Toto

Citation please.

And how do to extract the "earliest traditions" from the gospels?

Chris Weimer

I'm surprised you aren't aware of I Corinthians 15:3-7.

And as for the extraction, my main methodology is to find ideas underneath the layers written over by the main authors, especially when they happen to correlate perfectly with other ideas. Perhaps you remember this thread.

Llyricist

Oi yourself, none of those things point to an historical living breathing Jesus, nor do they provide any biography for anyone in particular.... just a mileau in which someone MIGHT exist...or several people for that matter.


And you have failed to support that assertion right down the line. Seems to me he thought Christ Jesus was Lord.

AFTER the crucifiction! And sheeesh, what do you mean by mythical here? Paul could have easily thought Jesus was real.... but "spiritual". He also may have made it all up consciously, but that is not necessary for the mythicist position.

Hell, Why wouldn't he (Say they met the risen Christ too)? He was making those claims to people far away from Jerusalem. Con men today can and do show alot more hubris (and get away with it) than any that might have existed if Paul wasn't tellin the whole truth.....but again, not necessary.

Toto

Of course I'm aware of it. I think it is an interpolation, not something handed down to Paul.

Or is that where you claim that Paul explicitly says that Jesus met Peter et al? But those are post-resurrection appearances.

What are you claiming about that passage?

I don't see anything there that really extracts early Christian traditions about Jesus from the gospels.

Chris Weimer

Excellent! The juicy stuff now. Why do you think its an interpolation? How early do you think this interpolation is? If it is one, I would push it no further than before Mark, which by that time assumed James and Peter as part of the Twelve, not like Paul who is differentiating.

That there is a tie between Jesus and James, Peter, & the Twelve.

The inference in there. It makes far better sense with an historical Jesus rather than a mythical Jesus. At least in my opinion.

Chris Weimer

Born of a woman, by the seed of David, under the Law? Yeah, because we all know that God is under the Law. I really doubt that Paul thought Jesus was Yahweh. Do you have evidence for this assertion?

See above.

You're assuming too much. Of course no conclusion is final, and there's always the slim possibility that Jesus was entirely fictional, but I think the evidence points contrary. Why do you continue to argue this strawman? You're not arguing against a Christian here, you do realize that, no?

Toto

Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 As a Post-Pauline Interpolation

Too much history has been lost to date this very closely. It appears (to me) to date to a period when a faction that looked up to Peter was in contention to a faction that looked to James; this passage unites the two factions while giving some priority to Peter. The 500 may have been added after that, to push James' status down even further.

But nothing there refers to or even implies a historical Jesus who lived recently. The passage makes as much sense with a mythical savior, or a long dead teacher who started appearing to Peter and James.

The passage seems independent of Mark; at least the interpolator did not take Mark's story as literal.

Amaleq13

There is a connection with the risen Jesus but where is the connection with a living Jesus?

You don't get that until you read Mark's story.

Chris Weimer

It's an inference in Paul's language, even without Mark. Jesus was born human, crucified, and then rose to meet the Twelve, James, Cephas, and the 500.

In case no one has, I urge you all to read "Is Paul's Gospel Narratable" by Richard B. Hays JSNT 27.2 (2004): 217-239. Much of the work I'm about to redo has already been done there.

Edited: With that said, I'll probably remain MIA from these debates until I finish two blog entries - one on kata sarka and one on Pauline narrative.

Didymus

You're right: I really should have left out the canonical business. It's not relevant. Perhaps I was reacting to the implication that the quotation of sayings is some sort of evidence for historicity. I should have stated my case more directly: The fact that all those 2nd century works attributed sayings to Jesus has no bearing whatsoever on historicity.

And Crossan is really stretching things when he includes the Pauline epistles as sources of Jesus' words. Paul quoted Jesus by name only with regard to the eucharist. But Crossan and others blithely assume that sayings attributed by Paul to "the Lord" or "God" must have been uttered by Jesus for no apparent reason, or simply because a gospel author attributed a similar statement to Jesus. I think that's pretty weak.

The Jesus Seminar can fairly be considered historicist for many reasons, not the least of which is that their primary objective - to "evaluate the historical significance of every shred of evidence about Jesus from antiquity" - they implicitly affirm their belief that the Jesus of the Gospels was a historical figure.

The sayings are only one shred of the evidence they refer to. I'm not sure what "core sayings" means or what that has to do with the Jesus Seminar. Through a process of concensus, they have agreed that only certain sayings can rightly be attributed to Jesus.

I don't think it's quite accurate to say that Doherty "has all the sayings attached to a mythical Christ entirely." He certainly acknowledges that they were probably part of the oral tradition before they found their way into Mark and Q, and in turn Matthew and Luke. To my knowledge, he doesn't claim that they were invented by Mark from whole cloth.

The JS attributes the sayings to one person; most mythicists attribute them to many people. That is a difference, but not a big one. The events that are recapitulated in the gospels are much more significant.

Didymus