dog-on

Gurugeorge,

Would you agree that Galatians could, very well, be an autobiographical work of Marcion's?

gurugeorge

It's definitely an option (as I understand from Price's article on the evolution of the Pauline Canon), but I found DC Hindley's argument on my Marcion's Paul thread pretty convincing, that what logically has to be the primary layer of the passage he scrutinizes in that thread has a Jewish element (or at least, an element acknowledging the importance of Scripture).

Price pitches it about right I think, re. Marcion's Paul: "Like Muhammad in the Koran, [Marcion] would have read his own struggles back into the careers of his biblical predecessors." So Marcion may well have edited Galatians to reflect his own struggle, but I think the original layer is not Marcion but someone else. This someone else could still have been a Samarian and/or proto-Gnostic and all that, but whoever he was, it seems he took Scripture seriously.

GakuseiDon

Really? A pagan belief in the historicity of their gods whose myths were represented as taking place on earth is evidence for a similar belief in Paul, all things considered. Did any pagans believe that the myths of their gods DIDN'T take place on earth? If no, then what is the significance for Paul? How was Paul's beliefs different from pagans' in this regard?

GakuseiDon

Well, I am interested, but perhaps I should have said "relevent to this particular question". Showing that Paul believed that Jesus existed at some point in heaven doesn't show that he believed that at some point Jesus didn't exist in heaven. Given that the early Christians state in a few places that Jesus actually entered heaven, and there is no other place for Jesus to be except on earth, then this suggests strongly a belief that Jesus was on earth.

Paul had to mean something. If passages like "born of a woman" and "descendent of David" are tentatively accepted as genuine to Paul, then we can at least evaluate Paul's possible meanings. The most obvious meaning is the face reading. What do we have that goes against that? Showing that Paul later believed that Jesus went to heaven doesn't appear to affect the face meaning IMO.

GakuseiDon

Well, no. I haven't seen anyone make that point in threads here. Mind you, I have a growing list of people I ignore, so I could have missed it. The comments on this are mostly that the MJ position relies on handwaving, claims of interpolation, lack of analysis of data, ignoring the face reading of comments, etc. Pretty much the same accusations made about HJers, now that I come to think of it. But I've never seen it expressed the way you put it.

If there is only the Gospel Jesus, then why call this thread "HJ? Put your cards on the table!" Why didn't you call it "Gospel Jesus? Put your cards on the table!" How are you distinguishing between the two?

Sure, I have no problem with that.

"Midrash" and "pesher" are interesting topics, but I'm afraid I don't know much about them, except they seem to be a get-out-of-jail card used by mythicists. So why wouldn't those statements by Paul necessarily imply belief in a HJ? What is the midrashic meaning of "born of a woman" and "descendent of David" such that Paul didn't believe the statements to be true?

gurugeorge

The fact that in the same breath Paul states that he got the revelation from Jesus Christ himself, that this Christ "appeared" to several people, and that his Christ is a divine being. The face reading is therefore actually that he was talking about a nonhuman and only "historical" (with scare quotes) entity (i.e. a mythical entity with pseudo-historical details).

GakuseiDon

1. "Born of a woman", etc don't appear to have been given by revelation from Jesus.
2. Paul seems to have persecuted Christians before his revelations. Surely he knew something about Christ beforehand?

That doesn't make much sense. How many nonhuman figures were thought to have been "born of a woman" and were a descendent of living people? (Roman gods who had human parentage were thought to have existed in history) Can we have some examples?

the Radio Star

For what it's worth, Pontius Pilate was mentioned by Tacitus.

dog-on

You know, I must apologize, I had a feeling that the term "Gospel Jesus" would only add confusion. I should have edited it, or at least defined my meaning. Gospel Jesus, refers to the, seemingly, original source of any information about the character, with Gospel being used, maybe incorrectly, as a reference to the NT.

I do differentiate between a full-on Cosmic Gospel Christ and the regular guy version that HJ attempts to locate. In the case of these arguments, I assume the HJ position is referring to the latter, but the latter position is, to the best of my knowledge, unsupported by the record and is simply created by erasing many, many more lines of text than even believers in copius amounts of interpolation, such as myself, need do.


I guess you can refer to the "prophesies" used, by Christians, in the OT, here are some references that our current crop of fundi's so happily use to prove the TRUTH of their claim:

Born of a woman, look at Isa 7:14 or Gen 3:15
David's stock, Ps 89:3-4, 19, 27-29, 35-37


Check out: http://www.usbible.com/Gospel/messianic_prophecies.htm for a good example of what giving someone a very long rope can accomplish. How do you see this as a "get-out-of jail" card?


I have no idea what "Paul" actually personally believed about the "mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings", as I have no idea what J. Swaggart personally believes about his own, personal Jesus. I just don't think that it necessarily follows that he must have believed in a recent historical earthly visitation from CJ in order for his writings to make sense. So, therefore, such a belief would be an additional and unnecessary requirement.

gurugeorge

Why should Paul preface every item of his doctrine with a reiteration of his claim of revelation? That seems to be a rather bad use of the argument from silence. He says of his teaching in general that it comes directly from Christ and that it was prophesied in Scripture, and he's pretty unequivocal about it. (Indeed he seems to use his direct revelation as a sort of trump card.)

Perhaps, but we have no way of knowing what people "knew" about Christ beforehand. All Paul says is that he "appeared" to some people.

I find the Radikalkritik idea that the reference to persecution is a possible interpolation to make Paul fit in with the Acts story quite plausible, but even if it's not an interpolation, I don't see how it helps us decide on historicity.

Were they thought by all people to have existed in history? Or only some? How many and varied interpretations of the Greek and Roman gods are there amongst ancient, Hellenistic, Jewish, and Graeco-Roman philosophers, thinkers, religious people, known initiates of the mysteries, mystics, magicians? To my knowledge (I don't have the time to dig up the references, but you are a learned person, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here), there are mythico-historical interpretations, eheumeristic interpretations, allegorical interpretations, rationalistic explanations-away (even in ancient times!), mystical interpretations (allegory about subjective mystical experience), magical interpretations (allegory about subjective visionary experiences and the "knacks" to be acquired). The myth "space/time" is variously conceived as non-existent (i.e. allegorical or merely fictional), some time in the past on earth, some "primordial time" on earth, some "primordial" time in another plane or level of being, some time in the earthly past on anoher plane or being, or in a kind of "Dreamtime" (i.e. continuously enacted in a nonlinear space and time).

There is no "official" interpretation of ancient myth that Paul would have to match up to, myths were just themes (mythemes) that people read their own obsessions and ideas into, and elaborated as their obsessions and interests dictated (just as with the Christ myth). Rationalists looked at them rationally, mystics looked at them mystically, philosophers looked at them philosophically, magicians looked at them magically, ordinary folk looked at them in a homely way, etc., etc.

What's the historical content of the Jewish Messiah myth? There isn't any, he is supposed to come in the "future", to vanquish the Archons and rule over a Jewish-led Utopia.

What's the historical content of the originial Joshua Messiah myth? There isn't any, he came in the "past", his work is done, his victory won, he fooled the Archons, and his spiritual Kingdom is already here and present, if you just accept it; you are already redeemed, if you "die in Christ" (sympathetically re-enact his death and resurrection). The minimal historical references are Scripture-based.

That's all Joshua the Anointed One originally is, that's all you can find on the face of it in the text we have of Paul - a Jewish myth turned on its head, highly spiritualised, with a sprinkling of dying/rising god.

But the very problem with turning the myth on its head like this is that some people will take it more literally than others, will take a more historical kind of interpretation, and wonder where and when he came, what are the details, etc.?

Hence the flowering of stories to fill the gap.