Toto

Hi King Arthur - you make it too easy for me.

Why is Price talking about apologists? Because this text came from a debate with apologist William Lane Criag. So much for your "true scholars don't address apologists."

Secondly, the sentence that you quote is not from Price - it is part of William Lane Craig's argument against Price. This article contains arguments that Craig made in an oral debate with Price, set off by quotations marks. It is Craig, the Christian apologist, who argues that the verb is un-Pauline, as part of his argument that the verses could not be interpolated because otherwise the passage would not make sense, and that this unusual verb form for Paul indicates that he is passing along tradition.

Now I admit that the format of this second Craig article is confusing. But you claimed to be smarter than anyone here. Guess not.

You were right when you told me אתה האיש

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

CX

Because there is none. There are no known variants to this phrase. Furthermore 1 Cor is one of the best attested books in the NT. The verses in question are attested by one of the oldest available MSS, the Beatty Papyrus (P46), circa 200 C.E. Obviously we cannot be certain given the evidence, but Paul clearly wrote that Jesus appeared to "more than 500 brothers". At least we have no reason to think otherwise. This tradition undoubtedly precedes the Pauline epistles. Still, that we do not see this mentioned in the Gospels is a good indication that the Gospel authors were unaware of this tradition. And certainly there is no evidence that such an event actually occured. Frankly, I'm not sure what the controversy is about.

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]</p>

Toto

This is the controversy: Christian apologist William Laine Craig (and others following him) claim that Paul's statement that 500 brethren saw the risen Christ, some of whom still alive, is part of the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. They argue that if there were 500 witnesses around, someone could just go ask them and check to see if it were true - otherwise the Galilean Skeptics Society would have debunked the whole thing and Christianity would have died on the vine.

There are many holes in this argument. We have no evidence that the story about 500 witnesses was widespread around 50 CE, since Paul's letters were not apparently widely circulated that early. We don't know that anyone would have debunked it, since Christianity was a minor cult at the time, and the times were not very skeptical. It seems that an event that dramatic would have survived in legend, but it does not appear anywhere else with a number approaching 500. And Paul's statement of an appearance before an anonymous 500 men has nothing backing it up. We don't know if he is lying, exaggerating, speaking of a spiritual experience that would not have been evident to anyone else, or anything. (These are all possibilities.)

Price's thesis goes beyond these. He points out that the theme of this passage is in contradiction to Paul's statement in Galatians, where he claimed that he got his gospel directly from Jesus and not from any man:

Price's thesis follows a model that says that the church in in the mid-second century, in reaction to Marcion, constructed the image of Paul that you find in Acts - Paul as cooperating with Peter and working in parallel with him, so all was sweetness and light between two factions of the early church that other evidence shows were uncooperative. The interpolation would have happened well before the earliest surviving manuscript.

Price:

It seems impossible to prove this one way or the other, but as a historical theory it seems to explain a lot.

CX

I guess I just don't understand what needs explaining. Paul appears to have heard from someone (he doesn't say who) that Jesus appeared to a large group of people. None of the evangelists seems to know about this. So what? Paul is trying to show that his revelation of Jesus is on par with those in Jerusalem who are apparently opposing his apostleship and that it happened to a whole bunch of people. So what is in dispute? That it actually happened? That's unproveable because the only reference we have to it is a passing, 2nd hand remark by someone with a theological agenda. That Paul actually wrote it? I see no strong reason to think he didn't.

Butters

Steven Carr:
King Arthur states:
If some dork lied when they put in writing that about 500 people saw Jesus after his resurrection, then surely there was at least one reasonable person to write "No, it did not happen that way."

Anyone have any replies to this?

[ August 03, 2002: Message edited by: xeren ]

Forscher:
Who would that person be? It's not as though 500 people showed up for a show that didn't happen, there were no 500, no gathering, and no show. Paul made the whole story up, to shore up the rest of his story. Since he was writing a long time after the supposed event, and from a long way away, at a time when all sorts of supernatural events were thought to happen, the chances of anyone who could and wanted to dispute it even hearing about it are slim, much less the chance of the later church allowing any opposing account to survive.

On the other hand, if 500 people HAD gathered for the show, and it DID happen, there must have been at least a few accounts of this. If 500 people had gathered for the show, and it didn't happen, there MIGHT have been a record of this also.

By the way, 500 people gathered together with me last night and we saw a ufo, if you don't believe me, go ask them.

Amen-Moses

Or this analogy:

Josephus tells us that a cow gave birth to a lamb and that it was witnessed by many people, where are the witnesses who say it didn't happen?

(I hope noone actually believes that Josephus is reporting fact btw)

Amen-Moses

Peter Kirby

Toto writes: Peter - what do you think of Price's arguments that the whole "500 brothers" were inserted by a later apologist?

A couple years ago I made a post to Usenet in which I indicated succinctly why I do not think that Price's arguments form a convincing case for interpolation of 1 Cor 15:3-11. If I find that post, I will reproduce it here.

Although Price argues for interpolation of the whole passage, the suggestion of inteprolation for just the 500 reference has some arguments in its favor. Once upon a time, I said: "But many scholars consider 1Cor 15:6 to be an interpolation. On one interpretation, 1Cor 15:1-11 evinces two fourfold hymns (fused together a little): 'that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he rose on the third day, and that he appeared' and 'Christ was seen by Kephas, then by the twelve; Next he was seen by James, then by all the apostles.' The long and awkward sentence of 1Cor 15:6 interrupts any kind of rythm or formulaic pattern there might have been. The focus of the tradition seems to be on notable leaders of the community, and thus the sudden mention of the 500 anonymous brethren seems to be an intrusion (Evans, _Resurrection_, pp. 50-51). And if Wilckens is right, this list is one establishing credentials, as one who claimed to be an apostle must have seen Jesus (cf. 1Cor 9:1). On the other hand, the reference to 500 witnesses available for corroboration can only be an apologetical device for the resurrection (Wilckens, _Resurrection_, p. 13). The extravagance of this claim seems more characteristic of later apocryphal writings. Moreover, it is difficult to understand why the evangelists left out this important detail if it were really an early tradition."

So the arguments include that (a) the long sentence interrupts a hymn, (b) all the other appearances are to leaders as though to establish credentials, (c) the claim seems to be a fancy similar to second century apocrypha, and (d) an early tradition of such importance would not have been passed over by the evangelists. The last argument is addressed by the speculation offered earlier. Argument (c) assumes that the first century was exempt from fancy. Arguments (a) and (b) depend on some sort of consistency in this list of appearances, which is reasonable but not certain. Although I have no trouble thinking that Paul wrote this, and although I am not convinced by the arguments for interpolation, the suggestion itself has merit and cannot be dismissed without due consideration.

Toto writes: It would tend to rule out your idea that the appearance to the 500 was written back into Jesus' ministry.

The idea is advanced primarily to explain the presence of this note in Paul and the apparent absence of the incident in the four gospels. If the note in Paul is a later gloss, you would be correct to say that no such explanation is necessary.

best,
Peter Kirby

Steven Carr

That the passage doesn't fit and is awkward.

Steven Carr

Fascinating that King Arthur lambasts atheists as being apologists and spin-masters when they are simply quoting what Christians say.

King Arthur

I meant too!! You know, see if you were paying attention and all!! You know...

Dang, Toto! Stop it! You're makin' me look bad! Hah!

Oh well, regardless of whether I screwed up again or not due to time constraints and horrible speed-reading skills, much of my argument still stands.

Fine, Craig is an idiot for saying what he said instead of Price. However, Price still has some unelegant rhetoric of his own for a true scholar. Besides, he's not very authoritative. There are many other scholars with a higher reputation.

Like I said, my argument still stands. One can see from my Greek transliteration that the lines fit nicely together, so verse 6 has a low probability of being an interpolation. As for the whole 3 - 11 being an interpolation, well, that's silly too. There are at least two words ("preaching" and "has been raised", or whatever) that are common between 3 - 11 and the rest of 1 Cor. In addition, as CX pointed out and as I said before, there is no evidence in all the many manuscripts that would lead one to believe this had ever been an interpolation. (As an aside: I say thousands of manuscripts as evidence because ancient scribes had access to older manuscripts than we do today, so even medieval manuscripts will occasionally preserve and older, more original reading than the early papyri. So, out of all the thousands of manuscripts, some preserving traditions older than the oldest manuscripts we have today, I would expect to see at least one somewhere with some evidence of serious tampering in verses 3 - 11, as is the case with the ending of mark which was screwed up very early. It just ain't there.) Oh yes, and an atheist scholar whom I respect very much and is a very reputable textual scholar - Bart Ehrman, doesn't even list these verses in his book on the Orthodox corruption of the Scriptures!

Thus, as one of the more intelligent atheists (who still screw up good now and then) that the probability of this being an interpolation is very low indeed.

{applause....bow...applause...bow...thank you so very much...applause}

[ August 07, 2002: Message edited by: King Arthur ]</p>