Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

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Bernard Muller
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by Bernard Muller »

"The story of Paul in the Book of Acts is not evident in Paul’s epistles. Acts contains fanciful “miracle-mongering” motifs, including a resurrected Jesus who walks through walls and people who can make earthquakes happen through prayer. In fact, only in the Book of Acts do we have twelve apostles. Paul’s letters mention more apostles, some of them female. In the early Christian church, there were other sources of information about Paul which were for a time canonical, including Acts of Paul and Acts of Paul and Thecla ...
Actually, the twelve (Jesus' disciples) are mentioned in the whole of Acts only at 6:2 as "the twelve" without "apostles" or "disciples". "The twelve" (Jesus' disciples) without "apostles" or "disciples" is written in the four canonical gospels.
"twelve apostles" appears in gMatthew and Revelation.
And in Acts 14, Paul & Barnabas are called "apostles".
Am I missing something or Price is dead wrong?

If Acts was written much later than the Pauline epistles, we can expect added embellishments and fiction on the life of Paul. However Paul had to be more careful about lies about his life because his audience knew about him, at least in part.
"Some of the early Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr, never even mentioned Paul in their extensive writings, so it is debatable whether or not Christians in Justin’s day had heard of Paul ...
That comment would put the "Pastorals" and 1 Clement and the Ignatian "to the Ephesians" and the Epistula Apostolorum and Marcion's canon, etc. written after Justin Martyr.
See http://historical-jesus.info/64.html
"In the final analysis, according to Price, the canonical writings are not only infused with the hand of Marcion and Polycarp, as many scholars would acknowledge*, but are an amalgam of biographical details derived from the other Christian martyrs’ lives ..."
Most of the time, anyone's life can be described as an amalgam of biographical details derived from others.
However, that alone would not prove (or disprove) that "anyone" did not exist.
There are ample evidence that some of the Pauline epistles (7 canonicals minus interpolations & editing) were written in real time when Jerusalem was still existing and, because of Romans 13:11-12, before Nero's persecution of Christians in Rome (64 AD).

Cordially, Bernard
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by MrMacSon »

Bernard Muller wrote:

"The story of Paul in the Book of Acts is not evident in Paul’s epistles. Acts contains fanciful “miracle-mongering” motifs, including a resurrected Jesus who walks through walls and people who can make earthquakes happen through prayer. In fact, only in the Book of Acts do we have twelve apostles.* Paul’s letters mention more apostlesa, some of them female. In the early Christian church, there were other sources of information about Paul which were for a time canonical, including Acts of Paul and Acts of Paul and Thecla ...
Actually, the twelve (Jesus' disciples) are mentioned in the whole of Acts only at 6:2 as "the twelve" without "apostles" or "disciples". "The twelve" (Jesus' disciples) without "apostles" or "disciples" is written in the four canonical gospels.
  • "twelve apostles" appears in gMatthew and Revelation.

    a And in Acts 14, Paul & Barnabas are called "apostles".
Am I missing something or Price is dead wrong?
* I presume Price is referring to Pauline references to 'the twelve'.


"Some of the early Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr, never even mentioned Paul in their extensive writings, so it is debatable whether or not Christians in Justin’s day had heard of Paul ...
Bernard Muller wrote:
That comment would put the "Pastorals", 1 Clement, the Ignatian "to the Ephesians", the Epistula Apostolorum, and Marcion's canon, etc. written after Justin Martyr.
Yes, it would (Maybe not Marcion's 'canon'(?))
FransJVermeiren
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by FransJVermeiren »

readyforchange wrote:I am wondering what the interpretation is for Romans 13:11, in particular the second part of the verse: Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers (NRSV).
Your first post is a fine analysis of the Paul problem. In the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity Paul remains intangible and escapes all sound interpretation. Mentioning the return or second coming of Jesus, you discuss one of the cornerstones of traditional Paul interpretation. But nothing in Paul’s letters refers to a second coming of the Christ, explicitly nor implicitly, philologically nor concerning content. Paul never says ‘Jesus the Christ did so and so, and when he will return this or that will happen’, he does not use the words ‘again’ or ‘next time’, ‘first’ or ‘second’ etcetera. In other words, the second coming is a scholarly construction to make sense of Paul in the traditional chronology, but unfortunately Paul doesn’t make any sense in the traditional chronological framework. If you read Paul carefully, he discusses the coming of the Christ in the future, and that’s exactly what he does in the verse you quote. And this is only one of several future-oriented fragments in Paul. I didn’t exactly count them, but there are at least twenty of these future-oriented passages in his letters. I believe this orientation on salvation by a future Christ is the core of Paul’s original epistles. In his time in Palestine and in the Jewish world in general there was an intense messianic fervor, a future messiah was passionately expected and, as expectations were high, this future messiah was expected in the near future. That’s just what Paul says in this verse: messianic salvation is nearer than when we came believers. Believers in Jesus? No, believers in that future messiah. So Paul says that he expects that the messiah will arrive soon, and that more time has passed since they became believers in the messiah (or messianists) than will come to pass until the messiah will arrive.
Is Romans 13:11 a failed prediction? I don’t think so, it is only the explicit formulation of the hope of a fervent messianist towards his community/followers. It’s his way to say: Prepare yourselves, great things are going to happen soon, very soon.

Please compare with Romans 8, 18-25:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not for its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

How is this passage reconcilable with Jesus Christ who shortly before did such decisive things for mankind?
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The practical modes of concealment are limited only by the imaginative capacity of subordinates. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.
readyforchange
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by readyforchange »

MrMacSon wrote:
readyforchange wrote:
Thanks. I have recently seen some comments on another forum that suggest Paul's letters were not written until the 2nd century CE, but I have not explored this theory much further. If there are any resources online that go into detail on reasons for why Paul's letters and gospels may have been written during that time-frame and you can pass along, that would be great.
I did a quick search. A lot of the discussion/s & articles center around Marcion being the first collator of Pauline epistles: and 'genuine' Pauline epistles at that.

There have always been two Pauls: the Paul of Marcion's "genuine" letters; and the Paul of Acts. The stories are similar, but the Paul of Acts agrees with the writers of the Christian Gospels, not the Paul of the reconstructed Marcion texts.

Robert M Price may be the person who has discussed this most -

2. "In 'The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul [2012; Signature Books, Salt Lake City; 580 pages], Price suggests that Paul is a composite of several historical figures, including Marcion of Pontos, Stephen the Martyr, Simon the Sorcerer, and the iconoclastic evangelist who was named Paul. His letters were actually written and edited by other people, including Marcion, and an early Church Father, Polycarp of Smyrna ...

"The story of Paul in the Book of Acts is not evident in Paul’s epistles. Acts contains fanciful “miracle-mongering” motifs, including a resurrected Jesus who walks through walls and people who can make earthquakes happen through prayer. In fact, only in the Book of Acts do we have twelve apostles. Paul’s letters mention more apostles, some of them female. In the early Christian church, there were other sources of information about Paul which were for a time canonical, including Acts of Paul and Acts of Paul and Thecla ...

"Some of the early Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr, never even mentioned Paul in their extensive writings, so it is debatable whether or not Christians in Justin’s day had heard of Paul ...

"In the final analysis, according to Price, the canonical writings are not only infused with the hand of Marcion and Polycarp, as many scholars would acknowledge*, but are an amalgam of biographical details derived from the other Christian martyrs’ lives ..."

http://signaturebooks.com/new-testament ... y-existed/

* eg. Joseph Tyson, Matthias Klinghardt, & Markus Vinzent
Thanks MrMacSon, this is interesting. I have not read Price's writings much but from what I understand, he is a very respected scholar. I read some of the Acts of Paul and Thecla a few years ago.
readyforchange
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by readyforchange »

FransJVermeiren wrote:
readyforchange wrote:I am wondering what the interpretation is for Romans 13:11, in particular the second part of the verse: Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers (NRSV).
Your first post is a fine analysis of the Paul problem. In the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity Paul remains intangible and escapes all sound interpretation. Mentioning the return or second coming of Jesus, you discuss one of the cornerstones of traditional Paul interpretation. But nothing in Paul’s letters refers to a second coming of the Christ, explicitly nor implicitly, philologically nor concerning content. Paul never says ‘Jesus the Christ did so and so, and when he will return this or that will happen’, he does not use the words ‘again’ or ‘next time’, ‘first’ or ‘second’ etcetera. In other words, the second coming is a scholarly construction to make sense of Paul in the traditional chronology, but unfortunately Paul doesn’t make any sense in the traditional chronological framework. If you read Paul carefully, he discusses the coming of the Christ in the future, and that’s exactly what he does in the verse you quote. And this is only one of several future-oriented fragments in Paul. I didn’t exactly count them, but there are at least twenty of these future-oriented passages in his letters. I believe this orientation on salvation by a future Christ is the core of Paul’s original epistles. In his time in Palestine and in the Jewish world in general there was an intense messianic fervor, a future messiah was passionately expected and, as expectations were high, this future messiah was expected in the near future. That’s just what Paul says in this verse: messianic salvation is nearer than when we came believers. Believers in Jesus? No, believers in that future messiah. So Paul says that he expects that the messiah will arrive soon, and that more time has passed since they became believers in the messiah (or messianists) than will come to pass until the messiah will arrive.
Is Romans 13:11 a failed prediction? I don’t think so, it is only the explicit formulation of the hope of a fervent messianist towards his community/followers. It’s his way to say: Prepare yourselves, great things are going to happen soon, very soon.

Please compare with Romans 8, 18-25:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not for its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

How is this passage reconcilable with Jesus Christ who shortly before did such decisive things for mankind?
Hi Frans. For a long time, I never realized how little of Jesus' life is recounted in Paul's letters, and that Paul never knew Jesus while Jesus was alive. Paul does talk a lot about the Christ in a future context. Right, there was an expectation by the Jews at the time of the messiah coming soon. So do you mean that the future Christ/messiah envisioned by Paul was not the same thing as a second coming of a post-resurrection Jesus of Nazereth, a historical man Jesus? What about Paul's mini-resurrection account in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8? My apologies, as I may be missing something there. Thanks.
readyforchange
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by readyforchange »

Good point on Romans 8:18-25
FransJVermeiren
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by FransJVermeiren »

readyforchange wrote: What about Paul's mini-resurrection account in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8?
You correctly mention 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8, and this fragment is best discussed together with 1 Corinthians 11: 23-25. Most of all the first half of the first verse of these fragments is interesting (underlined):
• 1Cor 11: 23: ‘For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, …’
• 1Cor 15: 3: 'For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, …’
Image Paul, who became a member of the young Christian community less than five years after Jesus’ death, and who had intense contact with the apostles who told him as eyewitnesses everything he wanted to know. If the sentences above were Paul’s, he would have said something like ‘Peter told me that the Lord Jesus took bread on the night he was betrayed …’ or ‘Through what I know from the apostles I realize that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, …’ These two opening sentences give a strong impression that their author speaks about things which happened at least two generations before, and that was not Paul’s situation. Also, if we look at the content of both fragments, we see two small syntheses which can hardly be attributed to Paul more than a decade before the first word of the Gospels was written. These syntheses belong to a later, more developed stadium of Christianity. So in my opinion these two fragments carry the signature of a second century editor of Paul’s original letters. The purpose of this forgery was to change Paul’s messianistic message, his propaganda for a future unnamed messiah, into propaganda for Jesus-the-messiah-from-the-recent-past. Another method of the forger(s) was to change ‘Christ’ or ‘the Lord Christ’ into ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘our Lord Jesus Christ’. Nestle-Aland shows that ‘Jesus’ has been added several times and labels these additions as ‘of doubtful authenticity’, a cautious way to say ‘not original’.

Below I also repeat a part of a recent post in another topic on this forum:

“In my opinion 1 Cor 5, verse 5 gives a fine view on the working method of the copiers/editors of the Pauline epistles.
“… you are to deliver this man to satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
The footnotes show that there are four textual variants of ‘in the day of the Lord Jesus’.

They go as follows:
• In the day of the Lord
Εν τῇ ἡμερᾁ του κυριου

• In the day of the Lord Jesus
Εν τῇ ἡμερᾁ του κυριου Ιησου

• In the day of the Lord Jesus Christ
Εν τῇ ἡμερᾁ του κυριου Ιησου Χριστου

• In the day of our Lord Jesus Christ
Εν τῇ ἡμερᾁ του κυριου ημων Ιησου Χριστου

The ‘day of the Lord’ (or ‘day of revenge’) is a key concept in the Essene Dead Sea Scrolls, and in short it describes the day when Jahweh will come to put an end to the oppression of the Jews, to harshly punish their enemies (in an atmosphere of war and all kind of calamities) and to bring His messiah to power to rule over a liberated and prosperous Israel. So the Lord in this concept is Jahweh, not an unnamed Christ nor Jesus the messiah. Paul uses this concept time and again in his letters, and in my opinion he always uses it in its original Essene, eschatological sense. Which means that all the words at the end of the sentence following ‘kuriou’ (bold and underlined) are later accretions, ‘Jesus’ as well as ‘Christ’. Note also the future tense, so Paul looks forward to the future great day of the Lord.”
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The practical modes of concealment are limited only by the imaginative capacity of subordinates. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.
iskander
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by iskander »

readyforchange wrote:Good point on Romans 8:18-25
"Romans 13
11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; 13let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. 14Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires
1Thessalonians 5
5Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters,* you do not need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3When they say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4But you, beloved,* are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. 6So then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation"




Romans 13:11-14 and 1Thessalonians 5: 1-8 are warning against the unexpected delivering a mighty blow out of the blue. He reminds them of the insurance policy that protects them from such accidents, for as long as they keep up with the payment of the agreed fee. But what does " salvation " mean here?
Last edited by iskander on Fri Aug 12, 2016 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Bernard Muller
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by Bernard Muller »

1Th 4:16-17
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first;
then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.


Cordially, Bernard
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iskander
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Re: Is Romans 13:11 a Failed Prediction?

Post by iskander »

Bernard Muller wrote:1Th 4:16-17
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first;
then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.


Cordially, Bernard
Good
Salvation from death. The just are resuscitated to live forever whereas the evil remain dead forever; Athanasius, on the Incarnation.This seems to have been the belief of early Christians.

" But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die."7 "Ye shall surely die"—not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption."
On the Incarnation of the Word , Athanasius, St. Archbishop of Alexandria (c.296-c.373)
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