On the Road
On the Road's JournalSorry to Miss Your Meaning --
I agree "I am not lying" sounds like special pleading. The fact that Paul uses the same phrase in three different letters sounds to me like he was responding to a particular accusation that was circulating. Robert Eisenman thinks this is related to the Qumran document mentioning the Teacher of Righteousness, the Wicked Priest, and the "Lying Spouter, who denies the law in the midst of the whole congregation." Note: The Qumram documents are usually dated earlier, but there are good reasons to doubt the traditional dating (eg, Norman Golb, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?"
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This question is so weird IMO because it looks like Paul may have been mythologizing an actual person, but pretty much just appropriating the name and applying it to his own heavenly character. What persuades me that Jesus was historical is that James is universally discussed in the early material as a physical relative, and the desopnysi that Domitian interrogated were seen as physical relatives of Jesus. I realize it is possible that 'brother' is not used literally, but the scholars on Crosstalk2 insist that Paul would have used a word other than adelphos if that's what he meant, and few of them have a religious ax to grind.
This is what I am starting to think happened: Jesus depicted himself as the King of the Jews, either trying to incite a revolt or hoping for divine intervention. He did what revolutionaries at the time did -- stir up support in the countryside and then reveal himself when the whole country was at a fever pitch in Jerusalem. The Romans and ruling Jews had good reason to suspect him of sedition. His death was not planned.
The earliest belief about the resurrection was that it was a spiritual resurrection from the cross -- Jesus ascended spiritually into heaven, and nothing special happened to his body. Although we do not know the details, James was famous for his "ascents" into the heavens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascents_of_James). Putting the two together, it is inevitable that James would report that he saw his brother in heaven, perhaps sitting at God's right hand -- this is the original heavenly Jesus. Some of this material was shared orally with subgroups of messianic Jews who met in the synagogues around the Mediterranean.
Paul picked up on this heavenly Jesus and appropriated his popularity for his own purposes, not caring about the real Jesus' beliefs. While Peter and some others accepted him at first, his denial of circumcision and Jewish law caused James to eventually banish him from the synagogues.
In the second century, Marcion issued the first New Testament consisting of ten letters of Paul and a version of Luke. Marcion argued that Paul was a gnostic and was the only correct interpreter of Jesus' teaching. The most incindiary belief of gnosticism was the claim that the god of the Old Testament was not Jesus' father but a jealous local tribal god. That got people's attention.
Marcion was eventually excommunicated, and part of the backlash against him was a reemphasis on literal truth rather than the allegories and heavenly truths of gnosticism. During the mid-2nd C, Irenaeus added three more Gospels and some other letters. Material that did not fit doctrine was changed, and in some case new sayings or stories were introduced or altered to fit orthodoxy. (Eg, at Jesus' baptism, the Arian "today I have begotten you" became "with you I am well pleased", as Bart Ehrman argues). Which is a big reason for the mass confusion in this area.
Strangely enough, while I agree Paul was dishonest, his version of Christianity was the most positive and uplifting as opposed to the ascetic legalism of James or the severity of the orthodox fathers. Arguably, more of the highest religious ideals of Western civilization can be traced to Paul than to anyone else.
We Don't Know of Paul Being Thrown Out of the Temple Itself
although he was arrested there later in his life. The ejection was from synagogues in other cities, largely in Syria and Turkey. From 2 Corintians 11:
5 I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles....
--snip with too much context for thread
24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones....
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+11&version=NIV
The 'super-apostle' reference indicates that his enemy was also considered a follower of Jesus. This strongly suggests James, since he is depicted (eg, Acts 15) as having some kind of presiding authority over the movement and (Galatians 1) sent representatives to ensure that Jews (including Paul and Peter) were following the ritual law.
There are a lot veiled references to the Paul-James dispute in the NT. For example: "One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables." (Rom 14:2). This is very likely a swipe by Paul at James, who later Church fathers describe as having been a vegetarian. The letter of James says "Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren?" This is pretty clearly a reference to Paul's doctrine of salvation by faith alone. (Note: James is often considered pseudonymous, but given the context and timeline it seems unlikely to me.)
Paul pretty much ignored the historical Jesus and preferred to speak about Jesus as a heavenly figure. This is due to Paul's gnosticism or gnostic tendencies, but also probably to the inconvenience of Jesus' actual relatives being his enemies.
"I am not lying" appears four times in the epistles, making it appear to be a general defense against being repeatedly called a liar. It is hard to see Paul defending Jesus' physical existence to the Galatians, since the context is a dispute with Jesus' physical brother.
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Name: Jack NeefusGender: Male
Hometown: Newark, NJ
Home country: US
Current location: Baltimore, MD
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 20,783
