Ken Olson wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 2:05 pm
robert j,
I do not understand the term gospel the way you do.
And I do not understand Paul in the same manner as you do.
Ken Olson wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 2:05 pm
... It seems to me that Paul allows that other Christians, particularly missionaries, also preach the gospel and this may differ in some particulars from Paul's gospel, which he calls 'my gospel' and, in Galatians, suggests is the only true gospel.
First it seems that Peter was entrusted by god with the gospel to the circumcised:
7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been [entrusted with the gospel] for the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles),[Gal. 2.7-9; bracketed word not in the Greek, but required by sense of the sentence]
We also see Paul suggesting that other apostles also preach the gospel in 1 Corinthians:
9 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2 If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. 4 Do we not have the right to our food and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife ['sister wife'] as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk?
8 Do I say this on human authority? Does not the law also say the same? 9 For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was indeed written for our sake, for whoever plows should plow in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?
Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
15 But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting! 16 If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
Here it seems to me that when Paul says that the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel in v.14 that the divine command refers to what Paul has already put forward in vv. 4-6, where he asks whether he an Barnabas, who he claims are apostles, do not have right to be supported by the church or their converts in the same way that Cephas and the other apostles (and at least some of the brothers of the Lord) do. Preaching the gospel seems to be the basic activity of Christian missionaries, including apostles and some brothers of the Lord, by which they make their living.
It would also seem strange if Paul himself were the one who introduced the term gospel because the divine command seems to be referring to an existing practice of apostles receiving support from the church before Paul, who, he says, did not take advantage of the practice. The term may have come from Isaiah 61.1 (as might the term 'the poor' used in Gal. 2.10).
Absent clearly independent evidence for the purported Judean predecessors in the faith that Paul claimed, I do not take such a generous approach to much of Paul’s rhetoric.
I think Paul’s letters are authentic and adequately intact for reasonable analysis. Accepting that as a starting point, one can be reasonably certain of the existence of several named figures. For example, the Corinthians knew Paul’s junior-partners Timothy, Silvanus and Titus because they had met and interacted with them. Similar associations could be outlined for Paul’s other congregations.
However, there is no evidence in the letters that any among his congregations had ever met Cephas, James or John nor that his followers had any independent knowledge of such figures other than what Paul had told them. The same holds true for the Judean assemblies in Christ that Paul claimed to exist. I’m not aware of clearly independent evidence for these figures and groups, hence we are entirely dependent on the self-serving claims of one man.
The story of Judean assemblies and of the Jerusalem leadership triumvirate provided Paul the valuable ability to claim his faith system was part of a wider spiritual movement taking place in the Judean homelands. Tradition. Paul likely told all his potential patrons similar stories of these purported predecessors during his evangelizing visits with each of his congregations. And Paul continued to use (and abuse) these figures in his letters to provide significant support for his position when points of contention arose with his congregations.
What about other Christian actors or groups outside of Paul’s immediate circle that are seemingly described in Paul’s letters?
You have acknowledged that the opposition among the Galatians might have consisted of local Jews.
I think the evidence in 2 Corinthians is consistent with the so called “super apostles” being professional Jewish missionaries working the Diaspora circuit. Perhaps they were recommended to Paul’s Corinthian group by Jewish associates. I suspect with just a brief meeting with a few of the Corinthians to gain an invitation to a meeting, they would have heard a bit about Paul’s heavenly son of the Jewish God. Enough for these polished professionals to incorporate a few mentions of that spiritual logos and celestial anointed savior (Christ Jesus) into one of their standard presentations on the mysteries of Moses. Paul heard about these figures --- and about what they had taught the Corinthians --- third-hand from Titus after his long return journey. A passage that is often seen as acknowledging these figures as Christian missionaries only provides such a result with expanded (apologetic) translations (2 Corinthians 11:23). Rife with conditionals, Paul really wasn’t sure what the missionaries had told the Corinthians about Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 11:4). In his clearest characterization of these competitors in relation to a Jesus Christ, Paul refers to them as servants of Satan that were “disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:13). Paul seems pretty confident in that last part.
The existence of a Christian congregation in Rome in Paul’s day depends entirely on the textually compromised chapters 1 and 15 of Romans. The textual evidence for chapter 15, and portions of chapter one as well, is complicated by clear signs of manipulation based on manuscripts and early attestations. Gamble reports a 14-chapter version of the text as both relatively early and geographically widespread. And he adds that the textual evidence for missing addresses to Rome in chapter one is associated with the 14-chapter version of the text. Sure, Gamble concludes that the 14-chapter version was edited down from a more original, longer version; but the same evidence can also be used to argue for a 14-chapter version as being the more original.
To the second portion of your post here ---
As suitable for my purposes of presenting Paul as I see him, you could not have picked a better passage than that portion of chapter 9 in 1st Corinthians. The passage reminds me of something a person who is upset might write to air a grievance, then crumple up and toss into the waste basket. In this interlude in the wider letter, this is Paul unplugged.
He starts off again using his purported predecessors to enhance his argument, and to introduce his extended appeal for compensation. Paul goes on for 8 more verses throwing everything including the kitchen sink into his argument that the Corinthians should pay him for his work. After all this guilt-tripping, Paul caps it off with his claim that such compensation is a command from the Lord. What you characterize as “the divine command”, I see as a desperate appeal to an honored higher power to serve his personal ambitions.
And after all that, since the Corinthians weren’t paying him anyway, Paul shamelessly claims that he doesn’t really want to get paid, that it would be a blow to his pride to accept compensation from them. However, this is empty rhetoric. In 2 Corinthians, Paul acknowledges that the Macedonians had been supporting him when he was in Corinth (2 Corinthians 11:7-9). Why would it be so noble to work for the Corinthians without compensation, only to be supported by the Philippians?
I take a much more skeptical approach to Paul than most investigators who also accept his letters as authentic. I would change my tune with clearly independent evidence of Paul’s Jerusalem triumvirate and of Judean assemblies in Christ in Paul’s day. Absent that, I am not willing to rely on Paul, the father and patron Saint of modern-day televangelists.