On the Ancestral Jesus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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On the Ancestral Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

In another thread, Ben wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:01 pm
robert j wrote: Tue Jan 02, 2018 11:33 amThe part of the mystery involving the earthly events of his Jesus (when in the likeness of men) occurred deep in the scriptural past. But the mystery had been recently revealed, in Paul’s time.
I find it very hard to read the Pauline epistles as they stand in such a way as to suggest that, for Paul, the life and death of Jesus took place in the misty past, scriptural or not. Not all of scriptural time is open, at any rate; Jesus cannot have preceded Adam (1 Corinthians 15.22, 45), Abraham (Galatians 3.16), Moses (Romans 10.4-5), or David (Romans 1.4), for example.

Paul views Jesus as the first instance of the general resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.13, 20-28), so we would be at pains to explain why the general resurrection began so long ago and is only going to be completed now, in Paul's own lifetime (1 Thessalonians 4.15; 1 Corinthians 15.51) or shortly thereafter (1 Thessalonians 5.23; 2 Corinthians 4.14). Even the metaphor he uses, the first fruits, works best with a brief interval of time.

Paul also claims that Jesus was the end of the law for those who have faith (Romans 10.4), that he was raised from the dead in order to justify humans (Romans 4.25), and that this justification comes by faith (Romans 5.1) in Jesus (Romans 3.22). He avers that no one can have faith unless he first hears the gospel from a preacher (Romans 10.14) who is sent (Romans 10.15). Finally, Paul acknowledges that it was at the present time (Romans 3.26) that God showed forth his justice apart from the law (Romans 3.21), and that the sent ones, the apostles, were to come last of all (1 Corinthians 4.9); he also implies that the resurrection appearances were the occasion of the sending out of apostles (1 Corinthians 9.1; 15.7, 9; Galatians 1.15-16). If we presume that, for Paul, Jesus was raised in the distant past but only recently revealed to the apostles, we must take pains to account for this gap; why, for Paul, did Jesus die in order to end the law and justify humans but then wait indefinitely before making this justification available to humans?

All is explained, however, if we recognize that Jesus came and lived and died "at the right time" (Romans 5.6). Paul obviously has a specific time in mind; it would be weird for him to emphasize the right time in this way if he had no idea when that time even was. He elsewhere even calls it "the fullness of time" (Galatians 4.4), which sounds very much like "the ends of the ages" (1 Corinthians 10.11) during which Paul himself was living.

I believe everything works best in the Pauline epistles (again, as they stand) on the assumption of a recent life and death of Jesus; other assumptions as to the timing would require assumptions or guesses not present in the texts themselves.
I was remembering these words of Alvar Ellegaard:
there is hardly any room for doubt: the earliest writers do not provide any information about the earthly Jesus, simply because they not know much about him. Now, if they do not know, they cannot have been Jesus' companions and contemporaries. Yes Jesus was clearly a well-established and revered figure in the Churches of God. The only natural explanation, it seems to me, is that Jesus' fame was of long standing... Jesus was by no means a near contemporary of these early Christians, but a figure belonging to the late second century BC."
(p. 141)

I think it depends a lot from which Jesus we are considering. The Risen Christ is a recent affair. But the humanoid Jesus who died may be a recent affair, also, but only if we consider him as :

1) crucified by Romans

2) crucified by demons in heaven.

In both the cases, the Silence of Paul about the humanoid Jesus continues to be surprising. Paul is too much vague even about the short sublunar drama of a recent mythical Jesus. Paul could say a lot of other things about the details of a recent celestial crucifixion, but he didn't do.


So I am inclined to move the (celestial or earthly) crucifixion of Jesus in the ancestral times.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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