Toto

I don't follow this.

Christian were not persecuted for an actual historical crucifixion. If they were persecuted at any point in time, it was by the Romans for being a secret society, or perhaps by the Jews for blasphemy or other violations of Jewish law. None of this requires an actual crucifixion - just a symbolic crucifixion that marked the society. (The crucifixion could have been a historic event, but I don't see why it had to be.)

Observance of the halakha would make the Christians into Jews, who would presumably not be persecuted by the Romans because Judaism was religio licta.

But once you think that Paul was speaking in a cultic lingo, who knows what he really meant?

Solo

Are you saying that you don't follow what I'm saying or are you saying that whatever Paul was saying (in Gal 6:12) he could not possibly have meant an actual historical crucifixion ?

Well, Paul says that the Jesus crucified was a stumbling block to the Jews, so evidently the persecution was coming from the Jews who considered Jesus an executed evildoer.

That's the problem, isn't it ? Why don't you play out the "mythical cross" scenario as I suggested ?

What Paul said is that in the mind of the Judaizers, they had to circumcize and preach the law so they were not persecuted for the cross of Christ. What I'm saying is that Paul's audience would have known if Cephas and Co. did not believe Christ was crucified, so for Paul to accuse them (before his audience) of judaizing only to avoid persecution because of the cross, the crucifixion for all intents and purposes had to be historical. If it was mythical, Paul would have looked like an idiot accusing the Jerusalem missions of trying to avoid persecution for an event that did not happen except in Paul's mind !

(BTW, Gal 3:1 does not mean that the Petrines denied Jesus was crucified. They simply did not credit the cosmic scheme and the symbology that Paul assigned to the cross. I think it unlikely that the Nazarenes believed originally Jesus was Messiah.)

You are all over the place. Please, try to concentrate on what you are saying. Paul affirms the persecution of the followers of the crucified Jesus, so you will just have to take that as a starting datum.
I entertained the possibility that the persecution might have been an internal struggle. But I don't see how this interpretation could stand because if Paul talked about persecutory mania (as Thomas did), Cephas gang's hypocrisy in not following the law when James was not looking would have certainly not alleviated it.


Best,
Jiri

spamandham

Paul says "Christ crucified", not "Jesus crucified".

Why would Jews care whether on not some nobody named Jesus had been crucified or not? Considering how popular the name was, no doubt dozens of Jesuses were crucified.

Christians were teaching that the very idea of Messiah had been obliterated. This is what Jews found so offensive.

P- "There will never be a messiah. The mystery of the scriptures that I have revealed to you is that the kingdom is already here for those who align themselves to it spiritually. It never was about political dominance."

J- "Nu uh!"

Kapyong

snip.
Will rethink that.
K.

Toto

I don't follow your logic.

I read that as only saying that the idea of a crucified Messiah was a problem for Jews to join the new religion.

It still doesn't follow. Why do you think that the Galatian would be persecuted because of the cross? What difference would it make if it were real or imaginary?

:huh:

aa5874

But, in Epistles where the Pauline writers called a character Jesus Christ over 150 times it is certainly not unusual for the writer to just write either Jesus or Christ once or twice and not Jesus Christ.

But, in any event, the Pauline have failed to show that Jesus was a figure of history when they NEVER wrote that they SAW Jesus alive anywhere except AFTER the non-historical resurrection and NO external sources of antiquity can corroborate the Pauline writings with respect to their Jesus.

gurugeorge

I think I understand your argument, and will respond to it in the form below:-

First of all, the notion that Jews were persecuting other Jews for ... well, for what? For believing that some bloke called "Jesus" had been crucified? Lolwhut? It just doesn't make much sense. Either it's an anachronistic retrojection of later Christian persecution back into the Paul letters, or it means something else.

I think the passage is not an interpolation but is mistranslated, partly because of the whole "Paul = formerly persecuted Christians" idea that comes from Acts - i.e. there are other passages in the Epistles, where Paul says something like "formerly I persecuted" - those are interpolations, but this passage I think is being mistranslated based on reading the passage through those spectacles (to the effect that at that time Christians had been persecuted).

The passage is not talking about a persecution on account of belief in the cross, but "persecution" BY THE CROSS, by the symbolism of the cross and what it represents ("I am crucified to the world and the world to me").

IOW, I think the passage is correctly interpreted in the spiritual sense you mention, but the halakhah observance is not a "remedy" but rather an avoidance mechanism. There is a new covenant, but some of these people are sticking to the old ways, unwilling to make the leap of faith into the world of spirit. That seems to me the plain intention of the whole Gal 6 section (what's required is a "new creature").

At any rate, even with your interpretation, the passage does not necessarily show that the crucifixion was an event that happened in the lifetime and living memory of some of the people involved, that they witnessed and knew about (which is what would be required to support an HJ scenario). It could also fit a scenario in which the event was an event believed to have happened before the lifetimes of any of the people involved, or in "yea time". If they are being persecuted, they are being persecuted on account of a belief, not on account of a fact's sheerly being the case.

IMHO the scenario is thus: both the Jerusalem people and "Paul" thought that Scripture and their own visions told them that The Messiah had been and gone at some indeterminate time in the past, that he had come obscurely and not with fanfare (in order to fool the Archons, who were waiting for the fanfare guy), that his victory was spiritual and not military (as everyone had expected), and that the victory was a done deal (hence "gospel" = good news of a won victory), that the world was transformed spiritually on account of it.

I think they thought there was indeed a fleshly crucifixion, and that Scripture in some codified form told them of this event, but that the fleshly fact was a symbol of a far greater cosmic transformation, and that that cosmic transformation is what put the burden on believers of making the leap into the world of Spirit, and abandoning the old fleshly symbols, the old covenant - which is precisely what the "Judaizers" were unwilling to do (they were hanging on to pride in the fleshly symbols). The "stumbling block" is of course the idea that the Messiah had been and gone (and wasn't to be expected any more) and that he had died, to all appearances, ignominiously.

aa5874

Veracity MUST be pertinent when dealing with questions of history.

What sources external of the Church and the NT that has led you to think the Pauline writer's did not know they were making FALSE claims?

You simply have FAITH in what you think about the Pauline writings.


You are not making sense. You do not even know when and under what circumstance a single Pauline writing was made. You do not know with any certainty who wrote actually wrote a single Epistle or the actual original contents of a single Pauline epistle.

Please state what external source has led you to KNOW that any Pauline writer REALLY had faith and was NOT deluded?

Please read the OP. Jesus of Nazareth is the issue.

Not one Pauline writer even claimed Jesus lived in the CITY of Nazareth or did anything in the CITY. NONE.

The Pauline writings do NOT confirm that Jesus was crucified.

What naivete!

The Pauline writings ARE EVIDENCE that CLAIMS were made about a character called Jesus the Messiah in antiquity.

No external writer, Jewish or Roman, who wrote about Judea in the time of Pontius Pilate has confirmed or even mentioned a character called Jesus the Messiah of Nazareth as found in the Gospels or Jesus the Messiah, the Creator of heaven and earth, and EQUAL to God as mentioned in the Pauline writings.

Solo

It is not the Galatians that Paul said would be persecuted, it was those who proselytized them. If they proclaimed Jesus who they knew was condemned as a lawbreaker (Gal 3:13), they would have been persecuted by other Jews.

Best,
Jiri

spamandham

Gal. 3:13 neither states nor implies that Jesus was a lawbreaker. But even if it did, why would Jews care if some group of kooky gentiles wanted to play Jew and worship a lawbreaker? None of these arguments make any sense. For Jews to persecute Christians, Christians must have been teaching something directly offensive or otherwise threatening to the Jews.

Teaching that YHWH had done away with the law and rejected Jews in favor of Christians would certainly be offensive and threatening to Jews, but puffing up a crucified lawbreaker? That doesn't make any sense as to how it would be offensive or threatening to Jews.