Ben C Smith

Correct. The argument that Paul intended a real live human being does not disqualify that branch of mythicism that posits a legendary Jesus who supposedly acted in the distant past, a la G. A. Wells.

Thanks for your comments.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

The argument I am making is not about independent starting points; it is about what Paul (right or wrong) meant to say about Jesus.

Ben.

Vorkosigan

Sorry I've been gone for so long....busy as hell. I have to resurrect a lot of threads....

Don't be silly. Citing later writings committed to historicist positions, writing a century later, for what Paul thought is absurd. Smith's argument is the usual circular arguments that underpin all historicist claims.

The whole argument over the "real meaning" of kata sarka is a gigantic red herring. Ask historicists why there are no historical references in Paul to the gospel tales, and they will tell you that it was because the recipients of Paul's letters "already knew." So Paul doesn't see fit to ever discussion John the Baptist, Paul, Mary, etc, but does, on the other hand, remind the audience that Jesus was born of woman, as if there might be some confusion on that score, and was descended from David. Even though they "already knew."

Most likely kata sarka does not relate to any historical/mythical dichotomy at all, but rather to the argument that Paul lays out in Gal 4, which I took Bernard Muller to task on ages ago:

• Bernard's argument further demands that we take the meaning of "sons" in Galatians 4 to be historical when it refers to Jesus, but allegorical when it refers to humans. In fact Gal 4 is one long allegory on Abraham, sonship, and the Law. Note that Paul uses "according to the flesh" here in a symbolic sense. Abraham has two sons, both by human women, and both born by sexual intercourse and a trip down the birth canal. But he distinguishes them by their relationship to the Law.

Kata sarka in Rom 1 is symbolic and allegorical rather than literal. Interpreting it to mean that Jesus had a fleshly existence is like interpreting "born under the law" to mean that Jesus was born in a courthouse.

The claim in Romans 1:3 is unacceptable and is in fact a good example of a Pauline silence. If Jesus is really the Son of David then one would expect Paul to substantiate that claim by laying out a geneaology, or at least referring to a father known to be of the Davidic line. Otherwise how could anyone know that a fleshly Jesus was really a son of David? That no such geneaology existed is testified to by the fact that both of the geneaologies in Luke and Matt are fictions, and the Markan Jesus is adoptionist (and there is no Markan geneaology).

But then there is always the unassailable historicist retreat: "They already knew." It puts me in mind of that famous passage from Conjectures and Refutations

• Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")

The "they already knew" is a good example of a conventionalist twist -- the introduction of auxiliary theories to save the main one. "They already knew" cannot be refuted. It cannot even be engaged in a scholarly fashion, because it is a faith-statement.

But if Ben wants to claim that the early Christians had the same interpretation that the later ones did, then one must wonder why the writer of Mark, who certainly knew the letters of Paul, refrained from saying that Jesus was born of earthly parents, specifically makes him adoptionist and the son of god by baptism, uses him as an allegorical stand-in for the believer, supplies us with no geneaology to prove a Davidic descent, and has Jesus comment ironically on his alleged descent from David.

Whatever Paul really means by kata sarka here has probably been lost, obscured by centuries of historicist propagandizing and misreading of Paul.

Vorkosigan

God Fearing Atheist

And "they didnt know" can?

Vorkosigan

It's not a case of "and they didn't know". It is a case of "what is the correct reading of Paul's letters?" In the historicist side, a series of ad hoc assumptions and axioms support their case. I am merely exposing one here. Note that nobody is using "and they didn't know" to explain a vast silence. Rather, "and they didn't know" is a conclusion from the data in Paul + an interpretive framework. "they already knew" is an ad hoc apologetic strategy designed to counter the clear lack of historical references in Paul.

Vorkosigan

Chris Weimer

Sorry Vork, but who is saying this? I mean, apart from those without a sensible methodology.

I think its rather sensible to assume "born under the law" to mean that Jesus also was subject to the Torah. That seems like the most obvious interpretation. How does that fit in with Paul only knowing a mythical Jesus?

Oh come on, Vork. Where does Paul ever get meticulous like that? You can't seriously expect everyone to lay out a genealogy for someone. For him, born of the seed of David is obviously good enough to bypass the Messianic requirement.

Seriously, can we drop the huge strawman? Not one person here has argued "They already knew." Let's discuss the real arguments.

And Mark is supposed to cater to Paul why again? Using Paul is not the same as imitating him.

Yes, ultimately, I agree with you. However, we do our best and work with probabilities.

Chris

God Fearing Atheist

Absolutely. But this is exactly what HJers are doing; using Paul's words and not speculation about what he may or may thought or have had knowledge of. On the other hand and despite your claim to the contrary, it seems to me that mythicists rely on alot of that sort of thing as evidence and not, as you say, reach it as a conclusion (e.g. your claim about genealogy above).

Did Paul mean Jesus was a dude descended from David, or did he mean Jesus was a heavenly figure only the seed of David in some spiritual sense, of which Doherty admits has no know parallel elsewhere in ancient thought? Did Paul mean Jesus was a fleshy guy on earth, or a mythical figure that existed in some Bizzaro fleshy realm below the upper heavens which, apparently, has no parallel either? Did early Greek-speaking church fathers work Rom 1.3 into their apologetics because they understood Paul as uncontroversially saying both of these things, or did they misunderstand?

Ignoring what Paul did not write and focusing on what he did (which HJers appear to do but MJers not), its the mythicist position that seems ad hoc.

But I could very well be wrong.

Vorkosigan

What are you talking about? It is common explanation used by many scholars. Popping open my trusty copy of Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, and we see on page 312, where Ehrman gives three options to explain the paucity of historical data in the Paulines:

• "Option One. Paul knew a large number of traditions about Jesus but never spoke of them in his surviving letters because he had no occasion to do so. This is perhaps the easiest way to explain why Paul scarcely ever mentions the events of Jesus' life. Someone who takes this line could point out that Paul evidently knew other apostles (cf Gal 1-2).....Who exactly was he? What did he do? What did he teach? How did he die? Surely questions such as these must have occurred to Paul's converts, and surely he must have answered them. If so, then we might conclude that Paul never mentioned these traditions in his letters because he knew that his converts already knew them."

In the same way that being descended from David and born of woman did. Although personally I believe that the "born of woman" remark is a simple interpolation. Just can't prove it. <g>

Born under the law probably relates to Paul's view of the Law as knowledge of sin -- Gal 3:20 from which it is necessary to free. In Paul's Heavenly Savior scheme, Christ had to be born under the law in order to save from it, since he could not overcome it from the outside. It may also relate to Paul's sense of history -- Jesus was born when the Law was still in force, and thus, he was "born under it" -- in a particular period of history. The whole concept of the Law in Paul sort of floats around. As you note, Paul wasn't meticulous very often.

Sure. But how did he justify "seed of David" to himself? For you can't just point to someone and claim that they are descended from David in the strict sense without knowledge. If this claim was not mystical/allegorical/symbolic, it had to have been underpinned by knowledge of Jesus' descent relationships. Yet that is precisely what the fictional descent relationships in the gospels deny that early Christians had any knowledge of. But instead of giving us a minimal evidence for Jesus being of the Davidic line -- remarking on who his father or family was, for example -- he doesn't.

Alternatively, what if he simply meant that Jesus was Jewish and the early Christians understood the 'seed of David" remarks to mean that the messiah had to be descended from David in a loose sense -- be a Jew. That would get the historicists out of the geneaology jam here.

It's a bog-standard NT argument. Meier appeals to it on pp45-47 of A Marginal Jew, in a more sophisticated form. I've given you Ehrman and Meier. How many more scholars must I cite?

I agree totally. But the issue is that the writer of Mark does not appear to know things that apologists claim Paul knows.

I think a big problem here is that these texts have been worked over by later redactors, just like the other NT texts, but we don't have them until well after they had been altered. *sigh* In reference to your survey on the other thread, if there is anything I want, it is the unaltered letters of Paul.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough with my emphasis. Mark's Jesus is adoptionist. He doesn't accept the (Pauline) claim that Jesus was born to the role. Or rather, he understands Paul to be talking about adoptionism. Or doesn't give a shit what Paul is saying. Point is, Jesus' birth receives no emphasis in Mark.

Yes, but the absence of the geneaology is one of those millions of silences on your reading. On mine it is the inevitable result of Paul not having one, so Matt, Mark, and Luke didn't have one either. Nobody had one, because there wasn't one. There's no evidence that anyone knew HOW Jesus was descended from David in early Christianity. (really, how could they have known?)

Vorkosigan

TedM

I don't know how they could have known. My post was deleted, as desired, but I was wondering is that within my control too (I assume a moderator deleted it)?

ted