ApostateAbe

I certainly wouldn't deny that Paul thought of Jesus as something much like a god--a prophet, messiah, Son of God turned spiritual being--but there are no explicit equations of Jesus with God in the writings of Paul. We need to remember that Paul was a Jew, and Jews are very stridently monotheistic.

GakuseiDon

I don't understand your point, I'm afraid. Can you explain what you mean, please?

(ETA) Okay, I just read your response to Abe. I deny that Paul thought that Jesus was God. Paul clearly states that:

"[Christ Jesus. . .] who came from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom 1:3-4)"

You can't get much clearer than that. Paul didn't think that Jesus was God. He thought that Christ became "Son of God" through obedience to God and the resurrection of the dead. In later pagan eyes, Christ became divine because he did what every person who became divine did -- he ascended into the heavens. Pagans thought Julius Caesar became divine because his spirit -- in the form of a comet -- was seen going into the heavens.

From a Jewish perspective, Paul's view of Jesus was not unprecedented: Philo writes how Moses "was called the god and king of the whole nation". I look at this in my review of Doherty's book:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...view3.html#3.5

And some time afterwards, when he [Moses] was about to depart from hence to heaven, to take up his abode there, and leaving this mortal life to become immortal, having been summoned by the Father, who now changed him, having previously been a double being, composed of soul and body, into the nature of a single body, transforming him wholly and entirely into a most sun-like mind...

… he was buried without any one being present so as to know of his tomb, because in fact he was entombed not by mortal hands, but by immortal powers, so that he was not placed in the tomb of his forefathers, having met with particular grace which no man ever saw...

... What more shall I say? Has he not also enjoyed an even greater communion with the Father and Creator of the universe, being thought unworthy of being called by the same appellation? For he also was called the god and king of the whole nation, and he is said to have entered into the darkness where God was; that is to say, into the invisible, and shapeless, and incorporeal world, the essence, which is the model of all existing things, where he beheld things invisible to mortal nature; for, having brought himself and his own life into the middle, as an excellently wrought picture, he established himself as a most beautiful and Godlike work, to be a model for all those who were inclined to imitate him.

aa5874

It is COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS and NOW deliberately mis-leading to promote the PROPAGANDA that the Pauline Jesus was a MAN when it is the COMPLETE DOCUMENTED OPPOSITE.

It is the PAULINE WRITINGS that claim "Paul" was NOT the Apostle of a Man and did NOT get his Gospel from man.See Galatians 1.1-12

The Pauline writings are PART of the NT CANON and MUST be compatible with the teachings of the Church that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate.

You are SPREADING PROPAGANDA and is NO longer engaged in a RATIONAL discussion. You are COMPLETELY OBSESSED with your INVENTION perhaps like Marcion and his PHANTOM.

HJ has NO documented birth and NO documented flesh just like Marcion's Phantom.

Sheshbazzar

However Avi, these things would have been of the utmost importance to the 'ger toshavim' "the strangers within thy gates" resident aliens, those Gentiles who lived among, worked with and for, and worshiped the God of the Jews along with the Jews from the time of Moses, And to any Jew who was at all concerned with, and sympathetic to their place within society, and with their eventual acceptance as -'Gentiles' remaining Gentiles- into the Kingdom of Heaven

This would have been a subject with which all 'ger toshavim' and their Jewish friends and employers would have been deeply concerned with long before any 'new' religion arrived.
Omitting any reference to that 'new religion' and its eventual mythical JC figure. It should be quite understandable that these resident Gentiles who also believed in and worshipped the Jewish God along with the Jews, would desire acceptance into the Scriptural Heaven in which they also believed along with the the Jewish nation, and that those Jews who valued these 'righteous Gentiles' would also wish for their continued companionship in Paradise, and not their destruction.
Both the Law and the Prophets are explicit in their promises to The Gentiles. Neither 'The Kingdom to Come' under the Messiah, nor 'The Kingdom of Heaven' would be exclusively Jewish, but that the Gentiles (by definition those uncircumcised in the flesh) would also be the inheritors of the good things of The Promises.
Shaul the Pharisaic Jew could not prevent what latter men would contrive to do to his good words of hope for The Nations.

ApostateAbe

Doug, I have no big disagreements with any of that.

I claimed, "The whole purpose of the life of Jesus was the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus." That is not just a projection backward from orthodoxy, but it is a theory that seems to plausibly explain why Paul and the other authors of the epistles focus almost exclusively on the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul spells it out many times; for example, in Romans 7:4.

In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

And Romans 14:8-9.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

You may see from this that the orthodoxy did not accept such belief about the purpose of the life of Jesus by accident. It was in their earliest scriptures. If you think that the authors of the epistles thought differently about the purpose of the life of Jesus, then I think you have a responsibility to show it. It is not up to me to prove that the details of the life of Jesus before his crucifixion were mostly irrelevant to the purposes the epistles. Since you are proposing a probabilistic difficulty, it is up to you to show that such details would have been relevant and are expected to show up more than they do.

ApostateAbe

If you propose probabilistic difficulties and a not-so-obvious solution for them, then it most certainly matters whether or not the prima facie evidence supports your assertion that there is a problem. I know that such issues have been covered--yeah, maybe Josephus's mention of James, the brother of Jesus, was interpolated. But, the conclusions that are somewhat unique to those of your position are not relevant to the point that there is a problem that demands an explanation. Suppose you were to take such thinking to its extreme--you can reinterpret all of the evidence for the name, "Jesus Christ," as referring to the Emperor Tiberius, and then you can demand, "Why isn't Jesus mentioned even once throughout all of the New Testament? That is a problem that demands an explanation." Sometimes, problems are problems only from one's own unique perspective.

aa5874

The Pauline Jesus MUST be compatible with the teachings of the Church that Jesus was God INCARNATE.

It is ABSURD to claim that the CANON of the Church contains the very Heresy that they condemn.

It is UTTER Nonsense for the Church to have CANONISED a KNOWN HERETIC.

Now, examine Galatians 4.4.

Ga 4:4 - In the Pauline writings, Jesus was the SENT Son of God.

Please FIRST UNDERSTAND what the CANON of the Church represents.

Please FIRST UNDERSTAND what God Incarnate means.

Jesus was FIRST GOD and then made flesh.

You don't seem to understand the NT CANON.

aa5874

ONCE YOU introduce the NT Canon as evidence for HJ then then that is tantamount to PERJURY. You KNOW in advance of posting that the NT Canon is about God Incarnate or the Child of a Ghost.

The Pauline witness when cross-examined will ADMIT that he did write that Jesus was RAISED from the dead and that he was NOT the Apostle of a MAN AND DID not get his Gospel from man.

You cannot enter the NT into EVIDENCE and IGNORE that the Matthew witness will claim that he did write that Jesus was the Child of a Ghost which corroborates his written statement.

You cannot use the NT Canon as evidence for HJ when the very Church which produced the NT CANON condemned HJ as HERESY.

Use of the NT Canon for Heretical purposes is tantamount to Perjury.

Doug Shaver

If they didn't mention him, then on what grounds do we assume anything about what they believed about him?

Doug Shaver

I don't see how it could be anything but a projection backward from orthodoxy, if you're using it to explain the absence of any reference in the epistles to Jesus' pre-crucifixion life. Your theory presupposes that Paul's beliefs were essentially the same as those of what became Christian orthodoxy a couple of centuries later.

I see his words, and I see your interpretation of his words. Your interpretation seems to just beg the question.