Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 10-04-2002, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Layman:


Sigh.

This is all irrelevant to the point. You have been yammering and insisting that Paul would never have recited a tradition about Jesus -- even though Paul uses precise Rabbinic language showing he did just that -- because "his gospel" came directly from God. In response, I have pointed out that by "gospel" Paul does not mean to say that everything he knows about Jesus came from God. The "Gospel" to Paul is the message that Jesus saves -- Gentiles and Jews. The notion that "Gospel" means "Biography about Jesus" is anachronistic.

To further illustrate this point, I pointed out that Paul obviously had learned some things about Jesus and Christianity before his Christianity, and therefore it's silly of you to argue that he would never learn anything about Jesus or Christianity from humans.

Sigh yourself.

This is the point that you are avoiding: you are using circular reasoning. You are assuming that the Christians Paul persecuted believed in the same human Jesus as later Christians, and then you assume that he must have received information from them about this human Jesus, and then you offer some ambiguous words from a possibly interpolated piece of writing to prove that Paul had information from them of a human Jesus.

Can you show that Paul did not learn from these early Christians and from Peter that Jesus was a spiritual entity who had never existed on the lowest plane of reality, this earth? Can you show that Paul did not learn from these others that Jesus was the spirit of someone who had lived 100 years ago? You can't show any of this. Perhaps Paul was persecuting them because they were corrupting Judaism with their pagan-based mythological savior, and then he had this vision of that same pagan savior, and decided to join them.

Toto · 10-04-2002, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by leonarde:
I submit that although it is likely that as a persecutor of early Christians Paul had a rough
idea of the claims of the Resurrection, he did
not have (since he did not require it) the
in-depth knowledge of Christianity that one would
expect of a missionary. And we know that he did become a full-time missionary, travelling to parts of the Meditteranean where there was no knowledge of Jesus. There were
,no doubt, questions for Paul. And to prepare himself for these missionary journeys he needed a
tad more background knowledge: both of the
historical Jesus and of the teachings of those very first believers.....He almost certainly
got it from the earliest disciples, since they were readily at hand.

Cheers!

Leonarde - you have imagined a scenario that has no basis in fact. It makes sense that Paul would have acted that way, but there is just no evidence that he did, and most scholars assume that Paul was just not interested in the details of the historic Jesus, since he never mentions those details in his letters, even where he could have used some detail from Jesus life or death to illustrate a point.

Get a copy of Doherty's book <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=663" target="_blank">The Jesus Puzzle</a> and turn to page 302 (which doesn't seem to be on his web site.) Doherty imagines a scene there of Paul trying to convert people who ask him questions about Jesus, and gives the answers that current scholarship attributes to him.

lpetrich · 10-04-2002, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Toto:

... Doherty imagines a scene there of Paul trying to convert people who ask him questions about Jesus, and gives the answers that current scholarship attributes to him.

That's fabulous!!!

Paul seems so snotty, dismissing much of what many people find interesting about Jesus Christ.

Starboy · 10-05-2002, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Toto:


You have yet to demonstrate the above. I would suggest that if there were a historical Jesus, then Paul would have acted the way you suggest - he would have immediately sought out people who knew Jesus in person, learned from them, talked about Jesus with them. But there is no indication that he did any of this. After his visitation, he goes off into the desert, then he starts preaching. He shows no apparent interest in the details of the history of Jesus. He does not apprentice himself to one of the disciples. He thinks of himself as the equal to the others who presumably knew the historical Jesus.

That is one interpretation, another would be, he didn't give a rat's a** about Jesus. This was his opportunity to express the control freak side of his personality, a trait that persists within and is common among Christian authorities to this day.

Starboy

Radorth · 10-05-2002, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Doherty imagines a scene there of Paul trying to convert people who ask him questions about Jesus, and gives the answers that current scholarship attributes to him.

What kind of an argument is this? "Doherty imagines"? What "current scholarship" are we talking about? How can one have a meaningful discussion about historicity when are asked to accept imaginary possibilities as premises?

Quote:

Paul seems so snotty, dismissing much of what many people find interesting about Jesus Christ.

Like what for example? Your statememt is interesting. Kindly give us something specific to mull over.

Radorth

leonarde · 10-05-2002, 07:31 AM

Posted by Toto :

Quote:

Originally posted by leonarde: I submit that although it is likely that as a persecutor of early Christians Paul had a rough idea of the claims of the Resurrection, he did not have (since he did not require it) the
in-depth knowledge of Christianity that one would
expect of a missionary. And we know that he did become a full-time missionary, travelling to parts of the Meditteranean where there was no knowledge of Jesus. There were, no doubt, questions for Paul. And to prepare himself for these missionary
journeys he needed a tad more background knowledge: both of the historical Jesus and of the teachings of those very first believers.....He
almost certainly got it from the earliest disciples, since they were readily at hand.

Cheers!

Leonarde - you have imagined a scenario that has no basis in fact. It makes sense that Paul would have acted that way, but there is just no evidence that he did,

Well my scenario has the advantage of.....logic.
To wit:

1)the bare-bones conversion depicted in the Acts of the Apostles wouldn't tell Paul what he, Paul,
should teach about Jesus, either historically or
as far as teachings are concerned.

2)therefore, just to do his job in a minimally
competent manner, he needed information.

3)the New Testament hadn't been written at that
point (Paul himself may have later written some of the very first works)so he couldn't get
the info the way we early twenty first century types do.

4)where did he get this information from?

Your claim:

Quote:

Paul was just not interested in the details of the historic Jesus, since he never mentions those details in his letters, even where he could have used some detail from Jesus life or death to illustrate a point.

just does not ring true to me: you are saying that
in a context of knowing an enormous amount of
information about what the earliest Christians
believed. Imagine by contrast, for a moment, that you are a native of Corinth (or Rome, the exact location is unimportant)in the first century AD. Some guy comes into town and starts preaching ---
---in a synagogue or elsewhere----about his road-to-Damascus experience. "Saul, Saul why do
you persecute me?" is followed by "I am Jesus,
whom you persecute. But get up and go into the city, where you will be told what you must do."
(The above words are the ONLY ONES that Paul hears
in his conversion vision; it is from Ananias that
he learns---according to 9 Acts 15-16----that he is to be a Christian missionary to the Gentiles.)

Now Saul/Paul certainly had a vague idea of whothis Jesus was whom he was persecuting.
But did the run-of-the-mill Corinthian or Roman (ie living in Rome)or Galatian?? No. To make converts to any religion, ideology, intellectual paradigm, you have to be able to respond credibly to questions. Can we really picture the following types of scenarios?
-------------------------------------------------
(Corintians)Where and when did this Jesus live?
Who was his mother? What did he do before becoming
an itinerant preacher? What were his teachings?

Paul: Sorry, but I'm not interested in the historical Jesus.
-------------------------------------------------
To have had any credibility whatsoever (and
we know he was a resonably successful evangelist)
he would have had to respond to the above-type
questions. There could be no substitute for knowledge in this area. The fact that his writings
reflect little of it is probably due to 2 things:

1)he was writing to persons who were already converted to Christianity.

2)his knowledge of Jesus was limited by never having met the flesh-and-blood Jesus.

Cheers!

[ October 05, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]

[ October 05, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]

Radorth · 10-05-2002, 08:03 AM

Quote:

Can you show that Paul did not learn from these early Christians and from Peter that Jesus was a spiritual entity who had never existed on the lowest plane of reality, this earth? Can you show that Paul did not learn from these others that Jesus was the spirit of someone who had lived 100 years ago? You can't show any of this. Perhaps Paul was persecuting them because they were corrupting Judaism with their pagan-based mythological savior, and then he had this vision of that same pagan savior, and decided to join them.

We can show it, and have shown it via the methodology used to verify 90% of all accepted facts in human history, i.e. the alternatives are even more absurd. For us to live on "planet Doherty" we are required to take more by faith than the NT demands. This problem of blind acceptance works both ways, and seems to be the source of our divisions.

I'll admit one of mine, specifically that the nativity and resurrection stories require us to take much by faith. This where many agnostic historians draw the line, and reasonably so, presenting us with reasonable alternatives such as that his body was not to be found, but could have easily been stolen by one or two disciples who never fessed up. Or that some women given to insanity saw angels at his empty tomb and finally convinced Peter of same.

But (sigh) the folks on Mars Hill never tire of hearing some novel theory, do they? Schonfield, Wells and Durant are dead, along with their "old" methodology.

Radorth

"There are things in heaven and earth not dreamt of by your philosophy."

Toto · 10-05-2002, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Radorth:


What kind of an argument is this? "Doherty imagines"? What "current scholarship" are we talking about? How can one have a meaningful discussion about historicity when are asked to accept imaginary possibilities as premises?

Radorth

Radorth - I am afraid my short post will not make much sense unless you read Doherty's book. If you do, you will be *astounded* at the way leonarde's thinking tracks Doherty's, except that leonarde thinks his scenario must have happened, while Doherty uses it as evidence that our understanding of Paul is off.

(I would not normally post something that requires you read a particular book, but leonarde's post could have been based on the book.)

Toto · 10-05-2002, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Radorth:


We can show it, and have shown it via the methodology used to verify 90% of all accepted facts in human history, i.e. the alternatives are even more absurd. . . .

Could you give a cite for this methodology, proof by the lesser absurdity?

I think if you look at the history of the search for the historical Jesus, you will not find such a clear consensus on methodology as you seem to think exists. You might enjoy Charlotte Allen's Human Christ, which I reviewed <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000406&p=" target="_blank">here</a>. The historical Jesus that you are so sure exists was a creation of Deists, who now seem dated.

leonarde · 10-05-2002, 11:23 AM

Posted by Toto:

Quote:

(I would not normally post something that requires you read a particular book, but leonarde's post could have been based on the book.)

As it happens I'm completely
unfamiliar with the book you cite. Any dovetailing
in the opinions of the author and me are coicidental (at least sourcewise). But GMTA....

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