Switch89

Several months ago, I wrote a rather long post on Debunking Christianity which defended the idea that Paul never clearly speaks of Jesus as a man on earth.

I just had a look at chapter 6 of JP Holding's book "Shattering the Christ Myth" which you can view here.

Holding says that the silence in Paul isn't all that surprising, given the fact that Paul lived in a "high context" society (one which assumed lots of insider knowledge in communication) while we live in a "low context" society (which is the opposite of the former).

So I'm posing the question: What do we make of Paul's silence?

show_no_mercy

Paul not only is silent about the Earthly life of Jesus, he's also silent about Jesus having any disciples. That should be an even bigger red flag than simply Paul's silence about Jesus, since Paul is supposedly interacting with these "disciples" in his letters. He only calls them apostles. Not only does Paul not refer to Jesus' teachings, none of these apostles do either.

So this silence can be explained by (IMO) three options:

1. Jesus didn't exist on Earth.
2. Jesus was simply a pious hermit who didn't preach or do any miracles (similar to James the Just).
3. Jesus was an insurrectionist so his Earthly life was hush-hush.

And if you agree with Holding about the "insider knowledge" context, this seems dangerously close to Gnosticism, which points to option 1.

Steven Carr

You have to laugh at Holding , don't you?

Paul tells his readers that he persecuted Christians.

And up pops Holding to say that everybody knew that, so there was no need for Paul to mention it.

Paul even says the Jews had been entrusted with scriptures.

I guess these 'high-context' people just had no idea that the Hebrew scriptures had been given to Jews.

Unlike we 'low-context' people who have to have it spelled out for us that the Old Testament was about Jews.

Toto

This is just the same argument that people have made before, dressed up with some cultural anthropology terms.

The argument that Holding does not address: was Jesus married? How can you explain Paul's numerous statements about marriage without bringing in Jesus' married state as either an example to emulate or an exception - if Paul knew whether Jesus were married or not?

Steven Carr

Why did people in a 'high-context' society need to be told that Jesus had been born of a woman?

Switch89

That's a good point. It's also a good point, now that I think about it, that the later christian writings mention Pilate and various other things that point to an earthly Jesus.

I think probably the strongest threat of "breaking the silence" of Paul is in Galatians 1:19, in which Paul calls Jesus the "brother of the Lord".

For me, the fact that all the other passages (like Galatians 4 and Romans 1-3) use earthly metaphors to describe spiritual relationships (see my article on this for more) means that this lonely ambigous passage ought to have a spiritual or symbolic interpretation as well (thus making James a spiritual brother of Christ).

Switch89

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 Paul refers to the "Twelve" though he does not say disciple.

One more thing: If Paul lived in such a high context society, wouldn't Galatians 4:4 ('Born of a woman, born under the law') be totally out of place?

Toto

'Born of a woman, born under the law' is a formula that reinforces a point of orthodox dogma. It is not really a statement of fact.

It doesn't actually make a lot of sense except as a counter to those who thought that Jesus was a spirit and not really Jewish (as Marcion did.)

aa5874

The epistles of the so-called Paul have more information about Jesus on earth than all the other epistles of the so-called James, Peter, John, and Jude.

This is the writer called Paul on the betrayal of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 11:23-34 -
1 Corinthians 2:6-8 -
1 Corinthians 15.3-8 The author of 1 Corinthians wrote about Jesus as if this Jesus was on earth before he ascended to heaven.

No other epistle has so much information about the so-called Jesus while he was supposedly on earth, not even the epistles called James and Jude, the supposed brothers of Jesus, or the epistles of Peter and John, the supposed disciples and apostles of Jesus.

But, it is extremely odd that the Pauline writer never claimed to have seen Jesus on earth before he got his revelations from the Jesus that left earth and went to heaven.

DCHindley

Not meaning to pick a beef or anything, aa, but why would this necessarily have to be odd?

Morton Smith (if that's his real name) had pointed out many instances of ancient magicians (the serious practitioners of the art of controlling demons and spirits, not the kind who make elephants disappear by smoke & mirrors) seeking to have communion with spirits for all manner of reasons, including the receipt of revelations or various kinds. This includes spirits of the dead. See his book Jesus the Magician (or via: amazon.co.uk). There was one case where a magician kills a boy to keep its spirit captive to do his bidding.

For a nifty selection of actual ancient Greek and Egyptian Demotic spells, recovered from the finest garbage dumps of Egypt and the literature of Greece, Rome and the east, seek out Hans Dieter Betz's The Greek Magical Papyri (or via: amazon.co.uk). Some of the ingredients these spells required were things like nails from crosses and sculls of executed criminals, etc. I know these spells work because I crashed the servers at the Prodigy dial up service (that dates me, doesn't it?) when I posted some extracts from it to a forum <said as my eyes shift around in a paranoid manner and I nervously wring my hands together>.

DCH