How Did Paul Know Jesus Was Resurrected?

[Secret Alias]

Was reading De praescriptione haereticorum again and stumbled on this passage this morning:

In this way let all heresies, when challenged by our Churches, according to each of these standards, prove how they imagine themselves to be Apostolical (because of the claims of the Marcionite canon being an Apostolikon?). But indeed they are not so; nor can they prove themselves to be what they are not; nor are they received into communion and fellowship by Churches which are in any way Apostolical, seeing that they are in no way Apostolical because of their divergence in doctrine.

I ADDUCE in addition to these arguments an examination of the doctrines themselves which were in existence in the time of the Apostles, and were by the same Apostles both pointed out and rejected. For thus, too, they will be more easily exposed when they are proved either to have existed already at that time, or to have derived their origin from those which did then exist. Paul, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, censures the deniers and doubters of the resurrection.

We've had discussions here about whether 1 Corinthians references a 'tradition' or not. The heretics certainly did not think so. All that Paul learned about Christ/Jesus came from a heavenly revelation. All of which makes his knowledge about the doctrine of the resurrection very strange. The gospel, which the Marcionites thought Paul was the first to pen, now has a woman being the first to see the empty tomb. In subsequent re-drafting of the text there are various encounters with the risen Jesus. I wonder however whether or not Paul's original gospel resembled Mark's with respect to the empty tomb. How could Paul have claimed to have never received any human knowledge about Jesus especially his resurrection?

[Clive]

What if the only resurrections any one ever experienced were like the heavenly 500 ones, regularly occurring during eucharistic altered states of consciousness sessions at dawn and the gospels are later just so stories to explain how the leopard got its spots?

[Clive]

"Christ is risen. He is risen indeed"

[Secret Alias]

Another passage from De Praescriptione

But although Paul was caught up as far as the third heaven, and when brought into paradise heard certain things there, yet these revelations cannot be thought to be such as would render him more qualified to teach another doctrine, since their very nature was such that they could not be communicated to any human being

Sed et si in tertium usque caelum ereptus Paulus et in paradisum delatus audiit quaedam illic, non possunt uideri fuisse quae illum in aliam doctrinam instructiorem praestarent, cum ita fuerit condicio eorum ut nulli hominum proderentur.

ēreptus m ‎(feminine ērepta, neuter ēreptum); first/second declension

snatched away, having been snatched away
rescued, having been rescued

The English translation 'caught up' obscures the Marcionite implications of the passage. The Vulage reads:

Scio hominem in Christo ante annos quatuordecim, sive in corpore nescio, sive extra corpus nescio, Deus scit, raptum hujusmodi usque ad tertium cælum

The English translations consistently render the terminology 'carried up' implying some rapture like levitation or something. But the idea is clearly that Paul went up to heaven with Jesus, that Jesus 'seized' Paul and carried him off to heaven. This is important I think when we revisit 2 Corinthians 12:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell

2 οἶδα ἄνθρωπον ἐν Χριστῷ πρὸ ἐτῶν δεκατεσσάρων,— εἴτε ἐν σώματι οὐκ οἶδα, εἴτε ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματος οὐκ οἶδα, ὁ Θεὸς οἶδεν,— ἁρπαγέντα τὸν τοιοῦτον ἕως τρίτου οὐρανοῦ. 3 καὶ οἶδα τὸν τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον— εἴτε ἐν σώματι εἴτε χωρὶς τοῦ σώματος οὐκ οἶδα, ὁ Θεὸς οἶδεν,— 4 ὅτι ἡρπάγη εἰς τὸν Παράδεισον καὶ ἤκουσεν ἄρρητα ῥήματα ἃ οὐκ ἐξὸν ἀνθρώπῳ λαλῆσαι.

Of course I think the hesitation that characterizes much of this passage (and other self acknowledged 'crazy' passages in 2 Corinthians). The original read something more like:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven ... And I know that this man ... was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.

The passage was likely written fourteen years from the crucifixion retelling Paul's out of body experience being 'seized' by Jesus. Note what happens when you accept my theory that IC = man not Jesus. In our terminology what Paul is saying is:

I know Jesus in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven ... And I know that this Jesus ... was caught up to paradise and I heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.

I think this is the closest we get to the idea that Paul was the original witness for the ascension and resurrection of Jesus - not as Acts tells it but as a simultaneous event. In other words, Jesus 'snatched' Paul up as a witness to his ascension and then, most probably 'restood' himself in Paul's body making the apostle the awaited Paraclete (cf. Origen Homilies on Luke 25, Acts of Archelaus etc) as well as Christ.

[Secret Alias]

The idea that the apostles were witnesses to the Ascension robs Paul of his original role in the development of Christianity. It was Paul who witnessed Jesus's enthronement - albeit through a visionary experience.

[Bernard Muller]

As I wrote on my website (http://historical-jesus.info/hjes3x.html), proto-Christians, because they thought Jesus, when still alive, would become the future King, could not believe they had been wrong when Jesus was crucified. So, through the scriptures and the writings of Philo, they took consolation into thinking Jesus' spirit had been saved in heaven, in order to come back to earth at the advent of the kingdom of God. The Jewish Christians followed. At the same time, some of those made claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus, in vision, as a light, as a stranger on the road, etc, most likely to boost their status among believers.
Paul inherited of these beliefs, claimed also visions & revelations, but stressed the raising from the dead (claiming Jesus was the first one to do so), rather than Jesus had been saved in heaven.

Cordially, Bernard

[outhouse]

What if the only resurrections any one ever experienced were like the heavenly 500 ones, regularly occurring during eucharistic altered states of consciousness sessions at dawn and the gospels are later just so stories to explain how the leopard got its spots?

This brings up the real point of it all.

These religious people blamed every good holy thought that came from their heads as being divine in origin. AND every bad thought was an evil spirit that needed to be ran off by some holy man.


THEN we add to all this the rhetorical prose all authors wrote in, knowing their were trained to build their own authority as they were competing against different sects and they needed a tool to show why hey were superior.


The other obvious failure in this thread, is what kind of resurrection were the heretics fighting against? a spiritual one? not likely, they would have been fighting against the few the thought it was a physical resurrection.

[outhouse]

The idea that the apostles were witnesses to the Ascension robs Paul of his original role in the development of Christianity. .

And Paul/his communities originated nothing. Paul never claims to originate anything. Paul wants nothing more then to be viewed as a real apostle

It was Paul who witnessed Jesus's enthronement - albeit through a visionary experience.

No.

[Clive]

Outhouse, your last two points read like someone playing a game of battleships who has received direct hits pretending they haven't been hit

[Clive]

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 2For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 3I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,…
Cross References
1 Corinthians 1:23
but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

Galatians 6:14
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Paul was definitely bringing something very new to the table. The new Adam, the reconciliation of god and man, the new heaven and earth, through the cross that he only ever experienced by revelation, or in an altered state of consciousness, probably induced in a riff on mithraic type rituals involving dawn, blood and bread.

Possibly this new chimera, the Yahweh's Priest Saviour.