DCHindley

Yes,

How typical of DCHindley to err in such a weighty issue.

Under torture, I got him to confess that the last time he checked publication status was between jobs in 2003. The linked book was reprinted in 2004.

Then, just before he passed out from the suffering, he urged any who want to read a very insightful, broad reaching review of much of the scholarship that underlies modern critical efforts of Paul (if only subconsciously) to buy a copy of this book.

Skippy

spin

They could have been. In fact that is the traditional view -- which of course I don't give a hoot about, as I'm attempting to read the text anew without the christian accretions to whether it can be read in another functional way and, if so, whether it is more likely or convincing. So, take off your black hat and put on your blue hat to see what you can make of it.

I don't believe Paul is saying what you think. He says -- and I don't know why this doesn't seem to have effect on people --, that his gospel is revealed by Jesus, not taught to him by humans. That doesn't mean some of it wasn't taught by humans but some was. He seems quite unequivocal to me. Amaleq13 wishes to redefine the gospel he received as being only bits of a more complex gospel, which Paul clearly does not allow. This is why Amaleq13 has tried to go around Paul's words.

Well I just mean that type of numerological messing-around with texts. Was that sort of thing known at the time or not? There seems to be "gematria"-like numerology in the Apocalypse, so why can't these guys have gotten some of this novel idea of a "value revalued" Messiah from that kind of messing around with Scripture? (I mean this in reference to the difficulty of finding overt potential references that might match "died for our sins, was buried and rose on the third day" in scripture - apart from the Hosea one, which does at least show "third day" as some kind of meaningful 3-day reference.)[/QUOTE]
Had it been part of the tradition from the time of Paul, I don't see how we end up with the three days prophecy. The third day should have excluded the other. Our gospel evidence from both Mark and Q seems shows that three days was strong (Mk 8:31, Mt 12:40, 27:63, though notably not in Luke and Luke indicates the sign of Jonah from Q, but mystifies it, no longer indicating three days and three nights in the belly of the fish) and that the third day only later began to overtake it. The scenario that seems to me to fit the gospel evidence is

1. • rise after three days (Mark)
   • three days and three nights -- sign of Jonah (Q)
2. it's really the third day
3. Luke is fixed up while originally being redacted

The Lucan fix up links in well with the Lucan separation between the twelve and the apostles, seen in 1 Cor 15.

The possible Pauline use of the Hosea reference to the third day does not account for the three day tradition that underlies both Mark and Q. This suggests that it isn't Pauline.


spin

dog-on

I don't buy the "Jerusalem group" as having been an actual part of Galatians. I have marcionized those parts that where most probably interpolated, by the orthodoxy, in the 2nd century.

1Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. 3Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.
6As for those who seemed to be important—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance—those men added nothing to my message. 7On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles,[a] just as Peter had been to the Jews. 8For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9James, Peter[c] and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. 10All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

Paul believed there was only one Gospel, not two...

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

gurugeorge

Not quite spin, I feel you're missing a bit of the subtlety of this point. The traditional view is that the Jerusalem people knew this guy who was (from our modern-day perspective) just an ordinary human-being type of nuthouse Messiah claimant (or someone who they claimed was a Messiah in this sense), who they then believed "appeared" to them after his death, raised from the dead, and who they then found references to in scripture that had predicted him all along.

What I (and I think Amaleq13) are saying is that that's not the plain reading at all, because the crucial link between this Messiah and the the Jerusalem crowd in terms of him having been at any point a human being who they knew personally prior to his apotheosis is just not there in the text. That's what's been "read into" the text by generations of Christians, but it's simply not there.

Absent that absolutely crucial missing link, all you get is a credo about a Messiah, then immediately you get the claim that this Messiah "appeared" to the Jerusalem crowd; but "ophthe" (as I posted a quote showing recently in I think the Cephas thread) has a theophanic meaning in the Septuagint.

So the plain meaning of the text is this:

These people in Jerusalem had a new concept of the Messiah. They had the idea that the Messiah has already been (at some indeterminate time in the past), and they thought this truth can be found in scripture if you dig deep enough. i.e. they thought that (to put it roughly) everyone else was being blind and silly in expecting a Messiah to come who would bring a great military victory, because the Messiah reveals himself (ophthe) in scripture as having already been and done his work, and having done everything in the totally opposite way everyone expected (not a military victor, but a spiritual victor, not a king but a chump, etc., etc.). (In my quote from the article I mentioned about ophthe, the guy said "according to scripture" can be read like "according to the BBC" - i.e. it's just a plain report that the news of this Messiah comes from scripture, scripture - and scripture only - is where they are getting the idea of this Messiah from.)

And (this is the neat bit, which you can get from the "Archon" stuff) in doing everything in the reverse way from what everyone expected, he fooled the Archons, who were watching out for a big military victor.

This is like the "traditional view" only in terms of sequence, but because there's no support in the text for the traditional view that the Jerusalem people were people who had known this Messiah personally as a human being, it's actually 100% support for a mythological Messiah, a "Joshua Messiah" quite fully as mythological as the traditional one, only projected into the past instead of the future.

And, at a stroke, this solves the problem of why the other early stuff like Hebrews seems to have no quotes from this "Jesus Christ" that aren't already in scripture. It's because scripture is the only place he ever existed, in terms of their personal acquaintance, to these earliest Jerusalem Christians.

But of course if you put someone in the past like this, the yokels start wondering "hmm, but what did he do, and when precisely did he do his stuff?" People start "filling in" a backstory for him, much as fans speculate about comic book superheroes nowadays. After the Diaspora there would have been more and more of a disconnect between these early Christians and scattered Christians, speculating about their Christ. And that's the origin of the Christ we know.

At the risk of having an unequal contest with you (but what the hell I've already had Amaleq13 use me as a punch-bag on another subject ), he seems to say in this passage that the Gospel that contains the specific items "the Messiah died for our sins, was buried and rose on the third day" was "handed down" to him in terms that suggest it's from humans ("paralambon").

He certainly talks about some kind of visionary revelation direct from the Messiah himself in other places, but that direct revelation seems to be about his own "twist" on the idea, whereas here in the Corinthians passage he just includes himself in the list of those to whom the Messiah "appeared" (i.e., he just grokked the same hidden Messiah in the scriptures that these guys had been proclaiming). The basic fundamental idea of an "inverted" Messiah, the basic credo, the element that he shares with the Jerusalem people, he got from them (or heard of from them).

Put it this way: it looks like he heard of the basic idea from or via the Jerusalem people, but didn't really believe it until the Messiah they were talking about spoke to him personally in his visionary experience - whereupon He revealed a more universaliseable version of the creed to him.

gurugeorge

I pointed out the van Manen and the other Marcion reconstrutions earlier (which does show "Jerusalem", but also excises some of the bits you do), but the only thing I think that really shows (although as spin says it doesn't really show it to sufficiently critical degree historically because it's a reconstruction) is that the story about "Paul" persecuting the Jerusalem people in the early days is bunk.

It still looks like this: the Christians in Jerusalem were the first Christians, these were the guys who had a revolutionary new concept of the Messiah. "Paul" at some point "got" the same Messiah idea through a direct revelation (as he thought) from the Messiah entity, who he realises is the same Messiah the Jerusalem people have been banging on about. So naturally, he goes to check in with those people, but it's fairly casual - he's not beholden to them in any way, he's just giving those people their due as the people who had the idea/revelation first and respectfully checking in with them (although he isn't in any hurry to do so!).

I think it's quite feasible to see his tirades against "other gospels" as tirades against the old Jerusalem crowd after relations had soured. (i.e. they'd promised him the "uncircumcision", they'd shaken hands on that, but here they were messing around with his flock).

dog-on

Quite possible, guru...

I do believe that this particular savior concept was extracted from the LXX, however I just think the Jerusalem angle is, shall we say, contrived. I suppose people valued history and tradition, a considerable reason for a latter group to attach a something "a little closer to home"...

spin

Sorry, for what I'm looking at it is. That is in the reading of Galatians for what it says about Paul.

This is all eisegesis to me. You don't know from Galatians very much about their beliefs.

You've certainly got a different edition of Galatians from mine.

It seems it doesn't matter how deeply I bury people's noses into what Paul says in Gal. 1:11-12 they won't read it. He specifically and pointedly says he didn't get it from humans, so he leaves no room for it having been handed down to him.

We don't know what he heard from the Jerusalem group, but no-one simply invents anything totally new so Paul had sponged up stuff from wherever, perhaps from Judea, but probably mysteries and saviors of Anatolia, or at least Cilicia the home of Mythraic mysteries, and mixed it with his own limited knowledge of current messianic thought. That would explain his advocacy of a non-messianic messiah, a messiah that would save his people (though not the Jews) by dying for them (as a savior and not the son of David who would bring military victory).


spin

dog-on

Could the "we" in Gal 2:4-5 be taken to mean that "Jewish" Paul was not, himself, circumcised?

Does it actually read as "we" in the Greek?

Julian

How does this work in Greek? You run into trouble in sentence one. Maybe you could do this in the original language and include your well-founded reasons for your edits...? You do realize that the punctuation in the English doesn't relate to the Greek, right?

Julian

dog-on

Really??!!!

So one couldn't say, for instance:

Fourteen years later I went up to Jerusalem

or

After fourteen years I went up to Jerusalem

or



in Greek?