NOGO

Mag, with all due respect, you appear to be strong on generalities but when presented with a specific example you cannot refute it.

NOGO

Let me see if I understand this.

Paul believed that the Garden of Eden Story was untrue.
He needed a mission for his saviour.
He created a story.
People were guilty by association and made to feel guilty for being human.

He spread the story.

People listened to the story.
They knew that that the Garden story was a myth.
But it was a good story.
So they stopped asking themselves why they need a saviour,
started feeling guilty for being human and converted to Christianity en masse.

NOGO

Did you read my statement literally to arrive at such a conclusion?

There is indeed irony but not where you think.

Mageth

My intent was not to "refute" a specific example. I was pointing out that you are projecting the modern rationalistic mindset onto the people of the First Century which didn't view the world that way. But if you insist:

Perhaps, but that does not tell us if they thought the stories were to be understood as literal history or as mythic tales that included metaphorical truth, as has been pointed out, I believe.

Who here has said that Paul told people that Adam never existed etc?

In any case, in mythos, Paul would be referring to the metaphorical truth of the myths, both ancient and the ones he was spinning, without insisting that they were literally true. That's the method of mythos - wrapping concepts that are hard to grasp in "historical" stories that are not intended to be interpreted or understood literally but metaphorically.

Once again, simply not true. Working within mythos, Paul and his audience would understand that the "Garden story" described metaphorical truths wrapped in an "historical" account which it is not necessary to understand as literal history. The new Jesus myths Paul was spinning (if one accepts them as such) included metaphorical truth that depended on or looked back to the metaphorical truths derived from the "Garden story". Under mythos, it's not necessary to understand or interpret either as literal history. Doing that (insisting on a literal, historical interpretation) is understanding the Bible through the modern, rational mindset (logos).

Because they're working under the modern, rational mindset (logos) and don't understand mythos.

Again, your logos is showing.

Mageth

You're still missing the point, and looking only through logos.

That's not what he said. He said the myth is not literally true. That does not mean that Paul didn't consider the myth metaphorically true.

Remember: myth=false is a modern, and inappropriate, application or definition of "myth" in the context of mythos. The people could understand the myth as not literally true but still accept it as providing metaphorical truths.

NOGO

I agree.
Paul starts with a conclusion and then reads whatever he needs to read into the scriptures.

Most believers do exactly that even today. They do not allow the text to tell them what it says they project they beliefs into the texts.

This however does not deny that Paul believed scriptures to be true.

For example.

Paul tries to disinherit the Jews to a promise made by Yahweh to Abraham.
He jumps on a single word "seed" which was singular in his Greek Bible and concludes that this cannot mean the Jews because they are many. So it must be Jesus. Christians, therefore, inherit the promise through Jesus.

That is real freedom to interpret.

But why would Paul do that?


He must have believed that Yahweh actually existed.
He must have believed that Abraham actually existed.
He must have believed that a promise was made.
He must have believed that Yahweh had a plan for humanity and that this plan was somehow hidden in the Hebrew scriptures for him to see, if only Yahweh would allow him.

This must be the basis of his effort.

dado

i have no idea what paul believed to be true. none of us do, with any certainty. what i know is that one story being based on another story does not in any way imply a literal acceptance of the earlier story, nor does it imply the earlier story can't "mean" something entirely different.

right there is the kernel of your internal contradiction: the garden of eden story in no way implies the need for a savior. in fact there is no savior at all in judaism, mostly because there is no need for one because there is nothing from which to be saved. that paul was able to get a conclusion directly at odds with the hebrew texts argues against your theory, not for it.

dado

it is impossible to do otherwise with millenia old material for the same reason it is impossible to hear a Mozart symphony the way Mozart heard it: we cannot discard our context and don the mantle of "their" context. everybody reading these texts - all texts - projects their beliefs because reading is by definition an interpretive act.

LP675

I don’t think that they are “strangely devoid� of specific details. Of the letters we have, none of them was meant to be a synoptic gospel as far as I know, and the fact pastoral letters (and other letters) don’t contain lots of specific historic details shouldn’t surprise anyone (so their absence doesn’t strike me as “strange�). The point of a pastoral letter, I would have thought, is to minister to, encourage and direct people, not give a history lesson.

There is absolutely no question he was arguing for a physical resurrection, IMO.

I wonder what you mean by “mythologized�, could you give examples where he does this so I can get a sense of what you mean by the term “mythologized�? And what exactly do you mean by “he interpreted them through mythos, not logos�.

Toto

Richard Carrier will be publishing an article on this, arguing that Paul believed in a spiritual resurrection. There are some threads on this.