jjramsey

I suppose I should have made this this clearer, but I'll reiterate. Since Paul is appealing to Jesus' resurrection as common ground between himself and the Corinthians, he is assuming that the Corinthians already knew about Jesus' resurrection, so he did not need to repeat its details--whatever those details were.

Whatever faults Muller may have in his arguments, he provides a decent list of the usages of kata sarka:

None of these usages have anything to do with speaking of something as located somewhere in the space between the earth and the lunar sphere.

Carrier's analysis has been shown to be dodgy, however, as S.C. Carlson and Chris Weimer pointed out (see also here) on the dreaded thread "Doherty, Gibson and Barrett, oh my..." (I call the thread "dreaded" because Gibson exhibited some truly boorish behavior there.)

ginomai was not in the verses contrasting the "soulish" body (which you call a natural body) with the spiritual body. That is a separate issue. More to the point, I am not saying that the use of ginomai in verse 15:45 has the force needed to imply that Christ had a change of state, but rather that it has insufficient force to deny such a change of state. As I wrote above,

Burton clearly says, "GENOMENON EK GUNAIKOS evidently refers to birth," that is, he says that the typical translation of the phrase as "born of a woman" is correct. The ambiguities in ginomai do not help you here. See also further comments on your (and Doherty's) use of Burton by krosero on the "dreaded thread."

Ted Hoffman

Muller showed the semantic range of kata sarka. That does not falsify Doherty's interpretation. It is like showing that the usage of the word "bread" to mean a baked cake falsifies "bread" to mean sacrament.

He simply ignores Doherty's argument and constructs an alternative argument.

Carrier responded to both Weimer and Carlson. If you have something you feel he did not address, lay it here.
Where does he appeal to the resurrection as recognized common ground?

jjramsey

You asked the question, "What 'evidence' do you have that kata sarka was used any other way?" as if you were denying that kata sarka was used "any other way." I showed examples of plenty of other ways, which answered the question that you actually wrote.

The list from Muller that I gave above does not, in and of itself, falsify Doherty's interpretation. What makes Doherty's interpretation implausible is that the meaning that he is proposing for kata sarka is not seen in other literature, is far different from the meanings seen in the other literature, and doesn't make any better sense of Paul's writings. Under the conventional interpretation, Paul's use of kata sarka varies, but consistently uses kata in an abstract sense, not in the sense of referring to a concrete location (i.e., between the earth and the lunar sphere). Doherty himself acknowledges that his rendering of kata sarka as referring to the sublunar realm doesn't work for all instances where Paul uses kata sarka. This means that Paul's usage of kata sarka swings from using kata in the abstract sense to kata in a concrete locational sense. Yet there are no cues in Paul's text to indicate that he is swinging his meaning so broadly.

As far as I can see, Carrier never substantiates that Paul is likely to have used the kata in kata sarka to be "in the realm of" in the concrete sense that would be required to connote the sense of being somewhere in the realm between the earth and the firmament.

Right at the beginning of chapter 15, when he reminds them that he passed down to them the tradition of Jesus' resurrection. Essentially, he is saying, "Remember this teaching that I gave you," and then goes on to build the rest of his argument from that known teaching.

Clivedurdle

May we take this a step at a time? Do you agree resurrections do not happen, except for cases like the young woman under water at freezing temperatures who was revived and similar examples?

Why do you assume that a belief in an impossible thing - resurrection - needs to have a foundation of a real thing - a human body?

I stated earlier that the beliefs people had about what was living and what was not were very alien to our present conceptions - there were not the current divisions we have between flesh, soul and spirit. I have only vague ideas what they meant by soul and spirit, is it possible their concept of flesh was also alien to ours? It would seem to be if bread can be turned into flesh and wine into blood!

All of this interaction between ritual, myth and drama is bread and butter to anthropology. I repeat, if we are to get anywhere with establishing the jesus myth - which I see as clearly well on the side of the balance of probabilities - the fence is about to collapse onto the myth side - it might help if we used different tools to history - those of anthropology. We are looking at a common or garden mystery religion that for various reasons hit the zeitgeist!

jjramsey

Yes.

I didn't. Read what I wrote again. I did take it a step at a time:

This is a two-step process: first figuring out what Paul believed about Jesus, and then dealing with the most parsimonious explanation for why Paul held these beliefs in light of other evidence.

Clivedurdle

Your second step - jesus was flesh as you and i understand flesh now does not follow! Paul believed in "funny flesh" - "this is my body". The doctrine of transubstantiation is my evidence of "funny flesh". How could Paul possibly have our modern understanding of flesh, especially as the catholic church now clearly states what Paul believed! I would trust them on this!

darstec

His work is out there. Thus it is submitted. It is ignored. If you know of any of those "peered historians" please send them a copy and ask for an explict paragraph by paragraph refutation of the points Earl Doherty makes. [Perhaps a personal plea from you will help.]

Or do you personally suppose that there are rules to the effect that commentators in peer-reviewed journals are not allowed to comment about something in public domain? If Mr. Doherty is as amateur as comments suggest, everyone of those peers to a man (or woman) should make mincemeat of this work with alacrity.

darstec

Please, Papias????? We haven't the foggiest idea of what Papias if he existed said. We only have a few fragments from Eusebius and one other telling us what Papias supposedly said. And in each case neither has the same Papias quotes.

Of all the voluminous work Papias is said to have written, and as an important person as he is said to have been, not one thing of his survived. Nothing of his own works were important enough to have been copied? That silence is deafening. Or perhaps the bulk of what he said (if he really existed) was so far removed from what is now considered orthodoxy, they didn't dare let the public read his heresy. Maybe he was quote minded or maybe words he never wrote were put in his mouth.

darstec

How is it that you can say Papias clearly believed...??? We have nothing written by Papias. Absolutely nothing. What we have is a few fragments of Eusebius who supposedly quoted Papias a few centuries later. And this Papias was so important to early Christianity that not one scribe bothered to make sure his writings (if Papias even existed) survived.

The two most logical reasons are that there was no Papias and he wrote nothing or that what he really wrote was considered heresy and had to be destroyed.

jjramsey

Actually, the most likely reason is a boring one, that Papias' works were simply lost, just like countless other works of antiquity.