Toto

I know enough about Paul to know that there is a lot that I don't know. But I am totally at a loss to make any sense out of GDon's claims.

It has been argued persuasively by Joseph Tyson (or via: amazon.co.uk) that the proto-orthodox anti-Marcionite who wrote Acts made Paul much more Jewish, to counter the Marcionite claim that Paul rejected both the Torah and the God of Israel. Is there a similar editorial hand in the Epistles? Do we know if Paul originally quoted Scripture, or were the Scriptural allusions added by a later hand? If the latter, then part of the meaning is just that Paul is being identified with Jewish Scripture.

ph2ter

The reason why the mining of the Scripture was successful i.e. that the coherent picture of Jesus figure was possible to extract from the Scripture probably lies in a Jewish premonotheistic past. In the middle east mythology very important deity is the son of supreme god which is connected with the vegetation cycle and which dies and is born every year. When Jews became monotheistic, they did not abandon their polytheistic heritage, but only change or lost the meaning of it. Popular custums, beliefs, traditional rituals and holidays which originated in premonotheistic past were not abandoned. They lived in peopel's memory and practice but lost the original meaning which was changed or moved to the background and effectively became crypted. That heritage including elements of mentioned deity found his way into the Scripture. Christians were doing the opposite. They extracted that crypted heritage and reversed the meaning of it into its polytheistic original. And finally merged with monotheism in an unnatural way which nobody can understand (Trinity). Without such elements already incorporated in the Scripture I doubt that anybody would get Christian type of ideas about Son of God figure.
This is how I understand Christianity came into existence.

GakuseiDon

OK, so they mined the Scriptures. What would they have made of the "Zion" references, IYO?

Clivedurdle

We are looking here at the very successful Jewish fantasy factory that invented Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon and probably wrote the Septaguint in the second century BCE.

That made a grotty hill village Jerusalem the centre of the universe!

I would also be very careful about which heaven we are looking at - I see a clear admixture of Persian Jewish and Greek ideas of heaven. Zion and battles between good and evil - a Zoroastrian idea - are everywhere.

Christs at the centre of it all on crosses - square thingies with their own symbolism - life and death, conjoining the gods and humans.

Lovely jubbly as a story!

Real? Pull the other one!

GakuseiDon

What I'm claiming is that Zion is used to mean Jerusalem. This is one among other possibilities. I'm trying to find what the best reading could be. My contention is that Paul is talking about an earthly Jesus to whom something happened in Jerusalem. For example, Paul writes:

Rom 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,
Rom 9:4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises;
Rom 9:5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God...

Rom 9:32 For they [Israel] stumbled at that stumbling stone.
Rom 9:33 As it is written: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame"...

Rom 10:9 ... if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Rom 10:10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Rom 10:11 For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame."

Based on that, Paul seems to be talking about an earthly Jesus who was Jewish, and did something in Jerusalem -- rise from the dead -- that was a stumbling block to the Jews.

I'm not saying I'm definitely right. What I'm after are other possibilities, so we can discuss them to see which makes the strongest case based on the passages.

Similarly with the other passage about "Zion":

Rom 11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
"The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
Rom 11:27 For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins."
...
Gal 1:3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
Gal 1:4 who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father

Again, I'm suggesting that Paul is tying Christ into "Zion", where Zion is Jerusalem. I'm not saying I'm definitely right. I'm looking for other possibilities, so we can discuss which makes for the best reading.

I think reasons given for one reading will affect how other readings can be made. It might be that a possible reading for a mythicist position conflicts with readings given elsewhere to support that mythicist position (and similarly with the historicist position). Thus, I'm interested in how alternate readings can be supported.

If that is the case, what do the Zion passages mean, IYO? Was this put in by historicists, to show that Paul thought that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem? Or was it put in by ahistoricists? If so, what were they doing modifying Marcionite writings? What time-line do you put on them?

ph2ter

It is evident that they understood that the Zion references speak about Christ. The term for Paul probably bears the meaning that Christ, the Saviour of the mankind came from the Jews. He does not specify any specific place and time. For him that is not relevant. What he found in the Scripture is only Zion and he probably understood that symbolically. Later, when the first Christians start to historicize Jesus, they naturally put the Jesus crucifixion specifically in Jerusalem on the Mont Zion, the real place in Judea. If Paul also understood Zion to be the real earthly place where Jesus was crucified, then he got that information from the Scripture. Nothing in his writings demonstrate that he knew or heard about the real person which was recently crucified there.

aa5874

It should be noted that Eusebius who wrote that the letter writer Paul was crucified or executed during the days of Nero, also claimed the writer was aware of the gospel of Luke and called gLuke "my gospel".

There is simply no credible evidence anywhere that the writer called Paul lived and wrote in the 1st century.

There is simply no credible evidence that the letter writer called Paul died in the 1st century.

There is simply no credible evidence anywhere that the gospels stories started after the death of Paul.

Now, the information from the church writers is that the writer called Paul had a disciple called Luke, and it was this Luke who wrote gLuke and Acts.

In the letters of Paul, there is information found only in gLuke, Acts of the Apostles, and even, what is now considered a later addition to gMark, i.e Mark 16.17.

These are all indications that the Jesus stories preceeded the writer called Paul.

And, the letter writer called Paul placed himself after the Jesus stories, after the apostles.

Romans 16:7 - Galatians1:17 - The Jesus story preceeded the writer called Paul based on the letters of the writer himself.

ph2ter

Who cares what Eusebius wrote. He is not historical witness of Paul. Internal evidence in Paul's letters points to the time before the Gospels were written.

It does not mean that Paul found that informations in those documents, but rather that those documents got informations from Paul's writings.

But if Paul was placed after the apostles, that does not mean that the Gospel stories existed in Paul's time or in the time of apostles.

aa5874

There is no historical witness of the letter writer called Paul.

There is internal evidence in the letters from the writer called Paul that points to the time AFTER the gospels were written.


But, you cannot deny that it is not at all possible that the writer got his information from the Jesus stories as found in the "memoirs of the apostles."

You cannot deny that in Acts, Saul/Paul was presented as being converted after Jesus had ascended to heaven.

You cannot deny that in Acts of the Apostles that it is written Saul/Paul persecuted Jesus believers.

You cannot deny that in a letter with the name Paul, it is written that he persecuted the Church.

Anything is possible, but the evidence, as we have it today, means that the Jesus stories preceeded the writer called Paul.

It is not if Paul was placed after the apostles, it is that the writer called Paul placed himself after the apostles.

Whose apostles were before the writer called Paul?

It is right there in the letters.

The apostles of Jesus Christ who was crucified, died, resurrected on the third day and ascended to heaven.

Galations 1.20-24 This means the letter writer called Paul has placed HIMSELF after there were stories about Jesus.

Now, can you provide evidence or information from the writer called Paul HIMSELF that can show he placed himself before any stories about Jesus?

Toto

It that is the case, the Zion passages are just there to show that Paul can quote scripture and respects the Jewish scriptures.

If they were added, it was sometime around the middle of the second century, after Marcion. There were probably no "historicists" then in the modern sense. The later proto-orthodox might not have gotten around to making the physical existence of Jesus an item of high importance.

It's the same way American politicans can quote a Bible verse that might be completely out of context or misinterpreted. They are just showing their identity - there's no specific "meaning" that they are aware of.

I think that the "born of a woman" references were added by the proto-orthodox to counter Marcion, just as Tyson thinks that the birth scenes in Matt and Luke were added to counter Marcion, who thought that Jesus arrived on earth from heaven as a adult. But again, that's not a matter of "history." If the forgers had wanted to prove that Paul believed in a historical Jesus, they could have done a much better job. But that was not the issue that they cared about.