spin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:53 amIt's quite inappropriate to use the 20th century notion "historicist" about people writing 1900+ years ago.
C'mon, we use modern terms all the time to categorise ancient writings: 'Middle Platonist', 'Neo-Platonist', 'Gnostic', 'mystery religion'. Yes, we need to be careful using modern categories when grouping ancient beliefs, but as long as we ourselves understand the term being used those categories can be useful.
spin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:53 amThey had no idea of historicity. Lucian of Samosata showed in his work "How Not to Write History" that most of those trying to write history had no idea.
Had no idea about what? History? A 'historicist', as used on this forum, is someone who believes that Jesus appeared at some point on earth in history, so that if we had a time-machine, we could see him with our eyes.
spin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:53 amThe best you can hope for is people writing who believed Jesus to have been real.
According to some mythicist theories, Paul thought Jesus was real. He just thought that Jesus never came to earth. So it's a little more than that.
To me, using the modern term 'historicist' to refer to the thoughts of ancient people seems useful and non-confusing. But I'm happy to use any terminology as long as it's clear what people mean. I'm an amateur, I haven't any training at all in ancient languages so I'm happy to use whatever people more knowledgeable than myself thinks is best. But we've developed our own amateur terminology on this board. If we can improve on that, I'm happy to use those improvements.
spin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:53 amGiven that Paul is our earliest writer on the subject of Jesus, you must not retroject ideas from later works to bring Paul into their fold. Relevance in tradition only goes foward, not backward. We must look at Paul's Jewish cultural background to contextualise and understand him. That's why we look at the LXX, intertestamental works and the works of Philo to develop a picture of Paul. It is out of these that Paul's thought bloomed.
I understand your point, and I agree with what you mean, but if the topic is the number of times Paul quotes Jesus, then examining contemporaries and near-contemporaries who wrote letters where Jesus might have been expected to have been quoted must also be useful. Looking at the LXX, intertestamental works and the works of Philo in that regard will be short work! Though obviously they are useful in other contexts.
The problem is that often whenever the topic is "Why did Paul...?", the comparison point is the Gospels. When Paul is put into context with other early writings, the content of Paul isn't so odd or unexpected.
spin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:53 amAnd one has to decide how much of Paul's letters is his work and how much is later incrustations, remembering the title of J.C. O'Neill's essay "Paul wrote some of all, but not all of any". Adding to Paul's work helped to bring him into the fold. Consider the Petrine inclusion in Gal 2:7b-8: after Paul talks about the uniqueness of the one gospel, the one he was given by revelation, we learn in Gal 2:7b-8 that there is a gospel to the circumcised, that of the apostle Peter, and one to the uncircumcised, that of Paul. This is the only Pauline passage that mentions Peter. Paul generally uses Cephas, so people make ad hoc excuses for Peter's appearance here. Paul's work preserved by Christian scribes is fair game for orthodox improvement.
Fair point. Why didn't the Christian scribes add quotes from the Gospel Jesus into Paul, in your opinion? Do you think they thought that Paul's writings didn't need that particular kind of improvement?