The Jesus of the fabricated Paul: crucified in outer space

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Giuseppe
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The Jesus of the fabricated Paul: crucified in outer space

Post by Giuseppe »

Assuming an entirely fabricated Paul, coming from cerdonite/marcionite circles, a good solution about the Jesus of the early fabricated Paul (the Jesus of proto-marcionite Kerdo), once removed the catholic layer, is given by Arthur Droge, even if he was talking about the Valentinian layer added on the epistles, precisely in 1 Cor 2:6-11:

This peculiar passion account, which, if it were Pauline, would be the earliest extant, is imagined not as an historical event at all, but as the key episode in a cosmic drama, and as such it differs fundamentally from the more familiar (i.e., historicized) crucifixion stories of the New Testament Gospels.

https://www.academia.edu/43327375/_Whod ... lications_

Droge appears to be inclined to think that:
  • An outer space death is in evidence in 1 Cor 2:6-11
  • A first century Paul couldn't have thought something of the kind...
  • Therefore: 1 Cor 2:6-11 is interpolated.
My point: if Paul never existed (= my premise), then 1 Cor 2:6-11 would give, according to Droge's premises, not the original pauline thought (a nonsense, if Paul didn't exist), but surely the original thought of the Kerdo or proto-marcionite who invented Paul in second century.

Hence, while the man Marcion may be the last of the marcionites to edit the epistles (before the first catholic corruption of them), and as such he would have become historicist in whiletime (by having read or written a gospel), it is more probable that the early pauline authors were "mythicist" Christians, even if they had heard historicist voices from Judeo-Christian circles: so much was their original focus on an outer space death of Jesus.

But alas: it was only their focus. With Droge and Magne, I think that the outer space death was a radical gentile Christian thing. It was their belief, sure, but it was only their belief. The other Christians, before, during and after the early fabricated Paul, didn't feel a similar interest for a death space death.
Giuseppe
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Re: The Jesus of the fabricated Paul: crucified in outer space

Post by Giuseppe »

Hence, the problem is to find the belief (about Jesus) of the Jewish Christians who preceded the early fabricated (Kerdo's) Paul.

Once Paul is fabricated, as cascade effect we would have the early gospels, with Pilate being chosen depending on the date assigned before to the fabricated Paul. Being Pilate introduced for his first mention of a Christus in Rome, the emphasis is on the word: Christus. How not think about an anti-marcionite motive even behind the search of the first mention of a Christus in Rome?

The choice of Pilate is necessarily anti-marcionite and therefore anti-pauline.
Giuseppe
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Re: The Jesus of the fabricated Paul: crucified in outer space

Post by Giuseppe »

So grear was the marcionite hostility against the word Christus, that they corrupted Christiani in Chrestiani (a clearly marcionite epitet). More late, fool medieval scribes changed newly Chrestiani in Christiani.
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maryhelena
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Re: The Jesus of the fabricated Paul: crucified in outer space

Post by maryhelena »

My thanks for the link to Arthur Droge's article. I've read through the article. I don't know Greek so it was Droge's conclusions that interested me.

As I have tried to suggest, it would be better to think of “First Corinthians” at the pre-collection stage as an active site or open file, more along the lines of an archive or dossier, and certainly not a unified, much less actual, letter. So conceived, the process that yielded the letter known as “First Corinthinas,” as well as the collection known as the corpus paulinum, would be analogous to the process of the composition of the gospels. In other words, at some point in the second century materials of heterogeneous origin, date, and provenance began to be fashioned into a loose epistolary form and attributed to a figure from the first century. What would such a scenario imply about the authenticity of the very texts upon which Pauline scholarship is based? At a minimum it would challenge the current scholarly consensus that presumes it is in possession of six (or seven) of Paul’s authentic letters. It would also require greater circumspection on the part of scholars who would presume to read these letters as if they provided a gateway to the first century, as well as access to a “real” (viz., historical) first-century figure whose biography can be recovered. It would mean, in other words, that the corpus paulinum will no more yield a historical Paul than the gospels have yielded a historical Jesus. But we would surely be none the worse for that.


footnote 72: On this, see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1975), 1–6, 57–59, 88, though she is working from the premise that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is
Pauline. To be clear, my point is not that 2:6–16 influenced the Valentinians, but that the Valentinians
“influenced” Paul. Yet this was not only true of the Valentinians. “Paul” (or better, “Pauls”) was (were) a
literary fabrication of the second century, and in general assumed three separate generic forms: epistolary,
commentarial, and narratival. Cf. the similar second-century creations of “Peters,” “Johns,” “Thomases,”
“Jameses” et al. Whether a “historical” Paul can be disentangled from this is a question to which I will
return shortly.

“Whodunnit? Paul’s Peculiar Passion and Its Implications”

Arthur Droge

Pre-print version. Forthcoming in a collection of essays on Paul.

https://www.academia.edu/43327375/_Whod ... lications_

Maybe a scholar to keep a watch on....

The NT has two crucifixion stories. The 'heavenly' cosmic 'crucifixion of the Pauline epistle and the gospel Jesus crucifixion. The Jerusalem above and the Jerusalem below. The body and the spirit. The flesh and blood and the spiritual/intellectual/philosophical nature of man. Physical reality, history and the evolutionary nature of our 'spiritual' intellect.

It's not a choice between the Jerusalem below and the Jerusalem above - the NT upholds both. It's not a choice between the Pauline epistles and the gospels - they can no more be separated than can our mind function without our physical reality.
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