Contradiction in Paula Fredriksen's use of the Argument from Silence

[Giuseppe]

My point: despite the persuasiveness of Sanders’s argument about the scene in the temple court, and despite the near-ubiquity of its acceptance, there are still good reasons to locate the gospels’ predictions of the temple’s destruction to the period post-70 ce. [...] There are plenty of things in Paul’s letters that the later gospels do not have, and there are plenty of things that the gospels say about Jesus that Paul does not have. But his eschatological traditions provide Paul’s strongest links to the early Jesus movement in both its pre-resurrection and post-resurrection phases. If Jesus had predicted the temple’s destruction as or at the End of the Age, and if Paul himself also speaks of such signs – including those that he insists he has by ‘the word of the Lord’ – then it is at least odd that he evinces no knowledge whatever of Jesus’ prophecy. Of course, if the original context of this prophecy is post-70, then it is not odd at all.

(source, p. 317, 319)

What is wrong here? The Argument from Silence is considered strong by Fredriksen against the prophecy of the destruction of the temple being pre-70 CE, while the same scholar doesn't like to use the Argument from Silence (under the assumption of the totality of the seven pauline Epistles) against the historicity of Jesus. But at least the "Sanders's argument" (= the 'false witnesses' reporting in Mark 14:57-58 really what was an old Christian belief) is a strong clue that an anti-temple prophecy had to be there before the 70 CE, while in the current pauline epistles, as they stand now, it is very strange (=unexpected) the silence about the earthly details of the entity described as image of God, agent of creation, etc.

[Giuseppe]

A good answer to Paula Fredriksen's criticism of Dale Martin's article is given by Dave Allen in his recent article (How Josephus viewed Jesus), p. 348:

If Jesus’ sign had been the destruction of the temple, that would never have been excised from the TF as it would have been in line with the gospels. The particular sign of Temple destruction would only be appropriated to Jesus ex eventu. Jesus’ original sign would have been in the same vein as Theudas or the Egyptian, whatever action Jesus promised, his sign (i.e. a re-enactment of some scriptural divine intervention that Jesus would have got himself from a vision) would have been to start the new age. As Jesus’ original sign would have ultimately failed, when the temple actually got destroyed this was thrown onto Jesus as the failed prophecy as the gospels suggest. (It was only a failed prophecy in Jesus’ own day but not an ultimately failed prophecy in the readers day – let the reader understand!) As a literary device the gospels show that they were uncomfortable with a failed prophecy of Temple destruction (Mark 13:1-31) 42. When the Temple actually got destroyed in 70CE Mark included it in his gospel, but with the qualifier that it was a false report (Mark 14:57-58) to counteract why it didn’t happen in Jesus’ day.

(my bold)

This would explain why even the apocalypticist Paul would have been silent about the 'sign' promised by Jesus having been the destruction of the temple: the failed prophecy of the particular 'sign' promised by Jesus (the destruction of the temple) was embarrassing even for the apocalypticist Paul.

[Giuseppe]

I am satisfied in verifying positively that also Dale Martin does the same argument, contra Paula Fredriksen:

The fact that Paul also shows no knowledge of Jesus’ prediction of the temple’s destruction is also not hard to explain. As I say at the end of my article, the disciples learned something from the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus: armed opposition to Rome and the Sadducees should no longer be an option. They, or at least most of them, changed their minds quickly and found a new, and less violent, way of relating to both the temple and Jerusalem, a way related to future eschatological and ‘spiritual’ fulfillment rather than armed revolt. Paul became a follower of Jesus a few years after this change took place among most of the original disciples. What Paul ‘joined’ was no longer an anti-temple movement. So he had no interest in that previous movement. It is common knowledge among scholars that Paul had no real interest in what we modern scholars mean by ‘the historical Jesus’. And he joined the group only after the other disciples had rejected the violent, anti-temple position of the historical Jesus.

(Response to Downing and Fredriksen, my bold, p. 340)

I agree very much with this quote, apart the reference to Paul having "no real interest in what we modern scholars mean by 'the historical Jesus'", since I follow Joseph Turmel's and Roger Parvus's view that the 'Paul' we know is for the 90% the mere spokesman of Marcion and people involved in the marcionite polemic.

Now it is becoming more and more clear that my best historicist scholars are Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Dale Martin.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

I am satisfied in verifying positively that also Dale Martin does the same argument, contra Paula Fredriksen:

I'm not sure one can call that an argument, but it's great storytelling

[Giuseppe]

I am satisfied in verifying positively that also Dale Martin does the same argument, contra Paula Fredriksen:

I'm not sure one can call that an argument, but it's great storytelling

There is storytelling and storytelling, yet.

Fredriksen insists that if the historical Jesus had predicted the destruction of the temple we would certainly find some reference to it by Paul. She claims, ‘Where he has an early paradosis, Paul mentions it’ (p. 319). Really? How does Fredriksen know that Paul never knew of any other saying of the Lord or any other story about Jesus except those he brings up in our seven letters by him? We simply cannot know everything Paul knew.
It may indeed be true that some or all of my arguments are speculative, but I would insist that those offered in their place by both Fredriksen and Downing are at least as speculative, if not more so.

(p.344, my bold)

[RandyHelzerman]

Anybody with two eyes and a brain would have been able to see that Jerusalem was doomed, and therefore the Temple would be destroyed. Josephus writes about *another* Jesus, Jesus son of Ananus, in "The Jewish War", Book 6, Chapter 5, Sections 3-4. This guy made a right nuisance of himself going around saying that the city was doomed, etc etc. I'm sure he wasn't the only one, and I'm sure he wasn't the first one. The Qumran community, for example, wrote all kind of florid things. It was an eschatological stew, and all kind of people were making all kinds of prophecies.

Paul's letters were occasional, and were sent to people who were not in Jerusalem. He clearly thought the end of history was at hand, and he thought that had implications for how people should be living their lives, but these implications would be very different for a Gentile church in Corinth or Thessolonike. He's not going waste expensive papyrus telling everybody what they already believes.

Arguments from silence are very useful--there are so very few controls over how much speculation you can do!! Almost by definition, there's not much that can contradict your claims!! But i consider this more of a bug than a feature

Not saying that it isn't striking that Paul never mentions a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, it is, and it is not entirely devoid of implications, but you have to really be careful not to extrapolate beyond what is apropos of responsible scholarship.

[Giuseppe]

Not saying that it isn't striking that Paul never mentions a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, it is, and it is not entirely devoid of implications, but you have to really be careful not to extrapolate beyond what is apropos of responsible scholarship.

We should agree before about who is the "Paul" we are talking about. I follow the Paul reconstructed (or better: purified) by Turmel's criticism. See here and enjoy!

ADDENDUM: obviously, if "Paul" is strictu senso the current 7 pauline epistles, then nothing and none can say that Richard Carrier has been confuted. Nothing and none!

[Giuseppe]

I have found the following reasons to believe that 'Mark' invented it all:

"Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations"

(Psalm 2:12). In addition, Jeremiah 26:11:

“He is guilty of death; he has prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears”.

Even so, I ask: is this sufficient to prove that there was not a tradition preceding Mark about Jesus wanting the destruction of the temple (and accordingly that 'Mark' was not disturbed by a such tradition) ?

[RandyHelzerman]

We should agree before about who is the "Paul" we are talking about.

I don't think any version of Paul talks about the destruction of the temple, no?

[Giuseppe]

We should agree before about who is the "Paul" we are talking about.

I don't think any version of Paul talks about the destruction of the temple, no?

Yes, but if you agree with Turmel that the genuine bits of Paul make him not different from the Pillars, i.e. apocalypticist Jews, then the Dale Martin's point above would make more sense, doesn't it?