teamonger

Certainly people used parables before Jesus... but Jesus' content seems rather unique. Someone had a remarkable way with parables, either Jesus or whoever put them into his mouth.
t

spamandham

Because James is the head of the Church for cripes sake!

He isn't just another believer, nor is he a peer of Paul's, he's the equivalent of the Pope.

You don't suppose it could be related to their position in the church do 'ya?

We both agree there's something unique going on. We both agree that the word 'brother' was used figuratively in the vast majority of cases. Yet you stubbornly insist nonetheless that in this case it must be literal. Why?

Unless there was no historical Jesus, in which case "brother of the Lord" would still be a fitting title for the head of the church.


It's been 2000 years since Christianity began, and yet most Christians claim everything is happening exactly as planned by god according to his schedule. Why are those claims not evidence that it was all recent history?


A recent Jesus is not very compatible with the idea that Paul got his gospel through revelation, as he claims multiple times. I know you'll argue that Paul had to claim that, but he didn't. He could have simply claimed he recieved his authority through revelation.

To claim he received the gospel itself through revelation, if it were believed that Jesus lived recently and handed it directly to the Jerusalem gang, would be a horribly weak claim.

All of this is compatible with Paul's belief that Christ was coming to gather the elect. Paul believed the kingdom of god was at hand. Have you read up on what he meant by that phrase?

These two epistles are considered later pseudepigraphs by the scholarly concensus, and have no bearing on Paul's beliefs.

But Galatians is not part of any arguments he had with the pillars, it's supposedly a letter to Paul's own converts.

If he was previously persecuting the church, he must have known why he was doing it! He couldn't possibly have been unfamiliar with their basic beliefs as a persecutor. Even the highly superstitious unskeptical minds of 2000 years ago would have figured that out.

Something is amiss.

On the one hand, this crucifixion has theological overtones - it's in fact central to Paul's gospel. On the other hand, Paul is ambiguous as to what 'crucify' and 'cross' even mean? Why - because he's embarrased about the central tenet of his gospel!? And then, a few years later, Mark writes a gospel with all the gory details of a Roman crucifixion, showing no sign of embarrasment about it at all.

This scenario actually seems plausible to you? :huh:

I think we live on different planets.

You don't need to judge them, you just need to recognize they are in dispute and assign relevance to them accordingly.

Sure, if he's referring to the destruction of the temple devoted to that celestial being, or some other historical disaster with theological overtones. You are reading Paul with Mark colored glasses.

Uh, no. You are the one inserting into Mark's words what simply isn't there.
Under the standard scholarly approach that Paul wrote first, it is reasonable to project Paul into Mark (but not the other way around). So, Mark's 'kingdom of god' language probably derived from a common earlier source as Paul's. What did Paul mean by 'kingdom of god'?

Paul never discusses the end of the world, just as Mark doesn't. You're conflating Paul/Mark/Revelation/Tim LeHaye.

Well when you do finish, you'll have the ability to argue against it from an informed position. May I recommend not arguing against it until you are in fact informed?

spamandham

No. I've merely assumed thay are the same author. Can you provide a coherent argument against that assumption? (FYI, 'the writings attributed to Paul are not credible' will not be considered coherent).

Are you actually trying to argue that since the letters attributed to Paul are not credible, therefor these two portions are interpolations?

aa5874

So, why did not the apostles before "Paul" get the very same revelations from Jesus? Why did not Jesus reveal the very same ideas to the apostles?

After all, the apostles were with Jesus on earth, from a little after his baptism by John to his ascension. Jesus claimed Peter would be "the rock on which his church would be built". Peter and the rest of the apostles received the Holy Ghost as Jesus had told them.

Peter now became the "rock". Peter was like Jesus, he was carrying out miracles, thousands of people were converted, Peter raised the dead and successfully asked God to kill people who lied about the cost of their property.

Peter was the rock.

Until Saul/Paul got "revelations".

Jesus did not reveal Saul/Paul to the "rock".

Saul/Paul went to the "rock" and told him of the revelations from Jesus.

"Paul" is the new "rock" on the block. Peter has been "fired" by "revelations".

If Acts of the Apostles is read carefully, it will be observed that Peter "the rock" dominates, he is filled with the power of God, until the conversion of Saul/Paul in chapter 9.

After that the bottom begins to fall out for Peter, he and the "revelation" man, Saul/Paul, cannot see eye to eye. And now Peter starts to get visions that his own ministry is flawed.

By the 15th chapter of Acts of the Apostles, Peter and the "revelation man", Saul/Paul have a showdown and "the rock" just disappears. Not a single word is heard from Peter, the rock, again. The revelation man Saul/Paul has usurped the rock. Peter is no more.

From the 16th chapter of Acts of the Apostles to the end, ch 28, Saul/Paul alone rules. Peter vanishes into thin air. The revelation man is the "rock".

But the conversion of Saul/Paul is fiction as written in Acts.

teamonger

Oh, lighten up. Of course I looked at the Wiki page about the TF (long before you posted the link, in fact), and knew that long ago the TF was usually considered pure forgery. My understanding is that's no longer the case, that most scholars now consider it "corrected" by a zealous scribe or three. The finding of the variant Arabic version lends creedence to that view.

I haven't noticed scholars making such simplistic assumptions, many seem to like a "proto-Mark" for example. There are many plausible ideas to explain the writing process, including starting with an actual Mark (as described by Papias). Yes, each community developed separate Jesus' traditions, yet the three synoptics describe a relatively consistent character.

So your assumption is a Mark gospel built of snippets, gathered by a redactor. Do you think the Matthew author used the final product, or some earlier stage? Or did Matthew gather his own snippets? The Q material would appear to be a rather large snippet, since it was used by Luke as well.

An interesting theory, but my main question was, why make Jesus a Galilean. Seems not to fit with Paul and Mark both describing him as a "son of David", and was apparently so embarrassing that separate traditions developed to gloss over the problem (birth narratives of Matthew and Luke).

As for the town, my view is that Mark, as a second-hand source, heard about the actual town Nazareth. When the Matthew author made reference to the non-existent prophecy ("he shall be called a Nazarene"), he probably got confused with "Nazirite" in Judges 13. Such a misunderstanding would be rather typical of this author, whose other OT allusions have major problems. Would you agree with that much?

Umm, all of those are good questions

Well, I was referring to Jesus not being accepted by his fellow Galileans and his own family. One possible reason: the people who knew him and grew up with him would be less likely to be amazed by his charisma.

And then re-establish it with Matthew and Luke confirming descent from David? Another possibility is, Jesus as a Galilean knew he wasn't of Davidic descent, so came up with a rationale to still claim the messiah title.

Or, it might be natural for someone not to worry about tomorrow, if he believed the world was about to end.

Nor do you know how much time passed. There were indeed multiple traditions about who the disciples were, but there's no reason to assume that all such traditions were false. Each set of traditions need evaluation by criteria (multiple attestation being one).

To make either a historicist or mythicist case requires assumptions. The question is, which explanation is more economical while fitting all the evidence we have. The most economical is not, of course, necessarily the true explanation.

I asked questions to hear your answers, thanks for providing them. Not sure what problems you're referring to. James in Josephus? I just wanted to focus more on the big picture rather than get bogged down in a debate about a small reference.

I keep his elbow in a box on my bookshelf.

For the simple reason that Paul was not the first apostle.
t

spin

Stonewalling and then saying someone else should lighten up?

I didn't claim it was still the case.

Some time back I asked you this:

[A]s AJ 18.65 starts "About this time another outrage threw the Jews into an uproar", what is the previous outrage that threw the Jews into an uproar?

I didn't get an answer. Please try to respond!

So do you think it's just you?

The information we have about Papias and what Papias said was through the hands of another writer. It's hard to know what Papias actually claimed. You've seen how Origen has been abused because people didn't take notice of what he was saying and what his sources may have said.

The Matthean author quite clearly used an advanced form of Mark.

Q is another tradition collection.

Thanks for clarifying your somewhat unclear earlier question. Where is the "Village of Comfort" (Capernaum)? This was the home of Jesus in Mk 2:1.

The logical connection I can't see. But check the archives on Nazara.


There was no confusion with "Nazirite". The allusion was to Jdg 13:5, which in the LXX contains nazeiraios. "[H]e shall be a nazeiraios (to god from birth)". (And the Greek sometimes added a "called" in such situations.) We have an allusion to the probable source for "nazarene", ie NZYR, a linguistic source acknowledged later by Eusebius.


Which should help you not to jump to "logical" conclusions.

Please read what I said and respond to it.

Isn't that what the synoptics indicate??

Ockham.

So, you can see that your conjectures aren't sufficient.

We use what we can confirm.

Here are some of the assumptions you made in the paragraph I was referring to:

Appears that Mark is your odd duck: a fabricator of comparitively recent history, cleverly fitting an odd duck Jesus into the activities of known historical people, with many unclear motives as to the details. But for the historicist, Mark isn't odd at all. Much of his detail came from real history, based on second hand stories about a real crucified preacher, with a few decades of embellishment and glorification thrown in.

Even to use the inappropriate label "historicist" is full of assumptions.

I re-asked some immediately after the question you are responding to:

Where is your tangible historical evidence for this pseudo-messiah?

Why do you look before Paul when Paul makes it clear that he didn't get his stuff from anyone before him?

When the sorts of questions you ask could easily be applied to Ebion, why do you ignore his implications?

I can see that you're not bogged down in facts.

Don't believe you. You could make a fortune with christians if you did. And just imagine the opportunity for sports doctors to theorize on the possibilities of Jesus having a tennis elbow. (But he wouldn't have been the first known tennis player: Joseph served in the courts of pharaoh. :constern02

That assertion does not deal with the problem posed to you. Paul tells us where he got his gospel from. Do you believe he is mistaken?

--o0o--

I would love to see an honest piece of evidence for Jesus rather than just more of the same web of conjectures. The historical Jesus hypothesis as far as I've seen is a sham, which assumes its central conclusion. Press a supporter and they have no evidence at all.

teamonger, you've so far offered nothing more than modern rationalizations which amount to you saying "I believe that Jesus was a real human being" and nothing more.


spin

aa5874

We have no evidence for Jesus external of apologetics, only forgeries in Josephus.

The mythicist position requires that there is no evidence. There is no evidence so Jesus is a myth.


The historicist requires evidence, there is none. The historicist is now forced to assume that there may be evidence that has not been found after 2000 years.

teamonger

So a human James is a peer of "the Lord"? Interesting. There were other brothers of the Lord in 1 Cor 9:5... seems if you make Jesus a peer with them, you might have a Jesus who was once human.

The idea that Paul is elevating them somehow doesn't square with how elsewhere he is adamant about being their equal.

Because the usage "brothers of the Lord" or "the Lord's brother" is a special case, distinct from generic references to "brethren" or "my brother".

Because we know Christianity isn't something new. Paul was putting forth new concepts. It wouldn't make sense for him to think those concepts were actually established centuries before, and were simply dormant until his own arrival. In the "fullness of time" Jesus came and resurrected, and then in another fullness of time, Paul was making it come true? I don't think Paul had that high a view of himself.

Maybe it was indeed perceived as a weak claim by the "Judaisers" who kept cropping up to spoil his fun even after he claims an agreement was made.

How about this: "But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power (1 Cor 15:23-24).

The imminent end times portrayed in 1 Peter and 1 John show them to be fairly early, certainly earlier than 2 Peter for example. They are part of the overall picture of early Christianity. There's little difference between Paul saying "time has grown very short" and 1 Peter saying "the end of all things is at hand", or 1 John saying "we know that it is the last hour".

Yes, it's a letter where Paul claims to have won the argument. But the very fact that the Galatians are following "another gospel" (brought by apostles who were still pushing the Law) tends to show otherwise.

Exactly, there was some form of "Jesus knowledge" in circulation before Paul. But Paul's "first-hand" acquaintance with such knowledge was apparently his conversion experience. So he became a hybrid... some of his knowledge came from the common background, and some came from his revelation.

By the time Mark wrote, the embarrassment of the crucifixion was partially digested by Paul's spinning of it. Paul does show he was embarrased by it... potential converts saw it as a "stumbling block" and "foolishness". But if it were common knowledge that Jesus was indeed crucified, he is stuck with that. He must overcome it, by somehow making crucifixtion a coherent part of the theology.

How can "crucified the Lord of glory" refer to the temple destruction which probably hadn't even happened yet? I think you're grasping at straws here.

If Jesus came first, and Mark recorded his words somewhat accurately, then we can project Jesus (somewhat garbled) into Paul.

I'm seeing a consistent theme from John the Baptist/Jesus/Paul/1 Pet/1 John/Rev... the mistaken idea that God was about to step into history and set everything right. And then, 2 Peter had to be added, to rationalize that imminence away.
t

teamonger

Must say, your account is more entertaining than Acts

But remember, the writer of Acts was supposedly Paul's buddy. We don't get to hear Peter's version of events, nor much about what became of "the pillars". But we know there were early Jewish Christians who said the Law still rules, and who had a version of Matthew with no birth narrative.
t

aa5874

All the entertainment is from Acts.

Peter received the Holy Ghost, he just could not have preached the Law.

This Peter is Acts 2.21 Acts 2.38 Acts 2.41 So Peter was preaching that people must believe in Jesus and be baptised and they will be saved. Peter was full of the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost was sent by Jesus. The Holy Ghost does not deal with the Law.

Acts 10.45 It was only after the "revelation man Paul" came on the scene that we hear about people preaching that you must be circumcised to be saved.

Peter did not preach circumcision..

These are some of the last words of Peter before he vanished in Acts 15.7 Five verses later Peter disappears from Acts.

The revelation man with the fantastic conversion takes over.