bacht

In a Platonic universe the Son of God had to contend with "powers and principalities" in the ether, ie. archons or evil angels. The apocalyptic literature is full of this kind of stuff.

The Revelation to John presents a similar picture: Christ/the Lamb triumphant in the heavenly realm, not on earth (at least until the final slaughter of the heathen)

dog-on

The mystery that was hidden, now revealed, etc...

Why assume anything?

A warm and fuzzy, from reading the scriptures? Are you a Mormon, by chance?
:snooze:

Solo

It appears to be beyond your capacity to appreciate the difficulty in proclaiming the appearance of some ancient martyr that no-one ever heard of or read about.

Can you imagine the conversation of the two first recipients of Jesus'appearance ?

Moe: Abe, you won't believe this : a guy appears to me out of thin air and says that he is Jesus the Christ, and that he is coming back and destroy the place ! Then he disappears again. Would you believe that ?

Abe: Hey, that's strange, the same thing happened to me ! But tell me something Moe, who the fig is Jesus the Christ ?

dog-on it, how did you guess ? :huh:


Jiri

dog-on

Your own inability to believe it, does not objective evidence make.

Besides, in my opinion, it is amazing that anyone would have ever believed this stuff in the first place,if you want to get technical about it...

So if you have some actual evidence, besides your own incredulity, please present it.

:Cheeky:

GakuseiDon

Bacht, I think it is important to be careful of terminology here. For example, there could be no evil angels in the "ether", which was thought to exist above the firmament in the realm of God.

So, evil angels in the air around us, yes, but not above in the Platonic Heaven. That's why I very much doubt that they would have thought that Christ could have been crucified in the Heavenly Jerusalem. If Paul thought that Christ had been crucified in "Zion", then the most likely reading is the earthly Jerusalem rather than the Heavenly one.

Solo

Ok, here is my summary:

Whether one likes it or not, the idea that Paul thought Jesus a figure from distant, rather than a recent, past carries with it a mighty challenge of showing,

a) how info about such a figure was transmitted for a long time when we have absolutely zero evidence of it, and,

b) what prompted and sustained the sudden outburst of interest in this figure at the time of Paul, if it had been "out of sight" for ages.

In contrast, if a historical Jesus was at that time still in living memory, no such evidentiary burden is necessary. Paul's genuine letters - especially Galatians - establish there was a lively and pointed debate about teachings associated with this figure, and the meaning of Jesus martyrdom in the Jewish and allied communities of Paul's time. This - in the absence of evidence to the mythical origins of such disputes - IMHO is a sufficient guarantee of a near-contemporaneous historicity of Jesus (known at some point as Jesus of Nazareth) regardles of the mystical, cosmic meanings imputed to real or imagined events associated with his name.

Thank you, dog-on.

Jiri

dog-on

I appreciate your response and I'll attempt to clarify my view of why I think this question, though relevant to our inquiry, seems to have been unimportant to Paul.

We must deal with the evidence, as we have it. From my understanding of what Paul has written, as we now have it, there are a few things that stand out:

1. Paul is extremely vague with respect to the placement of Jesus Christ in history.

2. Paul seems to be concerned, almost exclusively, with the risen Christ.

3. The most probable source for Paul's knowledge, based on what Paul says and considering the extreme improbability of an actual divine revelation, seems to be the LXX, from which Paul often quotes and of which he refers to as "the scriptures" and was not, I would wager, based on any specific knowledge of, or reference to, any actual history.

Whether it was Paul, or someone else entirely, who first discovered the secret hidden in the scriptures, we can not really say, other than that it seems to be agreed, by those who claim expertise of such things, that Paul is the earliest Christian writer.

So in the chronology, as is laid out by the evidence and, by the way, seemingly agreed to by the actual faithful, we have this:

God----->Man

Now you say this:


I would answer that, on the contrary, we actually do have evidence of it, at least in the form of text and that this evidence comes from Paul himself.

According to Paul, God hid this knowledge in the words of his profits. These words then served as the vehicle for the transmittal of the mystery of the Jesus figure and his message, to be discovered at the appropriate time by Paul, who was set aside for just such a purpose.

My opinion?

The general mood of the times, as evidenced by Josephus, for example.

The practice of the Romans to allow for various forms of religious expression to freely exist and the tendency of such ideas to spread, mix and transform.

Another reason might be as a direct result of the translation of the ancient Hebrew writings into Greek, ie. the LXX, a century, or so, before and the probable widespread distribution of this work throughout the Roman Empire, by the mid to late first century AD.

Christianity has always seemed like a Roman reinterpretation of the Jewish faith to me and not like a Jewish, reinterpretation, of their own faith, but evidence for that is sketchy at best, to my knowledge.

Ever wonder why, even today, Judaism rejects the interpretations of their writings, as imposed by Christians, as a case of nothing more than incorrect translations and obvious misunderstandings?

So, as to Paul's own view of the "when" of Jesus' sacrifice; it happened because the scriptures said it happened and, as such, does not require any corroborating evidence, such as an actual historical event to make it so.

One simply has to have faith.

And besides;

Why are we so sure that Paul thought that Jesus has already visited the earth?

Just a question I ask myself, from time to time.

gurugeorge

Ah but Paul tells us quite plainly that Jesus' death and resurrection were historical facts recorded in Scripture because he says "according to Scripture". Scripture is in fact the only cited source of evidence cited for those supposed events.

Now we don't "see" that evidence on a straightforward reading of Scripture (apart from maybe a little bit in Isaiah), so the evidence may not come from a straightforward reading of the LXX. However, AFAIK the Jews were always fond of the kind of literary and numerological fiddling and twiddling that (much later) came to be called "Qabalistic"; we know that "truths" derived from such fiddling and twiddling were sometimes considered more important than the surface meaning; so it seems that the only option we have, if we want to accept Paul's self-description is to take it that this kind of literary/numerological fiddling and twiddling is where Paul (and the other early Christians) got the ideas about Jesus from.

They fiddled, and they twiddled, and lo! There they saw evidence that a Joshua had come before, been crucified, and resurrected.

(Perhaps this "qabalistic" analysis is also what "portrayed" Christ as crucified before peoples' eyes?)

GakuseiDon

A nitpick: It doesn't say that Christ died and was resurrected according to Scriptures, but that Christ died for our sins, and rose on the third day according to Scriptures. I think these qualifiers were put there to help establish Jesus's bona fides as Paul's Messiah.

There have been threads on whether "according to the Scriptures" means "in accordance with the Scriptures" or "The Scriptures tell us...". To determine which one is better, I think the question of timing comes into play again.

Consider what you are saying: that scriptures were telling him that Christ died, and that Christ was resurrected, as past events. But how can that be? The law was added until Christ -- "the seed of Abraham" -- should come. So, if the scriptures were saying that Christ had already died at some point in the past, why was Scripture talking about a Christ who was to come? Did Christ come at some point after Abraham, but died before the end of scriptures?

If we have a look at some passages, it seems that the scriptures are being predictive about something in the future, rather than descriptive about something in the past:

Gal 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, [saying], In thee shall all nations be blessed.

Here, Scriptures are predicting something that would happen in the future. In fact, Scriptures is saying that God had given it as a promise about something that would happen in the future:

Gal 3:17 And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect.
Gal 3:18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Gal 3:19 What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made...

So:
1. Scripture talks about the law.
2. Scripture foresaw that Christ would come.
3. The law was in effect until Christ came.

Given these things, I would suggest that "died for our sins according to scriptures" means "died for our sins in accordance to what Scriptures foresaw", rather than "the Scriptures tell us that Christ died at some point for our sins". If I am correct, then I would suggest that these and other passages (like "first fruits" and "fullness of time") moves the period when Christ died closer to Paul's time.

I have no problem with that. Just to be clear: Are Jesus's post-resurrection appearances as visions an issue that affects either for or against historicity?

As I said, I think Paul does help us on the timing. I've given some of them previously. If it is okay, I would like to establish a time period when Paul thought that Christ had died:

1. Paul talks about Jesus having "died", so obviously places it in the past relative to Paul.
2. Paul regarded Jesus as coming after Abraham ("till the seed of Abraham should come")
3. Paul regarded Jesus as coming after Moses ("born under the law", where the law was added 430 years after the promise to Abraham)

I've given reasons above why I believe that Paul regarded Jesus as having died in Paul's recent past. But, at the least, is there enough evidence to reasonably conclude that Paul thought that Jesus came at some period between Moses and himself?

Earlier, I wrote:

4. Paul received a new message directly from God -- via revelation and "from no man" -- that Christ's death and resurrection applied to Gentiles as well.

You responded:

I actually think this is extremely improbable, if not simply impossible. You will need some amazing evidence to get me on board.

Given what you gave as Paul's revelation, do you still think this is extremely improbable?

dog-on

I was being a bit cheeky regarding this part of your assertion:

Sorry, that it confused you.