DCHindley

MaryHelena,

Thanks for the vote of support for looking closer at the historical side of the historical critical method (well, I hope that is what you were supporting). You are one of the few here who really seem to look at this kind of thing.

In my view, Jesus was a real live messianist active in Galilee and Judea. He held a POV that the coming messianic age would welcome gentile god-fearers. This was not the majority view among Jewish messianists, but it earned him some gentile followers from these regions. However, the Jewish war of 66-73 CE completely destroyed any hopes among these gentiles that a new age was coming as they had expected (that god himself would establish a new kingdom of god to replace the Roman empire, headed by a resurrected Jesus).

The Jewish war became the catalyst that caused these gentile god fearers to reexamine their place in god's grand scheme of things. They still seemed to be strongly attached to the Jewish god and what he represented (justice). I'm sure after much consideration, the idea formed that the failure of the Jewish War indicated anger at the Jews for political revolt and that Jesus' death and "resurrection" actually had heralded a new kind of kingdom. They incorporated certain elements of popular middle platonism and the mystery religions they knew from youth up, and the high christology was born. This new high christology had a high degree of appeal for city slicker gentile god-fearers like the kind that Paul had pastored. His literature (which had nothing to do with Jesus at all) was adopted and adapted to create the Pauline corpus we know today.

I'm not so willing to accept that idea. Judaism had this idea that each gentile nation had a guardian angel that could exert influence on that nation to do god's will. This was manifested at times by the idea that the angels themselves did battle with one another in the heavens and their respective nations irresistibly followed suit. This is also represented by the idea that the angels of heaven worshipped god in a manner resembling the way he was worshipped on earth, and the book of Revelation has a new Jerusalem in heaven with an alter and everything. However, I was always of the impression that this heavenly city was there waiting to replace the one on earth when the new age dawns.

Plato only said that different places in the universe had different properties. Each place had things such as houses, rocks, streams, trees, atmosphere, etc, but these things differed depending where they were in the universe. So, here at ground level, things are the way we know them. However, in more refined areas such as the heavens they are in more refined form. A while back, whether this or a different thread I don't recall, I posted a whole series of posts taken directly from Plato about this, to which no one thought good to comment.

This is actually an offshoot of the Platonic concept of Forms/Ideas, that is, totally abstract concepts of things (like rocks and chairs and streams, etc) existing in a completely incomprehensible realm of existence. These things may exist physically in the universe we exist in, but our ability to comprehend them are impeded in the sense-perceptible world, and hence Plato's parable of the shadows in the cave. There was also a series of posts about that too, equally uncommented upon.

So, if sense perception is incomplete, then different regions of the sense-perceptible universe will perceive things differently. So really, Plato never taught such a thing as "what's above is also below." If anything, that is a Jewish idea.

DCH

Doug Shaver

Where's the overreaching there? A sublunar realm populated by various sorts of sentient beings was a live cosmological option during the first century. Lots of philosophers at the time apparently regarded it as just as real as the earth beneath their feet. Is there anything anywhere in the Pauline corpus that renders implausible the thesis that Paul believed in that realm?

spin

An effort for there to be no misunderstandings:
We clearly agree thus far.

One is defined as having become physical. The other is defined as having become spiritual. Two separate individuals.

Verse 45 involves two parts, the second of which parallels the first. The second part here does not have the verb, as it has been omitted through ellipsis, the omission of a word in the parallel phrase because it is assumed from the first.

Adam became a living being; the last Adam [became] a life-giving spirit.

The verb "became" is omitted in the second part because grammatically it can be assumed from the first.

The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. He was not always a life-giving spirit. He first had to be raised. Paul has said time and again that christ was raised from the dead. Here he is giving his understanding of what that meant.

Again we agree.

Here is what I have been saying:

[T2]{c:bg=silver}-|{c:bg=silver}Physical body|{c:bg=silver}{c:bg=silver}Spiritual body||
{c:bg=#FFCCEE}Adam|{c:bg=#FFCCEE}"The first man Adam became a living being..."|{c:bg=#FFCCEE}(resurrected Adam)||
{c:bg=#AACCFF}Jesus|{c:bg=#AACCFF}(pre-resurrected Jesus)|{c:bg=#AACCFF}"...the last Adam a life-giving spirit."[/T2]
Two separate individuals.

The material in parentheses is not stated in v.45, but implied from the discourse: what is sown a physical body is raised a spiritual body. Adam was sown a physical body, so will be raised a spiritual body. Christ was raised a spiritual body, so was sown a physical body. The spiritual comes after the physical.

There is no escape clause for Jesus. No spiritual->non-physical lesser form->spiritual option provided by Paul here, just physical->spiritual, which is repeatedly presented.

Once raised, christ became the new Adam, the first spiritual body. Everyone will come after him. Hence the Adam reference.

Doug Shaver

Plato was not the only Greek philosopher whose ideas were current during the first century. During the four centuries since his time, plenty of others had added their two drachmas' worth to his theories. Nowadays, of course, almost nobody hears about them, but it's a good bet some of them would have been familiar to Paul and other first-century Christians.

maryhelena

David, the problem with that is that it has no historical basis. Even if such was the case ie a real flesh and blood gospel Jesus, there is no way to historically establish such a proposition. Consequently, early Christian history would remain forever in the dark. When I referred to history I really did mean history, Jewish history. History with some backbone, some indication that things were such and such. Indeed, a nobody carpenter from Nazareth is not going to leave any historical validation of his existence - but a historical investigation of early Christian history should not be allowed to stall on such an argument. If the premise of the carpenter from Nazareth is a dead-end for a historical investigation of early Christian history - then, it is time, is it not, to side-line such an argument?

I am of the opinion that the mythicist camp is short changing itself over its emphasis upon Paul and his Cosmic Christ. While the whole Paul/Cosmic Christ scenario is interesting - bottom line is that it really is only a theological or philosophical construct. Dead people do not rise from the dead. There is no heavenly hereafter. There is no resurrection from a dead physical body to a new spiritual body. It is with this basic reality that I would try and interpret Paul. Interpret Paul as trying to explain a rather complex philosophical framework from within his first century limited scientific understanding of human nature.

As I mentioned in an earlier post - how would Paul go about explaining his ideas today. That’s what is necessary - not getting tangled up with his less than scientific arguments. Perhaps Paul is attempting to combine history with theology and philosophy - not being prepared to let go of that Jerusalem below. Jewish interests centred more on that earthly temple than the Jerusalem above. Or simply that he wanted the two Jerusalem’s to become part of the new spiritual understanding. No spiritual context without the physical context. And, bottom line, is that not just a reflection of our human nature - we are dualistic beings. Mind and Matter....and we must live with accepting this differentiation instead of attempting to turn Matter into Mind - attempting to turn the physical into the spiritual. It’s only within the spiritual, within intellectual philosophical evolution, that things can be turned upside down - ideas, our intellectual ‘furniture’, can be re-arranged at whim. Spiritual ‘bodies’ can be transformed, ‘resurrected’, by just the click of a switch...

(As to a messianic 1st century figure - well, Josephus seems to have played his hand re Agrippa I - so perhaps this historical figure could do with some serious investigating....but that’s a subject for another thread....)

DCHindley

MH, I think a lot can be inferred about this Jesus, simply by the way folks reacted to him.

Jesus was acknowledged by Christians as having been crucified by the Romans as "King of the Jews". That kind of death is without question served upon revolutionaries to Roman authority. The term "christ" (anointed one), can easily be understood as a sign of messianic election on the part of god. Whatever Jesus was in real life, that is how he died. There is something to be said in the concept that you don't admit something like this unless it cannot be denied. What point would it have served to just make up these kind of things if christianity was a reformed set of rising savior myths borrowed from here and there?

Over time christians redefined what that term "anointed" meant so that it was no longer a messianic designation in the Jewish sense but served to designate Jesus as specially elected by god (regardless of whether he is an emanation of God or an angelic being, or simply a specially designated human being who received the emanation or angelic being) to institute a completely new covenant with man in general. It is the leap from Jewish messiah to divine savior figure that needs a historical explanation. The Jewish war and a platonic inspired myth about a (semi)divine being who descends into the physical realm to save souls are what made christianity possible. In short, christians managed to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

However, the authorities were not so willing to buy into this redefinition, and for several centuries prosecuted them just for following such a man, a sure sign that they were up to no good themselves. They might as well have revered Sparticus as far as the Romans were concerned. Just replace "Jesus Christ" with "Sparticus Gladiator". There is a reason why no slaves in antiquity developed a secret society to rever the gladiator who united the slaves and so humiliated those damn Romans.

DCH

maryhelena

History, David, history is where it’s at - not NT gospel storyline.




Basically, what Wells is saying is that his Galilean preacher figure was not crucified - the crucifixion belongs to an earlier figure....

(David - methinks Toto will be after us for going off topic....)

EarlDoherty

How many times must I point out that this is a misleading and erroneous translation of verse 45? Whenever I do point that out, I refer to the translation you insist on and show you what’s wrong with it. This is called rebutting the opponent’s argument. Do you do the same to me? No. You simply repeat your position as though I’ve said or demonstrated nothing to discredit it. Can you not understand that my procedure is the proper one and yours is simply avoiding the issue?

Jean Hering, 1 Cor. 15:45: “The first Adam was created to have a living nature, the second Adam to be a life-giving spirit.”

As you yourself point out, a verb that is understood must have the same meaning as the verb it is understanding. Since Adam had nonature before he was created, the implication has to be that the second Adam came into being as a life-giving spirit, not that he had some other nature before he was a life-giving spirit. Paul is simply illustrating the two natures, physical and spiritual, which he has enumerated in 44b.

Let’s look at the passage 45-46 and compare the two readings, spin’s and mine. We can see why his doesn’t work:

44b: There is a physical body, but there is a spiritual body also. 45: That is why Scripture says, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’, the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit…

Spin wants 44b to mean: there is a physical body, but then there is a spiritual body. He insists on a progression here, where the language conveys none. That progression cannot simply be imported into 44b from 44a, despite their common verse number, and some translations recognize this when they start a new paragraph at 44b.

But let’s set that aside for the moment and see what happens when we segue verse 46 from the above (spin’s preferred) translation of 45b, “whereas the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.” The ‘has become’ here supposedly assumes that a previous state of Christ having a physical body is implied. If this were true, what happens when we go on to verse 46:

“Note that the spiritual does not come first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.”

We can dispose of one possible point first, that Paul has anywhere in mind Christ’s spiritual body in his pre-existent state. If he did, that spiritual body would indeed have come before either Adam or his own (supposedly) incarnated physical body, and Paul could not have said that that spiritual body does not come first, since it clearly did. So when he is referring to the spiritual body of Christ, he means the spiritual body which has been in existence subsequent to Adam and to his own salvific acts. (The whole argument is not without its muddled aspects, but Paul is doing his best to order and use his pieces to serve the purposes of his argument. He needs to present a physical body, Adam, followed by a spiritual body, Christ, in order to mirror what he maintains will happen to the Corinthians upon their resurrection.)

What do “the physical” and “the spiritual” in verse 46 refer to? In verse 45 he has referred to “the first Adam” and “the second Adam”. Thus 46’s “physical” must refer to Adam, and “spiritual” must refer to Christ, not both terms to Christ. This separation between the two continues through the rest of the verses (47-49), one term to Adam and the other to Christ, one term to the earthly man and the other to the heavenly man.

OK, now consider “the animal body comes first, and then the spiritual.” Does this mean, as spin maintains in his “has become” translation of 45b, that where Christ was concerned, his physical body (during incarnation) came first, while his spiritual body (after resurrection) came second? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course Christ’s incarnated body would have come before his resurrected spiritual body. Does this need pointing out? Moreover, who would be claiming the opposite, forcing Paul to preface this by saying “the spiritual does not come first”?

But it is perfectly clear if we take Paul’s “the animal body comes first, and then the spiritual” as referring to the underlying principle he is trying to get across to the Corinthians: that they as physical bodies come first, and then they as destined spiritual bodies after resurrection will come next. If he had meant to point to Christ as undergoing that progression, then—as I keep repeating ad nauseum—he could have used Christ as the example; he would not have needed Adam at all to represent the first, physical body. The incarnated Christ on earth would have served that purpose by himself.

But he did not have an incarnated Christ to appeal to. So Adam served as the prototype example of the physical body, and Christ served as the prototype example of the spiritual body. Period. (Could be made of hydrogen, for all I know.)

To put it another way. If, as spin maintains, 44b (“There is a physical body, but there is a spiritual body also”) is supposed to contain a progression which allegedly follows on 44a (“sown as an animal body, it is raised as a spiritual body”), why then verse 45? It gives us two separate references to Adam and Christ. Did Adam undergo the progression? (There is no mention of a resurrected Adam, despite spin’s determination to insert one so he can claim a parallel resurrected Christ from a physical body.) Did Adam morph into Christ (maybe this is spin’s “single entity”)? If Christ himself supposedly underwent the progression, wouldn’t that be sufficient.? Adam would be redundant here. The only sensible interpretation is that Adam serves as the example of the physical body, and Christ of the spiritual body. This rules out any suggestion or intention that Christ serves as the example of both, and rules out any “progression” interpretation of 44b, let alone a direct link for the latter with 44a. (Ergo, new paragraph at 44b.)

Anyway, I’m sure all the third parties here are sick of hearing me argue this, and sick of seeing you ignore the issue of the translation of verse 45. Besides, when I start turning “characters” into “words”, it’s a sign that I’ve been banging my head against the wall a little too much.

(Arrrgghh!! 6,400 characters. Sorry, DCH. But you do insist on reading my posts.)

Earl Doherty

DCHindley

Even if you consider the NT gospels "stories" (I see them as examples of the genre of apology), would you deny that it is possible to infer historical conditions of Roman Society from reading the Metamorphosis of Apulius or Petronius' Satyricon? These two works, by the by, are the only examples of Roman novel that have come to us. I think it in our power to do the same with the gospels (whatever genre they are).

DCH (see my finger wagging over to the left as I get crosseyed with righteous fury?)

maryhelena

David, I'm afraid your references don't mean anything at all to me....

Are there 'historical conditions' within the gospel storyline? Indeed, we have Tiberius, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas - ie we have a set historical time frame - from Herod the Great and his siege of Jerusalem in 37 bc - in which the last king/high priest of the Jews met a disastrous end. Taking the gospel crucifixion storyline to be about 33 ce (gJohn) then there is a 70 year time frame in which to look at the real historical events - events from which the gospel writers were able to draw up their prophetic and salvation interpretations of that history.