Originally Posted by post tenebras lux

But who can say whether Paul ever existed either? :huh:

The Falsified Paul by Hermann Detering

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

[...] My positive silences are more direct, not relying on background knowledge. I have said that they include "exclusions" of an historical Jesus, and statements about the faith movement which are self-sufficient without an historical Jesus, the latter making it unnecessary to postulate a figure who would even be an intrusion on the idea being expressed. As a corrollary to the latter, we would have to recognize that it is highly unlikely that the writer would make a statement which would provide such a self-sufficiency, rather than to provide the more reasonable and expected reference in that context to an HJ.

One example I can give contains and illustrates all three of those elements:

Titus 1:3 - "Yes, it is eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, and now in his own good time he has openly declared himself in the proclamation which was entrusted to me by ordinance of God our Saviour."

- Exclusion of an historical Jesus: In the past lie God's promises, in the present lies his acting upon them through the missionary movement represented by Paul (the writer speaking as Paul, as the Pastorals are generally dated by critical scholars as belonging to the early 2century). No insertion of an historical Jesus between the two 'events'. This is a blatant, and unexplainable, exclusion.

- God declares himself through the missionary movement (which by other contexts is identified as a 'declaration' through scripture and the Holy Spirit). This identifies the early Christian movement as one that arose and operates through revelation to apostles like Paul, rather than through Jesus' own ministry and life on earth. We thus understand that movement through other means than the career of an HJ.

- If an author like this is going to identify how God acted on his promises, it is a virtual guarantee (indeed, how could anyone get their mind around anything else?) that he would speak of such action of God as having taken place through the life and death of Jesus. That would be such a compelling idea that he would hardly pass it up in favor of speaking of the missionary movement instead, completely ignoring Jesus' role in the matter. Note that this does not require the writer (and even if it were Paul) to know anything about the details of the life and death of Jesus. It would simply be the fact itself.

This kind of positive silence, on all levels, is what saturates the epistles and other early documents, and I claim that there is no way around it, despite all apologetic efforts which fill NT commentaries--and I've seen them all! And I remark on many, many of them in my website articles and in my book. It is one thing that justifies me saying to people like Kevin that historicist scholarship has a predisposition which governs everything they interpret and conclude--and indeed 'cook' (to borrow Jeffrey's term)--about the evidence that is staring them in the face. And it is this kind of positive silence, backed up with so much else of a background nature, which justifies regarding the evidence for the MJ position as "overwhelming". And once we understand the content and construction of the Gospels (together with the fact that they all essentially proceed from one initial author), there is very little that can stand against it. (Certainly not "the brother of the Lord" or "genomenon ek gunaikos" which enjoy other explanations.)

All the best,
Earl Doherty

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

[...] The author of Titus, when speaking of the fulfillment of God’s promise should have been compelled to find that fulfillment in the life of Jesus. Nothing else makes any sense. There shouldn’t have been any “tension” with an absent fact, since it should not have been absent.

Of course, it isn’t just Titus which shows this glaring anomaly. There are all sorts of other passages in the epistles which are virtually identical. Such as:

Romans 16:25-26 – “…according to the Gospel I brought you and the proclamation of [i.e., about] Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of that divine secret kept in silence for long ages but now disclosed, and through prophetic scriptures…” [NEB]

Ephesians 3:5 – “…you may perceive that I understand the secret of Christ. In former generations this was not disclosed to the human race: but now it has been revealed by inspiration to his dedicated apostles and prophets, that through the gospel the gentiles are joint heirs with the Jews, part of the same body, sharers together in the promise made in Christ Jesus.” [NEB]

In the second of these, dissenters argue, well, it’s just the inclusion of the gentiles that is revealed. First of all, in the first one, and in a passage like Colossians 2:22, no such limitation is specified. And in any case, is a writer like this going to say that even such a ‘secret’ would in no way have been revealed or acted upon by Jesus himself? Are we going to accept that in passage after passage, no place is given in any of this “long generations of silence and ignorance….followed by the revelation of such secrets and the banishment of such silence,” no role whatsoever, no mention whatsoever, to Jesus’ life, not even a glance his way? The concept is absurd.

2 Corinthians 5:5 – “God has shaped us for life immortal, and as a guarantee of this he has given us the Spirit.”

In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, as I say in The Jesus Puzzle (p.45-6), “It is Paul who has received from God ‘the ministry of reconciliation’; it is he whom God has qualified ‘to dispense his new covenant’ (2 Cor. 3:5). Paul’s disregard for Jesus’ own ministry of reconciliation or dispensation of the new covenant is astonishing. The parallel to Moses’ splendor in the giving of the old covenant is not Jesus’ recent ministry, it is the splendor of Paul’s ministry through the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:7-11).”

Paul places no HJ (Romans 8:22) between the “universe groaning in the pangs of childbirth…while we wait for God to make us his sons and set our whole body free.” In that hiatus, he once again speaks of “we, to whom the Spirit is given as firstfruits of the harvest to come”. As I continually point out in regard to Romans 1, the gospel of God in the prophets pre-announced Paul’s gospel, not the life of Jesus. In 2 Timothy 1:9, the Savior has broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light…through the gospel, not through his own life and death in recent history! (See TJP 117-118 for a full discussion of this important passage.)

And on and on. It is indeed “overwhelming” if one will simply open one’s eyes to it.

Originally Posted by Malachi151

I'm aware of that, I'm just trying to go for argument's sake here.