“Son of David” as an anachronism (or metaphor?) in the Gospels, Paul and Acts?

23 thoughts on ““Son of David” as an anachronism (or metaphor?) in the Gospels, Paul and Acts?”

1. I did not state it in my post, but what went through my mind re Psalm of Solomon 17 was that this is not depicting the anticipated-historical-this-worldly Davidic messiah that some scholars say was extant among Jews and that the disciples of Jesus reinterpreted to apply to Jesus in a spiritual manner.

   Rather, this is the very same idea that we find in some Christian texts. The Christian idea is not a reinterpretation of a “physical” Jewish idea but a borrowing of a Jewish idea wholus-bowlus and applying it to Jesus without modification. This is thus no different from any other literary borrowing — such as the borrowing of the plot lines for the raising of Jairus’ daughter from Elisha’s miracle.

   In other words, the Christian idea that matches the one in Ps Sol 17 is not the outcome of a tormented struggle on the part of disillusioned disciples trying to make sense of the death of Jesus by reinterpreting scriptures. It is a simple borrowing of an extant idea. The question then becomes among whom, where and when was this particular concept circulating, and what factors were involved in leading some Christians to pinch it?

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2. The main reason the Jews started the war with Rome, according to Josephus, was an oracle they interpreted to mean that “one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth” (War 6.312). Josephus applies this instead to Vespasian, and Doherty suggests that this is why Origen says that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was “Christ.” In any event, This alone is a good indication that Jews were expecting a “messiah,” to such an extent that they started (and ultimately lost) a war with Rome.

   In addition to this, we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, however it may be understood, also expected a messiah (or two or three or whatever).

   If there’s not much more than this to indicate that first century Jews expected a messiah (though I think the above is plenty), I suppose it’s because (judging from Josephus and the fate of the DSS group) Jews who had this belief then generally did not get to continue to live to talk and write about it. If the DSS were not hidden and found in caves, we would not know of them. In contrast, we have always had the writings of people who interpreted
   messianic oracles to apply to Vespasian or a Rome-friendly heavenly Jesus.

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   1. Hi John. Josephus is describing a time from the mid 60’s when conditions apparently dragged the people into war and messianic hopes of delIverance. It is from this period on that we have evidence for popular messianic hopes for the first time. As for the DSS I should have clarified that Horsley addresses them as the products of the Qumran community.

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      1. Whatver the conditions were that inspired the uprising against Rome, the mid-60’s and after were also roughly the same time period of the production of Christian literature. Josephus, the rabbis and “Pauline” Christianity had a more Rome-friendly understanding of “the messiah,” while those who didn’t perished. All of them dealt with the first century expectation of a “messiah.”

         The Qumran community does not appear to be isolated from the events of their time (whether in the first century or not), to judge from both their literature and the archaeological remains at Qumran (like coins, which go up to 68 CE, and even some from the Bar Kochba era, if I recall corectly), and thus are evidence for messianic expectation of the late second temple era among the disenfranchised.

         I assume you are wondering where the evidence is for “messianism” before the 60’s, and I suppose it is the anti-Roman activity that Josephus documents from Judas the Galilean to the First Revolt, and the apocalyptic literature of the sort found at Qumran. The absence of anything else is understandable, as I said, because Jews who had this belief generally did not get to live to write about it, or if they did they had to hide it.

         The conditions of the mid-60’s appear to have been the “last straw” for people who had fought Herod and the Roman occupation from the beginning, who no longer had a Hasmonean king.

         Reply

         1. I also think it is significant that, as you point out, it is the time of the production of the Christian literature that we find the evidence for the messianic expectations that we find referenced in the Gospels themselves. This favours the point that such messianic references in the Gospels are anachronisms and do not go back to what was on the mind of any disciple of Jesus in the time of Pilate.

            I focussed on this more in my previous post, but Horsley points out that we have no reason to think that any of those rebel movements before the war were “messianic” in any way. Some may have wanted to act out a Joshua event, maybe, that is, to mimic a biblical hero of the past, but there is nothing here to indicate they were looking for some long-anticipated royal messiah. Rebel movements are not uniquely Jewish, either, of course.

            The Qumran/DSS evidence does refer to a messiah, as you said, but it seems you are not convinced by my presentation of Horsley’s point that this is not representative of popular thought and is even vitiated among that community by being turned into a metaphor and being used as a foil to justify priestly rule.

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            1. Josephus makes the connection himself between Judas the Galilean’s “fourth philosophy” and the messianic revolt of the mid-60’s:

               “And it was in Gessius Florus’ time [the mid-60’s] that the nation began to grow mad with this disease [that began with Judas] … and he occassioned the Jews to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority, and to make them revolt from the Romans” (Ant. 18.23-25).

               It’s been awhile since I’ve thought much about the OT, but wasn’t it normal for priests to “rule over” kings? The king was even required to “write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is in charge of the Levitical priests” (Dt. 17:18). The priesthood was older than kings, and most of the Torah pertains to them and their sacrificial system, and very little to kings. It seems normal enough that the DSS group thought that
               “the messiah” was to be a subservient to priestly rule.

               The idea of being “priests” in the DSS was more symbolic than real, in any event. The Damascus Document lays this out plainly when interpreting the meaning of “the Priests and the Levites and the Sons of Zadok” in Ezk. 44:15:

               “‘The Priests’ are the Penitents of Israel, who went out from the Land of Judah and ‘the Joiners’ with them” (CD 4.2-3). They even change the spelling of “Levites” to nilvim to force their interpretation of it to mean “Joiners’ instead of actual “priests.”

               The DSS group seem to be more like “regular guys” trying to “do the right thing” in an era of “wickedness,” who represented people they call things like “the poor,” “the Doers of the Torah in the House of Judah whom God will save,” and “the Simple Ones of Judah doing the Torah” in the Habakkuk Pesher.

               And they had a lot of expectation for a messiah. Does the all messianic expectation in the DSS and Pseudepigrapha stem from the mid-60’s, or was it something that had percolated among “the poor” since the fall of the Hasmoneans and inspired the apocalyptic literature and the “deceivers” and “magicians” in Josephus during the Roman era?

               Reply

               1. I should have mentioned that it is Eisenman that brought to my attention that the DSS group changed “Levites” to nilvim.

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                  1. On another topic for the moment, this sort of thing was one of the practices of midrash — and we find Matthew doing something similar with his changing of a word for branch into a similar one for a town Nazareth.

               2. Does Josephus really suggest that Judas the Galilean’s rebellion had anything messianic about it? I will be posting again on Horsley’s survey of the evidence for the rise of popular messianism from the 60’s on.

                  Reply

3. The so-called Qumran community was completely destroyed by the Roman army. (In any case I don’t believe there was any such thing as a Qumran community – I basically go with Golb). The first revolt was limited to Judea, but exaggerated by Flavian editors to cover other areas such as Galilee in the writings attributed to Josephus. It was the priests who were doing the fighting. THEY WERE MESSIANIC. Roman forces under Nero invaded Judea in 66. The priests had got wind of an invasion. Many priests fanned-out into Judea and took over the fortresses such as Qumran and Machaerus, taking with them their scrolls – scrolls have been found strewn in a number of Judean locations, not just at Qumran. The priests had already captured Masada from Agrippa I’s soldiers.

   The priests who were doing the fighting had previously been banned by Herod the Great (at the end of his reign) from the temple. There were no sacrifices of animals. But in the reign of Agrippa I they had gained control of the temple, killed the king and taken over Masada from the king’s forces.

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4. Pingback: Vridar » Jesus the Seed of David: One More Case for Interpolation

5. Hi Neil,

   Hope you read comments on old blogposts!

   Two of the NT references you quote caught my attention:

   Mark 12:
   [35] And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David?
   [36] For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.
   [37] David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.

   and:

   John 7:
   [41] Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?
   [42] Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?

   These two quotes imply that Jesus was NOT from the seed of David and so needed to explain why, because there was an expectation among those receiving the Gospel – whether we mean by that the audience in the Gospel or those reading the Gospel – that the Christ/Messiah would be of the Seed of David.

   Hence in the quote from Mark above, Jesus asks rhetorically, ‘How say the scribes Christ is the Son of David?’ By Christ here he means the Messiah they are expecting. He then explains from Scripture that the Christ is NOT the Son of David, because in Psalm 110, David calls him Lord and therefore he cannot be his Son.

   Similarly in John, the objection is that Christ cometh of the seed of David (i.e. the Christ they are expecting) AND out of the town of Bethlehem, neither of which are fulfilled in the current candidate, Jesus.

   The understanding I present of Mark above assumes that Jesus objects to the scribes contention that the Christ is the literal son of David. It is also possible that he objects to their contention that he is the metaphoric son of David, because he believes his stature is greater than that of David. However, this also entails that he is not the literal son of David, otherwise anyone listening to him could reasonably answer ‘But hold on a minute, you ARE the son of David, so what are you objecting to?’.

   Now, this helps us make sense of Paul’s need to argue that Jesus was the Christ from scripture in the epistles, just as Jesus is arguing that he is the Christ from scripture above in Mark. If the Jesus that he was arguing was the Christ was a perfect fit for the job, there would be no need to make an argument for his case from scripture.

   Jews prior to Paul had two beliefs of relevance. Firstly, they believed in an angel, the Beloved of God, who was exalted to almost divine stature. This is posited by Margaret Barker in The Great Angel. The secret/tremendous name of this Angel, as revealed in the Ascension of Isaiah is ‘Jesus’. Compare this with Yahweh, the special name of God, to give you an idea of the divine nature of this angel. Obviously, this Jesus was not of the lineage of David, nor would it have been appropriate to refer to him as the Son of David metaphorically, because his status is greater than David’s. This is what ‘Jesus’ is arguing in Mark above from Psalm 110.

   Secondly, they believed in a Christ/Messiah/Savior who would come and rescue them from their current situation. They believed this Christ would from the lineage of David: a son of David.

   The religious innovation of Paul – or the sect to which he belonged – was to associate these two concepts; to say that Jesus the semi-divine angel was the Messiah. Hence his need to argue that Jesus was the Christ from scripture, just as Jesus does here in Mark, because people are expecting the Christ/Messiah – according to their understanding of scripture – to be from the line of David, not for him to turn out to be the angel Jesus. Then arises the question of how this Jesus-angel Messiah provides salvation for Israel, which was the expected function of the Messiah, to which Paul’s answer was the final part of his innovation – the crucifixion. So he turned it from a physical salvation into a spiritual salvation. Hence the crucifixion being a stumbling block for the Jews, as he says in his epistles.

   Make sense?

   Reply

   1. Makes sense, but I have to say I have questions about some of the assumptions you raise even though they are conventional ones. You might be interested in my series of posts on Novenson’s book, Christ Among the Messiahs; also Was Paul Really Persecuted for Preaching Christ Crucified where I find myself siding with Morton Smith’s argument that the crucified Christ ideas itself was not an offence to the Jews. That same point, I have since learned, is also argued by James C. Hanges. And iconoclast that I am, I also question the common claim that Second Temple Jews generally believed in a Davidic Messiah to come and liberate them.

      Reply

      1. Neil,

         Thanks for the links. Yes, you are right; a crucified Christ was not a novel idea. People had been preaching it prior to Paul. His innovation, as you say, was to interpret the crucifixion as entailing the abrogation of the Law – definitely a stumbling block for Jews.

         Giuseppe: Maybe my previous comment was not very clear. It left a few things unsaid, which I will try to fill out now.

         I first read Roger Parvus’ posts on the Simonian origins of Christianity last summer. I found it very interesting and largely convincing. More importantly, it provided a framework through which one could understand the texts that we now have and ‘what actually happened.’

         I had always felt that mythicists did not have a cogent explanation for Christianity. The Church had given us one explanation: HJ, four gospels written by first-/second-generation followers, Paul a bit later on, writes the epistles, other epistles written by Apostles, etc. Mythicists pointed out the holes in this theory and presented partial solutions; Jesus as non-corporeal being, Jesus as dying-rising God, Jesus as re-write of mystery religion, etc., but no-one (as far as I know) provided an all-encompassing narrative that made sense of Christianity. This is where I felt Roger’s thesis was particularly strong.

         I have since thought more on the subject and other bits and pieces have fallen into place. Subsequently I discovered that others have said similar things on some points – always comforting – such as Allegro, Massyngberde Forde. The rest remains my own conjecture.

         So here it is, my theory of Christian Origins:

         Cast of characters:

         One of the most confusing things about the various texts in the canon is the plethora of characters, most of whom have no external corroboration. However, in reality, many of the characters are the same person under different guises and have historical counterparts in external sources.

         Firstly, we have John the Baptist. ‘Luke’ calls him Peter in the beginning of Acts, often mentioned along with ‘John’. More on that in a minute. He is also the same John the Beloved disciple in the Gospel of John.
         Secondly, we have Paul the Apostle, author of the Epistles. Jesus calls him Simon BarJona in Matthew 16:17. The four Gospels refer to him as Simon Peter. James calls him Simeon in Acts. He is also the same person called Simon Magus in Acts, as Roger Parvus pointed out at length.

         Thirdly, James the Brother of the Lord is himself, with one consideration: when the average Christian or post-Christian reads ‘brother of the Lord’, he or she will instinctively read ‘the Brother of Jesus Christ,’ but that is not who is meant. ‘The Lord’ here is John the Baptist. James was his brother and his successor in heading John’s movement after his death.

         Fourthly, Cephas. Cephas is not Peter; rather he is Joseph Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Temple and initiate in the movement of John the Baptist. Others have already pointed this out, as I discovered in an article Tim linked to on Vridar.

         Finally, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not a historical figure. He is a semi-divine angel who manifests in a given person. In the Synoptic Gospels, that person is Paul. Jesus is really Paul. In the Gospel of John, that person is John the Baptist. Jesus is really John. More on this in a minute.

         A few points are in order.

         Firstly, Peter is not a name. It is a title of the founder of a church. The metaphor implicit in the title comes from the Foundation Stone under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on which the Temple was built. This is why the High Priest Joseph was known as Caiaphas. This is why Luke calls John the Baptist Peter; because he was the foundation on which his Church was built. Last, but not least, this is why Paul is also called ‘Peter’; because he was the foundation on which his church was built, as he himself says in the epistles.

         Secondly, Paul is also a title, not a name. Paul’s name is Simon; he adopted the title after being born into John’s movement. Luke alludes to this in Acts, although he tries to throw us off track by claiming Paul’s name was previously Saul.

         Thirdly, Jesus calls Simon ‘Simon BarJona’ – Simon the Son of John – because John the Baptist is the spiritual father of Simon/Paul. He was initially an initiate of John’s movement before founding his own church. This expression is common in the writings of Paul: he refers to his own initiates as his ‘children’ and says that he is their ‘father’.

         Fourthly, there is an allusion to Paul’s conversion in the story of Simon Magus in Acts, although Luke takes the opportunity to deny that Peter (who is John the Baptist) laid his hands on Simon Magus.

         Fifthly, Luke refers to one person as two. Specifically, Peter and John, who seem to be wondering around together all over the place, are really just John; Peter is his title and John is his name. Similarly, Paul and Barnabas, another double act, are simply Paul. Paul is his title and Barnabas is a name for him. Barnabas means the ‘the Son of the Father’. Who was his father? John. So Barnabas = BarJona = Simon.

         Those are our cast of characters. When we understand who is who, we find ourselves on a firmer historical footing. We no longer need to look for a historical Jesus. We no longer need to wonder about a historical Paul; we find him in the historical Simon Magus and in the historical Simon Peter who founded his own church.

         Next, we need to understand which texts belong to whom.

         Firstly, we have the Ascension of Isaiah and the Book of Revelation. These two books are part of the canon of the church of John the Baptist. There may be others texts that have not survived.

         Roger Parvus dates the Ascension of Isaiah to AD 30. I agree. This book was part of the canon of John’s movement before it was co-opted into the Christian canon.

         J Massyngebird Forde argues in Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary that the Book of Revelation is also a product of John’s movement. I agree.

         The Epistles of John (certainly the first) and the Letter of James (John’s brother) are also part of this movement.

         The Synoptic Gospels, as I mentioned earlier, are the production of the Simonian church. Specifically, the Simonian church produced Mark. It was redacted by Matthew and then finally by Luke.

         The Gospel of John is the product of the church of John and we should be place it in their canon.

         Each church made their spiritual founder ‘Jesus’ in their respective gospels.

         Once we realize this, we can more easily understand the differences between the two gospels. Paul tells us that unlike others, he is not well spoken. The others he is referring to are John and his apostles. John is the one to say things like ‘I am the Truth’, ‘I am the Way’; apparently Paul was not ‘all that’. It also explains the differences of themes, which I will get to in discussing the differences between the movements themselves.

         We also find the themes, language and theology of the Gospel of John in the other works mentioned above, the Epistles of John, James and Revelation. For example, the beginning of the Gospel of John refers to the Word and it recurs in these other works; however, we do not find it in the Synoptic Gospels or Pauline Epistles.

         The two movements and the differences between them:

         John and Paul both founded churches. Paul was initially an initiate of John’s church. However, at a certain point he had a religious experience where the semi-divine angel Jesus of the Ascension of Isaiah revealed himself directly to him. Based on this experience, he re-interpreted the meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the Ascension of Isaiah and founded his own church.

         Both of these churches were gnostic churches. By gnostic, I do not mean the Wikipedia definition of Gnosticism. By gnostic, I mean a path whose goal is spiritual unification of the initiate with a divine entity, in this specific case Jesus Christ. I am not sure whether they would have understood it as a unification of spirit or consciousness, but it is not relevant.

         People became initiates in John’s movement by undergoing Baptism. The path was a Law-based path – following the Halacha. It was one of teachers and adepts. To become an apostle required formal authorization from one’s teacher, i.e. there was an initiatic chain. They taught the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God as per the book of Revelation. They also taught the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the semi-Divine Angel as per the Ascension of Isaiah. However, they understood the significance of crucifixion to be one of expiation of sins through blood sacrifice. This is why we find the Paschal lamb motif only in the gospel of John. John – who was Jesus manifest – was the Paschal Lamb, the sacrifice of whose blood would redeem the sins of Israel. They also taught the doctrine of the Word and that John was the Word made flesh.

         Paul on the other hand did not baptize anyone – except those two baptisms while he was still part of the John movement. His path was one of immediate direct experience of Jesus Christ – the foundation that he laid – on which other teachers built. He re-interpreted the crucifixion of Christ to mean the abrogation of the Law – hence his disinterest in baptism, circumcision, food and the rest of it. However, after having the Christ-experience, initiates in his path would develop good character by their newfound Christ-consciousness. This gospel he received directly from Christ. Although he had been in John’s church, he never received authorization as a teacher in that path. Instead, he claimed he had received a direct revelation from Jesus Christ as Cephas had before him. When he says in Galatians should an angel come with a contrary gospel, let him be accursed, he seems to be making a direct dig at John’s movement, because John received the book of Revelation from an angel. Similarly, when he says he did not receive it from a human teacher, he is referring to the methodology of the John movement. When he says he only teaches the crucifixion of Christ, he means as opposed to John’s movement, who teach the coming of the Kingdom with equal, if not more importance. In Paul’s theology, this makes sense. If his initiates are not going to be judged, who cares about the Kingdom to Come?

         Finally, what was involved in this Christ-experience? I think that initiates would be witness to an event, the grand finale of which was the crucifixion of Paul himself. He would appear on a cross, crucified. Then he would be taken down and then finally rise from the dead. This explains why he has the scars of Christ on his body. This experience would raise the initiate into a state of Christ-consciousness. I have a feeling that Paul would act out some form of ur-Mark before the crucifixion, i.e. ur-Mark is a play used in the initiatic event. This is why his initiates received him ‘as an angel, as Jesus Christ.’

         The sequence of events

         In the beginning, there was John and his movement…

         John is the starting point. Without understanding his movement, his canon, his methodology, we cannot really make sense of the whole picture. I have tried to put the pieces together above. We can begin with Simon, as Roger Parvus does, but we will be starting too late and we will miss a lot of points.

         Paul joined this movement and became an initiate in it.

         John was arrested and beheaded.

         After his death, Cephas saw Jesus Christ in a vision. So did others. Then, so does Paul. However, Paul re-interprets this vision and starts preaching his own Gospel. This brings him into conflict with the mother-church, who question his authority to teach his gospel.

         Paul preaches his gospel, gains converts among gentiles and performs his grand party trick, his own crucifixion.

         One day, it goes wrong, and Paul dies on the cross. Later authors will record for us that Simon Peter, Paul and Simon Magus all died on the cross. They were all the same person.

         This is my theory so far. I think it does a good job of explaining a lot about the texts we have and places the cast and events in extra-biblical history.

         I would appreciate any feedback; I am sure everyone who reads this reply is far more conversant in the subject than I am.

         Reply

         1. Very interesting. But I consider the view of Roger as an serious and original instance of the mythicist paradigm of Doherty-Carrier and therefore do not understand why you started your post criticizing mythicism.

            To me these three great scholars (Earl, Richard and Roger) excite me a lot, but I still wonder if their error is not to cast doubt on even deeper into the authenticity of the socalled Pauline letters. The name ”Paul”, at times, seems to hide behind a theological program as big as a house: the last is first.

            On the other hand, remains insoluble the eternal problem raised by Radical Criticism: if Marcion invented ”Paul” and wrote a gospel too, because he is both ignorant of a HJ in the epistles while is the first inventor of a HJ with his first gospel?????? A real mystery. Or rather: a true antithesis!

            Reply

            1. Hi Guiseppe,

               I was not criticizing mythicism, I was expressing disenchantment with what I had read up to that point, which admittedly wasn’t much.

               I also don’t think Marcion invented the Pauline letters; he may have edited them as a possibility, but invention seems unlikely. As for the conundrum you allude to, that would entail Luke preceding Mark, no? Is that the position of the Radical Critics? I can’t recall off the top of my head.

               Reply

               1. yes, the conundrum is the possibility that the person that wrote the first ”pauline” letters is the same person that wrote the first Gospel.

                  This abstract possibility is examined indirectly by Richard in this way:
                  Mark is so demonstrably allegorical it could even have been written by Paul and still be complete (and deliberate) fiction.

                  But after the same dr.Carrier is more precise:

                  Since unlike the later Gospels it [Mark] never represents itself as history.

                  Replacing Mark with Mcn (=proto-Luke), there’s the conundrum of which I talked.

                  Reply

                  1. Maybe a solution of that conundrum (is you accept the hypothesis, oviously) is that with the Epistles Jesus is ”seen” only by revelation and recognized as Son of True God from the last(=the first). While, with the Gospel, Jesus is ”seen” as a phantom on terra firma, but he is not recognized as such by the first apostles(=the last).

                     I would ask for a reply on this by Stuart (obviously, only under condition that he assumes a mythicist scenario for a moment, putting aside his agnosticism on matter)

   2. Hi Tariq,

      for me it makes sense. But how do you explain that Marcion not only recovered Paul in II EC but claimed to be the more true Paulinist of all times? If your view is true, it will arise a problem in II CE: a need of a separation between ”Christ” and ”Jesus”, contra the historical Paul’s view, just from the man that collected for all us the Paul’s letters and published them the first time!

      I can hold your view with this apparent inconsistency only under the condition that Paul thought that Jesus was first a semi-divine angel, and only secondarily, for the Jew outsiders (the Pillars?), a ”Christ”. In this way, Marcion eliminated from Paul everything (the part relative to Christ according the scripture) that Jesus was, according to Paul, as the only part of facade (the traditional Jew Christ). Perhaps Marcion thought that Paul would approve his choice: removing what is superfluous and keep the ”essence” of Paul, the angel Jesus, given the failure of Jewish Christians (before) and proto-orthodox (after) to understand what Paul meant.

      Otherwise, the innovation about you talk is not pauline, but by Pillars of Jerusalem (the real founders of cult), while Paul was really the same Paul of Marcion, i.e. the first Apostle with the need (and the divine mission) to separate what the Pillars had joined, the semidivine angel from the Jew Messiah.

      Happy to listen comments on your view.

      Reply

      1. This raises an interesting question: who had come before, the angel ”Jesus” or the title of messiah ”Christ”? According to dr. Detering, Gal 1:18-22 is a probable proto-orthodox interpolation. If this were true (and authentic of Paul), then the first to speak of ”Jesus” in History would really be Paul himself (when he listed ”his Son in me”), with the Pillars of Jerusalem to know later his ideas only when Paul decided finally to visit them in Jerusalem (as reported in Galatians 2, that would be the description of the first meeting between the oldest church of Paul and the more recent church of the Pillars). In other words, the angel Jesus (Paul) would come before the Messiah Jesus (James and Peter), with Marcion wanting to return things in their proper chronological order.

         Reply

6. A-maze-ing!

   Reply

   1. The history in “Tariq’s Gospel” (above) is as substantial as any in the NT.

      Reply
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