spamandham

A straightforward read is merely that it was the correct time for his son to be born. It's merely an assumption that when Paul refers to 'the right time for' in various places, that he is referring to the same time. I see nothing in the text to suggest that.

Paul explicitly states that faith is what saves, and that faith is what delivered them from the law. From Paul's perspective, the crucifixion would of course be necessary in order for faith to be useful. So the crucifixion is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. For Jesus to be crucified, he would first have to be born, so his birth is a necessary condition for salvation as well, but not a sufficient one.

- Jesus 'appeared' first to James then to .... and finally to Paul, combined with Paul's explanation of his own appearance experience as being a vision. Paul makes no distinction between how Jesus appeared to himself, and how Jesus appeared to James.

- Paul's emphasis on faith. No faith is necessary for eyewitnesses, implying that neither Paul nor anyone else he knew was such an eyewitness.

- What little Paul says about Jesus that indicates a human person, reads like a creed. Creeds tend to be developed to fend off heresies. This suggests a reasonably long time period from the start of Christianity until when Paul writes. The existence of multiple churches with divergent views, which is who Paul's letters mostly address, reinforces the idea that Christianity was not a new religion when Paul joined it.

- Paul makes statements that indicate his ideas regarding Jesus were received by direct revelation alone, which again implies at best, that Jesus was a character from the distant past to Paul. Romans 16:25 "Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past" Gal 1:12 "I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."

- Paul seems to know nothing about Jesus other than the creedal aspects. This implies no-one he knew had any such knowledge either. By itself, this would be a weak point, but combined with the above it gains strength.

- Paul makes statements such as this in 1 Thes 4:14 "We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.". If Paul thought Jesus was a contemporary, it wouldn't make sense to say "we believe that Jesus died and rose", but instead we would expect a more authoritative "Jesus died and rose".

Combined these points, the stronger position, IMHO, is that Paul did not view Jesus as a contemporary. Per the discussion we've had already, I don't see anything in Paul's writings that suggests Jesus was a contemporary. That conclusion seems to be based on interjecting assumptions into Paul that he never actually says or implies.

andrewcriddle

I think we may have been slightly at cross purposes by confusing more than one issue.

Theoretically Paul may have held any of the following positions:

a/ Christ died long ago and the preaching of the Christian faith started long ago.

b/ Christ died long ago but the preaching of the Christian faith was delayed for some obscure reason and only started recently.

c/ Christ died recently and the preaching of the Christian faith started recently.

Most but not all of my arguments in this thread are against option b/ and do not work against option a/.

I thought that you were proposing option b/ however your last reply suggests IIUC that you are sympathetic to option a/

The fact that in 1 Corinthians 15:5 Paul has the revelation of Christ's resurrection begin with his appearance to Cephas (Paul's contemporary) would argue against option a/ as does the general absence of evidence for Christianity before the 1st century CE.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

It seems to me, that Paul views Jesus as a figure from the distant past. It also seems to me, that pre-Pauline proto-Christianity probably existed for much longer than is typically assumed. Paul would likely have known that the religion he was joining was not new, so option (a), wherein it is Paul's belief that Christ is a figure from the distant past, and Paul views pre-Pauline Christianity as old, seems to best fit what Paul writes.

I don't view the visions as the starting point for Christianity.

People who have such visions are generally deeply immersed in a belief system that the visions reinforce. The fact that people were having visions reinforces the idea that Christianity was well established, rather than countering it.

I would not expect any hard evidence regarding an obscure sect from 2000+ years ago to survive, even though it occasionally does.