Robert,
It doesn’t take faith to see when the turning point in Christianity happened. All you need is a little experience to know where to check the validity of the biblical consensus theses. How authenticity and dating are established.
In a sea of ghostwriters, you find one authentic Paul because you want to find him. At the same time, you ignore obvious arguments against this favorite thesis. Similarly with Mark’s dating. He was certainly writing the day after the fall of the temple, not 30 years later. When Harnack began to invent that Marcion cut out fragments of text from the letters and gospel, his first reviewers asked themselves where such a strange idea came from. But later it caught on – the bizarre idea became a consensus.
Have you worked with any ghost writers? I have worked. Mainly those from Harper One. They write all the time – 6-8 hours a day. Without any artistic pretensions, they are absolute masters of the pen, thanks to regular practice. You can provide them with a brief containing the most confusing plot and detailed character requirements and they will put it down on paper. That’s why I don’t have to believe in ghost writers. I just know what they can do.And I know that everything can be written.
But there was one interesting case. This is a famous, excellent writer who suddenly needed money to get out of a temporary hole. It came to me at the end, through a chain of friends, when no one wanted to lend them any more.
I didn’t want to lend him money either. But I was commissioned to write short stories like “50 Shades of Grey.” He laughed at me and said he would never release such shit under his name. I said I didn’t need a name. And that’s how he became a ghost writer. He took 50% in advance in cash and delivered the work the next day instead of a week to get another 50% as soon as possible. Overall, it wasn’t worth it – he charged about 10 times more than a professional ghost writer and the delivered product was similar to others. But we wanted to try… Old times.
Porphyry: #27
“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.”
Since there is no direct record of the disciples beliefs, this is certainly one possibility but ultimately it is a matter of opinion which possibility is the most probable.
Colossians 1:26 refers directly to a secret hidden for long ages and to a task assigned by God.
Although this epistle is not considered to be genuinely by Paul, the mention of the task matches what he wrote to the Romans.
It is reasonable to conclude that Paul believed that his task was to reveal the secret that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
If the disciples did not share this belief, it explains why Paul only made short visits to Jerusalem, why he only met Peter and James on his first visit instead of being acclaimed for his conversion and why the disciples did not accompany him on his travels.
The disciples also had experience of other ordinary people that Jesus resurrected who were not considered to be divine.
Why should the disciples consider that Jesus was divine just because he had been resurrected?
brenmcg: #39
Your comment regarding 1 Corinthians 3-5 “I passed to you the facts which I received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised to life on the third day according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas and afterwards to the twelve”
There is no reason to conclude that Paul got all of this information from the disciples. He says that he did not get his gospel from any human source, which would include the first item which probably resulted from his conversion experience. I see no reason to suppose that the disciples believed that Jesus had died for their sins or that they believed that he was the divine Son of God.
Robert: It is true that gospel accounts are not reliably historical but what can be said is that the gospel writers considered that resurrection of ordinary people was possible, otherwise they would not have mentioned it. This reflects the common view at that time when distinctions between sleep, unconsciousness, coma and death were not understood. It is reasonable to suppose that the disciples shared this view so should not have considered that Jesus was divine just because he had been resurrected.
What do you mean by claiming that the difference between sleep and death were not understood? Of course the difference was understood. In one case the person keeps breathing and will awaken in short order, thus should not be buried. In the other, the person stops breathing, will rot in short order, and the corpse needs to be somehow disposed of because it is about to putrefy. First century Jews were perfectly aware of that difference: That they, like every one else in the ancient world, were aware of the difference is why every language of the ancient world had different words for sleep and death, and why they didn’t bury people who were just having a cat nap.
Even if some of them–like some people today–think of death as a kind of sleep, they only think of it as a *kind of* sleep–they are perfectly aware of the significant differences, like in one case you continue to draw breath and in the other you are about to start stinking.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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