spin

This seems to me to be eisegesis. Your interpretation doesn't apparently come from the text.

But once again I come away after a conversation with a person who doesn't accept my analysis (that Paul in no respect needed a prior Jesus to believe in him as real), yet once again without getting a substantive why.


spin

Solo

:rolling:

It's not that hard, spin, is it ? Paul once regarded Christ from the non-spiritual point of view. So someone had to tell Paul something about Christ for him to form an opinion according to the flesh. Right ? Are you with me ? Are you following what I am saying ?

So what I am saying is that if it was not God it had to be a whispering willow. No ? Ok, fine, just testing....So someone other than God, or a whispering willow, was talking to Paul about Jesus first.

Jiri

spin

Nitrous Oxide, I guess.

I suggest you stick to your day job.

Next you'll be telling us Paul was gay. Doh!

He gave the Corinthians the wrong idea and they needed to be put back on the right course. He'd been talking about bodies for quite a lot of the preceding passage: "while we are at home in our body we are far away from the Lord" (5:6). We already have a notion of the Corinthians to involved in enjoying the feeding and swilling of Paul's religious fellowship meals. The body has been too important to the Corinthians and Paul is here trying to turn them away from the physicality of the body.


spin

aa5874

Jesus was mis-characterised as a Jewish Messiah. The only passages found about a Messiah are found in Daniel 9.

In Daniel 9, there is no reference to the Messiah as a son of a God. In the writings of Josephus, the Jew, when he made commentaries on the book of Daniel, he made no mention of any god-figure that was to be the Messiah.

And, further Jesus of the NT, in order to be deemed a Saviour or had the ability to forgive sin, he ultimately had to show he was indeed a God and this is confirmed when the authors of the NT, the church writers, and non-canonised writers wrote that Jesus resurrected.

There is no mention in Daniel that the predicted Jewish Messiah must resurrect on the third day and no Jewish writer that gave commentaries on the Messiah as found in Daniel ever claimed that the Messiah should have resurrected.

The Jesus of the NT was really presented in all similarities to pagan gods, born without sexual union, like the myth of the Greeks, as found in the writings of Justin Martyr.


As I have written before, it is absurd for you to argue for the historicity of Jesus without providing historical evidence.

You must understand by now that absence or lack of historical evidence is EXACTLY what a MJer needs to maintain the myth position.

The longer you take to provide historical evidence for your Jesus, the longer and stronger the myth position will be maintained.

You should realise by now that your failure to provide historical evidence has opened the barn door. It cannot be closed, again.

Jesus has been presented as the perfect myth.


1Co 15:17 - Salvation is based on a mythical event, the resurrection.


In order to show that Jesus had the power to save, other mesianic figures were killed, but they just died, he must be resurrected, he must show he is divine, that is, Jesus' ultimate goal is to prove he was a God by defying death after the third day.

And, the authors of the NT, the church writers, and non-canonised writers wrote that Jesus did prove he was a God, they wrote that Jesus did resurrect.

It is futile trying to argue historicity and admit you have no historical evidence, you only make the myth position stronger and stronger.

Solo

Compulsive exegesis at work, I suppose. ....we all appreciate you are a charming fellow, spin.



I am not in the least interested what Paul intended to do with the verse. You are desperately running away from the relevant issue at hand:

I am pointing out to you that there is historical information about Paul's sources of "Christ" in 2 Cr 5:16. When Paul says that he once regarded Christ from the worldly point of view, but no longer he is saying - to someone who is reasonable and level-headed - several very interesting things which can be induced by an orderly process of reasoning:

1) a that there is a worldly view of "Christ" which comes from men,

2) that Paul once (before receiving instruction from what he perceives as higher authority) held on the worldly view of Christ,

and

3) that Paul received that view through ordinary channels of human communication.

there is a fourth item, which is not directly relevant but extremely important:

4) that, he Paul, "classes" his Christ with the rest of humanity : he regards no-one from the worldly point of view (i.e. through ordinary rational process based on self-interest) though he once regarded Christ in that manner.

So, what Paul is basically saying is that since he has been in Christ, the ordinary process of unenlightened reasoning does not matter to him - what happened to Jesus on earth, what someone says he said or did does not in the least touch on faith of those who trust Paul. Paul assert his new, spiritual man.

However, it strikes me as naive in the extreme to conclude from finding that Paul was theologically independent that he was somehow free from the emerging Jesus traditions which he was so determined to dominate.

Jiri

Elijah

I have no idea how you are forming your opinion on what was thought about the Jewish messiah at the time or why you think it was limited to Daniel 9.

So you still think the title son of God doesn’t mean messiah but biological offspring of supernatural genie?
Sorry, as long as no evidence is reasonably expected on the figure in question then asking for it is only going to look like you either don’t understand the lack of information we have about the past or are intentionally misleading people on this subject. As you have seen discussed with me, there are no historians that should have mentioned Jesus that we know didn’t.

The we want evidence is just a crutch for mythers who don’t want to bother trying to support or even construct a viable alternate theory.

Raising from the dead doesn’t confirm he is a god it confirms their already existent belief in the resurrection. You can believe in reincarnation, astral afterlife, oblivion and being resurrected. The Jews went with resurrection of the dead and saw Jesus as a sign of that faith being correct.

It’s not a mythical event to them, it’s proof that their faith isn’t in vain.
The myth theory doesn’t get stronger until it actually exists on more than the unrealistic expectation of evidence from the other side, when none should be expected but actually relies on evidence of its own to support whatever theory it is trying to support.

spin

Then you won't understand it.

Mouth moves, but says nothing.

You seem to think that I didn't comment on the content, but you are mistaken. I was putting forward the notion that when Paul learnt what was happening in Corinth he chose to correct it by nudging them in the right direction. Paul always believed in horses for courses. One method may be best option for Galatians, but another for Corinthians. You are mistaken to assume that Paul is saying anything more than "hey, guys, you've got it wrong. The body's inconsequential. We are spiritual beings. So from now on we regard no-one after the flesh..."

This is not an indication of someone telling Paul he got it wrong at some stage. You seem to misunderstand Paul's opinion of his own ideas. Whatever the situation, he's gotta be right when dealing with religious matters. Your proposal goes against what Paul presents of himself. You seem to believe that he admits to his Corinthians that he made a mistake, didn't have the right idea. You must be joking on two accounts: 1) he doesn't make such mistakes (I thought you were aware of glimpses of his psychological make-up), and 2) he's the one advocating the spiritual approach as opposed to his opponents such as seen in Galatians. He tells the Galatians "live by the spirit" (5:16). He tells the Corinthians the same in 2 C 5:16 but using round-about rhetoric. He generally treats the Corinthians very differently from the Galatians.


spin

(And you're still assuming your conclusions.)

fatpie42

Well I was only considering whether Jesus was a historical figure, so I guess I don't need to explain the nature of salvation, do I?

It would seem unusual if I'd done anything of the sort.

Oh I was taking that for granted. I guess it seemed so obvious to me that I didn't recognise what you were criticising.

Paul's 'main message' wasn't that someone died. That someone died would have been an entirely pointless message unworthy of all those letters. Paul's main message is related to the salvation he believes is related to the death of that person. Of course, his entry into understanding that salvation is not by eyewitnessing the actual death (if there was one), but simply by having a spiritual experience. Whether he heard about Jesus originally from some other source and whether that source links back to a real person is another matter of course.

I don't know if that makes my original assertions sound any less controversial, but it might at least help you to explain more clearly where you disagree.

I can see how that might justify a different approach, but I'm not so sure about "special treatment". Why should a Jewish messiah require less stringent appeals to evidence?

1) While I understand that you want to leave the possibility open that Jesus was historical, I don't think it should be seen as the more likely option. Even if Jesus were accepted as historical, that historical figure would seem to have very little in common with the figure in the gospels. The inconsistencie in the gospels both with the known historical facts and between each other mean that we could not really assert anything with any confidence. Not even that "he was crucified".

2) An account of Jesus which doesn't demonise the pharisees would be nice. Since during Jesus' life they had very little political power, their prominence within all the accounts of Jesus' life we have is a clear sign that these accounts do not properly recognise the context in which Jesus is supposed to have lived. (The pharisees didn't gain that position until some time later after Jesus' death - when the gospels were being written).

No, I am saying that the gospel writers took a story they believed was true and wrote it in a mythological style. They considered the inner meaning of the story to be far more important than the historicity of the story. The events in the gospels are pushed together in various different orders because the material the gospel writers were working with were a variety of stories originally understood in no historical context. The gospel writers arranged a mythological narrative for a series of short anecdotes.

Well the people at the time believed that Jesus was going to return soon with the wrath of the Almighty. Unfortunately despite waiting and waiting he didn't turn up. They had stories about what he was meant to have done and how these were originally understood is uncertain, but the stories which occurred later developed a whole mythology with a great deal of symbolism. (For example, what good would it be to provide the best wine at the end of a wedding feast? It would be a complete waste, yet we hear Jesus being praised for it. This only makes any sense as a symbol of Jesus' own supposed purposes, so this was most likely its primary meaning.)

It isn't just the first time we have anything worth keeping. It is the first time we have anything at all! Paul's letters are believed to be the earliest accounts. I admit that doesn't mean that Paul originated the myth, but it is a bit of a blow to the historical Jesus theory that the earliest account of Jesus is over a decade after his supposed death and written by someone who never met him.

I've never heard of Remberg. I picked those names because you asked for names. Now you have revealed that no names would be worthwhile for you because you don't think anyone would have written about Jesus. Of course, the gospels seem to imagine that other people were taking a great deal of interest in Jesus and that he had a huge number of followers; which would suggest that someone might actually have taken an interest at the time enough to write something. If all of these details are a later addition, what parts of this story can we possibly take as historical?

I think you are banking too much on your decision to consider Paul to have a less hellenic view of Jesus. Even if Paul only considers Jesus to be an extra-special prophet it still remains that his justification of Christ's power over sin relies on a mythological event. If the resurrection isn't a mythological event, what power could it possibly have over sin?

A historical event of someone rising from the dead would not act as such a proof.

If it is unrealistic to expect evidence, the myth position has won. The only reason why we should be expected to believe something without evidence is if evidence is irrelevant. Evidence isn't irrelevant to historical analysis, but it might be irrelevant to a purely mythical understanding...

aa5874

You must realse by now that the Church presented Jesus as a "genie", not me.

There are the authors of the NT, the non-canonised writings and authors of Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tatian, Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius and other church writers who presented Jesus as a "genie" born without sexual union and resurrected.

Well, you have a serious problem. There is no historical evidence for your Jesus and the creature was described like a "genie" by the Church, born without sexual union, resurrected and floated through the clouds.

You have a multiple-attested "genie" with no history.

I don't need a theory when you have no history of the "genie"


See the writings of the church. The "genie" did truly resurrect. The "genie" did truly ascend. That is their story.

So, why did the church writers claim that "genie" was TRULY born withiut sexual union, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, and TRULY resurrected?

Well, I have what I expected .

I expected no historical evidence for the "genie" with descriptions of the creature from Matthew 1.18 to Acts 1.9, the beginning and end of the "genie" from conception to ascension, with multiple-attestation.

Elijah

I consider that the major error of your understanding. Understanding it like a pagan myth instead of Jewish messiah I don’t think is correct.
Maybe they believed in virgin births and resurrection of the dead being possible and not mythological.
You need a theory of how he came to be thought of as historical. We need the same level of evidence you expect of Jesus for your writer of the Jesus story. Tangible evidence of their existence and proof that they are the originators of the Jesus story.