Reification

[spin]

It seems to me most Jesus-centric studies are based on reification of literary content. There is no real effort to give flesh to tradition-developed stories. One is too busy stretching those literary traditions over preconceived frames.

If this all reflects the state of play, how do we get around the problem? Or is it unsurmountable and thus futile?

I had hoped that we could beat out some foundations we could start from. That's why my part time contribution has been to try to understand where Paul - ie the writer of the theological notions in the recognized letters given authorship to that name - was coming from. There seems to be one individual in there behind the text to be grappled with unlike any other new testament writing. But obviously my efforts have been unconvincing.

How do you bridge the gap between written tradition and the reality behind it? If we can answer that we may be able to circumvent the reification.

[spin]

• it's basically true
• it's an elaborate myth (a literal myth)
• I guess there's some truth and I see it this way…
• how best can I make it fit
• it's fundamentally a contrived con|fraud|means of crowd control|…
…

[MrMacSon]

It seems to me most Jesus-centric studies are based on reification of literary content. There is no real effort to give flesh to tradition-developed stories. One is too busy stretching those literary traditions over preconceived frames.

By, "There is no real effort to give flesh to tradition-developed stories," I wonder if or presume you mean there's no real effort to give flesh to the concept or concepts of tradition-developed stories (or traditions of stories developing or a tradition of actively developing stories).

There's been a bit of scholarship in recent years that seems to be relevant, such as:

1. Matthew Larsen's 2018 book, Gospels Before the Book, Oxford University Press,
2. M David Litwa's 2019 How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths, Yale University Press,
3. Robyn Faith Walsh's 2021 The Origin's of Early Christian Literature, Cambridge University Press, and
4. M David Litwa's just published Late Revelations: Rediscovering the Gospels in the Second Century CE
   (which proposes that the initial gospels were "waves" of rolling 'traditions'—stories, teachings, and sayings that evolved within early Christian groups: 'traditions' that were fluid and dynamic, initially lacking the apostolic authorship attributed to them by later generations.)

Larsen's book, which proposes early Christian writings existed in various, fluid note-forms, is probably foundational to Litwa's Late Revelations.

Now, here, you are more focussed on Paul, but, given various scholarship that at least some of the Pauline epistles are compilations or re-use of aspects of other Pauline epistles, the principles those books apply to the gospels probably apply to them.

[spin]

By, "There is no real effort to give flesh to tradition-developed stories," I wonder if or presume you mean there's no real effort to give flesh to the concept or concepts of tradition-developed stories (or traditions of stories developing or a tradition of actively developing stories).

First I had in mind a more circumscribed context, ie on this forum. Second, I'm not really interested in the turtles on turtles approach: they must be standing on something. In our case either real events or ones that never happened. Are the traditions just embellishments or ultimately creations (via one process or another). The paper itself has limited appeal.

Now, here, you are more focussed on Paul, but, given various scholarship that at least some of the Pauline epistles are compilations or re-use of aspects of other Pauline epistles, the principles those books apply to the gospels probably apply to them.

To some degree, but Paul's letters are making different claims from those other works. The writer presents himself as the principle agent in a generally non-narrative framework, which makes the letters ostensibly a genre that is common in contexts outside a religious world.

Of course the transmission process is the same as the other works, so liable to scribal corruption, but they are a different basic material with no blatant supernatural content. His visions and theories of the future can just be the ravings of a "crazed"* mind. ("Crazed" is shorthand for a much more complex discourse…)

The few instances of claims of the supernatural - such 1 Cor 15's claims of people having seen a resurrected Christ - must be treated with suspicion as probably not reflective of Paul's general content and naturally feature textual difficulties.