Vivisector

Apologies for any confusion - didn't mean to imply that the disciples were particularly noteworthy from the standpoint of a contemporary historian or commentator, only that it seems to me, at least, that (a subset of?) the disciples would have to be something other than ordinary to develop the beliefs that they apparently did.

Cheers,

V.

gurugeorge

Yes, but take into account all the evidence. Why is there no evidence of personal contact, in "Paul", between the people he's talking about as "the Pillars", the "apostles", and the figurehead of the cult?

If there's any "argument from silence" it's this: if there were a human Jesus, one would expect in all the authentic letters of "Paul", some tiny giveaway that one of the people he's talking about, had personal contact with the human Jesus. (Hence my oft used paradigmatic example: "Cephas told me Jesus had told him X". Something like that isn't too much to ask, surely? If these people were supposed to have been people who received teachings from an actual human being?)

But there are no little hints of that kind.

Yet the later tradition, the gospel tradition, has it that the "apostles" were personal disciples of Jesus. That later tradition is what makes it look fairly plausible that there was a human being - after all, personal discipleship would be hard to explain as a myth-all-the-way-down thing, right? That looks like something you'd get from a human being, right?

This disparity is itself part of the evidence. So we have:-

1) In the earliest known evidence, no evidence of (belief about) personal discipleship that would make a human Jesus more plausible from internal evidence.

2) In the later evidence, the gospels, we have evidence of (belief about) personal discipleship.

Why would you get that personal discipleship connection in the later evidence and not in the earlier?

Clearly, if there was good reason why the concept of personal discipleship of the earliest apostles made sense to some of the later writers.

Review it again: the earliest writings are from a self-avowed visionary, this "Paul", whoever he was.

Now look at the argument in the Pseudo-Clementines, from the mouth of "Peter": the gist of it is that visionary revelation is all well and good, but personal contact and reception of teachings is better.

Combine that, in thought, with the findings of Walter Bauer in his Orthodoxy and Heresy: in orthodoxy's own words, they found "heresy" already established wherever they went.

That is to say, the earliest movement is more like a proto-Gnostic thing, more in line with the writing in "Paul", that looks free of a recently-dead human who some of the people he's talking about personally knew. This "Paul" figure, whoever he was, was, as the later Gnostics averred, the real founder of what was more like a philosophical-theosophic-theurgic movement - think about how Plotinus argued against them, about how of some of the earliest apologists are talking about a philosophical movement. And then later, post-Diaspora, when the true origins of the movement are somewhat lost in the confusion, a branch of the movement takes it upon itself to "lead" the movement, to bring it into some coherence, and to that end, they invent the idea that their bishops are descended from people who knew the cult figure personally and received teachings from him. (The earliest traceable version of this idea, in GMark, may just have been an innocent variation on the myth, with "Mark" having an axe to grind showing the stupidity of the earliest "apostles", standing in for the Jews in general, completely dropping the ball, hence getting thwacked by the Romans.)

To me it seems this is the real "smoking gun": we have a means and motive for a later seeming-historicization of what was originallly pure myth. And we have a story that's supported by the evidence (of the development of the tradition, from extant writings) all the way along, with nothing anomalous.

***

There's something ambiguous about the term "founder". Think about it: is Jesus Christ really portrayed, in the earliest, "Paul" writings, as the founder of a religion? Really?

But "Paul" is - there he is, sweating away, travelling about, exhorting his flock, very evidently founding a religion.

So yes, a human founder, precisely as you'd reasonably expect: but the cult deity is not the founder - it only looks that way when viewed through the later lens of "apostolic succession".

Vivisector

Hi George,

Do you think Paul's relationship with Cephas, as reported by Paul, might have made it less likely that Paul would have appealed to the authority of Cephas or any of the Pillars?

Cheers,

V.

hjalti

Doug, I bet that Marshall Applewhite isn't mentioned in those history books.

And why the heck should we expect him to be mentioned just because some few followers make absurd claims about him? Most people don't care about what some wacky cultists do. Do you for example know who Michael Travassier is?

aa5874

Have you really considered what you have just said?

Please say how you came to find out about MARSHALL APPLEWHITE? Did you just dream of him.

And after the suicide death of Marshall Applwhite and other members what happened to the CULT?

The Jesus story does NOT match the Marshall Applewhite story. The Jesus story is historically IMPROBABLE if Jesus was a mere man.

The Jesus story matches the MYTH fable of Marcion's Phantom Son of God who was BELIEVED to have come to Capernaum from heaven, WITHOUT BIRTH, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius the very same time as Jesus the Son of the Ghost and the Virgin.

gurugeorge

What "authority"? Where's the evidence of the "authority" of Cephas and the Pillars (in the sense of people who personally received teachings from the cult figure in human form) in the "Paul" writings at all?

To say "oh, he just wanted to set up shop on his own, so he was downplaying their authority" or something like that, is sort of circular.

On the face of it, they seem to be some people who he acknowledges have some sort of priority, but it's not clear what that priority consists in - it's certainly not at all clear that the priority consists in their having known Jesus personally and gotten teachings from him. To say that's clear, would be to read in the later writings into the earlier.

What's in the "Paul" writings is consistent with the Jerusalem people being prior proponents of an idea somewhat like the idea "Paul" believes in.

That would pitch his attitude just right - sure, they have priority, but not "authority" (in the discipleship sense). It looks like they just had a similar idea before he did, so he's polite, and tries at first to respectfully join his cause with theirs, but when it doesn't work out, he dumps them and strikes out on his own.

The sense I get from it is that they did indeed have this variant Messiah idea before him (i.e. a Messiah that's been and done his work, not one to wait for, not one to come, and a Messiah that's more a spiritual victor than a military one); but if they had been people who'd been personal disciples of the deity he was getting visions of, while that deity had been on earth in human form, you might expect him to say something like "yah, I know they got the teaching from Jesus personally, and they have that kind of authority, but I think they've handled it wrong, plus I think my authority from Christ after his resurrection, in spiritual form, is good enough". You'd expect him to mention the source of their "authority" (i.e. personal contact, reception of teachings, eyeballing) in the course of his explaining his differences; ie. you'd expect him to justify his stepping out of their authority, which would entail him mentioning their authority.

But instead, you get his "revelation" being on a similar footing to theirs ("and lastly ...."). There's no hint that their revelation had been in the form of teachings given directly, it looks like their revelation was visionary, just like his.

Vivisector

It certainly does make one think, which is why I appreciate your earlier comment.

My earlier thinking was - and I'm having a horrible bad-clarity day - whatever it was that the Pillars (or whatever is best to call them) were teaching, Paul seemed opposed to at least some points of it. If this was the case, then it would make sense to me that Paul would go to great pains not to say or write anything that would give them any more credibility than they already had, and that he would focus instead on his teachings and his own credentials. I would have assumed that, regardless of the truth of it, Paul would avoid saying or writing, "I know Cephas did the Galilee circuit with Jesus, but ..." because this would remind the reader of Cephas's personal association with the earthly Jesus and Paul's lack of one. But it's not a point I'd want to argue too strongly.

Another thought your original post has given me is going to take me some time to even put in the form of a coherent question, but it's basically along the lines of, what did (or could have) Paul's opponents have taught as coming directly from the lips of Jesus? Surely the types of things Paul opposes (e.g., circumcision and dietary laws) weren't presented by his opponents as unique teachings of Jesus. But I'll chew on this a little more.

Cheers,

V.

gurugeorge

Hmm. Suppose it was already known to contemporary Christians that the Pillars had been personal disciples (knew Jesus as a human being before his crucifixion and got teachings from him), and that Paul was merely a visionary ("knew" Jesus only through talking to him in visionary experiences), then it seems to me that Paul could scarcely avoid having to justify his assumed authority somehow, as against the personal discipleship of the Pillars/Apostles. The fact would be already known, and Paul would have to justify himself in the light of that known fact, so I think he would have to acknowledge the known fact: "Yeah, I know they knew the guy man to man, but my revelation, even though it's just visionary, is better in x, y ways".

But suppose the above were not a known fact, that there was no personal discipleship to the cult entity claimed by anybody in Paul's time, and everybody's authority was on the same footing (i.e. purely from squinting at Scripture and having visionary revelations)? Then you'd get what you get: a cult tiff, with nobody having any particular authority over anyone else, it all being from Scripture-bothering and revelation.

I think that "Peter"'s argument in the (admittely somewhat later) Pseudo-Clementines is tremendously important for understanding this: "Peter" clearly says that personal teaching, if available, would trump mere visionary revelation. Were people who had been personally taught available, a mere visionary would have a hard time competing with that, and if he tried, he would have to acknowledge (what everyone knew - he could hardly brush it under the carpet) that the Pillars/Apostles had been personal students of his Christ while he was alive, and would have to get around it somehow to justify his own stance. Otherwise there would be an elephant in the room, so to speak.

In the standard biblical scholarship, this is gotten around by assuming all sorts of things about Paul's psychology (grumpy, sneaky, head in the clouds mystic, etc., etc.). I don't think one can do that, one has to take what's there and make a story that fits what's there without assuming anything about anyone's particular psychology (especially if those assumptions are based on a prior assumption of gospel-Jesus-with-personal-disciples!).

Vivisector

I'm working to try to see this, but at this point, it might be simply a matter of how you'd overcome this challenge vs. how I would overcome it. I'm not sure I'd want to risk strengthening my opponents' authority by referring to personal discipleship.

Do you conclude that the "super-apostles" of 2 Cor were "super" simply because they were apostles before Paul?


I think one could read much of Paul's writings exactly this way; i.e., that he emphasized that his own authority was no less than that of the other apostles he is opposing. I see it as possible that he wasn't trying to brush their authority under the carpet (I'm not sure how he could have done that, especially if this is what he is reacting against) but that, as I've suggested, he simply took what you might consider the approach of lesser likelihood of success. What we don't have, which I will freely admit, is a positive indication in Paul's writings of the source of the opponents' authority (except for the entire issue of James, which I hope to continue to let lie). We also don't have anything that, as far as I can make out right now, represents those opponents' thoughts on Paul except perhaps for (as you mentioned) the Pseudo-Clementines and James. All we have is Paul's side of the argument. I will say, though, that it has long seemed to me that the synoptics (in particular) can possibly be viewed as reinforcing Paul's arguments by portraying those who supposedly knew the earthly Jesus as dolts who didn't really "get it," and I continue to search for a sensible context for this.

I'd prefer to leave that to others except to say that, as I tried to earlier in this thread, I question whether we should term Paul's (or that of anyone else who plays such an instrumental role in essentially attaching a religion to someone) as ordinary.

Cheers,

V.

Doug Shaver

OK. Now all we need is some contemporary evidence of the disciples' existence and what they believed. There is no first-century documentation for either.

Paul mentions a couple of names that coincide with characters who appear in the gospels and Acts, but he does not attest to their having been anybody's disciples. He also says nothing about their beliefs except to hint that they were similar to his, and so if his Christ was ahistorical, so was theirs.