Irish1975 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 6:10 am (which Bauer seems to think is mostly fraudulent)
the fraud is always possible, but I follow Richard Carrier when he says that if everything is based on a
story and nothing other before it, then Absolute Agnosticism is the only rational possible choice (the second is the Amalgam Theory: Jesus being Jesus ben Saphat; the third is the traditional historicist view).
At any case, it is sufficient to find in the Vridar's post all the occurrences of 'Gospel':
So a new thought, a new contrast – rather a new assumption – a given assumption – the assumption that in the election of the weak and foolish, the wisdom of God is revealed!
But an original creator would first have to prove that divine wisdom is demonstrated in this calling. For our author, however, the assumption, the proof, is given – but where? To the gospel text that the author of the Gospel of Luke used and for whose use by the author of our letter we will provide numerous and the most convincing evidence.
But let us accept the author’s appeal to a statement for which he would have had to provide proof, and let us instead receive as a gift the consequential evidence for his use of a gospel text!
Furthermore, what is the antithesis between the treatment the apostle receives and his behavior towards his persecutors in the same verse? “When we are cursed, we bless,” etc. It does not belong in a context that deals purely and solely with the persecutions and sufferings that the apostle and his peers experience – it is again a reminiscence, taken from a foreign context, a free adaptation of the gospel commandment according to which (Luke 6:28) the curse of people should be repaid with blessing. The more inappropriate this self-praise is in the present context, the stronger it testifies that the author had already been given a gospel with that commandment of the Lord.
In short, the hierarchy already existed when the author wrote, and it sought after the titles of its authority against the resistance of the laity – there were already multiple Gospels, for the scripture that commanded blessing as a weapon against curse was not the original Gospel – and there was already, as the author immediately proves, a norm of catholicity.
The prohibition of the pagan jurisdiction was already established as a statute when the author attempted to theoretically justify it, and he immediately juxtaposed essentially different commandments with it as proof that he did not create independently, but rather compiled given material (verse 7). The author took the punishing remark, phrased as a question, about the use of pagan jurisdiction from the same gospel text which the author of the Gospel of Luke used to borrow the isolated question in chapter 12, verse 57: “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?”
To put it in a reasonable way, the situation is as follows: the author knows the absolute prohibition of the original gospel, but he could not hold onto it strictly, as he wanted to give rules for real life, which often contradicted it – but he also did not yet know the casuistry that explicitly specifies the case in which the absoluteness of the prohibition should yield, as in the Gospel of Matthew.
If he then explicitly states that he has no command of the Lord for his exaltation of celibate life (v. 25), the result just obtained is confirmed: he knew neither the Gospel of Matthew nor the Gospel source from which its author (in Matthew 19:10-12) took the praise of those who have renounced marriage.
We highlight one argument from his reasoning because it is again important for determining his relationship to the Gospels.
In the context where he presents marriage as unnecessary and superfluous due to the brevity of time remaining until the final crisis (v. 29-31), he adds a warning that those who have wives should live as if they had none, and he immediately extends this statement to everyone, advising those who weep to live as if they were not weeping, those who rejoice as if they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as if they had no possessions.
Having wives, rejoicing, and buying are positive determinations and pleasures, which are all valid in their place when it comes to renunciation and abstaining. Crying, on the other hand, does not belong here, it is not introduced by anything in context and could not have occurred to anyone who originally creates and follows a driving interest – it has come to the author by chance, from outside, through foreign force – but from where? From those beatitudes that the author of the Gospel of Luke has taken from the same source text as our author.
Finally, any doubt that this theory about the legitimacy of the claims of the clergy could belong to a time other than the second century is dispelled by the application appended to the last argument (verse 14), that the Lord also decreed that those who proclaim the Gospel should live by the Gospel. The author knows of this provision of the Lord from the instruction He gave the Twelve at the first sending out (Mark 6:6 and Luke 10:7), only here the instruction originally intended for the Twelve is transformed into an instruction for the seventy.
On the other hand, we can add a new detail to our discovery concerning the author’s relationship with the gospel accounts. There is nothing more natural than the instruction regarding the pagan feast in verse 27, “Eat anything sold in the meat market,” while the instruction in Luke 10:8 to the seventy disciples, “Eat what is set before you,” interrupts the flow of thought, is unnecessary repetition since the subject was already fully addressed in verse 7, and, if, as is highly likely, it also refers to the question of meat sacrificed to idols, this reference is not emphasized and, in itself, is quite elegant and, in the present context, is an ostentatious addition.
In short, only in the first Corinthians letter is this passage a natural and original part of the whole. However, Luke, who had the same Gospel text in mind as the author of this letter, borrowed that phrase for his instruction of the Seventy.
If the main questions that needed to be asked have been resolved so securely that there can be no doubt about the composition of our letter based on the gospel source text that underlies Luke’s gospel, which itself is already a later version of the original gospel, it would be completely pointless for us to go into detail about the discussion of women’s head coverings (verses 2-16) and to show the same labored and contrived character of our author’s presentation that is now firmly established as the consistent characteristic of his exposition.
He now describes the event in the life of Jesus on which the institution he is discussing is based – he says (v. 23) that he received it from the Lord, but the truth of the matter is that he is simply copying it from that Gospel source, which Luke has combined with the accounts of his other sources in a clumsy way.*)
*) Hence, the disruptive repetitions in Luke’s account.
One thing was certainly already firmly established when the author wrote – very firmly! namely, the report of the appearances of the risen one, to which he later refers to let the denial of the resurrection of the believers shatter against the actual resurrection of the Lord – this report was already given to him: in that gospel that the author of this letter used together with him from the original source of the present Luke Gospel. Our long-established discovery is now receiving new confirmation, namely that when the author of this letter makes the specific statement that the risen one first appeared to Peter, only in the Gospel of Luke (24:34) is this appearance assumed as the first in a very confusing way, but not described itself. This confusion proves that the original Luke used a foreign text – but he used it briefly. On the other hand, our author has reproduced the assumption of this text in a simple positivity, and only one thing has not succeeded for him – namely, to integrate the reference to something known, established, into a harmonious relationship with his Corinthians.
