ApostateAbe

Very well. Given your last statement, we are in sufficient agreement--Paul got his information from Jesus. Vision or not, doesn't matter--Paul's Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. There is no need to break up my post and debate each statement isolated from the wider point. That can be a little frustrating. Usually, I just ignore posts like that. Thanks.

ApostateAbe

I think that is possibly a good objection, though it seems to be relevant only for another debate. Whether or not Paul's Jesus was ever on Earth, it is irrelevant to the debate between spamandham and me.

aa5874

The Pauline writer got his gospel from Jesus after he was raised dead. And Paul saw Jesus in a resurrected state.

Ga 1:1 - Galatian 1.11-12 1 Cor.15.3-8
In the NT Canon, the disciples actually SAW Jesus after he resurrected in the flesh eatng fish and Paul is claiming that he was the last to actually SEE Jesus in a resurrected state.

maryhelena

Perhaps one should be careful about reading Paul' ideas as ideas that have to always correspond to something literal or physical. It seems to me that Paul is about some kind of spirituality, theology, mysticism - whatever. Anything that is not literal or physical. Paul had a vision or a revelation. He had, in other words, a 'light bulb moment'. A bolt out of the blue, a flash of sudden insight, a stroke of inspiration. With the temple gone in 70 ce - Paul' ideas are related to a spiritual temple. Thus, to my mind, the 'man of lawlessness' is not some physical man - as could possibly be the case if a literal temple is the context. A spiritual temple only relates to ideas. The 'man of lawlessness' would be a figurative 'man' - an idea that is causing a 'powerful delusion'. Lots of ideas, from theology to political ideologies, contain that sort of power. (and no bigger idea than the historical crucified Jesus idea.....sorry, could not help myself there....:blush

Did Paul, whoever he was, experience first hand the destruction of the Jerusalem temple? Quite possible. It's only his letters that need to be dated post 70 ce - especially so with his spiritual temple ideas. Placing Paul' letters, his spiritual temple ideas, pre-70 ce, would be a bit like jumping the gun. No way such ideas are going to take off while the literal temple is functioning. After 70 ce - then Paul' spiritual temple idea would be an idea whose time had come...

spamandham

When I say there isn't enough evidence to form a model, I don't mean that it's impossible for a reasonably clever person to contrive a model, I mean that there isn't enough evidence to form a full scale model we can have any reasonable level of confidence in.

(I don't consider "Jesus was a first century cult leader who was crucified by Pilate" to be a model of the type we're discussing, for example).

There is no such fallacy. My conclusion is correct and can be generalized to any field where the expert opinion is all over the map on the basics like it is in regard to Christian origins. To the extent there is a scholarly consensus at all, it is trivial rather than detailed.

HJers claim there is a scholarly consensus all the time, and then fail to provide any substantial evidence of such consensus opinion, or that the consensus is what their own pet theory happens to be. I'm sure you will agree that your own model has not been subjected to critical scholarly review, and is certainly not the consensus.

The only true scholarly survey I'm aware of that attempted to pin this down was the Jesus Seminar, which started with the assumption that Jesus was historical and went on to try to figure out which sayings were authentic and which weren't. Perhaps you could claim that this necessarily implies that the scholarly consensus is that Jesus existed as a cult figure of some kind...and I will agree that there probably really is a trivial scholarly consensus such as that, but nothing that comes anywhere near the type of comprehensive model we've been discussing. When it comes to comprehensive models, there as many of those as there are published scholars in the field.

From one of your references:

For one thing, the way scholarship proceeds is by taking a consensus, disputing it, and establishing a new consensus (which is then disputed, leading to a new consensus that is itself then disputed, and so on, ad infinitum). In part, this kind of back and forth occurs because, well, frankly, historians have to write about something, and if everyone agrees about a particular issue, then there's nothing more to write about it.

(emphasis mine)

It follows then that if scholars are writing conflicting holistic models about Christian origins, that there is conflict rather than consensus in regard to such models, which tells us something about the combination of data quality and approach, and I suppose I prefer to blame it on the data quality more than the approach, but perhaps you could indict the latter instead.

Einstein did not sit down cold with a collection of data and derive relativity from it. He had knowledge of all the physics that preceded him and knew it worked for classical cases. He was looking for a more detailed model that he knew would result in the classical model for classical cases. This is the sense in which built on the model itself and not just the data.

While it's not impossible that Einstein could have come up with relativity having only the data, it seems absurd to say he used only the data, and he stated as much, "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."

My complaint is that there is not enough *quality* data. We're just going around in circles on this.

I agree we are talking past eachother, and probably will continue to do so on the subject of modeling Christian origins, because we fundamentally disagree on approach and after several days of discussion, I don't think either of us has made a case that the other finds compelling. Thanks for remaining cordial.

spamandham

If Paul's Jesus was known to Paul only in the form of visions and scriptural exegesis, then Paul's Jesus may have been apocalyptic, but not a prophet. Prophets are the humans who receive spiritual visions, not the spirits themselves, i.e., Paul is the prophet. This may seem like a pedantic nit, but I think it's important considering that this thread is exploring mythicism.

spamandham

I agree with this, and so I view Paul's letters as substantially post 70CE. So now we are trying to refine that a bit. But if we see significant actual historical events that would have been extremely impactful to this type of author, and those events fall within an acceptable time range and also seem to point to something specific, I guess I don't see why we would prefer to interpret it as purely spiritual.

Paul does talk a lot about the spiritual, but he doesn't talk exclusively about the spiritual, and even when he does, I think we can legitimately state that his spiritual ideas were influenced by his life experiences, and so a spiritual man of lawlessness and a spiritual rebellion may nonetheless have been influenced by a historical man of lawlessness and a historical rebellion. Spiritually minded people draw these types of parallels between real events and their spiritual ideas all the time. It's how they're ideas are deemed relevant to their audience.

bacht

Yes, there is plenty of anti-Jewish sentiment in Paul, which is one reason for supporting a 2nd C dating for the letters.

I was re-reading Revelation last night and was struck by the Jewish flavour throughout. Apart from the introductory remarks to the Asian churches (synagogues?) the whole thing could be an appendix to Zechariah or Daniel. It's almost pure Jewish apocalyptic, with the crucial addition of the Lamb.

I'm trying to reconcile in my mind how this sort of thinking could co-exist with someone like Paul.

maryhelena

Not only that ie "standing on the shoulders of giants". One can have all the available data and still not have the wherewithal to develop some new insight.

Paul, with his vision or revelation, would most likely agree.
If this is the case with natural laws - how much more relevant is Einstein' quote in relation to uncovering past historical events....

Intuition, inspiration, chance - as Karl Popper says:

(my bolding)

maryhelena

Of course, re spiritual ideas being a reflection of what is on the ground, so to speak. But what is on the ground includes the past history - thus Paul could simply be projecting an interpretation of past events into his spiritual future ideas. Patterns seen in Jewish history re prophetic interpretations becoming the basis upon which to predict future spiritual 'events'. Thus no need to suppose Paul was around for events re the time of Hadrian.