Toto

Do you think that this reference to "the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men" is an interpolation?

jgibson000

I'll answer this when you come up with a reference to ARCONTES (=supernatural powers) as carrying out their designs absent human instruments or agency.

Jeffrey

Vorkosigan

Good question. How then can anything that happens in myth occur? It must all be historical.


2:9 is a citation of Isa 64 and includes "those who love him" not as an antithesis to 2:8 but as an explanation and justification for 2:10. Those who love him have not heard from human wisdom, but through divine spirit. The reference supports 2:7 and explains it as well. The whole passage is a discussion of things spiritual into which non-human arcontes fit perfectly. After all, if Paul had thought Jesus had been executed by people, all he had to do was say so.

Further, Paul makes a characteristic turn in 1 Cor 1 that shows that he has received this knowledge not by studying a historical event, which he evinces no knowledge of, but by deducing it from the Old Testament. In 1 Cor 2 not only does he cite Isa 64, he also cites scripture at the other end of this passage in 1 Cor 1. The wisdom of this world does not refer to an actual historical event but an understanding of history derived from scripture. The reason he has to talk in "spiritual terms" to the people of the Lord is because he has no historical terms to say to them. Paul (or his mentors) has deduced all this from studying scripture.

Michael

jgibson000

But this begs the question not only of what PNEUMATIKOS means, but of whether in his statement about ARCONTES in 1 Cor 2:6-8 PAUL is not doing just this, especially in the light of how in antiquity ARCONTES (=supernatural powers) were thought to carry out their designs.

Jeffrey

Vorkosigan

Yes, well it does beg that question. So we're stuck, Jeff. We're using two different interpretive frameworks to look at Paul. In one framework, Paul for some reason always uses veiled references to history and never talks about Jesus' own life, even when it might appear to be useful. In the other framework, the events of Jesus' saving death are the results of visions and do not refer to any historical event. Paul can be interpreted sensibly using either framework.

So the real question is how should be interpret Paul? Which framework should we use? If we look at the other epistles the same pattern emerges -- no history. OK, so we look at the "history" in the Gospels -- and guess what! There doesn't seem to be any history there either -- instead of veiled references, as in Paul, it becomes "embellished references."

We don't have a clash of "evidence" because evidence is something constructed out of interpretive frameworks. What we have is a clash of frameworks.

Michael

Toto

I fail to see how these two issues are related.

For reference, Earl Doherty's analysis of this is here - scroll down to "The Rulers of this Age."

I would prefer that Doherty defend his own ideas. Perhaps he will drop by.

An excerpt: Granted, Ephesians is not generally considered Pauline, but presumably reflects Pauline thinking.

I admit that I find this sublunar plane hard to wrap my brain around, but Richard Carrier seems to think that it makes historical sense (here), and Doherty himself has said that he has trouble getting into that sort of thinking. But I think that it is ahistorical to impose our modern rationalist interpretations on texts that were written in a non-rational age.

TedM

Since verse 8 flows right out of verse 7, how do you know that "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, hor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared" isn't referring to the human "rulers of the age" who didn't understand God's wisdom which he had just mentioned? Where is the context that supports anything about a lack of wisdom or understanding among demons?


He didn't have to say so if everyone already knew who the archons were, of course. It wasn't necessary to his comparisons of God's wisdom vs human wisdom or lack thereof.


He used scripture to support his ideas about why some have God's wisdom and others don't. That isn't near enough to conclude that he deduced a non-historical Jesus crucified in another realm from scripture--something he never mentions in the 58 times he refers to Jesus' death. The use of scripture in no way shows that God's wisdom or revelation from God's spirit has nothing to do with an actual historical event.

ted

Vorkosigan

The context is in the use of scripture rather than history to justify the argument. If Jesus/God had really confounded the wisdom of the age, why doesn't Paul refer to the tales contained in the Gospels to justify this? I can understand him reaching for scripture sometimes. But here is the perfect opportunity to reach into Jesus' own life and show him besting the scribes and chief priests and pharisees. But he doesn't. Instead, he retreats into more talk of competing spirits.

LIke I said, all the silences are explained by this argument. So your argument is essentially that everyone knew that Jesus had died on the cross in Jerusalem/Judea at the hands of either Herod or Pilate, but the significance of this event -- the fact that it confounded the wisdom of this age, etc -- was something nobody knew.

This is very strange, on its face. You have posited people who worship a messiah but know only the facts of his life, and have to be taught its significance, but nevertheless, deftly, without reminder of any facts of that life, but instead, referring to the OT to justify this life without actually mentioning it.

But let's look at it another way. If Paul is explaining the significance of a life lived to others who also understand its significance, but in a different way, then we are still stuck with why Paul would go back to the OT instead of using the facts of Jesus' life to refute the ideas of others.

That argument "everybody knew" won't work. Everyone knows today in the Churches, but preachers constantly refer to the real life of Jesus even to those who know it well.

Well, in a sense I agree -- Paul manages to tell us 58 times of Jesus death, without ever once mentioning a historical fact about it. Each time he is silent, because everyone "already knows."

Michael

jgibson000

Thanks, I think. But it's not a dodge. It its quite clear that at the heart of the "sub-lunar" case for what Paul is on about in 1 Cor 2:6-8 lies a view of the nature and location of "ARCONTIC" (to coin a phrase) action that, so far as I know, no ancient ever subscribed to or spoke of, and which all of our extant evidence testifying to how ARCONTES (= supernatural forces) were "known" to act and to carry out their designs contradicts.

Therefore, so far as the truth of the claim that the language of 1 Cor 2:6-8 can be taken as Paul saying there was no earthly hand in Jesus' crucifixion is concerned, the issue of whether the Thessalonians passage is or isn't an interpolation has no bearing, since the case for the meaning of that language is unrelated to, and by no means stands or falls with the question of the authenticity of the Thessalonians passage. The only issue that really matters is whether there are any instances of any ancient author who uses either ARCWN or ARCHONTES of supernatural beings and who describes them as acting or carrying out their designs, which show that anyone in or before the 1st century time ever thought of these powers as doing so without human instruments or by means of human agency.

I look forward to your adducing some.

Jeffrey

TedM

Yes, God's wisdom comes from God, and the scriptures support it.

Those are good questions. It is an argument from silence but the questions are reasonable. However, your reply doesn't address my question with regard to Isaiah 64:4 seeming more appropriate to apply to human rulers not understanding than demons, and it doesn't address my comment that the idea that a lack of wisdom among demons isn't supported at all by the context, which only refers to other humans lacking wisdom.


Yes as to the event. The significance was known afterwards to those the spirit revealed it to. The significance was not revealed to those humans who crucified Jesus.

I don't think they had to be taught it's significance without a reminder of any facts about Jesus but with references to the OT instead. It is roughly the angle Paul took in his letters, which is odd, but Paul was an odd fellow. Why Paul focused primarily on the salvation act itself is a great question which one can only speculate about. Perhaps it was because Paul never knew Jesus personally. Perhaps Paul had heard many of the same teachings in his own education. Perhaps Jesus wasn't as grand a presence as is found in the gospels. Perhaps Paul didn't like the anti-Pharisee message. Perhaps because Paul was intently focused on preaching the theology of Jesus' atonement through his death, or the theology of salvation through faith for gentiles--themes which Jesus himself didn't stress but for which he could find plenty of OT support, etc... There are lots of possibiilties, and one is that Paul's Jesus was crucified in the air by demons. But that theory is weakly supported.

Others may well have taught facts of that life, which can explain the proliferation of the sayings of Jesus and the gospels, perhaps even during Paul's time.


If it is a choice between everybody knowing that Jesus was crucified on earth and everybody knowing that Jesus was crucified by demons in the air, I'd go with the former as being many times more likely.

Michael, since I have your attention, did you see my post about Luke's 10 lepers, and my question if that is the primary evidence you have that Luke knew Mark was fiction?

ted