Arthur Droge: The apostle Paul.

[maryhelena]

The blogger you quote is basically correct.

The problem has been signaled even in the time of Couchoud (the precursor of Doherty as to outer space death etc).

In their time, it was Joseph Turmel the first to recognize that the epistles can be 'purified' from Gnostic interpolations placing the death of Jesus in outer space.



Prosper Alfaric was the only mythicist to concede this point (that 1 Cor 2:6-8 was a Valentinian interpolation), hence he was more an agnostic than a mythicist.

Between the "irreducible" mythicists who didn't want to concede that 1 Cor 2:6-8 is an interpolation, there was Couchoud himself (who defended himself by merely considering a lot of things as genuine in Paul, the same tactic followed by Richard Carrier today), and especially Edouard Dujardin, who wrote an entire book, Grandeur et décadence de la critique, sa rénovation (1931), devoted to attack the disgraceful Turmel to have raised the hypothesis interpolation.

Curiously, the same trajectory of Turmel has been followed by Roger Parvus, who has become historicist after the realization that 1 Cor 2:6-8 can't be used as mythicist argument in virtue of its interpolated character.

I confess that without 1 Cor 2:6-8 as original, mythicism à la Carrier/Doherty/Couchoud/Dujardin collapses totally.

But please recognize the other side of the coin: in virtue of the same reasoning, if 1 Cor 2:6-8 is genuine, then mythicism wins.

Giuseppe, mythicism wins whatever dating is allocated to 1 Cor.2: 6-8. Droge's article has demonstrated a gap in the time frame between the 'interpolation' and the rest of that chapter. How long that gap was he does not say. But that there was a gap in time - re the content of these verses being applicable to the period around 140 c.e. and not pre 70 c.e. - challenges Carrier's position.

What Arthur Droge's article has done - with dating the 'interpolation' to around 140 c.e. - is to bring into question the Carrier and Doherty use of these verses to argue that it was the Pauline heavenly 'crucifixion' that was primary - resulting in both of these leading mythicists neglecting or devaluing the gospel story. They have run with the consensus dating of Paul and 1 Cor.2:6-8 - a position that Droge's dating of 1 Cor.2:6-8, as an 'interpolation', to around 140 c.e. has shown to be unsubstantiated. The heavenly, cosmic, 'crucifixion' is not an early but a late philosophical development.

Droge, by demonstrating a late date for the heavenly 'crucifixion' idea has not discredited mythicism. On the contrary, he has moved mythicism, or more correctly, the ahistoricist position, forward. That the heavenly 'crucifixion' is dated late does not mean that the gospel crucifixion is historical. That crucifixion remains as it always was - an allegorical story reflecting the early Jewish historical origins of what became Christianity. The NT contains two crucifixion stories - the gospel allegorical crucifixion story and the Pauline philosophical 'crucifixion'. It's not a case of which crucifixion is primary - the two crucifixion stories are context based and thus there is not a question of primacy. Like that old song - love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage - you can't have one without the other....

[maryhelena]

But you can't quote Ben Smith as supporting the view of your blogger, since he said to me somewhere in this forum that even if 1 Cor 2:6-8 is an interpolation, it could reflect the original pauline thought and so be still valid for mythicism. Unfortunately, he was not able at all to realize that an interpolated 1 Cor 2:6-8 goes directly against the mythicism.

Giuseppe - the 'interpolation' in 1 Cor.ch.2 is not against mythicism - it is against the Carrier/Doherty version of mythicism.

Yes, of course, the 'interpolation' is Pauline - it is Pauline philosophy - regardless of whether NT Paul is historical or a literary figure. Droge has made a point of suggesting that 'interpolation' might not be the best term to use.

To label 1 Cor. 2:6–16
an interpolation, then, may be a misnomer. For in order for it to be such would require that 1 Cor. have
actually been a real letter, or at least unified and stable enough to admit of being interpolated. I no longer
think that a likely scenario. I even doubt whether it is correct to refer to 1 Cor. as a collection of letters
from which real letters might be disarticulated. At least scholars have not achieved a consensus on this
question. On the other hand, to think of 1 Cor. as a dossier would allow us to imagine how a passage like
2:6–16 could have wound up as a piece of it. Rather than being the work of an interpolator, it is more likely
that a collector or redactor, who was assembling the dossier into the loose form of a letter, was the one
responsible for both the inclusion of our passage and its present location in 1 Cor.

[Giuseppe]

Droge, by demonstrating a late date for the heavenly 'crucifixion' idea has not discredited mythicism. On the contrary, he has moved mythicism, or more correctly, the ahistoricist position, forward.

if he places all Paul in the second century (following Detering), then mythicism would have still chances.

But a historical Paul before the 70 CE and disconnected from 1 Cor 2:6-8, well: he was a historicist Paul. Period.

[Giuseppe]

Giuseppe - the 'interpolation' in 1 Cor.ch.2 is not against mythicism - it is against the Carrier/Doherty version of mythicism.

which is the only available serious mythicist theory assuming Christians before the 70 CE.

[maryhelena]

Droge, by demonstrating a late date for the heavenly 'crucifixion' idea has not discredited mythicism. On the contrary, he has moved mythicism, or more correctly, the ahistoricist position, forward.

if he places all Paul in the second century (following Detering), then mythicism would have still chances.

But a historical Paul before the 70 CE and disconnected from 1 Cor 2:6-8, well: he was a historicist Paul. Period.

We will just have to wait and see how further Arthur Droge takes his 'interpolation' argument.

[Giuseppe]

We will just have to wait and see how further Arthur Droge takes his 'interpolation' argument.

it is not necessary to wait.
Droge has made it clear that he is Jesus Agnostic, being arrived to a total stalemate given the absence of sources supporting the final decision about historicity versus mythicism.