Artemus

Thanks for the info. I guess it is my viewpoint that the burden of proof lies entirely with tthe HJ camp that led to the question. (You can't prove that "Fred the Not Great" didn't live when I said he did.) Perhaps I should have phrased the question "How does Paul believing in an HJ help make the case that the HJ existed?" I don't see any difference in what you outlined in the second paragraph (considering only what Paul himself wrote, and not what later writers say about him) and what we have from the gospels. But the discussions always seem to assume that if it is proven that Doherty is wrong about Paul believing in a mythical Jesus then it is proven that the historical Jesus existed. I simply don't see it.

Infidelettante

I think it quite telling that when Paul made his last trip to Jerusalem James sent him to the Temple to reaffirm his devotion to the law.

He made no visit to Golgotha to worship at the place of the crucifixion nor did he visit the tomb.

There is no mention at all of the crucifixion or resurrection. In defending their beliefs against the perceived infractions of Paul the Jerusalem Church refers only to the Law of Moses and the customs of the Jews, never to any doctrine that could be conceived of as Christian. Acts 21:17-25

I can only conclude that if there was a crucifixion it was of little importance to the Jerusalem Church. The only condition which would allow the crucifixion to be unimportant is if it were not followed by a resurrection.

JT

Derec

I have read Mack's "Lost Gospel" and I have a question. Could it be that (unlike Mack sugests in his book) teh Christ Movement of Paul was initially distinct from Jesus movement of Q that was based on teachings of a wandering Cynic named Jesus which got embelished. Later on (around time of Mark) these two got combined into the familiar Jesus Christ figure.

See if this little hypothesis gets ripped apart or what.

UMoC

capnkirk

Those are not the only two options. Consider this one for example:

Paul HAD persecuted the followers of an exclusively human Judaic Messiah. Their claims of a resurrected Jesus' precipitated Saul's vision (Damascus Road) where he conflated this resurrected Jesus with the dying-resurrected savior gods of the mystery cults of his childhood Tarsus, resulting in a Christ that had much more in common with these cults than with anything Judaic. Paul himself becomes the focal point of the obvious disconnect between traditional Judaism and Xtianity.

Sensei Meela:

Paul supposedly was executed in Rome in 62 CE, so obviously all his letters were written before then. The earliest reasonable dating for the first gospel, GMark, is about 70 CE, making it quite probable that the Gospel writers had Paul's letters for reference when writing the three Synoptics.

capnkirk

Correct! Now ask yourself why, in view of the Christ depicted in Paul's letters, The Jerusalem Church (TJC) would demand that Paul reaffirm his devotion to the Torah? Could it just be that TJC, being the observant Jews depicted in Acts, deeply suspected that Paul was preaching abrogation of the Torah (i.e. a NEW religion separate from Judaism?). Just a little further on, TJC expells Paul because they had discovered that Paul was a Roman citizen! The Roman ocupation was the first thing that a Jewish Messiah was to overthrow. Rome was the enemy! NO follower of this HJ could also be a Roman citizen! See my preceding post for some more details.

That's because TJC were NOT Xtians; they were followers of an exclusively human, non-violent, textbook Jewish messiah. The Jewish messiah was to be a human claimant to an earthly throne, not a divine sacrificial savior. They "believed" that Jesus had been resurrected, and being a monarchial rather than an ecclesiastical organization, chose James (Jesus' closest relative) to head the group (i.e. serve as Prince Regent until Jesus' expected return) rather than Peter. They never were Xtian in any recognizable contemporary sense.

On the contrary, what we are seeing in Acts is the increasingly bitter quarrel between the followers of a resurrected human waiting for his return, and a man who was preaching a radical new Christology to Gentile and Jew alike (but only abroad in the Hellenized world where this Christ concept would be readily recognized).

I realize that what I have offered here are rather confusing snippets, so let me say that all these factors are drawn from The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby, a well-credentialed (Jewish) Talmudic scholar.

Toto

I think this is essentially Doherty's hypothesis. The 'Q' movement is basically a Cynic sort of wisdom philosophy. Paul preached a heavenly spiritual Christ, not based on any earthly example. Later "Mark" wrote an allegory in which a Cynic type philosopher was crucified, using a mish-mash of details from the Jewish Scriptures and other events in which Jewish revolutionaries were crucified.

Infidelettante

Thank you Capn' for fleshing out my account with greater detail. The Mythmaker is an interesting book. I intend to read it again if I can get it away from my brother. You might enjoy The Birth of Christianity Reality and Myth by Joel Carmichael.

JT

Infidelettante

I think the Jerusalem Church could have maintained their belief in the coming Kingdom of God even without the resurrection. In any event I know of no reason to think the Jerusalem church believed in the resurrection. The spiritual resurrection of Paul was transformed into the physical resurrection of the Gospels. It does not follow that the Jerusalem Church necessarily believed Jesus rose from the dead.

JT

Vinnie

Paul makes James the benefactor of a resurrection appearance. So does the Gospel to the Hebrews. It [Paul] "could" be a lie but if the James//Jerusalem school denied the resurrection it wasn't a very good lie on Paul's part.

Vinnie

capnkirk

OK, let's start with the name. The Jerusalem 'Church' is a misnomer. There is good reason to believe that this moniker was added much later (let's save the specifics of that for later or for another thread). TJC was instead a synagogue founded by Jesus' disciples after his crucifixion, for the express purpose of waiting close to where they expected Jesus' return to be (Mount of Olives), where God's miracle would defeat the Romans. If they didn't "believe" that Jesus had been resurrected, then there would have been no reason for the group to have gathered in the first place.

By the time of Saul's Damascus Road experience, 7-9 years had passed since the crucifixion, and 10-12 years before Paul's first appearance back in Jerusalem. This chronology derives from Paul's reference to Aretas being King when he arrived in Damascus after his "epiphany" (2 Cor 11:32-33). Aretas IV, didn't gain the throne until 37 CE, and Aretas III was a contemporary of Herod Antipater (Herod the Great's father)