Does the Earliest Gospel require a cult of a god Jesus?

[Charles Wilson]

what would this 'earliest Gospel story' have been ??

Titus conquers God in Jerusalem and takes all His wealth to Rome.
He leaves some Thugs to enforce the Roman Rule and sets up a Cadre of Writers to tell the story of how the Son of God was given Power over the Jews.
What God really meant to do was to move the whole religion to Rome where the Empire could keep a good eye on things and control events from Downtown.

The End

[Giuseppe]

Since I am persuaded, by reading Bruno Bauer, that the earliest "pauline" epistle betrayes knowledge of a lost earliest Gospel story, then the next question is: was this story designed to euhemerize a god Jesus on earth?

I'm curious, what would Bruno say about this? viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10757

the Earliest Gospel, for Bauer, was a kind of proto-Mark. Accordingly, his author was a gentilizer more than a judaizer.

For "Judaizers" I mean readers of Matthew or proto-Matthew.

Does proto-Mark presuppose the opening up of "God's Kingdom" to Gentiles, the very thing that the letters of Paul are written to justify? How does Bruno deal with this? Does he say that the proto-Mark and the letters of Paul were virtually contemporary, being read for the first time alongside each other? Or does he say that some proto-Mark was circulating on its own first?

Bruno Bauer is persuaded that the Earliest Gospel preceded stricto sensu the earliest "pauline" epistle and was known/used by the forger of the latter.

For an idea of the gentilizing background of the Earliest Gospel, read for example the following quote:

The mechanical and inappropriate manner in which the saying about the foreign exorcist is inserted in Luke’s Gospel (9:49-50), which represents the father who revealed this to the wise and understanding but hid it from the infants, leads us back to an original gospel source from which the author of the first Corinthians letter borrowed the material for his antithesis between the divine favor of the foolish and the humiliation of the wise (1:27) and for the hidden wisdom of God (2:7).

https://vridar.org/bruno-bauer-six-work ... onclusion/

[Peter Kirby]

Since I am persuaded, by reading Bruno Bauer, that the earliest "pauline" epistle betrayes knowledge of a lost earliest Gospel story, then the next question is: was this story designed to euhemerize a god Jesus on earth?

I'm curious, what would Bruno say about this? viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10757

the Earliest Gospel, for Bauer, was a kind of proto-Mark. Accordingly, his author was a gentilizer more than a judaizer.

For "Judaizers" I mean readers of Matthew or proto-Matthew.

Does proto-Mark presuppose the opening up of "God's Kingdom" to Gentiles, the very thing that the letters of Paul are written to justify? How does Bruno deal with this? Does he say that the proto-Mark and the letters of Paul were virtually contemporary, being read for the first time alongside each other? Or does he say that some proto-Mark was circulating on its own first?

Bruno Bauer is persuaded that the Earliest Gospel preceded stricto sensu the earliest "pauline" epistle and was known/used by the forger of the latter.

For an idea of the gentilizing background of the Earliest Gospel, read for example the following quote:

The mechanical and inappropriate manner in which the saying about the foreign exorcist is inserted in Luke’s Gospel (9:49-50), which represents the father who revealed this to the wise and understanding but hid it from the infants, leads us back to an original gospel source from which the author of the first Corinthians letter borrowed the material for his antithesis between the divine favor of the foolish and the humiliation of the wise (1:27) and for the hidden wisdom of God (2:7).

https://vridar.org/bruno-bauer-six-work ... onclusion/

Okay, so does that mean that it strictly precedes in that it came from the same people, who wrote the Gospel first and Letters second? Or does it mean that there was a period of time in which people had this Gospel (=proto-Mark) but no Letters (Pauline corpus)?

If so, how are we to understand this Gospel-only group? And how are we to understand the addition of the Letters here?

I'm suggesting that the Gospel presupposes that which the Letters seek to establish, which would imply either that the Gospel came from the same people who wrote the Letters (putting references in the Letters to the Gospel, as Bruno supposes) or that the Gospel came later. And so I'm saying that the Gospel is either contemporary and of the same origin, or later.

[Giuseppe]

From how I interpret Bauer, I think he subscribed to this view:

there was a period of time in which people had this Gospel (=proto-Mark) but no Letters (Pauline corpus)

In my humble opinion, Bauer would agree with you that "the Gospel presupposes that which the Letters seek to establish", i.e. both were written by Gentilizers. But nowhere he says that they were gentilizers coming from the same identical school.

[Giuseppe]

This your question sounds strange to me:

And how are we to understand the addition of the Letters here?

Legends grow, they don't diminuish. Once one is persuaded by the fact that the epistles are littered with references and pointers to the Earliest Gospel, their importance becomes more and more relative.

[Peter Kirby]

From how I interpret Bauer, I think he subscribed to this view:

there was a period of time in which people had this Gospel (=proto-Mark) but no Letters (Pauline corpus)

In my humble opinion, Bauer would agree with you that "the Gospel presupposes that which the Letters seek to establish", i.e. both were written by Gentilizers. But nowhere he says that they were gentilizers coming from the same identical school.

Bruno puts it this way:

The question properly framed is: which of these letters were written before the Acts of the Apostles, and which were written after? Which letters were known to the author of the Acts of the Apostles and served as its basis – and in which letters is there evidence of knowledge of the presuppositions of the Acts of the Apostles, and which of the authors of these letters had the historical work in mind and used it?

The overall subject of investigation is the historical sequence in which the letters and the Acts of the Apostles were written – dealing with the process of Christian consciousness that culminated in these works – as well as the relationship of these works to the Gospels.

So it sounds like Bruno is regarding the letters as "marginal" as I put it, in that the extension of "God's Kingdom" to Gentiles is regarded already as earlier established. Or, to frame it along the lines that perhaps Bruno himself would, according to a process:

Gentilizers + Gospel -> Judaizers + Acts -> Hegelian Synthesis + Paul

But what exactly does this earliest "Gentilizing" consist of? How did it come to be worked out and established? And if it were already worked out and established, how can the letters attributed to Paul be written in the way that they are?

If it lays claim to the continuation of Judaism saying that everyone can be part of this new concept of participation in "God's Kingdom," then all of what the Pauline corpus argues for contentiously is already established in the proto-Gospel. Yet the letters of Paul seem to take it as not established, as new and rightly controversial and requiring novel ways of thinking about the story of God, the law, and Israel and about the impact of his Christ on that story. So the letters of Paul are, quite apparently, not addressing or coming after a group with an established intellectual / religious tradition going back to the mysterious group who created a first Gospel, who had already worked all this out and treated it as established.

So the chronology of Bruno Bauer seems off.

[Giuseppe]

So the letters of Paul are, quite apparently, not addressing or coming after a group with an established intellectual / religious tradition going back to the mysterious group who created a first Gospel

they couldn't, since, even before 1 Corinthians, "there were already multiple Gospels", accordingly: tot capita, tot sententiae.

In short, the hierarchy already existed when the author wrote, and it sought after the titles of its authority against the resistance of the laity – there were already multiple Gospels, for the scripture that commanded blessing as a weapon against curse was not the original Gospel – and there was already, as the author immediately proves, a norm of catholicity

(my bold) https://vridar.org/bruno-bauer-criticis ... ns-letter/

[Peter Kirby]

So the letters of Paul are, quite apparently, not addressing or coming after a group with an established intellectual / religious tradition going back to the mysterious group who created a first Gospel

they couldn't, since, even before 1 Corinthians, "there were already multiple Gospels", accordingly: tot capita, tot sententiae.

In short, the hierarchy already existed when the author wrote, and it sought after the titles of its authority against the resistance of the laity – there were already multiple Gospels, for the scripture that commanded blessing as a weapon against curse was not the original Gospel – and there was already, as the author immediately proves, a norm of catholicity

(my bold) https://vridar.org/bruno-bauer-criticis ... ns-letter/

Does this address what I'm saying in any way?

[Peter Kirby]

Bruno Bauer is difficult to read because he suggests he's making an argument when he omits the most crucial of points. For example:

We highlight one argument from his reasoning because it is again important for determining his relationship to the Gospels.

In the context where he presents marriage as unnecessary and superfluous due to the brevity of time remaining until the final crisis (v. 29-31), he adds a warning that those who have wives should live as if they had none, and he immediately extends this statement to everyone, advising those who weep to live as if they were not weeping, those who rejoice as if they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as if they had no possessions.

Having wives, rejoicing, and buying are positive determinations and pleasures, which are all valid in their place when it comes to renunciation and abstaining. Crying, on the other hand, does not belong here, it is not introduced by anything in context and could not have occurred to anyone who originally creates and follows a driving interest – it has come to the author by chance, from outside, through foreign force – but from where? From those beatitudes that the author of the Gospel of Luke has taken from the same source text as our author.

And.... ? Whence is directionality for teaching like the beatitudes established? I remember when you and every forum like this one, caught on fire by Doherty's expositions, were all over this as evidence that Paul knew so many of these teachings as not even attributed to Jesus. And at least that is more consistent with the text, in that there are only a couple explicit "sayings of the Lord" in them. Doherty realized he had to make an argument. Bauer made claims.

[Giuseppe]

Bruno Bauer is difficult to read because he suggests he's making an argument when he omits the most crucial of points. For example:

We highlight one argument from his reasoning because it is again important for determining his relationship to the Gospels.

In the context where he presents marriage as unnecessary and superfluous due to the brevity of time remaining until the final crisis (v. 29-31), he adds a warning that those who have wives should live as if they had none, and he immediately extends this statement to everyone, advising those who weep to live as if they were not weeping, those who rejoice as if they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as if they had no possessions.

Having wives, rejoicing, and buying are positive determinations and pleasures, which are all valid in their place when it comes to renunciation and abstaining. Crying, on the other hand, does not belong here, it is not introduced by anything in context and could not have occurred to anyone who originally creates and follows a driving interest – it has come to the author by chance, from outside, through foreign force – but from where? From those beatitudes that the author of the Gospel of Luke has taken from the same source text as our author.

And.... ? Whence is directionality for teaching like the beatitudes established?

Surely I feel a sense of déjà-vu when I compare the two passages:

1 Corinthians 7:29-31:	Luke 6:21
29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.	Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.