Paul, Adam, and Adam Walked in a Bar

[gryan]

@GakuseiDon,

He was "sent" to be "born" and so on.

[GakuseiDon]

@GakuseiDon,

He was "sent" to be "born" and so on.

I know nothing about ancient Greek (or ancient Latin or modern Greek), but the idea of being "sent" doesn't necessarily suggest pre-existence to me, but of something willed or caused. "God has sent forth a sign!" doesn't suggest pre-existence of the sign.

The famous "Augustus Gospel" inscription has that idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_ ... _of_Priene

Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance (excelled even our anticipations), surpassing all previous benefactors...

Providence, which is deeply interested in our life, sent Augustus as a savior. This "sending" doesn't mean that Augustus was pre-existing.

Then again, might I be missing a nuance that exists within the Greek that implies a pre-existence involved with the "sending forth"?

[gryan]

@ GakuseiDon

Good observations!

For further consideration: In support of his preexistence argument, Das offers this parallel use of the word "sent" in the near context:

Gal 4:6
Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

"Even as the Spirit is preexistent, the Son is preexistent." --Das

[GakuseiDon]

For further consideration: In support of his preexistence argument, Das offers this parallel use of the word "sent" in the near context:

Gal 4:6
Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

"Even as the Spirit is preexistent, the Son is preexistent." --Das

I'm not sure what Das means by the Spirit of the Son being "preexistent" in that context.

For the Son, it is clear: the Son pre-existed in one form (e.g. an angel or Logos) and was then sent to Earth in another form: as a man "made of woman, made under the law". An object is transported from one place to another, leaving one existence and entering into a different existence. I'd need to understand what Das means by "pre-existent Spirit of the Son": what it was before and after.

I'm not saying "pre-existence" can be automatically ruled out in either case. He might be right. But, like "God sent us a sign" and "Providence sent us Augustus", the sending itself doesn't require a starting place (i.e. a pre-existence), merely that there is a sender and the sending is received.

[Paul the Uncertain]

I'm not saying "pre-existence" can be automatically ruled out in either case. He might be right. But, like "God sent us a sign" and "Providence sent us Augustus", the sending itself doesn't require a starting place (i.e. a pre-existence), merely that there is a sender and the sending is received.

The Quran has the notion of Jesus simply becoming by the will of Allah in that moment.

3:47 ... so it will be: Allah creates what he wills. When he decrees something, he simply tells it "Be," and it is.

Earlier in the same Surah, Maryam is provisioned with food by Allah, without any explanation about where the food "came from."

The conceptual framework, then, within which a powerful entity might manifest something in a given time and place while itself being "elsewhere" and without the manifested something ever having been beforehand isn't peculiar to the "euro-classical" world or its specific languages, like Koine. Nevertheless, the entity is fairly described as the "sender," by the causal relationship between the entity and the manifestation (= the receiving of something by somebody).

The ambiguity about the past ontological status of "something," knowing only that it was in some sense "sent," seems to run very deep. I despair of a high-confidence disambiguation.

[robert j]

I'm wondering whether Gal 4:4-6 implies that Jesus was a pre-existing heavenly entity or not.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law,
so that we might receive adoption as sons.
...

I think not. I think this implies that Jesus came into existence like others of us who are "born of a woman" ...

This well-worn issue is clearly relevant to the question of pre-existence.

I think Paul attributed certain specific human credentials to his JC figure to give his heavenly figure adequate “standing” to provide salvific and redemptive benefits to humans. There are several mentions in the letters of Paul’s JC figure having come in the likeness of man. And the passage you cite, “having been born of woman … born under the law … that he might redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.” This “standing”, in a quasi-legal sense, is the justification for a heavenly spirit to be seen as having had enough “skin in the game” for the self-sacrifice to provide benefits to humans.

[gryan]

There is a large body of scholarship on the question of pre-existence in Paul, and I don’t see Tabor as a leading investigator on the issue. But Tabor’s apparent waffling on the issue provided an easy way to raise the question.

I think pre-existence provides the greatest explanatory power for the concepts in the extant letters.

@robert j

I'm being persuaded by your argument.

Years ago, I read and pondered Tabor's dissertation:
TABOR, James D., Things Unutterable. Paul's Ascent to Paradise in its Greco-Roman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts [Studies in Judaism]-Lanham-New York-London: University Press of America, 1986

I have a hunch that Paul's Ascent to Paradise is just a reprint of his earlier views with respect to preexistence of Jesus. I think the views expressed in Jesus and Paul (2012) may be a more mature Tabor.