Robert said
Steefen said
I may or may not get around to discovering the answer to that question. It is a question not included within the scope of my current writing project, and the statement “Josephus may have been an author of one or more authentic or inauthentic letters of Paul” is not in the scope of my current writing project. …That’s a shame. One cannot really develop a convincing reinterpretation of the historical Jesus and the history of the development of Christianity without dealing with the letters of Paul. They are earlier than any of the gospels. Some, eg, Gerd Lüdemann, date 1 Thessalonians as early as 41 CE.
And the Biblical Jesus dates 27 – 33 CE, without which Paul has no grounds from the Biblical perspective, what a shame.
From Reimarus to Wrede, The Rise and Fall of the Marcan Hypothesis, What Is Redaction Criticism by Norman Perrin
Hermann Samuel Reimarus was very much a man of the Enlightenment. His natural, rational religion was irreconcilable with a revealed religion such as orthodox Christianity which because it could never be intelligible and credible to all people could never become a universal religion.
Reimarus attempted to prove to himself that
Jesus was an unsuccessful political messianic pretender
The disciples were disappointed charlatans who invented the early Christian faith rather than go back to working for a living after the debacle of the crucifixion
The disciples stole the body of Jesus in order to have an empty tomb to support their story of a resurrection.
But Reimarus’s work is more important than his own conscious purpose or even than his own conclusions. … Reimarus has shown that if we accept the Enlightenment view that history is “what actually happened,” then the Gospels are not historical [history] since many of their narratives reflect concepts that were developed long after the events they purport to narrate took place. So far as redaction criticism is concerned, it is the creative element in the study for an acceptable life of Jesus tradition which concerns us.
And, the Jesus narratives are to a large extent expressions of that which express religious concepts derived from Judaism or Hellenism, from the Old Testament or Christian experience. – David Friedrich Strauss
The mantle of Reimarus descended upon David Friedrich Strauss, author of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846). For him, In their present form, the gospels cannot be understood as history, nor can a residue from them be rescued as history by explaining away the element of the miraculous in them.
The Gospel narratives are essentially concerned with purveying a Christ myth and this fact has to be recognized about them.
Robert said
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Do you think you can develop a convincing reinterpretation of the historical Jesus and the earliest history of Christianity without dealing with the letters of Paul?
I deal with the letters of Paul, just not your specific questions.
Robert said
In general he doesn’t agree but he is also not familiar with Lüdemann’s arguments. The best arguments for an early dating are not at all simple to summarize, involving a relatively comprehensive overview of the development of Paul’s thought as well as the dating of a couple of contemporary events (Caligula’s statue and expulsion of Jews from Rome). I think we have in 1 Thessalonians a very primitive form of Paul’s thought.
Do you think there is any evidence that Paul changed his thought? This is a debate I would love to attend – ‘Ehrman vs Lüdemann on the dating of 1 Thess’. It would probably be impossible to pull off and it would be guaranteed to bore the living crap out of the majority of a lay audience. Anyway I couldn’t afford either one of them. Too bad.
To be honest, this thread is boring me to tears. I know technical questions matter, but they are best left to people who know the fine points, namely professional scholars. When amateurs get into the weeds, the garden languishes. And I do not exempt myself from that judgment.
Chapter 17
Gustaf Dalman: How could one who was actually walking the earth come down from heaven?
Steefen: Greek mythology, immaculate conception.
= = =
If theology has found it so hard a task to arrive at an historical comprehension of the secret of the self-designation, “Son of Man,” this is due to the fact that the question is not a purely historical one. In this self-designation, there lies the transformation of a whole system of thought: the inexorable consequence of the elimination of eschatology from religion.
If one recognizes Son of Man in the third person and as a purely future reference damage is done to the verses (violence is done to those places in the gospels) where Jesus tells at least one person, no, waiting for the future is over, I am the Son of Man, I am, humbly, a man.
The Son of Man can be recognized as first person and third person, present and future
The act of the self-consciousness of Jesus by which He recognized Himself in His earthly existence as the future Messiah is the act in which eschatology supremely affirms itself. The Messianic secret of Jesus is the basis of Christianity since it involves the de-nationalizing of Jewish eschatology from Roman territory to Rome empire (the Gentiles).
But, Jesus’ life after death in the gospels and Acts is not the Son of Man of the successful phase of his Son of Man movement. So where does this work out successfully?
The Son of Man is an earthly man, Son of Earth which is Son of Gaia which is Gaius, Divine Gaius Julius Caesar and Son of the Divine, Augustus Caesar and the divine emperors proceeding from that Father and Son set. We have explored the overlay of Roman leaders on the gospels and there is a presence of inchoate and early imperial Rome.
The gospels explain that Jesus was the one for which John the Baptist waited because the lame walk and the blind see (Luke 7:22, Matt 11:5) and those are exactly the miracles of Vespasian under the resurrection god Serapis.
Jeffery Siker
Jesus became sinless when early Christians interpreted Jesus as a Passover lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
Steefen
Jesus is a representation of Jewish Messianism which sinned against Rome. Jesus is a lamb of personification who died for the sins of Messianism against Rome.
Schweitzer
Pfleiderer brings together wood, straw, and stublle, but where he gets the fire to kindle the whole into the faith of primitive Christianity. According to Albert Kalthoff, Christianity arose by spontaneous combustion
Steefen
from the conditions capable of alighting and exploding Christianity onto the scene which were Jewish Messianic expectations:
I. the connection of an expectant Jewish sentiment to the burning of Rome
II. the connection of an expectant Jewish sentiment to the initial success of defeating Roman Legion XII Fulminata in 66 CE
III. then a horrible change of fortune for the Jewish Messiah Zealots and their fighters
Their successes were caught and stopped.
There was a call for remorse over the outcome for what they had done so much so that the Messianism would become nothing but
a) non-violence with
b) a sentence from Justice to be punished by Rome (not only for the revolt but for creating a Jewish Civl War based on the early perceived success (burning of Rome) and actual success (defeating a legion) of a perceived apocalyptic God.
IV. And there was the rush to fill the vacuum of the collapse of the Temple with Temple Judaism (and its focus on freeing/delivering Israelites from a super power, Ancient Egypt, hence Israelites can be freed and have deliverance from Rome) being to blame for belief in a fiery, apocalyptic deliverance from Rome (at Rome itself)–until proven otherwise.
Jesus would be devout to Temple Judaism and he would be 1) the leader of mariners in Galilee to get involved with violence against Rome, stealing horses from the Roman diplomats of Vespasian seeking peace then having rebels fight Rome at the Battle of Galilee, 2) after the change of military fortune, the leading person to speak for the Jewish God as the Son of God a) non-violence and b) the leading person to be sentenced to punishment by Rome.
There is no messianic Jesus and a band of mariners in Galilee in history until we find them doing messianic action against Rome during the Jewish Revolt.
Jeffery Siker
How and when did Jesus come to be viewed as sinless in earliest Christianity?
Steefen
When Stoicism was included in the New Testament and Jesus had to be lifted from Teacher to Sage.
Yes?
Robert said
Steefen said
… There is no messianic Jesus and a band of mariners in Galilee in history until we find them doing messianic action against Rome during the Jewish Revolt. …How can you defend this thesis without dealing first with the letters of Paul, which all precede the Judean War, perhaps by as much as 25 years and which are utterly messianic in their orientation? Are any written by Paul prior to the war in your opinion?
What is Bart Ehrman’s answer to the question, What proof outside of the New Testament is there of a historical Paul?
What proof is there of the existence of Socrates, other than heavily fictionalized dialogues by two men claiming to be his disciples? Oh right, a satirical play well predating the dialogues, that caricatures him as a head-in-the-clouds philosopher, as well as a con man and fraud. Maybe that was the real Socrates, and Plato and Xenophon just decided to use him as a hobbyhorse for their own ideas. Or maybe there never was any Socrates, since Thucydides never even mentions him.
Or maybe the study of ancient history is hard. And ill-suited to those who (like Aristophanes’ Socrates) are just engaged in endless navel-gazing and opinionating, instead of serious study of all available data.
Steefen
What is Bart Ehrman’s answer to the question, What proof outside of the New Testament is there of a historical Paul?
Robert
There’s no contemporary evidence for the existence of Paul outside of the New Testament.
Steefen
That has been Bart Ehrman’s answer to the question also.
I disagree with you both: Josephus alludes to Paul in the second passage after the Testimonium Flavianum. The passage that alludes to Paul has not been claimed to be a Christian scribal insertion and it has not been claimed to be an insertion by Eusebius.
Josephus’ account of the First Jewish Roman War was centrally about real military events. Paul’s account was centrally about his vision of a man he called Jesus, a character of historical fiction based on an assassinated Samaritan. This Jesus was more real to Thomas than to Paul. Josephus was brought on to write by the Roman Empire. Paul was not brought on to write not even by King Agrippa II. In no way are you on solid ground to even equate the historicity of both Josephus and Paul. You want to waste people’s time with that nonsense?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)