gstafleu

Do we have any idea of how Paul went about extracting his bits from the "scriptures"? I'm asking because it seems to me that what is being done is:

1. We assume Paul used some cryptic way of extracting bits from the scripture for his purposes.
2. As we don't know what his method was, we then posit a method and try our own cryptic extraction.
3. When we find a match between two cryptic extractions we are in seventh heaven.

My point being: don't we pile cryptic upon cryptic here, ending up at an arbitrary destination without much guidance?

Gerard Stafleu

Vivisector

It's always seemed to me that the entire business of identifying a prooftext that Paul (or someone prior to Paul) could have used in this context has been pretty arbitrary. Seems the Hosea passage is one of the few that come remotely close to filling the bill.

Are there better candidates that you have in mind?

Cheers,

V.

gstafleu

Not from the OT, no. It always seemed to me that this whole business of a (piece of) god coming down to earth and then dying and rising was pretty un-Jewish, and hence should be difficult to find in the OT, something aaN seems to confirm. Hence my suggestion of looking elsewhere in addition to the OT.

Gerard Stafleu

Vivisector

I agree, and I'm not sure that even the "Apocrypha" is much more help.

Myself, I think it started out as trying to find prooftexts for the idea of the messiah dying and rising, rather than a god or piece of god. Perhaps more Jewish, but still unexpected, which may have led to the forced interpretations of passages such as that in Hosea.

As an aside, I think the weakness of the prooftexts is, in itself, consistent with the idea of individuals trying to enhance the significance of an HJ as opposed to using the texts to construct an MJ. It seems to me that working backwards, from HJ to the texts, would produce some very uneasy fits (which seems to be the case). If one worked from the texts forward in the direction of an MJ, I think they could have done a much better job.

Cheers,

V.

dog-on

Was the concept of a dying and rising God foreign to the Greeks?

Ben C Smith

There is very little assumption here. We have tons of actual, cited prooftexts used by Paul throughout his writings; we can use those to see how, in essence, he operated.

We do know a lot about his method, I think, from his cited prooftexts.

When we find an OT passage that looks as if it has been used for the uncited prooftext (according to the scriptures) much as other OT passages have been used for the cited prooftexts, we have grounds for supposing that perhaps this is what Paul had in mind.

Ben.

aa5874

Once it is realized that Mark's Jesus is likely to be fictitious, and Acts is also fiction, it soon becomes very probable that there were no NT christians or Christian Churches from Pilate to Vespasian. There are no references to any new Son of God, Holy Ghost religion, or Churches of NT Christians by Philo or Josephus from 1CE to 93CE, or any references to anyone with the name Saul, Paul or Peter.

Now if there are no NT christians or Churches, how did "Paul" manage to write epistles to them?

PhilosopherJay

Hi gstafleu and Ben,

Yes, certainly Hosea was not the only Hebrew Scripture he had in mind when he wrote, but this was evidently important.

The writer of the epistle points to Hosea a few lines down when he writes (1 Cor. 15):
55 "Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"

Hosea 14 has

I will deliver them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
Where, O grave, is your destruction?

So the evidence is
1. Tertullian points us to this passage as the correct interpretation
2. It is really the only line in the Hebrew scriptures that talks about a raising up on the third day.
3. The writer paraphrases Hosea a few lines down, (although it is quite possible that he was quoting Hosea and the transmission of the text has turned it into a paraphrase).

It is kind of like a poet who mentions a great prince who saw his father's ghost and writes "The play's the thing that will catch the conscience of the King" a few lines down. It is hard not to conclude that the writer is referencing Hamlet in the father's ghost passage.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi V.

Philo does reference a second Adam as does Paul. I don't know about a Messiah. It might be worth checking.

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

Vivisector

Thanks, Jay. I was aware of similarities between Philo's expressed thoughts on the logos and the term's usage in John, but unaware of any of his thoughts on the Messiah/Christ.

Cheers,

V.