Peter Kirby wrote:When looking for positive evidence of a historical Jesus, the first century originator kind, I found 1 Cor 15 and Gal 1 to be suitable based on their meaning. The rest did offer indication that they believed in Jesus as a man (among other things!), but not necessarily one that they had known as their recent companion, which I find and consider to be the "boundary condition" between historicist and non-historicist hypotheses.
Below is from the old IIDB board, in the thread created in 2006 by Ben C Smith called "Paul and his older contemporary, Jesus". It's from my files, so I don't have a link to the original. This was Ben's OP in that thread.
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Paul and his older contemporary, Jesus
Did Paul think of Jesus as a mythical figure from primordial times? Did he think of Jesus as an historical figure from the indefinite past? Or did he think of Jesus as an historical figure within living memory? Here I offer some evidence for the last of those three options. See what you think.
Evidence that Paul regarded Jesus as a real human being in real human history, not from the age of myth:
1. Jesus must have lived after Adam, since Paul calls him the latter Adam (1 Corinthians 15.22, 45).
2. Jesus must have lived after Abraham, since Paul calls him the seed (descendant) of Abraham (Galatians 3.16).
3. Jesus must have lived after Moses, since Paul says that he was the end of the law of Moses (Romans 10.4-5).
4. Jesus must have lived after David, since Paul calls him the seed (descendant) of David (Romans 1.4).
Evidence that Paul regarded Jesus as having lived recently, within living memory, as an older contemporary:
1. Paul claims to have had dealings with the brother of the Lord, James (Galatians 1.19; 1 Corinthians 9.5).
2. Paul believes he is living in the end times (1 Corinthians 10.11), that he himself (1 Thessalonians 4.15; 1 Corinthians 15.51) or at least his converts (1 Thessalonians 5.23; 2 Corinthians 4.14) might well live to see the parousia. Paul also believes that the resurrection of Jesus was not just an ordinary resuscitation of the kind Elijah or Elisha supposedly wrought; it was the first instance of the general resurrection from the dead at the end of the age (1 Corinthians 15.13, 20-28). When, then, does Paul think Jesus rose from the dead? If, for Paul, he rose from the dead at some point in the indeterminate past, then we must explain either (A) why Paul thought the general resurrection had begun (with Jesus) well before the end times or (B) why Paul regarded the end times as a span of time stretching from the misty past all the way to the present. If, however, Paul regarded the resurrection of Jesus as a recent phenomenon, all is explained. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the general resurrection and thus the ultimate sign that the end times were underway.
3. Paul expects that he might see the general resurrection in his own lifetime (1 Corinthians 15.51). He also calls Jesus the firstfruits of that resurrection. Since the firstfruits of the harvest precede the main harvest itself by only a short time, the very metaphor works better with a short time between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the rest of the dead, implying that the resurrection of Jesus was recent for Paul.
4. There is, for Paul, no generation gap between the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15.4). Furthermore, there is no generation gap between the recipients of the resurrection appearances and Paul himself; he is personally acquainted with the first recipient of a resurrection appearance (1 Corinthians 15.5; Galatians 1.18). Is there a gap between the resurrection and the first appearance? The flow of 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 would certainly not suggest one; however, I believe we can go further.
Paul claims that Jesus was the end of the law for those who have faith (Romans 10.4), that he was raised from the dead in order to justify humans (Romans 4.25), and that this justification comes by faith (Romans 5.1) in Jesus (Romans 3.22). Paul also claims that no one can have faith unless he first hears the gospel from a preacher (Romans 10.14) who is sent (Romans 10.15). Finally, Paul acknowledges that it was at the present time (Romans 3.26) that God showed forth his justice apart from the law (Romans 3.21), and that the sent ones, the apostles, were to come last of all (1 Corinthians 4.9); he also implies that the resurrection appearances were the occasion of the sending out of apostles (1 Corinthians 9.1; 15.7, 9; Galatians 1.15-16). If we presume that, for Paul, Jesus was raised in the distant past but only recently revealed to the apostles, we must take pains to account for this gap; why, for Paul, did Jesus die in order to end the law and justify humans but then wait indefinitely before making this justification available to humans? If, however, we presume that, for Paul, Jesus was raised recently, shortly before appearing to all the apostles, all is explained. That was the right time (Romans 5.6).
5. Paul writes that God sent forth his son to redeem those under the law in the fullness of time (Galatians 4.4). It is easier to suppose that, for Paul, the fullness of time had some direct correspondence to the end of the ages (1 Corinthians 10.11) than to imagine that the fullness of time came, Jesus died, and then everybody had to wait another long expanse of time for the death to actually apply to humanity.
An apparently undesigned coincidence involving the life and times of John the baptist:
Imagine that Paul (and other early Christians) really had no particular time in mind for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; as far as they were concerned, he lived and died in the indefinite past, or even in times primeval. Now imagine yourself as Mark the evangelist, taking this general, indefinite timeframe and historicizing it into a specific setting, under Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate in the late twenties or early thirties. Why would you settle on that time? Why not under the Maccabees, or during the exile, or a little after Pompey, or any of a thousand different possibilities?
1. Mark could have reasoned from all the points above that Jesus was an older contemporary of Paul (the apostle knew his brother, thought the end times had begun, called Jesus the firstfruits of the final resurrection, apparently did not conceive of a gap between justification won and justification applied, and said Jesus was sent in the fullness of time).
2. Mark could have been looking for a precedent for Christian baptism. Paul describes the institution of the other great Christian ritual, the eucharist, in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25, but does not in his extant epistles describe the institution of baptism, even though, despite not having been sent to baptize (1 Corinthians 1.17), he baptizes anyway (1 Corinthians 1.16!). Mark could have lit upon John the baptist as the perfect rationale for Christian baptism; if the movement began within baptist circles, then Christian baptism stands explained. If not, he would have to seek another source for Christian baptism.
3. Mark could have been looking for a good timeframe for the dominical words in 1 Corinthians 7.10-11, in which the Lord, not Paul, prohibits both partners in a marriage, husband and wife, from divorcing. Mark could have noticed that such a command makes more sense to a gentile readership (like the Corinthians) than to a Jewish audience (virtually necessary if he is going to put these words on the lips of the Jewish Jesus in Galilee), since only men could customarily initiate a divorce in Jewish society. So did Mark have to drop the female half of the command? He did not (Mark 10.11-12). He found the perfect time for such a saying, to wit, not long after Herodias had flouted Jewish custom and initiated the divorce from her husband in order to marry Herod Antipas (Josephus, Antiquities 18.5.4 §136), who in turn had John the baptist killed for his criticism of their marriage (Mark 6.17-18).
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We do not really need to know which of these reasons caused Mark to decide on the tenures of Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate as a good time in which to place a previously timeless Jesus. The point is that he had too many good reasons to place him in that timeframe: James the brother of the Lord, the Jewish association of resurrection with the end times, the metaphor of the firstfruits, the difficulty of inserting a gap between justification won and justification applied, the fullness of time, the origin of Christian baptism with John the baptist, and the suitability of both halves of the divorce saying to time of the execution of John the baptist.
All these reasons converge on a time within recent memory for Paul the apostle. Is that a coincidence? Or is that because that is indeed when a man named Jesus lived and had brothers and fulfilled the times and was baptized by John and prohibited women from initiating divorce and died and purportedly rose again? Or is there some other explanation?
Ben.
