Professor Ehrman
Neither Jesus nor Paul saw himself as departing from the truth of Judaism and the Jewish God.

Steefen
False. For Jesus to ask for the literal or metaphorical consumption of his body and blood is to depart from the truth of Judaism and to depart from the Jewish God. For Paul to de-prioritize the Law is to depart from the truth of Judaism and from the Jewish God.  

Steefen, Argumentation Specialist

Note the Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli):

I present I.
Aquiva does not prohibit the custom of healing by whispering secret names over a wound as such but only if it was practiced by a heretic who does not belong to the community of Israel (kelat Yisrael).
Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud. Chapter 5: “Healing in the Name of Jesus,” p. 53.

Jesus does not belong to the community of Israel at the point when he metaphorically or literally (in the gospel of John) tells people to drink his blood and eat his body. Period. The biblical Jesus is a heretic in reference to the Jewish covenant and the Torah. Paul as well who also puts forth [Holy Communion].

I present II.
Eleazar b. Dama keeps company with a heretic and wants to be healed by him and his potent charm [in the name of Jesus…], but his merciless uncle prefers the beloved nephew dies rather than be healed by a heretic.
Ibid, p. 55.

I present III.
If we forgo the Bavli’s artificial and probably secondary identification of Jesus with the sinners of Israel, we can put Jesus into the category of the heretics and then have [1] Titus for the destroyers of the Temple [2] Balaam for the sinners of the nations, and [3] Jesus for the heretics.

The first and third, Titus and Jesus, were punished forever in Hell or Gehinnom (Hebrew) / Gehenna (Yiddish). The second, Balaam, was released into nonexistence after twelve months. … [Jesus] has no portion of the world to come and is accordingly punished in Gehinnom because he is one of the worst heretics that the people of Israel have ever produced.
Ibid, Chapter 8: “Jesus’ Punishment in Hell,” p. 90.

Paul says at ** you do not have permission to see this link **
You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Jesus says at ** you do not have permission to see this link **
How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Stephen said
Professor Ehrman

Neither Jesus nor Paul saw himself as departing from the truth of Judaism and the Jewish God.

Steefen

False. For Jesus to ask for the literal or metaphorical consumption of his body and blood is to depart from the truth of Judaism and to depart from the Jewish God. For Paul to de-prioritize the Law is to depart from the truth of Judaism and from the Jewish God.  

You  miss the  point.  Ehrman  is  not  saying  that  others such  as  yourself don’t  think  that Jesus  and  Paul  departed  from  the  “truth”  of  Judaism  and  the  Jewish God.    His  opinion is  that  neither  Jesus  nor  Paul thought  they  did.   

  

LOL, I did not miss that point. “I didn’t think I was being a heretic.” That sure will stop the Jewish establishment from plotting Jesus’ death or the Jewish establishment plotting Paul’s death. At least Jesus did not have a crowd of people trying to attack him like Paul did. Supposedly he had a crowd of people cheering against him and for Barabbas–Son of the Father.

There must be a problem with the system:

Robert posts something then the system shows I posted the same thing afterwards.

Many Catholics are not familiar with the term kerygma, and so they can be perplexed when they see or hear it.  Kerygma is a Greek term that basically means “preaching” and is used to describe the content of the apostolic message of Jesus. St. Paul reminds us in Romans 10:14 that preaching is essential for people to believe in Jesus and be saved. 

When Paul referred to preaching the kerygma, he was referring to a very specific message, not just a general homily on any aspect of faith. Paul preached first and foremost the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection and their saving significance. Paul also preached on the response required of us in order to accept and live out this saving action of Jesus.

The content of Paul’s preaching may seem simple, but it should be understood as the foundation upon which everything else is based. All other Christian teaching depends on and flows from the truth of our Lord’s saving death and resurrection.

To understand the impact of Paul’s preaching, we have to place it in the context of the larger story of salvation.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

Let us begin by observing three relatively firm conclusions at which the debate may be said to have arrived.

First, one must acknowledge that the Pauline letters (whether we accept Tubingen’s four, Bultmann’s seven, or even all thirteen) contain only fragmentary materials about the life and teaching of Jesus. This fact is most dramatically apparent when one asks what, for example, would be known about Jesus’ life if, of the New Testament materials, only Paul’s letters had survived.

One would know that

1) Jesus had been born under the law as a Jew (Gal. iv. 4), of the line of David (Rom. i. 3)

2) that he had a brother, James (Gal. i. 19)

3) and twelve disciples (1 Cor. xv. 5), of whom he mentions by name James (1 Cor. xv. 7), Peter, and John (Gal. ii. 9)

4) that he ate a last meal with them, and on that same night was betrayed (1 Cor. xi. 23 ff.)

5) that he was put to death on a cross (Gal. iii. 1 ; 1 Cor. Ji. 2, et passim), was buried (1 Cor. xv. 4; Rom. vi. 4), and was (on the third day) raised from the dead (1 Cor. xv. 4, et passim), after which he appeared to his followers (1 Cor. xv. 5 ff.).

This is virtually a complete catalogue of the ” hard facts ” of Jesus’ life and ministry one is able to glean (“glean” is precisely the word for it, for they are not readily apparent) from Paul’s letters.

We find there

1) no details about Jesus’ birth

2) no stories of baptism and temptation

3) no calling of the disciples

4) no direct mention of Jesus’ teaching or healing ministry

5) no confession [by Peter] at Caesarea Philippi

6) no transfiguration

7) no cleansing of the temple

8) no conflict with the authorities

9) no Gethsemane scene, no trial [or trials]

10) no thieves crucified with Jesus, no last words from the cross, no soldiers, no weeping women, no word about the place or time of the crucifixion

11) no mention of Joseph or Mary

12) no mention of John the Baptist

13) no mention of Judas

14) no mention of Pilate

Victor Furnish (1965)
One may readily identify as a second relatively firm conclusion, that the Jesus-Paul debate has not ever been significantly advanced, nor will a solution to the Jesus- Paul problem ever be finally achieved, by locating parallel passages in Paul and the gospels.

Steefen (2020)

Paul says at Romans 2:1

You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Jesus says at Luke 6:42

How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Steefen
Please hold off-topic questions until the end of the article or put them in a different thread that also will not be addressed until the end of this article in this thread.

Victor Paul Furnish, B.D., M.A., Ph.D. – S.M.U. / “The Jesus-Paul Debate: From Baur to Bultmann” (1965)
Granting the sparsity of biographical and teaching material relating to Jesus found in Paul, what else accounts for this?

Steefen
Paul did not see the risen Jesus before he ascended to heaven.
He did not see Jesus before Holy Week, he did not see the Crucifxion, he did not see the empty tomb, he did not see Jesus for the forty days before his ascension.

Victor Paul Furnish, B.D., M.A., Ph.D. – S.M.U. / “The Jesus-Paul Debate: From Baur to Bultmann” (1965)
There is nothing in the two authentic Pauline Letters 1 Corinthians (chapter 2) or 1 Thessalonians (chapter 1) with their summaries of Paul’s missionary preaching in Corinth and Thessalonica to support the conjecture that the narration of Jesus’ earthly life or instruction into his sayings was the central or even an essential part of it.

Moreover, in Romans, Paul strives to summarize essential points, he says no more in Romans about the earthly Jesus than he does in the letters written to congregations of his own founding.