Toto

You are admitting some serious deficiencies here. Please think about it. PM me if necessary.

Rick Sumner

Ι'm not sure that Paul's letters as they stand are fundamentally incompatible at all. Parts of them are, to be sure. But then we start to run into problems with the view that things are missing that would prove someone's case.

See, if we take the view that Paul was redacted to combat a theology, we're rather forced to conclude that that redaction was additions, not subtractions, because if we remove elements he'll still fit it just fine.

In other words, if they were removing things, they did a remarkably piss-poor job of it, which makes it difficult to suggest that that's what happened.

If we're going to argue for interpolations, then fine (though I'd encourage it to be looked at case by case. While I may not agree with spin, at least it can be said that he endeavours to do so, and applies things consistently. That's considerably better than "It's been interpolated and I know not where"). But we can't suggest that they've been heavily and thoroughly redacted with an eye towards homogenity. If that was the case, we might expect it to better serve the accused purpose.

Rick Sumner

I would delight in seeing you lay out a theory whereby this can be sustained, not as a "possibility," but as a plausible explanation of the development of the Pauline epistles.

Because, as we stand right now, and despite numerous requests for you to more fully formulate it, you haven't done so. You haven't developed such a plan, or any kind of epistemic approach to the epistles. Which means, whether you like it or not, an arbitrary desire is exactly what is shaping your conclusions.

Even if we agree that it has been heavily interpolated, you suggest that you can't prove what's interpolated or what isn't, what's authentic and what's not, but then cheerily decide that "phrases like 'born of a woman'" are representative of the interpolater.

The response to that is obvious, if we're going to develop our interpolation theories without expanding upon the whys, the wheres and the hows, you have no reason to think it more likely that "born of a woman" represents interpolation than you do to assume "according to scripture" is. Nothing except personal preference. I can't think of a standard more arbitrary than that.

So if we're just going to decide it's interpolated but with a shrug decree it unprovable, then I'll just take the obvious tack. The verses not supporting me are the interpolations, the ones not supporting you are authentic.

Rick Sumner

This is going to sound crazy to you, but I actually don't have the same reverence for Carrier you do. I'm not even waiting for his book to come out. When it does, there's a better than passing chance I won't even bother getting it until well after it's released. Crazy, I know. I moonlight as a hatter.

He's welcome to disagree. That just means he's wrong.

But I'd be delighted to see where he spells out, with wide reference to contemporary historical inquiry, what exactly biblical historians are doing that other historians are not.

GakuseiDon

But why couldn't Paul have been a First Century version of those 2nd Century Christians? That's the implication of the ad hoc nature of your comment.

Doherty does something similar in his new book. 1 Tim was, apparently, written by a mythicist. Doherty gives the indicators to show this. However, there is one passage there that gives him a problem. So his suggestion is that perhaps 1 Tim was written by a historicist who either didn't know or didn't care about historical details, and incorporated material from earlier mythicists. But that opens up the implication that other writers may have been the same. How can you tell? By the lack of historical details? By the presence of mythicist indicators? Doherty has already allowed that both elements can be found in historicist writings.

And that's the problem: every ad hoc solution has implications that should not be ignored. They should count towards determining what makes the best possible solution.

Toto

I don't understand this. Are you asking why Paul was not like the 2nd century Christians who thought that Jesus was historical for theological reasons? Perhaps he was, but then he can't be used to show that Jesus actually was historical. And then you have the added problem of trying to show why Paul had no curiosity about any detail of Jesus' life or death or the place where he was crucified or resurrected.

So other writers were historicists for theological reasons but rewrote earlier mythicist material? How does that help the historicist case? Shouldn't you be able to locate an early historicist writing that was later mythologized, rather than early mythicist material that later is overwritten with historical details?

Rick Sumner

How do you plan to tell them apart? If I suggested that a document met that description, wouldn't you just retort that it was the converse?

Toto

Did you have a document in mind or is this just hypothetical?

Rick Sumner

It's already happened with documents I might have in mind. So I suppose it's hypothetical. Let me rephrase the question:

What specific criteria would you suggest show an historicist document mythologized and not the other way around?

GakuseiDon

No, I'm asking: how can you tell that he wasn't?

Well, because he was like your hypothetical Second Century historicists.

I'm talking about the implications arising from an ad hoc solution. Let me repeat your comment from above:

The interpolator did not foresee the 20th century debates, so did not think to add details about Jesus' mothers name, or make sure that Paul taked to Peter about what Jesus actually said. Those were not the issues that 2nd century Christians cared about.

Having raised the possibility that there were historicists who didn't care about those issues, how can you then reject the idea that Paul was a historicist who didn't care about those issues either?