spin

The Pilate testimony comes from 1 Timothy, a work which is not considered a part of the Pauline corpus, a work written when the churches had become the Church. Beside that there seems nothing specific at all in your list -- other than the long passage about the eucharist, which is so long whoever put it there probably used the gospel as source, and which contains the information about the betrayal -- to suggest anything that requires a human Jesus, rather than - say - a Krishna-type Jesus. (The eucharist passage has happily been inserted into a discussion about how one should participate in the Jewish style "feast of the Lord".)

But then you won't try to eke out something that's not there to make your Jesus historical.

Why?

What exactly could he have done, if he existed?

At the same, conceding a vast amount of the gospel as ahistorical is tantamount to ceding the whole thing, because what you keep will only be arbitrary. (But let me repeat, this doesn't mean that there was no Jesus, just that, if there were, he appears now irrecoverable historically.)

This doesn't work for "historical trappings". Either Jesus was or was not from Nazareth. Either he spent most of his career in Galilee or he didn't. Either Jesus went or didn't go to Jerusalem. You must conclude that the gospel Jesus is nowhere to be found in Paul and of course outside the gospel there is nothing.

Presuming that there was one...

This would make better sense of course if there were no pre-death Jesus manifestations. Paul, after all, knew sfa about Jesus and didn't need him. It was the salvific act on which Paul's theology turns, thus lacking all the benefits of a theology of example, based on a real world intervening Jesus. There's none of this love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, render unto Caesar. All of this has mysteriously passed Paul by, only to surface when the gospels were written. He evinces no knowledge about the teachings; he evinces no knowledge about the miracles; he evinces no knowledge about the life. He just knows the Jesus of the salvific act, Christ crucified.

There is no "be followers of Christ": "remember what Jesus did when he... and do likewise". Yet there is a lot of moral teaching in Paul, so while there is opportunity to use details about the moral Jesus as examples, Paul is once again silent. This silence, like the others, is crying for explanation.

We have to approach the texts differently from what has been done for the last 19 centuries. There is lamina upon lamina of church theology and exergesis (and eisegesis) which cloud the significance of the texts. Starting out with presuppositions such as that Jesus was ultimately historical is plainly going outside the bounds of good scholarship (ie what has happened for those 19 centuries) and clouding the task of revealing what is in the text.


spin

TedM

You keep responding as though a 'historical Jesus' has no support from Paul, yet your claims are with regard to details and how Paul's Jesus isn't sufficiently like the 'gospel Jesus'. I gave you specific references that Paul believed that Jesus was a man who had walked this earth, and Paul describes some things he did and some aspects to his personality. I think it is misleading to say that Paul "knows nothing about a man called Jesus who took part in events in this world of ours" without some qualifiers.

I don't know what you mean by 'historical trappings', and don't see why you keep insisting that I find a gospel Jesus in Paul's writings.


It appears to me that on several of your answers you aren't really addressing what I'm writing. But, I'm tired so I'm going to bed.

ted

spin

I can't see anything that separates Jesus from Krishna. Can you?

You are simply wrong in your overinterpretation.

Do you want to cite more Timothy or other such reputable sources?

Such as?

I dont. I ask what other Jesus is there, but the gospel Jesus? The "how would you know" part of your response would be interesting in its sophistry.

Au contraire, I feel that what you write isn't dealing with the issues. If you care to state a supported position, ie specific references and arguments based on them, I'll happily consider them, but as it is your position seems lacking in definition.

Nighty-night.


spin

Amaleq13

The significant difference being that people today are primarily, if not solely, familiar with the Gospel depiction of Jesus as a teacher. If we could find someone who only knew Paul's letters, you would have a comparable situation and I would be willing to bet a considerable amount that it would never occur to them to embrace "Jesus" but only as a wise teacher.

Where would they get such an idea? They wouldn't get it from Paul so somebody else must have been preaching this other Jesus. There's that pesky variety again.

It only makes sense to assume that it was his followers who collected the sayings, doesn't it? And his followers who came to see him as something more than just a wise teacher. Is the Jesus of Q the HJ or isn't he? Are the Pillars his former disciples or aren't they?

We might want to make things even more difficult by considering the Gospel of Thomas which shares some of Q's sayings but adds others that seem to depict yet another Jesus. While the final form is thought to be late, some scholars think it represents a community that split from the Q people at an early stage.

I don't think that is very likely. See Peter Kirby's website on The Epistle of James to understand why. I find the scholars' arguments offered there convincing.

I wasn't clear enough. The coincidence would be that the leader of Q had the same name as the one given to Paul's Christ. Given the apparent ubiquity of the name and the fact that it is perfect for the role of Paul's Christ, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to me.

It is my understanding that only the initial layer or possibly the second is dated that early.

If I recall correctly, the portions that depict Jesus and John as contemporaries are understood as part of the latest layer.

Already covered above and not really all that unlikely as unsatisfying as that might seem.

That is, as I keep reminding you, an assumption I am making in this discussion.

I'll send you my answers to your questions via PM rather than muddy the waters with an MJ tangent.

TedM

Such as based on an interpretation that Paul's 'according to the flesh' is referring to some place other than earth. Such as a belief by Paul that Zion is not only on earth. Such as a belief by Paul that Jesus could have had human attributes such as meekness and gentleness, and undergone human-like birth, as being born 'under the law' (a Jew), suffering and death on some place other than earth. Such as an interpretation that some of the strongest strongest passages in support of a human Jesus (calling him a man in Romans 5 and 1 Cor 15, "James, the Lord's brother", "the brothers of the Lords" who are mentioned because they have wives, passages in 1 Timothy that refer to the 'sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ', and Pilate, the reference in 1 Cor to being crucified by rulers of Paul's age that didn't understand who Jesus was, the reference to Jews who killed the Lord, being a descendant of David) ALL were not really written by Paul, or have better interpretations that don't support the idea that Jesus had been on earth.


At the least, a Jesus who walked this earth who was crucified. I base this on Paul's lack of mention of a place other than earth for all of his (in the authentic and Colossions letters) around 50 earthly-sounding references to have occurred, not counting the 30 other references to his death.

In order to stay on topic with the purpose of this thread, and frankly to save on time, I don't want to go over the various interpretations at this point, but I do thank you for your willingness to do so.

take care,

ted

spin

This is one of those interestingly undefined phrases: kata sarka. What does it mean? And how do you know?

I don't follow your intention with this.

Divine beings often have human qualities. Yahweh gets angry or jealous, etc. He walks on the earth...

Just like Krishna or Dionysus.

The text doesn't say "born" (from the verb gennaw) but "made" (from the verb ginomai). If Jesus wasn't made to be under the law then his death would be pointless to a Jew, ie there could be no salvific act.

Neither suffering nor death imply human. Even in Babylonian times gods could be punished or killed.

Does "man" exclude the notion "divine man"?

Without the christian presumption that "Lord" here meant Jesus, the phrase is not transparent. I have often argued that the absolute use of Kyrios only applies to god, with the exception of very few post-trinitarian conflict interpolations.

Ditto.

As I have already indicated, the "pastoral epistles" are Pauline in name only and certainly written many decades after him. Don't you know this?

Not "Paul's age", but "of this age/world" aiwnos toutou and the force of "aeon" is not transparent. One cannot limit the phrase to signifying just Paul's time or even to any time. The "archons of this aeon" has a rather strong gnostic flavour to it, telling you to beware of simple interpretations.

I couldn't track this one down. What's the reference? (Hopefully not a misinterpretation of 1 Cor 1:23.)

He was "made" of the seed of David, whatever that means, kata sarka, whatever that means. The phraseology is certainly not transparent for someone to be sure of its significance without presenting an elaborate philological argument to justify it.

Your response seems to indicate a willingness to read the text as the church wants you to read it. It reminds me of those who read the two birth narratives as though there were no inherent conflict between them, because that's the way we have been taught to read them.


"earthly sounding"?? I gather that means that, as there is no indication of location whatsoever, it is "earthly" by your default. "[L]ack of mention of a place other than earth", indeed. We are told by the gospels that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem at a place called Golgotha, of which each gospel is adamant, ie one of the "harder" facts of Jesus's career, yet Paul is blithely uninterested in where he was crucified.

We are left with a Jesus crucified in no specific place nor time, other than this aeon, which really tells us nothing. And one wonders whether Paul was being strictly physical when he talks about Jesus being crucified, especially when he talks of the world being crucified or Paul himself (Gal 6:4).

I think you supply the definition that Paul lacks.


spin

TedM

My point is that to say that Paul knows nothing about an earthly Jesus just because the earthly sounding references are in some people's minds 'not transparent' is misleading. The phrase you couldn't find is in 1 Thess 2:14-15, which I already know that many believe is another interpolation. Paul never says that the earthly references to Jesus are metaphorical, though of course they could be. Paul does say where Jesus was crucified indirectly because he says Jews stumbled because of a stone in Zion in Rom 9:33, and in Gal says the stumbling block is the cross. Putting them together--Paul is saying Jesus was crucified in Zion, which refers to Jerusalem. Paul never says these things took place in some other Jerusalem in the sky.

But, for the last time, I don't want to debate the specifics, as it takes more than a few comments from either side. People who point to Paul's 'silence' about a historical Jesus often really mean Paul says little about the 'gospel Jesus', or a 'detailed Jesus'. The truth is that given the number of earthly-sounding references Paul gives regarding Jesus in letters that aren't intended to be discussions of Jesus' earthly life his silence is deafening with regard to his Jesus as really having done these things in some sphere in the sky. Mythicists tend to overlook or ignore that silence.

ted

spin

Especially when you are projecting the idea onto me. I did say your notion of "earthly-sounding" reflects you, not necessarily Paul.

Sure doesn't sound like it was written by a Jew at all, does it? That's taking "chameleon" to Zelig proportions.

As I said, "I think you supply the definition that Paul lacks."

I'm not a mythicist. I'm as agnostic as I ever was. "[E]arthly-sounding" is just as subjective as it was in your earlier comments. The truth is you are conclusion driven in your findings and you are happy with this "earthly-sounding" stuff to do it for you.


spin

TedM

I guess I don't know what that means. Since Zion was on earth, man was on earth, people were crucified on earth, died on earth, etc.. it is not a 'notion' to call it 'earthly-sounding'. That point shouldn't even be debatable. What is debatable is whether that is what Paul means. Since he never says otherwise and (I think) we don't have any clear evidence that anyone during Paul's time or before believed in a 'sphere' in which those kinds of things happened, it seems quite a silence to me on Paul's part if that is what he meant.

To say that Paul "knows nothing about a man called Jesus who took part in events in this world of ours" without any qualifiers is IMO not agnostic. It presumes you know that Paul meant something we have little evidence for, even though we have plenty of evidence for the alternative (ie people are born, live, and die on earth). I don't so any agnosticism in that kind of statement at all.

ted

TedM

Hi Amaleq13,

I plan to only respond to this post today, and get to the rest of your other post from yesterday pm tomorrow, (edited--though this maybe addresses it). If I'm not careful these responses take a lot more time than I think I should be spending on them, even though they interest me a lot

Or, maybe they made it up themselves, perhaps borrowing from various sources including the teachings of Christians regarding proper behavior. Neither of these seem a stretch to me given the exalted status of Jesus in the Christian community.

Not if others just made them up and attributed them to Jesus, although if HJ really said these things I agree they originated with the followers..

I just think it is interesting that neither one of these (Q or Thomas) can rule out a HJ that lived the same time as tradition says. When comparing the 3 (Q, Thomas and Paul) it is Paul's that seems to least represent a HJ. It seems unlikely to me that if all 3 different Jesus' (or 4 or 5 if you count Paul's opponants in another category) we have no indication of something other than a HJ to account for all 5 of them at about the same time--and the only records we have that discuss the differences between 'philosophies' that I know of are Paul's, which seem to focus on the post-Jesus role of the law. Ok, back on track..

I'll take a look.


I see 2 coincidences. The same name and the same general timeframe. We are talking about the embodiment of Wisdom in a human in one and the Messiah in the other--all at about the same time. Huge coincidence to me. And the name itself was common, but how many names of the time could have been used for Q that weren't, but were more appropriate? Why not one that meant 'wisdom' or 'teacher', etc.. I'd say the odds of picking the same name would be less than 1 out of 10, and the odds that the Messiah and the incarnation of Wisdom would be declared perhaps within 30 years of each other in Jewish history would be less than 1 in 4 (total guess) even given the historical context. The odds of both together therefore would be about 1 in 40. It makes more sense to me that the Q Jesus was either a Christian original or a Christian addition which intentionally used Jesus' name based on the same HJ we are assuming inspired Paul than a second one that didn't. I'll get to your pm further tommorrow. If it happened in say 60-70AD then the alleged variety never existed. If it happened around 30-40AD then I have to explain a 1 in 40 odds of them being independant. I can't, so I conclude they both were based on the either the same HJ or the same concept for a non-earthly Jesus.

Just so I'm clear--I'm not concluding that the unlikelihood of these coincidences supports a HJ. I'm concluding that it supports the idea that both Q and Paul's Jesus were based on the same person or concept, and that works whether Q was contemporary to Paul or came as a later Christian addition.

ted