The Real Bottom Line in the Mythicism Debate

[John T]

Not to belabor the point but the belief of a resurrected Messiah was not unknown before Paul. The Essenes were awaiting the resurrected Messiah, who would herald the coming of the Son of Man.

“If true, this [Gabriel’s Revelation] could mean that Jesus’ followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose from the dead.”. http://www.normgeisler.com/articles/Bib ... nStone.htm

Respectfully,

John T

[andrewcriddle]

Not to belabor the point but the belief of a resurrected Messiah was not unknown before Paul. The Essenes were awaiting the resurrected Messiah, who would herald the coming of the Son of Man.

“If true, this [Gabriel’s Revelation] could mean that Jesus’ followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose from the dead.”. http://www.normgeisler.com/articles/Bib ... nStone.htm

Respectfully,

John T

This claim has now largely been withdrawn
See for example Hazon Gabriel

Andrew Criddle

[Hawthorne]

Not to belabor the point but the belief of a resurrected Messiah was not unknown before Paul. The Essenes were awaiting the resurrected Messiah, who would herald the coming of the Son of Man.

“If true, this [Gabriel’s Revelation] could mean that Jesus’ followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose from the dead.”. http://www.normgeisler.com/articles/Bib ... nStone.htm

Respectfully,

John T

This claim has now largely been withdrawn
See for example Hazon Gabriel

Andrew Criddle

Could you give a full citation for that, Andrew?

Nevermind, i think you are referring to Henze, p. 115.

[Adam]

Jiri, it's been a long time,
Though not just recently touting my Seven Written Eyewitness Accounts Thesis here,
I did recently add a corollary that John 21 might be the lost original ending of Mark 16. The appearance of Jesus to Peter and six other apostles in Galilee would of course be the missing appearance suppressed in Mark. I hold that there were competing Judaeo-Christian entities where Luke-Acts and John 20 focused on Jerusalem while Matthew and Mark 16:1-8 and John 21 came from a Galilee and Peter focus. See below the quotes to my quote and the link to my big thread on Horizontal Synoptic Solution:

Solo wrote,

If the risen Jesus actually appeared to Peter and the disciples, or such lore existed at around 70 CE, then the original Mark (ending at 16:8) lied about their not receiving the news of Christ rising. But I think Mark was telling the truth (symbolically) because his gospel would likely have been a non-starter if he consciously supressed what every Christian supposedly knew in his time, i.e. that Jesus rose on the third day and appeared to his discipleship.

[/box]
Hi Jiri,
Unless I'm misinterpreting your statement here --- I don't see how you can characterize that Mark's ending “consciously suppressed” the resurrection and the appearances. The resurrection is both implied and explicit (Mark 16:4-6). And the appearances are clearly implied (Mark 16:7).
robert j.

I think you need to separate the annunciation of resurrection from physical appearances of the resurrected Jesus to his discipleship. Mark's gospel of course proclaims the resurrection throughout but the abrupt ending leaves IMO no alternative to either Mark not knowing of the appearances to Peter and Co. or his consciously suppressing them. My take on the ending is that Mark argues it was not the disciples but someone else who first witnessed and proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus as the (beginning of the) gospel.
Best,
Jiri

[Adam wrote on Feb. 18}
I appreciate your charity in refraining from attacking my precipitously introduced idea that John 21 is not a late addendum to the gospels, but instead the lost ending of the Urevangelium. I already (Feb. 5) clarified that nothing after John 21:17 is early. However, this Redactor’s work also included John 21 verses 1, parts of 2, 7, and 8, all of 10 and 14, the first ten words of 15, and the second sentence of 17. Or so Howard Teeple would have it, and I mostly agree. Few of you have access to his Literary Origin of the Gospel of John, so I’ll type up his analysis of John 21 when I have more time [see below].
Note that the Beloved Disciple thus disappears from the source, and also the sons of Zebedee (the only supposed naming in John of “John”). Also disappearing are all three occurrences of the word “appeared” (or revealed, manifested), ephaneroosen.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 2&start=50
And follow it down to where on April 20 I did post my write-up of John 21 as the lost ending to Mark after 16:8 titled Teeple's John 21 with Commentary

[Solo]

Paul himself claims to be a Jew so obviously not all Jews were baffled by his ideas.

Oh, please, do give me a break, Neil ! ...but on a point of fact Paul was baffled by his own productions testifying unwittingly to the dissociative mental process that has sponsored them.
What is wrong with the suggestion? Was Paul a Jew or not? Was he immersed in Jewish thought or not? Was he one case-study of Jewish thought or not?

I don't know what evidence you are thinking of as the basis of your "point of fact". I certainly don't see how the following quote supports your "point of fact" if that's what it was meant to do.

2 Cor 4:8-9 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Any idea why I bolded "perplexed" in the verses ?

The persecution of course relates to the mysterious persecution "within" ( 2 Cor 12:7).

Surely I think many would read chapter 12 as quite a different topic from the one in chapter 4.

Surely many would.

All of Paul's arguments in his epistles for his view of the Christ are apparently reasoned along the lines of typical Jewish debate with typical Jewish assumptions. Especially his argument about seed of Abraham etc in Galatians. I simply don't see what is so "baffling" about Paul's Messiah given what we know of Jewish beliefs about Isaac and martyrs and dying messiahs and agents and hypostases of God. It's a claim I hear often enough but rarely see defended.

A typical Jewish debate it certainly was not, since at least on five occasions Paul's theological stance on Jesus Christ vis-a-vis the Law earned him forty lashes less one, i.e. the traditonal near-max (as per Deu 25:2) imposed by the Law.

How do you conclude that the lashes were the reward for his theological arguments?

The reference is to the passage in 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul uses the incidents to "boast" of his sufferings for Christ. I believe I have made a reasonable conclusion.

According to Alan Segal and Paula Fredriksen and others, what some Jews (obviously not all Jews) found to be offensive in Paul's teaching was not the idea of a crucified Messiah per se but the point that the crucified messiah clearly did not deliver the Jews from their material/worldly suffering. N.T. Wright (fwiw) argues it was not the idea of a dying messiah that was offensive (it was known to second temple jews) but the manner of death, being hung on a tree and therefore being a curse, that was the offence.

which contradicted Deu 21:23, where a "hanged man is accursed of God" and his burial has to be quick so as not to defile the land by the sight of him. So again, Paul got generally either a very cool or a very hot reception from the Jews who were schooled in the tanakh. So he would naturally gravitate to the God-fearers among the Gentiles who would not have had nearly as vehement legalist objections to his artful interpretations of the Jewish scripture.

So you agree with N.T. Wright's interpretation, yes?

Yes, the point has been made by a number of scholars.

I personally do not feel at all uncomfortable with the idea that the resurrected redeemer of Christianity originated as Paul's unsuccesful import of an essentially pagan concept into messianic sectarian Judaism. Paul certainly would not have seen it that way (since it came via revelation) and believed I am sure that his salvation schema was genuinely and purely Jewish, something that apparently confuses Tom Wright, E.P. Sanders and others.

Best,
Jiri

What do we mean by "messianic sectarian Judaism" and what is the evidence that such a thing existed in the Second Temple era?

I think it is safe to conclude that the "seven sects" that Hegesippus mentions in connection with James the Just (Eusebius, H.E. 2.18) were messianic in nature. So were the Qumran sectaries. Unlike the Jewish temple mainstream, these cults were scouring the Scripture for signs that the coming of the Messiah was imminent.

What pagan precedents of a "resurrected redeemer" might Paul have known about?

I warmly recommend Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" for an overview of what was available to Paul. I don't want to speculate what sort of non-Jewish ideas and myths Paul might have come into contact with in his travels. As I said, I don't think, his borrowed theme of a "resurrected Messiah" would have announced itself as being of pagan origin. I simply observe that the idea was synthesized in one head, and based on the information we have, I have no reason to believe it was not Paul's.

There is actually something quite interesting in this regard in Carrier's book. Carrier points to Philo's essay "On the Creation" and maintains that it contains a thesis of "two Adams" (p. 179). But Philo actually does not say "two Adams". He speaks of a Platonic duality of human nature, one created by God from brick material, the other reflecting an uncreated image of himself. This duality actually sets the "first man" apart of the generations that followed in which flesh (which was originally beautifully proportioned) became corrupted through "pleasure". The interesting thing about all this is that Paul might have actually been familiar with a street version of this middle-Platonic concept of "first man" and adapted it to his purposes. He speaks of Adam as "typos", a type of the one to come (Rom 5:14). But I certainly would not go as far as saying that Paul "derived" his idea of the "two Adams" (1 Cor 15:45) from the Platonic concept of dual nature of the "first man". In Philo, this duality of nature is united and contained as one; in Paul the there are two natures of man which are contrasted as irreconcilable opposites.

Best,
Jiri

[John T]

Not to belabor the point but the belief of a resurrected Messiah was not unknown before Paul. The Essenes were awaiting the resurrected Messiah, who would herald the coming of the Son of Man.

“If true, this [Gabriel’s Revelation] could mean that Jesus’ followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose from the dead.”. http://www.normgeisler.com/articles/Bib ... nStone.htm

Respectfully,

John T

This claim has now largely been withdrawn
See for example Hazon Gabriel

Andrew Criddle

@Andrew,
Thanks for the link but I am already well aware that the stone is still very controversial.
"An American team of experts using high resolution scanning technologies tried — but failed — to detect more of the faded writing.... [However] "All agree that the passage describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack on Jerusalem in which God appears with angels on chariots to save the city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to appear in the Hebrew Bible. "I am Gabriel," the writing declares."...Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot. ... 8l9g0DwpK8

This language is very consistent with what Jesus and James the Just proclaimed as well as what is contained in the DSS. See The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek (IIQ13).

Because of that, I give it a high probability that when Paul claimed scripture had prophesied the resurrection of Christ that the scripture he was referring to was from the Essenes.

[spin]

I give it a high probability that when Paul claimed scripture had prophesied the resurrection of Christ that the scripture he was referring to was from the Essenes.

You have no "scripture" from the Essenes. There is just the unsubstantiated theory that the Essenes were somehow involved with the DSS. P.R. Davies showed that there was no single sectarian viewpoint to be extracted from the scrolls, for there were different views to be found. There is nothing direct to connect the Essenes to the scrolls and the pride of place given to the sons of Zadok in the community strictly argues against an Essene connection along with the temple materials from the DSS including temple rosters and a list of temple treasures (Copper Scroll). It is ridiculous to think that people excluded from the temple maintained priestly rosters. The people who advocated the Essene theory have never got past the advocacy stage and many scholars these days tactfully refer to "the sect" or even duck the issue completely.

[outhouse]

I give it a high probability that when Paul claimed scripture had prophesied the resurrection of Christ that the scripture he was referring to was from the Essenes.

You have no "scripture" from the Essenes. .

Exactly.

[John T]

I give it a high probability that when Paul claimed scripture had prophesied the resurrection of Christ that the scripture he was referring to was from the Essenes.

You have no "scripture" from the Essenes. There is just the unsubstantiated theory that the Essenes were somehow involved with the DSS. P.R. Davies showed that there was no single sectarian viewpoint to be extracted from the scrolls, for there were different views to be found. There is nothing direct to connect the Essenes to the scrolls and the pride of place given to the sons of Zadok in the community strictly argues against an Essene connection along with the temple materials from the DSS including temple rosters and a list of temple treasures (Copper Scroll). It is ridiculous to think that people excluded from the temple maintained priestly rosters. The people who advocated the Essene theory have never got past the advocacy stage and many scholars these days tactfully refer to "the sect" or even duck the issue completely.

@Spin,
Please start a new thread and present evidence for your theory about how the DSS got placed into the caves 'willy nilly' and how you know the Essenes had nothing to do with writing them. I really want to know what you base your 'willy nilly' theory on.

Thanks in advance,

John T

[neilgodfrey]

I don't know what evidence you are thinking of as the basis of your "point of fact". I certainly don't see how the following quote supports your "point of fact" if that's what it was meant to do.

2 Cor 4:8-9 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Any idea why I bolded "perplexed" in the verses ?

So it's argument by bolding? Bolding does not persuade me of your interpretation or application of the passage.

How do you conclude that the lashes were the reward for his theological arguments?

The reference is to the passage in 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul uses the incidents to "boast" of his sufferings for Christ. I believe I have made a reasonable conclusion.

No doubt this is what you believe. It is an inference you are making. Given what we know of Judaism of the period it is quite incredible that Paul should be lashed for engaging in debates about the nature of the messiah. See Morton Smith's "The Reason for the Persecution of Paul and the Obscurity of Acts".

So you agree with N.T. Wright's interpretation, yes?

Yes, the point has been made by a number of scholars.

Not sure if you read carefully the point Wright was making but if you agree with Wright then you are agreeing that there was no problem for Jews to believe in a dying or slain messiah.

What do we mean by "messianic sectarian Judaism" and what is the evidence that such a thing existed in the Second Temple era?

I think it is safe to conclude that the "seven sects" that Hegesippus mentions in connection with James the Just (Eusebius, H.E. 2.18) were messianic in nature. So were the Qumran sectaries. Unlike the Jewish temple mainstream, these cults were scouring the Scripture for signs that the coming of the Messiah was imminent.

I think we are retrojecting later concepts of the messiah into much of what we read about the Second Temple era. We are doing scholarship backwards and coming up with skewed conclusions.

What pagan precedents of a "resurrected redeemer" might Paul have known about?

I warmly recommend Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" for an overview of what was available to Paul. I don't want to speculate what sort of non-Jewish ideas and myths Paul might have come into contact with in his travels. As I said, I don't think, his borrowed theme of a "resurrected Messiah" would have announced itself as being of pagan origin. I simply observe that the idea was synthesized in one head, and based on the information we have, I have no reason to believe it was not Paul's. . . . .

Agree. But from what I have been learning I am coming to see Judaism itself as an epitome of Hellenism (blend of Greek and Asiatic ideas/influences). Judaism was itself the creation of Hellenism. (The fights between different schools of thought were also part and parcel of Hellenism -- and in Palestine had more to do with political and ethnic fears relating to neighbours than 'culture' per se.) The ideas of atoning sacrificial blood and divine mediators and various shapes and sizes of messianic concepts are entirely Jewish from their inception. Paul's view of a messiah was based on typically Jewish interpretations of Jewish scriptures. At no point does he or any of his opponents set up a "correct" view of a messiah that supposedly stood in opposition to his. Paul's messiah his still the all-conquering one, the deliverer, and (like those of other sects) a heavenly figure. Whether the atoning teaching associated with his messiah's death was original to Paul or the work of an interpolater makes no difference to the Jewishness of the concept.