Did Jesus die before he was born?

Luther himself was very Pauline, and he rejected James and Hebrews on the basis of views he adopted from Galatians, Romans, and Ephesians. It would surprise me if even liberal Lutherans reject Paul.Very liberal Mennonite churches probably reject Pauline doctrine. Not too many "mainline" churches do, because, after all, it was Paul's line of churches that succeeded way back in the Roman empire. He became much more well-known than even Peter.

I was under the impression that 1 Corinthians was not under question as a whole nor part, as far as its Pauline authorship. Maybe I'm mistaken. Chapter 15 of that letter, however, mentions the three days, the ascencion, and the appearance to the apostles and crowds.Well, I guess it doesn't mention the ascension specifically, but since the whole chapter is on the resurrection, and he mentions repeatedly that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, it should be safe to assume that he must have ascended at some point.Oh, the ascencion is mentioned specifically in Ephesians 4:8-10; I think another pretty well-accepted writing of Paul.

Is this necessary? The Jewish diaspora produced synagogues, not that much different than our idea of a church. Since Acts describes trips into synagogues, why invent something different?You are suggesting that Paul formed his own churches or won them over from existing ones. Acts suggested that he formed his own with those won over from existing synagogues, which appeared to be open to speakers. I don't know that your suggestion adds anything here.On the other hand, my interpretation of the writings of the 2nd century church leads me to believe that teachers taught on their own in house churches or in their own house or place of business even in Paul's churches. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in the early 2nd century, seems to be trying to put a stop to that sort of private teaching, because the gnostics were using it so effectively. I mentioned the last part of your quote in my previous post. Luke seems to be credited among the early Christians with having produced his Gospel under Paul's authority. I don't know how much room the Acts or the Galatians version give for Paul to have learned much of the stories of Christ if they were passed around verbally. Instead, Luke gathered them up at some point, stating that is what he was doing, and Paul may have heard few of them prior to Luke's new career as a journalist, if Luke was even still with him at that point. Jesus' time frame has been curious to me for a long time. Irenaeus, a well-respected bishop of the late 2nd century, suggests that Jesus didn't die until he was at least around fifty. Of course, there are the problems with the census, which didn't happen when Luke said it did. Yet, it did happen. (AD 14 or 14 BC?)There are a lot of claims of being an eye-witness in John's Gospel and letters. If there's any truth to those claims, then it was an "apostle" who wrote the Gospel, no matter what his name, because he was an eye-witness and close companion.{Fixed 1 quote box - AM}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 07-23-2003]

I commented on this in a closed thread (http://EvC Forum: Is the Bible inspired by God? -->EvC Forum: Is the Bible inspired by God?). Would you be interested in addressing my post here?

No rush, Brian. I'm only curious, not demanding.

I found the following by searching the first volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers ( Early Church Fathers - Christian Classics Ethereal Library ) for "rose again according to the Scriptures." It is in Irenaeus' Against Heresies, book III, chapter 18, paragraph 3:

quote:

---

He was likewise preached by Paul: "For I delivered," he says, "unto you first of all, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures."(9) It is plain, then, that Paul knew no other Christ besides Him alone, who both suffered, and was buried, and rose gain, who was also born, and whom he speaks of as man.

---

Irenaeus also mentions the passage without quoting it, saying:

quote:

---

And again, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, when he had recounted all those who had seen God after the resurrection, he says in continuation, "But whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed," acknowledging as one and the same, the preaching of all those who saw God after the resurrection from the dead.

---

That's in the same book, chapter XIII, paragraph 1. The "whether it were I or they, so we preach" quote is from 1 Cor 15:11, right after our passage in question.Looking at the passage, it seems to me that the Marcionites were saying only Paul had knowledge of the truth, not that only Paul had witnessed the resurrection. So that passage didn't have to be the focus of Irenaeus' attention, anyway. He begins instead with Paul's comment about James and Peter being apostles to the circumcision. Then he goes right to the above referenced quote.I couldn't find any earlier references to 1 Cor 15, but there's only so many writings prior to Irenaeus' gigantic book. Only Justin's Apology and his Dialogue with Trypho are of any length prior to Irenaeus. (Well, maybe The Shepherd of Hermas, but that's unlikely to have Scripture quotes.) I also haven't checked the ANF's index of Scripture reference's, although I do doubt I'll find an earlier reference. Too unlikely.Anyway, I guess I don't think it's an interpolation. It fits in pretty well with the whole topic Paul is introducing in 1 Cor 15.

Yeah, it seems to me that "when he had recounted all those who had seen God after the resurrection," is a clear reference to 1 Cor 15:5-8, because the "continuation" he gives is 1 Cor 15:11. Irenaeus is late enough that using God and Jesus interchangeably is not too surprising. I guarantee you I could find several other instances where he does that. (Not that Irenaeus was late enough to be a trinitarian, but he would be more prone to using "God" to refer to Jesus.) That is what he is doing in that passage, and I think it was pretty effective.By the way, my ANF index says Irenaeus referenced 1 Cor 15:5-8 four other times. I didn't look them up, and there were no earlier references. Well, somewhat contemporaries. I'm not denying the lack of information about Jesus' life in Paul's letters, and the lack of quotes from Jesus. The only quote by Paul of Jesus is found in Acts, not Paul's letters--I think. He does seem to have heard a version of the last supper (1 Cor 11).I'm going to give some thought to the timing of Jesus' life as you've thrown out. I saved the two links mentioned earlier, but I haven't had time to read them yet. Still covering for a co-worker till early August and pulling long days.At this point, though, I don't think I personally am ready to grant you anything but that Paul might not have heard a lot of stories of Jesus' life. He wasn't around the other apostles very much, and when he was, there were some other pressing matters to discuss.

I don't know that this applies much. Previous editors accept the reading Deum, which is God, without remark. Harvey wants to change it back to Dominum, or Lord, so that Irenaeus isn't found calling Jesus God. That's probably important to all the theologians that are debating the Trinity, but I don't see how it has any application at all to whether or not Irenaeus was quoting 1 Cor 15:5-8.Anyway, he refers to that passage several other times as well.Further, if he's not referring to that passage, then what is he referring to when he says Paul recounted those who saw God after the resurrection? Surely Paul didn't recount a list of people who saw anything at all after the resurrection other than in 1 Cor 15, did he? I was a little lost here.What does "one reason for its presence could be that Jesus was actually recorded somewhere as saying just that" mean? Are you saying that the compiler of Matthew's Gospel had a source for that statement, but not any others?Actually, just tell me what you meant. I'm not following what you were trying to say.The last part, I interpret to mean: "Percy believes that if there were accounts that were made of Jesus' life in the early first century, then those accounts must have been against mainstream Christianity's perception of Jesus. If the accounts had been supportive, then the church surely would have preserved them."I agree with that, I guess. I think we are generally agreed that there were no accounts, pro-traditional or anti-traditional.How much contemporaneous record is there of John the Baptist? Is he mentioned by a contemporary more than once?

I've finally had a little bit of time (at 5:30 on a Sunday morning) to peruse one of the web sites mentioned in this thread (The Bible and Christianity). Since this thread was started in somewhat of a casual discussion mode, I'd like to comment on the web site in the only way I can--casual discussion mode. I'm not up on any of this stuff enough to do more.One, the guy writing the web page seems terribly unfamiliar with the material other than the two books he's apparently summarizing. For example, he mentions "Galatians I and II" as accepted letters of Paul. It looks to me like he read "...Galatians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Corinthians..." and turned it into "Galatians I and II, Thessalonians I and II, and Corinthians." He's also unaware of the passage in 1 Cor 15 that's been discussed.He spends some time trying to discredit a sentence in Gal 1:9, but he doesn't even address 1 Cor 15, which is more pertinent to the things he said. Thus, I assume he's quite unaware of it, as I would expect from someone who doesn't know there's no I and II Galatians.Further, his discrediting of Gal 1:9 mainly includes questioning Paul's use of "Lord" there, which he says wasn't in vogue until later. This isn't true, unless he wants to discredit Paul's 43 uses of it in Romans as well, which he says is a genuine Pauline letter. I know from debates with Christians back when Christian doctrine mattered to me that Paul is very consistent about using God to refer to the Father and Lord to refer to Jesus, so he uses it a lot.Two, surely none of this is as simple as he describes. If his focus is only on the Dead Sea Scroll's "Teacher of Righteousness," then, okay, that's interesting (and I want to look at the $8 book Amazon carries rather than the $35 book the web site recommends), but there seems to be an immense amount of speculation about the development of Judaism. The general outline doesn't seem hard to believe, and that's probably because the book he read was written by someone much more familiar with the subject. (I'd be interested in Brian Johnston's opinion of the scholarship of Karen Armstrong's "History of God"). The details do seem hard to believe. People just sat down and worked out how to amalgamate Yahweh and El? Israel and Judah were forced to live together, so they casually said, "Hey, it looks like we have two different Gods. Why don't we figure out how to put them together?" That's not normally how it works.And the author kept saying "it's very clear" and "clearly shows" and other such terminology. I'd be curious to know whether we really know as much about the Hyksos and their tie to the Hebrews as he suggests. I've seen the Hyksos discussed before, but I've never heard anyone be so conclusive about what happened to them.Oh, and the web site's description of Josephus "extensive" coverage of John the Baptist seems like quite an exaggeration to me. As far as I can tell from surfing the web, Josephus has about three paragraphs broken up in two places on John the Baptist. That's a far cry from what the web site implies when he says Josephus "regularly gives two or three pages on the trial of a common thief" and has extensive coverage on John the Baptist, from which I would infer that John must get at least a whole chapter. I doubt, however, that Josephus regularly gives two or three pages to the trial of a common thief. I'll be he did it once and the web page author took it from there.I'm just bringing up things I saw. It will take me a bit to have time to get a couple books and read them, because this "teacher of righteousness" thing intrigues me.

As to the other web site I found mentioned in this thread, "Pagan Christ's."That particular page is on "Attis." It sounds exaggerated, too. Can someone help me with this. There's really a Phrygian god born on Dec. 25, who is considered both the Father and divine Son, and who has a death on a tree with a resurrection after a couple days in the Spring? That is extremely hard to believe.That page mentions Tertullian, and Tertullian does indeed mention Attis in passing. He says that Attis was burned to death like Hercules. He mentions him twice, but never says more.The page says that Christians blamed similarities between Roman gods and Christianity on demons. This is true, and Justin is the best example. Justin predates Tertullian by about 50 years, but Justin doesn't mention Attis at all. He does mention the similarities between Mithras and Jesus, but doesn't seem to know about any similarities between Attis and Christianity.I can't go back and read all of Tertullian right now, but I suspect the page is just wrong in providing Tertullian as an example of a Christian who blames similarities on the demons. I think he must mean Justin.Anyway, I don't believe anything that page says about Attis except that he was a Phrygian god. Does anyone know anything else about that?

Thanks, John.I had been curious why Justin and others, who are clearly very familiar with the Mithras rites, ignored Attis if he was so like the Christian rites.There's enough differences I can understand it. The other site is clearly an exaggeration, although I can understand where he got the ideas he focused on and embellished a little.

I hadn't seen your site, but I'm going there now.By Justin and others, I'm referring to the early apologists who argued that demons foresaw the coming of Christ and so produced "pagan Christs" to mimic him and keep people from coming to him. Mithras is mentioned, Attis isn't.That's not a huge deal, but the description of Attis on that web site I mentioned was so unusually similar to Christianity, that it seemed odd they wouldn't have mentioned it. Justin lived in Rome when he wrote, so he had to have known about Attis.The site is clearly exaggerated. I am not trying to deny that there were trinities, resurrection myths, "flesh and blood" meals, etc. in pagan religions. I was under the impression that Mithras' rites bore the closest resemblance to Christian rites in the Roman empire, so hearing about Attis was quite a surprise. And if Attis was so similar, why did the apologists (Justin and others) of the Roman empire defend themselves concerning Mithras, but not Attis?The answer is that Mithras really is the closest to Christian rites, and the site was exaggerating the similarities to Attis, as well as inventing the statement that Tertullian responded to the Attis myth.The Mithras rites by themselves are enough to imply (though not prove) influence. And critics of early Christianity used them. That is why the apologists had to address it.