spin

It wouldn't be wise to bet your house on something that wasn't certain.

I don't see a reason to justify choosing Jesus is likely to have been real. And while I wouldn't discount, it seems to have as much going for it as the not-real option. As I have said frequently enough now, the two positions are ontological commitments without having an epistemology to justify them. That makes neither position of any value. We can happily see christianity blooming from Paul, who never met Jesus and admits gaining no knowledge of his Jesus from other humans. A Jesus was certainly necessary for his messianic innovations, a messiah who'd come for a prequel which gave people an escape from judgment. This required a human Jesus, but that which is a logical necessity for Paul is not a historical necessity. All religions have real founders. Wasn't Paul christianity's founder? He had no need for a real Jesus nor did any of his converts. Was there any christianity outside the groups that Paul founded? He talks of earlier messianists, but were they christian? Why doesn't he mention Jesus in their context?

Will Wiley

I would choose that a jesus likely existed on the basis that we have about as much evidence as we would expect for a preacher from that time, and that there is no sensible alternative to explain things.
I don't think they are anything near comparable
I think that is too simplistic a way to compare them.
Only if your assumption above is correct.
He does not admit that though. We know he meets and has signifigant interaction with Cephas, as we need to explain his dealings with Cephas. They only make sense if Cephas followed Jesus as messiah too.


Also Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to others including Cephas before he appeared to himself

How could Paul have not also been aware of Cephas's take on Jesus?

Will Wiley

please remove, double post

Huon

And what if "Paul" was a true liar, simply interested in living off James and more than five hundred brothers and sisters ?

spin

First, we have to start with the fact that Paul was the first writer we have of this religious tradition. All the gospel material that interferes with being able to read Paul on his merits were written well after him. (Consider that Mark, the earliest gospel, was written well after the fall of Jerusalem: the temple curtain is rent to symbolize the overthrow of the Jews; the wicked tenants of the parable (Mk 12:1-12) symbolizing the Jews get ejected from the land they occupied courtesy of the landlord and others are given control of the land.)

Reading gospel material into Paul is a guarantee of obfuscating what he was saying. We have to understand him from what he says and what came before him. Whatever you've read from the gospels is a liability that can stop you from dealing with Paul. People talk about Paul's churches, a nice established christian term, but he was the first to use it and we cannot retroject the christian notion into it. He don't know that his meetings (that's how ekklhsia should be translated in Paul to keep it neutral) were anything like later churches, which eventually became the buildings specifically constructed for the meetings. How were Paul's meetings different in format from those of the Pharisees? They would have had food and drink for those of the fellowship to participate in a communal ritual.

Cephas is the person Paul talks about through 1 Cor and mainly through Gal except for Gal 2:7b-8 which unaccountably talks of Peter. (See my blog entry, where I argue this is an interpolation. And I'm not alone in the matter.) Peter suddenly appearing would be no problem to later christians who learned that Cephas was Peter, but when did Cephas become Peter? Was it always? Why would Paul call him Cephas regularly if he was supposed to be called Peter in Greek? It shouldn't come as a surprise that in the early 2nd c. Epistle of the Apostles both Cephas and Peter are mentioned as separate apostles. We find it easy to think of Cephas as Peter but we may be looking at the situation before Cephas and Peter were combined. After the fact stories can be understood or construed in a manner that doesn't represent the original. Was Paul's meeting in Jerusalem with the pillars really a friendly successful one or was Paul sent to gentile oblivion by Jewish messianists who seemed nothing like people who had been followers of Jesus, who had apparently learned nothing of the laying aside of torah practise and eating and carousing. The Jerusalemites were strict torah followers. Didn't they walk through the grain fields picking ears of corn in flagrant disregard for the torah (Mk 2:23ff)?

We are used to understanding Paul through the eyes of the way christianity became, not the way it was for Paul. We must look at him differently. Otherwise we will probably repeat the mistakes of all those who don't even try to read him for his own ideas in his own context. If you don't hang your gospel knowledge at the door, you're bound to mess up.

You're not trying yet.

Strangely enough I have been dealing with material for a long time and have some familiarity with it. If you have an epistemology for Jesus historicism, let us all know. From my point of view, the only approach that you will see is the repudiation of mythicism, which tells you nothing about Jesus historicism.

You have the opportunity to show it wrong by providing what nobody else can.

Only possibly, if Cephas is Peter.

Do you think Paul wrote stuff about Jesus appearing to the twelve? There weren't twelve at the time according to the gospels. Is Paul really telling us there were the legendary 500 witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, while telling his converts that they have to believe in the resurrect? Surely a few of those witnesses were enough to convince the converts that it isn't a matter of belief. Then we get the story of some having fallen asleep: this is the later church, making excuses for believers dying with no end in sight. Then we get to the lovely self belittlement of Paul as an abortion, while he in fact is the apostle chosen before birth to tell the world about Jesus (Gal 1:15-16). This is all bad enough, but then we get the "on the third day" rhetoric when the first gospel talks of "after three days" (Mk 8:31), only later to be corrected to "on the third day" in Matt & Luke, another fine example of a later hand. There is just so much wrong with this passage, if we look at it now with objectivity. I spent a week demonstrating that Paul would never have used the Greek verb translated as "received (as a student from a master)", for it indicated that Paul was lesser than others (and he received his Jesus gospel from god not from some master). Paul specifically indicates he is no less than any apostle (1 Cor 9:1-6). Having "received" the information is certainly later church putting Paul in his place.

Did Cephas have a take on Jesus? Or was he just a Jerusalemite messianist waiting like the supporters of John the Baptist for the apocalypse? The baptist sect survived John and even Acts 18:24ff tells a tale of Apollos who was a follower of John who knew nothing of Jesus! He was teaching of the messiah so well that christians took him aside and set him onto the way of Jesus. The Jerusalemites were perhaps not as open to Paul's Jesus as Apollos is portrayed. Perhaps the Jerusalemites were quite similar to Apollos and knew only of the messiah coming at the apocalypse. Paul doesn't report using the name of Jesus with them. He even argues in Galatians against the torah practice of the Jerusalemites positing Jesus instead of the torah. Just think of the faith in Jesus v. works of the law debate. Remember naughty Cephas eating with the gentiles until his colleagues came and he lifted his game from embarrassment? Paul asks, "how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" (Gal 2:14b) Do this Cephas seem like a person who understood the message of the gospel Jesus??

Will Wiley

As I haven't mentioned the gospels, Im not sure why you did. I'll consider your arguments here when I have more time.
Interesting response.
Didn't you just say you can't use the gospels to understand Paul? We need to explain pauls interaction with cephas. It dovetails well with Cephas having an interest in Jesus. It doesn't dovetail well with him not having one, but I'll consider what you have to say when time permits

spin

Without injecting the gospels there's no problem with Cephas. However, looking at developments between gospels can tell us about interpolations in Paul.

Will Wiley

Do you agree that Paul met Cephas and spent time with him?
Because Paul also tells us that Jesus appeared to Cephas before he appeared to Paul, so it's difficult to argue that Cephas didn't have a view on Jesus, from that vantage point.
It then follows that they would have spoken about Jesus, doesn't it?

aa5874

One does NOT do history by merely agreeing with unsubstantiated claims.

The Pauline writings are the very worse writings to accept as credible.

Do you NOT understand that NOT even the agents of the Church knew when Paul lived.

The History of Paul is that he was executed under Nero but was ALSO aware of gLuke.

It is chronologically Improbable.

It has been deduced that NERO died Before gLuke was composed.

There are letters that place Paul Before c 70 CE but they are ALL Forgeries.

It was a horrible error for so-called Scholars to accept sources of fiction and forgeries with multiple FAKE authors as authentic.

Grog

What views on Jesus do you propose they shared? What do you think Cephas knew that he had to share with Paul? So far, based on Paul and without reading the Gospels in, we only know that Risen Jesus had appeared to both. Paul says nothing about Cephas having knowledge about Jesus' time on Earth.