Toto

The letters of Paul cannot be reliably dated from internal evidence.

If one accepts Acts and the basic gospel story as history, Paul would have been a contemporary of Jesus - but he never met Jesus and gives no indication that he lived in the same era. He does refer to James as the Brother of the Lord (but not the brother of Jesus), but there are alternate interpretations of this phrase that make as much sense as a claim that James was a biological brother of Jesus.

Solo

I think there are plenty of indications he lived in the era in which Luke places him but you may bellieve as it suits you.

Paul's reference to James the Just (who I incidentally doubt was a biologically related to Jesus) may have had some bells put on it later but it appears to be genuine because it reveals much more than any mythmaker of the early history of the church would want to reveal. Incidentally, you forgot about Cephas and John.

Jiri

spamandham

IMHO, Paul himself admits that his knowledge came from a combination of a vision to the "third heaven" combined with revelation through Logos. Clearly, he himself admits he never knew Jesus. Even if we accept the traditional dating of Paul's writings to the mid 1st century, that still puts him a minimum of 20 years+ after the fact, assuming Jesus existed NLT 30 CE, which, admittedly, there is little reason to assume, but a later date for Jesus causes even more problems.

I'm not interested in arguing about JtB in this thread, so I'm blowing off the rest of your questions. I'd like to keep the focus as best I can on trying to answer the OP.

Solo

Knowledge of what ? The way I look at it is that Paul deals with a movement which idolizes a recently departed leader/idol. Paul argues with the Jesus-professing crowd as to the true nature of Jesus, the man (then) in heaven. The question I asked you was: why would his letters not qualify as historical witness to Jesus followers ?

I accept that (without the qualifier).

You have to do some more math on that. Paul backdates some events to which he is referring, i.e. his return to Damascus after his revelation, his first visit in Jerusalem, etc.

That's fine with me. But it was you who brought JtB up with some assertions which I requested you clarify. So I take this as admission that you were talking through your hat.

Jiri

spamandham

I would say Paul's letters do prove there was a Christian movement at the time Paul wrote. But Paul clearly never knew Jesus, and never appeals to the authority of anyone who knew Jesus either. The obvious conclusion is that Paul is not a contemporary of Jesus, which was the point I originally made. If you have a point, make it. I'm not interested in arguing.

Assume whatever you want.

Doug Shaver

I have read those discussions, or at least a substantial part of them. In a nutshell: I think those who dispute Doherty's interpretation have utterly failed to prove their case.

I don't consider any of the gospels to be a source of information about Jewish thinking during the years immediately following Jesus' death.

That is one proof text. When I read Paul's epistles in their entirety, I see a divine Christ.

I don't think Paul's Christ is at all shy of being godlike. I think his Christ is godlike, period.

To assert that Paul's Christ is a divine man is to assume your conclusion.

I think hellenized Jews could have done something like that, yes, provided the "other god" had never been a man of this world.

As for orthodox or proto-orthodox Christianity -- we're talking about what Christians were believing in Paul's time. Orthodoxy didn't exist then. And if you're referring to the Trinity, Christians can stamp their feet, wave their arms, and call it monotheism until they're blue in the face, but that doesn't make it monotheism.

Doug Shaver

I have seen such a suggestion many times, but never the evidence itself.

I've been led to believe that Dillon's The Middle Platonists (or via: amazon.co.uk) is the best current authority on that subject, and Doherty includes it among his sources.

I obtained a copy by (nonrenewable) interlibrary loan and skimmed it, which is all I had time to do before I had to return the book. Before returning it, I ordered a copy of my own from Amazon, but shipment has been delayed, so my research is hanging fire at the moment. All I can say at the moment is that I saw nothing in Dillon that was inconsistent with Doherty's claims, and some things that were at least suggestively in support of it. Whenever the book finally gets here, I will be taking a slow and careful look at it.

Also, a couple of years ago I read The Heirs of Plato by the same author and I still have that one. I'll be looking through it again before I'm done with this. As best I recall at this point, it too was at least consistent with Doherty. However, since the period it covers is before the one we're talking about, I'm not expecting it to find any smoking guns in it.

I'll do that.

Neil List

As my first foray into this forum I thought I'd throw in a tongue in cheek remark:

The BBC website records that "Jedi Knight" made it onto the list of "official relgions" in the 2001 UK Census - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1589133.stm - I wonder what future IIDB forums in 4007 CE will make of Luke Skywalker when they view that there were in excess of 10,000 Jedi Knights living in the UK in 2001? Wonder if the descendants of Spin and yenquirer will be slogging it out as to whether Darth Vader was financially or politically in charge of the Death Star?
NL

jjramsey

Considering that the reluctance to divinize a man came from the commandment "You shall have no other gods before me," your conclusion makes no sense. Worshiping another god would have been an outright violation of this commandment, whether he had never been a man of this world or not. By contrast, the kind of language used to indicate Jesus as divine avoids the idea of Jesus being totally separate from God. This tendency culminated in the now orthodox idea of the Trinity.

This is nonsense. You can argue that the Trinity is not coherent, but it is pretty silly to deny that the point of the doctrine of the Trinity is to preserve monotheism.

GakuseiDon

Really? I'll put up three points here:

1. "Born of a woman". I've seen half-a-dozen usages where it is clearly referring to a human being born on earth. Doherty (AFAIK) hasn't offered one where it doesn't refer to someone born in the sublunar realm.
2. Jesus created "lower than the angels". This mirrors a passage in Psalms, which without question is referring to mankind. Doherty's reponse? That "both Floor 5 and Floor 1 are “lower than the roof”, but they are not thereby on the same level, and both may not be inhabited by people of the same nationality". He doesn't offer any examples supporting this, though.

In both cases above, there are no passages that he has presented to support him. Yet there are passages against him. It doesn't prove that he is wrong (he could claim that the authors had a "unique" usage which would be impossible to disprove), but clearly the evidence itself is against him.

The final one is the most damaging, IMO, and hopefully you'll be able to confirm it via Dillon:

3. Doherty says that for the average pagan, the bulk of the workings of the universe went on in the vast unseen spiritual realm (the "genuine" part of the universe) which began at the lowest level of the "air" and extended ever upward through the various layers of heaven. Here a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, and Attis could be castrated. But again, he can give no examples from the literature where he shows this, while I can give examples from the literature showing how the myths were either thought to have been enacted on earth, or were allegorical, and so didn't occur at all. Some recent discussions are here:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=174800&page=5
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=175903

It's a dense book, but very useful. It convinced me that Doherty is wrong.
Before reading it, reread Doherty again. Do you understand what he says about the "fleshy sublunar" realm? e.g. Is it another dimension? Is it contiguous with ours? Did pagans believe that Attis was castrated there? (I've found that many Doherty supporters can't coherently discuss what he means by that in the first place -- they just point to the review by Carrier) If not, concentrate on that, and then see if you can find anything in Dillon that would support the idea that the pagans believed that their myths took place in a "sublunar" realm. It isn't there. Given how the myths are described, you will find that the evidence is simply against Doherty.

I've been urging Doherty supporters to look further into his ideas, beyond what they find in his book. I'd be interested in what you find out, either pro or con.

(ETA) I just realised that I forgot to ask you to define what a "Platonic spirit world" is, from the pagan perspective. Can you say what you mean? Did it include "fleshy" activities? Did pagans place the activities of their gods there? Was it located under the Moon, or was it placed in another dimension? Which pagan writers referred to the concept?