DCHindley

Exactly,

Whether the christological passages come from the original letter writer or an editor, it really doesn't change the fact that that person (or those persons) referred to a supernatural Jesus, but with allusions to purported historical events associated with the name. The movement from which any hypothetical redactor sprung must surely have some sort of history dealing with the Jesus traditions. As Schweitzer complained, critics had not adequately explained how Christianity (or a redactor's community) got from point A (a historical Jesus) to point B (a mythical divine redeemer).

DCH

Ben C Smith

I do not necessarily think that. (In fact, for the seed of David reference I am actually inclined to think Davidic lineage was attributed to Jesus artificially, though I have not entirely decided on that yet.)

Some or all of them may very well be just that. (For example, it may well be that, since the messiah was expected from the line of David, certain early Christians went on ahead and attributed Davidic kinship to him, based solely on scriptural expectations. That is a live option, in my judgment.)

I do not recall saying anything about Peter or James on this thread.

The question, rather, is why you are putting words in my mouth. I am not certain you have quite grasped the nature of this exercise.

When Paul wrote those things about Jesus, did he actually mean something very different than their prima facie value? Or was he saying, regardless of the source(s) of his knowledge and regardless of the accuracy of his claims, that Jesus really was of the line of David (for example)?

Ben.

dog-on

I didn't mean to imply that you had used the "Peter and James" card on this thread. My point with that reference was that for your hypothesis to be valid, Paul must have received information from sources other than where he states. So, if you make Paul less-than-honest on this account, your cake is eaten.


I understand exactly what it is you are after.

The OT is full of quasi history attributed to different characters, most of which are purely mythical. Does the fact that the bible claims that Adam and Eve were real historical people make it so? Did the original person who came up with the tale really believe that this had actually happened? Is their story set on earth?

Did the author of the epistles do anything significantly different with his references to the god-man?

Here is a better exercise. Point out a reference in the epistles that you think is strong evidence for an HJ that could not have been "revealed" in the OT scriptures.

Ben C Smith

Paul says that Jesus was born of a woman, of the seed of Abraham, of the seed of David. On their surface, these are claims that Jesus was a human being. I am looking for evidence that Paul meant something else.

Let us suppose that Paul received every single datum about Jesus via direct revelation from God. Did God reveal to Paul that Jesus was a human being or not? What did Paul mean by those phrases? And what is your evidence that such is what he meant?

I am reading only what Paul has written, to wit, that Jesus was of the seed of David and so forth.

It seems indisputable that the prima facie reading is that Paul is saying that Jesus was a human Jew of the Davidic line. (If you are disputing that this is the prima facie reading, then you are simply mistaken, IMVHO, and there is nothing I can do about that.)

I would not always take Paul literally. But, where he uses terms and phrases that elsewhere are generally literal, I would tend to take him literally there.

(And, to be fair, if we are taking away the later canonical gospels, we have to take away the later gnostic writings, too. Otherwise we might be backreading from them. Nevertheless, go ahead and backread from the gnostic texts if you wish; I would like to see the evidence that you have for a nonliteral interpretation of according to the flesh, seed of David, and so forth. That is what this thread is about.)

This is not the topic. Let me grant for the sake of argument that all Paul knew of the messiah came from the scriptures. What did Paul know? Did Paul know that the messiah was a human Jew from the line of David, or not?

For the purposes of this thread, I do not know. How does that help us interpret born of a woman? Even if Romans 13.1-7 were to prove absolutely fatal to an HJ, I would still be asking what Paul meant when he wrote what he wrote.

It addresses the problem that I wished to address, which is what Paul meant by certain phrases. I am sorry that it did not address the problem(s) you apparently were hoping it would address.

I am not quite certain what this has to do with the thread, but, according to Charles Talbert, in chapter 2 of What is a Gospel? (or via: amazon.co.uk), we have Alexander, Augustus, Empedocles, Apollonius, Claudius, and Peregrinus, at least.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

The only hypothesis that I have submitted on this thread was actually a bare assertion. I asserted that, when Paul said X, he meant X, and not Y.

I have no idea what the exact sources have to do with my inquiry. I will grant you, for the sake of argument, whatever source(s) you wish. Do you think Paul learned about the messiah strictly from scripture? Great, let us run with that. What exactly did Paul learn about the messiah from scripture? Did he learn that the messiah was to be a descendant of David, and so he assigned his mythical messiah Davidic kinship? Or, when he wrote that Jesus was of the seed of David, did he actually mean something else entirely? Never mind whether Jesus was a real human being on this thread. Did Paul think that the messiah was human or not?

No, of course not. And the fact that Paul claims Jesus was born of a woman does not make it so. My question is not, not, I repeat NOT whether it is so. My question is: What did Paul mean?

Ben.

dog-on

Ben, I need to clarify myself, as even I am confused...

Why couldn't the references you site (seed of David, born of a woman, etc...) be understood by the writer as simply that which must have been, based on the revelation he felt that he received through the scriptures? These statements must be there because God (through the scriptures) said so.

Ben C Smith

They may well be just that. They may be things that Paul felt must be true because of his own reading of the scriptures. If that is the case, however, what exactly did Paul feel must be true? Did he really think that the messiah should be a human being from among the descendants of Abraham and of the line of David? Or did he mean something else entirely by those phrases?

If you have never read Doherty, then it is no wonder you are confused. This all has to do with his reading of these phrases. When Doherty reads a phrase like born of a woman in Paul, not only does he think that Jesus was not actually born of a woman, but he also thinks that Paul himself did not mean to imply that Jesus was really a human being who ever walked the planet. Doherty thinks that Paul wrote these human-sounding phrases, but that he meant that Jesus carried them out as a nonhuman, not even on earth, and certainly never actually passing through the tubes of a woman (not even in appearance, as a docetic might have it), from start to finish.

I am seeking, in the spirit of what Richard Carrier asked in his review of Doherty and Muller, evidence that Paul might have written these human-sounding things with something very nonhuman in mind.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Let me attempt to put the issue of the sources Paul may have had for his messiah figure into perspective, since it is distracting from the search for evidence of what certain phrases mean.

I have personally heard sermons or Sunday School lessons in which the preacher or teacher asserts that Jesus, as a human being, must not have been very good-looking. This teacher is not basing this judgment on any historiography, on iconography, on archaeology, or on any of the usual things a modern historian might use to make such an assertion. Rather, the source for this datum is Isaiah 53.2, which says that the suffering servant has no stately form or majesty that we should be attracted to him. The teacher is taking Isaiah 53 in its entirety to apply to Jesus, and then drawing a conclusion from it as to what Jesus must have looked like.

Now, I am not personally in favor of this sort of thing; that is not how I usually try to arrive at the truth of matters. Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the teacher in question is talking about the actual physical beauty (or lack thereof) of what he considers to be an actual historical personage. When he says that Jesus was not particularly good-looking as a human being, he means exactly that, and he intends his words to be taken at face value, regardless of how he deduced the information.

That is why none of this business about Paul taking his information from scripture has anything at all to do with the OP. So what if he did? The question is how he intended his words to be understood.

So let me make a simple assertion (yet again): Paul thought that Jesus was a Jew and a descendant of David, because he writes that Jesus was of the seed of Abraham and of the seed of David.

Now, using linguistic evidence from other writers in antiquity, please prove me wrong. Prove that Paul did not actually mean that when he wrote that.

I repeat what Carrier wrote:

Ben.

dog-on

I've said, somewhere before, that I wasn't too comfortable with the "Sub-Lunar realm" argument. Maybe I'm just not up to speed on first century cosmology...

Though my first choice would be later interpolation by other writers, I do not think that the end result is all that different. I believe that "Paul", (or whoever wrote those passages), believed that he had received a revelation from God. This revelation came from, perhaps, a close reading of the scriptures from a non-traditional perspective. Perhaps a, non-Jewish, Roman's interpretation of the Greek translation.

The revelation seems to have been based on specific scriptural references. Of course, looking back wards at the text we have today, this is what we find.

I just don't see that these details, other than their being referenced as part of the revelation, have any bearing on what was preached. The author simply stated these matter of factly, as what he received. What his actual beliefs were, regarding these details (recent, mythic past or "sub-lunar" sphere), are simply unknown, but need to have had no corroboration other than the scriptures from which they are based.

Of course, at a later time, some evangelists thought differently and along came the gospels...

Chili

Yes but "born of a woman" is not the same born of a female because the woman in this context is not human = not hu-man = not-earthly = free from sin = virgin in perpetuity or it could not be the seed of Abraham of David who's seed was also from God, period.

Paul is looking at the archetype of redemption wherein the image of God that exists in each one of us is brought back to life. They call it heaven on earth, Ben, which makes Jesus a real man who walked on both the old and the new earth.

Woman is opposite to human but this would be philosophy and a derail in theology.