Bede

Tonight I actually met him. Here are my thoughts.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason


On 17th October 2003, GA Wells, professor emeritus of German from Birkbeck College and a grand old man of 77, gave a talk to the Cambridge University Humanism Society on the subject “Was he crucified under Pontius Pilate?”. Wells has been writing books on his radical thesis on Christian origins since the 1970s and his seventh is about to be published. While he has not been in the best of health, he appeared to us as a smartly dressed and sprightly gentlemen, with the old school graces of excellent manners and elocution.

His talk offered us what is probably the final evolution of his views. These are no longer quite so extreme as in the past and he can no longer be classified as a ‘Jesus Myther’. Wells began by analysing the Pauline corpus and other early Christian epistles to show that they are a product of Jewish wisdom tradition of Enoch, Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon. Very little of this would be controversial. However, he insisted that the lack of details about Jesus’s life and death can only be put down to Paul’s ignorance of them. Paul, he claims, knew nothing of Judas, Pilate or Jesus’s earthly ministry nor exactly when he had lived. However he made very clear, contra Earl Doherty and indeed the chairman of the meeting, that Paul did believe Jesus had been a real Jewish man put to death by crucifixion.

Placing the Gospels firmly after the Jewish revolt culminated in 70AD, he suggested that they were completely cut off from the original Pauline Christians and that the Jerusalem church with which Paul argued no longer existed to gainsay their contents. Instead, Mark was built up from the fictional reworking of Old Testament prophecy and in particular, the suffering servant of Isaiah. There was no passion under Pontius Pilate and the earliest Christians knew of no such thing. The Q source, added to Mark to help compile the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, does, however, reflect the preaching of a real Galilean Jewish prophet of the first half of the first century who was conflated with the earlier Jesus of Paul (Jesus, after all was a common enough name). In other words the Jesus of the later church was an amalgam of two figures linked by a fictitious Jerusalem narrative.

Most questions afterwards revolved around the audience’s lack of expertise with New Testament scholarship which Professor Wells had, to some extent, assumed in his talk. Your correspondent asked how the old Christians of Paul’s churches were supposed to have reacted when the new stories in Mark emerged and why we see no controversy or survival of the early gentile converts Paul made. Wells was only able to claim that history was written by the winners and such evidence that did exist has been lost in the intervening period.

In all it was an interesting talk that saw Wells emerge as less of a radical figure than he is often assumed to be, but still with a radical reworking of the evidence regarding Christian origins.

Toto

Thanks for posting this, Bede.

What do you figure the time schedule for this is? If Paul was converting people around 40-60 CE, do you figure that Mark's manuscript was widespread by 70 CE? You don't find other Christian writers referring to Gospel stories until the second century. Would any of Paul's original converts have necessarily read Mark? Would they have seen it as conflicting with Paul, or as just a different story based on the same themes? My impression is that early Christians were not so concerned with orthodoxy in doctrine or in historial fact.

Kosh

Did he go into what the "original" Christians believed? Did they believe Jesus rose from the dead and was physically on the earth as the son of God?

Bernard Muller

Toto wrote:
What do you figure the time schedule for this is? If Paul was converting people around 40-60 CE, do you figure that Mark's manuscript was widespread by 70 CE? You don't find other Christian writers referring to Gospel stories until the second century. Would any of Paul's original converts have necessarily read Mark? Would they have seen it as conflicting with Paul, or as just a different story based on the same themes? My impression is that early Christians were not so concerned with orthodoxy in doctrine or in historial fact.

Mark's gospel appears in 70-71, and I do not see why Paul's converts were not targeted by the gospel.
Actually '1Clement' has rearranged material which is in GMark. I dated '1Clement' 80-81. 'Barnabas' & the Didache also have gospel material from GMatthew. I dated 'Barnabas' at about 97 and the Didache at about 95 (minus late Christian additions).
Revelation, also written around 95 has a whole verse with many details derived from GMatthew.
And "Matthew" used GMark.
And GJohn, published around 100, used GMark, & GLuke, & even 'Acts'.
GMark is, among many things, an awkward combination of what Mark's community heard from different preachers, including Paul, Apollos, Cephas/Peter and others, false eyewitnesses, Jewish Christians and Judaizers.
To make it simple, the Galilean peasant got divinized to correspond more to Paul's picture of the Son of God.
But GMark is mostly about addressing concerns, doubts, crises, unbeliefs among the Christians then by putting the solutions in the mouth of Jesus or events not reported by his disciples.
Let's not forget Paul do have tidbits dealing with a human Jesus:
He is described through them as a poor & humble Jew, dealing with other Jews (against Paul's ministry to the Gentiles!) and crucified as "Christ".
He has a brother called James, that Paul is uncomfortable with, to say the least. James is in Jerusalem as a pillar of the "church" there. Other pillars are John & Cephas. At one time, Cephas had followers in Corinth and the same Cephas went to Antioch Syria. Paul considered them as Jews, and never "in Christ" or "in the Lord". Finally Paul met with them, including early on with Peter for fifteen days, before being an apostle himself. And James & his men were feared among the leaders (all Jews) of the church of Antioch. And the Christians of Macedonia initiated collecting money for the "poor" of Jerusalem.
So that what can be known from Paul's letters, which is quite a bit.
And even if the gospels and 'Acts' greatly embellished Paul's (in passing) testimony, that can still be seen in these NT books, at the bottom layer.

"or as just a different story based on the same themes? My impression is that early Christians were not so concerned with orthodoxy in doctrine or in historial fact."

Yes, that's pretty well it. But why would they swallow all this things? Because they were hooked to the idea of the Kingdom coming soon, and they in its utopia eternally. All the rest was secondary.

I do not agree with Wells about Paul not knowing about Jesus. He had plenty of opportunity to know, but very little about HJ had any significance for him, except 'Christ crucified' and then in heaven. That's all he needed for his extrapolations and for elevating the Christology. His audience also must have known the basic HJ[101] by Paul or others, but that had little importance. Paul stressed the Heavenly Jesus & Savior, and was not about to dwell on a Galilean Jew crucified in Jerusalem as "king of the Jews" to his audience of Gentiles converts. In his letters, Paul treats of many "problems", but HJ was not among them. HJ was not an issue.

Best regards, Bernard

PS: all what I wrote is well documented in my website.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Paul probably didn't write this stuff, and especially all that anti-Judaic stuff in the "Pauline corpus".

Quote:

Mark was built up from the fictional reworking of Old Testament prophecy and in particular, the suffering servant of Isaiah. ... The Q source, added to Mark to help compile the Gospels of Matthew and Luke ...

Mark wasn't the earliest gospel.

There was no Q.

Otherwise, I guess, Wells' reconstruction might be OK...

So here we see how the "rebel" scholars like Wells come to be fully assimilated into the massive web of deception and double-think that today's official NT scholarship is...

C'est la vie...

Yuri.

Vorkosigan

Thanks Bede! I enjoyed it very much.

Ah, the old name confusion scenario. This strikes me as....simplistic.

Vorkosigan

Bernard Muller

The Q source, added to Mark to help compile the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, does, however, reflect the preaching of a real Galilean Jewish prophet of the first half of the first century who was conflated with the earlier Jesus of Paul (Jesus, after all was a common enough name
So Wells accepts the Q sayer, whose name is Jesus, but he thinks the crucifixion of another Jesus (who had a brother that Paul knew) was what Paul had in mind. It looks to me Wells is a HJer, TWICE!!! And then we have Occam razor. Why two Jesus merged together when one suffices.
It seems also Wells has been sold to an early Q, not dependant on GMark, but admits Q was compiled after GMark. I remember that Wells, from his early books, mentioned 80 for the date of Q compilation.

Wells began by analysing the Pauline corpus and other early Christian epistles to show that they are a product of Jewish wisdom tradition of Enoch, Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon.

You need to have an imaginative bias to see it that way. Many times, Paul looks very human and trying to fight back the competition, to assert himself as a legitimate apostle despite his handicaps, to go on resolving odd behavior among his converts, to stress the hope of resurrections & the nature of resurrected body, to address the big issue of Gentiles admission into the new faith, etc., all of that not in the aforementioneds. Sure Paul delt also with ethical stuff and, of course, you can expect some corrrespondance with 'Proverbs' & 'Wisdom'. 'Enoch' (with the Christian additions not written yet)?
But I am not denying Paul did know about OT and other Jewish writings (also Philo's) and used them extensively in his dubious logic & discussions.

Mark was built up from the fictional reworking of Old Testament prophecy and in particular, the suffering servant of Isaiah. ...

There are only two tidbits about the 'Sacrifice for atonement of sins' in GMark, and the suffering comes only in the last 24 hours (and no piercing in GMark!). So the suffering servant hardly shows in GMark. Reworking of prophecies? Yes it's part of GMark, but not in a big way. "Matthew" will do that a lot more. Furthermore "Mark" is using reverse midrahism to explain embarrassing events (the disturbance & the disowning of disciples after the arrest), not exactly fulfilment of prophecies. But any perceived reworking of OT prophecies in GMark occupies only a small fraction of the gospel. Wells does not address the majority of the work.

Best regards, Bernard

Vorkosigan

How did you document links between Paul and Philo?

Vorkosigan

Bernard Muller

How did you document links between Paul and Philo?

Vorkosigan

Good question. Actually, in my website, I did not say (or documented) anything between Paul & Philo directly, but I did that a lot between Philo & 'Hebrews', which I contend, was partially endorsed by Paul. So coming from Philo, through likely 'Hebrews', or his author (whom I showed to be Apollos, an associate of Paul):
Son of God, Word-like (1Cor8:6), pre-existent, in God's image (2Cor4:4), firstborn (Ro8:29), and the habitation in heaven.

Here are the references in Philo's works:

a) "Now the image of God is the Word, by which all the world was made" (The special Laws I, ch. XVI)

b) "... the second deity, who is the Word of the supreme Being" (Questions and answers on Genesis, II, 62)

c) "For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest Son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn. And he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father ..." (On the confusion of tongues, ch. XIV)

d) "And even if there be not as yet one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless let him labor earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born word, the eldest of his angel, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called the authority and the name of God and the Word, and man according to God's image ..." (On the confusion of tongues, ch. XXVIII)

e) "And this same Word is continually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all, to the subject race. And the Word rejoices in the gift ..." (Who is the heir of divine things, ch. XLII)

f) "Who then is the chief butler of God? The priest who offers libations to him, the truly great high priest, who, having received a draught of everlasting graces, offers himself in return, pouring in an entire libation full of unmixed wine" (On dreams II, ch. XXVII)

g) In Philo's "On reward and Punishment" (152), any average proselyte is promised "a firm and sure habitation in heaven".
And for your common Christian, that shows also in 'Hebrews' (the heavenly Jerusalem) and (more accurately) in Paul's epistles:
2Cor5:1 "... we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven ..."

Best regards, Bernard

PS: they are more common items between 'Hebrews' and Philo, but they do not appear in Paul's epistles.

Bernard Muller

CONTINUED
How did you document links between Paul and Philo?

Vorkosigan

I forgot a direct connection between Philo & Paul:
"And God formed the man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7). There are two types of men; the one a heavenly man, the other an earthly. The heavenly man, being made after the image of God, is altogether without part or lot in corruptible and terrestrial substance; but the earthly one was compacted out of the matter scattered here and there, which Moses calls "clay." For this reason he says that the heavenly man was not molded, but was stamped with the image of God;
(Allegorical Interpretation 31)

Compare that with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 (Darby)

45 Thus also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit.
46 But that which is spiritual [was] not first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual:
47 the first man out of [the] earth, made of dust; the second man, out of heaven.
48 Such as he made of dust, such also those made of dust; and such as the heavenly [one], such also the heavenly [ones].
49 And as we have borne the image of the [one] made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly [one].

Best regards, Bernard