…we do not have a record of any christological disputes between Paul and the original disciples of the earthly Jesus…
But you have to wonder just how much each knew of the others’ views. I suspect illiterate fishermen probably did not share the rather sophisticated cosmology of an educated literate Jewish apocalypticist like Paul who would probably have incorporated his Jesus beliefs into previously accepted concepts. But Paul can describe an Adoptionist viewpoint in Romans 1:3-4 and then without batting an eyelid give us Philippians 2. My theory is that these early believers simply didn’t make distinctions we find so important. The first Christology that seems to have really roiled the community was the proto-Doceticist idea that Jesus wasn’t a real human being.
@Robert
**”I don’t think that’s true, but I have no idea why you are bringing this up here. Does it relate to something I said?”**
Not sure – think I just meant I’d only be referencing the gospels and Paul which would be all that were needed
**”I know that is your reading of Mk 14,28 16,7 and the supposedly lost ending to the gospel, but as you should know by now this is not the only way to read Mark’s gospel.”**
Well there’s an infinite variety of ways to read any written material – but there’s only one natural and non-biased way to read Mark’s account of the resurrection – and that’s as a reawakened body walking around which later gets raised to heaven.
**”Nor does Paul’s idea of a resurrected spiritual body necessarily entail the resuscitation of a corpse.”**
No, but Paul’s idea of a resuscitated corpse necessarily entails the resuscitation of a corpse. “Christ died, he was put in a tomb, he was reawakened, he showed himself to Peter”.
**”Where in the writings of Paul or Matthew is it said how Jesus got to heaven (from where he will return)?”**
Nowhere.
**”-There are no degrees of divinity in the gospels or Paul – all agree that there is one God and that Jesus is the son of god in a divine sense.-
Try convincing Bart or any other critical scholars of this view. Let us know how it goes.”**
Well I think that Bart and most critical scholars would agree that all four gospels and Paul agree that there is one god and that Jesus is the son of god in a divine sense. The only thing to show them then would be that there are no degrees of divinity. The only way to do that would be to go through verse by verse showing no claim of degrees of divinity.
**”-All four gospel accounts would be consistent with Paul’s view of a resurrected body which has been transformed from a perishable earthy one to a non-perishable heavenly one.
The only non-biased conclusion is therefore that this view was most likely the earliest one.-
Why do you imagine your view is unbiased?”**
Well true nobody has an unbiased view – but in this situation with the complete absence of evidence to the contrary the asymptotic unbiased view would be that the Paul’s view represents the earliest one.
**”You’re presuming a lot based on the fact that we do not have a record of any christological disputes between Paul and the original disciples of the earthly Jesus. It may very well be a correct presumption, but it is still an argument from silence in a written record that is presumably very incomplete, almost non-existent.”**
Yes there’s very little to go on – the only solid evidence is from Paul who says he told his gospel to the apostles to make sure he wasn’t running his race in vain and they added nothing to it.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary the only non-biased view is therefore that they did agree. Only someone with a bias against Paul would doubt him in this situation.
What connects anonymous ghost writers with Jesus’ disciples? Probably just a consensus – just a little joke. Because they are certainly separated by time and space. What is this discussion about? All Christologies coexisted with each other in the marketplace as if there was no decisive testimony resolving the issue of which was historically true. The authors of the gospels exercised creative freedom in developing missing parts of the gospels, and considerable freedom in editing what they themselves read. Here Paul comes to the disciples with his gospel. How much of it do Jesus’ alleged disciples, who are obsessively interested in ritual surgery, understand? After all, this clumsy gluing of the Apostle and the Disciples is a simple and clear argument for the fiction of the narrative.
brnmcg: “Where does Paul say he was given a secret that the disciples didn’t know?”
In Galatians 1:11-12 Paul says that he did not take his gospel from any man but through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Therefore he did not take his gospel from the disciples.
In Romans 1:5 and 12:3 Paul talks about the task he has been given to teach his gospel to men of all nations.
In Colossians 1:26 there is reference to a task assigned by God to announce a secret to all nations.
It would not have been a secret if the disciples had known it.
The conclusion is that Paul believed that he had received the secret that Jesus was the divine Son of God but the disciples did not share his belief.
The text from Gal. doesn’t say the disciples didn’t know what Paul preaches. It only says Paul didn’t get it from them. In fact, it later suggests he compared notes with them (implying there was at least some overlap in the messages they had).
In other words, one can hold that “he did not take his gospel from the disciples” without saying that his gospel was a secret unknown to the disciples. They might both have received the same gospel independently of each other.
Paul’s ideas about the meaning of the Christ Resurrection were supposedly developed in the period 40-60 CE, but were not known until 100 CE (Zuntz) or even 139 CE (M. Vinzent, A. von Harnack, W.B. Smith). Therefore, if we accept the consensus dating of the gospels, we can see that its authors created their Christological concepts out of thin air, not knowing Paul’s ideas or the concepts of Jesus’ disciples. The only one who supposedly knew Jesus’ disciples is Paul. The problem was that no one knew Paul because he disappeared into a black hole for 40 or 80 years along with the letters. This phenomenon concerns the entire Christian movement, which Harnack described as the great stagnation of the Grosskirche, which ended with Marcion bringing Paul’s letters (“the source of pure faith”) to Rome.
The Christology by Jesus’ disciples is completely unknown because even Paul ignored it. Paul listened politely to Cephas and said nothing and focused on the slander. Paul in Galatians attributes to Jesus’ disciples an unhealthy interest in ritual aesthetic surgery called circumcision.
20 or 40 years later, anonymous evangelists compete with each other, creating competing Christological concepts, which is the result of their ideas of historical narrative. They only compete with each other.
The Christology of Jesus’ disciples did not survive. Apparently it wasn’t important…
Just because.
The problem is that even Harnack, who placed the gospels in parallel with the letters, dated Acts to 65 CE, claimed that 1Clem is authentic like the Letters of Ignatius, sees a black hole in the history of the Grosskirche until the arrival of Marcion and revealing to Rome the source of faith – Paul’s letters. Then he accuses Marcion of shortening the gospel and cutting up the letters, which astonishes all those from whom Sola Scriptura did not deprive them of common sense.
For a project to survive, it must have its own dynamics without such black holes. Because stagnation is deadly and more effective than persecution. Regardless of where you place this black hole in time, 60-100 or 60-130
And this project obviously has it. A variety of content is created, written in huge quantities in a short time.
It just started a little later.
Dating the content of writings created by ghost writers fighting each other for the attributes of priority and authenticity is simply naive.
In context what Paul is saying is not that he didn’t learn stuff from earlier disciples of Jesus, but that his “personal” revelation, directly from Jesus, was the interpretation of the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion.
What specific context makes that a uniquely reasonable interpretation?
I think one significant difficulty in interpreting such passages is that what Paul claims to a particular audience may not reflect what actually happened, or even what he claimed happened in another context. Paul might very well have changed his story, in either subtle or substantial ways, to cater to his rhetorical needs vis a vis a particular audience. In other words, trying to harmonize even the authentic letters of Paul, may very well mislead us.
What specific context makes that a uniquely reasonable interpretation?
You’re quite right that we should be cautious extrapolating from seven letters of a corpus that might have originally numbered in the dozens if not hundreds. But given the fact that Paul clearly quotes prior Christian credos and statements, and given the centrality to Paul of the nature of the crucifixion and resurrection, I think it is the simplest and most consistent reading of his surviving letters.
If we describe a discovery wish-list of early Christian documents, one of mine would be a cache of non-canonical but authentic Pauline letters. Say, a jar containing all the original authentic Pauline letters, including the entire Corinthian correspondence, plus two or three previously unknown but authentic letters. A reasonable request, I think. Not too greedy.
Harnack adopted the early dating paradigm and still ended up with a black hole in the form of the long stagnation of the Grosskirche. According to him, the solution to this stagnation were Paul’s letters, which were resurrected after 80 years thanks to Marcion. He justified this sudden church revival as best he could, because nothing about project management, EBITDA, and other mundane matters of a religious entrepreneur occurred to him. On one side of the hole are dating selected canonical writings based on their content. On the other side of the hole there are the first pieces of evidence confirming the existence of these writings and a whole host of new imitative works. And all the anti-Marcioni activity.
The conclusion is simple – the hole is the result of adopting an incorrect dating method for those selected writings that became the basis of the canon. In 140 CE, Marcion was the first to use a much shorter and simpler gospel than the canonical ones and shorter letters. Writing about the development of the NT Gospels in the years 70-110 CE and the letters in the 40-60 CE is the result of the magic of ghostwriters from the 2nd century, wishful thinking fueled by the hope that something is authentic, pure and true.
Unfortunately, it’s just a brilliant creation.
He justified this sudden church revival as best he could, because nothing about project management, EBITDA, and other mundane matters of a religious entrepreneur occurred to him.
I sort of doubt anyone in the first or second century church was worrying about EBITDA either.
@Stephen
“In context what Paul is saying is not that he didn’t learn stuff from earlier disciples of Jesus, but that his “personal” revelation, directly from Jesus, was the interpretation of the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion.”
Nowhere does Paul claim his interpretation or “personal” revelation of the significance of Jesus’s crucifixion is different from earlier disciples.
On the contrary the implication of 1 Cor 15:3-5 is that he received that portion of his gospel directly from Cephas and the twelve.
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.”
Absolutely nowhere does Paul claim to be preaching anything contradictory to the earliest disciples. The only thing close to it is when he says Peter ceased eating with gentiles for fear of the circumcision faction.
I sort of doubt anyone in the first or second century church was worrying about EBITDA either.
Everyone has always been concerned about EBIDTA. Without even knowing it.
Yet they decided to radically control personnel costs by promoting an ascetic lifestyle and celibacy in controlled structures. It is easier for a missionary to survive the initial period when he is building a congregation from scratch.
In addition, they themselves needed money for the development of structures and sometimes for bribes in Rome.
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