luvluv

"It definitely wasn't the Jews. The suffering servant in Isaiah is the Jewish people."

So you're saying that there weren't messianic Jews? There were no Zealots?

"I have talked about Galatians 2:7-8 elsewhere. Paul knows a Cephas as 1 Corinthians shows us and here in Galatians after mentioning Cephas, suddenly the text throws in references to Peter. These references are spurious. They do not fit into the discourse. After these two verses Paul goes back to using Cephas. If for Paul, Cephas was entrusted with the gospel to the circumsized then why do the Corinthians know him?"

Actually it's the other way around. It starts Peter and then gets turned around into Cephas. It seems to me like he's laying the groundwork for the reasons for his authority with the Gentiles:

Galatians 2:1
Then after an interval of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also.

Galatians 2:2
It was because of a revelation that I went up; and I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but I did so in private to those who were of reputation, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain.

Galatians 2:3
But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.

Galatians 2:4
But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

Galatians 2:5
But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

Galatians 2:6
But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)--well, those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me.

Galatians 2:7
But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised

Galatians 2:8
(for He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles),

Galatians 2:9
and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

Galatians 2:10
They only asked us to remember the poor--the very thing I also was eager to do.

Galatians 2:11
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

Galatians 2:12
For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

Galatians 2:13
The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

Galatians 2:14
But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Galatians 2:15
"We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles;

Galatians 2:16
nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

At any rate, it seems he did know a Peter existed. So I'm asking you guys: Did Peter exist? Did Paul exist?

luvluv

Sojourner:

It shows how Jesus clearly predicted that he would return during the lifetimes of his contemporaries -- with all the Christian apologies (with refutations) why this did not occur.

Okay, but if Jesus did not exist, and all of these Gospels were written after all of Christ's contemporaries had died, why would the guy who wrote the Gospels leave these ALREADY disproven prophecies in the book?

spin

luvluv: "Actually it's the other way around. It starts Peter and then gets turned around into Cephas."

You should look at 1:18, where Cephas is first mentioned.

And please read what you cited. Don't you see that the stuff about Peter doesn't fit the discourse at all?

2:6 finishes with "those leaders contributed nothing to me." and

2:9 starts with the real important ones: "and when James, Cephas and John, who were the acknowledged pillars, recognized..."

Thrown between these is the gospels to the uncicumsized and the circumsized stuff. You have to work hard to read this passage as coherent.

luvluv: "At any rate, it seems he did know a Peter existed."

That just doesn't seem to come from the text. I see no sign that Paul knew a Peter. And as I pointed out the stuff about bringing the gospel to the circumsized doesn't fit Paul's mention of Cephas to the Corinthians, who were obviously not circumsized, but just as obviously knew Cephas well.

I have said elsewhere, the Epistle of the Apostles seems to think that Peter and Cephas were two separate apostles.

luvluv

"That just doesn't seem to come from the text. I see no sign that Paul knew a Peter. "

What about this:

Galatians 2:7
But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised

Galatians 2:8
(for He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles)

I didn't say he knew a Peter I said he knew OF a Peter, which would seem to sugget he exists.

I just want to know whether or not you believe Paul or Peter existed?

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

spin

luvluv, you seem not to read what I am saying. Had you noticed one of the previous times, I have read the text. But you didn't notice, and didn't understand the analysis I put forward. The evidence is abundant that texts were reworked. We have two different endings to the gospel of Mark. We have additions to John (throw the first stone) and the 1st letter of John handily about the trinity, so there is nothing strange about texts being changed or added to. I have argued this for the text of Galatians when it suddenly starts talking about Peter when Paul had earlier talked about Cephas and immediately after this Peter stuff continued talking about Cephas. So, repeating the text may stimulate you somehow, but it sure doesn't reflect any analysis.

"I didn't say he knew a Peter I said he knew OF a Peter, which would seem to sugget he exists."

This shows you are not willing to engage in what I wrote to weigh up its value objectively. As I said, Paul indicates that he knew a Cephas. The text indicates that it has been worked on to include Peter, ie the Peter material is secondary and not part of Paul's original letter, so to me Paul didn't know of a Peter. If he didn't, how can we?

"I just want to know whether or not you believe Paul or Peter existed?"

We have a series of texts with the name of Paul attached to them. They have a cultural context which is coherent. It would seem that the writer (excluding parts which are problematical, such as the letters of Timothy I & II and Titus), let's assume he was called Paul, was a single person, ie *he* existed.

Peter doesn't come out of the analysis at all, ie I see no evidence that there was such a person. This doesn't mean that he didn't exist. It means that I don't think anyone can know that he existed.

I have no beliefs either way.

Vorkosigan

How do you know that the passages in Galatians have been reworked? I know of an argument for that, but I am wondering what yours is.

Michael

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by luvluv:

turtonm:

What is the fundamental reason that scholars do not think Jesus was an actual person?

First, the vast majority of all scholars believe there is someone under the story. Practically all, in fact, although that will change over time, I suspect. What they differ on is the degree to which the NT gospels, and other gospels, reflect the reality of Jesus' life, whoever he was, and whatever his real name was.

So when you say "Jesus was not an actual person" it is a tricky statement. Even people who think that Christianity was some combination of Hellenic mystery cults and Jewish messiah-ism do not rule the existence of a real person under the story. They just don't think he bears any relationship to the man in the legend, any more than the King Arthur who lost his wife to Lancelot bears any relationship to the actual figure, who seems to have been a minor warlord.

Do scholars believe that the fall of Jerusalem was the start of Christianity as we now know it or is that just your idea? (Serious question, not an insult)

Scholars view the fall of Jerusalem as a seminal event in the formation of the Christian consciousness. I think it was a key event, though not the beginning. I overspoke. I view Christianity as growing gradually over a century or so prior to the fall of Jerusalem, gradually accreting legends and stories about Jesus, the Savior. Savior cults are extremely common in colonized areas where people are desperate. In the third century AD Folk Taoism in China began developing a Savior cult that eventually produced a Mary figure, an Infant, a Heaven, a Hell, a Triune Godhead (past, present, and future), a Devil, and even a Taoist Pope, and of course, a Savior.

Also, with all due respect, I really cannot find any Old Testament verse which in anyway seems to speak to the parables. I think that Jesus, or whoever you want to say made up the parables and statments in the NT, had some pretty coherent and consistent ideas.

I don't. And if Jesus was so coherent and consistent, why are scholars so incredibly divided on which parables were his and which weren't? Why can nobody say for certain what Jesus was? I can't really label a man "consistent" who called his enemies "vipers!" while telling us we should love ours.

Parables as teaching forms long predate Jesus. What would you accept as a "parallel?"

He seemed to put acts of service and love over acts of ritual. He seemed to emphasize forgiveness. He taught in parables. In his almost exasperated frustration with the established religious community, he seems to have a consistent personality.

Would you say that the Jesus of John -- who does not speak in parables at all -- bears any relationship to the one in Mark? If you think Jesus taught in Parables, how do you view the gospel of John? Does the Jesus of the Gospel of Mary look anything like the Jesus of Luke? Where do you place the Jesus of the Gospel of Peter? There are forty or fifty known gospels, you know. Are you claiming that Jesus is consistent across the four canonical ones, or across all known versions of his life? Even for the four &lt;approved&gt; versions Jesus is extremely different. When you toss in the other gospels, and Revelations......Part of the "consistency" is an artificial construction of the Church. The 4 gospels have been edited by the Church to conform to doctrine, and they were selected based on ideological criteria. It's really not surprising that there is some degree of consistency.

I am just asking you these questions to make you think. Sooner or later, if you are going to think about the NT, the Gospel of John will become a major issue. How does it fit? There Jesus claims to the Son of God from the beginning, he talks in philosophical discourses, no parables at all, and the gospel itself has been heavily edited. If you want to claim that Jesus taught in parables, then you have to pretty much reject the gospel of John as authentic tradition -- but then how could the alleged Beloved Disciple have written it? That was the JEsus' Seminar's conclusion. Basically, they decided there were no authentic sayings in John at all. They went with the Synoptics as the authentic word of Jesus.

But don't take my word for it. Read Ehrman's or Udo Schnelle's Introduction to the New Testament.

Is there any other work of fiction from this time that imitates this style (realism)?

I'm glad you concede that the gospels are fictions . And yes. The placing of fictional characters in known settings was as common in that day as in ours.

It seems radically different from all the other religious text,

How? Given your claim, you could just as easily say that Buddhist writings are radically different from the NT. Does that make them authentic? Really, you have to claim that all other writings -- Taoist, Buddhist, Inca, Hindu, Jain, Shinto, whatever, are all the same, and the NT stands out. And that's absurd. They're all different from each other. Do you have some measure of difference you can put forth?

... and differs greatly even from the Old Testament and the prophets. If it is the work of an imagination, it demonstrates amazing consistency in terms of characterization (not only Jesus but people like Peter, for instance, seem to have a consistent personality),

Well, I don't agree. Can you get a consistent image of Peter across the letters of Paul, the canonical gospels, and the noncanonical writings? I don't think so.

And I don't think it is the work of imagination. That is a simplistic view. It is the work of a selection process by a community that viewed some sayings as useful and authentic, and others as not. The "not" were trimmed, we don't even know what they were, although some writings preserve sayings of Jesus not found in any gospel, but were clearly part of what was once a rich oral tradition. The second century writer Papias, cited by Eusebius in the fourth century, thinks that the oral tradition is more useful than the written....echoing what was once a widely held view.

That kind of selection process goes on all the time. For example, few now recall that one of the early miracles of Lourdes was that some unbelievers were eaten up by snakes. Since this did not fit a recognized Church tradition, it was
edited out from the collective memory of the Lourdes miracle tradition. Similarly, the miracles of Charles Manson are missing from much writing about the man, they don't fit into our preconceptions of what a monster must be. But Manson's followers aver that he levitated a bus over a stream once. Such selection processes operated on the Jesus Legend as well.

...theme, style (consider how the author of John refers to himself in the first person as "the disciple Jesus loves).

Why should I consider it? Fiction writers frequently wrote in the first person, and certainly could think from someone else's point of view. In any case, the Beloved Disciple is an invention of the writer of John. I personally do not think that any disciple wrote even a single word of it.

I admit I am not well read in terms of the criticisms you quote, but I am acquainted with the Bible as a finished product. The character of Jesus does not seem to be an amalgam.

It does to me!

Unlike much of the rest of the Bible, the parables and the sermons he preached do seem to be the consistent philosophy of a single man.

They may represent sayings circulating in a group of communities linked by common beliefs, so they should have a certain consistency of subject matter. As I said.

Note that there are two competing theories on the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. Both agree Mark is the first gospel (practically all scholars agree on this except for a few fanatic conservative Christians). In one theory, Luke copied Matthew and Mark, in the other Matthew and Luke separately copied Mark and a source called Q, which they used in different ways. So why is Jesus "consistent?" Because everybody copied from Mark!


So I ask again, can you name any document from the period similar to the New Testament in style?

If I could, would it mean the NT writers copied it? If I couldn't, would it mean that the NT writers and editors didn't use their own creativity in stitching together their sources?

In any case, I don't know what you mean. Are you referring to the NT as a body, or just to the gospels as a literary format? As far as I know, Mark's was the first gospel of any kind.

Religioustolerance has introductory material on the gospels:
<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb1.htm</a>

Michael

spin

Michael:
-------------------------------------------
How do you know that the passages in Galatians have been reworked? I know of an argument for that, but I am wondering what yours is.
-------------------------------------------

I have basically answered that reworking is the likely answer from the reasons already stated:

1) Paul indicates elsewhere (1Cor.) that he knows
a Cephas, and starts off with Cephas in Gal 1:18
only to return to that name directly after the
Peter material;

2) the Peter material interrupts the discourse in
an extremely brusque manner with unrelated material;

3) although Peter is supposed to have been "sent" to the
circumcized, Cephas is well-known to the
uncircumsized Corinthians;

4) the Epistle to the Apostles is blithely unaware
of the fact that the two figures are supposed to be
the one, listing them as distinct apostles.

We may be used to the sudden change of name because we are trained to it, but there is no logic in the text to first be talking of one name and then intrude another for two verses then come back to the first without a blink.

The easiest way for me to understand the phenomenon is in the light of harmonizing the text: Paul's material lay unused by most for a long time and people know the name Peter better than the Hebrew Cephas, so when Cephas was found in this text, someone simply associated Peter with it, "clarifying" the text.

Vorkosigan

Good stuff! Argument number 3 is especially convincing. Are you aware of<a href="http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/barnikol.html" target="_blank">Barnikol's paper on this issue?</a>. He has some other useful arguments to buttress your case.

Michael

spin

Michael,

Thanks for the Barnikol link. He seems to go into the technical material well. He has also gone a good way to indicating when the material was added.