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

Another Response to David, Part 4: Paul, Q and Groping Traditions

I wrote:

I'm not talking linguistic philosophy either. You had mentioned ‘the building blocks of thought’, and those are concepts, not words. This is basic epistemology, not linguistic philosophy. You can't have language without concepts. The ability to form concepts comes first, but language helps us retain and organize the concepts we've formed.”

David wrote:

This is a silly quibble, but just so you don’t think I’m being dishonest in what I stated: ‘Words are the unit of thought in most of our thinking and writing; they are the bricks of our conceptual formulation.’ (Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3 ed., page 128)

I didn’t think you were being dishonest, David. I just think you’re wrong. I think Ramm is wrong as well, but I’ve come to expect such espousals from Christians. Christianity has no theory of concepts, so it comes as no surprise to find Christians confused on this matter. In fact, it is no “silly quibble.” The absence of the objective theory of concepts is one of chief problems with any mystical worldview. As I mentioned, words are symbols – specifically, auditory/visual symbols – which represent concepts. I quote Rand:

A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of a concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines—by specifying their referents. (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 52)

Though he most likely does not realize it, Ramm is propounding a falsehood.

David wrote:

Regarding the word study fallacy you keep insisting is proper exegesis: Straight out of a hermeneutics textbook, under the heading of “word-count fallacy”: “We make this mistake when we insist that a word must have the same meaning every time it occurs. For example, if we are confident that a word carries a certain meaning in seven of its eight occurrences in Scripture, we might be tempted to conclude that it must have the same meaning in its eighth occurrence. Yet as Darrel Bock maintains, ‘word meanings are determined by context, not word counts’.” (Bock, “New Testament Word Analysis pg. 111, A Hands on Approach To Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, Duvall pg 130)

If this is the definition of the word study fallacy, then I have not committed it. For one, I have considered the context of the passage in question in determining the meaning of “brother of the Lord,” for as I (and many others) have pointed out, Paul says “brother of the Lord, not “brother of Jesus.” I buttressed my interpretation by citing a source which explicitly defines “Lord” as a title, when you called it a name. Furthermore, I nowhere maintained that, because other instances of the word “brother” in Paul’s letters denotes a spiritual rather than biological relationship, it must therefore mean a spiritual as opposed to a biological relationship in the passage in question. This is clear from my statement that it most likely rather than necessarily means a spiritual relationship in the passage in question.

David wrote:

You deem my inquiries about James as trifling, but even Wells himself says that his theory stands or falls on this. Indeed the reason I have pressed this point is because your original statement about a recent resurrection in Paul demand such evidence be discussed.

Let's keep in view what I had actually stated. 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.

Keep in mind that I am more of a philosopher than a historian (the former is more a passion where the latter is more a side hobby). A major branch of philosophy is epistemology - how do we discover and validate our knowledge, and how do we establish our knowledge claims? - and is probably the most important area of philosophical inquiry. Paul claims to have received his gospel directly from the risen Christ by means of revelation (Gal. 1:11-12). It seems that anyone can claim anything and say he knows it by means of revelation. How do I know that Paul really received a revelation from some divine source? How could I verify this? Apparently I'm supposed to just take his word for it, for nothing objective is offered to secure such a claim. And questioning such a claim is a big no no in Christianity: it is tantamount to questioning whether or not the divinely approved "Word" is true or not, and we're not supposed to do that. As Bahnsen says, the bible is supposed to be unquestionable. So rather than addressing such questions, it appears that we're not supposed to ask them. But I'm not afraid to ask, so I ask. But believers don't seem to be able to give much of an answer to this kind of question, even though it seems far more important to me than, say, what Paul meant by his passing reference to "James the brother of the Lord." Besides, as far as I'm concerned, this point has been settled: it's a church title, not intended to denote a sibling relationship. So it is for these reasons that I stated what I said above. I am aware that, insofar as Wells' case for legend is concerned, this is an important issue. But in the larger scheme of things, it's a minor quodlibet at best. In regard to Wells' views, it's a hurdle he clears with ease.

David quoted G.A. Wells:

If Paul means blood brother of a historical Jesus, then it would suffice to establish--against my view--that Jesus had really lived in the first half of the first century. Furthermore, I must admit that this interpretation of Paul's words does seem the immediate and obvious one. Here, then, is a case where what seems to be the plain sense of a text . . . would weigh very heavily indeed against my view of Christian origins. (HEJ, 167)

Regarding "the twelve," David quoted more of Wells:

If these words were really written by Paul, then it looks as though he was aware that Jesus chose twelve disciples; and if Paul in this respect corroborates what the gospels say, then it would be reasonable to infer that he also knows the principle facts of Jesus' life . . . . (DJE, 124)

David then commented:

In order to get himself out of the quagmire he’s created ;) , Wells must argue that the Corinthian passage is an interpolation (DJE, pg 124) even though every single shred of manuscript evidence includes the full passage. That means there is zero textual warrant for his claim. This constitutes special pleading. You said you were ok with the creed being authentic though right?

Comparing manuscripts is not the only way to know that something has been interpolated. Especially if there's a substantial interval between the time when the original is believed to have been penned and the date of our earliest extant copies. In the case of Paul's letters (including I Corinthians), the earliest copy we have Papyrus 46, which Griffin dates to AD 175-225, at the earliest AD 150, or at least if not more than 100 years after Paul originally wrote the letter. This interval provides more than ample opportunity for tampering with the text. Also, certain indicators within the text itself can give this away. For instance, in I Cor. 15 we find reference to "the twelve," which Paul never mentions elsewhere in his several letters.

David wrote:

In addition, Wells must reject both references to Jesus in Josephus to hold up his theory. Written around 93-94 AD, Josephus’ writings clearly link Jesus to his disciples and connect his crucifixion to Pilate. Now I grant that many register concern about the authenticity Antiquities 18:3, but who else is rejecting all references to Jesus? Wells of course.

Wells is not a lone ranger in rejecting the two passages in Josephus as interpolations. Not at all. I’m sure if you do a little digging, you’ll find others do to. Wells gives his reasons in The Jesus Myth, pp. 200-221.

David wrote:

Princeton Seminary's James Charlesworth: "We can now be as certain as historical research will presently allow that Josephus did refer to Jesus." (Jesus Within Judaism,pg. 96)

I would expect soundbites such as this from someone like Charlesworth. But notice how it uses a string of words to say nothing very definite. If historical research will not presently allow that Josephus really did refer to Jesus, then how certain can we be? And whose research? Of course, Charlesworth’s own. As a professor at a seminary, I’m sure he fills his title well.

David wrote:

In addition, Wells must also twist the reference in Josephus about James to be consistent. According to the passage "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Lucceius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20.9)…which is also where we derive the traditional date of 62 AD for his death.

This statement comes from the so-called ‘shorter passage’ in Josephus. As I pointed out in my previous blog, Wells provides reasons for supposing this passage to be a Christian interpolation (cf. The Jesus Myth, pp. 217-221). There Wells interacts with defenses of the passage’s authenticity provided by R.T. France and R.N. Tyler and shows why they are weak. So if this passage is a Christian interpolation, as Wells holds, then – contrary to what you say – Wells has no need to “twist” this reference in order to remain consistent with his broader thesis.

David wrote:

At any rate Wells has since changed his mind about the existence of Jesus, so now his earlier critiques of Paul need to be re-assessed and I seriously doubt they will maintain consistency.

Yes, Wells is now inclined to suppose that a real human being (not an incarnation of a divine being, mind you) was behind many of the stories and sayings which informed the primitive basis of the Christ cult. But if true, this is still totally damning to Christianity. Indeed, even if one does not accept Wells' overall conclusion, he still makes massive blows to the literalist interpretation of the New Testament, sufficiently so that I don't think it can recover. But confessionally invested believers will keep trying, I'm sure.

David stated:

Apparently Q has persuaded him that Jesus may have been a real person.

Wells credits J.D.G. Dunn for helping with this in Can We Trust the New Testament? (cf. p. 50).

David then quoted Van Voorst:

'A final argument against the nonexistence hypothesis comes from Wells himself. In his most recent book, The Jesus Myth (1999), Wells has moved away from this hypothesis. He now accepts that there is some historical basis for the existence of Jesus, derived from the lost early "gospel" "Q" (the hypothetical source used by Matthew and Luke). Wells believes that it is early and reliable enough to show that Jesus probably did exist, although this Jesus was not the Christ that the later canonical Gospels portray. It remains to be seen what impact Wells's about-face will have on debate over the nonexistence hypothesis in popular circles.', Van Voorst, Robert E, 'NonExistence Hypothesis', in Houlden, James Leslie (editor), 'Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia', page 660 (Santa Barbara: 2003)

This tells me a lot. Van Voorst refers to Wells’ modification of his theory as an ‘about-face’ – suggesting a 180-degree turn in his views. This is misleading. Wells’ allowance of some shadowy figure behind some of the earlier traditions which ultimately wound up in New Testament narratives about Jesus does not constitute a wholesale revision of his views of the data. The conclusion that the gospel accounts are legends is constant throughout all this. In fact, one could argue that Wells’ modified view actually strengthens his critique of Christian origins, for it better accounts for the several streams of traditions which we observe in the gospel narratives. Wells writes:

The essential point, as I see it, is that the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus’s historicity, refers to a personage who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles. (Can We Trust the New Testament, p. 50)

Keep in mind the following point that Wells makes of Q:

Q does not mention Jesus’s death, and does no more than hint that the hostility extended to him may have been what led to it; he is represented as the last in a long line of Jewish prophets sent out by Wisdom whose messages met with apathy, rejection, even persecution. Q certainly does not regard his death as redemptive and does not explicitly mention his resurrection. It never calls him ‘Christ’ (Messiah) and has no allusion to eucharist, nor indeed to any social or cultic practices which would separate its group from mainstream Judaism. In all these respects the Jesus of Q differs from the Jesus of Paul, who was “delivered up for our trespasses”, “put forward” by God “as an expiation by his blood”, and “raised for our justification” (Rom. 3:25; 4:25) (The Jesus Myth, p. 103)

So Q represents a non-Pauline tradition which does not involve a dying and rising savior, but which has been grafted into the narrative of Jesus’ life in Matthew and Luke.

Elsewhere Wells notes:

[R.E.] Brown is surely right to say that “in all probability the first-century composition of the Gospels was not simple”, and that our chances of determining it “are so slim that it is better to adopt a simpler overall approach that solves most of the difficulties and leaves some minor difficulties unsolved.” On this basis, he accepts Marcan priority, but with the modification that Matthew and Luke were influenced to some extent also by oral tradition. He also defends the majority view that neither Matthew nor Luke knew the work of the other ([The Death of the Messiah], pp. 42-45). There are some 230 verses common (verbatim or nearly so) to the two that are not found in Mark; they place this shared non-Marcan material in entirely different contexts, and this is one reason why it is unlikely that the one took it from the other and so knew the other. Luke’s dependence on Matthew is urged by some scholars, but there are strong reasons against it (such as his failure to reproduce any of the material special to Matthew in his passion narrative). If, then, the common non-Marcan 230 verses were not taken from the one by the other, they must derive from a common non-Marcan Greek source not now extant and known as Q (German Quelle = source). They consist mainly of sayings of Jesus, and so Q is known alternatively as the ‘sayings source’. In sum, the majority view is that Matthew and Luke each independently used two sources, Mark and Q (each supplementing them with a certain amount of material that is not shared). (The Jesus Legend, p. 97)

So Wells has come to see that the sayings source derives from an actually existing personage, whose name is not known (that name could have been Jesus, or the sayings could easily been posthumously credited to the Jesus of the new Christ cult), but “who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.” So if you want the person behind the history here, look to Q.

David wrote:

In a lecture given in 2003, he admits that Paul probably did believe that Jesus was an actual Jewish man who was crucified. (http://www.bede.org.uk/gawells.htm)

Since you apparently did not see it before, I’ll quote Wells again on this point:

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 asked:

How do you square this with your statement given your relied on Wells for nearly all citations made during our interection?

As I explained in a discussion I had regarding similar issues:

Where Doherty may be regarded as a "mythicist," I can be regarded as a "legendist" - I think it's clearly the case that the stories we read in the gospels and the book of Acts are the product of legendary developments, regardless of whether or not Mark came first, regardless of whether or not there was ultimately a human being named Jesus which initially inspired sacred stories messianic heroism.

The citations I've made from Wells' earlier books did not consist of arguments seeking to conclude that Jesus never existed. Rather, they help show how the story of Jesus grew as a legend.

by Dawson Bethrick

Another Response to David, Part 3: The Usual Pagan Suspects

David attributed the following two quotes to G.A. Wells:

Before 90 AD, Jesus remained an undated, mysterious figure about whom virtually nothing was known or reported (Did Jesus Exist? pgs. 47, 65; HEJ, 217-220).

I did not find this quote on p. 47 of Wells’ Did Jesus exist? (I saw a full-page chart instead), nevertheless it reads like something he would write and describes his position. It may be that you have a different edition from mine? Or, you’re paraphrasing Wells?

You quoted Wells again:

Jesus is not linked with a recognizable historical situation in any document (Christian, Jewish or pagan) that can be proved to have originated before about AD 100" (Did Jesus Exist?, pg. 215)

Yes, Wells writes this, and does so at the point where you cite him. You then registered your thoughts in response to these quotes:

Now those are some big statements, and you would immediately wonder what he does about all the external attestation (Josephus, Tacitus, and later Papias, Thallus, Lucian, Pliny, etc…) Easy, he rejects them.

Wells’ assessments of these sources are completely tenable. He does not simply “reject” them, as if he didn’t have any interaction with opposing arguments. Wells’ treatment of Tacitus, for instance, is worth quoting at length since he has been accused of rushing to judgment before:

The one pagan reference to which appeal is still commonly made is the statement of Tacitus that Christians ‘derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberiius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate’. Tacitus wrote this about AD 120, and by then Christians had themselves come to believe that Jesus had died in this way. I tried to show ([The Historical Evidence For Jesus], p 17) that there are good reasons for supposing that Tacitus was simply repeating what was then the Christian view, and that he is therefore not an independent witness. I did not (as I have been accused of doing) assume that Tacitus was repeating what contemporary Christians believed. I gave reasons for thinking this to be probable, which is quite a different thing. Trilling, even though an orthodox apologist, goes so far as to state that ‘what Tacitus actually says could have reached him from any educated contemporary’ and is ‘no more than what could be learned anywhere in Rome’ ([Fragen zur Geschichtlichkeit Jesu], pp 58-9). But in thus conceding the main point at issue Trilling has obscured the fact that Tacitus obviously considered it necessary to explain to his educated readers what manner of persons Christians are. He evidently did not expect the educated public of his own day to know, even though, in the same context, he implies that as early as Nero’s reign (fifty years earlier) the common people of Rome knew and hated them. This is valuable evidence that Chrisitanity had made little headway among the educated Romans of Tacitus’ day. How came it, then, that he himself knew something of them? As governor of Asia about AD 112 he may well have had the same kind of trouble with them that Pliny experienced as governor of Bithynia at the very time... The cities of Asia included some of the earliest Christian congregations (Rev. 1:4) and may well have been the foci for active disturbance between pagan and Christian: for some of these cites were ‘centres of a strong national Roman feeling... The emperor-cult was especially vigorous in that region, and the older deities also had not lost their hold on the enthusiastic devotion of the populace’ (Merrill, [Essays in Early Christian History], p 97). Merrill adds wryly that ‘it is altogether likely that Tacitus returned to Rome from his province with no favourable opinion indeed of Christianity, but with some knowledge of it that he might not have acquired without his period of official service in the particular province, and that his fellow-citizens of his own class at Rome would hardly be expected to possess’.(Did Jesus exist?, pp. 13-14)

While Wells puts Tacitus’ writing of his Annals at “about AD 120,” other sources put it to AD 115-117, while several which I have looked at put Tacitus’ death at AD 117. Nevertheless, all sources seem to agree that Tacitus was writing after AD 110, which is sufficiently later than the time when the Christian story of Jesus as we have it in the gospels would have gelled in the minds of adherents. Needless to say, this is after AD 90, and here Wells is not simply dismissing Tacitus as a source of independent testimony, but is in fact giving reasons why Tacitus need not be taken seriously as an independent source confirming the gospel depiction of Jesus.

In regard to Josephus, Wells devotes an entire section of his The Jesus Myth (pp. 200-221) to dealing with both the Testimonium as well as with the so-called ‘shorter passage’, both of which hard-line literalists insist that we accept as authentically Josephan testimonies verifying the existence of the Jesus of the gospels. Wells cannot be accused of merely “rejecting” Josephus as an independent source confirming the portrait of Jesus found in the gospels,

With regard to Josephus, Wells devotes an entire section of his The Jesus Myth (pp. 200-221) to his defense of the position that the two passages in Josephus’ The Antiquities of the Jews are Christian interpolations. Wells is not alone in this view; he cites numerous authorities on the matter who are inclined towards this same conclusion. That Wells is not simply parroting what others have written is clear with the fact that he also interacts with several sources which argue for their authenticity. It should be no surprise that I am persuaded that Wells (along with numerous other scholars) is right.

Wells addresses the issue of Thallus in his book The Jesus Legend (pp. 43-46), where he points to disagreements among scholars on when Thallus supposedly wrote, something that is quite difficult to determine since his writings do not survive (what we know of him comes to us from Sextus Julius Africanus, who wrote in the third century and quotes Thallus briefly).

Also, see Richard Carrier’s Thallus: An Analysis, which is a good overview of the matter.

In regard to Pliny, again Wells does not simply dismiss him as if he did not exist, but gives good reasons why his testimony does nothing to vouchsafe Christianity’s claims for the historicity of the gospel Jesus. Wells writes of Pliny:

It is clear from what he says that his only knowledge of these people [i.e., Christians in his province Bythinia-Pontus] was what he had extracted from them under interrogation, namely that their convictions amounted to “a perverse and extravagant superstition”, involving (among other things) reciting “a form of words to Christ as a god”. Whether this ‘Christ’ they worshipped had been on earth as a man will have been of no interest either to him or to [Emperor] Trajan. What worried them was that Christians were holding meetings which, because of Christian unwillingness to make due obeisance to the emperor, might have been seditious; they were not concerned about whether there was any historical basis to Christian doctrinal niceties. (The Jesus Legend, p. 41)

On p. 43 of the same book Wells quotes J.J. Walsh (“On Christian Atheism,” Vigiliae Christianae, 45 (1991, pp. 264-65) who points out that “Pliny evidently knew next to nothing not only about the sect but about his own government’s policy towards the sect,” since the purpose of his writing about the troublesome Christians in his province to Trajan was to ask for guidance on how he should deal with them.

David wrote:

What degree of specialization does he possess relevant to the subject area? None.

If by 'degree' you mean a certificate of completion from some college course, I don't know. Wells is a professor of German, and many have used this fact to dismiss him as unqualified to speak on these matters. In other words, because the source (Wells himself) is not decorated by some accredited institution in the very field of Christian origins, nothing he argues can be taken seriously. Never mind his arguments, the data he collects to support his conclusions, his observations based on a familiarity with the subject matter which goes back for decades (his first book on Christianity being published in 1971)

Wells’ expert command of German, however, does afford him access to a wealth of literature in the field of New Testament studies, because so much literature in the last 200 years in this field is native to this language. Freke and Gandy make the following pertinent point:

Eager to distance themselves from Rome, German Protestant scholars began to search the gospels for the real Jesus. Even up to the present day the majority of such scholars have themselves been Christians, since a theological career at a German university is closed to those who have not been baptized. Yet despite this, rather than giving Christianity a firm historical foundation, as they hoped, Protestant scholars’ three centuries of intense scholarship have undermined the literal figure of Jesus completely. (The Jesus Mysteries, p. 146)

Of course, we can dismiss Wells because he’s not a professor of New Testament Greek if you like.

David wrote:

Now given I don’t think you have to be a New Testament historian or textual critic to be critical, but when you’re going to swim upstream and insist on largely abandoned styles of form criticism you’re making a tall order.

Maybe it's time that someone makes this "tall order"? Then again, asking me to believe that a universe-creating, reality-ruling deity incarnated itself in the form of a human being born of a virgin in first century Palestine, was crucified, entombed and resurrected, and later ascended back to heaven, is not a tall order? Meanwhile, referring to Wells' case as "a tall order" simply because he does not have, say, a Ph.D in New Testament Studies, ignores his heavy reliance on scholars who do. Besides, would it really make any difference if Wells did have a Ph.D in New Testament Studies? Would this suddenly bestow his arguments with a gleam that would capture your attention and make you say, "Hey, this guy's onto something!"? My suspicion is that, even if Wells had 10 doctorates in fields ranging from ancient history, New Testament studies, theology, patristic literature, etc., believers would still find ways to dismiss his verdicts, in spite of the artificial requirement to possess such certifications.

I say artificial here because such a requirement is never an issue when it comes to believing the literalist Christian view of the New Testament. If an individual affirms that everything in the New Testament is historically true, why doesn't he need all these degrees in order to make such an assessment? It is, after all, an assessment, no? For Christians, you can be a high school drop-out ditch-digger who couldn’t the word ‘truth’ if asked to, and still "know" that the New Testament is authentic history, but you have to have degrees up the wazoo in order to challenge such affirmations. This may not reflect your view personally, David, but special pleading of this kind is not uncommon from Christians. It seems that apologists, out of desperation, will reach for anything in order to dismiss challenges to their faith. After all, it is a matter of faith, is it not?

David wrote:

Wells more recently questions the seriousness of the Jesus quests :

The theological world is now in the midst of what is known as "The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus". J. P. Meier allows that "all too often the first and second quests were theological projects masquerading as historical projects" (art. cit., p. 463). We shall see whether their successor fares any better.” (G. A. Wells Replies to Criticisms of his Books on Jesus, 2000)

I would like to interact with Wells personally someday, but I think he’s a bit old for such affairs and admittedly gets on the Internet infrequently.

I would love to be able to engage an ongoing discussion with Dr. Wells myself. But alas, I don’t know how I would even try to do this. The most I’ve been able to accomplish are brief exchanges with David Kelley (an Objectivist philosopher) and Peter Thomas (narrator of ‘Forensic Files’). I’m a big fan of both. To add G.A. Wells to this mix... well, that’d be like having sat down with the Holy Trinity for me.

David wrote:

J.P. Holding did have some interaction with him: Tektonics

Your link did not work, but regardless, I tend not to go to Tektonics unless I'm looking for a source of low entertainment. Turkel is in constant sneer mode and clearly resents anyone who does not share his views. I have come to expect from him only the most expedient of apologetic tactics.

I wrote:

Similarly with the events described in the gospels themselves: how can we know which year, according to the event sequences given in the gospels, when Jesus was crucified?

In response to this, David quoted Luke 3:1:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene

He David wrote:

Tiberius became emperor in August, AD 14 which places John’s ministry at October, AD 27. Given the 3 Passover feasts described in John, this would place the crucifixion at AD 30. External sources corroborate that Pilate was Roman governor of Judea, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, and Caiaphas was Jewish high priest. Specifically one of these sources would have no reason to acknowledge or accredit Christianity: the Jewish Mishnah and Talmuds. Five of Christ’s disciples are named therein (see Klausner, The Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 18) Ok, nice but big deal right? Well, if multiple methods of computation bring us to the same date this strengthens the conclusion (and also cast doubt on collaborative effort among the authors). As you know source criticism plays a large role in this, which is why the question of Q-source and Markan priority are important.

Luke 3:1 is about probably the closest (and only) reference in the gospels themselves which can be used to date any of the events they speak of. But even this is not as exacting and definite as David would have it. In his essay Jesus Variants, Peter Kirby points out the following:

From the data provided by Josephus, we estimate that Pilate was prefect of Judea from 26 to 36 CE. The canonical Gospels do tell us that the crucifixion of Jesus was under Pilate and that its day was in some relation to the Passover, which after much puzzling over calendrical systems has produced the dates of 30 and 33 as the most popular years for scholars to place the death of Jesus. (Meier's A Marginal Jew, vol. 1, is a good source for this scholarship, with a favored year of 30 CE.) But none of the canonical Gospels give us data that would allow us to fix the date at 33 CE precisely. The closest thing to an absolute reference for dating in the Gospels is in reference to the start of John the Baptist's ministry in "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (Luke 3:1) which may be 27 or 28 or 29 CE depending on the method of calculation of the regnal years. Even if there were no data that contradicted a date of the death of Jesus as being 33 CE, there is no ancient source that says this in the first place, so it shouldn't be on the list.

So while the date in mind here “may be 27 or 28 or 29 CE depending on the method of calculation of the regnal years,” Luke 3:1 does narrow the timeframe significantly. However, it hardly puts to rest any question on the possibility of legendary development. In the authentically Pauline letters, there is no reference to a crucifixion under Pilate (I Timothy, which offers the New Testament’s sole reference to Pilate outside of the gospels and Acts, is pseudonymous). Wells’ view is that Pilate came to be linked with Jesus’ crucifixion as a natural consequence of two distinct streams of tradition – the view of Jesus in Paul’s letters and the Galilean preacher of Q – being fused into one as we find in the latter part of the first century.

First recall the points Wells makes about the Jesus we read about in Paul’s letters:

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)

The earliest known tradition of Jesus has him crucified at some unspecified time in the past, treated by Paul as if it were not at all recent, without any indication of the circumstances or place of his crucifixion. The earthly life of Paul’s Jesus is as hazy as a wispy vapor. But as interest in Jesus grew, it would be natural for enthusiasts to wonder about Jesus’ earthly life.

Movement towards dating the earthly life of the Pauline Jesus in a relatively recent past is intelligible even without the influence on later Christians of Q: For Paul’s Jesus came to Earth “when the time had fully come” (Gal. 4:4), and this soon developed in Pauline-type communities into the more specific statement that he had lived “at the end of the times” (Hebrews 9:26; 1 Peter 1:20). Even if this originally meant no more than that his first coming had inaugurated the final epoch (however long) of history (the epoch that would culminate in his return as judge), it would in time be taken to mean that he had lived in the recent past. And to post-Pauline and post-Q Christians of the late first century, familiar as they were with crucifixion as a Roman punishment, his death by crucifixion – already attested by Paul, but not given any historical context in his nor in other early epistles – would have suggested death at Roman hands, and hence during the Roman occupation of Judea from A.D. 6. From such a premises, coupled with the Q datum of Jesus as a contemporary of John the Baptist, Pilate would naturally come to mind as his murderer, for he was particularly detested by the Jews, and is indeed the only one of the prefects who governed Judea between A.D. 6 and 41 to be discussed in any detail by the two principal Jewish writers of the first century, Philo and Josephus. (The Jesus Myth, p. 104)

If you place yourself in the Corinthian church of the day, before the gospels were written and circulated, going by the content of Paul’s letters you would probably wonder who this Jesus was. Yes, there would be the post-resurrection appearances that were pointed to as vouchsafing salvation and eternal life. But there would also probably be this lingering sense of wonder about who Jesus was during his earthly life. What was known of this at the time? Paul’s letters indicate that Jesus was crucified, but they do not indicate a time or place or specify the circumstances of this event. Also, Paul treats the earthly Jesus as “emptied” of his supernatural powers and status, living in humility and obscurity. The door was thus opened to the imagination, if to nothing else, and as oral traditions were developed and various views were amalgamated (a fact to which Paul’s own letters testify), it’s hard to see how any traditions which would have eventually prevailed could not involve at least some groping and invention. The Wisdom literature and Old Testament prophets and poetry supplied many of the details which would later be incorporated into the portraits of Jesus. But at this point, we’re not dealing with historical accounts, but theological concoction.

David wrote:

Nevertheless, if multiple independent attestations can be sufficiently demonstrated, then the historicity of an event is very probable even to the most skeptical historians (Ehrman, Borg, etc…).

Even if we did have this in the case of the gospels, this would not seal the case for the historicity of the resurrection. Besides, what we have in the case of the gospels is a clear line of dependence, embellishment and development. Matthew and Luke were obviously using Mark's narrative as a model for their own (so they are not "independent sources"), and John's gospel is built on traditions which show at least some familiarity with the basic outline of that model (preaching ministry followed by passion narrative and post-resurrection appearances). Indeed, it is where the authors embellished their own versions of the narrative that variations in the story are most pronounced.

David points to Papias as “external attestation” of Mark, which he dates to 110 AD (some sources, such as this one, dates Papias’ writings to AD 130 or even later):

Mark indeed, since he was the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, but not in order, the things either said or done by the Lord as much as he remembered. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed Him, but afterwards, as I have said, [heard and followed] Peter, who fitted his discourses to the needs [of his hearers] but not as if making a narrative of the Lord's sayings'; consequently, Mark, writing down some things just as he remembered, erred in nothing; for he was careful of one thing - not to omit anything of the things he heard or to falsify anything in them.

Christian apologist Richard Bauckham, acknowledges that the prevailing view among scholars is that Papias’ statements here are “historically worthless” as evidence for the Christian view. Bauckham writes:

What Papias says here about the Gospel of mark is the earliest explicit occurrence of the claim that Peter's teaching lies behind this Gospel. It was therefore subjected to close scrutiny and discussion during the first hundred years or more of modern Gospels scholarship. Some scholars up to the present time have continued to treat it very seriously as important evidence about the origins of the Gospel of Mark, but during the twentieth century it came to be widely regarded as historically worthless. Although the attribution of the Gospel to a certain Mark may be accurate, there is no reason, according to this widespread view, to suppose that this was the John Mark of the New Testament (Acts and Epistles), since this Latin name (Marcus) was in very common use, in Greek (Markos) as well as Latin. We know from Eusebius that Papias cited 1 Peter (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.17), almost certainly as evidence of the close association of Peter with the Mark known from the New Testament. (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 203)

In spite of this widespread conclusion among the scholarly community, Bauckham proceeds to argue for the validity of Papias as a reliable witness. In his essay Was Papias a Reliable Witness? Paul Tobin interacts with Bauckham’s case and concludes that, “Contrary to Bauckham, the consensus position is firmly in place: Papias’ witness is ‘historically worthless’.”

David wrote:

As I have pointed out to Robert, if the early Christian community was pumping out lies left and right to build their case for Christ, why not put Peter at the pen on this document instead of Mark who was not an eyewitness? Especially at the time Papias was writing, when the apostolic pedestal found its high point.

It needs to be borne in mind that, certainly by the time of Papias (which is after the gospel narratives had in one form or another become part of Christianity), believers like Papias thought they were passing on tradition. I would not look to Papias as an inventor, but more of a popularizer. As for how the author of the gospel we call Mark came to be a person named Mark associated with Peter, Wells explains this as follows:

The ascription of titles, in so far as its basis can be inferred at all, seems to have been a haphazard business. Beare writes in this connection of ‘second-century guesses’ ([The Earliest Records of Jesus], p 13). Mk., for instance, acquired its title probably because ‘my son Mark’ is mentioned as a close associate of ‘Peter the apostle’ who poses as the author of I Peter (1:1 and 5:13). This epistle of the late first or early second century, influenced as it is by Pauline theology, introduces ‘Mark’ as a personage familiar from the Pauline letters (Coloss. 4:10) in order to create the authentic Pauline atmosphere. Nonetheless, it was probably this mention of Mark in a work ascribed to Peter that originated the tradition (preserved by Papias, AD 140) that Mk. was written by one Mark who took down the spoken recollections of Peter ([Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu], p 8). This traditions was not finally discredited until the rise of form-criticism. At the beginning of this century orthodox commentators on Mk. still insisted that the gospel is a unitary composition, owing its unity to the author’s dependence on the eye-witness Peter for all its information. The change in critical standpoint is at once obvious from comparison with Taylor’s – also orthodox – commentary (first published in 1952), where stress is laid upon the great diversity of the traditions which Mark collected after they had already been used in the teaching and preaching of the Church. (Did Jesus exist?, p. 77)

Bauckham (a Christian apologist) confirms Wells’ hypothesis when he writes:

Papias, it is suggested, wishing to give apostolic authority to a Gospel ascribed to an unknown author called Mark, used 1 Pet 5:13 to identify this Mark with Peter's close associate, thus creating the connection he asserts between the Gospel and Peter. (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 204)

So if Papias was simply preserving what had come to him as a tradition, there is no need to paint him as a brazen inventor of would-be history. As for I Peter, I’ve already raised pertinent questions on the authorship of this letter in my blog Did the Author of I Peter See the Risen Jesus of the Gospels?.

Surely more to come.

by Dawson Bethrick

Another Response to David, Part 2: The Witness of Paul

In this blog I continue my interaction with David’s 16 August comments to my blog In Response to David on I Corinthians 15:3-8.

David wrote:

On several counts, you project your modern understanding back into ancient context:

quoting me:

They obviously do not have a physical person in mind when they make these kinds of declarations, so why suppose the early Christians were speaking about a physical Jesus when they claimed to have "witnessed" him?" If the word “witness” enjoys a very loose meaning for many of today’s Christians (and it very often does), why suppose it didn’t enjoy similar flexibility among the early Christians?

David continued:

A word’s current usage cannot be transferred anachronistically “backwords” (get it?).

Looking at it again, I actually think it’s the other way around: Christians today have adopted the bible’s own looseness of meaning of the word ‘witness’ into their conversation today (just as they have in the case of other words, like love, peace, rest, etc.). This actually makes even more sense, for what are they taking as their model for usage of the word ‘witness’ if not what the bible itself says? So I’m committing no fallacy here. Christians of all ages seem to think of themselves as “witnesses of the spirit.” Unger’s elucidates this as “the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit to true believers as to their acceptance with God and their adoption into the divine household” (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, p. 1370). Unger’s goes on to say that “the two classic passages upon which this doctrine is especially based are Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6,” and claims that “the witness of the Spirit is to be regarded as a sequence to or reward of saving faith” (Ibid.). If it is legitimate for believers to consider themselves “witnesses of the spirit” in this or some roughly similar sense, why would it be illegitimate for them to consider themselves witnesses of Jesus when they experience an appearance of Jesus before them, as in the case of the waking fantasies which many Christians I have known personally claimed to have experienced?

When Peter gives his sermon in Acts ch. 2, and says (v. 32) “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses,” what do you think he means? No gospel account puts anyone with Jesus in the tomb when his dead body was supposedly brought back to life.

In Acts 4:32-34 we find the following passage:

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold

The word ‘witness’ here seems so out of place on my (21st century) understanding of the concept for which it stands. But I’ll try to be flexible. For the early Christians, the use of ‘witness’ here was not illegitimate. For them, the dramatic change in the people’s response provided “witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” What is perhaps anachronistic is my assessment of such usage as loose, for this is not how I would use the word. But clearly Christians of the 1st century using the word ‘witness’ to include in its scope of reference spiritual objects (which is all I had in mind in my statement above) is not at all anachronistic.

David wrote:

The error is counted doubly when you attempt the feat with two different languages. (Carson, Exegetical Fallacies pg 33)

Perhaps your complaint is better directed to the translators of our modern English bibles, for they are using the word ‘witness’ in a variety of ways (I count 93 instances of the word ‘witness’ in my King James Version, and the meaning seems to flex through a multitude of senses) and while definitions are rarely if ever explicit in the bible, the New Testament’s usage of ‘witness’ does not at all seem incompatible with my point above, which you have sought to challenge in this way. If Paul had a waking fantasy of Jesus, like today’s Christians have, why wouldn’t he think of himself as a witness to Jesus? Even the book of Acts does not have the physical post-resurrection Jesus of the gospels paying a visit to Paul as they have him do before his immediate apostles before his ascension. And Paul in no way distinguishes between the experience of Jesus that he claims others have had, and his own. Would you not consider Paul a witness? That would seem quite strange, but I know that apologetic defenses can lead believers into very strange (and undesirable) positions.

I wrote:

If I had seen a man who was actually resurrected from the grave, whom I thought was "the Son of God," I would waste no time in writing down exactly what I had seen, where I had seen it and when I had seen it. If I knew of others who had the same experience, I would not hesitate to get their testimony down in writing, or at least to have them endorse such statements of witness. But that's me.

David responded:

Do you live in the oral culture of first century Palestine? If you did chances are you’d be illiterate, and if you could read and write could you afford it? How could you assure the transmission of your document?

Yes, my point above does assume literate capacity, and no, we both know that neither of us lives in first century Palestine. My point here is one of character: I would not be sloth in broadcasting my witness, especially if I were personally charged by a great commission. I certainly would not wait 20, 30 or more years before getting my experience documented, during which time my memory of it could easily atrophy or distort my recollection of the event. As for whether or not I could “afford it,” well, again, I’m not there, so this question seems deliberately unanswerable. Similarly with your question about assuring the transmission of my document. How did the author of the gospel according to Matthew assure the transmission of his document? Or did he? Other individuals spread throughout the intervening centuries seem to be creditable for this task, not the author himself.

Now your objection is sensible on the basis of my worldview, for the concerns you raise would impact the situation. But how could it be sensible on the basis of the Christian worldview, where naturalistic constraints like the one you raise should ultimately be of no concern? Would a supernatural deity appear only before the illiterate? Christians are always trying to tell us that it’s a fallacy to assume everyone “back then” was illiterate, uneducated, unscientific, superstitious, etc. (and I don’t, by the way). But we can’t have it both ways here. If Jesus appeared only to the illiterate, I’d say that was a bad choice on his part. Also, if he did appear to only illiterate persons, why should this matter? Jesus is supernatural, and could easily empower an illiterate person with supreme fluency in a multitude of languages if he wanted to. In fact, the writer’s sudden ability to write could itself be evidence of Jesus’ supernaturalism, something the gospel writers were so eager to insert into their stories.

See how supernaturalism takes the apologetic backseat here? No, I do not live in the oral culture of first century Palestine, and you know it. I know this too. And the chances that had I lived in those days I’d most likely be illiterate is ultimately irrelevant. Would this stop a supernatural deity? Why think it would? Your response here assumes naturalistic constraints. Why would these apply if Christianity’s supernaturalism is true? Having to acquire literacy in order to write is understandable on my worldview, which recognizes the primacy of existence and therefore does not presume to fake the nature of the human mind. But Christianity denies the primacy of existence. What guided Matthew’s hand in penning his gospel, if not a divine hand, according to Christianity? What force assured the transmission of his gospel through the ages and into our hands, if not a divine force, according to Christianity?

It seems more and more that the authors of the New Testament texts were just as bound to the reality I know as I am. Their stories suggest otherwise, but the textual development speaks louder than this.

David wrote:

Even granting your position for the sake of internal critique, how many average people in our modern society have ever written a historical account of some life changing event they experienced?

I don’t have the statistics on this, nor would I see this as at all relevant. My point above was a testament to my own character, not to some ad populum law of averages. This should be clear from the leading statement: “If I had seen a man who was actually resurrected from the grave…” Then again, I’ve observed many people writing about things that have happened in their own lives. For many years I kept a diary, and often I would record things that happened, especially those that had a profound impact on my life. But then again, that’s me. I’ve known some others who claimed to have done this themselves, but diaries tend to be private (until they’re posthumously published, in some cases).

David wrote:

How about the Virginia Tech mass homicide? This was a major event to witness. Who decides – and why – whether or not it’s a major event? I was going to school at James Madison University at the time (2 hours down the road), and saw no written accounts circulating amongst my close friends who were only several feet away from the killer that day. Indeed not even blogging about their experiences?”

I wasn’t there, but I blogged about it shortly after it happened on two occasions. See my blog Virginia Tech and also Christian Reaction to Virginia Tech.

There were also news reports about the event for days and weeks afterwards, many of them including interviews with firsthand witnesses.

I am close friends with a man whose son was a student at Columbine when Klebold and Harris went on their rampage. My friend (also named David) wrote to me several times about his son’s experience shortly after the incident. I don’t know if his son ever wrote about it (I wouldn’t expect a 13-year-old to write much about anything), but that’s irrelevant.

But the incident at Virginia Tech is hardly analogous to a religious experience like a resurrected man-god walking and talking with you and commanding you to go tell the world. It seems that Peter and co. took their sweet time in fulfilling this commandment.

David wrote:

No, but they told me plenty about it. Even if they did write some of it down, would it still be around in a couple of millennia? Maybe so with today’s standards, but I don’t think that even close to a reasonable expectation for 30 AD.

What if their actions were guided by an irresistible supernatural force? I mean, let’s compare apples to apples here, shall we? Did any of your close friends report that they feel moved by a supernatural force to tell the world about this event, and yet fail to do so? The gospels are supposed to be divinely inspired, are they not? That is what I was always taught. Given this, I don’t know why Christians would care whether or not they were written by eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses could be relying on so-called “autonomous thinking” in determining what they witnessed, or they could have difficulty distinguishing between “the wisdom of God” and “the wisdom of the world,” which Paul rejects, relying on their own judgment of what they observed instead of “letting go and letting God.” An eyewitness account might take one’s own interpretation of what one perceives as authoritative in understanding it. But if man’s mental faculties are contaminated by “the curse of sin” as so many Christians claim, then it seems that one would want something stronger than this. Indeed, for the Christian, what could be more reliable than divine inspiration? What could be authoritative than a testimony like, “I wasn’t there, but here’s what God told me to record”? When we get to Paul, what exactly do we have? He bases what he tells us in his letters on the claim that he received a revelation from God. The appeal to eyewitness accounts seems to be an unwitting reversion to a form of naturalism, for it does not rely on appeals to supernatural transmission of knowledge. Instead, it relies on the senses and one’s own cognitive faculties, but if “God be true, but every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4), why should we take testimony of this sort seriously?

David wrote:

Geisler (same book) points out it may very well be the case that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, and James were among the 500 as well as nine who are elsewhere named Apostles (Geisler/Turek, pg 248); if he’s right then there are written accounts.

Well, since Paul never names any of the 500 people he mentions in passing in I Cor. 15, we could say anyone living at the time was among them. In fact, on Christianity’s supernaturalism, we could go well beyond this, and say that some or all of the 500 people had been dead for decades or centuries prior, and rose out of their graves a la Mt. 27:52-53, and gathered to see the post-resurrection Jesus. Or, maybe these were people from later centuries transported back in time to see the post-resurrected Jesus. Or, maybe they came from other planets. Since we’re asked to conclude that Christianity’s supernaturalism is “the best explanation” of the data, on what basis could we discount these alternatives?

I wrote:

Paul nowhere suggests that Jesus had taught these things during his life on earth. But that’s what we find when we get to the gospels: Jesus marching a squad of disciples through the ancient countryside between various towns in Palestine performing miracles, healing the blind, the lame and the infirm, giving moral instruction and teaching in the form of parables. We never learn any of this from Paul.

David responded:

It’s as if you are surprised by the fact that Paul was writing letters on the road and not historical narrative.

No, that is not what surprises me. Paul may have been writing on the road (and writing on the road 2000 years ago would not be like writing on the road today – I know, I’ve done a lot of travel, both domestic and overseas, and today we move very quickly by comparison), but this did not prevent him from quoting OT sources and giving moral teachings of his own. Had he known that Jesus had taught the same things, I find it surprising that he did not appeal to Jesus’ authority. And if Paul were guided by a supernatural force (e.g., “the Holy Spirit”), and/or his hand was divinely inspired to write what he wrote, why should writing on the road be any kind of impediment? Then later we have stories which put Jesus into a historical setting where he does give the teachings that Paul gives as his own. If the gospels are true, I would find this quite surprising, perplexing even. But since it is the kind of thing we’d expect to see if the later narratives were literary developments rather than histories, it’s not at all surprising. What’s surprising at this point is how eager believers are to “soldier on” in spite of all the problems their position faces and cannot surmount.

David wrote:

Was Paul’s purpose in writing those letters to give exhaustive account of Jesus’ earthly ministry? No.

Paul need not have given an “exhaustive account of Jesus’ earthly ministry” in order to document knowledge of one. Indeed, we do not even learn from Paul that Jesus ever had an earthly ministry. Informative mentionings of it here and there would be quite adequate to establish his knowledge of it. And since he is said to have conferred with people who traveled with Jesus on that ministry, I would expect that he would have known about it.

David wrote:

Would these references have made his arguments more compelling? Perhaps to you, but where has it been argued that the original intended audience shares your worldview?

Why would they need to share my worldview in order for references to Jesus’ earthly ministry to be compelling? My worldview does not accept claims on the basis of supernatural authority in the first place, so your question here seems quite misdirected. Preachers today who are addressing people who share their own worldview are constantly drawing on the narratives of Jesus’ earthly life in order to buttress their points and make them more compelling. That Paul does not is quite curious. My evaluation here is not laden with anachronistic fallacy, either, since the earthly life that the gospel narratives give to Jesus is supposed to have taken place prior to Paul’s ministry, and Paul determined to “preach Christ crucified” (I Cor. 1:23) and “not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2). And even with these declarations, Paul never indicates the time, the place or the situation of Jesus’ crucifixion.

David write:

So why blame Paul for not fulfilling your requirements when they are incompatible with Paul’s authorial intent?

Is it really “incompatible with Paul’s authorial intent” to cite Jesus for teachings which, according to the gospels, he gave? Is it really “incompatible with Paul’s authorial intent” to mention things like Jesus being born of a virgin, being baptized by John the Baptist, gathering a band of twelve disciples and journeying with them to places like Galilee, Capernaum, Jerusalem, performing miracles, curing diseases, teaching in parables, quarreling with the chief priests, etc.? Come now, David, in your zeal to exonerate Paul’s conspicuous silences, you’ve not only confirmed that Paul was silent on the points in question, you’ve also wandered into the preposterous in order to defend them.

David wrote:

1 Corinthians 9:10 ‘To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband’. Now why does Paul put this moral teaching in Jesus’ mouth, and then immediately afterwards clarify something that he is saying instead of Jesus? Indeed this teaching was nothing new (Gen 2:24; Mal 2:16).

As you point out, Paul most likely got this teaching from the OT and since the OT was held with veneration, it is a teaching that is attributable to “the Lord”. On many occasions Paul recasts OT teachings as if they were part of the rollout of a new covenant.

Still more to come!

by Dawson Bethrick