avi

I think one needs to consider the source of this version of the Septuagint. For sure, the Hebrew text from Qumran has significant differences with our oldest extant copies of the Greek version in Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

I am not sure whether that was your meaning, "influenced by the Greeks". I would have written, instead: edited by Constantine.

avi

show_no_mercy

What does that have to do with anything I wrote? Are you intimating that the texts at Qumran have the words ρημα or λογος? That doesn't quite make sense.

Sheshbazzar

It would be quite interesting to do a verse by verse comparison between various LXX texts.
I have often heard that there are textual variations, Wonder if this could be one of them?
Further, could it have been a rather unconscious yet deliberate change in the translating of the Hebrew into Greek by pre-Christian Jews with increasingly messianic leanings? Where the move from the translation ρημα κυριου, to the translation λογος κυριου, while being considered equivalent, the latter form becoming preferable to, and supplanting of the former?

This would be a quite natural and understandable transition, as it would serve to facilitate the integration of, and ease discussion of these old Hebrew texts into the contemporary mainstream venue of that huge volume of Greek philosophical musings as to the nature of Theos/Elohim and of the Dabar/Logos.
(and be 'easier on the ears' of the Hellenic peoples)

Actually this wouldn't be much different than the transition that has went on with our English Bibles, as The KJV word choices have been 'updated' into the NKJV and other more readable versions, with the honest intent of providing words that are considered more contemporary and to more accurately convey and represent present day theology.
'The Holy SPIRIT', has now quite replaced and supplanted 'The Holy GHOST' in both conversation and in religious writings.

Perhaps these old Hebrew to Greek translations had began to 'sound' like it does when a Fundy or Old Order insists on spouting off in Old English text,
Most modern believers are quite put off, and non believers either look askance at them of laugh at such silly pretentiousness.

The 'thee's' and 'thou's' are quaint and cute until discussion gets serious, then when someone shouts; "Offendest thou the Holy Ghost? Thou art going to burn in hellfire!"
it is no longer at all considered as quaint or cute.

.

EarlDoherty

Here is the next installment in my response to GDon’s review of my book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, continuing on from the first part of his Part Two. Here he deals with my views on the Q document, then on Hermas and Ignatius. Again, all “Quotes” unless otherwise specified come from Don’s review.

Naturally, Don takes exception to my interpretation of the layering and evolution of Q, in which I trace the development of a founding Jesus figure within the thinking of the Q community, a figure who was not there from the beginning. Unfortunately, he rarely if ever addresses the actual evidence I draw from Q itself to justify this interpretation, let alone shows how that interpretation is faulty. As he notes, my discussion of Q covers a lot of material, but almost nothing of substance is presented by Don to deal with it. It actually boils down to him asking his readers whether they think my interpretation is to be preferred (implying that it is not), something he does at several points in his review. However, such a thing does not constitute rebuttal or counter argument. It abdicates that responsibility.

Once again, Don is very good at summarizing my presentation, but he creates a misleading impression at one point:

This makes it sound as though I would locate all sayings containing the name of Jesus as having been formulated only in a Q3 layer. Rather, certain sayings usually slotted by Q scholarship into a Q2 layer (apocalyptic/prophetic) may be left there, but only in original versions which did not yet identify them with a Jesus figure. To the extent that such sayings can be argued has having undergone later amendment to make such an identification—by creating new episodes constructed out of earlier pieces, or simply by changing references/pronouns relating to the speaker—such stages of amendment should be seen as belonging to a Q3 stratum, expanding on what traditional scholarship usually includes in such a stratum. I have co-opted the “Q3” term to include such a stage of amendment.

Where Don runs into the most difficulty is with my contention that, in the course of adopting the concept of a founder Jesus, the people producing the Q document seem to treat him like a symbolic figure doing no more than representing themselves. In other words, they know and can say no more about him than they can say about themselves. This is not to declare that the Kingdom sect which produced Q never came to envision that this figure actually existed, although the question has some uncertainty about it. But what we can certainly say is that for the purposes of how they portrayed him he could serve no more than as a representative of the sect itself, which is why he never accumulated a personality and significance of his own, and why so much is missing that is to be found in the later Gospel enlargement on him.

In that regard, we can look at Don’s appeal to William Arnal, an important Q scholar today. He refers to my quote (p.340) of Arnal:

What I took this admission to indicate (and to corroborate my own observations) is that Jesus as a personality, as a distinct individual responsible for distinctive activities of his own, cannot be discerned in Q, much less associated with many important features which we can see in the Gospels. Arnal makes further admissions in this direction. He claims that Jesus’ death “does seem to be taken for granted,” and notes that “Jesus’ resurrection…is not referred to explicitly….The personalized, unique character of the resurrection of Jesus is nowhere to be seen, just as the individual, exceptional and salvific notion of his death is absent.” Despite this admission that there is no sign of such things in Q, Arnal has nevertheless chosen to read them into the background.

On this I commented (p.350):

Arnal does the same in regard to Jesus’ miracles in Q:

Once again, any uniqueness in Jesus’ activities, and personality, has been subsumed and buried in the activities of the Q preachers. No distinctive portrayal of them is in evidence. In fact, in only one case is such a miracle even narrated; usually they are simply mentioned in principle, to make a point about Jesus’ position and authority. But is this simply a refinement of an earlier stage of Q evolution, in which such things were the activities and self-image of the Q sect itself, supporting its own claimed position and authority? Can we say that the Jesus figure, once introduced, served as a symbol of such things, focusing the record of the sect on a representative individual? When we take various aspects of Q into consideration, this becomes a very feasible postulation, and is certainly supported by observations like those of Arnal.

First, we can introduce an alternative suggested by Don:

This, to Don’s credit, is at least a partial concession to the possibility that no founder or person of prominence existed at the beginning of the sect. Perhaps this is just for the sake of argument, but it does admit that the evidence could be interpreted as pointing that way, just that the Q ‘founder’ emerged in the course of the sect’s history, and he was historical, not entirely imagined. But that entails its own problems which hardly take us much further. First of all, such an actual person (hardly to be equated with the HJ of tradition) would have come into prominence in the middle of things, and for that to be forgotten in his transference back to the starting point might be difficult to envision. Whereas the imagining of a founder from scratch, to whom originating teachings and practices were assigned, is an easier sell, particularly since we have quite a few examples in world history, such as Confucius (now doubted as an historical figure), Lao-Tzu, Lycurgus of Sparta, and—closer to Christianity’s home—Ebion and Elchasai of 1st and 2nd century sects.

As well, if a real person emerged as the sect was evolving, we would expect that some aspects of his real life and personality would be carried back to the beginning along with him; that such a person, presumably charismatic and influential, would have generated some focus upon him as an individual, the very individual whom Arnal admits cannot be identified in Q. We would expect that in the course of altering earlier sayings to place them in his mouth, or focusing the group’s general activities on him individually, elements of his personality and activities would be injected into those reworked sayings, and indeed into other sayings than he presently inhabits, such as the wisdom teachings of Q1 which, with one exception I deal with, do not even contain a name for their source.

If, however, no such person existed, not even one emerging partway through the sect’s history as Don suggests, there would be no memories or traditions to incorporate, and it would take sheer invention to inject an imagined figure’s character into the body of sayings already existing at the time of his introduction.

In any case, I doubt that Don’s suggestion would be considered either feasible or acceptable by traditional scholarship on Q. I suspect he has offered it simply to put up an alternative to my own reading of things, and may not represent something he would be willing to subscribe to himself. Also, I would ask whether he thinks my reading of an entirely imagined founder figure is more difficult to accept than Arnal’s reading of an HJ (one with ties to the Gospels) who has been entirely subsumed within the picture of the sect itself, given no greater role and significance than that of the Q preachers. That they would not hold him up as a powerful, influential individual, as the greatest example of the deteronomistic theology of the killing of the prophets, as more than a mere first among equals, is almost impossible to envision.

As I noted above, I had no hesitation in saying that it was not completely clear from what we could see of Q itself (filtered through Matthew and Luke) whether the community regarded this new founder figure as historical, or whether he reflected the beginnings of an allegorical trend: newly portraying the sect in terms of a representative not necessarily regarded as historical. In any case, he was not raised any higher than a symbol of the Q sect itself and its claims, producing Arnal’s observations about the “collective” and Jesus’ inability to be differentiated from the sect.

The key consideration, of course, in which that inability serves as corroboration, is the actual demonstration from Q itself that no founder Jesus can be detected in the early layers. None of that internal evidence I offer is dealt with by Don in his review. I point out a couple of sayings referring to the beginnings of the sect in which no Jesus figure has a role: the Baptist’s opening speech in which he prophecies the coming of the Son of Man, with no indication that this entity was already on earth in the form of a human man, and whose description bears no resemblance to any wisdom teacher; or Lk./Q16:16 which identifies the turning point between the older period of scriptural study and the new Kingdom preaching by sects like that of Q to be the preaching of John the Baptist, not of Jesus himself.

I examined Lk./Q 11:49, which has “the Wisdom of God” itemizing those prophets and messengers of God who have been prosecuted and killed, without including Jesus himself. This reference to personified Wisdom is only one of several indicators that, prior to assigning the teachings of Q to a founder Jesus, the body of teaching was assigned to that heavenly entity, an idea with a long history in Jewish scribal thought. In fact, some pronouncements of Jesus sometimes assigned to a Q3, such as 10:22 and 13:34, have been identified as being in the nature of Wisdom oracles; thus, they may well have been assigned to her before they were transferred into the mouth of a Jesus.

I spent some space in pointing out the absence of any reference to a Jesus as speaker attached to the wisdom sayings of Q1 (with one exception). Here we have the greatest void on any biographical or personal data in sayings reputed to be by a founder figure. This has led to pronouncements by scholars like John Crossan that the early community chose to place an emphasis solely on Jesus’ words and not on his person, an ‘explanation’ which I argue is so unlikely as to be rejected. Arnal argues that the purpose of the early community which used the Q1 sayings was to promote the teachings of Jesus. It thus makes little sense that he himself, as an historical personality and with details of his circumstances, would not be included in the record of those teachings. Ironically, Arnal later offers a contradiction to this in his observation that Jesus as an individual has been entirely subsumed within the community’s picture of itself, belying his claim that one of the features of the Kingdom sect was “an interest in Jesus.”

That one exception I referred to adds further fuel to the fire. The set of three chreiai (questions and answers) in Lk./Q 9:57-62 is the sole occasion in Q1 in which the name of Jesus can be seen to be mentioned. But, by a comparison with the Gospel of Thomas, this set can be shown to have been artificially constructed at a later time out of previous sayings which would have existed separately in Q1, with no attribution.

A similar situation exists in some of the sayings of Q2, in that (as in Q1) there is no sign that any context to those sayings was present in Q, since Matthew and Luke never place them in the same context in their Gospels or provide them with the same set-up lines. And while such sayings can include within themselves a self-reference to the speaker, these can now be seen as representing that stage of amendment in which group sayings were converted to the personal sayings of the new founder. In more than one case, as in ‘the sign of Jonah’ of Lk./Q 11:29f, the language betrays that earlier group stage, something even the Q scholar John Kloppenborg acknowledges.

Don points to “one writer” (David Seeley) who suggests that the oft-appealed-to Q14:27 (“whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me”), suggests that Q may have an awareness of Jesus' death. But Don fails to deal with the opposite scholarly opinion I point to that no such awareness need be read into something which, on its surface, is not a reference to Jesus’ own cross and may well be a current proverb. Even Seeley has admitted that “not one of the passages in which prophets are mentioned refers to Jesus’ death. Such a reference must be assumed.” Right.

I also, guided by recognized scholarship, take apart specific pericopes such as the Dialogue between Jesus and John (Lk./Q7:18-35) to demonstrate that these in their extant forms have to be seen as constructions out of earlier discrete elements, making those forms an expression of Q’s later evolving beliefs. Other indicators in Q, such as the treatment of the anticipated Son of Man, add to the picture of the lack of any Jesus figure in the early layers.

As I say, nothing of all this is addressed by Don, who prefers to simply declare that “with regards to Q, Doherty's case appears to be built on speculation, with a fanciful conclusion.”

It is unfortunate, but neither does Wells seem to have considered any of this evidence before deciding on his view of a possible historical sage (though no one to do with Paul) at the root of Q.

Don quotes a priceless argument by Bart Ehrman about the issue of the lack of any Passion narrative, or elements associated with it, in Q.

So Ehrman (seconded by Don, apparently) holds up the example of Thomas as another document lacking a Passion narrative, which is meant to demonstrate that there was nothing unusual about a Christian writing lacking something which (in true begging-the-question fashion) is presumed to have existed. A silence in one document serves as corroboration about a silence in another—as ‘proof’ that despite the common silence, one is somehow allowed to conclude from this that the object of the silence nevertheless existed! Heaven forbid (and I'm sure it does) that this multiple silence could more sensibly indicate that the thing being silent on did in fact not exist. Another example of New Testament math, in which 0+0 adds up to a quite definite and secure number. (While I have previously encountered a similar argument in other applications within scholarly commentaries, my estimation of Ehrman plummeted upon reading this blatant fallacy.)

(rest follows)

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

(continuing on the above segment)

It is not quite clear what Don thinks he is accomplishing in his section on The Shepherd of Hermas. He offers a number of quotes from Richard Carrier about the document, but none of them seem relevant to my contention that the Shepherd contains no knowledge of an historical Jesus, not even buried in its obscure symbolism.

Don cannot actually quote anything in the text which would justify anyone thinking it to contain an adoptionist theory, let alone anything as definite as “Christ was a pre-existent being that descended on the man Jesus.” Such a man is never mentioned, and in fact “the Son” about whom the document does speak is variously identified with the Torah and with the archangel Michael, so who this “man” is certainly remains obscure. Nor is it clear in what way the “guide” is helpful in revealing such a man behind the symbolism. Don quotes from the text:

If the Son of God is a heavenly figure, which the text as a whole strongly suggests, then such symbolism is quite understandable. The Son is the spiritual channel between God and humanity, an expression of the concept of the “intermediary Son” (as in the Logos) common in the Hellenistic era. I have presented the early Christian Son throughout the book as an entity who is conceived of as the emanation of God, bestowing saving knowledge of Him and only occasionally being a sacrificial figure. There is certainly no helpful guide in the text of Hermas to any symbolic representation of an historical man, who never appears. And note the language in the final part of the above quote: “(The Son) became manifest in the last days…” Not came to earth or lived a life or was incarnated in a human Jesus. Rather, this is the same language of revelation that we find throughout the epistles, as in 1 Peter 1:20 (NIV): “He was revealed [the ever-recurring verb phaneroō] in these last times for your sake.” (Sorry, I can’t check the Hermas verb in the Greek, as Don has not identified the passage in this longest document of the extant literature, but the translation indicates a revelation verb.)

Once again, Don has failed to even take note of, let alone address, key elements of my presentation on The Shepherd of Hermas, even though it covers only two pages (p.270-2). I’ll throw in a couple of those observations here:

Once again, Don throws the decision to the readers, asking if I should be followed in seeing Hermas as yet another example of a Son of God Christianity that had no HJ at its core. Considering that such examples lie all around us in the record, and that Don has done little to discredit my interpretation of that record but appeals to his own personal incredulity which he hopes to foist on his readers, I would suggest that I have indeed marked out the preferable path. Once again, too, he appeals to Tertullian’s Ad Nationes as an example of a document which makes no specific mention of a founder’s name even though Tertullian is known to have been an historicist. Well, I’ve already dealt with that countless times. We know no such thing of the author of The Shepherd, who nowhere gives us a counter-balancing knowledge of an HJ, or refers to a “founder” even if not mentioning his name in the same breath.

When he gets to Ignatius, Don has recourse to the same dubious approach which inhabits much of his review. After quoting me on what the Ignatian letters (whether authentic to him or not) contain or do not contain—such as basic historical data about Jesus but no appeal to a written Gospel, no sign of an apostolic tradition going back to Jesus, no miracles, no sayings of Jesus, no apocalyptic prophecies—he says:

Well, no, it is not very reminiscent of Paul, for Paul contains no such historical details as Ignatius offers: birth by Mary, baptism by John, crucifixion by Pilate, raised from the dead in a human body to appear to some followers. If we had these things from Paul, mythicism would probably be quite unable to rise from its own dead. At every turn, Ignatius appeals to the idea that Jesus’ sufferings took place in real flesh—this in a dispute over the new docetism of the time. In other words, in whatever type of debate he addresses (some historical, some docetic) throughout his letters, he places a physical historical Jesus at the forefront of his arguments, something which Paul consistently fails to do.

And somehow, because the same ‘remarkability’ about certain silences in Ignatius has a parallel in Paul, Don expects us to dismiss it in Paul just as we would dismiss it from Ignatius as being evidence that he didn’t know of an HJ! Well of course we dismiss ignorance of an HJ from Ignatius, because he contains clear evidence of believing in such a person, something Paul does not provide. Our disappointed expectations in Ignatius do not relate to his belief in an HJ, but to whether that belief is only a very recent development, with yet no knowledge of things like sayings, miracles and apostolic tradition; whereas our disappointed expectations in Paul have to do with the question of any knowledge on his part of an HJ. I don’t know what to call Don’s brand of fallacious argument here. Maybe the “smoke and mirrors fallacy”?

As to my contention that we can assume that Ignatius (or his forger) has not encountered a copy of a written Gospel, since he never appeals to one to support his contentions about Jesus, Don offers some quotes from Richard Carrier, serving to make the point that Ignatius, in his journey to Rome for execution (which assumes authenticity), would have had no copies with him and didn’t want to rely on his memory. Well, his memory should surely have served him well enough to recall that the biographical data he offers could be found in a written document. Nothing would have prevented him from at least mentioning the existence of such a document, as Justin would later do in referring to his “memoirs of the apostles.”

Carrier is quoted (and bolded by Don) as saying: “Likewise, he borrows phrases or ideas which are found in Matthew and John, and on one occasion something that appears to be from Luke.” Well, Don shows that he knows of the common scholarly judgment that Ignatius is simply using oral traditions that were also used by the evangelists, so what is this supposed to prove? Similarly, Carrier’s suggestion that at least some of the Gospels were in existence before Ignatius wrote proves nothing either, since there is no necessity that everyone in the Christian world knew them at that time—something, in fact, which seems not to be the case in so many instances, even later than Ignatius. It thus becomes somewhat ludicrous to point out (quoting Carrier) that in the time of Ignatius it seems that none of the NT was regarded as an authority. (Of course, it’s pretty hard to give authority to something one shows no sign of being aware of!) Even given such a situation, Ignatius hardly needed to regard a written Gospel as on the same authoritative level as the Old Testament in order to point to it as containing an historical account that corroborates the very things about Jesus he is promoting in adamant opposition to those who are not. None of these arguments have any weight, and it is an indication of how little Don has to throw up as rebuttal that he presents them at all.

Don’s Part Three (on Paul) hopefully next weekend.

Earl Doherty

Merle

Earl,

First I want to express my sincere gratitude to you for publishing your website and responding here to questions. One of the troubling questions every exchristian must face is, "If Jesus was not the resurected Son of God, then how did the New Testament and the phenomenal growth of the early church occur?" (That question is probably second only to, "If I admit to my doubts, and then turn out to be wrong, will I burn in hell forever?") So with an intense interest in what exactly happened in Palestine in the first century, I found your site several years ago, I found it very fascinating. I think your views are probably the best explanation of what happened (but we probably will never truly know for sure.)

I arrived at this thread after starting a thread entittled "Did Jesus Exist" at the apologetics section of the Christian Forums site. (That site has a strict policy that no nonchristian except the opening poster can post on a thread, so folks here may visit there, but may not join that thread unless they want to tell me how wrong I am!) The discussion led to some strange questions being asked of me, and as the post linked to GakuseiDon's website, I was only a few clicks away from landing here.

I'll take some time to digest what I see here, but I look forward to reading it. Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

mountainman

So which man created Jesus (and when)?

But so long as the god or gods are contained somewhere in the One True Bible, much like a genie in a lamp, what's the outward difference?

And apparently that's precisely where the devil hangs out.

Toto

aa vs. TedM split off here

gurugeorge

Eh? How does that speak against Toto's point?

EarlDoherty

Part Three of GakuseiDon’s review of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man is devoted essentially to interpreting various aspects of Paul’s and other epistolary writings in such a way as to discredit my own interpretations of those writings. The only way to respond to this is to follow the course of Don’s review and examine each of his contentions. Again, all quotes unless otherwise noted, are from Don’s review.

The first question he examines, a brief one, is “When did Paul write?” He admits, as I contend as well, that Acts is now regarded by critical scholarship as not at all reliable as a means to date and follow the course of Paul’s career, although, as most here will know, I do accept a core authenticity within the Pauline corpus and accept that we can date that core to about the middle of the 1st century, using both historical markers in the epistles and the wider picture of the development of the Christian movement. More precise dating is not possible given the nature of Acts, which was written somewhere around the middle of the 2nd century.

In passing, one sticky point I constantly find it necessary to question is the common statement that 1 Clement (ch.5) refers to Peter and Paul’s martyrdoms at Rome, and that these took place “in our generation,” meaning not too long before 1 Clement was written (assuming authenticity of date). I will quote from Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, p.601:

Don’s first major topic is “When did Paul’s Christ Die?” Certainly this is a question that lies at the very heart of the mythicist case, and especially mine. Don draws on a list of indicators from Ben C. Smith’s “textexcavation” website that Paul regarded Jesus as having lived recently.

A couple of principles here. First, nowhere in the first century epistles (setting aside 1 Thess. 2:15-16 as a commonly regarded interpolation) is the time of Christ’s life or death specified as an historical time; nowhere is such an event given a specific time or place, or supplied with an historical marker. Second, when Paul focuses on key moments of his own time period relating to the genesis and development of the faith movement he is a part of, it is always in terms of the activities of apostles like himself, or actions and scriptural revelations by God (sometimes it is the voice of the Son himself in scripture); or when it involves Christ in the present period it is virtually always using revelation language. But there is never a clear association of Christ with Paul’s own time.

In the face of that astonishing lack of association, Don is going to need some pretty strong and direct indication that Paul conceives of Jesus as a contemporary. I suggest that he does not have it.

He first asks, when did Jesus rise from the dead? As is quite common, the main passage appealed to in this regard is 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Don says:

As I have said many times, if the events of Jesus’ salvific actions are placed in a heavenly time and place, something derived from scripture, as the “kata tas graphas” taken in conjunction with his “gospel from no man” of Gal. 1:11-12 makes feasible, then Paul has no concept of a gap between those events and the experiences of various believers in “seeing” Jesus, including himself. They inhabit two different worlds. Don breaks down 1 Cor. 15:3-8 in the traditional way, but on my website and in JNGNM (p,78) I point out the problems in seeing this passage as all of a piece. That analysis Don gives no attention to, let alone discredits it. Furthermore, I have often made the point that an argument based entirely on fine, ground-level wording coming from extant manuscripts two centuries later than the autograph have to be regarded as unreliable at best. (Even mythicists have to take care.) The “kai hoti” (“and that”) at the opening of verse 5, linking the gospel with the appearances, may create a certain impression on those looking for it, but even that, if it was authentic to the original, is readily explainable by seeing it as following on the “delivered” of verse 3; Paul is repeating something (the “seeings”) he had told the Corinthians previously, continuing on from the gospel which he also told them previously. Such an understanding, entirely justified from the text, solves any problem and sets aside any need to see this passage as implying a Pauline view that Jesus had died and risen recently.

Don has said further on this passage:

Well, it might be, if we had clear evidence that this is how Paul thought, although I don’t know what Don has in mind by the “all” in “all is explained.” (This passage in itself? The whole of the epistles?) But really, all that Don is doing here is stating the orthodox, preferred interpretation of the passage, an interpretation with almost two millennia of unquestioned tradition behind it. But the mythicist interpretation also gives us an “all is explained,” so we’re not any further ahead if we take this passage by itself.

But Don’s question imbedded in the quote above is odd. He wonders why Paul would consider that Jesus died at some unknown time in the past, or in another dimension, to justify the human race, but then wait (or God did the waiting) only until Paul’s time to bring that justification into effect. Should one think that such a puzzlement would override the determining factor in Paul’s mind? Namely, if it had happened sooner, Paul would have missed out! No new Son to be preached by him and fill his need to be an apostle, no being the one to get the true message buried in scripture (as he saw it). One might as well ask modern-day evangelicals why Jesus would wait two thousand years to return. The simple—and only—answer is, that’s the way our evangelicals want it to be. They would hardly be willing to say, oh, you’re right, Christ wouldn’t have waited 20 centuries, so our conviction that he is coming soon must be misguided!

Even so, one might think that there could be some disquiet in Paul’s mind about the long wait if G. A. Wells were right and he believed Jesus had lived and died on earth in some distant past, in a time unknown, perhaps centuries earlier. But what if he believed that Jesus had died and risen in heaven, in a ‘time’ essentially unrelated to a specific historical point? In that case, there would be no meaningful ‘gap,’ no puzzling time span between action and consequence, saving act and its application. It was all God’s secret, and He chose the time to reveal it to self-appointed apostles like Paul. In fact, Paul seems to have no worries about a span between act and actual justification. The revelation came ‘in the fullness of time,” “at the proper time.” Nor are such phrases ever seen to apply to the time of Christ himself, the time of his life and death, not even in Galatians 4:4, as Don should know having read my chapter devoted entirely to that Galatians passage.

In fact, that such ideas as the “fullness of time” apply to the recent events of revelation should be clear from the idea expressed more than once in the Pauline corpus, that the secret of Christ has been something hidden “for long ages” and only now made known through scripture, as in Romans 16:26-27. Obviously, such a ‘gap’ did not cause any problem to such writers. The Epistle to the Hebrews also presents a picture in which salvation comes into effect only as a result of the present time of reformation (9:10), triggered not by Jesus’ recent life and actions but by revelation in scripture at the formation of the sect. All this is the dominant if not exclusive way in which the epistle writers describe the present time, and it shows no sign of including a recent historical Jesus.

The other major passage Don appeals to is a little more complicated.

This is quite a bit to hang on a single word, especially when used in a metaphor to illustrate something unrelated to growing and reaping. Besides, the Greek aparchē can have a broader meaning than our usage in English. Bauer’s Lexicon notes that it can be used in a sense which is not tied to the firstfruits of a harvest. In defining this sense of the word, Bauer says: “The original meaning is greatly weakened, so that aparchē becomes almost equal to prōtos [“first”], and 1 Cor. 15:20 is given as an example: “of Christ…the first of those who have fallen asleep.” Without that close tie to a harvest meaning, “firstfruits” in the Greek creates no necessity at all to locate Christ’s resurrection in the recent past in Paul’s mind.

Don quotes my remarks about the passage in JNGNM, where I argue from the point of view of revelation:

To this, he can only suggest that we read over 1 Cor. 15:20-23. Does that sound like revelation to you? he asks. This misses the point. The passage taken by itself may not, unlike many other passages in the epistles, suggest a context of revelation. But it is all those other passages, and the language of revelation which permeates the early Christian record, which strongly suggests that we ought to see a context of revelation behind 1 Cor. 15:20-23, and thus that the reference to Christ’s resurrection does not entail the assumption by Paul that it took place on earth, recently or otherwise. Just as a few paragraphs earlier, in 15:3-8, both the death and rising can equally fit into a mythicist context. And there are supporting indicators in that direction immediately surrounding the 15:20 passage. I spend the bulk of a chapter in JNGNM outlining how 1 Cor. 15:35-49 not only has no mention of a recent resurrection on earth for Christ, the entire presentation of Paul’s argument in those verses excludes the very idea of a Christ who lived and died on earth in a physical body, and it neglects to offer an earthly resurrecting Christ as a very natural and useful analogy to the discussion about Paul’s claims for human resurrection.

As well, preceding the passage in question we have 15:12-16. As I say in JNGNM (p.79):

JNGNM has a host of arguments for the void in Paul’s (and other writers’) minds about any historical Jesus on earth which Don gives us no glimmer of, let alone any rebuttal to. What he has no answer for he simply ignores.

Don thinks to make an issue of the word “now” in 15:20: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” This “nuni” is supposed to indicate a meaning of Christ being raised in the present period of history. He says:

But this actually works against his argument. If Paul is writing about something that happened a couple of decades or more earlier, that resurrection has hardly taken place “now, at this moment.” Clearly, the ‘at this moment’ idea has to apply to a condition existing at Paul’s present time, namely that ‘we are now in a state of Christ having been raised.’ This does nothing to place the raising in the recent past. The present state of the “now” can equally be the result of knowing about it through recent revelation. There is no limit to the gap that may exist between the raising and the “now” situation; or there may be no idea of a gap at all if the death and rising took place in a spiritual dimension, in a different sort of ‘time.’ And what happens if we put the sentence in context? Paul has just led his readers through a rhetorical declaration of how he and other believers will have believed in vain and be lost if Christ has not been raised from the dead. The sense of the “now” serves to imply that that declaration is false. 15:20 should thus be understood as: “But the fact is (nuni), Christ has been raised from the dead.”

My own twist? No, for Don has overlooked this very meaning as given by Bauer. Definition 2b.: “introducing the real situation after an unreal conditional clause or sentence but, as a matter of fact.” And among the passages listed is “1 Cor…15:20”. Most translations make this clear. The NIV: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.” The Translator’s New Testament: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.” The NAB: “But as it is, Christ is now raised from the dead” (the second, gratuitous, “now” referring to the present condition). RSV: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.” The KJV and NASB keep the less precise “But now Christ has been raised…”

Don needs to check more translations, be more careful with contexts, rather than pounce on words atomistically.

Don next takes a look at Paul’s view of the end-times, which he (and others) see themselves living in. He quotes my example of Romans 8:22-3, on which I comment:

To which Don answers:

As far as I can see, this paragraph says nothing. I have pointed out how Paul’s focus is entirely on the future, as though nothing in the recent past has had any effect on the pain the world finds itself in. I fail to see what this has to do with “modern orthodox views”; it is simply a reading of the text itself, what it says and what it doesn’t say. Don turns around and defends his position by saying that Paul’s focus is entirely on the future—which is exactly what I have said. He in no way explains why Paul would not also attach a significance, some effect on the world’s misery, to the recent life of Jesus and his very acts on earth which had bestowed salvation.

And why would it be only “modern orthodox views” that would expect to find in an early Christian like Paul some reference to “a sense of past fulfilment in the life and career of the Gospel Jesus,” especially in the context of portraying the course—past present and future fulfillment—of salvation history? What sort of Christian, past or present, would not? Don does not enlighten us.

Moreover, it is not the case that “the general resurrection is signalled by the resurrection of Christ – not just the revealing of Christ!...” Don reads his own preference into the text of 1 Cor. 15:22-3:

As in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be brought to life; but each in his own proper place [lit., order]: Christ the firstfruits, and afterwards, at his coming [parousia], those who belong to Christ. [NEB]

Nothing here specifies a place or order in which the one “signals” the other in the sense of immediacy. In fact, the general resurrection is signalled by Christ’s coming, in the future. On the surface, the words actually imply that Christ’s resurrection, too, lies in the future (though we know, of course, that this is not how Paul thought).

Then Don brings up the “now” again, after quoting me on what Paul does focus on in recent history:

Clearly, this does not work at all. The “now” meaning Don reaches for has been shown to be invalid, an idea he himself has “read into the text.” And it is not the case that I read “revealed” into the text, as though I am saying that “Now is Christ risen from the dead” means “Now it has been revealed that Christ has risen from the dead.” I am saying that this kind of faith statement is based on revelation (from scripture), not because that passage states it but because the entire literature points in that direction, and even occasionally states it, and this passage is best understood in that context.

(second part to follow)

Earl Doherty