Didymus

I don't recall saying that. Cite, please.

Didymus

Didymus

I think history matters. How else are we to paint a coherent picture of how Christianity began? If we don't care about that, then we're in the wrong forum.

History rarely involves absolute certainty. But if we can possibly develop a coherent picture that fits the evidence we do have, I think it's worth doing.

"Mythical" often seems to implies Greek myth. There's been so much confusion over that term that I've come to prefer "fictitious" if you mean someone whose biography was created from other than historical sources.

It's a more direct way to couch the issue than MJ vs. HJ. I like the fact that it puts aside the question of Palestinian history vs. Hellenistic myth.

I agree. But we would have a much better idea of how Christianity began, and of how an idea can become a belief.

Perhaps the "human source" question is "provable" (in the historical, not the mathematical, sense) if we can only understand the evidence in the right way.

Didymus

Didymus

Ummm, a Palestinian locus for early Christianity? I still think that it was a religion of Jews and God-fearers living in the Diaspora. It didn't exist in Palestine during the first three centuries any more than it exists there today, i.e., as an import from gentile-land.

Didymus

S.C.Carlson

What's your understanding of Gal 1:17-18 then?

dog-on

I believe that Gal. 1:18-20 is an interpolation. I look at Gal 1:22-23 as almost a contradiction to 18-20 and as an interuption of the flow to Gal 1:21.

Sparrow

I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. What I meant was that Paul was acting as a result of whatever vision/hallucination/revelation/experience he had. Whether Christ was physical or spiritual didn’t matter to Paul. Later developments seem to require or at least prefer a physical Jesus, so the details are discovered/created/derived from scripture or possibly conflated with one or more messiah wannabes from the not too distant past. Most modern Christians it seems cannot conceive of a purely spiritual Christ. Of course it is diffcult for the casual investigator to read a historical text without reading with a bias to what they think they know. Note how many times here people seem to assume that Paul had copies of the four Gospels to reference.

Any discussion of how Christianity began must involve Paul as it is difficult to imagine it surviving, let alone spreading, without Paul’s evangelism. How and why it caught on is interesting whether it is true or false.

I didn’t mean to imply it‘s not worth studying, just that in some cases (like what specifically did any Christian cults prior to Paul actually believe?) we don’t have enough evidence to know for sure, even in historical terms. Perhaps some new evidence will be discovered.



I like ‘fictitious’, but I will be surprised if there’s not a strong emotional reaction from Christians over such a term.



As you pointed out above, ‘myth’ has some baggage, especially to the casual investigator. There’s still many different viable scenarios in each of these categories.

More evidence could possibly help.

dog-on

Didymus, thanks for taking the time to reply.

Regarding 1 Cor. 15:3-7, this passage smells too much like an interpolation. Robert Price gives a good discussion of this at:

http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html

Regarding the "first fruits", I will defer to Doherty. The passage in 15:21 is ambiguous as to time. 15:47 distinguishes between an earthly Adam and a Heavenly Christ. This is in no way a slam dunk for HJ, in fact, the ball seems to bounce harmlessly off the rim...

dog-on

I just can't get my head around the fact that if, in reality, such a "spark" were the case, wouldn't you think that a lot more ink would need to be used to justify this guy as the Christ/Messiah. A mythical/spiritual being would not be subject to "Hey, Johnny knew that guy, what a nut he was..." type of issue.

I am in the interpolation camp for "brother of the Lord". "Seed of David" is a messianic requirement, but if anything, this is the most difficult issue to resolve for MJ (other then tossing it as a later gloss, but what's the fun in that).

Didymus

||

There is no slam dunk for HJ in Paul, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's possible that he believed in a non-earthly Jesus. But where he made a number of references to Jesus that, if taken literally, place him in the earthly realm, he never stated unequivocally that Jesus did not exist as a man who lived recently on earth, nor did he clearly state that Jesus existed only in a spiritual realm or somewhere in the intermediate realm above the earth and below the moon or during some remote earthly time.

All the literality is on the side of Paul's regarding Jesus as human; on the HJ side there's only equivocation, ambiguity and the possibility that Paul was incorporating mysticism by reference.

This is not to say that Paul knew anything about a Jesus whose biography resembled the gospels.

Didymus

Didymus

Oh. Okay, I can see that.

That would be great. But in the meantime, let's stay on the case, shall we?

It's like quitting smoking. They'll get over it, and they'll be grateful in the long run.

Didymus