Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

GakuseiDon wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:23 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:35 am Paul quotes very a lot the Risen Christ.
Which passages do you mean?
all the passages where Paul reports "the words of the Lord", obviously.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

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Philologus wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:42 amMy argument was not that Jesus literally never said anything. I meant to say that he never taught anything new. His significance to his early followers had absolutely nothing to do with any new teachings, but rather his role in an apocalyptic movement that ended with him being executed. As such, the idea of Jesus being a wisdom teacher who had many clever things to teach and routinely impressed his audience and humiliated his opponents seems like a wholesale invention by later generations.
:thumbup: :thumbup: Yes, I argue the same. The issue is that many people see the "historical Jesus" as synonymous to the "Gospel Jesus", or what I call "the newspaper reporter Jesus". That is, they strawman that, if there was a historical Jesus, it meant that there had to have been people walking around behind Jesus, writing down what he said and what he did, like a news reporter.

But it's obvious that the Gospels are literary devices, with a lot of the sayings based on the OT. So why assume a "newspaper reporter Jesus"? It's like the argument is that the less Gospel material that can be pinned to a historical Jesus, the less likely a historical Jesus existed. But that's simply not true.

However, Philologus, there is a broader point that I've brought up here many times over many years. It's not that Paul doesn't quote Jesus, it's that Paul doesn't directly quote anyone. It's not just that Paul doesn't give time and place about Jesus (including where and when visions of a celestial Jesus took place by himself and others), he very rarely gives time and places about anything. Instead everything is tied back to Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, Paul 'manufactures' passages from Hebrew Scriptures by jamming two discrete passages together, sometimes changing the wording to make it fit his point.

So, Paul not quoting Jesus is only a mystery if we can first determine that Jesus said things that Paul should have quoted. Like you, I don't assume that this is the case. Paul clearly says Jesus came in the form of a servant and humbled himself, and was obedient unto death, thus being exalted. He wasn't exalted because he said a lot of wise things and performed miracles:

Phil 2:
7 But emptied himself, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him


But, as I've said many times, the wider scope is that Paul rarely quotes anyone directly, not just Jesus; and Paul rarely gives time and place about anything, not just Jesus (whether earthly or celestial).
Philologus
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Philologus »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:07 pm
Philologus wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:08 pm
Why did Jesus have to have original teachings to be different or unique? What would that explain?
I think that it is a rational question, to ask: why just Jesus ? Why not Theudas? Why not Judas the Galilean? Why not Jesus b. Ananias? Etc...
I understand. That seems intuitive, but I am not sure it's necessarily the case that Jesus, specifically, was an irreplaceable component. For instance, the answer to the question "Why not Judas the Galilean?" may largely consist of many factors having nothing to do with Judas or Jesus, and everything to do with timing, circumstances, other individuals (such as Paul), etc.
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Philologus »

GakuseiDon wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:25 pm But it's obvious that the Gospels are literary devices, with a lot of the sayings based on the OT. So why assume a "newspaper reporter Jesus"? It's like the argument is that the less Gospel material that can be pinned to a historical Jesus, the less likely a historical Jesus existed. But that's simply not true.
I thought the 'newspaper reporter Jesus' was a Superman reference, where Christ is Superman and the historical Jesus is Clark Kent, the average man who worked at a newspaper.

Anyway, I think people have a "plausibility bias" where they are less likely to accept that Jesus walked on water, but more likely to accept that he said, "Love your enemy." While it's true that miracle stories are less likely than sayings and parables, if we know the gospels are manufacturing all the miracle stories, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that they also manufactured all the sayings and parables.
But, as I've said many times, the wider scope is that Paul rarely quotes anyone directly, not just Jesus; and Paul rarely gives time and place about anything, not just Jesus (whether earthly or celestial).
How do you explain that?
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by GakuseiDon »

Philologus wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 12:10 am
GakuseiDon wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:25 pm But it's obvious that the Gospels are literary devices, with a lot of the sayings based on the OT. So why assume a "newspaper reporter Jesus"? It's like the argument is that the less Gospel material that can be pinned to a historical Jesus, the less likely a historical Jesus existed. But that's simply not true.
I thought the 'newspaper reporter Jesus' was a Superman reference, where Christ is Superman and the historical Jesus is Clark Kent, the average man who worked at a newspaper.
:lol: It's in the alternate version of Matt 16:

15 “But what about you?” Jesus asked, wearing his glasses. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter said, “Jesus, son of Joseph". Jesus then takes his glasses off. "How about now?"
17 Simon Peter answered, “Great Caesar's Ghost! You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”
Philologus wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 12:10 amAnyway, I think people have a "plausibility bias" where they are less likely to accept that Jesus walked on water, but more likely to accept that he said, "Love your enemy." While it's true that miracle stories are less likely than sayings and parables, if we know the gospels are manufacturing all the miracle stories, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that they also manufactured all the sayings and parables.
It's not quite that. It's that some people -- certainly some mythicists -- while acknowledging that the historical Jesus position might allow that the miracles didn't occur, nevertheless must contain an assumption that Jesus was an itinerant teacher who said many of the things in the Gospels. I see it in mythicists like Doherty and rgprice, where they note the lack of a Gospel saying in Paul and find it a problem for the historicist position. Of course, it's only a problem for the position that holds that the Gospel saying actually goes back to a Jesus, which is usually the province of apologists.
Philologus wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 12:10 am
But, as I've said many times, the wider scope is that Paul rarely quotes anyone directly, not just Jesus; and Paul rarely gives time and place about anything, not just Jesus (whether earthly or celestial).
How do you explain that?
I can't explain it within Paul. But the problem is much wider than Paul's literature. Doherty has a light-bulb moment in his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" but it never strikes him what the significance of it is. As far as I am aware, I'm the only one who ever argued the point with him on this topic. He wrote:

"As one can see by this survey, if one leaves aside Justin Martyr there is a silence in the 2nd Century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is virtually equal of that found in the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 485)"

And that is absolutely true. (In fact, we only have some of Justin Martyr's writings in any type of completeness because a Byzantine scribe copied of some of Justin's letters in the 14th Century CE.) There is a rarity of details, not just about Jesus, but about almost any details about times, places, events, in the letters of Paul, in the other letters of the First Century, and also in the Second Century writings.

If you have a look at the index page of Peter Kirby's Early Christian Writings website, you can see the proposed dates that the literature was written will often range from 50 years to over a 100 years. And that's because there are few clues to when the literature was written.

Paul is simply not unique. To examine Paul as if he WAS unique is the wrong starting point. The mystery isn't why Paul rarely quotes Jesus (as well as other historical details about anything else), it is why we see the same darn thing in the literature over the first few centuries. It's not until we get to Christians who are writing history that such details about time, people and places become frequent.

So the question "Why Paul never quotes Jesus" really needs to be extended to much of the literature of the first two centuries.

A partial explanation might be a process of self-selection. The more information about Jesus and the early church in an epistle, the more chance it might run afoul of later orthodoxy and so not be selected to being copied and transmitted on. That seems to be what happened to Papias's five books of oracles by Jesus, which probably didn't make it past the Fifth Century CE. So we are left with works that contain generalised content. But as I said it is only a partial explanation.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

Philologus wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:58 pm I understand. That seems intuitive, but I am not sure it's necessarily the case that Jesus, specifically, was an irreplaceable component.
is this a profession of Jesus's agnosticism, i.e. the idea that the historical Jesus could even be absent (i.e. not-existent), the evidence we have is however equally expected under the mythicist paradigm ?
Philologus
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Philologus »

GakuseiDon wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:21 am A partial explanation might be a process of self-selection. The more information about Jesus and the early church in an epistle, the more chance it might run afoul of later orthodoxy and so not be selected to being copied and transmitted on. That seems to be what happened to Papias's five books of oracles by Jesus, which probably didn't make it past the Fifth Century CE. So we are left with works that contain generalised content. But as I said it is only a partial explanation.
That may be a stronger hypothesis. Why do you think it's only partial?

On this hypothesis, it is possible that there were letters of Simon and James and others, but they were destroyed because they were embarrassing to the official narrative of the winning church. There may have been other letters of Paul that were destroyed.

It is also possible that that is why we no longer have the "Q" gospel. The official gospels copied unobjectionable material from it, but the source document had material that the church did not like.

Paul and other sources make references to church fathers in Jerusalem that Paul disagreed with. It seems unlikely that those church fathers left nothing in writing.
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mlinssen
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

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Philologus wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:13 pm
mlinssen wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:37 am The parables are unprecedented, and you want to suggest that someone just made them up as fillers? Why, how, where from?
I'm assuming you must agree that someone did in fact make up the parables. It's only a question of who.

Scholars agree that many of the parables do not go back to Jesus himself. So it is conceivable that none of them do. There seems to be an agreement that later Christian communities invented parables, teachings, and sayings that they attributed to Jesus. There's nothing extraordinary about this thread's hypothesis.
If you really believe in even a shred of Jesus then we'll be done very quickly. Naturally, Thomas created the parables just as JK Rowling created Harry Potter: there never was any Jesus to go along with the text.
And of course a lot got invented and attributed to the alleged Jesus, that's how story telling works

No serious scholar agrees that even a single parable goes back to Jesus, as that would imply that such a person existed, for which there is not a shred of proof. Only in biblical academic can statements like yours be made, it is hilarious
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by GakuseiDon »

Philologus wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:30 am
GakuseiDon wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:21 am A partial explanation might be a process of self-selection. The more information about Jesus and the early church in an epistle, the more chance it might run afoul of later orthodoxy and so not be selected to being copied and transmitted on. That seems to be what happened to Papias's five books of oracles by Jesus, which probably didn't make it past the Fifth Century CE. So we are left with works that contain generalised content. But as I said it is only a partial explanation.
That may be a stronger hypothesis. Why do you think it's only partial?
It doesn't fully explain the pattern on what we see over a range of material over the first few centuries. A few years ago I created a thread here called "New Testament -- which are the mythicist texts? Analysis of Carrier OHJ", here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4753 There is little difference between texts that are marked 'historical' and 'mythical', with the 'historical' texts often containing just one statement of 'historicity'.

For example, 2 Peter contains "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." According to Dr Carrier, 2 Peter was a forgery by later historicists. But take out that one passage, and it reads pretty much like nearly all the rest of the literature of the time: lack of details, not just about Jesus, but about everything else as well. If historicists were creating forgeries, why not fill them full of quotes and specific deeds about Jesus? A similar situation exists with 1 Timothy, as I show in the thread link above.

To me, it shows that the silence in Paul is not a bug but a feature. The focus on trying to explain the silence in Paul, without noting that a similar silence exists throughout the first few centuries, misframes the issue.
Giuseppe
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Re: Why Paul never quotes Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

GakuseiDon wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:24 amAccording to Dr Carrier, 2 Peter was a forgery by later historicists. But take out that one passage, and it reads pretty much like nearly all the rest of the literature of the time: lack of details, not just about Jesus, but about everything else as well
I have never understood why this fact (you insist continually on) would be a point going against Carrier. If you have just called "indifference about a historical Jesus" the partial absence of historicist details in the post-pauline writings, then accordingly you should call "ignorance about a historical Jesus" the total absence of historicist details in the pauline epistles.
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