Pre-BC. Paul?

[Jax]

While watching a youtube video lecture by Richard Carrier, Carrier mentioned that there were arguments by some scholars for Paul having written his letters either in the second century or the 1st century BCE. He further stated that the arguments were valid ones that were worthy of consideration.

I have been trying to locate what he was talking about but am coming up short. My primary interest is in a pre-BCE Paul, does anyone here know what scholarship papers that he may have been referring to?

[GakuseiDon]

Maybe Robert Eisenman? I haven't read any of his books, so I may very well be mistaken. But I suspect a pre-CE Paul goes along with a pre-CE Jesus. From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_of_Righteousness

Robert Eisenman has proposed James, brother of Jesus as the Teacher against a "Wicked Priest" (Ananus ben Ananus), and a "Spouter of Lies" which Eisenman identifies as Paul of Tarsus.[13][14] However, the introduction of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Damascus Document (CD 1:5-11) places the ascendance of this figure just prior to the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt sometime in the first half of the second century BCE.[15] That date is roughly two hundred years too early to be James, the brother of Jesus.

I don't remember Dr Carrier giving weight to a pre-CE Paul though. In OHJ he writes that he pretty much agrees with the consensus that Paul wrote around 50 CE. Which video were you watching?

[Jax]

Maybe Robert Eisenman? I haven't read any of his books, so I may very well be mistaken. But I suspect a pre-CE Paul goes along with a pre-CE Jesus. From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_of_Righteousness

Robert Eisenman has proposed James, brother of Jesus as the Teacher against a "Wicked Priest" (Ananus ben Ananus), and a "Spouter of Lies" which Eisenman identifies as Paul of Tarsus.[13][14] However, the introduction of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Damascus Document (CD 1:5-11) places the ascendance of this figure just prior to the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt sometime in the first half of the second century BCE.[15] That date is roughly two hundred years too early to be James, the brother of Jesus.

I don't remember Dr Carrier giving weight to a pre-CE Paul though. In OHJ he writes that he pretty much agrees with the consensus that Paul wrote around 50 CE. Which video were you watching?

Carrier definitely agrees with the general consensus that Paul is writing in the mid 1st century, however he has said that arguments supporting a pre-BCE Paul are out there and some of them are very well constructed and cannot be dismissed out of hand.

From (I think) this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPZ39rqaIZ0

As far as Carrier on Eisenman goes, I'm pretty sure that Carrier would rather go on at length about how much he loves dog dirt sandwiches rather than say anything positive about Eisenman.

[DCHindley]

While watching a youtube video lecture by Richard Carrier, Carrier mentioned that there were arguments by some scholars for Paul having written his letters either in the second century or the 1st century BCE. He further stated that the arguments were valid ones that were worthy of consideration.

I have been trying to locate what he was talking about but am coming up short. My primary interest is in a pre-BCE Paul, does anyone here know what scholarship papers that he may have been referring to?

If you misremembered and it was Jesus he was speaking about, the reference might be to G R S Mead's Did Jesus Live 100 BC? (he wrote around 1900 CE I think). Mead thought that in some Judean traditions (preserved in Talmud, Midrash, Toledot, but even mentioned by the Christian bishop Epiphanius) the Jesus revered by Christians had been conflated with stories about a disciple of a Judean religious teacher who was in hiding from Alexander Janneus around 100 BCE. The specific Judean scholar is different in the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds, but in both traditions the story is set in a sectarian religious community located Egypt or the wilderness somewhere. Jesus made a flip comment critical of their host community and the scholar severely rebuked him and drove him off. In response Jesus set up his own form of religion and the Judean scholar came to regret his rash rejection because of the evil that came of it.

If you remember rightly and it was Paul, the only person I can think of who has suggested such a thing is our very own "spin" who has felt for a while that the stories about Paul's conflicts with "the Ethnarch of Aretas" better fit a political climate for the 1st century BCE rather than 1st century CE. The "king Aretas" mentioned in the NT is usually associated with Nabatean king Aretas IV Harith, but as you can see if you check out "king Aretas" in Wikipedia there were several generations of Nabatean "Arab" kings by the name Aretas' (not necessarily in direct succession, but all related) going back over 100 years. "Spin" also points to various anachronistic technical terms for the region and the king in the stories about Paul in the NT that he thinks indicates the story has been adapted by Christians from earlier materials, somewhere around the 2nd century CE.

Now "spin" is not one to argue on the basis of this or that authority alone, but usually always lists the facts that support his interpretation. So search the BC&H (and the IIDB/FRDB) archives for spin's posts that mention "Aretas" & "Damascus" using Peter Kirby's search engine ( http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... f=7&t=1300 ). He may have given the name of a scholar (or two) who has suggested this in the past, but offhand I am not aware of one myself.

The term "ethnarch" can be applied to anyone in charge of an ethnic people. The term has been used for Herod's son Archelaeus ("Ethnarch" of the Judean people wherever they may have resided in the Roman empire). I also think the term "ethnarch" was among various titles applied to some Hasmonean rulers and even Herod in his early years, but that is off the top of my head. So basically, the "Ethnarch of Aretas" was the person who was appointed by king Aretas (pick one) to represent the Nabatean peoples who resided in Damascus.

Now I think that the Nabateans did briefly control the city of Damascus in the 1st century BCE (Aretas III), and maybe later, but control of the city changed hands numerous times. However, I do not think that Damascus had to actually be *controlled* by king Aretas for him to be *allowed* to *appoint* a *representative for his people* resident there, by whoever or whatever did rule the city (Romans, a city council, etc.). But that is just me ...

DCH

[John2]

However, the introduction of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Damascus Document (CD 1:5-11) places the ascendance of this figure just prior to the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt sometime in the first half of the second century BCE.[15] That date is roughly two hundred years too early to be James, the brother of Jesus.

There are various ideas about the meaning of the 390 years mentioned in the Damascus Document, which VanderKam discusses here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FSnLk ... el&f=false

So there is some flexibility here, and Collins, for example, is in the symbolic camp:

This passage has been widely interpreted to mean that this movement arose from Israel and Aaron in the early second century B.C.E. It is doubtful, however, that the number of 390 years can be pressed in this way. It is a symbolic number, derived from Ezek 4:5, and in any case we do not know how the author of this text understood the chronology of the post-exilic period.

https://books.google.com/books?id=13ZxD ... ic&f=false

My view is that whatever group wrote the Damascus Document was at least similar to Jewish Christians, that James is similar to the Teacher of Righteousness, and that Paul is similar to the Liar, however you date the Damascus Document (and that is my understanding of Eisenman's view as well). Lim, for example, notes that:

... the [Dead Sea Scrolls] sectarians and early church were the only ones to have used the concept of “the new covenant” from the prophecy of Jeremiah. Other Jews did not comment on “the new covenant” nor did they use it in their writings.

http://www.christianorigins.div.ed.ac.u ... t-seventy/

And Bauckham notes that:

Although the Qumran community and the early Christians were certainly not the only Jews to focus their hopes on the Isaianic picture of the way ... they are the only two groups we know to have applied the image of this way to their own way of life.

https://books.google.com/books?id=U7-Qe ... re&f=false

[John2]

Here is how Eisenman puts it in JBJ:

... such an argument [that the Dead Sea scrolls are pre-first century CE] changes little regarding the position being developed in this book. All the doctrines, ideas, and orientations, all the exegeses that would then have been current among 'opposition' groups of the first century BC, can then be shown to have flowed full-blown and almost without alteration into the main 'opposition' orientation of the first century CE. Thus the argument of this book remains unaffected. Only the direct textual link to James or some other first century 'Righteous One' or 'Zaddik' would be broken ...

[Jax]

Thanks Dave and John2,

Dave, I am going through the archives now.