stevencarrwork wrote:GakuseiDon wrote:
What is most significant is that Christ--whether a preexistent divine being, Adam, or an angel (I prefer the final interpretation myself)...[/list]
So clearly Ehrman has not changed his view on Paul regarding Jesus being an angel, but only on his views on what the Synoptics imply. Carrier might be mashing these views together, and perhaps has forgotten what Ehrman actually wrote in 'Did Jesus Exist'.
Here is Ehrman describing how he changed his views on Paul , after 'Did Jesus Exist' in the link I gave on this thread.
http://ehrmanblog.org/pauls-christology/
'But I get it now. It is not a question of higher or lower. The Synoptics simply accept a different Christological view from Paul’s. They hold to exaltation Christologies and Paul holds to an incarnation Christology. And that, in no small measure, is because Paul understood Christ to be an angel who became a human.'
Ehrman gets it 'now'. He gets it 'now' that Paul understood Christ to be an angel.
But of course, if Carrier says Ehrman has done something, a million people will automatically claim Ehrman has done no such thing. Because Carrier is wrong about everything,
On page 112 of Did Jesus Exist, Ehrman 'proves' that the earliest Christians were adoptionists by pointing out how one of the latest books of the NT ie Acts contains adoptionist theology.
You seem to be under the impression that Ehrman could remember from one page to the next of 'Did Jesus Exist' what he had written.
I'm sure Ehrman knows his own position!
1) Incarnation Christology - a christology re Ehrman that requires preexistence.
2) Exaltation Christology - a christology re Ehrman that does not require preexistence.
The gospel of Mark, re Ehrman has no Incarnation, preexistence, christology. The gospel of Mark has an adoptonists christology.
Ehrman's position is very straightforward. I don't get what the problem here is. Carrier can jump up and down re Ehrman 'reversing' his position (which, from
'Did Jesus Exist' to
'How Jesus Became God' looks to be only a matter of a timeframe re when the preexistence Incarnation Christology surfaced. In the earlier book Ehrman thought it was late and in the newer book he writes that he now thinks it was early BUT not prior to gMark's adoptionist, Exaltation Christology)
The bottom line in all this re the positions of Ehrman and Carrier is that gMark has no Incarnation Christology. Carrier's mythicist theory requires that the Jesus of the gospel of Mark was preexistence. Carrier cannot ascribe to the writer of Mark something that is not in this writing. Whether gMark's Jesus was historical or fictional does not change the gMark storyline - a storyline that demonstrates an adoptionist, Exaltation Christology - not an Incarnation Christology.
Ehrman's position is not dependent upon which NT writing was first written. It's based upon the christological development observed within the gospel story. That development is not negated if the gospel story was written post Paul. The christological development relates to an earlier time period than that covered by Paul's epistles.
The theories of Doherty and Wells have a period of time prior to the advent of Pauline Incarnation preexistence christology. Doherty has his imaginary Q founder and Wells has his flesh and blood Q figure. Doherty suggest an 'amalgamation' and Wells a 'fusing' of the Pauline grouping with the earlier grouping. Carrier has cut loose from Q and has therefore cut loose from having any reasonable response to Ehrman's two christological positions. i.e. the fig tree.......
- Carrier: ''Mark is fabricating a symbolic allegory. He thus cannot be taken literally at anything. He is not portraying any Christology. He is assembling lessons about Christian life and the gospel, and doing so with myths. The most obvious demonstration of this is the fig tree incident, where it is obvious Mark in no way actually means Jesus withered a fig tree for the absurd reason that it wasn’t bearing figs out of season. The fig tree represents the Jewish temple cult, and its withering represents what God allowed to happen to it, and why (as a result of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D.). So when Mark has Jesus adopted by God at his baptism, Mark is not trying to say that that is historically what happened, any more than he was trying to claim Jesus actually withered a fig tree for no sane reason. The baptism scene is a model for Christian baptism. This is what baptism meant in the church: adoption by God, cleansing one of their sins for all time. Jesus is thus simply a mythic stand-in for every model Christian. This is a story not about Jesus, but about baptism. And even insofar as it is about history at all, it only embodied the claim (true or not) that the Baptist cult endorsed the Jesus cult as their superior and successor''.
One does not have to be a historicists to recognize the adoptionist, Exaltation Christology, in gMark.....That is gMark's story! Whether that story is historical or fictional is a secondary issue! It is only Carrier's very own mythicism position that forces him to deny the gMark storyline. Up against what the text itself says - that at his baptism Jesus was exalted to being God's son - Carrier has to run to the whole of gMark being an allegory - thus allowing him to interpret the baptism in a manner to suit his own mythicism theory - i.e. being God's son is not an exaltation christology so gMark has no Exaltation Chronology.
At present, Ehrman thinks the earliest Christians thought Jesus was a pre-existent angel who was literally descended from David - no mean feat. How can a pre-existent angel who became Jesus also be descended from David?
Let me repeat - for how many times now - Ehrman has two Christological positions - the two positions mentioned above....
Interesting - Ehrman looks to be developing the ideas of Wells.....
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats