ynquirer

What I see is that you went wrong in this:

The suggestion was Bauer’s, not Detering’s.

Do you mean to imply that I asked for you to run into the aforementioned mistake?

I regret to say this, but - why do you insist in using the word 'mythical' wherever 'spiritual' does better? Mutatis mutandis much disagreement would fade away.

spamandham

The straightforward read of such statements, is that Paul admits to being a mystic, which means we should be interpreting his writings with that in mind. What he writes in regard to that which is part of his theology, is more than likely symbolic of something else.

gurugeorge

For the last time, Bauer:

... was convinced not only that the Paul in Acts represents an imaginary historical figure, but also that the representation of the apostle in the letters “sprung from the same ground of deliberate reflection.

Whereas Detering thinks (as I put it):

that "Paul" was actually "Simon Magus", a real historical person

This is confirmed, again, by the very passage you quoted but appear not to have read very carefully:

For Bauer, this figure was obviously not historical, but legendary—as the name already indicates, and whose symbolism (Paul = the small one) Bauer dealt with at length

And is also confirmed by the bit from Detering I quoted:

Why do we not understand the Pseudo-Clementines in a completely literal way? Why do we not take seriously the fact that for the writer of this Jewish, anti-Pauline literature Paul is in fact no one else than Simon?

No I mean to imply that you've been digging your own hole.

Because I think the "The Anointed One" figure Paul (and Hebrews) is talking about is a mythical entity, just as mythical as the Jewish "The Anointed One" figure, but placed in the past instead of the future.

ynquirer

Hhmmm… The argument does not hold water. While it is true that Paul’s writings are full of references to the Anointed One, the Jewish myth - is you wish to call it so - points very clearly at an earthly, full-fleshed man that was expected to come. Therefore, if Paul was talking about a purely spiritual entity, as you say, he must have explained that his spiritual messiah was not the earthly messiah of the scriptures. And he quite noticeably fails to do that.

gurugeorge

I think that's what's meant by this bit (2 Corinthians 16):

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.

The general "we" here is the giveaway. He can't be meaning him and the Corinthians if he's talking about a historical Jesus, unless he changed his teaching at some point from recent-past-historical-person-Jesus to spiriritual Jesus. So if he's using the general "we", then he's saying something like: "even though we once thought of the concept of the Anointed One as pertaining to a human being, we do so no longer."

There's also the business about Christ crucified being a "stumbling block to the Jews", although I admit that could feasibly pertain to a historical J. But it also fits with the idea that he was preaching a re-jigged Christ concept (not a fleshly victor - in fact a fleshly victim - but a spiritual victor, and in the past, with his work done).

Also, my suspicion is that some of the flesh/spirit juxtaposition passages that are normally interpreted as referring to the circumcision/uncircumcision thing may actually be referring to this too, but I'd need to know Greek to be confident about that.

ynquirer

At best, Paul here uses a cryptic language. “… even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer,” may, with equal strength, be argued to mean, “even though we as Jews expected the messiah to give us power, we as Christians regard him thus no longer.”

Take notice of the previous statement, “we regard no one from a human point of view.” Should “from a human point of view” on this spot be said of fleshly existence on earth, “no one” would have had such existence, according to Paul.

gurugeorge

In and of itself that might be a reasonable interpretation, if there were other reasons to believe that The Anointed One he was talking about had had a human aspect recently living on Earth and known at one time personally by Cephas, etc. But since there's no reason to make that connection (apart from the later proto-orthodox tradition of "apostolic successsion"), and in view of the massive weight (non-silence) of expostulation on a mostly mythic/spiritual Anointed One, I think my interpretation is better - and not at all cryptic.

That's the problem for HJ-ers. To see Paul as talking about a vision of a being who was known personally to Cephas and the others, you have to view a lot of what he says as cryptic, odd, peculiar, "silent" where you'd expect him to say things, and you have to make up excuses "oh of course he wasn't interested in the sayings and doings of Jesus because .... (even though later Christians notably have been interested in both Paul's spiritual interpretation and the actual doings and teachings of Jesus)". Now of course, contrary to common sense, these kinds of "epicyclic" explanations might be true, but what's lacking is a reason from the texts themselves to prefer that fussier explanation to the simpler one that Paul was talking about a highly spiritual mythical entity with some relatively unimportant fleshly aspects.

I think Paul believed that at some point his (and Cephas', etc.) Anointed One had some kind of fleshly existence, but it's more of a mythical/doctrinal necessity rather than a result of Paul having known some people who knew a guy who was The Anointed One.

What's being said here is something like: "as a result of the work of The Anointed One, we view people as primarily spiritual entities, and that's also how we view The Anointed One himself, not as we used to view him, as a kingly man to come."

To get to a HJ, you still need to tie the work to a human being. Otherwise you still have a mythical/spiritual entity with some fleshly aspects, like other myths.

spamandham

It's certainly possible that Paul believed that his spiritual Christ had taken solid form at some point in the indeterminate past, as you suggest, but it's also possible that Paul's christ is mystical symbolism for something else. Considering that Paul talks about mysteries and revelations gleaned from the scriptures, and Paul sees himself as the one chosen by god to reveal these mysteries, it seems a safe bet that Paul's Jesus is a mystical representation of something, rather than an heavenly being come to earth in the indeterminate past.

What character/entity from the Jewish scriptures is portrayed as suffering for the salvation of men?

Isaiah 53:5
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

gurugeorge

Yes, that's the fellow.

I actually tend to agree with Freke and Gandy that what Paul's Christianity was about was a kind of "non-dual" mystical experience, such as can be found in Buddhism, Daoism, Sufism, Vedanta, and also (more appositely), earlier in the ancient and Hellenistic worlds, in "Orphism", Pythagoreanism, Parmenides, Empedocles, Plato (not Aristotle - he was definitely tone deaf to that sort of thing altogether), the Neopythagoreans, the Neoplatonists (especially, and obviously, Plotinus). Also (again obviously) in Hermeticism and Gnosticism.

I also think that Paul's "letters" were heavily interpolated by proto-orthodoxy, though not much was excised because they were part of the foundation of proto-orthodoxy too, in Rome (i.e. they were originally shorter, more or less as Marcion's, although Marcion also probably added some of his own obsessions in his versions), and I think that they originally represented a kind of Jewish proto-gnosticism. Roughly, I think if you strip away the stuff in "Paul" that looks like theological housekeeping, and keep the "weird", opaque-looking spiritual stuff, and the little personal mentions of people and benedictions, that was the original "Paul".

This kind of "non-dual" experience (along with the usually separate, but not always, "visionary" experience - i.e. the experience of seeing, talking to, entities that don't actually exist, but seem to the experiencer to exist as much as any ordinary object, and to talk back) is something possible to most human beings, with a bit of effort (or it can occur naturally, and may indeed shade into madness on occasions), but it usually only happens to a few, or rather is usually only pursued by a few.

What the people who have these experiences tend to write is kind of "know how" notes, and each community of people who are into this kind of thing develop their own jargon and traditions, couched in terms of their cultural environment, so that the "know-how" aspect seems obscure to us. It's also usually only part of the story, because much of this kind of thing is like a "knack" that can be efficiently transmitted best in a person-to-person setting. (Again, this is ultra-clear from the Hermetic texts, but also from some of the Gnostic texts, such as Allogenes, and generally from the way the proto-orthodox spoke about Gnosticism.)

It's rather like, say the word "turn", has an ordinary meaning ("turn around please"), but it also has a jargon meaning in professional wrestling (when a wrestler switches from "face" - the good guy - to "heel" - the bad guy):

"Hogan's heel turn, after nearly twenty years as a face, shocked the wrestling world as a whole ... "

If you didn't know that "heel turn" was jargon, you might think this referred to some sort of ballet move that, for some reason, shocked the wrestling world

Likewise, terms like "flesh", "spirit", etc., in Paul, are code words for aspects of the meat and potatoes of coming to "know God", to attain the experience of "immortality" (another mystical code word, this time from ancient Greek and Graeco-Egyptian mysticism, as in Empedocles, say, and the philosophical Hermetica), or any of the other countless ways of expressing this brain phenomenon in the multitude of cultures that have come and gone on this Earth.

So actually, to my mind, even if the matter of the "historical Jesus" were cleared up (and that's a different story, because of course the conventional idea might after all be correct, and he could still have been a mystic basing his spiritual view ultimately, and in a roundabout way, on spiritual visions of a human being who had lived in his recent past), the real task of interpreting Paul would remain (should anybody be interested in something so obscure, once the "historical Jesus" dust had settled), and it would require a multidisciplinary approach, involving psychology, neurology, cognitive science, philosophy (of religion), as well as (naturally) the study of ancient history, papyrology, archaeology, philology, etc. You'd also need to consult people who were familiar with these kinds of experiences (in the way some neurologists have started to study hardcore Tibetan meditators with MRI imaging, that kind of thing).

Gamera

If we do that, it produces an incomprehensible anamoly.

In Gal. 2, Paul says he took his gospel to the Jerusalem church, and presented it to James, Peter and John, who found it to be in line with their gospel. But James, Peter and John knew Jesus (according to Paul). So an historical Jesus has encroached up the mythicist Jesus, if you are going to accept Paul's rendition of events at all.