spin

Of course not. But I'd like you to think outside that box for a bit. Otherwise you'll never know.

Just another case of history repeating.

You should be talking about what the other people said. Who is the "they" in 1:23?

"Christ" is Greek for "messiah". Believers of the messiah we call "messianists".

Belief in the messiah, ie "messianism".

??

You miss out on the fact that Paul didn't make the statement. He merely claims to cite it.

Christianity might have started with Paul, but it certainly wasn't christianity then.

I can understand that. Have you noticed that Paul's messiah wasn't a messiah? Yet he thinks it is. There seems to be a disjunction between what he thinks and what others think. Is his Jesus the messiah of any of those he "persecuted"?

Look at the introduction to Apollos in Acts 18:24f. The writers say that he "taught accurately of things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John." Do you think Apollos knew anything about Jesus before he met "Jesus people", or needed to know in order to teach what he taught? What's the necessary difference in theology between Apollos and those Paul refers to in Gal 1:23?


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Sheshbazzar

Christianity (or whatever one chooses to call it) has always had its differences, you are assuming as to what other contemporary adherents of the faith may have thought of Paul's unconventional and "distinctly different form of faith", and their perception of it in relation to their own foundational beliefs.

Actually Luther is a pretty good example, as in his view Catholic teachers and theologians would burn in hell for their perversion of Christianity, and of course the Catholics were equally certain that that was where Luther and his followers were headed.
To this day there are "Christians" that hold that the Catholics are not "true Christians", and Catholics who hold that "Protestants" are not "true Christians".
Then there are of course all of those other "Christian" sects that vehemently exclude, and are excluded by other "Christians" from being "true Christians".
Are you familiar with the Jehovah's Witness's views regarding "The Mother of Harlots" (and her "harlot" daughters)?
There are a great many groups that believe the term "Christian" has been hijacked by organizations that are not really "true Christians" and disallow that such individuals and organizations are "real" or "true" "Christians" at all.
At the extreme, is the KKK really a true "Christian" organization? Or the church of The Aryan Nations a truly "Christian" church?
A good many "Christians" would strongly reject any such inclusiveness.

J-D

I've never been in that box. I've never been exposed to any traditional interpretation of this text.If it so happens that I'm reaching a conclusion which other people have reached before me, that doesn't make it less likely to be true. It does make it less likely to be a bizarrely idiosyncratic interpretation.The Judaean 'Christians' (if that's what they were) referred to in 1:22. But 1:23 doesn't refer to what they said; it refers to what they heard.

In either case, the normal thing for a writer to do, in this sort of context, when stating what other people said or heard, if the writer does not think that what they said or heard was true, is to make it clear that it's not true. If I wrote something saying 'they heard that I had gone', but I hadn't gone, then I would make that clear. Otherwise the natural expectation is that the passage will be read as implying that I had gone.So, if 'Christ' is Greek for 'messiah', why can't we call them 'Christians'?Superficially, that looks like a contradiction. It looks as if you are using the word 'Christianity' to mean two different things in that sentence. Can you explain that difference?No. I don't understand what you're saying here. When is a messiah not a messiah?I don't see what particular disjunction you're talking about here.I don't know. In some translations Acts 18:25 describes him only as teaching things about 'the Lord', and there's no reference to his mentioning Jesus until after he's been 'instructed' by Aquila and Priscilla. In no translation is there any detail of what he taught, before or after being instructed.Since there's no theological detail given in either case, I don't see how this question can be answered.

J-D

Are Catholics Christians? I think the only meaningful way to answer this sort of question is to look at the opinion of Catholics themselves, of non-Catholic Christians, and of non-Christians. I don't think there is any other way to answer the question. I find that Catholics, the majority of non-Catholic Christians, and most if not all non-Christians consider Catholics to be Christians. On that basis, I think the correct short answer is 'Yes, Catholics are Christians', because the way most people use the words that's true, although the longer and more qualified answer 'According to the common opinion, Catholics are Christians, but some Protestants disagree' is also correct. Demographic statisticians include Catholics in their counts of Christians (correctly, in my view) on the basis of the short answer, even if they're aware of the dissent.

On the other hand, if you ask 'Are Mormons Christians?', the dissent is more significant and it's harder to give an unqualified answer. I expect different demographic statisticians take different positions as a result, and reasonably so.

Whether you think that Lutheranism is a different religion from Catholicism or not, Lutheranism emerged out of Catholicism. Whether you think that Mormonism is a different religion from Christianity or not, Mormonism emerged out of Christianity. In the same way, Paul's form of religion (whether we call it Christianity or not) emerged out of a form of religion which existed before Paul (whether or not we call that Christianity, and whether or not we call it part of the same religion as Paul's or not). And if we accept the account in Galatians, it was not traditional mainstream Judaism which was the predecessor from which Paul's form of religion emerged--that is, not the direct and immediate predecessor, although it was an earlier predecessor. That's what brings me back to my question: what was the origin of the form of religion which was the direct and immediate predecessor to Paul?

spin

The box is of naive literalism under the influence of christian hegemony. And I doubt you.

If you hadn't noticed, you've said that before.

How would you know, if you don't actually try to contemplate that which is outside your current perspective?

(Using the term "christian" in the context is simply inappropriate. You know next to nothing of their beliefs.)

What they said of what they heard from other people.

You still haven't answered my question: 'Who is the "they" in 1:23?' What is interesting is what they believed. We don't know, but you seem to think you do.

Umm, because "christian" means something to us that requires a Jesus plus a whole lot of other baggage. It's like telling someone who slags off an Arab that they are being anti-Semitic, when for most of us "anti-Semitic" has a different meaning from what the etymology provides us.

Computers may have started with Charles Babbage, but the first weren't built until circa 1950.

When it is a messiah only in name. Calling someone a messiah doesn't make him so. Jewish literature is a good indication of what the Jewish notion meant.

Paul's messiah isn't a messiah. One would assume that the notion of the messiah of the people in Judea was that of a messiah. The disjunction is between his notion of messiah, the non-messianic messiah, and that of the people of the Judean assemblies.

It's an Alexandrian/Byzantine text difference. It's not important, if we take the Byzantine "Lord" to refer to Jesus.

But you are willing to answer it with regard to the messianists of Judea. The point I was trying to make is the we can't separate what the commentator makes of the evidence from the reality, though there may well have been a substantive difference.

I am willing to consider Paul as meaning what he says in 1:11f and your problems with that based on 1:23 don't necessarily contradict what he says. If you want to approach 1:11f without any hints of fraud or other mischief, how can you make sense of it?


spin

spin

Paul preached messianism. The people in Gal 1:23 believed in messianism. They both believed in messianism and the text is coherent. Were they really the same thing? You know you don't know, just as you don't regarding Apollos.


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Amaleq13

For whom would Paul have been persecuting "messianism" and why?

Solo

I am not sure what you know of either brain or computers. Computers, over the fifty years overwent two design revolutions, semiconductor & microchip, the human brain has not. Further, in our thinking box, the neocortex sits on top of older structures which regulate vital bodily functions, which have nothing to do with thinking or computing per se but which "color" our world. Whether the world revolves around a neolitic village or U.S. metropolis, there are certain physiological constraints which come to play with our way of "receiving" what's out there.

Obviously, it is very difficult to say how Paul would have reacted to his challenges in today's world. It would have depended on a number of factors.
But he was an intellectually curious man and well aware of the external view of himself so I think his response would have been as unique as the one he devised 2M ago. The Christ personna (i.e. the slapping messiahship on the dead Jesus) has all the markings of a very personal and original self-dramatization. His conversion was not really the classical case of a crude sudden appearance of grandiosity (as you see in the banal cases of psychosis). His delusion - if it was delusion - was, as the great German psychiatrist Kraepelin used to say, "finely spun". There may be elements of rank madness in Paul but also this amazing depth in grasping the paradoxical nature of human existence. An idea hit me about ten years ago, as I was reading 1 Cr 1:18-30. Oh my, I said to myself: here is the key to Paul. He says (in translation by 21th century software): I know I am mad. Now, I understand what Jesus went through - his feelings of glory and exaltation that morphed into bottomless pit of despair, even to the most humiliating form of death. I have the same feelings of reaching heavens and the same lows where the glorious phantasms seem like the cruelest mockery of God. We are nobodies on earth. Anything that we have, anything that we are, can (and will) be taken away in a moment. But what if Jesus really believed he was empowered by God himself to proclaim his kingdom in Israel ? Was he foolish to think that flesh can inherit the kingdom of God ? Yes, he was. But if he was foolish, it was of no profit to him. It was because God made him so. And if God made him a fool and allowed him to be killed because he was a fool, then God cannot profit and human existence is worthless, hopeless, absurd. So, it's either that or you make the confession of that [apparent] fool and blasphemer as Christ, the Son of God.

This is Paul as read by my software. And my software's reply to Paul would be: 'I hear you man because I too walked that mile, but I was made whole with instructions to live a life, not to solve life.


I tried to give two examples of Shakespeare, one as a relatively "history free" plot (R&J) and the other (TOS) where there appears to be some historical context without which the meaning of the play may be be poorly grasped.

No argument and I would be grateful for any concrete, practical suggestions of how to fly this damn thing (the time machine).


I am repeating this obvious truism only because it does not seem obvious to you.

Jiri

spin

Paul doesn't say. His reason for why seems to have been in Gal 1:14, his zealousness for the traditions of his ancestors.


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Amaleq13

Wouldn't "messianism" have been a tradition of his ancestors?

So, he persecuted some non-traditional messianism?