How Did Paul Know Jesus Was Resurrected?

[Ulan]

The other point I would like you to consider is the authority question. If I remember correctly, you are proponent of the idea that the movement started somewhere or even at different locations in the diaspora, which leaves the Jerusalem community mostly as fiction. However, this torpedoes somewhat the point that a Jerusalem community with the family of Jesus at its center was the actual origin of most of Paul's teachings.

Your taking to big of bites here.

I don't think the Jerusalem sect was Jesus real family. Like 99% of the NT text, important names were almost ALWAYS attributed to other important figures for rhetorical purposes. .

It is the prose they used, and we have a long track record of factual cases.

Last

I am not debating such, so why even go there?

If this is your standpoint, why go to such length to declare it a "truth" that Paul only used teachings he got from others? Of which we don't really know who they were and what they taught? Sounds rather weak for a "truth".

[Secret Alias]

The simple fact is that Paul says X (= I didn't receive anything according to human tradition). The Catholic tradition must have received a text with those words from Galatians and couldn't alter them. They were a well recognized saying from the apostle. Yet it nevertheless attempted - by means of editorial manipulation of the Pauline corpus and the inclusion of Acts into the canon - to soften these words by implying that Paul:

1. had a vision which he received from heaven and which was originally 'separate' from the Jerusalem Church and which
2. eventually reconciled itself/himself with the same Jerusalem Church

This is very interesting IMO because it tells us something of the ground out of which Irenaeus was digging to manipulate the corpus as a whole. Why did people "fall" for the editorial manipulations? Well the first answer is that Irenaeus or whoever the editor was clearly left certain key statements standing like that which appears at the beginning of Galatians ('no human tradition') and that of 2 Corinthians 12 ('snatched to the third heaven/Paradise'). But what he does is clearly makes it seem as these happened or occurred at the beginning of Paul's career and then introduces a 'change of mind.'

This is why the parenthetical remarks throughout the corpus are left standing too. You have to ask yourself why does the editor not remove the bombast ('the other apostles aren't real apostles,' 'I am better' etc). The answer is quite illuminating. He clearly wants it to seem or has to make it seem as if the things the Marcionites believed or quoted are very much real statements of the apostles. But in essence what they subscribed to - he makes it seem - was an outdated understanding of the apostle Paul. Maybe eventually Marcion was refuted as a false teacher of Paul whose understanding was late. But the way the canon was edited makes it plain that they did indeed hold to a very early understanding of Paul but one which predated his reconciliation with the Jerusalem Church.

Maybe this doesn't find expression in the Patristic writings but we have to believe that editing of the canon was written from the vantage point of a subsequent 'reflection' on the part of Paul that his original bombast and hostility to the Jerusalem apostles was wrong. In that way Paul becomes repentant and the 'giving heretic one chance to repent from their ways' is born through the example of Paul himself.

But the important thing to see is that the heretic rebel Paul is certainly there. His bombast is still retained but it is muted by a parenthetical 'I am sounding like a fool' etc which is supposed to be the apostle censoring himself at a later date. I think it is much better explained by someone like Irenaeus doing the editing.

[Secret Alias]

Also people 'fell for the manipulated texts' because those who sat in the pews only heard the words read in church. In the manner that we see in Catholic and Orthodox traditions the 'Bibles' aren't widely available for reading. So in essence then they were again 'secret texts.' If someone sitting on a Sunday morning heard 'I will have nothing to do with those superlative apostles' and then suddenly - after a shake up of the ecclesiastical order running the church 'learns' that Paul said this and then subsequently made up with the Jerusalem Church most would believe it. You'd have to have read the original texts in their original form to know the context of the passages read aloud in church.

[outhouse]

The other point I would like you to consider is the authority question. If I remember correctly, you are proponent of the idea that the movement started somewhere or even at different locations in the diaspora, which leaves the Jerusalem community mostly as fiction. However, this torpedoes somewhat the point that a Jerusalem community with the family of Jesus at its center was the actual origin of most of Paul's teachings.

Your taking to big of bites here.

I don't think the Jerusalem sect was Jesus real family. Like 99% of the NT text, important names were almost ALWAYS attributed to other important figures for rhetorical purposes. .

It is the prose they used, and we have a long track record of factual cases.

Last

I am not debating such, so why even go there?

If this is your standpoint, why go to such length to declare it a "truth" that Paul only used teachings he got from others? Of which we don't really know who they were and what they taught? Sounds rather weak for a "truth".

Paul has complete historicity as someone teaching a perverted form of Judaism based on the crucified Galilean. There is no length here at all. He has complete historicity as someone who joined a movement in progress in the Diaspora.

His text WERE a community effort for the most part, written in rhetorical prose which is simply an art form of persuading others.

We know in detail what he taught because HE TELLS US and it was not in Israel either.


So the only thing weak here are people who take text out of the actual context, because that cannot stand the current status of historicity here, and then play lay their cards down on the table showing their bias.

[John2]

MrMacSon wrote:

"I think a key question is -- *Is 'Paul's gospel' what we see in the Pauline corpus or something different?"

And:

"There is no reference to what Paul was preaching."

I think Paul's gospel is what he preaches in his letters.

1 Cor. 4:15-17:

"For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church."

1 Cor. 11:1-2:

"Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you."

Php. 3:17-19:

"Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things."

I see "their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things" as an attack against Jewish Christians.

2 Cor. 11:4-23:

"For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. I do not think I am in the least inferior to those super-apostles ... And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve ... Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more."

1 Cor. 8:7-9:

"Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak."

Didache 6:

"And concerning food, bear what you are able; but against that which is sacrificed to idols be exceedingly careful; for it is the service of dead gods."

Acts 21:25:

"As for the Gentile believers, we [i.e., Jewish Christian leaders] have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols...."

Gal. 4:9-11:

"But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain."

A commentary to this notes (http://biblehub.com/galatians/4-10.htm):

"...not of the lucky and unlucky days, or of any of the festivals of the Gentiles, but of Jewish ones. By "days" are meant their seventh day sabbaths; for since they are distinguished from months and years, they must mean such days as returned weekly; and what else can they be but their weekly sabbaths? These were peculiar to the Israelites, and not binding on others; and being typical of Christ, the true rest of his people, and he being come, are now ceased. By "months" are designed their new moons, or the beginning of their months upon the appearance of a new moon, which were kept by blowing trumpets, offering sacrifices, hearing the word of God, abstaining from work, and holding religious feasts; and were typical of that light, knowledge, and grace, the church receives from Christ, the sun of righteousness; and he, the substance, being come, these shadows disappeared. By "times" are intended the three times in the year, when the Jewish males appeared before the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the three feasts of tabernacles, passover, and pentecost, for the observance of which there was now no reason."

Rom. 8:3-7:

"For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

This is the essence of Paul's gospel, that Jesus was the end of the Torah and there was no longer any distinction between Jews and Gentiles.

Gal. 3:23-29:

"Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

I not only can't imagine that the Jewish Christian "gospel" was like this, I don't have to because according to Paul it wasn't.

[Secret Alias]

What kind of a fucking statement is this:

Paul has complete historicity as someone teaching a perverted form of Judaism based on the crucified Galilean.

It's not even sensible. You assert by implication that there is 'true' Judaism and 'perverted' Judaism when such a statement is based on value judgments. Pray tell what 'true Judaism' was at the time of Paul. After that the point falls into an abyss. How does one develop a 'true form of Judaism' from a crucified Galilean? Is that possible? It's not that I am interested in hearing your mental masturbation again. It's just to point out that you're making another stupid point that no one is interested in hearing.

[Ulan]

Your taking to big of bites here.

I don't think the Jerusalem sect was Jesus real family. Like 99% of the NT text, important names were almost ALWAYS attributed to other important figures for rhetorical purposes. .

It is the prose they used, and we have a long track record of factual cases.

Last

I am not debating such, so why even go there?

If this is your standpoint, why go to such length to declare it a "truth" that Paul only used teachings he got from others? Of which we don't really know who they were and what they taught? Sounds rather weak for a "truth".

Paul has complete historicity as someone teaching a perverted form of Judaism based on the crucified Galilean. There is no length here at all. He has complete historicity as someone who joined a movement in progress in the Diaspora.

His text WERE a community effort for the most part, written in rhetorical prose which is simply an art form of persuading others.

We know in detail what he taught because HE TELLS US and it was not in Israel either.

I cannot take you seriously at this time anymore. What kind of bait and switch is this again? My question was not about what Paul taught, as he, as you very well state, tells us. Which, by the way, you do not accept. Because of "truth".

My question was what those people he took all his teachings from, according to your view of things, taught. Who don't tell us, and of whom we don't really know who they were?

So the only thing weak here are people who take text out of the actual context, because that cannot stand the current status of historicity here, and then play lay their cards down on the table showing their bias.

The "current status of historicity" is a nice way to put it. Implicitly this acknowledges that this view is in constant flow. Like that quaint tale of half a million eyewitnesses to Jesus' death of yours that, on close view, collapses like the house of cards it is.

[Secret Alias]

Can we all just agree to ignore anything that comes from John? He never has anything interesting to say.

[outhouse]

Like that quaint tale of half a million eyewitnesses to Jesus' death of yours that, on close view, collapses like the house of cards it is.

You cannot refute it, in any way shape or form.

So it factually does not collapse.

But to be clear lets quote me correctly, "half a million possible witnesses" is generally what I state. EP Sanders places it at 400,000, Josephus higher.

[outhouse]

My question was what those people he took all his teachings from, according to your view of things, taught. Who don't tell us, and of whom we don't really know who they were?

.

This is important here because it is the crux of what we all study here. Earlywritings.

We know people in the first century before the temple fell, were teaching a Hellenistic form of Judaism based on a crucified Galilean. This is not up for debate.


Should it be investigated fully? sure, but so far all the opposite conclusions have all been factually smellier then rotten horse crap.