Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 1:58 am

Michael BG wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 4:41 pm I can understand that if the word ‘rock’ was used in Mk 4:5 and 16 there could be a link to Peter (rock), but it seems that the word used is 'rocky places'.
In Mk 4:18 the Greek word εισιν is used which I understand is the third person plural not singular, which makes it unlikely that one person such as Judas Iscariot is being referred to. If verses 16 and 18 do not refer to particular people then it is unlikely that verse 15 refers to John the Baptist.

Πέτρον - Petron - Peter
Πετρώδη - Petrōdē - Rocky

JoeWallack wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 7:33 pm What is the ratio of credible statements made by Paul to incredible.

• Despite the incredible and fabulous statements made by Paul, Dr Sarah argues that per the Pauline writings—Jesus lived a human-type life on Earth. QED the historicity of Jesus is true per "Moral Certainty" in the context of the Pauline writings.

[There are] multiple points in Paul’s letters that actively point towards Paul having believed that Jesus lived a human-type life on earth; while Paul had almost no interest in the details of that life (because it wasn’t important for his own theology), he clearly believed it had happened.

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--Dr Sarah, "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023. [NOW BOLDED]

• Dr Sarah dismisses as unproven/unlikely the hypothesis that Paul understood that humans could live, breed, die, etc. on the sub-lunar sphere called “Firmament” as on Earth. And that all Paul’s references to Jesus’ death location are indeterminate between the location being on the Earth or on the Firmament.
• Dr Sarah argues that Paul's behavior is explicable on both hypotheses for historicity/ahistoricty.

If anyone else has another explanation that makes sense (i.e., not ‘Paul knew Jesus never lived on earth’, since, as I’ve pointed out above, this wouldn’t actually explain Paul’s behaviour here) then I’m quite happy to hear it.

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--Dr Sarah, "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023.

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 5:23 am

Carrier argues that it is unlikely that Paul would never have to respond to an argument where an historical Jesus is quoted and appealed to as proof.

Not that I would insist but one thing suggested by Mark 4:11, "To you is given the mystery of God’s Kingdom, but to those who are outside, all things are done in parables," is that in the pre-gospel phase only parables were ascribed publicly to Jesus.

We have no letter from Paul to a ranking apostle, only Philemon is a personal letter at all. On the one occasion where I think we have a clear reference by Paul to a teaching of Jesus, something against divorce, Paul doesn't quote anything while preaching to the congregation.
[...]

Is there any evidence in Paul that “those guys [i.e the other apostles Peter, James, etc.] get authority from having known the historical Jesus”? No. To the contrary, that conundrum is conspicuously absent from the letters of Paul: that they knew Jesus and he didn’t is never an argument he ever has to face or rebut.

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--Carrier (10 October 2023). "Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed". Richard Carrier Blogs. [NOW BOLDED]

rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:03 am There are ultimately only two sources of information about Jesus.

#1 Various early epistles (mostly Paul's, but a few others as well)
#2 The Gospels

There really are no other sources of info about Jesus. Everything else written about Jesus is based upon one of these two sources.

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 6:34 pm What I disagree with is removing this stuff (the apocrypha and the "Ecclesiastical History of the Fathers") from the table. They are sources, no matter how corrupt, from antiquity. My approach is to stack them up in separate piles along with the canonical stuff (Paul and the Gospels) but that they must remain on the table of evidentiary sources.

DrSarah wrote: ↑Sun Nov 05, 2023 2:19 pm

davidmartin wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:33 am

[...]
[W]e only have the vaguest idea of what sources were used in the gospels, we certainly can’t state that the sources didn’t predate Paul.

Michael BG wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 6:12 pm

The case I put forward shows that every detail about the life and ministry of Jesus can be "proven" to have been derived from literary sources and the minds of story writers, with zero basis in anything that could trace back to real knowledge of any real Jesus person. .

Dr Sarah states that you have failed to make this case. She points out where your argument is weak.

An argument for this is that you haven’t discussed every passage in gospel of Mark or in Q. (I am not even aware that you have made a case against there being a source Q. Let alone the more difficult task of arguing against the evidence for there being such a source.)

[A]ccording to mythicist theory Paul certainly believed that other church members had had some sort of vision of Jesus similar to his own, and one clear implication of this is that he would have believed their visions might have included Jesus speaking to them and advising them, as Paul believed Jesus had done to him.

Cf. As far as Paul appears to know, the first time Peter and gang ever saw Jesus was after Jesus died, and they only knew he died from scripture (this is, after all, literally what 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 says; but see my survey of all the evidence in OHJ, Chapter 11.2, 11.4, and 11.8). There is a reason Paul has never heard of anyone being a “disciple” of Jesus, and why he keeps assuming “apostle” simply meant someone receiving a vision of Jesus (1 Corinthians 9, where there is no notion of any other way to see Jesus; Romans 10:12-16, where the Greek makes clear he is talking about apostles; and so on). --Carrier (10 October 2023). "Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed". Richard Carrier Blogs.

[n.b. hypothetically] If Paul wanted to get as much information as possible about Jesus from other people, then the obvious thing for him to do – whether on historicity or mythicism – was to go and learn everything he could from the other church members whom he believed had also had some kind of experience of Jesus.

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--Dr Sarah, "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023. [NOW BOLDED]

• But why would Paul want to get as much information as possible about Jesus from other people?

Robyn Faith Walsh gives her reason to think Jesus existed:

[W]hat Paul provides is a story of Christ, because he never knew Jesus. He rarely tells us anything about the historical Jesus. He doesn’t really care. He gets no authority from that. [But] . . . he’s authorized because he has the most recent intel, he’s talked to the risen Christ and so that’s what he emphasizes.

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--Carrier (10 October 2023). "Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed". Richard Carrier Blogs.

[We can deduce] that Paul did not, in fact, want to get as much information as possible about Jesus from other people. And we can see that this wasn’t a reluctant acceptance of the lack of availability of other information; it was a deliberate strategy. So, if we work from the assumption that Paul would have wanted to find out everything he could about Jesus’s life, then we’ll be starting from the wrong premise completely.
[...]
Paul’s avoidance of the original church members makes complete sense. In their absence, he can keep focusing on the visions that tell him that he’s right about this, that he doesn’t need to listen to anyone else, that he’s heard this from the mouth of Jesus himself. He can push down pesky inconvenient thoughts about the implications of the fact that people who supposedly also personally heard from Jesus are saying something completely different. As far as Paul is concerned, Jesus has personally delivered God’s message to him directly. Therefore, anyone who thinks differently is just plain wrong. QED.

While this is always going to be speculation, it’s a plausible explanation for why he was so actively avoiding the existing church and rejecting their teachings, and it’s what I believe to have happened.
[...]
Mythicism tends to rely quite heavily on Paul, because, despite his letters being the earliest Christian writings we have, they actually contain very few details about any sort of earthly life of Jesus; mythicists have pointed triumphantly to this as indicating that Jesus must not have had an earthly life. But this passage casts things in a very different light. Paul not only never met Jesus during his lifetime, he seems to have made it a deliberate policy to avoid or minimise talking with people who did. And Paul wasn’t interested in Jesus’s life; he was interested in the atonement theology that he spun around Jesus’s death.

So the paucity of detail about Jesus in Paul’s letters doesn’t actually help the mythicism case.

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--Dr Sarah, "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023.

Is there any evidence in Paul that “those guys [sc. Peter and gang] get authority from having known the historical Jesus”? No. To the contrary, that conundrum is conspicuously absent from the letters of Paul: that they [sc. Peter and gang] knew Jesus and he [sc. Paul ] didn’t is never an argument he ever has to face or rebut.

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--Carrier (10 October 2023). "Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed". Richard Carrier Blogs.

[There are] multiple points in Paul’s letters that actively point towards Paul having believed that Jesus lived a human-type life on earth . . . [Paul] clearly believed it had happened.

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--Dr Sarah, "'Deciphering The Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed' review: Chapter 9, Part 1". Geeky Humanist. 13 June 2023.