GakuseiDon

Let's assume that is true, that much of what is in Paul is mid Second Century. Taking that into account, what is the apparent meaning of the passage:

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 would a mid Second Century redactor have meant by this passage, in your view?

Horatio Parker

My bad. Looking at other translations, I see my mistake; I thought "fathers" was meant as "father's" IOW God's.

archibald

Doesn't 'Paul' actually use the word, 'man' also, earlier in Romans (5:15)?

'But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.'

(KJV)

The greek bible I am sourcing has the word 'anthropou'.

Kapyong included a few other 'mans', when he listed the 90 places 'Paul' seemed to reference an earthly Jesus.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....305782&page=17

His list relates to point (a) at the start of my OP at 'Is HJ not the more likely explanation' thread.

And that's only 'Paul'.

The overall pattern, coupled with the lack of any clear references, anywhere, to him being non-earthly.....

Surely, on any objective, evidence based level, one can hardly be blamed for thinking that it seems more likely he was thought of as being earthly.

aa5874

Well, Jesus Christ was "Paul's" angel?

archibald

After he was supposed to have died, yes.

Sheshbazzar

Significantly, according to the text he did not say to Paul 'I am the LORD your God', The formula used by the God of Israel repeatedly to identify Himself in Scripture. (around 162 times)

This 'Jesus' speaking to 'Paul' -according to the NT texts-, had died many years before.
According the NTs description of this 'Jesus' after his death, he could magically appear and vanish at will, even in locked rooms. And after his death possessed an unnatural body, of flesh and bone but without blood. (Lk 24:36- 39 & Jhn 24:24-27)
A dead body, (theologically, his blood was poured out at death on the cross as a blood sacrifice for sin) a cadaver that comes back to a semblance of life is the definition of a ZOMBIE.

I won't argue with you the existence of that 'higher Christology' that is present in the Pauline corpus....certainly it is there, but shows many evidences of having been redacted (cobbled) in by other latter church pseudo-'Paul's'.

As for whatever 'The supposed apostles BEFORE him' may actually have thought, we do not know. What the texts tell us is utterly untrustworthy redacted and interpolated horse-shit of no value at all in establishing what the real situation was. Those Messianic Jews in Jerusalem might well have laughed at 'Paul'.
More likely if he was, as it is alleged, claiming that some dead man, a criminal, was the Almighty God of the Jews, they would have been more inclined to execute him for preaching such a blasphemy.

Sure 'Paul' lied. But then again most of what it is said that -'Paul' says'- was never spoken by, written by, or even known to Paul himself.
A lot of liars lied in his name. That fact is not his fault. Perhaps Paul -the REAL PAUL- never wrote one single thing that was a lie.

aa5874

"Paul's" angel was killed in the Sub-lunar by archons?

J-D

'According to the flesh' is not a natural idiom in modern English, which makes it difficult for me to interpret. But I don't have the knowledge to exclude the possibility that in the contemporary Greek it was a natural idiom with an easily recognised plain meaning. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, I don't know.

'Christ' is different. I know where that word comes from and what it means. I know (as we all do) the way it's most commonly used now, but I also know that two thousand years ago a plain meaning (to Jews, anyway, and to people familiar with relevant Jewish traditions) would have been something close to 'somebody ritually designated for a religiously significant role'.

I already mentioned that it's an interesting question why the writer should have emphasised that he was an Israelite/Jew 'according to the flesh', whatever that phrase means. There are now and there were then people who were Jews not by birth but by conversion. I don't know, but it seems possible that the writer wanted to emphasise status as a Jew by birth and not only by conversion. If that's what was going on, it suggests further possible lines of speculation. Maybe there was some rivalry between preachers/writers and some of them were attempting to undermine the status of others by accusing them of being 'only' converts. Maybe the writer of the passage was asserting 'birth' status as a way of claiming greater credibility than antagonists known to be 'only' converts. Or maybe the writer of the passage had been accused of being 'only' a convert, or feared such an accusation, and was motivated to deny such accusations. I don't know that any of these things are true, but any of them would be a possible explanation of the passage under discussion.

Kapyong

Gday,

It's not 90 - it's about 2 dozen claims (many repeated over and over.)

Which 2 dozen contain maybe four to five that matter.

But still you pretend there are 90?


Q.

Sheshbazzar

'Paul' maybe thought or even believed that there had been an earthly Jebus, but admits that he never met any such person.
His 'witness' for a earthly, flesh and blood Jebus is thus no more substantial or valid than that of any Christian of today. He is talking about a possible stranger that he never met.
And outside of his religious convictions, and his claimed phantasmagorical 'visions', 'Paul' had no more evidence for the existence of any earthly Jebus than you or I do.

Personally, I believe these Pauline 'conversion' stories are bogus, that they did not at all originate with the original and real Paul, but are the product of emergent church's theological tampering with pre-Christian Jewish writings. Paul likely never spoke or wrote 90% of what has been falsely attributed to him.






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