rlogan

I said no such thing. This is a theater of the absurd, which I guess is the consequence of an absurd premise, this criterion of embarassment.

No shifting of focus. If this silly theory holds, it holds everywhere and not just where you want to use it. If it doesn't, then it is useless.

TedM

Come on Jay. You're smarter than that. Why are all the folks here who don't like the criteria of 'embarrassment' so eager to simplify how it is is applied?

TedM

My position is not that converts were embarrassed by the cross. Rather, that non-converted Jews found the idea of a crucified Messiah repulsive. That reduces the probability that it was made up, since the evidence is strongest for the origin of the story to have been with the Jews. For the non-converts, it makes it harder to convert because it sounds implausible AND because they will suffer persecution for adhering to such a non-traditional view of the Messiah. 'Embarrassment' in this context has to do with 'against the grain' of common sense. It is more likely that this against the grain concept was forced upon them by circumstances (ie a beloved martyred figure) than by applying non-traditional repulsive ideas to a made-up non-human Savior.

Does that help?

TedM

I can play your game too spin. Paul says it was the 'same faith'. Since the choice is either Christ(faith) or works(law), Paul is saying they had the same faith in Christ that he has. Belief in the resurrection is all that was needed for salvation. People who ALSO followed works were in Paul's view not adding to their faith, but also not taking away. They were still saved by virtue of belief in Jesus' resurrection. So, when Paul says it was the 'same faith' in Judea that preceded Paul's conversion, he is saying they believed (had faith in) Jesus' resurrection. Nothing else mattered. It certainly wouldn't have been simply a group of 'messianists' that you seem to be atomistically focused on.


Ok, if you are correct then explain why your view completely is at odds with the NASB version I'm seeing, not only explicity but in common sense terms:

Who is the "church of God"? Paul uses this phrase 5 other times in the authentic epistles to refer to the Christian church: http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/...ase&bookset=10

If that isn't enough look at the context: He follows with the account of how God revealed Jesus to him. The clear implication is that God showed him how wrong he was to persecute those that believed in Jesus. Had he been persecuting some other group that didn't even know about the Jesus resurrection claims he made two huge omissions: 1. he used a phrase that always meant Christians when he used it in 5 other places. 2. He didn't explain that the revelation wasn't really that closely related to the group he just mentioned he had persecuted. Why even mention them? Do I have to live in Tarsus 2000 years ago to credibly claim that this doesn't make any sense -- ie common sense dictates that the messianists were Christians? OR cannot we conclude this with great certainly today through rational thought?


Then just a few verses later he explicitly says that the group he mentioned as the 'church of God" were "in Christ" and had the same "faith" that he now had after God revealed Jesus to him!

The tie-in of the group he persecuted to his own faith in Jesus is unmistakable -- clear indications both before and after his mention of the conversion. I'm scratching my head how anyone can manage to distort common sense and explicit meanings to conclude what you have concluded. It boggles my mind and really seems idiotic.

Since you probably aren't an idiot, I will await your explanation as to what is wrong with my NASB version above. How do you explain away all of this seemingly irrefutable evidence?

TedM

You don't get it. Embarrassment doesn't REQUIRE omission. Nor consistent use by different people. Observation shows that different people behave in different ways when embarrassed. Why should it have been any different 2000 years ago? This is ridiculous. Give me a good reason by Matt, Luke, and John 'softened' the portrayal of Jesus' being baptized instead of removing the entire event from an original Mark (which also was softened), and maybe we'll have something to talk about.

spin

Actually, no he doesn't. The text says, "they only heard it said, 'The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.'"

This follows from your previous erroneous assertion, as does what follows.

You need to look at what the context allows for the term to mean. How does Paul use "congregation, assembly"? (I use "congregation, assembly" here to try to wean you away from assuming things implied by a modern use of "church", which is essentially a christian organization.) In the singular it usually means a localized group, eg "the church of God which is at Corinth" in 1 Cor 1:2 and 2: Cor 1:1, presumably to be understood also in 1 Cor 10:32, and 11:22. Things get out of whack in--wouldn't you guess--1 Cor 15:9. In this last, which I have frequently argued is in an interpolation for various other reasons, we find some universalistic notion of "church", which also seems to be the case in Gal 1:13. This is not Paul's normal usage, for he would use the plural to talk about all believers (*).

1 Cor 14:33, for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

What is the implication of the singular "church of god" in Gal 1:13?

Note how the text uses "congregations of Judea in Christ"? This plural seems to be more in keeping with Pauline language.

We'll shelve the stuff about the "same faith", which is overworking what the text actually says. He is giving himself a backstory to the Galatians, showing that he is not just a lone nutter, but in the thick of things, knowing the so-called bigs of Jerusalem (who send to Galatia the people who wrongheadedly insist on circumcision) and being known by name by messianic groups across Judea.

That's because you are not reading what the text says, but what you want it to say, as you so frequently do when you try to read the texts.

Nothing to explain, just your Dr Suess reading level.

TedM

Wow spin, you surely deserve your name, as that last post was a perfect example of how you hone in on requiring perfection in the meaning of words to such an extent that you end up discarding common sense and overlooking plain and obvious meaning.

First of all, whether Paul says the churches of Judea had the same faith or whether he says that OTHERS said they had the same faith is completely unimportant, yet you think it makes some kind of difference. What matters is what Paul was saying. He clearly was making a point that the faith WAS the same.

Secondly, your distinction regarding his use of "church of God" between universal usage and local doesn't change the fact that this is the term he uses for CHRISTIANS, whether they be universal or localized. You seem to be implying that the usage in Galatians is an interpolation, the favorite escape plan for those that don't like what they find in a verse: just make it disappear. And 1 Cor 10:32 is almost definitely a universal usage. He mentions Jews (universal), Greeks (universal), and the "church of God." Local? Doubtful.

Third, you minimize the context as I showed that the argument for persecuting Christians and then discovering his error through God's revelation is a lot more convincing than persecuting "messianists" who didn't believe in Jesus' resurrection from crucifixion.

Lastly, you skipped right on by the KILLER evidence, repeating your claim about the messianists again:

How does this become a group that doesn't believe in Jesus' resurrection?

In summary, ALL of the above is very strong evidence that your preference for a generic messianic group that knew nothing of claims for a resurrected crucified Jesus are total unfounded and are clearly contradicted by what Paul tells us in Galatians was the situation. It just doesn't fit spin.

Of course the implications are HUGE, but you seem very committed to not be willing to take the step and just accept them, favoring instead extreme atomistic focus on certain things and complete blindness to the most important things.

And think about it: what would be the need for Jewish 'Christians' who followed the law but didn't believe Jesus had been a resurrected Messiah? And Paul, for whom the resurrection meant EVERYTHING--even willing to give up his own life for it, not only was submissive to the group ("lest I had been running in vain"), but he didn't even bother to mention that those so-called 'Christians' didn't believe Jesus had been resurrected? It's ludicrous to think that Paul would have ignored a difference in opinion over the truth of Jesus' resurrection in favor of a discussion about eating meat and requiring circumcision or not. It is simply too much of a stretch to be taken seriously.

Time to get serious and take a stand spin...go where the evidence leads you.

spin

Send TedM back, whoever you are.

ficino

In line with what some other people have said above, here are my reasons so far for viewing as a FAIL the application of the CoE to the crucifixion.

The NT scholar who uses the CoE to argue the historicity of the crucifixion reasons as follows. “Even though I can’t prove that the resurrection occurred, I can at least make a strong case that Jesus was crucified, because the early Christians would be embarrassed to preach a crucified messiah. They might have imagined or invented the resurrection to salvage their movement after its founder’s crucifixion, but they would not have made up the crucifixion itself—the probability would be too great that people would reject a cult of a crucified messiah.”

Against this:
1. I don’t have a background in prob. and stat., so my layman’s take may be off. It seems to me that, whatever the antecedent probability of success of a cult of a crucified messiah, the historical probability of its success is one. The face that it overwhelmed other cults shows that there were increasing numbers of people who did not reject the crucified messiah.

Why didn’t they?

2. Of the tradition that has reached us, there NEVER was a stage in which the message was anything other than the crucified AND resurrected messiah. A period of time during which the early Christians knew only a crucified messiah is itself an artifact of the gospels, the historicity of which is the subject of discussion. Away with a mere “crucified messiah.” The material under our scrutiny is all and only about a “crucified and resurrected messiah.” Even genuine or invented rebuttals from antiquity presuppose already a resurrected messiah. There are no nuggets of historical fact that can be detached as bare data from the tradition; all we have are various forms of the tradition.

3. And in that tradition is seen the genius of the cult’s message. It appeals to people of all stripes. Even the illiterate could look at pictures and see a Jesus who triumphed over the authorities who condemned and killed him. And so on.

So I think the CoE relies on unwarranted assumptions about intentions of people to whom, and in a time to which, we have no access outside of the already formed tradition of the crucified AND resurrected messiah.

TedM

You've seem to have missed the guy's point. Of course it was successful, but his point is that it was highly unlikely that it would be successful if it were not based on a real, historical crucifixion. THAT you cannot say had odds of 'one', because that is the question at hand.



I don't see that as significant. Why should there even have been such a stage? On what basis would anyone accept a crucified and NON-resurrected messiah? What I DO see as significant is that there was a long-standing tradition that the messiah would NOT be killed, but would be a messiah-king who would lead Israel to victory over its enemies. This is a completely different concept than a 'suffering servant'. The NT attests to this tradition. A major message of GMark was that nobody knew what Jesus was even talking about when he mentioned his impending death and resurrection because they couldn't even conceive of the Jewish Messiah dying and rising. The consistent message in the NT is that 'eyes were opened' NOT from scriptural reflection in a vacuum, but from scriptural reflection in light of odd historical events.


Yes, this explains why it lasted, but what is it that lasted? Belief that a historical event occurred to a man who had God in him on earth. Not some mythical conception derived from scripture alone.