gurugeorge

Indeed.

Anyway, for my mythicism, there's no problem about mention of fleshly aspects to the Jesus myth - and there's no problem about there being early doctrinal disputes about how important that aspect was.

In my view, Paul had visions of an entity that told him it had had a period of earthly sojourn. He got his gospel from (what he thought to be) the horse's mouth, and the content of that gospel has some fleshly aspects. This is what the evidence we have states.

Incidentally, re ad-hockery, I still contend re. the brother James point, that the "real siblinghood" position is the ad hoc explanation in this context, when clearly elsewhere in Paul the term "brother/sister" is used in a cultic sense.

aa5874

And another extremely important question is how did the Pauline Epistles become corrupted and manipulated without the knowledge of the Church and the Church writers?

And, how did the Church and Church writers not know the true actual teachings of Paul when he was engaged in physically preaching to the churches all over the Empire?

Based on the Gospels, Revelations and the writings of Justin Martyr, it is almost certain that there were no Pauline Epistles and no Pauline Churches before the Fall of the Jewish Temple.

The notion that a man wrote one or two letters to churches all over the Roman Empire and was able to exert theological influence over the church for decades with just a letter or two, via a courier service, is totally unrealistic or most likely to be fiction.

Based on the writings from the Church, sects had physical leaders and a known doctrine or teaching. And it is the physical leaders that control the sect, both physically and theologically, not a one letter written decades earlier.

And the concept of revelations and visions are not unique to Paul, for centuries before the Pauline writer, the books of the prophets were filled with revelations and visions.

The various sect leaders would have also claimed to have [b][received revelations and visions/b] from their God making Paul's vision and revelations virtually meaningless.

There are no credible external historical records of any Pauline sect in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple.

Chili

Paul was a gnostic and had noetic vision. He does not 'get' things and had no visions or trances as Jesus did when he spoke from hill-tops, valleys, steeples or Cana events before he was raised to be gnostic and so have the mind of Christ (please don't be confused with the -ism of Gnosticism who are a bunch of wannebe's). Take the gospels to present 'the way' to obtain this noetic vison and be omniscient (and Matthew shows the 'how not to" and Luke shows the 'how to').

Paul 'met' James means that he knew the intricate detail of a failed divine comedy that should be known as a Senecan tragedy and for this he had to look down from a divine comedy to see it.

Luke has room for James while Matthew has no room for the Jesus of Luke but he can't call him James because Joseph was an upright self righteous bible thumping Jew who looked forward to the reign of God in a MacBeth fashion who also wanted to be king hereafter. Hence: "All this happened to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet" in Mat.1:22, while it was the angel of the Lord (lucifer we call him) who told Joseph in a dream instead of Mary by way if intuition = hence the Canticle of Mary instead of Joseph's vanity (= no angel of the Lord in Luke, = the U configuration of our mind).

I can go on and on about this, but what does 'this Jesus' do in the end? Back to Galilee he goes [instead of heaven] for another 40 years [and be the wolf to nurse the lamb] and still die nonetheless.

Having said all this it is difficult to condemn Matthew because it contains a lot of good stuff but fails to deliver the wisdom that can see beyond this generation.

Chili

Oops, the above should say that Luke has NO room for James.

Kapyong

Gday,

Thank you for your calm and measured response :-)
Better than some of my ravings here and there.


K.

Kapyong

Gday,


Um, this is not a claim to be "born of woman".
Did I miss your point?


K.

Solo

You missed Jesus' point to Nicodemus in John 3:

Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

So, whoever added the "born of woman, under the law" in Gal 4:4 wanted to make sure that Paul's reader was not forgetting about the first birth. Since this looks like waving the adoptionist flag for Jesus, I am skeptical it was written by Paul, even though he seemed pretty clear that Jesus lived on earth and died by the hand of the law.

Jiri

GakuseiDon

Haha! Actually, my first reaction was, "OK, GDon, breathe deeply... and. Step. Away. From. The. Keyboard!" I did in fact make a New Year's Resolution not to post here again this year, at least until I complete my review of Doherty's new book, which will be a good 3 to 6 months after I receive it. That resolution lasted a day, but I do mean to try again.

Anyway, my interest is on how people thought back then. While -- outside the HJ/MJ debate -- there is a great focus on trying to understand the mindset behind the literature of the time (Sander's "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" kicking off the "New Perspective on Paul", for example), it seems that on this board any ol' theory about Paul's cosmology can be broached, without the requirement of backing that up from the literature of the day. The argument is, "After all, how can we moderns understand the mindset of people back then?" Meanwhile, scholarly papers are being written all the time on the mindset of people back then.

Perhaps you (and any other mythicist who has their own unique reading of Paul) are right about Paul's cosmology, but it is all much of a muchness until evidence can be provided.