Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
You say that something major happened to Paul with his vision. What was this “something”?
I suggest that it was a near miss by a lightning strike.
“Something” is just “something”. I make no claim what it is. A stroke? A fever? A seizure? Fevered dreams while he was sick? A bolt of lightning?
I don’t know. You posit lightning. Everything under the sun has been suggested for what it might have been.
In Paul’s time, lightning was thought to be controlled by the gods. This hypothesis explains why Paul thought he had received a special message direct from Jesus in heaven, as well as other matters which I have mentioned. Suggestions that he had a stroke, a fever, a seizure or a fevered dream do not provide any insight into his thinking. In the end, you can only choose the explanation which seems most probable. There is a saying that if it swims like a duck, flies like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, and in this case, if Paul was in a location (The Golan Heights) where lightning is likely, if his account (a flash of light, etc) corresponds to a lightning strike, and if his subsequent actions (belief that he had received a special message from heaven) also match, then it seems to me that it is a very probable explanation.
spiker said
Blackwell said
Spiker: Paul claims in 2 Corinthians 11:32 that King Aretas of the Nabateans, who died about 40CE, intended to arrest him for being a Christian. This, together with other events which need to be fitted in, puts an upper limit on time available for his conversion.
One extreme to another, Blackwell? If it didn’t happen in 5 minutes it could’nt have happened in a longer time frame?
You based your entire asssesment of that timeframe on the description given in Acts and seem to have ignored Paul’s own
account. Even if Jesus was crucified in 33 and Paul converts in 35, then spends three years “in Arabia” You still have
another 2 years to play with. Of course, none of that was built into my objecting to the whole “unreasonably short” imbroglio:
Again your entire assessment is based on a time frame Paul contradicts.
According to Paul
** you do not have permission to see this link **Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days.”I’m not sure you can reconcile this with the treatment in Acts. The question remains what was he doing between
“when God, who had set me apart” and his trip to Jerusalem “three years later” It’s entirely reasonable that he spent this time trying to deal with his “new found faith” and what it meant.
As Stephen pointed out there may have been a series of visions (insights?)
Other events which need to be fitted in according to the conventional hypothesis include:
1. The disciples had to convince themselves not only that Jesus had been resurrected but also that he was divine.
2. The disciples then had to convince other people in Jerusalem to share this belief.
3. Some of these other people (not the disciples) had to go to places like Damascus and convince people there to accept this belief.
4. The number of believers in places like Damascus had to grow large enough for Paul to hear about them
5. Paul then organized his expedition and experienced his conversion.
Since in those days there was no internet, no phones, no newspapers, no cars, etc., it seems unlikely to me that all of this would have happened within two years of the crucifixion unless the message was just the simple one that some people claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion. So the conventional hypothesis compresses the time available for Paul’s conversion.
Blackwell said Other events which need to be fitted in according to the conventional hypothesis include:
1. The disciples had to convince themselves not only that Jesus had been resurrected but also that he was divine.
2. The disciples then had to convince other people in Jerusalem to share this belief.
3. Some of these other people (not the disciples) had to go to places like Damascus and convince people there to accept this belief.
4. The number of believers in places like Damascus had to grow large enough for Paul to hear about them
5. Paul then organized his expedition and experienced his conversion.
Since in those days there was no internet, no phones, no newspapers, no cars, etc., it seems unlikely to me that all of this would have happened within two years of the crucifixion unless the message was just the simple one that some people claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion. So the conventional hypothesis compresses the time available for Paul’s conversion.
Sorry B
I’m having a bit of trouble following your response. So let me first restate my argument
There is insufficient evidence for the account of Paul’s conversion given in Acts; Thus statements like “The time available for Paul’s conversion from opponent to proponent of Christianity is unreasonably short… ” rely on insufficient and I would add argue unreliable evidence. That this account is directly contradicted by Paul, should make anyone hesitant to rely on Acts; yet your entire argument depends on the Acts timeline. Why?
He does say that, when he was traveling to Damascus, a bright light flashed from the sky and he heard a voice.
No, there’s absolutely no evidence that Paul ever made such a claim.
it seems unlikely to me that all of this would have happened within two years of the crucifixion
As far as I know, no one makes such a claim. So we have Paul, himself, converting within two years. So why is two years ” unreasonably short” to convert “from opponent to proponent of Christianity”
of the crucifixion: either by 32 or 35 depending on how you date the crucifixion. Then according to his own account, he went away to Arabia and “three years later I went up to Jerusalem” so we have him returning to Jerusalem in either 35 or 38.
As to your events needing to be fit in
1.) I don’t see how belief in divinity is required here.
3.) Why not the disciples?
5.) There’s absolutely no evidence of such an expedition. If you want to cite Acts, please explain how the account in Acts squares with Paul’s own account
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
Thanks for the references, B. I will have to look them up!
While I will be looking into those passages later, I did check the blog and here is what Bart writes, citing, Ray Brown
“..in this broader schema, Christology develops as the “moment” of Jesus’ exaltation is pushed back – from his resurrection, to his baptism, to his birth, to eternity past. And you can trace that movement, chronologically, through the Gospels. (And the later doctrine that Jesus was the pre-existent divine being who became incarnate through the virgin Mary is a still *later* Christology, acquired by mixing the view of Luke and Matthew with the view of John.)
I still think this is right. But I think it is only part of the Christological puzzle. Because even though it’s true that John, our final Gospel, is the only one that portrays Jesus as a divine being who comes into the world, so too, as it turns out, does the apostle Paul – who was writing earlier than Mark! That’s because Paul, like John, does not actually have an “exaltation” Christology, where the human Jesus is made divine… “
I added the emphasis because the exaltation christology sees Jesus as a human who becomes divine AFTER his exaltation
spiker said
Blackwell said Other events which need to be fitted in according to the conventional hypothesis include:
1. The disciples had to convince themselves not only that Jesus had been resurrected but also that he was divine.
2. The disciples then had to convince other people in Jerusalem to share this belief.
3. Some of these other people (not the disciples) had to go to places like Damascus and convince people there to accept this belief.
4. The number of believers in places like Damascus had to grow large enough for Paul to hear about them
5. Paul then organized his expedition and experienced his conversion.
Since in those days there was no internet, no phones, no newspapers, no cars, etc., it seems unlikely to me that all of this would have happened within two years of the crucifixion unless the message was just the simple one that some people claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion. So the conventional hypothesis compresses the time available for Paul’s conversion.Sorry B
I’m having a bit of trouble following your response. So let me first restate my argument
There is insufficient evidence for the account of Paul’s conversion given in Acts; Thus statements like “The time available for Paul’s conversion from opponent to proponent of Christianity is unreasonably short… ” rely on insufficient and I would add argue unreliable evidence. That this account is directly contradicted by Paul, should make anyone hesitant to rely on Acts; yet your entire argument depends on the Acts timeline. Why?
He does say that, when he was traveling to Damascus, a bright light flashed from the sky and he heard a voice.
No, there’s absolutely no evidence that Paul ever made such a claim.
it seems unlikely to me that all of this would have happened within two years of the crucifixion
As far as I know, no one makes such a claim. So we have Paul, himself, converting within two years. So why is two years ” unreasonably short” to convert “from opponent to proponent of Christianity”
of the crucifixion: either by 32 or 35 depending on how you date the crucifixion. Then according to his own account, he went away to Arabia and “three years later I went up to Jerusalem” so we have him returning to Jerusalem in either 35 or 38.
As to your events needing to be fit in
1.) I don’t see how belief in divinity is required here.
3.) Why not the disciples?
5.) There’s absolutely no evidence of such an expedition. If you want to cite Acts, please explain how the account in Acts squares with Paul’s own account
According to Acts 9:3-9 Paul was on his way to Damascus when he had his conversion experience, and in Galations 1:15-16 he says that he went off at once to Arabia and afterwards returned to Damascus. In that case, he must he gone to Arabia from Damascus in the first place. According to Acts 9:19-20, he stayed some time in Damascus, proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. It would not make sense for him to have done this immediately after his conversion experience, but it is just what he might have done after returning from Arabia. I can see no inconsistency between Acts and Galations, just complimentary details.
In his epistles, Paul repeatedly claims that a special secret has been revealed to him and he has been commissioned to inform everyone else (Romans 1:5-6 and 16:25, Galations 1:1 ; 1:12 and 1:15-16, also Ephesians 3:3-6, 1 Timothy 1:12-13 and 2:7 , 2 Timothy 1:11-12, and Titus 1:2-3). This claim is consistent with the effect of a near miss by a lightning strike, which in Paul’s time was believed to be a message direct from heaven. Of course, Paul may have had a vision or some extraordinary experience which produced the same effect as a lightning strike, and the author of Acts may have coincidentally made up a corresponding story, and Paul’s conflict with the disciples may have just been natural rivalry, but when everything is taken together, a lightning strike is the most probable explanation.
Why not the disciples? Because the disciple’s God did not come to earth disguised as a human, whereas the Greek and Roman Gods known to Paul did this all the time.
Blackwell said
According to Acts 9:3-9 Paul was on his way to Damascus when he had his conversion experience, and in Galations 1:15-16 he says that he went off at once to Arabia and afterwards returned to Damascus. In that case, he must he gone to Arabia from Damascus in the first place. According to Acts 9:19-20, he stayed some time in Damascus, proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. It would not make sense for him to have done this immediately after his conversion experience, but it is just what he might have done after returning from Arabia. I can see no inconsistency between Acts and Galations, just complimentary details.
No, geographically the accounts of Acts and Galatians complement each other. He was traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus so for almost the entire route to Damascus Arabia would have been closer. Perhaps he even passed through Arabia depending on the path he took. Arabia does not mean Saudi Arabia. To the Romans it was east of the Jordan River and the region is in roughly the same place as the country Jordan is today. I posted about this in another thread (or was it this one earlier?). The Romans called it Arabia Petraea (as in “Petra”) and it stretched from the Sinai Peninsula almost all the way up to Syria. I can’t find a map that I’m satisfied with to illustrate it, but there are some out there if you Google it.
Blackwell said According to Acts 9:3-9 Paul was on his way to Damascus when he had his conversion experience, and in Galations 1:15-16 he says that he went off at once to Arabia and afterwards returned to Damascus. In that case, he must he gone to Arabia from Damascus in the first place. According to Acts 9:19-20, he stayed some time in Damascus.
Why do you accept Acts as a credible account of Paul’s experience?
Also consistency is not evidence. Paul’s alleged experience is also said to be consistent with frontal lobe epilepsy, but we don’t now argue that Paul was having a seizure while nearly being struck by lightning while experiencing heat stroke.
Considering that the accounts in Acts seem fragmentary and not entirely consistent, I’m not sure, how they can be relied on to give us a relaible explanation.
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
spiker said
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Blackwell said
spiker said
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
spiker said
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Exactly! I asked this on 20th January and so far ‘answer came there none.’ Sometimes we just have to say, ‘I don’t know.’
Blackwell said
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Yea, I think you want to speak in terms of a high or low Christology. Both groups came to see Jesus as divine. The question is when,
As Bart put it
“In these posts I have been arguing that there were two separate streams of early Christology (this too has been a major shift in my thinking, and is closely related to the one I will be discussing momentarily). The first Christologies were almost certainly based on the idea of “exaltation.” Christ, as a human being, came to be exalted to the right hand of God, where he was made to share in God’s status as a reward for his faithfulness. The earliest Christians – the earthly disciples themselves (or at least some of them: we have no way of knowing if they all “converted” to believe this about Jesus) –thought that this happened at Jesus’ resurrection, where God “made him” the Son of God (and thus the Lord, the messiah to come, the Son of Man, and so on). Later there were Christians who thought this exaltation occurred at his baptism, so that he was the Son of God for his entire ministry.”
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Yet that is, not really even the books hypothesis. The books hypothesis
“what most NT scholars have failed to realize – including me, until just recently – is that in a DIFFERENT way they typically *do* impose a Nicene view onto the early evidence. And this is in thinking that when one asks “Is Jesus God” for a NT author, one is asking whether Jesus has crossed that enormous and unbridgeable chasm between the human and the divine. In this way of thinking, the human is one kind of thing, the divine is another kind of thing, and being one or the other is a HUGE and INSURMOUNTABLE difference. God is separated from humanity by an enormous gulf.
That is what we who are heirs of Nicea have come to think. And it’s not what ancient Jews and pagans thought, at all. Both Jews and pagans INSTEAD thought that divinity was a kind of spectrum, that there were different levels of divinity, that some humans had a share of divinity. In a later post I’ll explain how I have always typically illustrated the point. For now I’ll point out that even though I have realized this idea of a spectrum for years, I’ve oddly never applied it to Christology – as, in fact, the vast majority of my colleagues in the field have not done either. We have assumed (and most scholars continue to assume) that if we ask, “Did a NT author think of Jesus as God” we meant – “as being of the same essence as the one true God.” But in fact, it was possible to be God in a variety of ways and on a variety of levels.”
In HJBG, the disciples understanding is a given because his hypothesis (that which he would be providing evidence for) has to do with the above.
Why would Ehrman need to provide evidence for something that by your own logic, you would agree with. After all, if “the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul”, then it was a view not held by the disciples, but if the disciples did not think Jesus was divine, how exactly do you explain their belief in his ressurection without a corresponding belief in his divinity?
RE: The lightning strike:
“….Why don’t lightning cast a shadow, Jim?”
“Well,I reckon it do, but I don’t know.”
“Well, it don’t. I know. The sun does, & a candle does, but the lightning don’t. Tom Sawyer says it don’t, & it’s so.”
“Sho, child, I reckon you’s mistaken ‘bout dat. Gimme de gun—I’s gwyne to see.”
So he stood up the gun in the door, & held it, & when it lightened the gun didn’t cast any shadow. Jim says:
“Well, dat’s mighty cur’us—dat’s oncommon cur’us. Now dey say a ghos’ don’t cas’ no shadder. Why is dat, you reckon? Of course de reason is dat ghosts is made out’n lightnin’, or else de lightnin’ is made out’n ghosts—but I don’t know which it is. I wisht I knowed which it is, Huck.”
Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
spiker said
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Why a lightning strike and not a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.?
The evidence is from Paul’s repeated claims that he had received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to any of the other suggestions.
Blackwell said
Greg Matthews said
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Why a lightning strike and not a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.?
The evidence is from Paul’s repeated claims that he had received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to any of the other suggestions.
Well, you’re the one who’s been saying lightning bolt the whole time. What is the precedence for your surety that “lightning bolt” MUST mean a divine message? Do you know what it’s like to have a stroke?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
spiker said
Blackwell said
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Yea, I think you want to speak in terms of a high or low Christology. Both groups came to see Jesus as divine. The question is when,
As Bart put it
“In these posts I have been arguing that there were two separate streams of early Christology (this too has been a major shift in my thinking, and is closely related to the one I will be discussing momentarily). The first Christologies were almost certainly based on the idea of “exaltation.” Christ, as a human being, came to be exalted to the right hand of God, where he was made to share in God’s status as a reward for his faithfulness. The earliest Christians – the earthly disciples themselves (or at least some of them: we have no way of knowing if they all “converted” to believe this about Jesus) –thought that this happened at Jesus’ resurrection, where God “made him” the Son of God (and thus the Lord, the messiah to come, the Son of Man, and so on). Later there were Christians who thought this exaltation occurred at his baptism, so that he was the Son of God for his entire ministry.”
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Yet that is, not really even the books hypothesis. The books hypothesis
“what most NT scholars have failed to realize – including me, until just recently – is that in a DIFFERENT way they typically *do* impose a Nicene view onto the early evidence. And this is in thinking that when one asks “Is Jesus God” for a NT author, one is asking whether Jesus has crossed that enormous and unbridgeable chasm between the human and the divine. In this way of thinking, the human is one kind of thing, the divine is another kind of thing, and being one or the other is a HUGE and INSURMOUNTABLE difference. God is separated from humanity by an enormous gulf.
That is what we who are heirs of Nicea have come to think. And it’s not what ancient Jews and pagans thought, at all. Both Jews and pagans INSTEAD thought that divinity was a kind of spectrum, that there were different levels of divinity, that some humans had a share of divinity. In a later post I’ll explain how I have always typically illustrated the point. For now I’ll point out that even though I have realized this idea of a spectrum for years, I’ve oddly never applied it to Christology – as, in fact, the vast majority of my colleagues in the field have not done either. We have assumed (and most scholars continue to assume) that if we ask, “Did a NT author think of Jesus as God” we meant – “as being of the same essence as the one true God.” But in fact, it was possible to be God in a variety of ways and on a variety of levels.”
In HJBG, the disciples understanding is a given because his hypothesis (that which he would be providing evidence for) has to do with the above.
Why would Ehrman need to provide evidence for something that by your own logic, you would agree with. After all, if “the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul”, then it was a view not held by the disciples, but if the disciples did not think Jesus was divine, how exactly do you explain their belief in his ressurection without a corresponding belief in his divinity?
RE: The lightning strike:
“….Why don’t lightning cast a shadow, Jim?”
“Well,I reckon it do, but I don’t know.”
“Well, it don’t. I know. The sun does, & a candle does, but the lightning don’t. Tom Sawyer says it don’t, & it’s so.”
“Sho, child, I reckon you’s mistaken ‘bout dat. Gimme de gun—I’s gwyne to see.”
So he stood up the gun in the door, & held it, & when it lightened the gun didn’t cast any shadow. Jim says:“Well, dat’s mighty cur’us—dat’s oncommon cur’us. Now dey say a ghos’ don’t cas’ no shadder. Why is dat, you reckon? Of course de reason is dat ghosts is made out’n lightnin’, or else de lightnin’ is made out’n ghosts—but I don’t know which it is. I wisht I knowed which it is, Huck.”
You say that Jews thought that divinity was a kind of spectrum.
I see no evidence that the disciples believed a resurrected Jesus to be other than at the human end of this spectrum, whereas Paul’s Christianity puts him at the God end.
Why a lightning strike rather than a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.? Because Paul repeatedly claims to have received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to the other suggestions.
Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
Greg Matthews said
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Why a lightning strike and not a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.?
The evidence is from Paul’s repeated claims that he had received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to any of the other suggestions.
Well, you’re the one who’s been saying lightning bolt the whole time. What is the precedence for your surety that “lightning bolt” MUST mean a divine message? Do you know what it’s like to have a stroke?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I see absolutely no evidence that Paul had a stroke, but “message from heaven” is exactly how he would have interpreted a lightning strike.
Boltonian said
Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
spiker said
blackwell said
Page 174, under “The Belief of the disciples” and Page 205 under “The Outcome of faith”
I looked up both passages neither supports the idea of that the disciples believed in a divine Jesus prior to the crucifixion or even after. Did I misunderstand your argument?
My argument is that the idea of a divine Jesus came from Paul (as a result of a near miss by a lightning strike) and not from the disciples as claimed by Bart Erhman. On page 174 he writes”For Jesus’s disciples, Jesus was raised into an immortal body and exalted to heaven where he currently lives and reigns with God Almighty” and on page 205 he writes “The disciples, knowing both that Jesus was raised and that he was no longer among them, concluded that he had been exalted to heaven”
Where is the evidence that they came to this conclusion? This is Bart’s hypothesis, with which I disagree.
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Exactly! I asked this on 20th January and so far ‘answer came there none.’ Sometimes we just have to say, ‘I don’t know.’
The evidence is that Paul repeatedly claims to have received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to other suggestions like a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.
The question is “What actually happened?” and of course we cannot know for sure, but when all the evidence is taken together, the most probable conclusion is that Paul experienced a near miss by a lightning strike.
Excellent HuffPo article linked in your comment 34, Greg. I may be a bit cynical here, but perhaps Paul was just calculating the way the wind was blowing? Perhaps not even consciously, but watching the politics this evening, Paul reminds me a bit of Trump, a real deal maker. First he was against the Christians, then he realized the power that would accrue to him if he changed and took control of the church. I just find that there are so many examples of this type of charismatic personality across the centuries who have grabbed authority and convinced others to follow them that I don’t think Paul would need to be struck by lightening to change his mind. He is selling something that could only be popular, no need to follow dietary laws, not need to be circumcised, etc. “Have I got a deal for you!” Now, whether or not his conversion was sincere or not I have no way of knowing, self deception is powerful too.
Blackwell said
Greg Matthews said
Blackwell said
Greg Matthews said
Where is the evidence of a lightning strike? Bart took the data available to him and came to a conclusion. You’ve come to your own conclusion. Why do you ask for his evidence? Where’s yours? With the Bible there is very little evidence for a lot of things. All you can do is draw conclusions.
Why a lightning strike and not a stroke, a seizure, a dream, a vision, etc.?
The evidence is from Paul’s repeated claims that he had received a special message from heaven, and for Paul, lightning strike = message from heaven. This correspondence does not apply to any of the other suggestions.
Well, you’re the one who’s been saying lightning bolt the whole time. What is the precedence for your surety that “lightning bolt” MUST mean a divine message? Do you know what it’s like to have a stroke?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I see absolutely no evidence that Paul had a stroke, but “message from heaven” is exactly how he would have interpreted a lightning strike.
Why don’t you see the evidence? What do you know about strokes? “message from heaven” is exactly how he would have interpreted” That’s a mighty strong claim right there. Where’s your proof of what he would or would not have done?
I’m reminded of the classic film “Sergeant York” with Gary Cooper. His gun was struck by lightning, and he marched into the nearest church where he was born again. However, he did not develop a complex theology. Paul seemed to believe that he communicated with God over an extended period of time. I don’t see either a stroke or lightning could cause Paul to receive his “gospel.”
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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