Paul's shadow in the gospels

[Irish1975]

Aside from the argued to death and shown over and over again to be inconclusive mention of the ethnarch of Aretas in Corinthians, what passages would you point to in his letters to show a 1st century origin for them.

Not trying to be argumentative, just really would like to know.

Lane

Nothing wrong with a good argument.

Paul is not anti-Jewish, whereas most of the apostolic fathers are (Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, Hermas...), along with the whole Christian world from the 2nd century onward. They all knew about the temple's destruction in 70 CE. Since Paul wrote Romans before that cataclysm, he did not consider that God might have rejected his people. He does say that they have stumbled, and even that some of the branches have been broken off, but only inasmuch as they have not accepted his preaching about Christ.

In Romans 9-11, Paul argues that God has not abandoned or rejected his fellow Jews. It is a lengthy argument, and the only event in Paul's mind that has any bearing on the question is the resurrection that he preaches and celebrates through baptism and the Lord's supper. Is it really conceivable that a 2nd century christian, knowing what happened in 70 CE, and pretending (I guess) to be a 1st century Paul, would make him argue at length that God has not rejected or abandoned his people? Why bother?

The author of Romans (and 1 and 2 Corinthians) is under great stress, because he affirms a new covenant through faith in Christ, not through the old Mosaic covenant; but he also holds out hope that his kinsmen will "through jealousy" of the gentiles turn to faith in Christ. Why all this backbreaking (and, to many, not persuasive) theology of hardening and stumbling--but not rejection!--of the Jews, if the author were writing after 70 CE? I can imagine someone arguing that it's all an elaborate ruse to make us think that Paul lived earlier....but to what end? Romans 9-11 is the hardest and maybe weakest argument Paul makes. He's obviously pulling out all the stops. To suppose that the author of that portion of Romans knew about the Temple's destruction is not credible. He even says "to [the Israelites] belongs the worship" (9:4), which is admittedly brief and vague, but does strongly suggest that he was referring to a still-functioning Temple system.

[Irish1975]

The lack of acknowledgement of Paul or his body of work by early 2nd century writers. Robert M Price thinks the Pauline letters are the product of a few people like Polycarcp, someone in the Marcionite community, and a 2nd century Paul.

There are 2nd century gnostic commentaries on Paul's letters (Pagels' The Gnostic Paul). But suppose for the sake of argument that there is no 2nd century acknowledgment. What does that imply? Very little. Here is a useful comparison. The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, writing c. 500 BCE, is entirely unattested in the 5th century. Plato gives the earliest mention of him in the 300s. But nobody has ever seriously argued that Heraclitus might have been invented in later centuries, when he became quite popular with the Stoics. The distinctive idiom and genius and internal references in his writings ("fragments") provide adequate evidence to date him approximately to around the time of the Ionian rebellion against Persia (490s BCE).

The same can be said for Paul.

Your post is a prefect example of logical fallacies. You must know it is simply absurd to use information about Heraclitus to historicise Paul or to show that Pauline Epistles were composed before c 70 CE.

You seem not to understand that Scholars have already argued successfully that Paul was not a figure of history and that the letters under the name of Paul are compilations of forgery or false attribution..

The bit about Heraclitus is what is called an analogy. I'm not "using information about him to historicize Paul." I'm rejecting the argument that, if we do not have external attestation of an ancient text's authorship in the generations immediately following the postulated author's death, we cannot reasonably date it to the time of that author.

You repeatedly state your conclusion, garnished with some abrasive rhetoric about "what I seem not to understand," but you never actually make a case for your position. You don't even cite these Scholars-with-a-capital-S who you assure us have argued--successfully! (by whose idea of success?)--that there was no historical Paul. But we've already had this conversation and it seems to go nowhere.

[neilgodfrey]

I am not deeply read in the Q literature, but I think I read Kloppenborg saying that some overlap between Mark and Q is postulated, based on sophisticated criteria.

No sophisticated criteria are involved. Example is John the Baptist. JB material appears in Q so the question that raises is how to justify Q while JB appears in Mark's gospel. Answer that is offered: Author of Mark knew of JB traditions but not the document Q.

[neilgodfrey]

Once our Ben said somewhere that, from a mythicist POV, it's unfortunate that Mark didn't depend entirely on Paul. I wonder why this would be a "bad news" for mythicists, since the same Doherty, differently from Carrier, argues that the author of Mark wasn't a pauline, he didn't know nothing about Paul, but he came from an entirely different tradition (the Q tradition, precisely).

Actually Doherty's thesis is adapted from Burton Mack. (e.g. Myth of Innocence). (I am not sure now, but it might be worth checking if Mack ultimately took over an idea that had first been conceived by Bauer. Can't recall. Just mentioning it as a possibility to check.)

Whether Mark relied entirely upon Paul or was entirely independent of Paul of anything in between can make no difference to the historicity of Jesus question. The default position ought be that which treats Jesus as entirely a theological/literary construct with no place for the question of historicity or otherwise. What is needed to establish historicity is evidence comparable to the kind we have for Socrates or Cicero's slave Marcus Tullius Tiro or Publius Vinicius the Stammerer. That doesn't mean there was no historical Jesus. It only means we only have access to our literary/theological Jesus.

[Giuseppe]

Whether Mark relied entirely upon Paul or was entirely independent of Paul of anything in between can make no difference to the historicity of Jesus question.

I am not so sure, given the Paul's absolute prohibition of introducing ''another Jesus'', not even by an allegory.

So I think that really the case for a mythical Jesus is slightly more strong if Mark wasn't based on Paul.

[Ben C. Smith]

Once our Ben said somewhere that, from a mythicist POV, it's unfortunate that Mark didn't depend entirely on Paul.

Do you have a link to that post? I think you may be slightly misquoting me.

[Giuseppe]

Once our Ben said somewhere that, from a mythicist POV, it's unfortunate that Mark didn't depend entirely on Paul.

Do you have a link to that post? I think you may be slightly misquoting me.

I haven't the link but I remember perfectly that your answer to a my post was: "I'm sorry, but Mark wasn't based entirely on Paul", hence my (mis-?)quoting of you.

[Ben C. Smith]

Once our Ben said somewhere that, from a mythicist POV, it's unfortunate that Mark didn't depend entirely on Paul.

Do you have a link to that post? I think you may be slightly misquoting me.

I haven't the link but I remember perfectly that your answer to a my post was: "I'm sorry, but Mark wasn't based entirely on Paul", hence my (mis-?)quoting of you.

I think I recall. That Mark is not based entirely on Paul is not a problem for mythicism. It was potentially a problem for your particular mythicist point. You have confused those two things before, I believe.

[Giuseppe]

It was potentially a problem for your particular mythicist point.

for my mythicist point (that is the same of Doherty) yes: it is slightly a problem. For Doherty who ehuemerized Jesus was from a Galilean community that had only heard rumors about the celestial Jesus preached by Paul.

[Ben C. Smith]

It was potentially a problem for your particular mythicist point.

for my mythicist point (that is the same of Doherty) yes: it is slightly a problem. For Doherty who ehuemerized Jesus was from a Galilean community that had only heard rumors about the celestial Jesus preached by Paul.

But the point is that there are varieties of mythicism for which this matter is not an issue, and your quote made it sound as if I had potentially put all of mythicism on the chopping block over this one little thing. The varieties of mythicism to which I myself am most tempted, for example, have no problem at all with Mark not depending entirely upon Paul.