DramaQ

First: Apologies re my last post. It wasn’t until I had time to read the whole thread more thoroughly that I found Ben C. Smith had already covered that ground.

Second:

If his appearance as the risen Christ was the event that made them apostles.

I may be wrong, but it sounds like you get it from either a) A commission by the live Jesus, b) A visitation from the Risen Christ, or d) As a hand-off from prior apostles.

If one can get apostleship from other apostles, then there shouldn’t be an issue of the “500” being “visited” by the Risen Christ AND already being apostles. They were apostles because they’d been appointed by the pillars. None of them ever had to meet the live Jesus. They had their vision of the Risen Christ AFTER they got their commissions.

Paul’s bestowal is now more unusual because he got his commission the same way as the pillars (only late) AS A RESULT of his visitation from the Risen Christ. Rather than from a human being.

DQ

Gamera

See below my discussion of 1 Cor 15:7 and Paul's claim that the resurrected Jesus appeared to "all the apostles," strongly suggesting they were already apostles, and hence received their apostolic papers while Jesus was still alive.

Well, Paul strongly suggests that it does, for the reasons I have set forth. Namely, his rendition of the risen Christ appearing to "all the apostles" excludes himself. He points out that his becoming an apostle was somehow "freakish". He then tells us that it's because he persecuted the church before becoming an apostle. But chronologically, what does this mean -- it means that he didn't know the living Jesus, like the other apostles, and hence didn't follow him. Not knowing the living Jesus, he didn't follow him, but rather persecuted the church, until in a "miscarried" way, he became an apostle by the risen Jesus appearing to him. So Paul sees a difference and it appears to be chronologically determined, with the important break point being the living Jesus vs the risen Jesus.

I'm not saying Paul is clear about this, just that this seems to be the most plausible way of making sense out of an admittedly ambiguous little narrative about how he became an apostle.

Yes. And the difference meant a lot. It meant that while the other apostles knew and following the living Jesus, he (not knowing him) not only didn't follow him, but persecuted the other apostles. He circles back to this painful issue in his life on several occasions, so yes, it was important to him.

No, the gospel is a narrative about Jesus and was preached pretty much the same by all the apostles. At least so says Paul :

1 Cor 15:
9For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11Whether, then, it was I or they, this [i.e., the little narrative about Jesus' resurrection he just gave] is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

So the gospel is the same. Paul however interpreted it differently in how to apply it to the Christian life, and that led to conflict with the Jerusalem Church, the nature of which isn't exactly clear, but it involved the role of Jewish practices in Christianity. Fortunately we don't need to figure that out. Whatever qualms the Jerusalem Church had, it lost out.

Well, we agree there.

I understand that's your position. Now you need to reconcile it with Paul's claim that the risen Jesus appeared to "all the apostles," (which strongly implies they were already apostles when he appeared to them).

What requires your attention is interpreting 1 Cor 15:7 in a plausible manner to accord with the scenario you have posited. For the reasons I gave to Ben, I don't think there is a plausible interpretation of that verse that makes sense under your scenario.

DramaQ

That's what we get for posting at the same time. Go back one posting. I managed to answer this one before you asked it.

dq

ETA

Speaking of otherwise unrecorded monumental events: when, during his brief carreer, did the living Jesus bestow apostleship on 500 people? Why is there no other mention of it? Not in the gospels. Not by anyone, not even one of the 500.

Ben C Smith

This is the thesis statement for the first paragraph in your post, yet what follows seems to have nothing to do with proving circularity.

I agree with this. And none of it has anything to do with whether my argument is circular. And indeed my argument cannot be circular. Paul tells us that he received a revelation of the risen Lord, the very purpose of which was to commission him to go to the gentiles. Paul tells us that the Jerusalem crowd was going to the Jews, not to the gentiles (at least at that time). Paul tells us that his contact with the Jerusalem people has been minimal. Paul tells us that he is preaching a crucified Christ, no more. All of this leads me to the conclusion that Paul is forging his own path; he is not preaching the same details that the Jerusalem crowd is preaching. This means that, if the Jerusalem crowd is preaching all about an historical Jesus, then we cannot necessarily expect Paul to be preaching all about him, too.

Remember, the point of the exercise is to remove a potential mythicist argument, not to disprove mythicism.

Please supply the evidence for your claim that, had his audience known about apostles who had known Jesus in the flesh, they would have preferred them.

Why is that obvious to you? It is not obvious to me, speaking from the perspective of those for whom visions were taken very seriously. What evidence do you have?

There are two perspectives in that reconstructed document. First, there is the perspective of Simon, who prefers visions. Second, there is the perspective of Peter, who prefers personal discipleship in the flesh. What is your evidence that the apostle Paul would have been more like Peter in this document than like Simon? (It makes no difference that the author of the document sides with Peter against Simon; the apostle Paul is allowed to side with Simon against Peter, if he so chooses.)

Simon did just that, according to the very document that you pointed to.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Just to be clear, unless DramaQ is also named Ben, I think you have crossed your interlocuters here. Now on to the post that was really aimed at me:

I think you have argued well. I shall most certainly consider it. Thanks.

Ben.

TedM

I find it unlikely that the idea of our carnal nature causing separation from God was a new idea with Paul given the story of Adam and Eve. In any case, my point was that Paul's gospel was probably strongly influenced by his own personal interpretation of the OT. He obviously was very well versed in it, quoting and alluding to it over 100 times in his epistles.

2 Cor 5:21 "knew no sin" doesn't mean "didn't know he was a sinner". It means he didn't know what sin was--ie he didn't experience sin. That is to say, he was sinless.

Phil 2:6 "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" doesn't mean he was a sinner

Rom *3 "in the likeness of sinful flesh" doesn't have to mean "a sinner". It could mean his form was the same of that of sinners--ie fleshly.

Gamera

You raise a good point here, and it used to perplex me. But I think I have an explanation.

Paul is (typically) talking about two things at once: the risen Jesus appearing to the all the apostles, and the risen Jesus appearing to all kinds of other people. And I think it's fair to conclude that the 500 are those assembled at Pentecost, and they aren't apostles.

So 1 Cor 15 reiterates that portion of the gospel Paul preached that asserts that there were many witnesses to the risen Christ (some still alive he says). Within that context, he gives us information that suggests that the apostles were already designated apostles. And that tangentially leads him to a discussion of how his apostlehood differs.

It is a bit disshevelled, but such is Paul's style.

gurugeorge

I thought it was a Jewish Christian document contra Paul where Paul was represented as "Simon" and Peter is Peter?

Yeah, but Peter knocks him for six and does it very well. Come on, Peter's is a very rational, modern sounding argument isn't it? Since that argument was used at that time, it supports my contention that it wouldn't have actually made any sense for people to follow a mere visionary when they had disciples of a recently living god-man as an alternative. It does not compute.

OK now granted it's a Jewish Christian document, and quite late, and it takes for granted the historicist point of view. But it mimics the situation you'd have had IF there had been a historical Jesus who the apostles had known personally on one side, and some mere visionary on the other.

It just makes so much more sense to see Paul as a visionary among visionaries, with just his own (universalist) version of a shared, visionary myth. Then it makes sense that his vision would win out - for the no-cutting-your-winkie reasons, and just for the genial inclusiveness of it. Plus he might just have been darn charismatic. None of those positives would be enough, I think, to trump Peter's argument had there actually been other apostles connected to the living HJ at some point, preaching his words, etc. In fact I reckon the only way Christianity could have grown into anything more than a particularly fervent small Jewish sect, would have been if someone with Paul's universalist vision had also known the living Jesus and had that kudos.

Gamera

The passage has a lot of ambiguities. As I pointed out below, I think we can dispense with the 500 as the assembly at Pentecost, who are mentioned as witnesses and not necessarily as apostles.

I'm wondering now if Ben's prior "counter-reconstruction" might be helpful if applied in a more limited manner. Perhaps the idea is this: the risen Jesus appeared to Peter and the other apostles in helter skelter fashion, and he appeared to a lot of other witnesses, and then later he appeared to all the original apostles (minus Judas). This might be the encounter/meal refered to in Acts 1:4.

Since it is limited to a meeting among the original apostles (not some super convention of 500 new apostles) and since it is arguably recorded elsewhere, it avoids the objections I mentioned in my discussion with Ben.

spamandham

I agree that it suggests they were already apostles at the time Jesus appeared to them, but I conclude exactly the opposite from this than you. If any of them had known Jesus personally, it's very odd that Paul does not make any distinction between that type of appearance and the appearance to Paul. The implication is that the type of appearance was the same for Peter, the twelve, etc. as it was for Paul - a vision. A further implication is that these visions are the first time any of these people ever saw Jesus, since Paul's vision was his first time seeing Jesus, and Paul makes no distinction regarding the appearnces of Jesus to the others.

I don't see anywhere that Paul claims an appearance by Jesus is a pre-requisite to apostleship, and I would tend to expect him to use their title 'apostle' anachronistically even if a vision was what caused apostleship.

"The graduates received their diplomas at 12:00" is perfectly understood by all to mean "the guys who had not yet graduated, but who graduated as a result of receiving their diplomas, received said diplomas at 12:00" with no implication that they were graduates prior to that moment.

"President Bush smoked crack when he was in college" is also perfectly understood by all to mean "Bush, who is currently the President, smoked crack when he was in college" with no implication that he was President when he was in college.

I certainly don't speak Greek, so I have no idea if these concepts translate.