spamandham

I don't doubt this is possible. But I don't see why it is simpler than "Paul didn't know of a historical Jesus".

The mere fact that historical counter examples exist, only reinforce the possibility that Paul knew "of" but not "about" a HJ - a possibility that is mostly uncontested anyway.

But why is deemed more likely that he knew 'of' but not 'about', rather than he simply did not even know 'of'?

GakuseiDon

But there DOES appear to be some inadvertent references to a HJ in Paul. You are just glossing over them, since they are not the references you want to see. As I've always said, mythicists tend to find "silences" in Paul by reading the Gospels into him, but historicists aren't allowed to do this.

You're also assuming that we have ALL the letters from Paul or early Christianity handy. But there is a group who appears to have existed, and we don't have much literature from them -- the Jerusalem Group.

Another example of unusual silence is in the life of the Sai Baba of Shirdi (the 19th C one, not the current one). According to this Wiki article (my emphasis):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sai_Baba_of_Shirdi

Sai Baba of Shirdi or Shirdi Sai Baba (circa 1838 - October 15, 1918), (real name, birth place, and date of birth unknown), was an Indian guru, yogi and fakir, who is regarded by his Hindu and Muslim followers as a saint. Some of his Hindu followers believe that he was an Avatar of Shiva, Dattatreya, a satguru and the next incarnation of Kabir...

There is no clear record of Sai's given name, nor of his origins...

Sai arrived at the village of Shirdi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state when he was about sixteen years old (in 1854)... After approximately two months Sai Baba left Shirdi for four years[5]. It is unknown where he stayed at that time or what happened to him. There are some indications however that he met saints and fakirs, worked as a weaver and spent time with Jhansi Rani Lakshmibai during Indian Rebellion of 1857...

In 1858 Sai Baba returned to Shirdi together with Amin Bhai Patil's wedding procession. When he entered the Khandoba temple in Shirdi he was greeted by the priest Mlahaspathy with the words Ya Sai (welcome saint). The name Sai stuck to him and some time later he started being known as Sai Baba...

Sai Baba left no written works. His teachings were oral, typically short, pithy sayings rather than elaborate discourses... Biographers of Sai Baba of Shirdi (e.g. Govindrao Ragulnath Dabholkar, Smriti Srinivas, Antonio Rigpolous, Satya Pal Ruhela) when writing about him base it on what people who knew Sai Baba said and wrote. The words of two devotees of Sai who died at the turn of the twentieth century - Shivamma Thayee and Sharada Devi - are of particularly important to contemporary biographers of Sai...

Sai Baba's millions of disciples, followers and devotees believe that he had performed many miracles... According to his followers he appeared to them after his death, in dreams, visions and even in bodily form, whence he often gave them advice...

... in the nineteenth century Sai Baba's followers were only a small group of Shirdi inhabitants and a few people from other parts of India. It started developing in the twentieth century and even faster in 1910 with the Sankirtans of Das Ganu (one of Sai's devotees) who spread Sai Baba's fame to the whole of India...

Keep in mind that this is about AfS, NOT historicity. No-one questions Sai Baba's historicity, and there is literature from people who met Sai Baba, so no parallel with Paul in that respect. But wouldn't we be surprised by some silences there already, esp about Sai Baba's origin, name and early life? (His original NAME is in doubt, for Pete's sake? No-one asked him?) We can account for these if we assume that the people were more interested in "devotional" aspects rather than biographical. And if we went 2000 years into the future, and the only remaining literature WAS in fact devotional, then those silences would be magnified.

With the silences in Paul, we need to keep in mind that we can't assume that we have all the literature from that time, and what literature we have went through its own selection process from those that followed. Was there a focus on devotional aspects about Jesus? Yes, most definitely. Was there a focus on Jesus as a man? Not from what we can see. This may have been because: (1) Jesus was a mythical figure originally, (2) people at that time were simply more interested in "devotional" aspects, (3) those that followed were only interested in maintaining devotional aspects.

If the AfS is predicated on the assumption that people should have been interested in Jesus-the-man, then I think the mythicists would need to establish that early Christians SHOULD have had that kind of focus. I think that these examples show that we can't necessarily assume this to be the case.

ynquirer

On roughly equal footing to you, isn’t it? Let’s see. Paul in Romans 1:3 speaks of

Thus, according to you Paul implied that the whole Jewish people descended from David, didn’t he? Yet, wasn’t Abraham whom the Jewish people descended from? Wasn’t David only the progenitor of the royal bloodline?

With due respect, you haven’t read Paul with a modicum of care as to contribute anything of interest to the present discussion.

Dreadnought

An angle I've not really seen discussed here is the possibility that Paul knew of and about Jesus, but was far from impressed. If any of the minimalist HJs are true then it's very much possible that he was more hot air than wisdom and the final insult was that he went and got himself nailed to a cross or perhaps just retired from the movement and settled down with his wife and kids. Later a myth grew up around Jesus to contradict this picture. Perhaps the latter is more likely as apostates are rarely talked about and it would be extremely embarassing if the figurehead of the movement bailed out. I suppose this would be halfway between HJ and MJ as Paul and the rest of the movement are mystics believing in a saviour they don't know.

Dreadnought

Well, the Jewish people were believed to descend from both Abraham and Noah. Considering the number of wives and concubines that David and Salomon supposedly had I wouldn't really be surprised if all of Judea, except perhaps the Levites, could trace their ancestry to him.

DCHindley

[QUOTE=Ben C Smith;4616374]Ben,

Another possibility:

What if "Paul" knew historical details about Jesus, certainly that he was crucified (as he reacts to the criticism of some who thought that follong a crucified man was folly), but didn't care much for them and as a result seldom cited concrete details.

The important thing to remember when critiquing the thinking of "Paul" (or whoever), is that for whatever reasons he had he was of the opinion that "From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer." (2 Corinthians 5:16)

It was no longer important to him. Sure Jesus died, but what was more important was that he rose again and its implications for the individual believer.

DCH

spamandham

A straightforward read of what Paul says, that does not presume any mysticism regarding Jesus (though I don't know why we would make such an assumption considering Paul shows signs of being a mystic), does not lead to the conclusion that Jesus was a contemporary of Paul. For the very reasons you gave, it appears that devotion had already overtaken any historical aspects other than what was repeated in creedal form.

To the extent Paul's letters support a historical Jesus, they support a figure from Paul's indefinite past, rather than a contemporary. That being the case, and considering the similarities with Paul's Jesus and the suffering servant of Isaiah....

ynquirer

What if Paul, instead of knowing and/or caring too little, did know and care too much?

Ben C Smith

And except the Benjamites, right?

Ben.

Amaleq13

Because your suggestion has the additional complication of explaining the prima facie references to an HJ in Paul's letters as being something other than they appear.

IMO, Ben did a good job arguing against such a notion in this previous thread:

Paul and his older contemporary, Jesus.