Another Response to David, Part 7: The Anatomy of Legend and the Ruse of Revelation

I continue now with my final installment in my response to David’s lengthy 16 Aug. comment to my blog In Response to David on I Corinthians 15:3-8.


David wrote:

Are all these ancient historians spewing legend material uncritically?

I certainly would not advocate accepting the New Testament’s stories at face value, nor would I rush to the judgment that their authors were “historians” per se. We need to ask: what informed and guided their worldview, their religious presuppositions or academic criteria for historical accuracy? I see plenty of evidence for the former and basically zero evidence for the latter. Apologists often point to the author of Luke-Acts to secure the claim that the New Testament’s stories have the high caliber credentials of a superb historian. But scholars are far from unanimous on the value of Luke-Acts as actual history.

Verdicts on Acts have ranged from dismissing it as a bundle of legends to accepting it as a history whose trustworthiness is unsurpassed. Today conservative commentators still suppose, as does Dunn ([The Acts of the Apostles], pp. xi, 335), that it may well have been written by a companion of Paul. But a few theologians – John Bowden, for instance – are prepared to set it aside as “ideology, party history” ([Appendix to his English translation of G. Ludemann, The Unholy in Holy Scripture], p. 151. Others say that because it shows accurate knowledge of Roman administration it must be accepted as a well-informed account by a meticulous historian. But there is no reason why Luke should not have known a great deal about the Roman Empire, whatever is true of his story. In this connection, Barrett, who by no means wishes to suggest that Luke created his story out of nothing, observes that he himself has read “many detective stories in which legal and police procedures were described with careful accuracy, but in the service of a completely fictitious plot” ([“The Historicity of Acts,” Journal of Theological Studies], p. 525). (Wells, Can We Trust the New Testament?, pp. 111-112)

I find myself in agreement with Wells when he points out that “the profusion of miracles throughout Acts is something that does not inspire confidence” that we are reading genuine history (Ibid., p. 97). He gives as examples:

the Spirit providing transport for missionaries (8:39), angels ordering them about (8:26) and releasing on one occasion the apostles (5:19) and on another Peter (12:7-10) from the securest of prisons. Such stories of prisoners being supernaturally released were popular in the literature of the time. The apostles themselves work miracles ceaselessly. The Jews have their own magicians but they are always worsted when up against Peter or Paul (8:9-24; 13:6-11). Already by Chapter 2 the apostles have performed “many signs and wonders” (2:43); and in Chapter 5 “the multitude from the cities round Jerusalem” – there were no ‘cities’ round it: Luke had a poor grasp of Palestinian geography – bring sick folk, “and they were healed every one” (5:16). They thought they might be cured if only Peter’s shadow fell upon them (5:15), just as, later, contact with Paul’s handkerchief in fact suffices to make sufferers well (19:12). When Peter raises Tabitha from the dead (9:36-41), the obvious parallel with what both Elijah and Elisha had done (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:18-37) betrays that Luke’s intention here was to show that the apostles were in no way inferior to the prophets. But the more general overall purpose of the miracle stories is to demonstrate that the growth of the early church was God-driven. (Ibid.)

So if the author of Luke-Acts was a historian, I suppose Agatha Christie was also. At any rate, I’ve seen no good reason from Christians to suppose that the NT authors were not indulging themselves in the development of legends, and with the content and a track record like those which we see in the gospels and the book of Acts, it’s pretty easy to see why.

David wrote:

External sources seem to be the biggest problem for the legend theory.

Actually, as Wells, Doherty, Freke & Gandy, Price, etc., all show, external sources confirm the theory quite elegantly. They just don’t constrain their understanding of those sources according to a supernatural bias. Also, see my Early Non-Christian Testimony.

David wrote:

Do you really intend to reject every piece of evidence simply because it came later and “could have” been embellished?

If the context suggests that a feature or element is the result of embellishment, then I see no reason why I should not identify it as such. For instance, in Matthew, at Jesus’ death on the cross, you have an earthquake, saints rising out of their graves, the rent in the temple cloth, etc., details which no other writer, either in the NT or in the non-Christian record of the time, corroborates. All these things strike me as embellishments intended to make the event all the more impressive and dramatic. I see every reason to suppose these are inventions by the author and no reason to suppose they are historical.

There are many examples, too numerous to cull together here, which give little reason for confidence that we’re reading history in the gospels. For instance, in discussing two passages in Mark – 7:31-36 and 8:22-26 – Wells points out:

In both these pericopes Jesus uses spittle in the process of effecting the cure. All races of antiquity attached magical healing significance to spittle (see the discussion in Hull 1974, pp. 76-78), and this crudity, well-known from pagan parallels and embarrassing to commentators, may explain why Matthew and Luke omitted these two Markan stories. (The Jesus Myth, p. 149)

Are these healing stories really “history”? Why should we accept them as genuine history? It’s no use to try to recreate these conditions using saliva from anyone today, because apologists will say that mere mortal spit does not have the magical properties of an incarnated deity’s spit. So we’re stuck with accepting Mark on his say so in a matter which is simply incredible and obviously fantastic.

In many parts of the gospels, Jesus instructs story characters who are made to witness his acts or identify him as the messiah, to tell no one. Did they all quite coincidentally violate his instruction and go and tell someone who was writing Jesus’ biography about this? In Jesus’ hesitation prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read the prayer Jesus supposedly uttered in private. Who was there to record this if Jesus was praying in private? Who was there to witness Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness? The stories are chock full of constructed sequences which are obviously not historical.

David wrote:

The cumulative case is rather devastating; indeed, not even Christian apologists explaining away apparent Bible contradictions have attempted the maneuvers of proponents of the extreme legend theory.

Christian apologists ultimately rest their appeal to supernaturalism; they have to, because that is what the biblical record does. Paul appeals to supernatural revelation. The gospels appeal to miracles. The later apologists appeal to supernatural agencies. Those who see the telltale signs of legend-building need not make appeal to such fantasies.

David wrote:

Douglas J. Moo (The Letter of James,pg 13) points out that ‘…physical ties to Jesus became important only after the time of James’ death.’

I replied:

David, this statement right here undermines the view that "brother of the Lord" indicates a sibling relationship.

David responded:

Absolutely not, because I clearly said that I reject the position that Paul is honoring James with the phrase.

You can reject the view that Paul is honoring James with a title all you like. This only makes Moo's point all the more problematic though, since your position is that "brother of the Lord" is a reference indicating a sibling relationship. You want to interpret Paul as referring to James as a sibling of Jesus while he was yet alive (and writing when he was yet alive, according to Christian tradition), and yet here's Moo proclaiming that “physical ties to Jesus became important only after the time of James’ death.”

David wrote:

Why is any scholar that disagrees with your position a ‘Christian apologist’?

I don’t believe I have affirmed or practiced such a rule.

I wrote:

Actually we can say more than this. There are clear signs of tampering of common sources throughout the synoptics to taylor them to the specific preferences of the writer. It’s clear that Matthew and Luke were drawing upon Mark’s model, for they follow the same general course. But between Matthew and Luke, who (as many scholars – you like those – have pointed out) were both also drawing on a non-Markan source (referred to in the literature as Q), show differences in rendering the same sayings attributed to Jesus.

David responded:

I think a lot of the alleged ‘tampering’ is simply each author demonstrating a purpose and an intended audience.

I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. However, a study of the four gospels’ respective treatment of the passion sequences and their aftermath would reveal something other than merely differing purposes or different intended audiences. Rather, we would see that the basic story found in Mark (the earliest gospel) undergoes various transformations as it is developed, reworked and, yes, embellished. One consequence of all this is the jumble of contradictions which apologists have for centuries tried either to cover up or to explain away, both tasks being rather hopeless. For starters, take a look at Dan Barker’s Leave No Stone Unturned. The evangelists’ willingness to revise the story to suit their own individual purposes, indicates that what we’re looking at here is not history, but theologically laden legends.

I had cited two passages, one from Matthew and the other from Luke, which demonstrated how one or the other or both authors adapted a saying which both attribute to Jesus in different ways:

Mt. 7:11: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

Lk. 11:13: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"

I then commented:

Notice how Luke pushes the promise further into the imaginative realm of the supernatural. Where on Matthew’s version, the reader believing the promise could reasonably expect tangible goodies in response to asking the "Father" for them, Luke preempts such expectation by altering the text to say "the Holy Spirit" instead of simply "good things," which is, even on the Christian view, a broader generality. There are many similar examples of such loose handling of source material in the gospels. Clearly these folks were *creating* narratives, not *recording* history.

David responded:

Some manuscripts for Luke 11:13 read πνευμα αγαθον, or ‘the good spirit’.

Yes, I’ve heard this before. But this does not alter my point. Luke still moves what Matthew has away from a material interpretation. Matthew’s “good things” is far more open-ended. The author of Luke, very likely drawing from the same or closely similar source, probably saw this as imprudent (since promises about material goods can be tested, and are therefore an opportunity for failure), and recast it in a manner which precludes a material interpretation, thus denying a chance for failure. And we’re still left wondering: Which, if either statement, did Jesus really say?

David continued:

There is the issue of the authors placement of this narrative within the theme he is developing for his audience: ‘The Lukan parallel in 11:9-13 comes in a context where prayer is the issue. The point is fundamentally the same, but Luke narrows the focus. Rather than speaking of good gifts, he notes that the Holy Spirit is given. Since the Spirit is the consummate gift of God and also is a source of enablement and wisdom, the different is not that great.’ (Darrell Bock, Jesus according to Scripture, pg 146 sect. 63)

This reads like a bald-faced attempt at spin. No matter how apologists try to explain it, there is still a difference here, and it is in fact a significant difference. That “Luke narrows the focus” only concedes that the author is reworking the material, and thus not recording history but is inserting his own theological interpretation at this point. Since “good things” is much broader and more inclusive than “the Holy Spirit,” which is exactingly specific, there’s a great difference between the two. If one knew only the Matthean passage, he could certainly be forgiven for taking it to be a promise for material values (e.g., new sandals, medicine, wine, a bigger house, clothing for the children, winning the lottery, etc.). But Luke would rebuke such an interpretation, saying “No, no, no... Those kinds of things aren’t what’s being promised here. Something much different, residing in the spiritual realm, is what Jesus is offering you. Sure, you can ask for new garments, better food, disease cures, a restored spine, wealth, etc., but you need to be satisfied with the Holy Spirit instead.” Indeed, Luke’s upgrade of the saying moves the reward of supplication into the realm of the imaginary (anyone can imagine that some supernatural spirit has moved into his soul), and you can’t blame the guy: in such a realm, there are no failures.

David then wrote:

Also, this is arguably usage of a common figure of speech called synecdoche. (see Blomberg, The Historic Reliability of the Gospels, pg 165)

Perhaps I’m just dense (though I’ve studied a lot of poetry in my day), but I fail to see how anyone would take Matthew’s “good things” as a synecdoche for “the Holy Spirit.” In her standard Poetry Handbook, B. Deutsch defines ‘synecdoche’ as “the naming of a part to mean the whole” (p. 88). What we have in the case of Matthew, however, goes the opposite direction: rather than naming some part which belongs to the whole of “the Holy Spirit,” Matthew supplies a vastly broader term, which (if one values it) could be argued to include “the Holy Spirit,” but certainly much, much more than this. Similarly, it is hard to see how “the Holy Spirit” could plausibly serve as a synecdoche for “good things,” because of reasons given. If it is, as the apologist wagers, an instance of synecdoche, then again we’re left wondering what Jesus really said, for at least one author has revised an earlier source.

David wrote:

One need not conclude that the Gospel authors were inventing their entire stories simply because they tried to speak to their audiences.

That the authors “tried to speak to their audiences” is not the essential indicator of invention or reworking a text, so this statement misses the point. When it comes to sayings in the gospels taken from Q (which Mt. 7:11 and Lk. 11:13 appear to be), I don’t think the gospel writers were so much inventing as they were adapting a source to inform their respective portraits of Jesus. However, this vies against the notion that the gospel writers were recounting eyewitness accounts or chronicling history. Did Jesus say “good things” (Mt. 7:11) or “the Holy Spirit” (Lk. 11:13)? Did Jesus say anything at all? Given the shoddy evidence and the contaminated documents, I’m prone to suppose not.

I wrote:

If a variety of religions which preceded Christianity incorporated worship practices that involved, for instance, the consumption of bread and wine as symbols for the flesh and blood of a resurrected deity.

David asked:

Has someone provided an example of this?

I responded:

Yes, see for instance Freke and Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, Robert Price's many articles and several books on the matter, Wells, Doherty, and numerous other sources. I certainly don’t have time to spoonfeed you here. But here’s a little taste, from Price’s review of NT Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (which I have, but have not fully read):

There are three fundamental, vitiating errors running like fault lines through the unstable continent of this book. The first is a complete unwillingness to engage a number of specific questions or bodies of evidence that threaten to shatter Wright’s over-optimistically orthodox assessment of the evidence. The most striking of these blustering evasions has to do with the dying-and-rising redeemer cults that permeated the environment of early Christianity and had for many, many centuries. Ezekiel 8:14 bemoans the ancient Jerusalemite women’s lamentation for Tammuz, derived from the Dumuzi cult of ancient Mesopotamia. Ugaritic texts make it plain that Baal’s death and resurrection and subsequent enthronement at the side of his Father El went back centuries before Christianity and were widespread in Israel. Pyramid texts tell us that Osiris’ devotees expected to share in his resurrection. Marduk, too, rose from the dead. And then there is the Phrygian Attis, the Syrian Adonis. The harmonistic efforts of Bruce Metzger, Edwin Yamauchi, Ron Sider, Jonathan Z. Smith and others have been completely futile, utterly failing either to deconstruct the dying-and–rising god mytheme (as Smith vainly tries to do) or to claim that the Mysteries borrowed their resurrected savior myths and rituals from Christianity. If that were so, why on earth did early apologists admit that the pagan versions were earlier, invented as counterfeits before the fact by Satan? Such myths and rites were well known to Jews and Galileans, not to mention Ephesians, Corinthians, etc., for many centuries. But all this Wright merely brushes off, as if it has long been discredited. He merely refers us to other books. It is all part of his bluff: “Oh, no one takes that seriously anymore! Really, it’s so passé!”

David retorted:

The quote you provided does not address my question.

The quote in fact does provide a brief summary in response to your question, and the other sources which I gave in response to your question go further in depth on the matter. As I said, I am not going to spoonfeed you here.

David continued:

Honestly I can stand Doherty but Price (in his debates) uses so much rhetorical bluster that I rarely want to sit and read him.

Price is a delight to read. He turns what can easily become dry reading into something both informative as well as entertaining. Also, his polemic style is fairly mild compared to (and much more mature than) some of the caustic vitriol I’ve seen many internet apologists produce.

I wrote:

Okay, so long as it’s understood that borrowing from pre-Christian religious models was taking place in the molding of the Christian product. There were many sources, including various Jewish sectarian sources, the Wisdom literature, mystery religions, etc.

David insisted:

If you wish to assert borrowing from the mystery religions, go for it but give me an argument, not just assertions from Price.

I don’t see any need to provide my own arguments for this. Price’s work on this topic is sufficient in my view. I see no reason to reinvent the wheel here.

I wrote:

The evidence is clearly the opposite as you have it, but by deeming the mystery cults as "irrelevant to [your] analysis" as you have, you cut yourself off from a vast area of knowledge and source of evidence. I suspect there’s an apologetic reason why you have chosen to do this.

David responded:

The evidence has yet to be presented.

Notice the bald assertion from ignorance here. Or, if it’s not ignorance, it’s simply blatant denial, this after just noting Price’s work on the issue.

David continued:

I see no reason to accept mystery cult allegations on the grounds that we have no historical evidence of it.

There’s no historical evidence of the Osiris cult, the Dionysos cult, Mithraism, the Eleusinian mysteries, etc.? Here you put yourself in the dubious position of having to prove a negative. Do you think scholars invented these cults in modern times in order to view Christianity as “the great surviving mystery religion” (Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle, p. 115)?

David continued:

There is plenty of explanatory power within Judaism for Christian practices, why need I go seek explanations in places where evidence doesn’t exist?

I agree that there is “plenty of explanatory power within Judaism for Christian practices,” but this is incomplete. Paul drew from the OT (instead of from alleged knowledge of a historical Jesus), but also from the Wisdom literature as well (some of which is apocryphal). But there’s no question that Hellenistic culture also had its share of influence on Paul as well.

I wrote:

Now David, I did pose some questions on how revelation is supposed to work, but I do not see that you’ve addressed them. Instead, you seem to prefer trifling over a passing reference to James as “the brother of the Lord,” which seems to be a very small matter in comparison to the claim to have received a revelation from a deity.

David responded:

As I recall you asked two questions: 1. How does Paul know he has received information from a supernatural source? 2. How do we know that Paul has received information from a supernatural source?

Yes, these are the kinds of questions I was hoping to pursue with you. Paul himself does not seem to address any of them. Going by the content of the bible, we're supposed to just take his word for this. But most people wouldn't do this in the case of anyone else. Why does Paul enjoy this privilege with believers?

David continued:

Doug Geivett delivered an excellent paper at the same Greer-Heard conference that I referenced earlier (Dom Crossan vs NT Wright) on the “Espistemology of Resurrection Belief.” He also has a blog and is very responsive and polite, so I won’t hesitate to refer you to him for a thoroughly more educated opinion. His blog here.

Does Geivett get to speak for Paul? If so, why? What special knowledge of Paul’s mental situation does Geivett have that is not available to the rest of us? How would Geivett know how Paul knew that he received a revelation from a supernatural source? I haven't read Geivett’s paper so I don't know if he addresses my questions or not. And nothing you provide here suggests that he does, other than that you recommend it in response to my questions. Is his paper available online, or if not can you recap any of his relevant points? I'm just curious, when someone like the apostle Paul claims to have received knowledge by revelation, how this works, and why we should take Paul's word for it. For apparently that’s all we have to go on – Paul’s say so. In his writings, Paul certainly does not provide any objective evidence to have acquired knowledge supernaturally. Nor does he explain how knowledge can be acquired by revelation, how one knows that what he is experiencing is revelation (if revelation is something experienced in the first place), or how one distinguishes between what he calls knowledge by revelation and what he may merely be imagining. None of this is addressed in the bible from what I can tell; indeed, it seems that the authors who have contributed to both testaments seem oblivious to these concerns from the very get go. If you believe I am wrong, then I invite you to show me where any biblical author addresses these questions and provides inputs which relevantly settle them.

Now again, I have not read Geivett’s essay, but his own description of what occupies him in it does not give me much confidence that he in fact takes on the kinds of questions I have posed. In a response to a critic of his essay, Geivett recaps its purpose as follows:

I argue in my essay that N. T. Wright, a Christian theist, aims for methodological neutrality in his historical analysis of the evidence for and against a literal bodily resurrection of Jesus in the first century; in contrast, Dom Crossan’s methodology is inherently naturalistic.

If this is an indication of what Geivett seeks to establish in his essay “The Epistemology of Resurrection Belief,” I can only wonder what it has to do with explaining how Paul could know that he had received information from a supernatural source or how we can know that Paul actually received knowledge from a supernatural source.

David wrote:

1. As you’ve already pointed out, you will likely believe a personal experience or account if it comports with your expectations for that situation. I think you may have gone further and said you only believe reports that comport with the laws of nature, but a minor difference given the frequency of miracles.

What I accept as truthful is more involved than what you describe here. Briefly I will say that a claim, at minimum, needs to adhere to or at least be compatible with the primacy of existence principle; there must be some objective input from reality to inform it; it cannot contradict previously validated knowledge, etc. Certainly I would not accept as truth any statement which contradicts, either directly or indirectly, the primacy of existence principle. Conformity with the primacy of existence principle is a minimum requirement for accepting any ideational content as true. If a claim fails on this point, I know that it cannot be true.

David wrote:

2. If someone has an experience, and finds no reason to believe things aren’t as they perceived, then they have good grounds for believing their experience to be authentic.

This is rather vague. At any rate, in any instance of experience, there is perception of an object(s), which is non-volitional, and there is – if one pursues what he has perceived – also the identification of the object(s) he has perceived. This latter activity is volitional in that we can choose to identify what we have perceived or ignore it, and if we choose to identify what we have perceived, the process by which we do this involves selective focus (the proper method is called integration by essentials). This is not an infallible process; we can and sometimes do make mistakes. When someone tells me that he has had an experience in which he has encountered a supernatural being, I tend to wonder what perceptual inputs (if any) were involved and what process he used to identify what he experienced as being supernatural. I also wonder what epistemological safeguards he may have in place (again, if any) which secure his claims from contamination by imagination, particularly because – after studying the issue myself for nearly 20 years – I find it pretty much impossible to distinguish supernaturalism from the playland of imagination. It is on questions such as this that theists tend to be most careful about covering their tracks, or outright evading.

In the case of Paul, who claims that the risen Christ appeared to him, he gives us nothing to go on in investigating these details. Did he see something? Going by what he says in I Cor. 15, it seems that he did see something, but he does not specify this. I’ve known Christians personally who claimed that Jesus appeared to them, and yet they did not claim to have seen anything that they called Jesus, but rather seemed to be imagining Jesus as an invisible, ethereal or immaterial being in their immediate vicinity. So whether or not Paul saw something or thought he saw something is not exactly clear. But let’s suppose for argument’s sake that he did see something. Well, what exactly did he see? He says it was the risen Christ. Well, how does one know what the risen Christ looks like? Is it possible that he saw something completely mundane but mistook it or misidentified it as something supernatural? Of course, Christians want to rule out such possibilities, but it’s hard to see how one could reasonably do so. Christians apparently want Paul to be infallible where the rest of us are clearly fallible. So how did Paul identify what he saw as the risen Christ? He does not say; he gives no indication of how he made such an identification. We’re expected simply to take his word for it. We are apparently obliged to grant Paul wide allowances on these matters which we would not consider giving to a man on trial for murder who claims that a werewolf appeared between him and the murder victim just long enough to do the gruesome deed and vanish in a puff of smoke. Why is Paul an eyewitness of the risen Christ, but the man on trial making such a plea is not likewise an eyewitness? After all, he was there, was he not? The evidence puts him there, that’s why he’s on trial. How could we prove his story is false? We wouldn’t want to be presuppositionally biased against the existence of werewolves, would we?

So people claiming to have seen a resurrected human being, may very well have perceived something, but how they identify what they perceived as a resurrected human being is something that is not explained in the earliest testimony. The gospels were added into the record later in order to put credible eyewitnesses into the story, but these are clearly concocted stories, bearing the hallmark of fiction throughout, and not rationally credible whatsoever.

David wrote:

3. Reporting such an experience to others would follow similar criteria; namely, they would deem such testimony valid given they had no reason to believe the person was crazy, dishonest, or mistaken.

In the case of someone writing 2000 years ago, how can we gauge whether or not that individual was crazy, dishonest, or mistaken except by reference to what he has written? If the content of what he wrote contradicts basic fundamentals (such as the primacy of existence principle), why wouldn’t we suppose that something about him was amiss in some way, be it that he was crazy, dishonest, mistaken, or simply constructing a story which was intended to have allegorical significance rather than historical value?

The policy which involves assessing a person's claims as automatically trustworthy if we have "no reason to believe the person was crazy, dishonest, or mistaken," strikes me as nothing more than a recipe for indiscriminate credulity. But if someone told me that he saw a resurrected man, why wouldn't I think he's at least mistaken, if not dishonest or deluded? Paul does not claim to have the kind of experience which the gospels give to some of Jesus' immediate followers. In fact, Paul gives no indication that he knows about the kind of experience that the gospels report in their post-resurrection appearance scenes. He gives no indication that Jesus had a following of disciples during his earthly life, or that his post-resurrection appearances to Peter and the other apostles were in the flesh and on the day of his resurrection, as the gospels depict it. The loose ends here are simply too reckless to take seriously as historical, and given their underlying commitment to the primacy of consciousness, such accounts cannot be true, for the primacy of consciousness defies the very concept of truth.

David wrote:

Conclusion: A person claiming to have experienced something miraculous is generally not going to convince me; especially if I haven't had personal experiences or reports from other, or most certainly not if I presuppose the impossibility of said events (which I do not). I do think in combination with other types of revelation (such as the Old Testament for those Paul was writing to, remember how much he liked to argue using it?) and with examination: experiences and testimonies lend support to warranted belief. At minimum such things may press a person to further explore something.

So a single claim by itself is not sufficient to convince you, but multiple claims to the same effect are? Apparently in your view, simply repeating claim (even if it's arbitrary?) will vouchsafe its credibility, is that right? It appears that your view of the world lacks a fundamental understanding pertaining to the proper orientation of the subject-object relationship. I have discussed this matter elsewhere on my blog, so I won't repeat myself here. But this deficiency on the part of your worldview is evident due to your willingness to take the notion of the supernatural seriously. Cultures around the world today, some of them untouched by the influence of Christianity, do in fact take superstitions and stories of supernatural beings and phenomena seriously, and, like Christians today and in the past, find ways of making these beliefs compatible with their everyday experience. The common denominator to the willingness to entertain supernaturalism is the acceptance, typically unbeknownst to the believer, of the primacy of consciousness view of reality. Without the primacy of existence principle as one's ultimate criterion in evaluating truth claims, a thinker, no matter how careful otherwise, is susceptible to falling prey to an irrational worldview. This is because, on the most fundamental issue in philosophy - namely the orientation of the subject-object relationship - an individual who grants validity to the primacy of consciousness, even implicitly, has conceded the foundation of his understanding of reality and of man to the hazards of subjectivism.

You allude to different "types of revelation," which sparks my curiosity. How many types of revelation are there, what distinguishes them, and how do they work? You then appear to be saying that a combination of different "types of revelation" with "examination" will lead to a warranted belief. I wonder why examination would be needed for someone who has received a revelation from a divine source. What could this add to the revelation? Isn't a revelation supposed to be accepted as a self-sufficient transmission of knowledge on its own merits qua revelation? If the content of a revelation could be verified by examination, why would it need to be revealed? And what would keep someone from calling a fantasy which has no objective correspondence to reality a "revelation" from a divine source? For instance, what would keep me from claiming that it has been revealed to me by a divine source, that Mesus sits at the right hand of Yeah-Way in the supernatural Jingdom of Bleaven in triumph over Matan, the chief representative of uvil in the universe? For nay-sayers to disparage this truth as incoherent in some way, would only expose them for not having received the revelation. Indeed, I know of 762 other people who also received the same revelation. So with 763 witnesses to these truths, how could anyone dispute this?

When Paul says that the risen Jesus appeared to 500 brethren, and gives no details about time, place or circumstances, or even gives no specifics on what exactly these 500 people allegedly saw or experienced, how does one "further explore" this claim? It seems to come to an immediate dead end. Paul does not even name any of these people, so they're completely anonymous. What alternative does Paul give even his contemporary readers to having to simply take his word for it? What I find fascinating is that Paul apparently claimed to have had a personal visit by the risen Jesus, but he mentions it only once in all his letters, and then only in passing, giving no details to what actually may have transpired. For all that he gives us, he may have been sleeping when this happened. We only have his say so on the matter, and he does not describe his experience, which therefore means we have nothing to examine. He gives us no content to investigate or "further explore." But somehow you still conclude that Paul was telling the truth when he claims to have received knowledge via revelation. How do you determine this?

I wrote:

Also, I do have another question, which I've asked other Christians, but for which I have not received any satisfying responses. My question is this: Why doesn't Jesus just appear before all of us, as he allegedly did before Paul on the road to Damascus (according to Acts anyway), and settle all these conflicts which have raged for 2000 years? I asked a Christian this question once, and his response was "Jesus wants us to have faith" (which only confirms the disjunction between faith and reason). To which I asked another question in response: Are you then saying that Paul, the most prolific writer of the NT, did not have faith?

David responded:

If you're heading where I think you are, I don't want to get into the problem of evil this weekend, maybe another time. :)

No, that's not what I had in mind. I'm simply wondering, as I asked, why Jesus doesn't just appear to everyone in some profoundly compelling way, such as he is alleged to have done for Paul on the road to Damascus. This is not the problem of evil. It is what I call The Problem of Saul. Jesus is supposed to be God in Christianity, and God according to Christianity is said not to be a respecter of persons. Moreover, before Jesus' appearance to him, Paul (then Saul) was supposed to be a vicious persecutor of the church, far more formidable than some internet blogger like me. So if Jesus is no respecter of persons, why doesn't he just appear before me and everyone else? It would settle things quite quickly, and it would probably go a long way in averting heresies, apostasy, rogue cultish spin-offs, etc.

Now, perhaps you are like the late D. James Kennedy, who apparently did not believe in an omnipotent Jesus. Without explanation, Kennedy asserted in passing that “Christ cannot appear personally to all of the billions and billions of people that have lived on the earth since” the time of Paul.” But if Jesus is supernatural, "controls whatsoever comes to pass" (Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, p. 160), and is not constrained by the laws of nature or the contingent facts of the universe, why suppose that he couldn't appear before everyone? He can know everyone's thoughts, can he not? And in his divine nature, he's omnipresent, is he not? What would prevent Jesus from appearing to anyone or everyone if he wanted to? D. James Kennedy?

In conclusion, we see that the objections and counterpoints which David has raised have already been anticipated in the critical literature, and are easily answered with a little digging. A fringe benefit to that digging is the discovery of more and more problems for the literalist Christian interpretation of the New Testament’s stories. That what we have in the New Testament is a wellspring of legends and tall tales, is undeniable. Try as they may, Christian apologists, driven by their desire to protect a fantasy, will struggle in vain to validate their religious beliefs. Sadly, futility is their only reward.

by Dawson Bethrick

Another Response to David, Part 6: Signs of the Legends

In this post, I continue my long-awaited response to David's comments in response to my 29 July post In Response to David on I Corinthians 15:3-8.

I wrote:

Yes, you adhere to supernaturalism on the one hand (which defies explanation), and yet demand more and more and more explanation when it comes to hypotheses involving embellishment, fabrication, misunderstandings that beget further misunderstandings, manipulation of sources (such as OT "prophecies" of Jesus), etc., all couched in a worldview which condemns human beings as depraved liars. Got it.

David responded:

Not even close Dawson, and I’m surprised you would hurl such insults if you are really laboring in love as you claim. It only makes the discussion less productive.

Why consider my statement above insulting? You do adhere to supernaturalism, do you not? The bible is full of supernaturalism, so because of your confession as a Christian, I assume you do adhere to supernaturalism. And so far I've not seen how supernaturalism can be explained (to explain it would be to defuse it) or how supernaturalism can be accepted as a rational explanation to anything. Suppose someone tried to explain the growth of green plants because some supernatural being makes them do so. How is that a reasonable explanation? I've written amply on the issue of supernaturalism (see for instance here), and have concluded that proponents of supernaturalism consistently fail to explain how someone like myself can distinguish between what they call "the supernatural" and what they may merely be imagining.

Also, it is the Christian worldview, not mine, which views man as contaminated with some malady or force called "sin," something we are said to be born with or into, something that is part of our nature whether we like it or not. There's no use denying this aspect of our existence, Christians say, for it is traced back to the fall of Adam, the first man, according to the Genesis myth which got the whole thing started. It's never been clear how one "inherits" sin from Adam, or how one man's guilt can be hereditary. But then again, supernaturalism defies explanation, and we're just supposed to believe that this curse is passed on from generation to generation, without exception. In Rom. 3:12 Paul declares "there is none that doeth good, no, not one." To be true, this statement would have to include Paul himself. This statement was preceded by the declaration, in 3:4, "Let God be true, but every man a liar," which I've always thought a very puzzling statement, for it seems to put this decision, that "God [is] true" and "every man a liar" in the hands of the believer. That makes sense on my analysis of Christianity as ultimately being rooted in imagination. But Christians want to believe all this is true. But if it's true, that men are inherently depraved and involuntarily prone to lying, why should I trust what any Christian says? It's completely self-undercutting, even coming from the bible, because it was written by men, and, as men, they are involuntarily prone to lying according to their own worldview.

And here I am, I have offered a non-supernaturalistic explanation of the data which we find in the New Testament, and it's rejected because a few inconsequential things here and there are left "unexplained." But if being able to explain everything comprehensively were the guiding criterion for qualifying an account as reasonable, then surely we ought not accept the Christian account of the New Testament.

David had written:

3. Your interpretation provides little explanatory power, since if 'brother of the Lord' simply means James was a Christian, this is nothing unique and honorific at all.

I responded:

Did you read what I had written? Paul clearly thought that James was a "pillar" of the church at the time (I referred you to Gal. 2:9). He was not just another convert in Paul's view.

Now David writes:

This doesn't at all lend credence to your argument about the meaning of the phrase in Galatians 1.

Why isn't Paul's reference to James as one of the pillars of the church allowed to inform the context of his reference to James as "the brother of the Lord"? The word 'Lord', as I have shown, is a title, not a name. The impression I get from Paul is that James was an elder in the church with some elite claim to authority. If Paul had meant that James was a sibling of Jesus, why didn't he say "a brother of Jesus" instead of "a brother of the Lord"? All the data points to a title being used of James rather than a biological relationship which most likely wouldn't have mattered to Paul anyway, given his abhorrence for the flesh.

David continued:

Paul could say James was purple in chapter 2, but why assume that has any bearing on the meaning of a phrase in chapter 1?

I don't think Paul calling James purple in chapter 2 would be at all comparable to what we actually have. In chapter 1, Paul mentions, in passing and without further explanation, what appears to be a title for James, since he uses the word 'adelphos' (which Robert has shown can have a wide variety of meanings) in relation to "the Lord," which for Paul is the post-resurrection Jesus. As Robert pointed out in a comment, if Paul meant to specify a biological relationship between James and Jesus, he would have been better off using kasignêtoio instead of adelphos. Also, it is unlikely that he would have meant to denote this kind of relationship in reference to "the Lord," for reasons stated. Furthermore, that Paul clearly refers to James as a central figure in the Jerusalem church, so the implication here is sufficiently strong that Paul could only mean some positional status by virtue of his place as one of the "pillars." Meanwhile, I've seen no good reason why this reference would suggest a biological relationship. The only rationale I’ve seen for this involves an appeal to the gospels, but I’ve already addressed why this is at best shaky, and persistence in taking this course in the matter requires one to ignore the enormous context weighing against the authenticity of the gospels.

I wrote:

Specifically what evidence "points to the historicity of the Gospels"? What exactly do you mean by this? What evidence is there that a deity incarnated itself, was born as a human being to a virgin mother, performed miracles and cured congenital blindness, rebuked demons and devils, raised dead people back to life, and was himself raised back to life after being crucified? We have stories, and stories can be made up. Tell me what evidence supports these stories?

David responded:

It seems like you have only supernatural events in mind for the historicity of the Gospels. There are voluminous works out there on the historical Jesus from all spectrums of the issue which give evidence for this. Need I summarize them all here?

No, you needn’t summarize these works, because they aren’t what I’m asking for. Volume after volume of text is not what I’m asking for. I’ve seen enough “argument” for these things. When I ask for evidence which “points to the historicity of the Gospels,” I’m asking for something more substantial and more solid than just some apologetics book. There are books out there which argue for the reality of near-death experiences, astrological influences, ESP, sorcery, Mormonism, Scientology, etc. Defenseless readers are taken in by this stuff all the time, because the authors make it seem like these things are all true. Authors of these kinds of texts play on the reader’s imagination and rely on specious reasoning, and that’s how they hook them in. Josh McDowell, Bill Craig, NT Wright and yes, even Geisler and Turek, are all good examples of this. It gets even more perverse with the presuppositionalists.

All Christians have for validating the gospel narratives are the storybooks themselves, and sources which variously date later but are taken as confirmation of these storybooks. But in the end, stories are all they have, stories which become “real” in the believer’s imagination, because he envisages the characters and events which they depict. They are, in essence, the precursors to today’s cartoons.

I wrote:

As for the legend theory, I’ve already pointed to things which Paul says that conflicts with the later record, such as his view of rulers.

David responded:

I already asked how Paul’s general description of rulers is relevant to a specific description in the Gospels.

I gave as an example the view which Paul gives in Rom. 13:3 that

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

This is something Paul is saying within the lifetime of those who have supposedly been taught that Jesus was put to the cross under Pilate at the urgency of the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem. As such, Pilate would strike Paul’s readers – had they known the passion stories of the gospels – as an obvious and blatant counterexample to the general assessment that Paul gives here. But Pilate is no isolated case in the gospels and book of Acts. Recall in Matthew, we have Herod the Great, alleged to be responsible for the slaughter of innocents upon hearing of the birth of a new king (see Mt. ch. 2). There is also the story of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, who as ruler of Galilee had John the Baptist beheaded at the request of his daughter, according to the NT that is (see Mt. ch. 14). Then of course there was Pontius Pilate, who sanctioned Jesus' execution by the cross. Then later, according to Acts, James the son of Zebedee was killed by Herod Agrippa (see Acts. 12:1-2). With all these murderous exploits taking place by rulers and governors, why would Paul issue a generality like the one he gives in Rom. 13:3, when the gospels and Acts portrays some very vicious rulers and governors?

Now, if Paul had no knowledge of these things, and in fact had known differently about rulers and governors, thinking they were fair, then Paul's proclamation about rulers and governors might make sense. But why wouldn't he know about these things? Is it possible that Paul was just uninformed? But how could that be the case, given his travels and humanitarian ventures? It seems difficult to believe that Paul would have been so ignorant of the behavior of rulers and governors which not only impacted the lives of believers, but also helped to propel the very events of the narratives which we find in the gospels and book of Acts. Besides, Paul was supposedly “divinely inspired,” having his knowledge by result of it being revealed to him from a supernatural source. This would seem to make ignorance of these evil rulers all the more unlikely. And if Paul were so divinely inspired, wouldn’t he have at least some inkling of the state-sanctioned persecution to come? Surely Christians would not suppose that Paul’s generality could apply to Nero, Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Diocletian, etc. Clearly many rulers and governors of Paul’s time (even of the Roman state itself) were not fair, as he describes them, nor were many to come. At best, Paul’s statement seems wildly naïve. We can reasonably ask: What rulers and governors did Paul have in mind here? Paul himself does not tell us, which is not surprising.

But Paul’s statement that rulers and governors is only one of numerous points of discrepancy between what we read in his letters as opposed to what we read in the gospels and the book of Acts.

In I Cor. 5:9-11, Paul writes:

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.

Did Paul know of the gospel Jesus, who kept company with adulterers, harlots, publicans, and other vicious types?

For Paul, spiritual maturity clearly involves doing away with “childish things.” Famously, he tells us (I Cor. 13:11):

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things

In I Cor. 14:20, Paul writes further:

Brethren [believers might mistakenly think he’s speaking to Jesus’ biological siblings here], be not children in understanding... in understanding be men.

But according to the gospels, Jesus taught oppositely, requiring that one become as a little child in order to receive the kingdom of heaven. In Mt. 18:3, for instance, Jesus is made to say

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And in Mark 10:15, Jesus is made to say:

Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

Other quotes suggesting a similar sentiment can be found in the gospels. But the question is: if Paul were divinely inspired in his writings by the same Jesus as the gospels depict, would he say things that directly conflict with what the gospels record Jesus as saying?

For Jesus, salvation (the kind that grants entry into heaven anyway) is available if one should “keep the commandments” (cf. Mt. 19:16-19). But Paul would have none of this, as this is a soteriology of works. For Paul, salvation is through faith:

If thou confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

The two do not seem to agree even on a matter so important to the believer as the formula for salvation! Jesus is clear in affirming the view that salvation comes as a result of obedience, while Paul is clear in affirming that it comes as a result of confession and belief that Jesus rose from the dead, a component which is not at all present in Jesus’ salvific recipe. But if Paul knew that Jesus had taught that obedience to the Torah was necessary for salvation, would Paul ignore this and give his own formula? Or do we have two different traditions being represented here, combined into the same Testament and jointly affirmed by the institution known as the church? One thing, however, that both formulas share is the element of personal voluntary determination: one can choose to obey commandments just as he can choose to confess Jesus is Lord (though I would not argue that beliefs are comparably governable by choices; for instance, I cannot choose to believe that werewolves exist). This is a major difficulty for Calvinism and similar subcults which focus on the involuntary recipes for salvation, such as the need to be rebirthed (cf. John 3:5-8 et al.). Steven B. Matthies, in his Christian Salvation? supplies a telling survey of the different views of salvation found in the New Testament.

When it comes to the resurrection appearances, the view which gospels give us differs significantly from what we find in Paul, and even amongst themselves the gospels have some major points of discrepancy. Wells summarizes these problems as follows:

As, then, appearances of the resurrected Lord were of importance in the early church in establishing apostolic authenticity, it is at first surprising that those recorded in the gospels correlate poorly with those posited by Paul. The canonical gospels know nothing of an appearance to James, or to five hundred. And although Cephas as, according to Paul, the first to see the risen one, Peter plays but a very minor part in the gospel resurrection stories... In Matthew and John, appearances to women (unmentioned by Paul) are given pride of place. This suggests that the gospels were written at a time when establishing one’s apostolic authority by reference to appearances had ceased to be important. Mark, whose Christology led him to represent Jesus as dying deserted by his disciples, introduced women instead of them as witnesses of the crucifixion and burial, and naturally represented these women as going to the tomb on Easter morning, where they receive the resurrection news from an angel in the empty sepulcher [also unmentioned by Paul]. Matthew initiated a tradition of actual appearances of the risen one to these women by supplementing Mark’s story... It is also noteworthy that, while Paul has nothing to say of the locality where the appearances occurred, later Christian documents which are explicit on this matter contradict each other. Matthew locates the appearances to the disciples exclusively in Galilee, whereas Luke confines them to Jerusalem, seventy miles away. Such major discrepancies concerning a matter of the greatest importance to early Christianity suggests that stories of the appearances are legends. Initially Christians would simply have believed that Christ was risen; later, various stories about his appearances entered the tradition as attempts to substantiate this claim... That Christ rose from the dead does not of itself give him any share in God’s sovereignty. To achieve this he must be exalted to heaven, to sit at God’s right hand. Resurrection, then, and exaltation or heavenly session are not identical, although it was natural for the earliest Christians to assume that the latter the former immediately. Paul does not suggest any discontinuity when he writes of “Christ Jesus... who was raised from the dead and is at the right hand of God” (Rom. 8:34). And in Phil. 2:8-9 the sequence of events is said to be: Jesus dies and God exalts him to heaven. In Paul’s view, the post-resurrection appearances were made from heaven... The evangelists, however, writing a generation later, were anxious to establish the reality of the resurrection by making the risen one return – even if only for a few hours – to the company of disciples who had known him before his death. It was natural to represent him as doing this before his exaltation, and so the possibility was given of terminating his resurrection appearances with a distinct act of ascension. This possibility was not taken up by Mark and Matthew, but fully exploited by Luke. (In the appendix to Mark the ascension is stated in phrases clearly drawn from Luke.) In Luke and Acts the physical reality of Jesus’ post-resurrection body is brought out by making him eat and drink with his disciples (Acts 10:41) as he had done before his death. Paul would surely have rejected as blasphemous any claim to have eaten and drunk with the exalted one, and his claim that this person had appeared to him is intelligible, as we have seen, as religious experience. Luke’s story of the risen Jesus consuming broiled fish (Lk. 24:41-3) represents later apologetic, relevant to a situation where Christians were replying to Jewish and Gentile incredulity with a narrative which established the physical reality of his resurrection. (The Historical Evidence For Jesus, pp. 44-45)

So as the story was retold, the legend grew. For Paul, Jesus was crucified and resurrected and immediately joined God in “heavenly session.” For the later writers concocting narratives intended concretize the growing story, they began to insert a second earthly sojourn between resurrection and exaltation, something Paul knows nothing about. And since this was not enough to combat non-Christian incredulity, Luke has his Jesus actually eating food. It’s quite a fish story, but we’re not done yet.

The profound discrepancy between Paul’s epistles and later canonical tradition is carried into Acts, which is written by the same hand that wrote the gospel of Luke, and which is supposed to document the travels of Paul on his missionary journeys to places like Ephesus and Corinth. Before going to Corinth, Paul went to Athens, and according to Acts he gave his famous public square speech (speeches are a big thing in Acts, and make for interesting study). A comparison of the speech that Acts puts into Paul’s mouth with what Paul writes in his letters is quite revealing. Wells summarizes:

That Paul preached effectively in Athens and won followers (as Acts alleges) before leaving for Corinth (17:34-18:1) – there is no suggestion that he was driven out – is incompatible with Paul’s own statement (1 Cor. 2:3) that he reached Corinth in “fear and trembling,” obviously after a very rough time in Athens. If he ever did speak as Acts represents him, then he indeed went a long way to accommodate his Christian views to pagans – so far as to eliminate the redemptive significance of the cross, which he stresses at every turn in his letters.

Luke knows nothing of Paul’s idea of the efficacy of the crucifixion. For him, this event was a miscarriage of justice, a sin of the Jews, in that they perpetrated it when they should have known from their scriptures that Jesus was their Messiah.

Apologists have tried to argue that at Athens Paul modified his real views, in accordance with his declared principle (1 Cor. 9:10) of becoming like a Jew to win Jews and like a Gentile to win Gentiles. But the context shows that what he had in mind when he wrote this was observation of the Jewish religious law (which in his view is in any case unnecessary to salvation). In Jewish company he is prepared to be bound, for instance, by Jewish food laws, but in pagan company he feels free to abandon them. What he does not mean is that he is a hypocrite who will change his theology so as to win converts. In Galatians he insists that, as far as the theological substance of his preaching is concerned he will make no compromise: “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8; cf. the whole of Gal. 2).

Apologists who reconcile Romans with Acts by making Paul modulate his theology thus pay a heavy price for the consistency thus achieved. But if, in fact, the author of Acts knew nothing of Paul’s epistles and little of their theology, then the address to the Athenians becomes quite intelligible. Luke lived in a world where the Christian mission had turned from Jews to Gentiles, and so he naturally wished to show that Christianity is acceptable from Gentile premises. To this end he makes Paul say that pagan religious ideas need by slight recasting to become Christian, that Greek lore allows of Christian interpretation. (The Historical Evidence For Jesus, p. 162)

A major issue which Acts tries desperately to smooth over is the relationship between Paul and the Jerusalem council. This involved not only whether or not Paul subordinated himself to the Jerusalem leadership, but also the issue of whether or not Gentile Christians were supposed to adhere to aspects of the Mosaic law, specifically circumcision. According to Paul, he did not subordinate himself to the Jerusalem church. In fact, he seems quite defiant of them (cf. Gal. 2:6). Paul saw himself as the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13), but he did not view this as an assignment from the Jerusalem; on the contrary, according to his own report the Jerusalem church accepted this as Paul's role (Gal. 2:7-9), but were not responsible for commissioning it to him.

The picture in Acts is significantly different. Acts has Paul subordinating himself to the Jerusalem church at every turn. Acts 15:23-29 recounts a letter written by the Jerusalem church to Paul and Barnabas who were in Antioch. This letter included instructions on what Paul and Barnabas should be including in the content of their missionary teaching and preaching. Among those instructions are the following injunctions (Acts 15:29):

that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.

These are requirements that Paul and Barnabas are instructed to impose on Gentile converts. And Acts portrays Paul and Barnabas happily going along with these instructions:

Acts 16:4

And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

Paul himself, however, gives us a completely different account of this episode in Gal. 2:10, where he says of the Jerusalem council's requirements:

They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.

This contradicts what we read of this same situation in Acts, for Paul makes no mention of the injunctions which, according to Acts, the Jerusalem council issued in their instruction letter, and says that the "only" thing they wanted was that he and Barnabas "remember the poor." It appears that the author of Acts has drawn from a tradition about Paul of which Paul knows nothing, a tradition would subordinates Paul to the Jerusalem council. For indeed, it would be hard to suppose that Paul would go along with the injunction against food sacrificed to idols, for in 1 Cor. 8:4-6 he speaks directly to this:

Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

It seems that one could easily use a similar line of argument that Paul gives here in response to the prohibition of consuming blood and "things strangled." Since both blood and "things strangled" are "of whom are all things and we for Him," they should be just as acceptable as "things offered to idols." What’s more, Revelations 2:20 has Jesus condemning the consumption of “things sacrificed unto idols,” and puts this on a par with fornication.

The claim that the injunctions in Acts. 15:29 are best understood as an injunction against participating in pagan festivities, as some apologists have argued in order to overcome the problem, is unpersuasive. For if this is all that the Jerusalem council intended, why didn't they say this? Indeed, it is quite a different matter, for things sacrificed to idols were often sold to the public for personal consumption. Thus one need not participate in the festivities which produced things offered to idols, and still consume them. As if anticipating such a spin on things, Paul confirms the point in I Cor. 10:25-26, where he writes:

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions for conscience’ sake; for “the earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness.”

Of course, it seems that one could justify just about any chosen action by appealing to the slogan that "the earth is the LORD's, and all its fullness," especially when the god so designated is said to have "a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists" (Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 172).

At any rate, we still have a problem when Acts tells us that the Jerusalem council issued a decree instructing Paul and Barnabas to have converts abstain from things offered to idols, blood and strangled things (Acts 15:29), while Paul tells us that all they wanted of them was that they remember the poor (Gal. 2:10).

To make matters worse, in Acts. 16:1-3, when Paul meets up with Timothy in Lystra, the apostle compels Timothy to be circumcised - my reading of Acts suggests that Paul performed this operation himself (eww!). Surely the god of foreskins and calves' blood would have been pleased, but Acts has Paul do this to appease the local Jews. And yet according to Paul's own letter (Galatians), he rebuked Peter in Antioch for appeasing a Jewish faction which had been sent there by James (Gal. 2:11-12). This on top of Paul's vehement denial of any requirement that Christians be circumcized (cf. Gal. 5:6).

According to Paul's letters, there were some scandalous disagreements between them, much of it revolving around the place of the law in the new Christ-centered religion as it involved Gentile converts. This is evident in Galatians where Paul gives his side of the dispute and recounts his rebuke of Peter, something the book of Acts completely ignores.

I wrote:

You believe the literalist Christian propaganda because you’ve invested yourself so deeply into its program, and admitting that your leg has been pulled is just too much to bear, especially when the messenger is someone so “loathsome” as a confessed atheist. I realize this, David, I was in your shoes at one point in my life. Only I woke up.

David responded:

It’s rather unfortunate that my beliefs be relegated to mere “devotion to a system.”

Not that I did, but why would this be so unfortunate? Isn’t it the case that you’re devoted to the Christian faith? If it is more than “mere ‘devotion to a system’,” what is it?

David continued:

It’s not as if you have any particular insistence on the negation of my beliefs, or hold stock in the legend theory for any reasons relevant to your own Christianity experience.

I’ve learned things that I cannot sit down on. I have learned from many readers that my work has benefited them in some way. Several have come to me and thanked me for helping them find their way out of the darkness. I am not sponsored, as are many professional apologists, by some ministry or 501(c)(3) organization hiding behind charitable programs.

David wrote:

No not at all! I am completely biased and blind because of my worldview and you are the wise old atheist waking me up with the somber light of disbelief.

I don’t know if I have the ability to wake anyone up, but if I can help people discover and learn about a rational worldview, even one person at a time, I am pleased to try.

David wrote:

I find that rather silly, but amusing nonetheless. :) I’m 24 years old and grew up in a Christian home in the deep Southern Bible belt. I wildly abandoned my parents’ faith in college and eagerly followed the natural sciences as the sole means of attaining truth. I did things I never dreamed of (and will have nightmares about later in life), having been freed from the morality of my youth. Then, through events in my life, God took hold of me. I picked up the Bible and actually read its claims about God, mankind, and the world as well as the relationship between them. It makes perfect sense to me, and everything in the Bible meshes with what I’ve experienced personally in my “walk”, or whatever the popular Christian word is these days. In addition, I find the 4 facts about the resurrection very compelling.

You are still very young, David. When I was your age, I too was smitten with Christianity and other forms of supernaturalism. I have taken Paul’s advise, only in its own most consistent terms, and have put away such childish things.

David wrote:

So you see, from my perspective I too woke up, and I was also in your shoes.

I don’t think you’ve been in my shoes. Were you an Objectivist before becoming a Christian? I highly doubt it.

David wrote:

Actually I know a limited amount about your shoes, but I think you have a great deal of confidence in your dismissal of Christianity.

It’s important to note that, contrary to what many believers have charged, my rejection of Christianity is not an irreducible primary. I do not begin by denying the Christian god. No one begins by denying. We begin by recognizing, then integrating, then affirming, then assessing, etc. How the mind does any of this is a mystery to most individuals; their minds are the most alien objects in their entire existence and experience. And they are not encouraged to understand it in an objective manner. Instead, they are immediately taught, from before the time they can even speak in many cases, to fear an invisible magic being with whom they can have no actual dialogue, and to obey instructions they’re not supposed to understand on pain of supernatural threat. They are indoctrinated into such a mindset long before they have had the chance to develop the cognitive tools needed to defend themselves philosophically. There is no doubt that religion preys upon the philosophically defenseless.

My confidence in my critique of Christianity is subordinate to my confidence in my critique of mysticism as such, because I understand why it is false, why it is dangerous, and what the proper alternative suitable to man is. It would be very difficult for me to just sit on this knowledge and do nothing about it. Hence I broadcast it, free of charge, with open admission to all who would like to come.

David wrote:

I'm sure you've thought this, but I'm always one to say doubt everything even your skepticism.

Doubting is not a prime directive in my worldview. It has it’s place, but it is surely not a starting point. It can’t be; to suggest that it is, is to commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. We begin our intellection with positive recognition of perceptually self-evident facts, facts that are available to us firsthand, in the “here and now,” for this is where our awareness begins – with that which is immediately perceivable. The suggestion that we should “doubt everything, even your own skepticism,” is intellectually counterproductive. For one, there is no good reason why I should “doubt everything” (the claim that there is a good reason to doubt everything would itself need to be subject to doubt), and, also, skepticism is neither my standard nor my method.

David wrote:

indeed all other sources examined use the phrase specifically to identify Jesus’ siblings.

I responded:

And I’ve addressed this several times now: had later Christians not known that ‘brother of the Lord’ was a church title not at all denoting a sibling relationship, it could easily have been mistaken by them as meaning a sibling relationship, or opportunistically seized on in order to contrive such a view. Using ‘brother’ to denote others as believers was common parlance; it still is today. When I was a Christian, everyone in my church was so eager to call me his brother. Also, it is doubtful that Paul would have put stock in a relationship of the flesh. Nowhere does Paul say that Jesus had any siblings.

David then wrote:

Are you basing your assertions about later Christians on what is probable or what is possible?

My inferences are based on what is reasonable given both the overall context of Paul’s teaching as well as the specifics of the case at hand. Is it really that unreasonable to suppose that Paul, who refers to James as one of the “pillars” of the church (Gal. 2:9), was making use of a title here?

In Gal. 1:19, Paul indicates that whoever “James the Lord’s brother” may be, he was one of the apostles. He writes there:

But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.

If we compare this to the list of apostles given in the gospels, an interesting picture emerges. Here is Mark 3:16-19, where the 12 apostles are listed:

And Simon he surnamed Peter; And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite, And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.

This list is repeated in Matthew 10:2-4:

Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

The two lists agree on the names, which are as follows:

1. Simon Peter
2. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother
3. James the son of Zebedee
4. John the son of Zebedee
5. Philip
6. Bartholomew
7. Thomas
8. Matthew
9. James the son of Alphaeus
10. Thaddaeus (surnamed Lebbaeus)
11. Simon the Canaanite
12. Judas Iscariot

There are two individuals named James in the lists which Mark and Matthew provide. They are James the son of Zebedee and James the son of Alphaeus. What’s curious here is that there is no “James the son of Joseph,” as we would expect if “James the Lord’s brother” were supposed to be the biological sibling of the earthly Jesus. Apparently “James the Lord’s brother” was not understood to number among “the twelve.” Or was he? Again, confusion reigns here. But in the end, this is not my problem.

David wrote:

If all your probability assessments rely on the legend theory, I think you’re in big trouble.

Threats of being “in big trouble” will not move me.

I had written:

I’ve spoken to this already. The phrase "brother of the Lord" as used by Paul most likely indicates that James had some very high position in the Jerusalem church; for Paul, James is one of the “pillars” of the church (Gal. 2:9).

David responded:

You’ve given no evidence that “brother of the Lord” indicates this, and neither have the quotes you provided. Speculating about unnamed “extant texts” doesn’t do much for me.

Here you simply display the persistence of your own confessionally motivated denial. You want “brother of the Lord” to validate the sibling relationship which the gospels make explicit between Jesus, not because anything in Paul’s letters warrant this, but because you want to preserve the literalist view that the gospels portray authentic history. Indeed, you have provided no evidence to support the view that Paul really did have a biological relationship in view with his reference to James as “the brother of the Lord.” I’ve given several reasons why this interpretation is highly unlikely, and your response to these reasons is to dismiss them with the wave of your hand, to deny them outright if for no other reason than that you simply prefer otherwise.

I wrote:

Especially because it references "the Lord" as opposed to "Jesus," the phrase strikes me very much to be a title rather than a reference to a biological sibling. I don’t think a reference to a sibling here would at all make sense.

David responded:

Actually when the alleged ossuary of James was found, one of the reasons some critical scholars rejected it as authentic was precisely because it named him “brother of Jesus.”

Well, there you go, then. A later Christian could have easily come along and used his inscription on the ossuary to correct what he considered a problem in the written record.

I wrote:

I see that you resist answering my question. At any rate, I will answer yours:

David responded:

On the contrary, I clearly stated that I didn’t think James’ sibling status had much to do with it.

Yes, you’re right, you did. Had I time to edit my response I probably would have caught this. My apologies.

by Dawson Bethrick

Another Response to David, Part 5: Paul's Knowledge of Jesus

Since Paul is the earliest writer in the New Testament, a running constant throughout a rational examination of Christian origins is the question: What did Paul know of Jesus? Specifically, what did Paul know of the earthly Jesus, the Jesus before crucifixion. The gospels did not exist yet when Paul was missionizing his churches and writing his letters. The gospels were written well after this time, and a comparison of what Paul writes in his letters with what we read in the gospel narratives raises some fascinating questions. Scholars for over two centuries now have noted the profoundly different views of Jesus which, on the one hand, the early epistles, including but not limited to Paul’s, and on the other the gospels give us. Wells summarizes the problem as follows:

If we now ask what can be learned from Paul of Jesus’s pre-crucifixion life, the answer is: nothing except that he was descended from David (Rom. 1:3) and born of a woman under the Jewish law (Gal. 4:4). Paul never mentions Mary or Joseph (nor does any other NT epistle writer) and says nothing to suggest that the birth was from a virgin mother. For him, Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power” by dint of his resurrection (Rom. 1:4), not by a supernatural birth, nor by manifestations of power such as miracle-working or exorcisms during his lifetime. He never even suggests that Jesus had been active in Jerusalem and Galilee. Tom Wright, Dean of Lichfield, says again and again in his 1997 book that Paul preached “Jesus of Nazareth”, whereas in fact Paul never mentions Nazareth and says nothing to link Jesus with the place. Within the NT, the title ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is used only in Acts... The position is no better in respect to Paul’s knowledge of Jesus’s teaching. He never suggests that Jesus taught in parables, even though these are quite central to the synoptic teaching. He also never suggests that Jesus was involved in doctrinal conflicts with Pharisees. At no point in his letters where he is expounding the central content of his gospel does he cite or clearly allude to any saying of Jesus. No question was more central to Paul than whether it was necessary for Christians to keep the Jewish law, yet the controversies on the matter recorded in his letters, and even in Acts, show no knowledge of the various teachings on the law that are ascribed to Jesus in the gospels. In these, the parts of the law most prominent are the regulations about Sabbath and about food; and if Jesus’s attitudes on these matters had been as lax as some gospel passages suggest, this would surely have surfaced in other documents where these issues are to the fore. According to Mk. 7:19, for instance, he declared all foods clean. Paul can have known nothing of this, for he records a furious quarrel with Peter as to whether it was permissible for Christian Jews and Christian gentiles to eat together (Gal. 2:11-16), and it took a thrice-repeated post-resurrection revelation even to half convince Peter to permissiveness on the matter (Acts 10:9-17). Again, at Gal. 4:10 Paul reproves Christian opponents on the ground that they observe special “days”, and this must include Sabbath observance. But he does not support his case with any suggestion that Jesus had transgressed the Sabbath, had allowed his disciples to do the same, and had justified such action publicly in debate – all of which is alleged in the gospels. As to the all-important matter as to whether Christians need to be circumcised, Paul obviously knew nothing in Jesus’s teaching or behaviour to which he could appeal, and has to resort to a quite desperate argument in order to controvert the clear doctrine of Genesis 17:10 (“every male among you shall be circumcised”). How arbitrary Paul’s argument is has been well brought out by E.P. Sanders’s summary of it ([Paul], pp. 55ff). (The Jesus Myth, pp. 58-59)

As we note these and other similar points of remarkable difference between the portrait of Jesus in the gospels and Paul’s treatment of Jesus in his writings, the tell-tale signs of legend-building begin to emerge and make themselves noticeably apparent. But Christian literalists, anxious to protect their religious confession from the threat that such analysis poses for Christianity, busy themselves with the task of damage-control, hoping to discredit the message-bearers if they can’t discredit the message itself.

In the present case, commenter David has listed what he apparently thinks are good indications in Paul’s letters that Paul had knowledge of the Jesus we read about in the gospel narratives. I will review these and see whether they really do point to the Jesus of the gospel narratives, or if they are in fact primitive rudiments which later narrative-constructors adapted in their growing yarn of Jesus’ pre-crucifixion life.

I wrote:

As for whether or not the gospel writers used Paul as a source, this is unclear. However, as I have shown, many of the teachings which Paul gives as his own or as inspired by his interpretation of ‘the scriptures’ are put into Jesus' mouth in the gospels. This suggests that later writers were using sources that were influenced by Paul, even if they did not mention or credit Paul.

David responded:

I haven’t been shown any examples of this,

You have. Go back and check our exchanges. One of the Wells quotes that I gave lists several examples. There are plenty more, but the Wells quote is sufficient to show this.

David wrote:

but I have heard about lots of things Paul doesn’t mention.

Indeed. Does Paul mention Bethlehem? Nazareth? The virgin birth? Son of a carpenter? Escape from the slaughter of the innocents? A baptism by John the Baptist? Miracle-working? Magic cures? A ministry in various towns throughout Judea and in Jerusalem? Conflict with the chief priests? Teaching in parables? The feeding of five thousand? The raising of Jairus’ daughter? The raising of Lazarus? A trial before Pilate? A crucifixion outside Jerusalem? An empty tomb? Pentecost? Etc. Etc. Not only is Paul silent on these things, but all the early epistles are! These elements simply weren’t part of the legend yet. As the story was retold, they began to be added into the mix, until the resulting product is what we have in the gospels (and many non-canonical writings) today.

David wrote:

What about some things he does tell us about Jesus?

Yes, let’s look at them.

David wrote:

Jesus was born in human fashion, as a Jew, and had a ministry to the Jews. (Galations 4:4)

Yes, Paul does say that Jesus was born. But where was he born? When was he born? Who were his parents? Paul gives us no indication of these things. Paul mentions that he had a mother, but nowhere suggests that he was born a virgin. This legendary element came later as some communities sought to assimilate motifs from rival religions into their own version of Christianity.

David wrote:

Jesus was referred to as "Son of God". (1 Cor. 1:9)

On this, Wells notes significantly:

Paul characteristically applies to [Jesus] titles such as Lord and Son of God – titles which already existed within Judaism and also in pagan religions (see [H. Braun, ‘Der Sinn der NT Christology’, Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche, 54, pp 350-1) – although Jewish monotheistic influences prevents the earliest Christian writers from calling him God. (Did Jesus exist?, p. 18)

If this is true – that the title “Son of God” was already in use “within Judaism and also in pagan religions” – this is another motif which Christianity borrowed from predecessor religions and applied to Jesus. As such, it has theological, but not historical meaning: it does nothing to specify a historical setting to Paul’s Jesus.

David wrote:

Jesus was a direct descendent of King David. (Romans 1:3)

David was highly venerated by the Jews, as the legends about him in the OT indicate. Also, since Paul was drawing on OT themes as the palate for his portrait of Jesus, linking him to David would hardly be surprising. Again Wells poignantly nails it:

There are many centuries between David and Paul, and Paul gives no indication in which of them Jesus’ earthly life fell. (Did Jesus exist?, p. 18)

The reference to Jesus as coming from the seed of David opens the possible timeline for Paul’s Jesus significantly.

David wrote:

Jesus prayed to God using the term ‘abba’. (Galations 4:6)

When does Paul have his Jesus do this, and where? How does Paul know? Is Paul making a historical reference, or is he making a theological point? The context of the Galatians passage suggests the latter rather than the former. This interpretation is only buttressed by its appearance in Mark, the earliest gospel:

Jesus in Gethsemane (Mk. 14:36) address God with the Aramaic word ‘abba’ (father). Mark supplies no witnesses who could have heard what was said, and also finds it necessary to put into Jesus’ mouth the Greek translation of the word (making him say: ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee’). Nevertheless, Jeremias insists that the logion is genuine since in Jewish traditions God is never address simply as ‘abba’ without some additional qualifying phrase, such as is preserved in Matthew’s ‘our father who art in heaven’ ([‘Kennzeichen der ipsisima vox Jesu’, in Synoptische Studien, Festschrift fur A. Wikenhauser], p 89). To this the adequate reply has been made ([Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu], p 493) that Paul’s references to an early Christian practice of ‘Abba, Father’ (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) show that ‘abba’ followed by its Greek translation was a formula current in Hellenistic Christian circles, and that Mark has simply put it into Jesus’ mouth. And a leading Jewish scholar (Vermes, [Jesus the Jew], pp 210-11) has given evidence that ‘abba’ was used in the prayer language of the Judaism of the day in precisely the manner in which Jeremias and other Christian scholars have declared to be ‘unthinkable’. (Did Jesus exist?, p. 75)

So again, we have an early theological reference which was imported into the Christian tradition and later treated as a historical datum.

David wrote:

Jesus expressly forbid divorce. (1 Cor. 7:10)

Does Paul say when, or where, or indicate the circumstances of this delivery? How would Paul know this? That’s right, Paul appeals to revelation as the means by which he learned his gospel. Later writers could easily take such references and put them into a portrait of an earthly Jesus purported by some to be historical. How hard would it be to do this?

David wrote:

Jesus taught that ‘preachers’ should be paid for their preaching. (1 Cor. 9:14)

Another feature that Paul got from the OT. He even quotes Deut. 25:4 in I Cor. 9:9. Paul is not giving evidence of familiarity with an earthly Jesus here; he gives no indication of a historical setting on earth where Jesus would have given such instruction, and attributes the teaching to “the Lord,” for Paul, the risen Jesus, not the earthly Jesus. The later writers (i.e., of the gospels) take this reference, which has ecclesiastical significance for Paul, and give it the impression of historical significance by putting the teaching into Jesus’ mouth (cf. Mt. 10:10; Lk. 10:7).

David wrote:

Jesus taught about the end-time. (1 Thess. 4:15)

Let's look at what I Thess. 4:15 states:

For this we say unto you by word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

Again, Paul is here appealing to “the Lord” (as opposed to Jesus), which signifies for him the risen savior. Nor Paul does indicate a historical context for the teaching he ascribes to “the Lord.” By referring to “we” here (instead of “they” or some other third person reference), Paul indicates (as he does in other passages) his belief that Jesus’ return was coming soon, probably even within his own expected lifetime. No such luck. But this did not prevent later writers from adapting the gloom and doom eschatology and putting it into Jesus’ mouth.

David wrote:

Paul refers to Peter by the name Cephas (rock), which was the name Jesus gave to him. (1 Cor. 3:22)

Paul tells us that he had a very involved conflict with Peter, but he never tells us that Jesus gave Peter this name. This is not even hinted at in anything Paul says about Peter. In fact, Paul nowhere indicates that Peter was a traveling companion of Jesus on earth before the crucifixion. Later writers were probably perplexed by the use of two names for Peter, and explained it by having the Jesus of their narratives give the name Cephas to Peter in an exchange which is nowhere given in Paul.

David wrote:

Jesus had a brother named James. (Galations 1:19)

We've already beaten this horse to death. Paul never gives a brother to Jesus - that is, a biological sibling to the earthly, pre-crucifixion Jesus. Paul is clear in reference James as "the brother of the Lord," which title signifies the post-resurrection Jesus. James, it was seen, was referred to as one of the "pillars" of the church by Paul. It is most probable then that Paul is referring to James with a fraternity title, similar to the one he uses for an unspecified number of persons in I Cor. 9:5, where he states: "Have we no right to lead about a wife that is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?" Here Paul is obviously referencing the upper echelon of the Christianity of his day. It would be hard to suppose that Paul is referring to a group of biological siblings of Jesus here. Instead, he's speaking of an inner circle group, who were obviously held in high regard. The assumption that Paul is referring to a biological relationship is generated by reading the gospel details into Paul's letters, when in fact Paul's letters in no way confirm this reading.

David wrote:

Jesus initiated the Lord's supper and referred to the bread and the cup. (1 Cor. 11:23-25)

As I asked before, when does Paul say this happened? Where? Under what circumstances? Who attended this event? Paul doesn't give any details. Later writers came along and supplied them. Paul gave the primitive rudiments, indicating no time, place or historical setting. In fact, I don't even find any indication that Paul is associating "the Lord's supper" with the Passover. It would be temptingly easy for later writers to take what Paul writes here and redress it in a narrative situation that seemed historical, but is essentially just a piece of fiction.

David wrote:

Jesus was betrayed on the night of the Lord's Supper. (1 Cor. 11:23-25)

As above.

David wrote:

Jesus' death was related to the Passover Celebration. (1 Cor. 5:7)

Look at what the passage does say:

Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us

Is Paul saying that Jesus was crucified around the Passover holiday? I don't get that from this. This is Pauline symbolism, derived from his Jewish roots, and later writers took references like this and assembled them into their narrative. Again, it would be temptingly easy for them to do this.

David wrote:

The death of Jesus was at the hands of earthly rulers. (1 Cor. 2:8)

The passage says:

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

It is not clear what Paul means here by "princes of this world" (the ESV translates this phrase as "rules of this age" and the ASV has it as "rulers of this world"). Doherty has some interesting thoughts on this:

Where, then, was Jesus crucified and by whom? Like the myths of the savior gods, this deed took place in the mythical world, the upper spirit realm of Platonic philosophy, where spiritual processes were seen to be located. It was the work of demon spirits. Paul says, in I Corinthians 2:8, that those who “crucified the Lord of glory” were “the rulers of this age.” That phrase is not a reference to human authorities on earth, but to the demon spirits, who were regarded as controlling the world in the present age of history and who would be overthrown with the arrival of the new apocalyptic age... This was the interpretation of 2:8 by ancient commentators like Marcion and Origen. Modern critical scholars have largely followed suit: Brandon, Barrett, Hering, Fredriksen. Paul Ellingworth, Translator’s Handbook for I Corinthians, p. 46, says: “A majority of scholars think that supernatural powers are intended here.” The Ascension of Isaiah, a Jewish-Christian document in the Pseudepigrapha, foretells the Son descending through the layers of heaven, hiding his identity from the angels and demons until he reaches the lower celestial sphere, where he is “crucified by the god of the world,” meaning Satan (chapter 9). The crucifixion of Paul’s Christ was a spiritual event. (Challenging the Verdict, pp. 250-251)

So “princes of this world” or “rulers of this age” may in fact not mean human agents, but supernatural agents of evil who have seized control of the world.

In any case, Paul seems to be excusing Jesus' executioners for their ignorance, and granting them a moral caliber that just needed better information. I've known a lot of Christians who accuse all human beings of being guilty of crucifying Jesus (even though those who are alive today weren't around 2000 years ago in the first place).

David wrote:

Jesus underwent abuse and humiliation. (Romans 15:3)

These are themes that are common throughout the Psalms and Isaiah, both of which very highly influenced Paul’s views. Romans 15:3, the very passage you cite here, quotes Psalms 69:9, which is attributed by the OT to David! Moreover, when Paul refers to Jesus’ abuse and humiliation, he refers to them only vaguely, and gives no historical setting, indicating no specifics of the occasion. Later writers (i.e., of the gospels) take this motif and elaborate on it in their passion scenes, which are variously embellished in the different versions.

David wrote:

Jewish authorities were involved with Jesus' death. (1 Thess. 2:14-16)

Doherty points out for us that many scholars are of the view that I Thess. 2:15-16 is an interpolation into an otherwise (for the most part) authentically Pauline letter. He writes:

What then are we to make of the passage in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16, about the Jews "who killed the Lord Jesus"? Well, many scholars (e.g., Mack, Koester, Pearson, Meeks, Perkins, Brandon: see the Bibliography at end) have tended to make short work of it, dismissing it as an interpolation by some later editor or copyist. (Who Crucified Jesus?)

Wells points out that RE Brown, in his The Death of the Messiah (p. 378-381), has summarized the reasons for this, and quotes Furnish (Jesus According to Paul, p. 70) as saying of this passage that “there are good reasons to think that it has come from a later hand” (in Wells’ The Jesus Legend, p. 24).

David wrote:

Jesus died by crucifixion. (2 Cor. 13:4 et al)

Yes, Paul does affirm that Jesus died by crucifixion. I don’t think anyone with any familiarity with Paul’s writing would venture so much as to call this facet of his Jesus into question. It is certainly not a point of contention for me. But what’s curious is that Paul does not allude to any of the accompanying details that we find in the gospel passion scenes. Paul nowhere gives any indications of the time or place of Jesus’ crucifixion; for all that Paul gives us, it could have happened 100 years (or more) before Paul was running about growing his churches. According to the gospels, Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem, but you would never learn this going by what Paul has to say. Yes, Paul tells us that Jesus was crucified, but leaves all the details open to a wide assortment of possible variables, and nothing in Paul necessitates the details we find in the gospel narratives, which were written well after Paul’s time.

The Suffering Servant motif was already central to the prophets and the Wisdom literature, both of which figure largely in Paul's worldview. As we saw, Paul's Jesus hailed from a lineage of a royal Jewish household, the house of David. Any connection between Paul's view of Jesus and actual historical events was probably vastly different than one familiar only with the gospels might suppose. Wells gives some pertinent clues in the following passage:

My view is that Paul knew next to nothing of the earthly life of Jesus, and did not have in mind any definite historical moment for his crucifixion. As we saw, holy Jews had been crucified alive in the first and second centuries BC, but traditions about these events, and about the persecuted Teacher of Righteousness, could well have reached Paul without reference to times and places, and he need not have regarded their occurrences as anything like as remote in time as they in fact were. Whenever it was that Jesus had lived obscurely and died, he had, for Paul, returned promptly after death to heaven; and the evidence for this exaltation, and indeed for his whole religious significance, was his recent appearances to Paul and to contemporaries of Paul which signaled that the final events which would end the world were imminent... Thus even if the death and resurrection were put at some indefinite time past, it remains quite intelligible that Christianity did not originate before the opening decades of the first century AD. Nor need any supposed relevance to Jesus of the Wisdom literature have been appreciated earlier. (Can We Trust the New Testament?, p. 34)

David wrote:

Jesus was physically buried. (1 Cor. 15:4)

Does Paul specify that Jesus’ dead body was put into a tomb? No, he nowhere does this. Does Paul indicate when Jesus was buried? No, he does not. Does he indicate where Jesus was buried? No, he does not. Does he indicate the circumstances under which he was buried? No, he does not, he only indicates that Jesus died by crucifixion, but indicates nothing of the details of this occasion. Later writers took what is for Paul more of a theological dogma and cast it into a historical context, inventing all kinds of details (e.g., the earthquake, the rising of the saints, the tear in the veil, Joseph of Arimathaea, the packing of the body in spices, the guards at the tomb, the visitation of the women to the tomb, the angels at the tomb, etc.). All these are elements of great story-telling, for sure, but they’re only stories, legends by any other name.

The conclusion here is unavoidable: none of the features and motifs which have been discussed here put Paul's Jesus in any specific time, location or situation. Each can be explained without appeal to the gospel narratives, and each could have easily been assimilated by later writers in concocting a narrative of Jesus' life. In fact, what David has isolated for us is some of the raw material that was central to the creation of Christian story-making, the stuff of legends which grew in scale and impressiveness as the yarn was reworked and refashioned to suit new theological needs and new social challenges.

by Dawson Bethrick