Gamera

I guess being descended from David and bearing in his being God's ultimate plan for salvation isn't unique enough for you. I suspect others disagree on your parsimonious definition of unique.

In any case, you are stuck with biography even if -- implausibly -- Paul thought Jesus was an regular bloke. That's because he focuses on his execution, which implies a crime, or a deemed crime, which implies an interaction with the powers that be. And that, Amaleq, is what we usually call a "narrative."

Your argument reduces to the implausible claim that Paul just begins in media res with Jesus dying on a cross and resurrecting (which of course is itself a posthumous biography of sorts). It doesn't wash. It would have been incoherent to his audience -- especially an audience familiar with biography and utterly unfamiliar with theology, since theology hadn't been invented yet.

Steven Carr

Gamera is getting there.

Because 'appear' has no connotations of 're-appear', the word 'again' has to be added if you want to tell you readers that you mean 'appear again', rather than just 'appear'.

The sentence does make perfect sense without 'again'.

These two sentences below both make perfect sense :-

'One day Jesus Christ will appear.'

'One day Jesus Christ will appear again'.

Most speakers of English will tell you that those sentences mean different things.

However, there is one person in the world who claims that these two sentences have identical meanings.

And that person accuses others of 'linguistic naivety'.

Amaleq13

No, being a descendant of David is not "unique" by any definition.

The purpose of his incarnation says nothing about whether the life he lead prior to his execution was unique.

Since I have never denied "biography" but only your assertion of a "unique life", that means absolutely nothing to me except that you haven't been paying attention.

I asked you this before and you neglected to respond. Do you acknowledge that Paul's letters are consistent with the notion that Jesus lead an ordinary life prior to his execution?

And that, Gamera, is what we usually call a "straw man" since I have not only failed to deny this claim but clearly accepted it in the earlier thread.

More sloppy reading on your part. Please review what I have actually written about how Paul's gospel starts with Phil 2.

Your failure to actually read what I've written is simply pathetic.

Rick Sumner

Since you've: 1) Neither addressed a single citation I provided, nor defended a single one of yours, 2) Never discussed this topic with me beyond these two posts and 3) Clearly never even bothered to look in a lexicon for the Greek you presume to lecture everyone on (see, for an example outside of the NT that will hopefully preclude anachronism, Homer's Odyssey 14.152 or Plutarch's Demetrius 17, for why your understanding of the term "euangelion" is misinformed), I find your suggestions about my agenda to be quite amusing.

I invite the reader to determine for themselves whether or not you've offered anything of any substance supporting your position. I can't be bothered to engage you further when you revert to thinly guised ad hominems at the first sign of trouble.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Steven Carr

No credibility?

Let us examine Gamera's 'overlapping semantic fields'

'Appear' can mean 'perform' - as in 'The Rolling Stones appeared in Berlin', and 'the Rolling Stones appeared in London.' (Note that I do not mean that the Rolling Stones appeared again in London, even though they *did* appear again in London)

Would any congressman think that Condi was being thanked for performing a tap-dance routine?

Clearly not, so 'appear' and 'perform' have none of what Gamera calls 'overlapping semantic fields', so 'appear' cannot mean 'perform'. QED

In short, Gamera's reasoning is shot to pieces.

'Appear' just does not mean 'appear again', even if the speaker is talking about somebody who actually is appearing again.

Just as 'I ate my breakfast' does not mean 'I ate breakfast again', even though everybody knows I have had breakfast more than once in my life.


When I say 'I ate breakfast this morning', I do not intend to convey the repetitive nature of my breakfast-eating. I merely wish to state a fact about that particular morning and what meal I ate at that time.

This is all kindergarten stuff, which makes me wonder why Gamera says people lack credibility when they say that 'appear' and 'reappear' are different words.

To take Gamera's specific example, if Condi appeared before a comittee and the chairman told her before lunch 'Thank you for appearing', it would be assumed that she had finished giving testimony. If not, she would be reminded that she still had to appear again that afternoon.

gurugeorge

LOL. Your reasoning as above and in this whole thread reminds me of a quaint old English riddle I came across a while ago:

Why is a story like a ghost?" Answer. "A story's a tale; a
tail's a brush; a brush is a broom; a brougham's a carriage; a carriage is
a gig; a gig's a trap; a trap's a snare; a snare's a gin; gin's a spirit;
and a spirit's a ghost.

Doug Shaver

Evidence that Paul thought of "the gospel" in terms of the stories written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would be a statement of his that cannot be reasonably construed except as a reference to some element in those stories. The mere fact that they have been so construed by most Christians for some 1,800 years is not evidence that he himself intended such a construal.

Your claim is about what Paul meant by the gospel. Paul didn't write either of the epistles to Timothy.

gstafleu

Given that Hesiod doesn't locate the action anywhere, and given the prevalence of "countries far far away," I don't have much problem with "mythical strata of heaven," which, as far as I'm concerned, could be the same place where Snow-White lived: what's in a name?

The "fleshly sublunar realm" is a bit too detailed for the Prometheus story, though. If it is too detailed for the Jesus story I don't know. Thinking in spheres, where the sub lunar sphere was the lowest non-earth layer, was not unusual at the time, see e.g. Cicero's Dream of Scipio. Given that there always is a tendency in the minds of non-poets to move from the poetic (mythical time/space, dream-time, once upon a time, whatever you call it) to current reality, I wouldn't be surprised if the people of those days started placing mythical events in one of these spheres. Exactly how they did that is an interesting historical detail, but not more than that: it does not affect the myth itself.

Gerard Stafleu

GakuseiDon

Plenty, if we are trying to decide whether the author placed the action on earth or a "fleshly sublunar different sphere of reality". Not that placing a story on earth makes it historical, but it does help to rule out the "sublunar" option.

Dreams are dreams. Did Cicero believe that he was reporting a real state of affairs? He doesn't appear to. Tertullian and others gave what they seem to think was the real state of affairs with regards to demons, and it was that they lived in the sky.

:banghead: "I wouldn't be surprised" is Doherty-speak. What I am after is EVIDENCE. If there is no evidence that people in Paul's time believed that the sublunar realm represented another reality, and there is evidence against such a belief, then this can't help but weaken Doherty's case, you being non-surprised not withstanding.

Gamera

You have missed the point. The Synoptics have a particular storyline. The soupcon of a storyline Paul references in his epistles is not inconsistent with the Synoptics. If anything, Paul's preaching influenced the Synoptics, since he was telling his story of Jesus well before they were written.

This is evidence that Paul's storyline was more likely similar to the Synoptics as opposed to totally different.

It is not the strongest evidence, but it is evidence. As to the evidence that Paul told a nonbiographical narrative about a Jesus outside of history, there is really no evidence of that whatsoever.

So if we are to take your position seriously, you must come up with a plausible explanation of why Paul's references do not contradict the Synoptics.

That hardly matters. The author thought that Paul did. Which is evidence that Paul in fact did. Presumably the author an epistle attributed to Paul either intentionally or unintentionally would have some knowledge of what Paul wrote. Query: why did the author of Paul (who is much closer in time and tradition to Paul than you) think that Paul wrote a narrative gospel? You need to answer that question to make your position credible.