Ben C Smith

That is a good question, but it is not a question for me. It is a question for those who were wrangling over κατα σαÏ?κα on those other threads. My argument was subsidiary to the argument already going on over that phrase. I think you treated it as a stand-alone, and it was not.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

I'll be back in 24 hours. Have to day trip today.

Vorkosigan

Amaleq13

Then I agreed with you all along because, as I said, I rely on Carrier for my understanding and he has only stated that it can be understood in a way that is consistent with Doherty's thesis.

rlogan

Your "argument" was:



And the answer is no to both. Not Paul and also not the other three. The Ignatia as a group is a complete set of forgeries designed to consolidate church power under ridiculous pretense of "letters".

In general, once we are well into the 2d century the "humanity" of jesus becomes a political matter and it is horribly naiive to think we are reading a bunch of lilly-white puritans with no agenda.


There are two levels at which your struggle to unveil the "Historical Jesus" suffers here.

The first is failing to acknolwedge that the struggle over power for control over the masses of church followers has political dimensions that mean we should question what the proponents say - not to take them strictly as sincere expressions of what they "believe".

In our own time, for example, I do not believe for a second that Bush thought Hussein was about to unleash nukes on New York or give them to other terrorists who would. He certainly did his level best to make his followers believe that though.

The second level at which it fails is that I really don't care what the religiously insane think about the origin of the earth or the form our sky-daddy takes or whatever. What they say or believe has no bearing whatsoever on the facts.

jakejonesiv

That is the irony of it. :sneaky: The Jesus historists and ahistorists should switch sides on this one.

There is a common error being made on both sides of the debate. There is an unexamined assumption that the text of the Pauline corpus that we possess today existed in the same form in the first century. Is there is any evidence to substantiate that?

I will submit that there is not. We have evidence that in the second century CE there was a fierce debate between two (or more) significant Christian factions (proto-orthodox and Marcionite) that was fought over this exact point: what was the content of the Pauline (and gospel) material?

Does anyone here doubt that the scriptures were altered during the christological debates of the 2nd century? :banghead: And since the proto-orthodox were the eventual winners, it is their changes that survived. Ehrman OCS has offered evidence that, even after we reach the period of extant texts, the proto-orthodox were still modifying the very verses we have been discussing (i.e. Rom. 1:3; Gal 4:4, etc). It is reasonable to believe that they did that and more before.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

It was a real argument, even if you disagree with it. The word does not belong in quotes.

I see. You do not think that even Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Origen thought Jesus was a human being of the line of David. Guess I had no shot of convincing you that Paul did.

....

(Psst. Actually, I do not think Jesus was a real human either. I only argue along those lines on this board because I am both religiously insane and caught up in an ecclesiastical power struggle for the pocketbooks of my converts. But please, tell no one; I want the charade to go on as long as it can.)

Ben.

GakuseiDon

What historical elements did the historicists add to Paul, in your opinion? And what ahistorical elements did they leave in, and why?

jakejonesiv

My opinion? Thanks for asking. I think that the Marcionite layer is earlier and more original.

But for the purpose of discussion in this thread, at mimimum the proto-orthodox added those passages that speak of Jesus' physical descent. Romans 1:3; 9:5; Gal. 4:4..

We don't know what they cut out; the winners write the histories. Obviously, they would omit anything that would cleanly refute themselves.

The proto-orthodox left in docetic elements that could be harmonized with their Christology. Phil 2:7-8; Romans 8:3.

I now have a question for you. Do you see an equivalency between docetic=ahistorical and human=historcal?

I am reminded of F. C. Baur's definition of docetism, "the human appearance of Christ is mere illusion and has no objective reality".

If, for sake of argument, it is assumed that the earliest Pauline conception of Jesus is docetic, how likely is it that he was a real human being? In your opinion.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

I know you were asking Don, but let me answer anyway.

I may be way off here, but it seems to me that, if we could prove that Paul (or any other very early Christian) thought of Jesus in docetic terms, it would furnish a very nice piece of evidence for a layer of historicity preceding the docetic interpretation. We would have, in effect, a group of people who think (A) that Jesus is a divine being and (B) that divine beings cannot really be human admitting that this divine being looked, talked, walked, and behaved like a real human being.

Unless we can prove that there was some requirement that a divine savior look, talk, walk, and behave like a real human I do not see why these people would admit this unless they thought it really happened.

But I am not as familiar with early heretical groups as I would like to be, so I could be quite mistaken.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

As far as the apparent human appearance, I think there is an anthromorphic principle here. Bug-eyed aliens would probably imagine their docetic gods to look like, well, bug-eyed aliens - but without the squisHy gOo.

If a group of early Christians thought that Christ was not a real human being, that he was a phantom, I would see that as evidence against a historical Jesus. This isn't definitive, I suppose he could have been real and they just thought he wasn't. Sort of like.... hmmmm ... I have having trouble coming up with an example.

jj4 edit: I got it! PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!!!

Jake Jones IV