To believe that the historical Paul was only a mere preacher of the Jewish messianism.
The claim "Jesus is the Jewish messiah" is a post-70 anti-marcionite obsession (=the same obsession that led to the introduction of Pilate in the Gospel story).
Before the 70 CE, Jesus is only the "anointed one of God". As only a priest could be. Or he is Christos in the sense of a mere proper name to be used among the Christian gentiles.
Paul used 'Jesus' when he was among Jews, and he used 'Christos' as proper name when he was among Gentiles.
The great error of Van Manen
Re: The great error of Van Manen
The Pauline dogma is not that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but that Christ Jesus is LORD.
If one wanted to put it into the philosophical language of Kant, for Paul it is an analytic truth, a tautology, that Jesus=Christ. It is not a synthetic truth, i.e. a significant identification, because there is no conception of Jesus in the Pauline epistles that clearly distinguishes the idea of him from the idea of Christ. And (to refute all the nonsensical Christian interpretations of Paul) he never says that Jesus is the Christ for the simple reason that that’s not what Paul believed about Jesus Christ. Paul believed that the Father had revealed the son Jesus Christ in Paul himself. This is the core meaning of Galatians.
What if “Christ” was a conception originally worked up from a mystery ritual of anointing, as evidenced in the epistles of John and in Hippolytus and perhaps in the Odes of Solomon? Christhood as a type of religious ecstasy. Somehow the name Jesus gets attached to it, and Paul or Simon Magus or whoever begins to preach and to act in persona christi.
If one wanted to put it into the philosophical language of Kant, for Paul it is an analytic truth, a tautology, that Jesus=Christ. It is not a synthetic truth, i.e. a significant identification, because there is no conception of Jesus in the Pauline epistles that clearly distinguishes the idea of him from the idea of Christ. And (to refute all the nonsensical Christian interpretations of Paul) he never says that Jesus is the Christ for the simple reason that that’s not what Paul believed about Jesus Christ. Paul believed that the Father had revealed the son Jesus Christ in Paul himself. This is the core meaning of Galatians.
What if “Christ” was a conception originally worked up from a mystery ritual of anointing, as evidenced in the epistles of John and in Hippolytus and perhaps in the Odes of Solomon? Christhood as a type of religious ecstasy. Somehow the name Jesus gets attached to it, and Paul or Simon Magus or whoever begins to preach and to act in persona christi.
Re: The great error of Van Manen
does this presume that the Name above any other name is Kyrios and not even Jesus (ontologically of the same value of "Christ")?
To identify the Son with the Father and call the latter Kyrios seems to be a reaction against the "heretic" tradition of the Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas"), where also Son and Father are one, only the Father is the alien god of Marcion. A good reason to consider interpolated the hymn.
For Paul, Jesus has to give salvation to his followers, the conquest of the earth is not contemplated at all. Paul is never disturbed by Romans, the exact reason why even the tendentious author of Acts was embarrassed to invent a Paul condemned in Rome.
Re: The great error of Van Manen
Note the irony:
- The proto-catholics overcame easily the embarrassment of a Roman trial of Jesus, by having Jesus condemned by Pilate as Jewish Messiah, against Marcion.
- The proto-catholics didn't overcome the embarrassment of a Roman trial of Paul because the historical truth was too much strong to be easily denied: Paul didn't disturb minimally the Romans because all the world knew that Paul didn't preach the Jewish Messiah, but only "Christ Jesus".