Simon Gathercole: "The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters"

[MrMacSon]

The interpretation of Zeddie also explains...how one can be "in Christ" as the Stoic is "in Reason".

. . . . and Collectively, as N.T. Wright explains:

... in Paul, ‘The usage of Χριστός is incorporative: that is, Paul regularly uses the word to connote, and sometimes even to denote, the whole people of whom the Messiah is the representative’.

[Giuseppe]

Is Zeddie saying that the community had already conceived itself as an angel even before that the historical Jesus died?

I ask since it is not clear yet what would come before, for Zeddie, if the personification of a group or the specific entity that served to personify a such group.

[MrMacSon]

Is Zeddies saying that the community had already conceived itself as an angel even before that the historical Jesus died?

From the Conclusion:
(nb. Zeddies calls the Pauline Jesus 'Jesus', and the Gospel Jesus 'the Nazarene,' thought not at the end of this excerpt)

... Paul’s language regarding Jesus, when considered in its literary and religious context, is participatory and corporate, as are his references to Jesus’ humanity, birth and family ... His ministry, teaching, character, and suffering were all characteristics of that community, and his passion was a shared trauma within it ... Eventually Christians came to recognize 'the Nazarene' as an individual, historical incarnation of Christ Jesus, but that seems to have coincided with Paul’s death. Once Mark’s Gospel began to spread the message of the Nazarene incarnation, Paul’s writings were apparently re-appropriated to support the new doctrine. This was not too difficult, since the Nazarene, as a member of the pre-Christian community, already embodied Paul’s Jesus. And if Mark used Paul’s letters to help construct his image of the Nazarene, it seems unsurprising that the Gospel Jesus came to resemble Paul’s.

[MrMacSon]

Is Zeddies saying that the community had already conceived itself as an angel even before that the historical Jesus died?

. . . I think he's saying Paul portrayed 'the community' as Christ and/or vice versa ie. Christ reflected or even was the community

[Giuseppe]

The idea is not new at all, since already the mythicist Albert Kalthoff wrote so:

The Epistles, especially the four that bear the name of Paul - one to the Romans, the two to the Corinthians, and one to the Galatians - which make plainer even than the Gospels the dependence of Christianity on the death and resurrection of Christ, clearly intimate that this death and resurrection of Christ is not an individual experience, but one of the community. The death and resurrection of Christ is completely identified with the death and resurrection of the community.

(The Rise of Christianity, p.137-138, my bold)

Unfortunately, Kalthoff didn't describe well the evolution of this personification, since I may imagine two possible versions:

there was already the cult of an angel called Jesus
this angel becomes the symbol of an entire group

or:

the group as first act projected itself in an angel without name
at the end, the name Jesus was given to a such angel otherwise forever anonymous

[Peter Kirby]

split from here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10881