This is no more than a suspicion so far, one which I am trying to flesh out to some extent. I have made arguments before that certain Pauline passages which seem to point to a minimal Jesus of the kind you are writing about are actually interpolations. You know the passages of which I speak, since we have either debated them or agreed on them. This makes me wonder whether other passages, ones not as clear, might not also be interpolations, thus leaving Paul bereft of any statement which might reasonably be construed as indicating a minimal historical Jesus. If this is so, then the option presents itself which I presented on that thread about the mythicohistorical Christ: the only things remaining to tie a minimal historical Jesus to Paul's Jesus Christ is the name Jesus and the mode of execution, and this makes me wonder a bit.Bernard Muller wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2017 9:10 am to Ben,What is your definition of a historical Jesus? A minimal human Jesus who existed in the near past (relative to Paul), or the Jesus of the gospels? or something else?So I am wondering whether my pet theory, which happens to be that Christianity as we find it in Paul and several other early writings knew nothing of an historical Jesus, conforms to the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model after all....
Do you think:
a) Paul was totally silent about that minimal Jesus?
That is as far as I have gotten so far in this direction. I have no proof, no bang-dead argument as yet. It is all just a notion so far.
Silence is part of the (potential) argument, of course, but there is more to it than that, as I have argued elsewhere.b) If no, Paul did not know more about that Jesus other than what he wrote about him?
c) Other epistles might have been silent about any historical Jesus, but does that mean their authors rejected any historical Jesus?
Cordially, Bernard