teachings and believe that they are from God you cannot enter the Kingdom of God".

So we have a deity, which is refered to as the Word of God in the very first verse, speaking through a human Jesus.

Sometimes it is the human speaking and sometimes it is the divine entity speaking.

The difference between GJohn and the synoptic Gospels is another indication that not all is rosy in early Christian thinking.

Then there is Jesus' baptism.
During the baptism Jesus receives the Holy Spirit.
Jesus receives what Paul claims is within every believer which, gives them access to God's mind.

Matthew 3:16-17
... he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."

Again I remind you that Paul and Hebrews both say that Jesus was given the title of "Son of God" after his death and resurrection. Here we have the Father talking about his son.

Mt 4:1
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Note the "was led by the Spirit".
If Jesus was already Son of God from birth (and indeed before birth) why does he need to be led by the newly received Spirit?

Compare this with David's anointing.