Ben C Smith

That is an assumption that I am explicitly avoiding on this thread. I am not arguing for an HJ, not arguing that Paul knew about an HJ, not arguing that Paul was silent on something he knew of.

I especially am not arguing that he was uninterested in the gospel Jesus, because I am not assuming that there was a gospel Jesus.

I do not need to go that far. All I have to argue in order to make my point is that we cannot know that he was the sort of person who would have mentioned Jesus in his writings.

If you are right on all of this, or even on any of it, then the argument from silence fails, since it presumes to know (at least probably) that Paul would have said certain things had he known them, and your whole point is that we do not know enough about Paul and his situation.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Just to be clear, I think he can be used as evidence for an HJ, because I think he mentions an HJ several times. However, on this thread I am stipulating that he is completely silent.

Ben.

dog-on

Fair enough.

So, one cannot use the AFS (for which, on this thread, you stipulate total silence) as proof that Paul did not know an HJ. I agree. It can, however be used as evidence to support the conclusion that Paul had no knowledge of an HJ.

...and notice I used the word evidence...

Do you disagree that this, stipulated, complete silence would constitute evidence against Paul having knowledge of an HJ?

Solo

All of which I take is a long way of saying that if one is after the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, Colonel Sanders' biography would not be all that helpful.


Jiri

gstafleu

Going by the assumptions you posit for this thread, Paul cannot be used as evidence for an HJ, I think we agree here. The question now is: Can he be used, because of his silence, as evidence against an HJ? Your answer to this is: no, because he could have been a mystic, and mystics don't do historical. In order to show that such mystics are a valid construct, you adduce brother Lawrence.

The first thing I want to point out is that, going by the assumptions for this thread (only a silent Paul is available), there is no evidence for an HJ, so your hypothesis that there may have been one is (currently) unfounded. At best what you are saying is: If, in the future, we find evidence for an HJ, here is why that does not necessarily clash with Paul.

That's fine, but it doesn't make much sense to try to evaluate Paul as possibly refuting evidence that we don't have. The devil being in the details, the exact evaluation of Paul's silence will have to be against the background of the future evidence for an HJ. That, I think, is why several people have mentioned that Paul's silence cannot be used as evidence for an HJ: your argument is premature.

Nevertheless, let is ignore that for a moment and forge ahead. To make your argument work you have to claim some special properties for Paul, to with mysticism. That is fine, but it is an extra assumption, so you run into Occam's razor. This makes your hypothesis less likely (though it does of course not disporove it) then one that does not include this extra assumption.

Then we have the question of how well the text supports Paul's mysticism. We have to pay attention to the meaning of "mysticism" here. Belief in a spiritual entity can well be called mysticism (M1), but that is not this issue here. Here we are concerned with a particular kind of mysticism: emphasizing (only) the spiritual qualities of an entity of whom it is known that he was historical (M2). Paul's writing are, by the definition of this thread, proof for M1. Do they clash with M2? We certainly need extra assumptions, over M1, to avoid the clash. First, as mentioned, we need to assume that Paul was indeed the kind of person who would be an M2 mystic. Then we probably have issues like with the marriage thread: Paul addresses a very earthly issue where it is almost impossible not to mention what the HJ did or would have done. It is possible to define this away as well, by simply saying that Paul's mysticism precludes such a mention, but that is another extra assumption which sharpens Occam's razor.

So yes, your hypothesis can be made to work, but it means extra assumptions. As gurugeorge pointed out, for brother Lawrence (some of) these assumptions have been witnessed by external evidence, to wit the remarks of his biographer and the known constellation of the religious environment of the time. In Paul's case we don't have these externalities, so the assumptions remain just that, and Occam's razor retains its edge.

Gerard Stafleu

ynquirer

By no means is the argument premature. It furnishes a counter-example, that is, an instance in which the purported universal rule that everyone that knows of a relevant fact speaks of it, is false. It is not an absolute rebuttal of the mythicist argument from silence, but certainly takes much strength away from it. To be exact, it gives the argument from silence the expected value of the flipping of a coin.

Mysticism is not an assumption in Paul. Someone that claims to have being a witness to a personal appearance by God is, by definition, a mystic. If 1 Cor 15:3-8 is not evidence of mysticism, please show what is.

Ben has on this thread clearly dropped any claim to M2. Why do you push the discussion into that sidetrack? Or else why don't you unveil your own hidden assumption that a man that spoke of someone of David's seed that was cruficied and buried, was however speaking of a mythical entity?

What does Paul say? That marriage is superior to being a bachelor or the other way around? His position on marriage is clear indication of Paul’s belief that Jesus was a bachelor.

No, there are no extra assumptions in the counter-example. What we have in relation to brother Lawrence is some extra evidence, which we don’t have in Paul’s case. See the difference - evidence instead of assumptions? As much as gurugeorge acknowledged that an ignorant observer might think that brother Lawrence was a mythicist while being wrong, everyone that thinks that Paul’s myticism is default might be wrong with an equal a priori likelihood. And in supporting that such a theory is the default belief, it is you that need an extra assumption, namely, that ignorance is argument. That is a preferred neck for Occam’s razor.

Ted Hoffman

Did you cite these in the "HJ? Put Your Cards on the Table!" thread?

Ben C Smith

No.

Ben.

gurugeorge

You aren't making that assumption in Paul's case but are making a parallel thing that's a replacement for such an assumption in Lawrence's case, who we already know was talking about a non-mythical but mystical Jesus.

What makes it unproblematic that Lawrence is "silent" about a historical Jesus is the fact that he was a Christian mystic.

What would make it unproblematic that Paul was "silent" about a historical Jesus would be the fact that he was a (familiar-with-the-historical-Jesus) mystic.

But in the case of Paul all you really have (say if you were making those traditional apologist kinds of arguments that I agree you aren't making in this thread) is assumption, not fact. If you make it a fact, you are going in circles.

But Paul talks a fair bit about a "Jesus", in a way that's strictly speaking ambiguous between myth and history, but mostly mythical-sounding, even in the few bits that might be historical references.

Essentially, your point doesn't really get you that far. The situation (in your restricted strawman scenario) is symmetrical, and in fact you inadvertently expose the shakiness of the traditional grounds. It's a logical victory, but (in terms of the larger struggle) you are hoist with your own petard

No, it doesn't fail because it isn't based on the presumption of special knowledge about Paul in order to know what he would or wouldn't have been likely to say, it only assumes general knowledge of human beings, a common sense understanding in light of which it is assumed what he, as a human being, would or wouldn't have been likely to say. As I say, if we applied that common sense understanding to Lawrence's text, we'd be wrong, but we'd only know we were wrong because of that background knowledge we have of Lawrence. We don't have that background knowledge about Paul, so all we can go on is general principles.

I think this version of the argument from silence really only serves to soften up the approach, it's just meant to get away from the automaticity of the traditional view; it removes the traditional presumptions about Paul, based on years of study of him by Christians, and replaces it with a "well actually we don't really know what he was like, but if he were a normal human being surely he would ...". You can even make him a mystic (I too believe he was), but as I said the proximity of time and place to the cultic figure would make it unlikely for him to remain silent even as a mystic. That's why I said a better parallel would be somebody closer to the time of the cultic figure.

(Actually I've just thought of something that would make a much better parallel. Take the Dalai Lama. He's considered by Tibetan Buddhists to be an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, so he's got a very similar kind of god-man thing going to what the traditional picture of Jesus would have been. What we'd need to find would be, after the Dalai Lama dies, a parallel sort of devotional text by a hardcore Tibetan Buddhist mystic who knew of the Dalai Lama, but hadn't met him, but personally knew people who had, and who viewed him in the traditional way as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, and was devotional and mystical as you like on that side, but who also never let slip (either consciously or unintentionally) anything that would give a clue that the Dalai Lama was a real person, never mentioned, say, some political doings that might connect the entity he's talking about to history, never mentioned, say, that he knew somebody who had personally known the Dalai Lama.

In fact, I bet you anything that the kind of text you'd get would be a text in praise of Avalokiteshvara in his incarnation as the Dalai Lama. It would likely be that way round, from the point of view of the major entity, the entity supposedly incarnating and enlivening the human being, and the praise would be directed to that entity, but do you think there would be no clue whatsoever even in such a text that this entity he was talking about had recently incarnated, no clue that someone could decipher that would tie this entity to the recently deceased human being? I can't be sure but I doubt it. Anyway, it's interesting, and more apposite than your Lawrence.)

The real argument from silence is simply that there's no unambiguous, evidentiary connection in Paul's writings between Paul and someone known to him (i.e. the Jerusalem crowd, the only plausible candidates) who knew a person called "Jesus".

Ben C Smith

Bravo! Now you understand my point.

Ben.