Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:37 am
In his Facebook page, Prof Price calls apologetic the general trend to define Jesus as a Jew of Second-Temple (it seems that he wants to write a book about this titled "Judaizing Jesus"). I wonder about this because I have assumed always that there is no doubt that the Christian origins were only Jewish (apart the pagan influence of the dying and rising gods and some tropoi in the Gospels). Can someone explain about his?
I don't know if this is explanation, but consider the view of F C Baur (not Bruno Bauer), summarized by Albert Schweitzer in
Paul & His Interpreters (E.T. 1912, pp 12-13)
In the fourth number of the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie for the year 1831, F. C. Baur gave to the study of Paulinism a new direction, by advancing the opinion that the Apostle had developed his doctrine in complete opposition to that of the primitive Christian community, and that only when this is recognised can we expect to grasp the peculiar character of the Pauline ideas.
The great merit of the Tübingen critic was that he allowed the texts to speak for themselves, to mean what they said. On the ground of the striking difference between Acts and Galatians regarding Paul's relation to the original Apostles, and in view of the divisions and contentions which reveal themselves in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Baur concludes that in the early days of Christianity two parties — a Petrine party or party of the original Apostles, and a Pauline party — stood opposed to one another, holding divergent views on the subject of the redemption wrought by Christ.
In the gradual adjustment of these differences he sees the development which led up to the formation of the early Catholic Church, and he traces the evidence for this process in the literature. He thinks he can show that the two parties gradually approached each other, making concessions on the one side and the other, and finally, under the pressure of a movement which was equally inimical to both of them — the Gnosticism of the early part of the second century — they coalesced into a single united Church.
Later, this idea was turned on its head by Allard Pearson & Samuel Adrian Naber, in their book
Verisimilia (1886), whose proposed solution to the problem is summarized, again by Albert Schweitzer in
Paul & His Interpreters (E.T. 1912, p. 123):
If it be assumed, so runs their argument, that Christianity was in its real origin a Jewish sect which had liberal ideas in regard to the law and directed its expectation towards the Messiah, the antinomian sections of the Epistles represent documents of that period.
The present form of the letters is due to the fact that a later "Churchman" — the authors call him Paulus episcopus, and think that he may have served as model for the Paul of Acts — worked into them the second, milder set of ideas.
In short, Jesus was seem as a libertine/antinomian (a "law minimalist" so to speak) and thus antinomian ideas in the epistles actually are not Paul's invention, but the original dogma of earliest Christianity. Milder ideas were later worked in by a later editor. This is, basically, the opposite of Baur's position.
Even Q researcher John Kloppenborg, especially in
Excavating Q, seems to think that, if the double tradition (Mt & Lk not in Mk = "Q") is actually from Jesus, then
Jesus was not a strict observer Judean practices but more of a wisdom teacher of a type known in Ancient Near eastern culture. He interprets
the strict Judean elements (such as eschatological statements) attributed to Jesus in this tradition
as Judaic accretions to the more or less "blah" wisdom tradition Jesus left behind him.
In other words, Q was edited at least once, maybe twice, to introduce Judaic ideas into the wisdom tradition.
Sounds like Price is siding with Pearson & Naber in a way. But you can see that there are a variety of ways of interpreting the exact same evidence, depending on what the critics think is the most probable (or at least possible) solution.
My personal opinion is that Jesus practiced a relaxed form of Judean observance, but was concerned almost exclusively with eschatology (either putting himself out as the expected liberator of the country, or was predicting this figure could rise up in his own lifetime). For whatever reasons the Roman authorities thought he was claiming it for himself. Jesus attracted primarily Judeans, but something about his vision for a revived Judean kingdom also attracted some gentiles. Maybe the kingdom sounded like such a pretty damn nice place that they went as far as to convert to Judaistic ways to participate in it too when it came to fruition. I do not know if he thought that there would be a resurrection of the dead and a general judgment, at least in conjunction with his conception of the establishment of a revived Judean kingdom.
These gentile converts to Judaism, probably confined to the Judean dominated regions and southern Syria, in reaction to suspicion and perhaps what they took to be betrayal from natural born Judeans during the period of the Judean rebellion of 66-73 CE, transformed their conception of Jesus, whom they idolized, into the divine mediator between all mankind and god, by means of a vicarious sacrifice. They basically renounced their conversions and became essentially gentiles worshipping the single god of all through the rites and dogma of a mystery religion.
Paul had a completely different POV than this, which I think is a belief in an end of age type kingdom with a general resurrection so the deceased righteous of former ages could participate as well. However, this was in the distant future. In the meantime, those who worshipped the Judean God (both Judeans & gentiles) should conduct themselves as good citizens and let God sort out any injustices they suffer when that day comes. There was nothing immediate about his concept.
Understanding "Paul" as found in the Pauline letters is complicated by what I consider additions made by a later editor. Through commentary and use of catch phrases that redirected the intent of the original work, this editor inserted divine redeemer beliefs that represented an early form of the gentile Christian wing of the movement. He still dripped with venom towards those Judeans who rebelled against Rome and rejected them as foolish and deserving the pummeling dished out to them by the Romans in 70 CE, when Jerusalem was sacked and the temple burned and razed and many were enslaved. This, in my feeble opinion, must have been done pretty soon after the capture of Jerusalem and the razing of the Judean temple in 70 CE, maybe around 10-20 years later.
The Gospels, on the other hand, represent a later form of the gentile Christian beliefs, which just assumed that gentile believers in the Judean single god had themselves superseded the Judeans as inheritors of the prosperous land promised to Abraham's children.
DCH
