spin

You won't say much that is useful with baby language.

When you refuse to deal with a key passage written by Paul which is transparent in its implications, you are wasting everyone's time.

Why can't you even read the source material? Here it is:

11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

and further

15 .. God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased 16 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles

The gospel is Paul's religious message to his converts.

I've already asked you to provide a source reference in Paul to your claim that he persecuted "christians". Please do so.

Mithraists believe that Mithras came and slew the bull for the benefit of humanity. Do you think that Mithras therefore must have been real? That people sacrifice themselves doesn't make what they believe real. Fanaticism doesn't make what is believed in real.

Your avoidance of the argument is noteworthy.

Paul had a revelation which provided him with his gospel message. That revelation was what he thought was a message from god telling him about Jesus and his salvific act. Paul believed the revelation as reflective of events from the real world.

Paul states that is gospel came not from other people but from god. Paul claims his gospel and his Jesus were not delivered to him by other people.

When you say "it’s obvious you don’t know and you’re just throwing a half thought out theory hoping no one would notice", what exactly do you think you are referring to?

You have been repeating the same thing for several threads without getting anywhere. When you keep coming back to the same place in your loop, one must repeat the responses to you to some degree.

These hypotheses are possible descriptions of what happened. There is no need to believe them. You continue to insist that one must believe in plausible hypotheses rather than think that one of them may be functional. What is your hypothesis about the Arthurian legends? Are they based on a distinct "historical core"? Are they a literary product of the mediaeval period? Or are they as some think based on ancient tropes? Do you need to believe either way to know and think that one theory is better than another?

Your convenience is is confused about the technical meaning of myth. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thoughts.

Paul existed. He had an impact on what happened in the past. The impact he had related to his belief in the reality of Jesus.

Your conclusion though is not based on any facts.

No. You validate your sources before you use them otherwise you talk rubbish based on sources of unknown value.

Source please for Paul persecuting christians.

Paul believed that Jesus came to be crucified in order to provide sinners with redemption.

The passage says nothing about christians.

Paul was, according to his claims, a staunch conservative Jew (Gal 1:14). His zealousness would have led him to attack anything that wasn't traditional Judaism. Where do you learn that those people he persecuted were christians?

I'm sorry this doesn't communicate anything to me.

The notion of epistemology regards how you can know something. I've already indicated that I can know that they evolved. There isn't enough indication of what the earliest written form of the gospel was or the full process of evolution.

Answer me these things from the gospels:

1. Were there really twelve disciples?
2. Was Jesus born of the line of David?
3. Was Jesus tempted by the devil?
4. Did he walk on water?
5. Did he talk with Elijah and Moses?
6. Did he cure deafness and blindness?
7. Did he raise someone from the dead?
8. Did he return from the dead after being crucified?

For those which you responded to negatively, how did they get into the gospel tradition?

Paul's revelation gave him the idea that Jesus was real. We have no need for an evolution of the concept after the revelation. He was already seen to be real.

You have the great ability of showing holes in your thinking process and projecting them onto your interlocutors. You seem not to have read the paragraph you responded to.

You are wasting your thoughts on trying to understand the nature of Paul's revelation, especially as it is the results of the revelation that are important not its nature. What do you think the nature of his revelation can tell you that is relevant about the fact that after it he had knowledge about Jesus and his role in salvation though before it he didn't?

Where is your knowledge abut the people he was persecuting coming from in Paul? The source of this claim? It seems that you don't have any.

Language is the means you communicate with. If your use of language doesn't help you understand the communication, then the communication is failing because of your use of language.

That Jesus had come and performed his salvific act. And those who believe in Jesus will gain from Jesus' sacrifice.

If "[n]o one told him about his gospel", then you should realize that no real world Jesus was necessary for him to have his religion. You should at this point concede the premise of the hypothesis.

If he was not told about Jesus by any human being then there is no need for a historical core to the christian religion.

You're right in that it doesn't necessarily mean that. But you cannot indicate that he did actually hear of him, especially when he says 1) that it was god who revealed Jesus to him and 2) that he didn't receive his gospel from elsewhere.

What is the ekklhsia tou Qeou -- assembly/meeting of god?

SO we can forget about your tangents regarding the gospel.

I have already given you brief interpretations of his beliefs.

Given your response to my previous statement it seemed the obvious conclusion. Paul talks about exactly what you asked, ie your question doesn't deal with the fact that Paul says his gospel expressly did not come from other people.

If the fact that god rested on the seventh day was to be of any meaning the world had to be created in six normal days. Does that mean that the world was in fact created in six days?

Are you equating the number he claims to have baptised with the number of his converts?

Unlike you I am trying to work out what actually happened. To do so you have to be precise with language. You inveterately cannot be precise. This means you will miss much.

Then perhaps it will be safer.

No, it doesn't. It does require you to start with a level playing field.

You need to learn how to keep up your end of one first.


spin

spin

Dear onlookers,

Do you think I have failed to communicate the basic idea of the hypothesis I have put forward about Paul starting his religion based on a revelation concerning Jesus? Do you think that the position is justified? I'd be interested to know what you think.


spin

fatpie42

Oooh can I have a go?

1. Within the gospels there are blatantly more than 12 disciples. The gospels differ as to which people were part of the 12 and one has to do some serious mental gymnastics, suggesting that different names refer to the same people, in order to come up with a list of 12 which is reasonably consistent across the 3 synoptic gospels. The number 12 is most likely related to the 12 tribes as Israel.

2. There are two very different attempts to trace Jesus back to King David, which suggests that they were matching Jesus to the prophecies (taking it for granted that he had fulfilled them) rather than vice versa.

3. Well all three gospels tell of Jesus being tempted by the devil while he was in the desert. Of course, that means that no one was there to see it. Since the earliest of the gospels goes into no more detail than that, it makes it very likely that the story of the specific 'three temptations' is a later addition.

4. According to the gospels, yeah.

5. Now this one's a little more interesting. It is hard to take this story seriously since how could the disciples know that the two men were Moses and Elijah. It seems likely that this story is purely symbolic, or possibly presumed to have happened because of prophecies.

6. According to the gospels he does, though it's worth noting that at the time reports of miracles were widespread. While the walking on water miracle was an extreme example, miraculous healings are much less controversial. There were plenty of people around at the time who claimed to be able to heal people and were believed to be successful in doing so. The gospels even admit that Jesus' healings were not always successful, attributing this to a lack of faith on the part of the sick.

7. The weird thing is that the texts seem to avoid describing the risen Jesus as a ghost, and yet also avoid describing him as a reanimated body. He is sometimes described as having disappeared (which would suggest a ghost), but he is also described as physically interacting with people (though we must remember that the account of doubting Thomas was likely to be a late addition). The 'risen Jesus' was most likely a description of a vivid religious experience.


How about some new questions?

8. Did the pharisees plot to kill Jesus?
9. Why were the pharisees any more upset with Jesus than they would have been with one another? What did Jesus say which was controversial?
10. Did Pilate travel all the way from Rome to encourage the Jewish community to release him?
11. Was there a tradition of freeing political prisoners?

These are serious contradictions.
- The pharisees seem to be mixed up with the high priests in some sections since we are told that the pharisees plotted to kill Jesus and yet in the end it is the high priests who do so. (Notably enough, the Pharisees would have been leading Jewish communities when the gospels were written, but when Jesus was believed to have lived they would still have been ruled by the Herods.)
- Jesus is never shown making any particularly controversial comments in his arguments with the Pharisees. Jesus' arguments are not far off the kinds of arguments Pharisees would have amongst themselves. We are never given any reason why either the Pharisees or the high priests would want Jesus dead.
- Pilate would not have come to Jerusalem. He normally ran things from Rome and would accept or deny a request for capital punishment from there. The idea that Jesus would be considered high profile enough for him to travel all the way to Jerusalem is ludicrous. It is most likely a narrative device to point the blame away from the Roman authorities.
- The idea that the Romans made a tradition out of releasing known murderers is absolute nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence of it outside of the gospels' bizarre account.



As far as this 'myth to history'/'history to myth' debate is concerned, what does it matter? The stories in the gospel are blatantly not an accurate representation of anyone. Even if they are an extremely inaccurate, mythicised account of a real person, that doesn't allow us to know anything about that person anyway. As for the idea that the myth to history argument is lacking in weight, I fail to see why they would think this. Once a story has built up it is not really hard to imagine some people as taking it as more literal than it was intended. Urban myths work that way all the time.

Just my two cents...

Elijah

Again, I don’t think it’s my limited vocabulary that is preventing you from understanding my position and I don’t think your sophisticated word choice is providing the information needs to support your theory. Games games games.
I’m willing to deal with it, I was only pointing out that you are basing your theory off an interpretation of a single passage in a letter. An interpretation that you aren’t even clear on nor have you bothered to support in any way.
And what is that message? Someone existed and died right? Someone historical right?
I’ve already provided it. If you have another understanding of the passage then put it up.
What text are you basing your understanding of Mithraism on?
His message doesn’t sound like a revelation core but a historical one that a revelation helped fuel its spread. You still haven’t shown that the message was simply that the person the vision was about was the messiah and not the vision itself was the messiah.
The fact that you can’t flesh out your theory about what happened.
Jesus was real if he came and died that isn’t based on fact but on reason. You really need to clarify the nature of the revelation and the nature of the spirit you think Paul saw.
We can pick on the source material after we see if you can actually present a case that makes sense worth comparing to the evidence. Don’t put the cart before the horse.
In Christ, what does that mean to you? What is your interpretation?
So Paul believed a guy was actually crucified and you don’t think you are putting forward a historical core theory?
Being zealous doesn’t mean you are conservative especially if you are the poster child for antinomianism.

Because they say they were in Christ and they were the apostles of Jesus he went to talk to after his revelation.

Where did you see something that led you to believe they might be something else?
I was trying to illustrate the difference between a revelation that someone who exists is the messiah and a vision where the vision itself is the messiah.
Since you can’t know you’re just picking to believe what is convenient for your theory then? Making it up as you go.
Do you really need help understanding how legend gets added onto a historical figure? Is that why you go with the revelation theory because you can’t see how a legend gets attached to someone historical even someone like a messiah claimant?
He was real in your theory right? He existed and died.
No I’m wasting my time asking you to explain your theory when you obviously don’t have the answers I’m looking for. I’m trying to understand what you believed happened. I have no idea how you understand the revelation or what the revelation was really about.
Why play dumb? Is it that you just want to criticize material instead of presenting the information which explains your theory? Being skeptical of ancient texts is easy, explaining what you think happened rationally is where the skill lies.
If he came and performed an act then he was historical if people had to believe he performed that act he was historical. Your theory makes no sense what so ever.
Well if he had to perform an act in the world then he need to exist in the world which makes him historical.
Sure there is indications he heard of him there are indications he persecuted them.
A group you share your religious beliefs with, that being Christian.
No I understand you think the gospel is that Jesus came and sacrificed himself. A historical core that he didn’t need to witness himself but was revealed to him by god.
You may want to worry less about word choice and work on not being so brief with your explanations.
This didn’t answer my question at all I asked how can you not believe in a historical core if you believe someone came and died. I think you would be better off going the Toto route of he was a symbolic representation of Israel.
How are you counting his converts and what do you number them to be during his lifetime?
No, it requires a vivid imagination of a giant hypothetical or just learning to ignore the holes in the theory.

fatpie42

You HAVE to be kidding. Paul's message is not that 'someone died'. It is that salvation is possible.

On the whole 'myth to history'/'history to myth' argument you've got going here. Doesn't it count towards the myth to history stance that Paul argues that Jesus must have been raised from the dead because otherwise faith would be in vain? If it had gone from history to myth, wouldn't that logic have worked the other way around (i.e. that salvation must be possible because Jesus was raised from the dead)?

The alternative interpretation is, of course, that Paul was not talking about Christians because there weren't any Christians at this time. At this point in time there were simply Jews who believed that Jesus was the messiah and gentiles who had joined them. Paul was a key player in facilitating the movement away from Jewish customs, dismissing them as unneccessary 'stumbling blocks' for gentile converts.


Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. Paul was writing in Ancient Greek. Plenty of Jews believed in the Messiah without believing in Jesus, but more importantly there were no Christians at this stage of history.

I think they are claiming that the crucifixion of Christ is part of the mythology, just like the mutilation and rebirth of Dionysos is a part of Dionysian mythology.

I think the question is, if you think that the events attributed to Jesus are 'legends' which are 'attached', what makes the crucifixion an exception? Why is the crucifixion to be taken as a real event while, say, the walking on water is to be taken as 'legend'.

You might argue that the crucifixion is plausible as a historical event while walking on water is not. However, is Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on a donkey to huge crowds bearing palm leaves (which somehow failed to be recorded outside of the gospels) an event which happened to a real historical person? After all, it isn't a supernatural event and, just like the crucifixion, it isn't recorded outside the New Testament.

Elijah

And how is this salvation possible?
Lost me up there. What is do you consider his “faith” there?

Either way if Jesus is living and dying in your theory I have a hard time understanding how it is a mythical theory.
So there weren’t any Christians at the time(not even Paul himself), then why would he need to say that he didn’t receive his gospel from man since there was no man who believed in that? And why was he persecuting them if they were simply just waiting for a messiah like everyone else?
How did you come to the conclusion there were no Christians at the time of Paul’s letter writing?

Is Dionysus a story/myth/metaphor or did it supposedly happen in reality?
Well what isn’t possible should be immediately considered legend or symbolic. The crucifixion isn’t necessarily historical but the sacrifice would explain the line of martyrs and the faith that sprang from him. While the current myth theories being proposed do not address this.
It could be legitimate or it could be added into make it look like he was fulfilling messianic prophecy. In what ancient text do you think the event should have been recorded in? What does it matter if he did that or not?

aa5874

Based on the letter writer's word as found in Galatians, the writer did not start a religion.

He used to persecute the faith and there were already churches in Christ.

These are the written words found in the letters with the name Paul.

Galatians1.20-23 1 Cor 15:9 - Romans 16:7 - In the letters with the name Paul, the writer did not claim he started any religion.

Elijah

Thanks Aa! :thumbs:

Opinion

Does it really contradict it though. What he preached, man did not make it up, like the law. As he explained it was always there by faith. And what he taught he did not learn of it by man but gained only by revelation from God.

I don't think any man could have taught Paul of Jesus but only through his own personal revelation that gave him faith in it. I mean he heard Stephen preaching about it but that wasn't enough for him as he stood by as they killed him.

Maybe this is just my own evaluation on it but what is your take. That Jesus endowed him with special wisdom and knowledge of what he taught? I'll have to re-read it again later on.

Solo

But you see there is a problem: it's Paul's estimation that the Judean Jesus churches are "in Christ". He goes to Jerusalem to convince the folks that he has the true gospel, but evidently all he gets there is a concession to preach his revelations to the gentiles. It's highly doubtful the James' missions believed in Paul's crucified messiah.


Again, read this could be read as Andronicus and Junia accepting Paul's interpretation of their glorious ecstasies followed by "deep sorrow and unceasing anguish" . They had likely no conceptual toolset to manage what was happening to them (and the world) until Paul laid it out before them.

And how do you interpret then Gal 5:10, ' I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine; and he who is troubling you will bear his judgment, whoever he is' ! If this is not burning one's bridges, I don't know what is.





Jiri