Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

outhouse wrote:

Ulan wrote: 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.

outhouse wrote:

Ulan wrote: 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.

outhouse wrote:

Ulan wrote: what Paul taught, as he, as you very well state, tells us. Which, by the way, you do not accept. Because of "truth".

There is a difference in those who study the text for possibilities, and those who promote unsubstantiated conclusions from said study.

I have an open mind that can and does follow the educated evidence, not the imaginary.

Secret Alias wrote:I wonder whether what happened to Paul - i.e. being raised from the dead to the heights of heaven is expected to happen to all Christians. He taught that the dead in Christ will one day rise from their graves to meet the Lord in the air. (1 Thessalonians 4:15– 17)

Secret Alias wrote:I wonder if Galatians 1:1 can be understood to mean that Paul was dead and resurrected by Jesus and thus made an apostle. Here is our text:

ἀπόστολος, οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν

Jerome (from Origen) tells us the Marcionite text was 'removed' καὶ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς :

ἀπόστολος, οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν

What if οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ was also added later:

ἀπόστολος διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν

Secret Alias wrote: 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.

http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 445#p51445

[color=#008040]John2[/color] wrote:

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 wrote: Marcion's was the first interpretation of Paul