spin

I have no problem with your analysis of the "we". It's what I basically think as well. What you don't seem to realize is that this alternation spans the whole letter. You ignore it.

You have a funny idea of immediate context. You are prepared to reach back 14 verses from 2:6 back to 1:23 and call that immediate context.

What I have pointed out is that there is a fluidity regarding when Paul uses "I" and "we". But the "we" usually refers to those who preach. And gosh who are the "we" in 1 Cor 15:15 but those who preach. But you are blind to this. As you are convinced that 1 Cor 15:3-11 is kosher, you have to forget what Paul does through the letter and claim, no he isn't doing the same thing in 15:15.

This doesn't fly either. You point after the passage as though the reader has to arrive there after having had the shift from "I" to "we" before getting to understand what he is talking about. The issue is that Paul does in fact shift from "I" to "we" in various places in the letter and there is no problem when he does.

You have no reason to argue--other than arbitrarily--that Paul isn't doing what he did in other parts of the gospel. Paul has talked about his own preaching and others. Without vv.3-11 there is no problem in understanding the "we" after Paul has talked about his own preaching.

We are left with Paul simply not referring to the witnessing of the resurrection in vv.12-19 which is exceptionally strange, while you claim that it "flows better". You have been remarkably silent regarding this fact. This is why you have to argue as you do about the "we" having to be the witnesses. The language is about proclaiming the gospel, not about christ's appearances. The appearances are missing--so missing that Paul is arguing "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then christ has not been raised", but the witnesses would be sufficient to render such an argument moot. Where is the following sort of argument in Paul: "O, you foolish Corinthians, many people saw the risen christ, so how can you delude yourselves that there is no resurrection?" As I said, it's not there. He's still going on with arguments about "if the dead are not raised" in v.29 & v.32 and there is still no mention of what Cephas saw or the twelve (whoever they were) or the miraculously large 500. They were not available to Paul.

This is why you ignore it all and go for your arbitrary insistence that the "we" in 15:15 must refer back to v.11, when it would be obvious to the Corinthians after Paul had dealt with the issue of factionalism due to the different proclaimers of the gospel earlier. "Our proclamation" (15:14) is clearly understood in this context. And who are the proclaimers of the gospel Paul adheres to that the Corinthians have seen? Cephas, Apollos, Paul and those who accompany Paul, including Barnabas and Sosthenes. Mention "we" regarding those who proclaim and we know who they were: those who went to Corinth. Who of the witnesses in the list proclaimed at Corinth? Cephas and the one of the aborted birth, ie two of the "we" from earlier in 1 Cor. The list of witnesses to the christ appearances is irrelevant to Paul's argument.

archibald

Isn't it a little bit of a strawman to say that Ted is 'arbitrarily insisiting' anything? He is simply arguing that he thinks there is a very plausible case for there being 'something' in between verse 2 and verse 12.

While I take your useful point about possible switches from singular to plural, I can also see Ted's points about context, and in any case it is true that, conveniently, vv10-11 do provide a context for the 'we', as vv3-5 provide a context for a remind/declare/inform.

What you seem to be relying on is Paul not recapping on his recap, when he has a later opportunity. But this opportunity is only very shortly after, and he has already recapped, then changed to plural, arguably because his recap has involved the other apostles, so there is no need for him to reiterate it twice in one short passage. More to the point, it is the second opportunity. Why you can't see 'I now remind' as an even better one is beyond me.

Moving on to what seems to be your key point, you think that he would not say 'if', but, surely he easily could, because even if he has cited supposed witnesses (arguably not for the first time, if he preached, as he says he did, to the Corinthians before, unless your wider point about the interpolation is that the Corinthians had only previously heard of Paul's witnessing event) the Corinthians themselves could still be unconvinced, like anone else, by such reports.

There is no logical conflict with the 'if', at all, just you (a) deciding what you think 'the language is about' (even though more than one other poster has said, not unreasonably, that a core theme is the Corinthians uncertainties about resurrection, including their own, and/or (b) you thinking that Paul 'should' recap his recap, and these subjective interpretatons are hardly a compelling case for inerpolation.

judge

Just keep mindlessly repeating it Spin. "This is exceptionally strange"..."This is exceptionally strange"..."This is exceptionally strange"..."This is exceptionally strange"..."This is exceptionally strange"..."This is exceptionally strange"...

This is the kind of irrational nonsense that is supposed to pass for some kind of logical argument

Claiming it "is exceptionally strange", does not constitute a rational argument.

gurugeorge

I dunno, I don't see any contradiction there tbqh.

Paul received the gospel from no man, but from Jesus himself, and he's passing on what he received.

Since the dates are wrong for him receiving anything from a putatively human Jesus, it seems most likely that (whether there was a human Jesus or not) what he's talking about is some visionary experience wherein a Jesus apparition tells Paul what happened to him while he was on Earth, etc.

(In reality, it's all a confabulation from Paul's mind, but it seemed to him like a real receiving of something from somebody.)

aa5874

Why don't you accept that "Paul" may have been lying (deliberately confabulated)? What authority could "Paul" claim if all he had was a DREAM or a VISION that was NOT in agreement with those in Christ BEFORE him?

The disciples supposedly KNEW the REAL Jesus.

One cannot just IGNORE the fact that whether or not Jesus did exist that "Paul" could NOT have gotten any information from a dead man.

In the Pauline writings and 1 Cor. 15, "Paul" is NOT a DREAMER, he is claiming to be a WITNESS of the resurrected Jesus and that he was the LAST WITNESS of Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.

Anyone can DREAM but "Paul" is claiming that he is a WITNESS that the Resurrection of Jesus did happen.

1 Cor. 15 is a fundamental part of the Pauline writings where he ATTEMPTS to historicize the FICTION of the resurrection which "Paul" claimed he got from a WRITTEN source.

Solo

No, it does not !

Correct, except they did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. With some probability they believed the restored kingdom of Israel was just around the corner, and most likely that Jesus who was made high priest in heaven was to intercede for this Davidic kingdom. According to Hebrews 6:20, 9:12 e.g. Jesus was not coming back in parousia.

This of course would have enraged the pre-conversion Paul, who being a pious Jew did not credit a) the parochial kingdom of "shepherd king" a la David was coming or necessary, and b) that someone executed "under the law" were to act as an heavenly intercessor. It would drive Paul, the bright civilized cosmopolitan, to distraction to think that an illiterate Galilean village idiot was an instrument of God's will.

And your evidence for this is what ? Acts of the Apostles ?

Apart of the issue of authenticity (I believe Gal 1:19-21, 23-24, Gal 1:23-24 was an anti-Marcionite insert...see here), the verse you are interpreting says :

This does not imply the faith included resurrection. Indeed, if you compare "resurrection of the dead " in Hebrews 6:2 to the later mention in 11:35, you will see the semantics of the phrase is something completely different than what Paul preached :

The "dead" coincides with Revelation 20:6 blesses those who share in the "first resurrection" and is referenced the Matthew saying (8:22),"Let the dead bury their own dead". Evidently, for the earliest Jesus cults, some dead were more dead rhan others.

So, even if Gal 1:23 was authentic, the original set of beliefs which it describes as the "faith" would have been far wider than you suppose.

We know that Ted. This discussion board however is not dedicated to spreading the Word but to examining it critically.

You have just seen it.

You are switching and arguing something different - all I am saying that Paul was likely the first who preached "resurrection from the dead", meaning literally "the dead" !

The passage in Corinthians you refer to (1 Cr 3:6-9) omits Cephas as "fellow worker". It describes Paul as the one who introduced the Christ teaching in the city ("I planted"), and Apollos who supports it ("Appolos watered"). Cephas' contribution - if any - is omitted. People following "Cephas" in 1:12 cannot be read critically as testimony to essentially the same doctrine. Indeed, Paul is consistently pushing one gospel of Christ, which by all evidence is his own. IOW, the mention of himself as one of those followed at Corinth is not more than a rhetorical ploy.

It may be a good idea, Ted.

Best,
Jiri

archibald

And it might be reasonable to look at patterns. There might be at least some sort of a textual analysis argument for it to be even just plain uncommon if, in fact, there were any comparitive evidence that this is the sort of thing Paul was in the habit of repeating himself about.

As it is, he doesn't even do this for his own witness experiences, as far as I can see. He tends to mention them only a very few isolated times, doesn't bang on about them as a persuading device (at least not in the letters we have) and as a consequence his letters often seem to focus on the need for faith in those who have not directly experienced the phenomenon and so have to believe without this. For them, as for most audiences ever since, it is/was, quite properly still an 'if' issue, and Paul seems to use this rhetorically, not because he doesn't think the evidence is strong. And if he has in fact just restated the 'evidence', there is no good reason to think he has to restate it again a few verses later if it not the sort of thing he tends to hammer home his preaching with.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the only other place it (his own witnessing) gets a very brief mention in 1st Corinthians is 9:v1? And the only other place I can think of off the top of my head is Gal 1:12.

There may be other arguments for interpolation, but IMO the 'he didn't restate a restatement of only a few verses earlier' is not a strong one, given that he doesn't do this generally.

And then I feel I am left with the very puzzling and not unimportant question, why on earth would someone make this the lead point of their interpolation case, and why would others not seem to see the obvious weakness in it? I don't mean weakness as in it being out of the question, I mean weakness as in it not being a strong reason. I might add in the not seeing 'I now remind' as a plausible opener for a reminder (though to be fair one person did make a point about the possible value of reminders in oral societies). Or for that matter the progession from use of 'I', via 'they' to 'I+they=we' to use of 'we'.

Does this, I wonder, say something about the way in which such interpolations are approached. I have already said that it is my subjective observation that cases of supposed interpolation do tend, for some unexplained resion, to cluster around passages which may be linked, by many, to the MJ/HJ debate.

And I keep returning in my mind to the wider consideration about pure interpretation of this sort being necessarily speculative as a methodological standard in the first place.

archibald

I thought that both Galatians/Corinthians and Hebrews 6:2 used the same Greek word for 'the dead'?

Toto

The case for interpolations generally depends on a multiplicity of factors. spin may emphasize this, but Robert Price had other reasons.

This is a strange and off-kilter observation, since this passage is not one that historicists rely on. It describes a tradition in which various people saw a vision of the risen Christ, whereas historicists do not even pretend that the risen Christ is historical. You will not find Bart Ehrman basing his case on this passage, or anyone else that I can think of.

And a vision or appearance of the risen Christ is compatible with either a mythical or historical Jesus, since it is a mental event experienced by early Christians.

There is much more to discuss in this forum than the mythicist-historicist debate.

spin

Actually, what is happening is that others focus on this aspect, when I have consistently said that there are at least three major issues:

1. The fact that Paul never cites the appearances, ostensibly having mentioned them in vv.3-7.
2. The inappropriate use of the verb παραλαμβανω.
3. The conflict between Paul being chosen by god from birth and his birth being described as an abortion.

The response has been to ignore the substance of these and to try to say that "we" in v.15 entails the presence of the passage, when the plural proclaimers has been well established in 1 Corinthians.