A book that concludes to assign the Epistle to the Galatians and the other main Pauline epistles to the second century requires, more than any other, a few words of introduction. Not that I believe that any preliminary remarks can remove the impression of bewilderment that such an undertaking must initially make on any theological reader, regardless of their direction. However, it is important to me to leave no doubt about the sincerity of my intention, and I hope to achieve this by explaining how I arrived at my view. (Steck’s opening words – translated – of Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht nebst kritischen bemerkungen zu den Paulinischen Hauptbriefen, or The Epistle to the Galatians examined for its authenticity along with critical remarks on the main Pauline letters, published in 1888.)
Steck described his university years and his arrival at the firm conclusion that the four main Pauline epistles (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians) expressed the purest thought of earliest Christianity. He had heard of the existence of sceptical views that discounted the authenticity of those letters but ….. in his own (translated) words:
Although I had heard doubts about the authenticity of these epistles, I only received the impression that there were also such oddballs among theologians who had to doubt even the sunniest clarity, and Bruno Bauer appeared to me as an unscientific tendentious writer whose audacity had not shied away from an attack on these most genuine monuments of early Christianity.
Bruno Bauer had such an unsavoury reputation that it took him some time before he was eventually led by circuitous routes to read the words of the devil for himself, and once he had done so….
Only then did I turn to Bruno Bauer’s critique of the Pauline epistles from 1852, which I had previously only known through references. Despite its facile argumentation and often offensive presentation to theological ears, I found in it much that was accurate and previously unnoticed, solidifying my view until it became a full conviction.
A few pages into his first chapter Steck added:
The criticism of Bruno Bauer has so far not been refuted by competent scholars, and although it is of such a nature that no one likes to deal with it, scientific necessity demands a closer examination, even if only to refute it thoroughly.
Ignored, but not refuted. A situation that has by and large continued through to today, unless I am mistaken.
I copy here a translation of Steck’s concluding statement of the findings of the detailed analysis of the preceding five chapters. The formatting is mine:
Consequently, the Epistle to the Galatians must be regarded as
- a literary product not of Paul himself, but of the Pauline school,
- presupposing the existence of the Epistle to the Romans and the two Epistles to the Corinthians.
Its dependency on these predecessors, particularly on the former, has become evident from a closer consideration of many individual passages, leaving little room for doubt. Of course, if the matter were merely that our epistle repeatedly contains expressions, phrases, entire sentences found in other major Pauline epistles, little would be proven. That can happen and, in itself, is not a sign of inauthenticity. It is quite natural for the same writer to use the same thoughts and sometimes expressions repeatedly as opportunities arise. . . . .
However, the matter is not that simple. The passages in our letter that prompted us to look for parallels in other letters were those
- where the context was lacking,
- where thought and expression did not seem quite natural,
- where one had to ask whether the previous explanations had all remained forced and contrived. . . .
(pp 147f)
In short, obscurities of argument and puzzling loose ends in Galatians are clarified only when we turn (mostly) to Paul’s letter to the Romans. The author of Galatians presupposed a knowledge of the epistle sent to Rome. In Steck’s view, whoever wrote Galatians had either earlier written or certainly read and embraced the Romans tract and the two letters to the Corinthians. The corollary here is that the author further assumes that his primary audience of Galatians will understand his various points because they, too, are familiar with the other epistles. In the earlier chapters of Galatians where “Paul” sets out historical details from the time of his conversion to the time of his meeting with apostles in Jerusalem, the author was seeking to rebut the account in the Acts of the Apostles.
. . . [The author] addresses this letter as the purest expression of his spirit and opinion to the erring communities, a letter from which one should clearly recognize the Apostle’s actual stance towards Judaism. The letter would thus have been written not only long after the fall of the Jewish people and state (4:25) but also after the Acts of the Apostles. Since the latter writing cannot have originated before the beginning of the second century, as its acquaintance with Josephus proves for the Lucan writings in general, the Epistle to the Galatians is to be placed under the reign of Hadrian, and specifically after 120 AD.
(p. 148)
But how could it be so?
This view will undoubtedly be challenged by asserting that it claims the impossible. A letter as fresh and lively as the Epistle to the Galatians bears the stamp of the Pauline spirit too clearly for it to have been composed by a mere imitator. It is a work of a single cast and does not at all give the impression of a patchwork based on other letters. This objection is very understandable, and the perspective on the Epistle to the Galatians that underlies it was also long shared by the author.
. . . . One does not necessarily need to see in him a mere imitator; he could be a Pauline follower with an independent, sharply defined intellectual individuality who knows how to use the catchphrases of early Paulinism in a new, spirited way and to combine individual elements into a new whole. In such questions, one easily forgets that a letter merely attributed to Paul does not necessarily have to be the miserable work of an unoriginal imitator. If a significant, intellectually powerful personality stands behind it, the work will also bear its stamp despite the partial reliance on earlier material.
(p. 150)
In the second part of the book Steck examines all four major Pauline letters since if Galatians is not by Paul then the argument infers that the others are likewise not by a mid-first century author. To begin with, he analyzes the shared material among these four and demonstrates that it is Galatians that drew upon the others, and that Galatians was the last written and Romans the first. Steck then examines the evidence for the Pauline works drawing upon canonical gospel material. The evidence there is not overwhelmingly strong but in Steck’s view it is suggestive. Next, Steck sets forth the evidence for these letters drawing upon a knowledge of the works of pseudepigraphical writings (in particular the late first century/early second century Fourth Book of Ezra), and Philo and Seneca. If we accept the case for the epistles drawing on a knowledge of these works then we must date them to the very late first century at the earliest. Other arguments include overviews of patristic references to the Pauline writings — including the letters of Clement and Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, Justin Martyr, Marcion and other works.
We may even add a knowledge of the Ascension of Isaiah — courtesy of Roger Parvus’s studies.
I may post some of Steck’s evidence in detail in future posts but right now I am still in the process of digesting it all. I need more time to reflect.
I was intrigued to find one part of Steck’s thought running parallel with a certain notion of Christian origins that I had been exploring. Steck confronts the problem of finding an early gentile Christianity in Rome that existed quite independently from the synagogue.
Judaism and Christianity existed entirely separately in Rome at that time. This could not be the case if Roman Christianity had emerged from the synagogue. Thus, we are led to assume that Christianity in Rome emerged very early and somewhat autochthonously. The exclusive use of the Greek language in the Roman community until deep into the second century suggests that the roots of the oldest Roman Christian community lie not in the Jewish, but in the Greek colony of Rome. From this stratum of the population, the Christian doctrine gathered a circle around itself, as indicated in the 16th chapter of Romans, consisting largely of slaves but interspersed with elements reaching into the higher and highest social strata. The “Roman Hellenism,” elevated beyond the ordinary thoughts and pursuits of paganism by the advanced Platonic philosophy represented by Seneca in the Roman capital, had become acquainted with the religious teachings of refined Judaism through the Alexandrian Bible and the writings of Philo. With or without the form of proselytism, it sympathized with Jewish monotheism and its purer moral teachings. This environment became the cradle of the first Christian community in the world’s capital. Just as the Oriental cults of all kinds found fertile ground in Rome—where, according to Tacitus’s bitter expression, “all atrocious and shameful things from everywhere flow together and are celebrated”—so too did Rome become a receptive field for the higher aspirations emanating from philosophy. These aspirations aimed to elevate humanity’s moral consciousness and bring the good and the beautiful closer to realization. Among the driving forces of this new outlook was the belief in the personal realization of the ideal in a living bearer of that ideal. This was parallel to the widespread contemporary religious belief in a helping and saving Savior, as propagated by the cults of Serapis and Asclepius. This belief naturally drew new strength and definition from the messianic prophecies during the study of the Old Testament. Everything was thus prepared, only waiting for the trigger to initiate the realization of these tendencies in a specific community.
(p. 377)
For Steck, that trigger was “the news of the Messiah’s appearance in the East”. (I wonder if a stronger case can be made for the trigger being related to the destruction of “Judaism’s” centre in the 66-70 CE war.)
This trigger would have been the news of the Messiah’s appearance in the East. Here, disregarding chronology, we can almost fully adopt the depiction given at the beginning of the Clementine Homilies. Clement, who had spent his youth in chastity and moderation, had fallen into deep sorrow over the tormenting questions about the origin and destiny of the world and humanity. He turned to philosophy but found no certainty in the conflicting teachings, especially regarding life after death. In this doubtful state, he became aware of news that reached Rome under Emperor Tiberius one spring and kept growing: as if an angel of God were traveling through the world, and God’s plan could no longer remain hidden, the news was that someone had risen in Judea and was preaching the eternal kingdom of God to the Jews, confirming his mission with signs and wonders. This news spread more and more, and already assemblies (συστήματα) were eagerly discussing who the newcomer was and what he wanted. In the autumn of the same year, an unknown man publicly proclaimed: “Men of Rome, hear, the Son of God has appeared in Judea and preaches eternal life to all who are willing to listen, if they act according to the will of the Father who sent him,” and so on. This account in the Clementine romance probably contains more truth than is generally attributed to it. This or a similar scenario must have occurred in the formation of the first Roman Christian community. The news of the Messiah’s appearance spread from the East, found fertile ground in the circles in Rome who were alienated from the world and pursued philosophical ideals, and formed a small Christian community from the Roman population. To this, individuals from the Jewish colony (like Aquila and Priscilla in Acts 18:2) and proselytes may have joined, without affecting the Gentile Christian character of the community. Thus, it would be somewhat like the Reformation—a dual origin of the new religious principle. On one hand, it arose in Palestine through the messianic movement originating from Jesus and his disciples. On the other hand, it was prepared by the development of pagan philosophy and religion in Rome to such an extent that the mere news of the Messiah’s appearance sufficed to bring it to life in the world capital, where it naturally took on a unique character from the beginning and retained it for a long time.
(pp 377ff)
I have been trying to think through how a similar scenario among Jews/Judeans was preparing the way for Christianity but Steck has added a balance to that perspective by reminding us of the evidence for the earliest Christian community in Rome being distinctively gentile in origin. There is certainly much to think through.
Even if this view can only initially present itself as a hypothesis, it is surely worthy of closer examination. At the very least, it easily explains how the Christian community in Rome, at the time Paul arrived, could already be an established and well-founded one, yet not be connected with the Jewish colony there. It then also explains the distinctly Gentile Christian character of the Roman Christian community from the outset, as assumed by the Epistle to the Romans and particularly evidenced by the findings in the catacombs. Moreover, this view sheds new light on the further development of Christianity. If Christianity emerged simultaneously in a dual form—one Jewish Christian and the other Gentile Christian—then this separate existence of the two centers, Jerusalem and Rome, could persist for a time. Eventually, however, as the Christian church continued to grow and unify, these two halves had to merge into one cohesive entity. The integration of the two halves, the Eastern and the Western, could not occur without a transformation process affecting both. The Jewish Christian communities of the East had to abandon their traditions, insofar as these had not already been disrupted by Paul’s activities, for their Christianity to be feasible within the greater church. Conversely, the Gentile Christian communities of the West had to accept certain customs and practices carried over from Judaism if they wished to join the closer fellowship with those communities. Notably, they could not reject a lifestyle aligned with the essential demands of Judaism, as prescribed for proselytes. This process was prefigured by Paul’s historical activities, which first established the connection between the two halves of the Christian population. Accordingly, the process could not unfold easily or naturally; resistance was inevitable on both sides, potentially leading to extremes that pushed the opposition to its peak. This painful but beneficial process of integration is testified by the literature of early Christianity, and specifically, the Pauline letters are symptomatic expressions of the resistance from the more liberal faction in the Roman community against attempts to Judaize them. From the Epistle to the Romans to the Epistle to the Galatians, this conflict escalates to its highest point before subsiding as the extreme demands of the Judaizers fail to prevail, while moderate ones gain acceptance.
(pp 379f)
Steck, Rudolf. Der Galaterbrief Nach Seiner Echtheit Untersucht Nebst Kritischen Bemerkungen Zu Den Paulinischen Hauptbriefen. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1888. http://archive.org/details/dergalaterbriefn0000stec.
English translation is available at The Epistle to the Galatians examined for its authenticity along with critical remarks on the main Pauline letters [PDF – 5 MB, on my vridar.info page]
Neil Godfrey
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Do you have some time to read the Nag Hamadi text: The Apocalypse of Paul?
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/ascp.html
It is a most perplexing read, but there are things in it that seem to relate to the epistles. You might recall I made a rather crazy suggestion that Paul met the apostles in heaven – which of course is mostly contrary to the reading. But in “The Apocalypse of Paul” he is literally led by a spirit on the road to Jerusalem, then proceeds to the different levels and meets the 12 apostles at the seventh level.
Tell me if you think there is some parallel here worth considering?
If such a narrative was the original narrative, that would make the later narrative in which Paul meets them upon the Earth an attempt to strip of such mythical elements the narrative, correct?
When do you think that the original narrative was created? And when was the later, historical, version created? And were the 12 apostles whom Paul met in Heaven seen as purely heavenly beings or as Earthly humans who had ascended to Heaven?
It is a tantalising theory, that would mean the original Galatians 1-2 was about Paul being taken up by revelation to meet the 12 apostles in heaven. Original Galatians would be then a revealing more about this event and its purpose.
It would mean that the original Galatians is even more lost under a mountain of rewrites than we could have supposed!
It would be easier to assume that Apoc. of Paul comes later as Neil suggests, but some of the strange inconsistencies of Galatians might point to the Apoc. being first. The apostles referred to in the past tense and the ‘revelation’ taking Paul to Jerusalem which are counter to the mostly earthly narrative.
It seems like a nice pet theory for now!
Rather than a text through which to interpret Galatians, I see the Apocalypse/Revelation of Paul as being an attempt to “catholicize/unify” the various traditions of Paul. It draws not only from Paul’s canonical letters, especially Galatians, but also the gospels. If our Acts of the Apostles was an attempt to domesticate Paul for a Roman (proto)orthodoxy, the Apoc of Paul is a gnostic effort to present a message in which Paul and the Twelve are all on the same page. The difference, of course, is that Acts bends Paul towards a muted form of “Judaism” and answerable to the Jerusalem apostles, while the Apoc of Paul bends Paul towards gnosticism and superior to (though in harmony with) the Twelve.
It does not help us understand Galatians, but a knowledge of Galatians helps us understand that the author of the Apoc of Paul sought to merge Paul’s visit to Jerusalem with Paul’s vision of being taken up into the third heaven (and beyond, in the Apoc). It left readers with a choice: accept the Acts version of Paul or the gnostic version, which with its spiritualizing and bringing in various traditions presents a “superior” Paul. Along the way it also reduces the God of Acts to a subordinate Demiurge.
Do you have any good reasons to assume that Apocalypse/Revelation of Paul post-dates Galatians (and the gospels)?
The testimony of the spirits against the corrupted soul sounds a bit like some gospel content, but I cannot see any obvious direction for the development.
I think the proposition that @ABuddhist raises in his questions deserve some consideration.
The conspiracy theorist in me believes that Nag Hamadi texts are often dated later for the convenience of biblical scholarship more than any real evidence.
I think so.
That’s straight from Galatians while the little child is the God of the OT (as we learn as we read further and see he is the god who is doing the punishing of the wicked) who had set apart Paul from his mother’s womb. It’s a neat way to bridge the point of going up to Jerusalem by revelation with the idea that he was of one mind with the Twelve. This is written after the time of hostile division that we see in Galatians.
That’s the time of catholicizing, of trying to bring various factions into a unity, not under Luke’s Acts version of Christianity but under a gnostic umbrella. Paul and the Twelve are all one happy family – no longer divided as per the earlier epistles.
Echoes of Colossians, Ephesians and 1 and 2 Corinthians
1 Corinthians is behind that phrase
Again – no longer strife by harmony is the message of the day.
Straight from 1 Corinthians – but it satisfies the curiosity the Corinthian claim made: why only the third heaven? Here the author answers that yes, Paul said he went to the third heaven, but he was too modest to reveal all….
All good catholicizing stuff, though not the catholicizing in the direction of Rome’s orthodoxy.
etc.
I am totally out of my depths here, but I will give some arguments for an earlier dating.
To use a Richard Carrier method (which I admit is questionable), I note we have 12 apostles in heaven and no allowance for Judas falling. Or was Judas the one being punished?
Why aren’t the 12 apostles on Earth alive if this was written post-gospel era? yes, I am being very literal!
But if this is a unifying text, then the background would be that Paul operated in the same space as the other apostles, but here he is visiting them in their retirement home?
Where in the Cosmos is Jesus in this text? We have a description of the old man that sounds remarkably similar to descriptions of Jesus in Revelations, but he is actually the Demiurge? But here, Paul is playing the role that Jesus plays in setting free the captives. It looks awfully like Paul is the Son of Man set aside from birth and Jesus is not in the picture at all. If the writer was aware of the Epistles, then he/she should be reluctant to write Jesus out and attribute this role to Paul.
If we have no Jesus, and we have deified Paul, I think we have a sect that is either a long way out on a limb in the late 2nd century, or we have something much earlier – a sect that had no reason to care about what other groups believe!
I’ve caught some bug so am a bit under the weather at the moment so hopefully I’m not too incoherent here.
As for there being no Jesus in the Apoc of Paul, I think given that the text we have finishes with Paul’s entry into the presence of the Ogdoad, we might expect to find an account of Jesus in what has now been lost. Irenaeus tells us that the Valentinians had a Ogdoad consisting of a Father, a Word, Life, Man, etc. They appear to have had the Jesus of the canonical texts divided into different entities. (Compare the various names Jesus gives himself in the Gospel of John.)
Paul is certainly exalted beyond the status of ordinary mortals but I don’t see any reason to think he has become ‘divinized’. Yes, he is to lead captives out of prison but that’s the message that comes from the prophets, and Paul is even in the canonical texts placed on the level of the prophets (Jeremiah and Isaiah especially), as well as presenting himself a a living exemplar of Jesus Christ himself, along with his sufferings. We see that in the canonical texts so I don’t think it’s a surprise to find a gnostic sect honouring Paul even more highly.
As for the Twelve seen in the heavens, can we be sure they are not also alive on earth just as Paul also is at the time of his vision and entry into heaven? Recall that Paul looks down and sees himself on earth still in his physical body. At one point he looks down and sees himself surrounded by the Twelve — I took that to be on earth.
And for the heavenly Jerusalem itself, we have that same concept in Galatians itself in chapter 4. It is distinct from the earthly Jerusalem of which Paul also speaks.
I also hear echoes of a gospel parable with witnesses coming along at different hours of the day to enter into judgment with God.
The old man in white — do you see the same image in the ancient of days in Daniel — the Demiurge in the text’s view.
In the canonical texts Paul shares the sufferings of Christ, “filling up what is left undone by Christ”, and fulfils many of the evangelizing prophecies as Jesus said also applied to him. I see this as all bona fide gnostic stuff and allowing for anyone who wants to retain loyalty to the Twelve to find a place with them as well.
Get better soon!
I am out of ideas! I must admit that Apoc. Paul is just a cherry pick data point for a gnostic Paul.
I am certainly not going out on a limb to argue for a gnostic James because the gnostics (if that term is really relevant still*) did the apocalypse makeover of him also!
*Yes – apparently gnosticism never existed!
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/17119
Not sure what term we should be using? dualism with a hint of mystery?
Thanks. As for gnosticism, it’s been a while since I’ve read much related to it (apart from a quick search to bring up the “Jesus” figure related in some way to the ogdoad) — Have you had a chance to read Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category by Michael Williams?
For what it’s worth and for anyone else who might be curious here is his conclusion (263-66):
Once Earl Doherty wrote on Vridar, in the context of questioning the pauline epistles, that usually the Christian forgers shows a “chicken brain” and an example in such sense is the Testimonium Flavianum: how could it (= the possession of a chicken brain), Doherty asked, be true also for the forgers of the entire Pauline corpus? The merit of Bruno Bauer, in my view, is to have proved, by the his violent attacks against the incompetence and ineptitude of the author of Galatians (when the latter betrayed again and again his being based on Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians), that even a pseudo-Paul could show a chicken brain, hence fitting even the Doherty’s challenge!
I am remembered about Doherty here, because the idea of a dual origin of Christianity was also advanced by him, by postulating the heavenly-type Christianity of Paul and Pillars working in the Diaspora and a different Q-based Christianity limited to Galilee and Southern Syria.
Doherty imagined that the celestial Jesus of the Diasporic movement was euhemerized by being fused with the news about the Jesus of Q.
Applying the same logic of Doherty to the scenario advanced by Steck, we would have an original Roman community who was seduced by a midrashical story about a Jesus appeared under Pilate, and the only difficulty for the historian is to imagine what was the Jesus adored by the Roman community before that this Roman Jesus was identified with the midrashical Jesus coming from Judea. Krivelev (Du sens des evangiles) thought that it was a celestial Jesus and I think that there are two possible ways to concretize this claim:
1) was he a celestial Jesus insofar he suffered in heaven?
2) was he a celestial Jesus insofar he was only a heavenly revealer, not even one connected with a suffering and death?
My intention at the present is the reading of some books devoted to prove that the point (2) is the right answer.
(excuse for the length of the my comment, but it is stronger than me!)
If a Roman Christianity emerges simultaneously but independently from one in Jerusalem, is it based on a Jewish Jesus? If so, why? Is it because there was an actual Jesus and he happened to be Jewish? If so, why would he be known and admired by a gentile following at the same time, and not after, being so known by a Jewish one? Is the Peter/Paul meeting and doctrinal dispute completely mythical? (It reads much like a myth, in my view.) The hypothesis says that each faction had to give something up, but what about the initial Jewish identity of Jesus? (Or of Christ/Chrestus/Krystos [sp])? If the Jewish identity of Jesus was an invention, by whom was it invented and when? (OK, we don’t know.) For what purpose? If the answer is found in Saul/Paul, how does this produce a purely gentile Roman Christianity at the outset? What does this hypothesis explain that is not better explained by a unitary origin? I’m not pushing for the unitary origin; I’m just asking.
While my ideas are in progress about what was the Roman Jesus before the fusion with the Jewish Jesus, I try to answer to your question, What does this hypothesis explain that is not better explained by a unitary origin?
It explains, inter alia:
1) the particular insistence by which ‘Paul’ insists on “Christ and him crucified”. As if before then the crucifixion was not a shared datum among the audience addressed by the pseudoPaul (who therefore tried hard to introduce the idea of a cross the first time).
2) the evidence collected by Arthur Droge in this superb article about various early Diasporic Christianities with a Jesus but without a crucified Jesus.
3) the opposition between a Jesus Son of (an unknown) Father who was not crucified (and survived in the polemic parody as ‘Jesus Bar-Abbas’) and a Jesus called Christ who was crucified as Christ or “king of the Jews”.
Steck’s dichotomy, as far as I understand it after just one reading so far, between a gentile and a Diaspora-Judean Christianity. I would think the Jesus figure (of any form of Christianity) had to be Jewish because the foundations of both gentile and diaspora Christianity was primarily the Jewish Scriptures (esp Isaiah). Is that not so?
That’s also a sticking point I have with what I understand of Steck’s conclusion. After having dismissed the likelihood that a successful missionary movement originating in Jerusalem could have been accomplished so soon in Rome, it appears that he then accepts the concept of just such a successful missionary effort. Steck seems to assume that pre-Christian groups in Rome read the “prophecies” of the OT as anticipatory of a coming saviour figure. I’m not so sure. That sounds too much like an anachronistic interpretation to me.
It is treated as historical by all commentators I have read so far — if only because they turn to accepting the historicity of Acts on this point. I find that to be problematic, too.
My initial ideas: There is the Gospel of Mark Jesus who was a personification of Israel — who as per the Son of Man in Daniel “embodied” the demise of the old and resurrection of the new Israel.
But that gospel Jesus came after a “Pauline-like” Jesus. The name Jesus may not have been there from the beginning but a suffering servant-logos kind of saviour figure was there as a development of the kinds of Second Temple interpretations being applied to the Jewish Scriptures in partnership with contemporary philosophical views.
Does not a unitary origin face the difficulty of the earliest evidence pointing to radical diversities from very early days? (Doherty’s “riotous diversity”.)
There might be another way of looking at the problem.
Supposing that our starting point is Judiasm across the Diaspora. All of these different Jewish communities have their particular Messiah traditions, beliefs and superstitions, and they cross-pollinate regularly. The basic primordial elements of Christianity are in place long before Christianity has made any attempt to extricate itself out of Judaism.
What may have happened first wasn’t the birth of Christianity, but the defining of Rabbinic Judaism in the late 1st century. As Rabbinic Judaism started to consolidate a more structured belief system back into the Diaspora communities, the beliefs that it rejected as superstitious and idolatrous would have been marginalised, or in other cases, the communities may have pushed back against the Rabbis and their ideologies.
Christianity would have then have been the ‘stone that the builders rejected’, the outcast and marginalised fringe of Diaspora Judaism (a theme the gospel writers took up). The birth of Rabbinic Judaism would facilitate the birth of another religion that was from the outset extremely diverse and without a central unifying core. Over the course of the 2nd century, these fringe groups would start to solidify a common identity and merge their traditions, then finally begin to define their own orthodoxy.
But that gospel Jesus came after a “Pauline-like” Jesus.
I would add that that gospel Jesus came as a form of aggression towards the “Pauline-like” Jesus. But I am sure that you will address this when you will post a Vridar blog titled:
What Others have Written About Galatians (and Christian Origins) – Louis-Gordon Rylands
The vast majority of Biblical Scholars are still trying (vainly, IMO) to find an “historical explanation” for the stories in the Bible, especially the “Christ Story”. Again, IMO, it is precisely this “historical assumption” that there are some “historical basis” for these stories which has lead them astray and away from what is IMO the “true origin” of the world’s ancient mythology.
While the stories of the kings and kingdoms (and the Exile and Return) probably have an historical core, IMO, the true origin of the mythological stories, Like the gods and goddesses themselves, lie “in the heavens”. The stories were intended to depict the observed changes in the celestial realms of the gods and goddesses. These stories began long before writing was invented and, because our ancestors observed changes in the heavens above, the stories had to be changed and retold to reflect those changes.
What we have now is the much misunderstood remnants of these once oral stories, which continue to perplex and mystify scholars and theologians.
Steck agrees with Bruno Bauer on two key points: (1) that Christianity owes as much to Romanized Hellenism as to Romanized Judaism; and (2) that the traces of Seneca, Philo, and Josephus in Christianity are unmistakable.
In my reading, Bruno Bauer’s main error was his conviction that 1st century Judaism had no burning expectation of a Messiah. Bauer lived too many decades before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran which prove conclusively that 1st century Judaism had an important undercurrent of Messianic Expectation (cf. the many YouTube videos on the topic by Dr. James Tabor).
Steck is also correct to recognize the role played in developing Christianity by the Books of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Apocalypse of Ezra, the Sibylline Oracles, and so on, that were accessible to writers like Paul.
Steck also seems to tally with William Davies (1945) that the diaspora synagogue in the Roman Empire was remarkably Hellenized, Greek speaking, and would debate Philo and Stoicism every Sabbath.
This is an old hobby horse of mine ever since I read William Scott Green’s chapter in Judaisms and Their Messiahs:https://vridar.org/2010/11/26/the-myth-of-a-general-messianic-expectation-in-jesus-time/
When I saw BB’s take I was immediately pleasantly surprised. The Dead Sea Scrolls have added no weight to the oft repeated claim that there was a group eagerly anticipating such a figure to arrive, I and others have argued.
Horsley’s Bandits, Prophets & Messiahs only confirmed the case against, clearly an outcome Horsley himself did not intend: https://vridar.org/2011/07/21/did-the-jews-before-christ-expect-a-national-messiah/
Historical comparisons with Judea further arguably support the case against: https://vridar.org/2016/03/27/historical-conditions-for-popular-messianism-christian-muslim-and-palestinian/
My most in depth posts addressing the evidence cited to support the view of a popular messianic expectation among Judeans prior to 66-70 CE was a series of mine addressing Richard Carrier’s claims. If I recall correctly I went into some detail on the claimed evidence from the DSS: https://vridar.org/2016/08/02/questioning-carrier-and-the-conventional-wisdom-on-messianic-expectations/
Other posts I have written since then addressing the question:
https://vridar.org/2017/02/03/myth-of-popular-messianic-expectations-at-the-time-of-jesus/
https://vridar.org/2018/12/04/messiahs-and-eschatology-in-second-temple-judaism/
https://vridar.org/2019/05/05/the-chosen-people-were-not-awaiting-the-messiah/
“What does this hypothesis explain that is not better explained by a unitary origin?
It explains, inter alia:
1) the particular insistence by which ‘Paul’ insists on “Christ and him crucified”. As if before then the crucifixion was not a shared datum among the audience addressed by the pseudoPaul (who therefore tried hard to introduce the idea of a cross the first time).”
So then, what is being posited here is that Paul’s gospel introduces crucifixion for the first time, that it is unknown to his audience. This, along with simultaneity of loci of origins, implies mythicality, for the double reason that it does not originate from a known historical cause, and from the fact that Paul’s knowledge of Christ comes from a revelation. However, it does not imply that Paul himself originated the group of “Christians” he addresses, so we are left to wonder what got them together in the first place. Simultaneity suggests something, unlike a person, that can be in two places at the same time: a saying, a text, a song, an oral tradition.
2) the evidence collected by Arthur Droge in this superb article about various early Diasporic Christianities with a Jesus but without a crucified Jesus.
I read this article, and it is interesting, but it does not address the issue of the illegality of Christianity prior to Constantine. It assumes that the only reason for the failure of artists to portray Christian crosses is that the crucifixion was unknown to them, or not considered important. It would be a stronger argument if it addressed the fact that such art would have likely been suppressed, and people could have suffered punishments for creating it. In any event, there would still have been Pauline doctrine, and then the argument would be applicable to some Christians, but perhaps not to others, if I’m understanding the point here.
“I would think the Jesus figure (of any form of Christianity) had to be Jewish because the foundations of both gentile and diaspora Christianity was primarily the Jewish Scriptures (esp Isaiah). Is that not so?”
Ah, that’s just it, that’s just the very question at issue. In that article cited above, it is claimed that these proto-Christian groups had no pre-existing text! It is the gospels which use Psalms, Isaiah, and other OT texts for tropes, and the gospels, as we know, are not the origin of the sects. Even Paul is not the origin of the sects, but it could be Paul who is the origin of the Jewishness of Jesus, if Paul’s doctrine of replacement of the law by the death-and-resurrection is an expression of his own transformation from Jewish Jesus-hater to gentile-ministering Christian. Was it not the case, also, that crucifixion was a punishment often used for rebellious Jews? Was it crucifixion that created the specifically Jewish Jesus, or was it a Jewish Saul, or did Jesus become Jewish only with Mark?
“Does not a unitary origin face the difficulty of the earliest evidence pointing to radical diversities from very early days? (Doherty’s “riotous diversity”.)”
Sure, but it looks to me like Jesus was a Jew before he was a gentile, at least in terms of the order of written documents, if these begin with Paul, then go to the synoptics, and then to anti-Jewish John and to the 2d C. fathers like Justin. The Gnostics don’t seem to pick up steam until the 2d C., although correct me if I’m wrong about that. If we’re looking for origins, we have to stay pretty close to Jerusalem and Rome, and whatever we can figure out from that. These ideas of simultaneity put us very clearly in a mythicist framework, and I think the mythicality reaches the Pillars as well, and that leaves you with Paul and whatever he’s reacting to. Words, words, words, but whose and what?
So then, what is being posited here is that Paul’s gospel introduces crucifixion for the first time, that it is unknown to his audience.
Not exactly. My scenario is the following:
Roman and/or Alexandrian communities: the object of the cult was a Jesus but not a crucified Jesus.
After the 70 CE, the earliest gospel was written by midrash from OT by a different (not-Roman, not-Alexandrian) Jewish sect.
Some people from the Roman and/or Alexandrian communities welcomed this first gospel: hence they had to persuade the rest of their communities (of Rome and Alexandria) in accepting the idea that Jesus was crucified: ‘Paul’ is fabricated.
Questions: why the sudden interest for a crucified Jesus by diasporic communities originally without a crucified Jesus?
Best answer: because the idea that Jesus was rescued from the cross in extremis was too much beautiful for people already thinking, à la Philo,
that the body must be thought akin to the souls that love the body, and that external good things must be exceedingly admired by them, and all the souls which have this kind of disposition depend on dead things, and, like persons who are crucified, are attached to corruptible matter till the day of their death. (On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile 17.61)
They would have seen the first separationist gospel as the allegory of the true Israel abandoning the body (“Egypt”) and the “cross” nailing it to the body, in order to reach the Promised Land as a new Joshua.
But mere allegory was not the goal of the fabricators of the first gospel. They wrote it only because they wanted to increase the centrality of a community (Jerusalem) over all the other (Roman and Alexandrian) communities. Hence the two functions of the fabricated ‘Paul’ were an acceptance function (‘crucifixion is OK for us’) and a defense function (‘the centrality of Jerusalem is NOT ok for us’).
@Clarke:
Thanks for the abundance of thought provokers. Are you familiar with the “new perspective on Paul” that has upset a few of more dogmatic of apologists? If not, the ideal place to start is with Dunn’s book of that title. I wonder if that perspective might help towards opening up alternative scenarios of origins.
I wonder about that effect (“upset a few of more dogmatic of apologists”) by the New Perspective on Paul and accordingly about your question (if it was addressed to me). This new trend seems to me at contrary an ideological move designed to build a kind of golem (“the Jewish Paul”) only in order to reassure about the authenticity of the epistles. In short, the same goal of Acts of the Apostles in a modern updated version: “Paul was a pious Jew therefore the Marcion’s school couldn’t have written under the false name of Paul”.
If I remember well, the best evidence that Paul (or at least one of the Pauls) was not a Jew is 1 Cor 11:4: Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head
It is not necessary to visit the Wailing Wall to remember that in the collective imagination the pious Jew is always represented with “his head covered”. Before a such passage, how can the various proponents of the new perspective on Paul be so much confident about what they are advancing?
I have seen no evidence of such a motive driving the “new perspective”. Have you? No doubt many biblical scholars are dedicated to understanding the background to their faith and to that extent they remain bound to the fundamentals of their faith, but we can read past all of that and focus exclusively on the arguments, their coherence and the evidence supporting them. That’s all that interests me. There is enough ad hominem out there, personal innuendo and blatant attacks and everything else. It was my protest against the moderator himself participating in that sort of thing that got me banned from the earlywritings forum. Leave aside thoughts of “ideological moves or motives” unless they can be demonstrated to invalidate the argument.
I’m not sure what your point is about the question of whether Paul was a Jew or not. The “new perspective’ makes no such claim, if that’s what you were thinking.
The case is rather simple:
1) Scholars are undecided about the origin of “gnosticism” (if it is of jewish or gentile origin).
2) “Gnostic” elements are found in Paul.
3) Therefore, the undecision about the Jewish or gentile origin has to be extended on Paul.
4) Therefore, we don”t know if the author (or authors) of the epistles was (were) of gentile or Jewish origin.
What the New Perspective does is simply the denial of the premise (2), which confutes my entire argument.
But the premise (2) is proved beyond any reasonable doubt here.
Therefore the New Perspective on Paul is very probably an apologetical trend.
Do you know what the “new perspective on Paul” is? I do not see any correlation between your comment and the new perspective. The new perspective is centred on the meaning of “righteousness of God” and has nothing to do with the question of gnosticism per se.
Are you sure?
In the words of N. T. Wright:
At a popular level, this mess and muddle shows up in a general sense that anything inward, anything to do with strong religious emotion, anything which downplays outward observance, must be striking a blow for the Pauline gospel of justification by faith. This is as worrying as it is absurd. All these movements are forms of dualism, where Paul believed in the goodness and God-givenness of creation, and in its eventual promised renewal. Together they reinforce that gnosticism which is a poison at the heart of much contemporary culture, including soi-disant Christian culture.
Oh my goodness, Giuseppe. I really thought you were miles better than that. Would you turn to read a webpage by Ehrman to find out what Carrier’s thesis about Jesus was? If you are going to take your knowledge of something you have not investigated for yourself from the polemic of opponents or decontextualized digressions against current emotional religiosity (and an apologist who has even argued for the historicity of the literal resurrection!), I fear you are posting at the level of a troll. This is not like you. I have been defending you against those sorts of accusations. Have I been mistaken?
I was originally attempting to reply to Clarke, by the way. I’ve tried to make that clearer with a late edit. Sorry for the confusion.
I thought N.T. Wright was known as the starter of the new perspective on Paul therefore I have quoted him. I may quote Psula Fredriksen who defined Marcion the guy who “de-ethnicized” Paul: if that is the general tenor, what need of further inquiries?
My point is that you will find NONE in this trend who assumes that the Paul’s epistles are from the second century. All their efforts are designed to fit Paul within the pre-70 period. The question is purely academic for me from that POV (I would return to the Carrier’s view etc) but I am interested in fitting Paul in the post-70 period now, and the new perspective is of no help about that.
E.P. Sanders was the pioneer of the “new perspective”, not N.T. Wright. The page you cited was from Wright’s attack on a certain religiosity of moderns! (Wright differs from Sanders and Dunn with his view of the NP, but what you quote is NOT at all his “view of the NP” but it’s opposite!)You evidently clearly jumped to very false conclusions about the NP and ran with them in the manner of an ignorant troll who hasn’t the faintest idea what he is talking about but who appears to want to come across as someone knowledgable just the same. I am very disappointed and have lost a lot of confidence in your contributions as a result.
I was also somewhat dismayed at another contribution of yours recently: In that comment you display all the faults of an apologist who is bitten by the bug of “confirmation bias”. I fear you have not taken anything I have tried to point out to you about your penchant for finding only data points that confirm your thesis and are too ready to simply dismiss anything contradictory — as your false dismissal of the NP abundantly demonstrates.
I would hope that your enthusiasm could be directed towards weighing evidence pro and con — as honestly as possible with awareness of and allowance for your bias, and not working like an apologist to always prove your theory.
My “cognitive dissonance” derives from the wonder that Neil (who has expressed his agreement on the epistles being all from the second century) can be interested to the New Perspective on Paul, notoriously designed to fitting Paul before the 70.
That’t it, Giuseppe. You are on moderation from now on. The NP by its definition cannot possibly contain such a chronological requirement. When you actually decide to learn what the NP is before repeating nonsense about it I may look more favourably on your contributions. As long as you are content to repeat false assumptions alternating with ignorant assertions like the one above, all the while remaining ignorant of the NP from their proponents pov you are a mere troll. The NP could apply to any decade in the history of Judaism through to today and has no restriction whatever on necessarily being formulated in any particular century — as would be clear if you bothered to actually check to see what the NP is under all its current variants.
Neil, thanks for the recommendation. It’s on my list! According to Giuseppe’s theory, when do the letters of Paul appear?
@Clarke,
In the second century. I have changed bluntly the my view just I have heard about a recent academic book by N. Livesey against the authenticity of all the pauline epistles (and their fabrication by the Marcion’s school). It occurred only a news of the kind to make me change drastically opinion (!), since what was missing to previous cases by Detering et al. was only a some form of academic imprimatur. Hence my enthusiasm!
Admitting both that I have not read his argument and that I have my own theory about when and why ther authentic Pauline letters were written, my gut instinct is to ask why such authors would not have had “Paul” refer to teachings from Mrcion’s gospel (which a later proto-orthodox redactor could have modified rather than discarding) in order to support “Paul”‘s teachings.
No; I am fully convinced that regardless of what else they may have wrong, Mainstream Biblical Scholarship and Doherty and Price are right about the Pauline letters predating the gospels.
ABuddhist, you can’t count Robert M. Price among your list of scholars who think that the epistles precede the gospels. Since Bob Price has made it clear (in the his book on Paul) that Marcion (meant here as one of the fabricators of the epistles) was based on a story about Simon Magus or on a story about a Jesus under Janneus (and yet precursor to the our gospels with Pilate etc).
Hence the conditio sine qua non for placing the epistles in the second century is that thd knowledge of a proto-gospel (with an earthly even if docetical Jesus) is a necessary requisite.
I apologize for the confusion in my posting; I meant to write, “No; I am fully convinced that regardless of what else they may have wrong, Mainstream Biblical Scholarship and Doherty and Carrier are right about the Pauline letters predating the gospels.” I got Price and Carrier (as 2 qualified scholars who have written about Jesus from a mythicist perspective) confused yesterday.
The fault was mine – I was exhausted by a long Sunday of working in order to compensate for my weekend of not working during Asalahapuja Day and Khaophansa Day.
I have cut off Giuseppe’s contributions to this blog. It is with regret, since I have for some years engaged with him trusting that a sincerity is to be tapped beneath his enthusiasm. He is bitten by the same intellectual fallacies as apologists and conspiracy theorists. He has shown no hint of willingness to even consider the logical fallacies I have attempted to point out to him, but when he refuses to even find out what a particular approach to Paul is and remains content to rely on his gut prejudice and decontextualized polemics, I can no longer consider him a serious interlocutor.
Although I personally disagree with your decision, I thank you for explaining to the public why the ban occurred; furthermore, I am aware that a blog, unlike a public forum, is generally understood to have stricter criteria for who can be banned and why.
Relatedly, although I also am to a degree guided by my gut instinct when considering religion (as I noted to Giuseppe), it is by challenging this gut instinct that I bacame a Buddhist and developed my more nuanced understanding of Christian origins. To the first person to introduce me to the claim that Jesus was a myth, I reacted with incredulity and cited Josephus – but I now know that for centuries people have alleged that the main reference to Jesus in Josephus was an interpolation, and cases have been made that the lesser reference is also an interpolation (of only 2 words!).
I hope that if this or other comments by me at this blog cause you to consider banning me, Neil, I can at least be given a warning.
The questions you raise take me back to Earl Doherty who was never rebutted but, as with Bruno Bauer, was hounded out of the landscape — in particular his chapter on the Church Fathers who never find a reason to mention the name of Jesus in their apologies. And like Droge, I am “astonished” at what passes for themes of “Christian art” in Snyder’s volume. (My first response here.)
It was Steck’s 1888 notion that there was a gentile Christianity in Rome distinct from a Judean one that reminded me of the “new perspective of Paul” from a century later. We do see mystical and philosophical forms of “Christianity” (Odes of Solomon, Athenagoras) appearing separately from any of the canonical tropes.
Dare one wonder if the mass crucifixions of the Judeans 66-73 bringing about the end of the traditional form of the “Mosaic cult” became the gateway to uniting the gentile and Judean forms? Am I permitted to wonder Paul’s letters originated from the tropes that we first see in the Gospel of Mark?
>The questions you raise take me back to Earl Doherty who was never rebutted but, as with Bruno Bauer, was hounded out of the landscape — in particular his chapter on the Church Fathers who never find a reason to mention the name of Jesus in their apologies.
I have long thought that regardless of what 1 thinks about Doherty’s other conclusions, his presentation of such sources in such abundance reveals that the standard narrative about Christianity in its earliest times is not accurate. I remember asking for refutations to Doherty’s claims about that, and GakuseiDon claimed to have refuted Doherty’s claims about those sources in a refutation which Doherty had already responded to.
I have some personal thoughts about this and other matters (pertaining to Christian origins) which I hope to email to you soon, if you do not mind.
Earl Doherty’s response to “GakuseiDon” is still avaiable at https://web.archive.org/web/20120313083223/http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesGDon.htm
Several times I felt incensed enough to try to point out where GDon (otherwise known as Don Harper) would twist and misrepresent Doherty and seem to be playing some sort of “gotcha” game over details they had ripped from context. I could never figure out if people like Don Harper were genuinely of limited intelligence and comprehension ability or just too keen by half to find fault or were playing some other game I could not fathom. I suppose what irked me most was the way such critics would go out of their way to present an honest and cordial face to Doherty and others while stabbing him in the back. Earl Doherty (like René Salm) suffered enormous online abuse for their efforts and that was when it became clear that much of biblical studies today is ultimately still little more than an apologist enterprise.
Bruno Bauer might have expected the rejection he suffered because of his open taunting of the standards of the academic establishment. But Doherty and Salm never responded like that.
(No need to ask me about emailing. Anyone can email me — that’s why I have my contact details on this blog. I may not always reply promptly, though I will try.)
Good to see Rudolf Steck went out to read the book he was told opinions about. And again an older book that acknowledges there was this trend of saviour gods when Christianity developed. What frustrates me about this whole enterprise is that the people who are paid to be experts in this field so often seem to fail to know their own field. It’s one thing when I don’t read someone’s paper on X, it’s another when I’d actually be paid and trusted to give an expert opinion on the matter.
Maybe part of the problem is the massive amount of writings, I remember Hector Avalos criticizing his fellow scholars for producing much that barely if any advances the field in his ‘The End of Biblical Studies’. I forgot the name of the scholar who had a similar complaint, and pointed out that ‘The Case Against Q’ (as an example) should not have needed to be longer than a paragraph or two, if it wasn’t for the state of the field. We’ve learned over the last few decades that Biblical scholars a tendency to build whole castles on unquestioned foundations, and they’ll expand the kitchen by a smidge every year, without wondering what is upholding the walls. There’s just too much to read for scholars to be in touch, even if most of it doesn’t end up really contributing. That’s… not good.
But Erin Roberts pointed out in her dissertation ‘Anger, Emotion, and Desire in the Gospel of Matthew’ (haven’t finished it yet but it’s been interesting so far) that Biblical Studies was the only one in the humanities who barely if ever did collaborations with other fields. So even if scholars read more within their field, they’d still miss out on what and how other fields are doing.
Perhaps we should acknowledge the narrow specialisations and break up the field, or simply listen to Avalos and actually make it a field of history, so scholars will have to study history and check with relevant experts for a change.
This article reminds me to consciously pick up some European or other non-American authors to read, I think part of my frustration with the pace of the field is because on the internet nowadays there’s the tendency to recommend all the American authors, and they also mostly cite other Americans, and that’s just not the full width of what is done.
(I’m reading these backwards, might have more to say on an earlier post)
Interesting, but not at all surprising, that biblical studies rarely did interdisciplinary work with other departments. I have been somewhat bemused when on occasion (one, two?) there was a big song and dance made about a joint conference or seminar between biblical studies and history departments. I really wished I had been a fly on the wall to see what really happened there, and what exchanges happened with respect to methods. One biblical scholar has announced that biblical studies are a pioneering field in broader historical studies but I have never seen those (bib studies) methods taken up in any (non-bib) historical study.
I hope that my reposting this comment about the only use of the crierion of embarrassment outside Biblical studies which I have been able to locate is appropriate here.
The Criterion of Embarrassment is used when studying Buddhists’ scriptures to some extent.
In the writings of the scholar of Buddhism Jan Nattier, specifically her book about Mahayana Buddhism “A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)” [University of Hawaii Press; New edition (May 31 2005)], Nattier uses the term “principle of embarrassment” and refers to the term as “commonly used in New Testament studies” on page 65. She claims that she was introduced to the term by David Brakke. Nattier describes the “principle of embarrassment” as useful for three categories of things in Buddhist studies.
1. For assessing the reactions of non-Mahayana Buddhists to the claims made in Mahayana Buddhist scriptures. Thus, Nattier takes the admission in the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines that many Buddhists asserted that the Perfection of Wisdom literature was not authentic Buddhist Scripture and the claim in the Lotus Sutra that some Buddhists stood up and walked away when the Lotus Sutra’s teaching was first preached as reflecting genuine skeptical reactions by Buddhists to Mahayana Buddhist scriptures.
2. For assessing the accuracy of a story in the Mahavagga section of the Vinaya in which some Buddhist monks argue with each other so severely that they strike each other and refuse to accept Shakyamuni Buddha’s offer to mediate. Nattier accepts this story as evidence that during Shakyamuni Buddha’s lifetime, there were disputes and fights within his following of mendicants.
3. For assessing the accuracy of a tradition in Vinaya I.101-102 in which Shakyamuni Buddha’s followers are criticized by lay people for not assembling on full and new moon days in order to preach to the lay people. Shakyamuni Buddha is portrayed as convoking such an assembly when invited to by King Bimbisara, but in the first such meeting the Buddhist mendicants only sat around resembling livestock. In response to further criticism by lay people, Shakyamuni Buddha implemented biweekly recitation of monastic rules and preaching to lay people. Nattier accepts that this story reflects an incident or series of incidents in which Buddhist monastics adjusted to public norms because of public pressure. Nattier even says (at p. 66), “Such a story – in which Buddhist monks are described as falling short of social expectations – would hardly have been viewed as flattering to the Buddhist community, but was presumably too widely known to be denied.”
From what you have described here it appears that such a method (a criterion of authenticity) is used to support the historicity of certain traditions/narratives in a study that can be considered comparable to the study of early Christianity. The method surfaces when there is no independent evidence to confirm a tradition and, I would suggest, is likely subject to the same criticism of circularity that must surely apply to it at any time it is used in the absence of supporting independent sources.
Well, for what it is worth, we have multiple attestations, by Mahayana Buddhists and non-Mahayana Buddhists alike from Tibet, China, and Sri Lanka (from different centuries), that Mahayana Buddhists’ scriptures were regularly accused of not being authentic Buddhist scriptures by non-Mahayana Buddhists – so I have no problem accepting that the admission in the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines that many Buddhists asserted that the Perfection of Wisdom literature was not authentic Buddhist Scripture and the claim in the Lotus Sutra that some Buddhists stood up and walked away when the Lotus Sutra’s teaching was first preached reflect genuine skeptical reactions by Buddhists to Mahayana Buddhist scriptures.
Neil, in this interview (appeared only some hours before)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYOExybDiOA
I see that the Jewishness of Paul is put in discussion. I am a prophet, then (I have seen the video only this morning). You are free to read the proponents of the New Perspective on Paul but you can’t harmonize their conclusions with a scenario where Paul is placed in the second century.
Your slapdash impatient approach is again on display with a false link. A fitting finale — I consider this your final post on this blog until you can demonstrate some serious fact-checking before posting again. Slapdash assumptions about what others are saying and being too impatient to bother checking before posting yourself are signs of a troll.
Giuseppe has sent me the correct link to the video that I have now fixed in the above comment. Here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYOExybDiOA
In my dismay at some false conclusions drawn by G. about the NP, and still under the weather of semi-delerium with a bug, I made some nonsense comments in response to G that I have subsequently, under restorative medication, have hastened to correct. Unfortunately — my difficulty remains: a commenter who makes unsupported assertions that the New Perspective on Paul is incompatible with a dating of Paul in any era, BC, 1st CE or 2nd CE or 3rd CE or any other BCE or CE slot, and digs in on such a claim “supported” only by decontextualized quotes and broken links and in the total absence of any sign of knowledge of what the NP is about has nothing to contribute here.
Something that I think is relevant to all this is the continual problem I am seeing everywhere concerning the nature of the Apostles and who they are with respect to Paul, James and Cephas.
The idea that there are 12 apostles, or sometimes just ‘the 12’ is everywhere, but if Paul it the earliest reference to these apostles, then he never counts them for us to confirm there are in fact 12.
Surely the 12 thing is a symbolic feature, and in other texts the 12 are not named but seem to have mythological purpose.
When we do have references to the ‘twelve’, it is often in a manner that excludes Cephas, James and Paul as being part of this group.
In the 1:15 Corinthians example, Cephas has the first appearance followed by the ‘twelve’ (who are not named as apostles). By verse 7 Jesus appears to James, then to all the apostles.
—
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
—
It may be that verse 7 is a sloppy insertion, but it is difficult to untangle the mess here. I note we start with a creed and end up with Paul adding himself in. But did Cephas always precede the ‘twelve’? (not actually called apostles) If this was part of the original creed then it certainly exalted Cephas as the first of the ‘twelve’, but if I read the translation here very literally, Cephas is not explicitly made out to be part of the twelve, even if the text here can still allow for this. It would seem more natural as an english writer to say ‘… he appeared to Cephas, then to the remainder of the twelve’.
With apostles coming and going, the whole idea of there being twelve is always going to be dubious.
So did the concept of there being 12 apostles precede the identification of these apostles with the names we know of?
Into the mess, I would suggest considering also the Yeshu legend, where the 12 apostles are named but with names we are not familiar with, and Paul and Cephas feature in the epilogue several generations later.
I toy with the idea that originally the 12 apostles were meant to be 12 patriarchs, and sitting around in heaven.
Is there an easier way through this mess?
You may be interested in the arguments of two scholars who set forth their case for the historicity of The Twelve:
https://vridar.org/2009/05/25/manufacturing-evidence-for-the-historicity-of-12-apostles/
and
https://vridar.org/2010/11/30/the-twelve-disciples-new-insights-from-emeritus-professor-maurice-casey/
For those interested in what the Jesus Seminar scholars concluded about the Twelve, here is Robert Funk’s summary of their findings:
Funk, Robert Walter and The Jesus Seminar. The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1998. pp 71f
Thanks,
The second link provided is certain proof that you know how to deploy sarcasm 🙂
Certainly some support for a mythological nameless 12 preceding the names we know of, but it does seem to raise issues for an early dating of 1 Corinthians. If the first ‘apostle’ to claim to have had a vision of a risen Jesus gave birth to a cult that gave us the Jesus traditions in the 1st century (or even allowing a historical Jesus movement). Then 1 Corinthians written not long after should be able to name every such apostle on one hand you would think?
It would be strange that after a mere 20 years, they would have a vague creed about a special 12 who were the first such recipients of this vision, but were nameless. Unless, the 12 are part of a mythology set in a distant past, and hence the gospel story set further back in time. (Which of course is impossible if Cephas was the first recipient according to the creed – which I suspect is corrupted)
Surely the Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians is distant in time from these initial 12? Of course, the line about some of the 500 being still alive would completely contradict this, (later interpolation? R Carrier says so, but does not explain why)
But the Paul who wrote Galatians met these 12 in Jerusalem (by revelation – yeah won’t go back down that rabbit hole – been there!).
I am convinced there is an argument here that Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians is not the same Paul who wrote Galatians, as I do not see a way to reconcile them (without going back down the rabbit hole!)