TedM

Good question. I was thinking of that same idea this morning. I wonder if the 1 Cor 15 passage, or others puts the kabosh on such speculation. After all it appears that the "event" --either historical or "according to the scriptures" preceded the "appearances" to various people.

ted

TedM

That's an extreme reaction Earl. Speculating without strong conviction is in no way a sign of lack of integrity, and frankly I'm insulted that you would suggest such a thing.

I don't expect you to answer all of my speculations. You are free to ignore them at will. They are simply fodder for discussion and new ideas and revelations. If you prefer not to consider them simply because I don't have conviction in them myself, that is your perogative. Either Jesus was historical or not. You provide speculations as to why Paul was silent which support your mythical interpretations. One of your recent speculations was that he never discusses the location of the sphere because his community of believers already knew about it. I provide speculations as to why Paul was silent which supports my historical interpretations. What's the difference?


You gotta be kidding. I spend a great deal of time on occasion thinking through what you write and just because I resort to occasional excesses in speculation about things that I think may have some truth but about which I'm not as convicted as you are about your own speculations, you refuse to ever communicate with me? I already said in response to you yesterday I plan on backing off on the speculating. Shouldn't that have been sufficient to cool your fires?

What started my speculations--which have only been in a couple of recent posts, by the way, was something that I've wanted to address for a long time about your arguments. In order to amplify the silence you often pull up the Jesus of the gospels in all of his glory. I speculated--as have a great many scholars--that perhaps Jesus' ministry was a very lite version of what we find in the gospels. As such the silences don't seem nearly so pronounced. Toto found this to be insufficient but I was curious what kind of response you would have.

I guess I'll never know now, huh?

ted

EarlDoherty

It could very well be that Paul 'envisioned' the death in the spiritual world to have taken place since Adam. I have outlined that in The Jesus Puzzle, p.98:

As I've said, we cannot expect perfect consistency of thought or expression across half a century of writings about ideas that are mystical and bear no relation to reality, let alone rational common sense. (We can't even expect it within Paul himself, who often expresses things differently and even inconsistently from one place to another.) That "before times eternal" of 2 Timothy was an idea written decades after Paul. But the idea of "when we were sinners" could refer to any 'time' after Adam's Fall, or to no time in particular. It just took place in the spiritual world, and since everything in Jewish thought was based on the age from creation up to now when the new age was dawning (with the giving of the Law to Moses a key step midway through that process), including how they adapted Platonism, then Christ's sacrifice takes place in some corresponding spirit world during that framework.

However, this is arguing on the basis of how you have put the passage forward. In fact, that's all moot. You of all people should not be relying on the English translation. Here is the Greek literally rendered:

Romans 5:6 - "Christ, us being [ontwn] weak, at the time [kata kairon] died for us sinners."

Romans 5:8b - "(God demonstrates his love in that) even though we being [ontwn] sinners, Christ died for us."

So there is not even a necessary thought about any temporal placement of "us being sinners." It's not necessary that the fact of us being sinners is in the past, to be coincided with the time of Christ's dying for us. The thought really should be translated: Even though we are/were sinners, Christ died for us at his (or God's) proper time, in his own good time, at the time he thought best--which is about as vague as one can get, and certainly not pointing to recent history. In fact, it's vague precisely because Paul had no other way of expressing it, since he had no idea "when" the act had taken place, or even that there was a specific "when"--just that his Jewish mind conceived of it as being 'since Adam'.

Look at verse 7-8a in between those two verses. The idea in this passage has nothing to do with the 'time' of the sacrifice or the 'time' of being sinners:

It is the fact that Christ was willing to die for sinners (or God was willing to have him do it--one wonders if Christ had anything to say in the matter: "Dad! Do I really have to?"), so the thought is not anything to do with "when" at all. It is "even though we are/were sinners, Christ died for us." The Greek shows that, and I'm surprised you didn't see it. Yes, the "ontwn" in some contexts might entail an idea of "when", but that has to be demonstrated by the context, and this context does not.

(And it's yet another example of translators reading the Gospels into the epistles.)

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Sorry, I don't see it that way. The cops come and accuse me of a crime and grill me about it. I say, but suppose I was in the hospital at the time having an operation? The cops take the trouble to check with the hospital, and find out they have no record of me being there. They come back to me and accuse me of giving them a false alibi, a piece of stupidity in any case since I would have known they'd check it out and find it false. That's basic and pointless dishonesty on my part, angering the cops and doing my case for innocence no good at all.

That kind of nonsense, unfortunately, is often characteristic of apologetic approaches in any field. Oh, fossils in the lower layers of the sediments while later forms only in the upper? Well, what if that's because the fossils of dinosaurs were heavier than the other ones, and they sank deeper? ("Would you believe...?") Now, I know that some mentally challenged creationists may actually believe that, but I'm just as sure that a lot of them don't, it's just something to come up with to go through the motions of having some kind of 'explanation', maybe to calm the brain-dead audience who applaud these things, but you assured me on my query that you weren't among them. So it was, by your admission, just some deliberately artificial speculation you threw out that you didn't believe in yourself, but you expected me to waste my time on it.

Sorry, my decision still stands.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

You are incorrect. The Greek is clear. It says that we were still [ετι] sinners. It is that adverb, not the genitive absolute, that relates the death of Jesus temporally to the condition of being a sinner.

The translation I used was, BTW, my own, based directly and quite literally on the Greek text.

Your translations skip the adverb [ετι] altogether! It does not even make a cameo appearance, though in the Greek it appears in both verses.

Ben.

TedM

My strongest "conviction" (ie, what I think is most likely) is that Jesus was not as portrayed in the gospels, and had a relatively small ministry and following. Surprised? As for "not believing" that doesn't mean I wasn't ruling them out. I think they each have some validity worth considering. Maybe you thought from my response that I really was convinced they had no truth in them. If so, we've miscommunicated.

I don't think these things are black and white. It would not surprise me to learn that all of my speculations--which are not simply wild-ass ideas with no support whatsoever, but are based on what we actually do know--contributed to what we see from Paul.

Maybe you wouldn't have reacted so strongly had I more accurately said that I subscribe in part to what I wrote instead of saying that I don't subscribe to them.

ted

EarlDoherty

No, it's there. You're the one misapplying it. The eti is attached to Christ dying, not to the sinners. (Like the common mistake of applying kata sarka in 2 Cor. 5:16 to Christ himself instead of the ones "regarding" Christ.)

Example: "Even though you are/were a naughty boy, I still will give/gave you a candy." Thus,
Romans 5:6 - "Even though we are/were sinners, still Christ died for us." The eti in this verse comes after the phrase "us being weak" but right before the phrase "in time Christ died for sinners." An adverb like eti needs to precede the thought it applies to, as far as I'm concerned. (If you want to dispute that, OK.) At the very least, it would be ambiguous, and so could be taken my way.

Romans 5:8b does have eti attached to sinners, but the meaning of this adverb, as I said, does not have to involve 'time'. (See Bauer's def. #2.)
Thus: "Though yet sinners, Christ died for us," meaning "Even though we are/were sinners, Christ died for us." It's a statement about a state, the one the sinners are in, even though the existence of that state of course implies 'time', the time we were in that state.

Now, it can refer to a "continuing state or situation." But that is not a specific point in time. If this were how Paul was using it, then he would simply be saying, "during the time we were sinners, Christ died for us." This, then, is the option I explained previously. Paul envisions the sacrifice of Christ (in the spiritual world) taking place 'somewhen' within that Adam to the present framework.

Again, there is enough ambiguity in this passage (and remember my point about the intervening thought in 7-8a), to make this a very plausible case of there being no application of the sacrifice of Christ to a specific point of "when".

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

Hi Earl

I have several difficulties, one main problem is that IIUC according to you Jesus does not simply die in the heavenly world he dies in the sub-lunar world at the hands of the daemonic powers and by his death and resurrection overthrows their power (See Colossians 2:14:15 which IMO is Paulinr and if not is at least a very early understanding of Paul) Whereas a death in high heaven might plausibly require a sending of the redeemer to our world to make his sacrifice effective, a death and triumphant resurrection in the realm of the powers ruling our world ought in itself to change the basis of man's relation to God without requiring a second sending to begin having effect.

One other issue is that if Paul (as you suggest) is placing the death and resurrection in the pre-historic past there seems no reason why he cannot place it on Earth (where violent death certainly happens) rather than in the sub-lunar realm (where it probably doesn't). (I have to say that the prehistoric death of Christ seems particularly improbable. I don't think that Paul's understanding of the crucifixion and how it satisfies the Law's demands - the Law having been a stop-gap measure -makes sense unless the crucifixion occurs after the giving of the Law by Moses. )

Andrew Criddle

krosero

Do I understand your position? See below.


I gave you these three verses, and pointed you to the rest in Ben’s thread, which I said was about the TIME of Christ’s appearance in the sphere of flesh, not whether he came to earth through Mary or was seen in a heavenly part of the sphere of flesh through revelation. The WHERE was clearly not an issue in what I wrote to you, because I clearly said that I was disputing your assertion that the crucifixion was timeless for Paul. Repeating to me your position that he came in spirit (or “spiritual flesh”, as you’ve put it), tells me nothing about the time, and merely seems as if you thought that I was arguing for a full-fledged figure on earth, by Mary – but in fact I said that your assertion of timelessness was the issue. The time, not the place, is the issue.

As far as I’m concerned, at this moment, we’re not arguing whether Jesus was historical or celestial. We’re arguing about the time of the crucifixion.

Note: above, you seem to respond to the three verses I gave, but you actually missed verse 9: “… now that we have been justified by his blood …” What is this “now” that seems to describe, not our faith, but his bloodshed on the cross?

Each time I debate you, I am taken aback by something you say.

How is it that you can tell me that certain verses are ambiguous and that therefore I should not raise them (as part of an HJ interpretation), while you, presumably, reserve every right to bring up these same ambiguous verses (which you have called ambiguous) within your own interpretation? Yet that is what you have said: “they don’t need to be raised because they are ambiguous, or have been given a mythicist interpretation by me.”

They don’t need to be raised? Excuse me, but are you willing not to raise them yourself, since they are ambiguous?

And what of your other reason, that they don’t need to be raised because you’ve already given them a mythicist interpretation? That’s essentially saying: don’t raise objections, this is already clear to anyone with sense.

Imagine you bring that reason to any professional setting outside an internet debating board. Imagine you told them, don’t raise your objections, because I’ve already given them an mythicist interpretation. Obviously they’re not going to take it. Though I don’t know why you think it will be accepted by amateurs here, either.

In your long posts of recent weeks, you seem at times to want feedback and engagement. But for the most part you seem to have a don’t-slow-me-down-with-the-facts attitude. Ben tried to slow down your conversation in a previous thread by asking for clarification, and your response was simply to post another huge essay. You seem to want to drop onto the board your long compositions while at the same time pleading impatience with any objection that you’ve encountered before – merely because you think that you’ve met all the objections satisfactorily to anyone with sense.

Try taking that attitude to a professional setting.

I read your OP very carefully. Since it is not a finished product like your book, it is not very clear; it can’t be digested easily, unlike your book, which is crystal clear. So I could have sent off a quick missive saying that your OP was full of misconceptions and so forth; but I re-read it repeatedly over several days until I could repeat your argument, and spent a good amount of time crafting a post that tackles your points individually. By contrast, you responded to my long post within hours, pleading again the old mantra that you’ve been misunderstood (which will never work in a professional setting, and has become as tedious as anything on these boards), pointing me to old essays, and essentially assuming what my arguments were rather than trying to read them carefully to see where they actually touched on your arguments. Essentially you told me, don’t raise ambiguous verses in Paul in the way that you want; but let me keep raising them the way that I want.

If you want to post long essays here, that’s fine, but you have to expect that any single one of your statements will be challenged right on the boards. Isn’t that the point of bringing essays in their entirety to the boards? If you want, when your statements are challenged, you can point to a link to a previous post or online essay; but to do so and at the same time complain that you shouldn’t have to – when it is you who posted long essays here and explicitly asked for feedback – well what kind of person has this attitude, do you think? If you post something, expect it to be challenged in detail; if you want to point to another post or essay as a response to a certain point, fine; but don’t do it with impatience and self-pity.

And if what you really want is to write at length without being slowed by repeated or old objections, then post to a blog, or write online essays to your heart’s content; and post links to them here if you want to discuss them at any length.

I wonder, though, if all these words of mine will simply be a waste of time.

Earl, everyone knows that you regard the agents of the crucifixion as demon spirits, acting directly upon Christ somewhere other than the earth. That is what I was asking you about. I called it “your contention”. What other contention could that possibly be, other than your MJ reading? My point was not that you had to accept earthly rulers. My point was that if the crucifixion is going to be placed out of time, or at least outside of Paul’s own age, then what happens to your former contention that Christ was crucified in the sphere of the flesh by the rulers of Paul’s own world (ie, the rulers of the world below the firmament) in Paul’s own age? How does a crucifixion by the rulers of the age (implying that it took place in the air under the firmament) relate to your new contention that the crucifixion was timeless or in the deep past?

I actually remember that article well, because I blogged about it once. I remember how you treated the sequence in 1 Cor 15. And on this board, in some long-ago thread, I debated the point. Shall I do as you did, and simply point you to that thread? Or, since I can’t remember the exact thread, shall I tell you, as you tell me, that it’s hard for me to find, but that the answer is there, and that you therefore don’t need to raise your arguments anymore?

Somewhere you have missed something I wrote, because I have no problem with the sacrifice being the purchase but God actually doing the purchasing. My contention is that God did the purchasing at the sacrifice, not at the time of faith.

But why should that have been so unclear?

All right, so you think that “purchase” gets across the idea. Somewhere in there, Paul is expressing an idea that gets across the idea behind the English word “purchase.” So when Paul refers to the sending of the Son in order to purchase something, why is it that this would not seem to his reader like a reference to the celestial crucifixion? You say above that you have no problem with the actual sacrifice of Christ doing the purchasing. So how is it that a reader, hearing of the Son being sent for a purpose, and thinking of the sacrifice of Christ as doing the purchasing, will not think first of the cross to which the Son was sent? Why is it hard to imagine that they will hear verse 6 as moving on to speak of faith, of human acceptance of Christ, especially when it is only in verse 6 that Paul introduces the elements of human faith (hearts, crying out, the "spirit" of the Son)?

To the contrary, I read what you posted. My summary description of Romans 3:21-25 was merely to show how the passage is consistent with my reading of Galatians 4:4-6; it was not meant directly to “discredit” your analysis. Sometimes, you have to realize, I’m just describing my own readings; not everything is say need be taken as a direct salvo upon your reading.

To the contrary, you don’t agree. You can’t. I wrote that only one of the two sendings is described in terms of human faith. That is not your position at all. Your position is that both sendings have to do with human faith, though they are distinct steps in the same process; that is what you clarified in your post to Ben; it was already clear to me. It has nothing to do with my point: that only one of the sendings is described in terms of human faith. I wrote that point out, and you even quoted it when you made your response.

To give credit where it’s due, this is actually a clear summary of your argument. I have a response to your argument, which was ready last night. I left it for today, in order to try something new: to split up my long posts into pieces (more manageable to write, easier to read). Of course, you couldn’t know, so no blame to you; I’ll have it up momentarily.

My only suggestion: take more time with it than you did the last one. If you tell me you have no time, then you know what my question will be: why are you posting to these boards, taking the time to write long essays, when you’re not willing to commit time to long responses?

Kevin Rosero

EarlDoherty

But how would Paul have expressed that, if Jesus' death and resurrection were entirely mythical? How could he pinpoint the 'time' of the changing the basis of man's relation to God? If no one knew it before his own day, what would it mean, what practical understanding would be gained by the idea that the relationship changed at some indeterminable time and act within the mythical realm? He inevitably must locate it only at the time that the whole thing became known and its effect could be inaugurated. Besides, that puts the focus on him, which is the way Paul always likes it.

First of all, I am not suggesting that the death is placed in the pre-historic past. That's the 'primordial past' of the original mystery-cult myths, and that's still on earth, only in a 'sacred time' (as per Eliade). The pro chronwn aiwniwn of 2 Timothy is outside all that, before time and history in itself. It's all pretty vague, except that Christ's act (and elsewhere God's promises), take place in a venue that is not envisioned as on earth in history. That's the bottom line.

You want Paul to make sense. I would too. But I have said that he may envision the act as taking place (outside earth) during that post-Law framework. But even this isn't necessary. Christ can do his thing any time and place, or no time and place. God may have had him do so even before the creation of the world, since he knew what was going to happen and laid the groundwork for what he knew he was going to have to do, and went through the motions of establishing the Law of Moses, and waiting for this to prove a failure (in Paul's eyes) requiring the application of a new Law. So out of the trunk, where he's been keeping it secret during all the ages, he hauls Christ's sacrificial act and says "Now's the time to apply this!" (Remember, it's Paul saying all this based on his reading of scripture, not God or some other corroborative source.)

Of course, all of it is gibberish. None of it makes any sense to our modern scientific enlightened minds. But does that mean Paul couldn't have thought in that kind of non-literal mystical way--especially when so much of what he says points in exactly that direction?

Earl Doherty