aa5874

What now, amateur!!! "You haven't got the languages" now You have switched from "credibility" to "coherence". You are NOT making much sense. You may be confusing a JUROR with a LAWYER.

Well, amateur, why are you CHALLENGING people about the Pauline writings when "you haven't got the languages"?

How do you KNOW the Pauline writers had visions? Why do you RELY on the words of "Paul" when " you don't have the languages"?

You ADMIT you are an amateur.

What authority do you have to argue about the Pauline writings?

GakuseiDon

I think there is evidence, though probably not the evidence that you are after in particular. If we look at Wells again, he writes (my emphasis below):
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode.../earliest.html

Some recent critics have gone so far as to deny even that the early Christians believed Jesus ever to have lived on Earth as a man. I refer to Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, joint authors of The Jesus Mysteries (London: Thorsons, 1999), and to Earl Doherty, whose relevant publications include a 1997 article in the Journal of Higher Criticism and a series of articles on the Internet. [3] The strength of Freke and Gandy's account lies in bringing out the pagan parallels, particularly in the mystery religions, to earliest Christianity. They do not, however, accept that pagan motifs have been grafted onto a Jesus who was at least believed to have existed historically, but insist that Paul regarded Christ as 'a timeless mythical figure'. Doherty likewise holds that Paul speaks of Jesus 'in exclusively mythological terms'. I have never -- in spite of what some of my critics have alleged -- subscribed to such a view: for Paul does, after all, call Jesus a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), born of a woman under the (Jewish) law (Gal.4:4), who lived as a servant to the circumcision (Rom. 15:8) and was crucified on a tree (Gal.3:13) and buried (I Cor. 15:4)...

In any case, what was the point of Christ's assuming human form (Phil.2:6-11) if he did not come to Earth to redeem us? It is of course true that the source of statements such as 'descended from David' is scripture, not historical tradition. But this does not mean, as Doherty supposes, that the life and the death were not believed to have occurred on Earth. The evangelists inferred much of what they took for Jesus life-history from scripture, but nevertheless set this life in a quite specific historical situation. I am quite unconvinced by Doherty's suggestion that 'it is very possible' that even these four evangelists 'regarded their midrashic tale as symbolic only and its Jesus figure as not historical'. Again, Doherty does not allow that stories of martyrdoms in historical situations -- in, for instance, the books of the Maccabees -- could have prompted Christian ideas about Jesus' death as a historical event, since the deaths in the Jewish stories were 'invariably for the sake of the Law' and 'dying for sin is not in the same category'.

And on the archontes point, Wells writes:

Perhaps Doherty's strongest point is Paul's assertion (1 Cor.2:8) that Jesus was crucified by supernatural forces (the archontes). I take this to mean that they prompted the action of human agents: but I must admit that the text ascribes the deed to the archontes themselves.

And I like this final comment by Wells, indicating one important difference between Wells and Doherty:

Doherty tells that he was launched on the path of scepticism by my own critical work, but finds that my scepticism does not go far enough. This is certainly a novel criticism for me to face.

gurugeorge

I don't dispute that the concept of the cult deity has some human, earthly, fleshly aspects to it.

But that doesn't amount to a concept of a human being, or evidence of a human being.

The whole muddle comes about because the HJ idea is a rationalistic account that HYPOTHESIZES a human being as the root of the mythical story - whether the sketchy story in "Paul" or the more fleshed-out story in the gospels.

Where is the reason for introducing such a hypothesis? Upon what evidence does the hypothesis that there was a human being seem plausible?

There's nothing there. As aa keeps rightly insisting, the entity being spoken of throughout the NT Canon is mythical - born of a virgin impregnated by a spirit, blad-de-blah-de-blah.

The only reason anyone even thought such a hypothesis plausible (and not that the story is just like any other myth that has some fleshly, earthly aspects to it - e.g. like the Krishna myth) is because at the end of the 19th century some rationalistic Christians wanted to keep their cake and eat it.

They were too rationalistic to believe the myth, but they thought they could still preserve something called "Christianity" by hypothesizing an ordinary human being at the root of it.

It's total bollocks. There isn't a single connection in ANY of the evidence we have, between some person who might be considered a reliable witness, and another human being called "Jesus" - nobody we can historically pin down who heard a human Jesus' words, nobody we can historically triangulate who spoke to him, touched him, felt him, heard of him preaching at the time. Nothing. Not a sausage.

So why hypothesize the fellow? Yes, it's a vague possibility, but there are other, far more plausible scenarios (mine, for instance ).

The whole thing in "Paul" is just mystical stuff - it's blatant proto-gnosticism, it's what later developed into what was later called "Gnosticism". It's about personal salvation through good works, attunement and eventually some kind of mystical ascent/union. That effort the individual makes is the cry "Abba, Father!" God hears that cry and redeems his Son from the slavery of matter (i.e. the person realizes their oneness with Christ, their "immortality", their essential union with God - that is the "resurrection", the mystical union, akin to satori or whatever, in other mystical traditions).

Christ it's so fucking obvious, it's got nothing whatsoever to do with some real human idiot called "Jesus" who walked the earth and was crucified by the Romans at all. That comes later, as part of a sub-sect's attempt to capture the movement by connecting their forebears with the deity's time on earth. That's what gives the ILLUSION of a human being to us rationalists, that bit of jiggery-pokery.

It's a 50 CE version of Eckhart Tolle. Something that gave its earliest followers powerful personal epiphanies, not some vague bollocks promise about some vague afterlife nonsense or some eschatological tosh, but something real and powerful like a drug that affected their lives in unforgettable ways. What picture does "Paul" give of what went on in the congregations? - it's bloody occultism, plain and simple.

It's religion, the hard stuff, the stuff William James canvasses in "Varieties of Religious Experience", stuff that alters perception, alters thinking; not some vapid intellectual mincing around juggling with texts.

That comes much later, when the original impetus has died down and the movement becomes something semi-respectable that people send their second sons to join because they're such layabouts they can't do anything else.

gurugeorge

aa, do you have any other tool in your intellectual arsenal than tu quoque? It's kind of amusing the first 6 times you do it, but even the sweetest sweets pall after you've consumed 5kg.

aa5874

What straw now!! Answer the question!!!

You ADMIT you are an amateur and "don't have the languages" yet is vigorously arguing that the Pauline writings are CREDIBLE when it is claimed "Paul" saw the resurrected Jesus Christ.

You MUST know that "visions" cannot even be shown to be credible or that the contents of the vision be proven to be CREDIBLE as described.

What authority do you have to show that "Paul" is CREDIBLE when he claimed he SAW the resurrected Jesus?

What authority do you have to challenge others about the credibility of the Pauline writings?

No more straw.

archibald

I read it in the text, more than once, where it says there were followers before him who had the same beliefs. You, otoh, need at least a couple of 'ESIs (Explanation by Speculative Interpolation) . :]

You also require an unusual switch. For example, you have the Roman Christians Paul is writing to believing in a ghostie Jesus. Not many decades later, Roman Christians believe in an earthly one. And there is no clear trace of the mythicist cult.

In fact, if we actually utilize another extant text (Tacitus' Annals, more independent, for once, hallelujah), we have a not unreasonable basis to think that said Roman Christians actually believed in an earthly Jesus as early as 50CE.

Incidentally, what do you think of the suggestion that the Philippan hymn (see above post) is pre-Pauline?


George, I've almost lost count of the number of times I've already done this, including over my last few posts in this thread. I know it's not what you are asking for (explicit reference to a man someone before Paul had met) but overall, there seem to be more than enough references. And even when they aren't directly referring to a particular man, they still appear to be relating to earthly events.

Sometimes I really do wonder why all this is not enough. :]

GakuseiDon

You're mixing two things here: evidence for Paul's thinking and evidence for a HJ.

People back then thought that Hercules and Attis lived on earth. They are still myths.

If Paul claims that Jesus had some human, earthly, fleshly aspects, then that is evidence for what Paul believed. Best explanation: Paul thought that Jesus was a man who had lived on earth.

How Paul describes Jesus: a man who had died in Paul's recent past.

Not in Paul. Jesus is a man, a Jew who was an Israelite. No virgin-birth in Paul.

Here Paul seems to be saying that Christ came from the Israelites. I can't think of any reading that might be as plausible for someone described as "seed of David" and "seed of Abraham [who is to come]":

Rom 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,
4 who are Israelites, to whom [pertain] the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service [of God], and the promises;
5 of whom [are] the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ [came], who is over all

What's your alternative reading for the passage?

archibald

Toto,

Now that I have clarified regarding that one part of my post, do you have any comments on the post as a whole, and/or the other recent posts where I refer to other verses from the epistles and list some indicators (a) to (f)? I know you are a mod, and therefore probably a busy person.

archibald

Finally, I have had time to read A of I chapter 9 again. :]

And I am still wondering where the 'crucifixion in an upper realm' is dscribed.

This seems to be the passage in question:

'10. But they sat not on their thrones, nor were their crowns of glory on them.

11. And I asked the angel who was with me: "How is it that they have received the garments, but have not the thrones and the crowns?"

12. And he said unto me: "Crowns and thrones of glory they do not receive, till the Beloved will descent in the form in which you will see Him descent [will descent, I say] into the world in the last days the Lord, who will be called Christ.

13. Nevertheless they see and know whose will be thrones, and whose the crowns when He has descended and been made in your form, and they will think that He is flesh and is a man.

14. And the god of that world will stretch forth his hand against the Son, and they will crucify Him on a tree, and will slay Him not knowing who He is.

15. And thus His descent, as you will see, will be hidden even from the heavens, so that it will not be known who He is.'

http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...ascension.html

(my bold)

But that isn't, surely, a description of a crucifixion in an upper realm?

Toto

This thread has become unwieldly. Do you expect me to search through it for some unidentified post with points a through f?

Why don't you start a new thread?