Eyewitness To Jesus? The Gospel Authors

3This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. 4Don't we have the right to food and drink? 5Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas[1] ? 6Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? 1 Cor 9 NIV

So if they are all in fact apostles who travel about preaching, on what is the distinction based? We see elsewhereas in 2 Corinthians 10-12that Paul is one of many apostles who go about preaching the Christ in competing missions, some of whom (including Paul) are not part of the Jerusalem brotherhood. In this great conglomeration of missionaries, some are independent operators, some are members of the Jerusalem-based "brothers of/in the Lord". They are all aware of each others' activities, they have contacts between themselves, though rivalries do exist. As a distinctive, identifiable group, whom Paul throws into the pot of his argument in the plea for equal treatment, it is likely that his "brothers of the Lord" are a sub-group of apostles located in Jerusalem, of which James is a part if not the head. My point in this discussion is to show that viewing them as something other than "siblings of Jesus" is completely feasible and supportable within the context, and thus the phrase is at best ambiguous. It cannot be used to 'disprove' the mythicist case.

3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[1] : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter,[2] and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
1 Cor 15 NIV

Paul's listing in 1 Corinthians 15 of those who had undergone a "seeing" of the Christ suggests a number of things. The "more than 500 brothers" seems to be distinct from "all the apostles", although the latter may be a sub-group within the overall brotherhood. Paul implies that 500 is only a portion of it, making it a sizeable organization. Probably its members lived in Jerusalem and its environs, and assembled for meetings and ceremonies. At one of these, a group of over 500 (is this exaggeration on Paul's part, or of the tradition as it came down to Paul?) had some kind of revelatory experience of the spiritual Christ.
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This should cast light on the meaning of adelphos, both here and elsewhere. It refers to a fellow-believer in the Lord. Our more archaic rendering as "brethren of the Lord" conveys exactly this connotation: a community of like-minded believers, not "siblings" of each other or anyone else. Thus, a "brother of the Lord," whether referring to James or the 500, means a follower of this divine figure, and in 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul would be referring to some of these members of the Jerusalem conventicle.
AgeOfReason

I find that internet discussions prohibit that sort of thing. The long posts are boring, and generally the discussion ends in a shouting match.

I don't think we can assume that Jesus was "spiritual" at this point, that explanation doesn't completely fit the text. The word Paul uses for "resurrection", is always used for a bodily, physical resurrection. They considered Jesus to be a real person, with a body who lived in history.

I don't want to say anything too negative, because you seem to appreciate his insight, just take him with a grain of salt.

To what extent the mystery cult initiates made such a transfer is difficult to say. I suspect most of them went along, more or less, for the ride. Which is not to say that they had fully worked out in their own minds (if anyone did) exactly how the myths functioned in the new universe. In early Christianity's case, scripture was regarded as a window onto those higher spiritual dimensions. The New Testament epistle to the Hebrews is fascinating evidence of this kind of thinking. From scripture, the writer has drawn all sorts of features given to his savior Christ, whose salvation activities are placed in the spiritual realm (chapters 8 and 9). Christ's sacrifice is performed in a "heavenly sanctuary." The opening part of the epistle gives us a glimpse onto some great heavenly scene, the Son compared to the angels on the basis of scriptural passages which have nothing to do with any setting or activities on earth. The author's presentation throughout the epistle has Alexandrian Platonism written all over it. And he is writing to an audience that is expected to understand these things, without him having to provide any painstaking explanations.Did the cultic devotee regard Attis as literally bleeding to death in some heavenly realm? Was Mithras seen as using an actual heavenly knife to stab an actual heavenly bull? Quite frankly, I don't know. Not only am I separated from that kind of thinking by two thousand years, my mind is too conditioned by modern knowledge and attitudes toward the realities of the universe I live in. When Paul created his myth of the Lord's Supper (deriving his picture "from the Lord" as he says in 1 Corinthians 11:23), did he envision a table laid out above the clouds, with Jesus breaking heavenly bread? A mind like Plutarch's would say, No, Clea, it is all allegory. Unfortunately, Paul doesn't give us an insight into his thinking in this regard.

11Those animals whose blood is brought as a sin-offering by the High Priest into the sanctuary have their bodies burnt outside the camp, 12and therefore Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood. 13Let us then go to meet him outside the camp, bearing the stigma that he bore.The first thing to note is that the name of Jerusalem is not used. Only the Gospel story would lead us to identify the author’s thought about a gate with that city. Nor does the name of Calvary or Golgotha ever appear.

6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

I've looked at it, and at a number of his other pages. I haven't been able to find the references to spiritual beings who take on flesh and blood while not becoming historical. Could you point them out, please? I did note that Doherty discusses Paul's description of Jesus' descent "according to the flesh" without mentioning Paul's use of the identical term in the same letter, since Paul's clear meaning there would have demolished his argument. Does Doherty mention that item elsewhere? Because if he doesn't, I find it hard to see his approach as intellectually honest.

But let’s go on. In Romans 1:3-4, Paul gives us two items of this gospel about the Son, encoded by God into scripture:. . . who arose from the seed of David according to the flesh, and was designated Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness [or, the holy spirit] after his resurrection from the dead.This part of the sentence is frustratingly cryptic, as reflected by the many different translations of its various elements. (The above translation of verses 1 to 4 are partly my own, in an attempt to lean toward the literal Greek.) Here, Paul offers two elements about the Son. One is kata sarka, literally according to the flesh, a vague and particularly cryptic phrase that is used throughout early Christian literature in a variety of subtle ways, often with unclear meaning. The other is kata pneuma, literally according to the spirit. Whether the latter is a reference to the Holy Spirit is also uncertain. Perhaps Paul is using kata to refer to something like in the sphere of the flesh and in the sphere of the spirit, which is a suggestion put forward by the eminent scholar C. K. Barrett. Such a translation is, in fact, quite useful and possibly accurate. But let’s look at kata sarka first.. . . who arose from the seed of David, according to the flesh [or, in the sphere of the flesh] . . .Is this a piece of historical datum? If it is, it’s the only one Paul ever gives us, for no other feature of Jesus’ human incarnation appears in his letters. But the fact that it is linked with the second element, which is an entirely spiritual event derived from scripture, suggests that it is not a biographical element Paul is offering.In fact, it follows, grammatically and conceptually, out of what Paul has just said: it is an element of the gospel about God’s Son which has been pre-announced in scripture. Paul has told us clearly and unequivocally that this is where he has gotten this piece of information. In verses 1-2, Paul has focused on the message to be found in the sacred writings. Why would he suddenly step outside that focus and stick in a biographical datum about Jesus of Nazareth derived from historical knowledgethen return to scripture (as we shall see) for his second element? In fact, scripture was full of predictions that the Christ, the Messiah, would be descended from David. Paul, in reading these, would have applied them to his particular version of the Son, the Son who was a spiritual entity, not a human one.

LIGAUBO - Daftar Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Deposit Pulsa Jackpot TerbesarThe second Pauline passage most often appealed to in support of Paul’s knowledge of an historical Jesus is Galatians 4:4-5.. . .God sent his own Son, born of woman, born under the Law (literally, becoming or arising out of woman / the law) to purchase freedom for the subjects of the law, in order that we might attain the status of sons.[snip]Burton also notes that the word usually translated as born (genomenon) is not the most unambiguous verb to use for this concept; a form of gennao, to give birth, would have been more straightforward. Instead, Paul uses a form of ginomai, which has a broader meaning of to become, to come into existence. Out of woman, of course, implies birth, but the point is, the broader concept lends itself better to the atmosphere of myth, if that is what Paul has in mind. And his born of woman is not only something that was said of certain mythical savior gods, like Dionysos (and various other products of Zeus’ mythical dallyings), it is a detail he could well have based not on history, but on the source he uses for all he says about the Son: the Jewish scriptures. The famous passage in Isaiah 7:14,A young woman is with child, and she will bear a son and will call him Immanuel. . .was taken by Jew and early Christian alike to refer to the Messiah. Paul links this idea with Jesus being subject to the law. The latter was a paradigmatic feature which Christ had to possess, so that he could stand in parallel with those whom Paul is addressing, those who had themselves been subject to the lawuntil Christ abrogated it in this new age of revelation and faith.Again, as in the Romans 1 passage, if Isaiah referred to the Messiah as born of woman, Paul would have concluded that in some way there must have been a spiritual world archetypal process to which this scriptural passage pointed. There would have been little difficulty in accepting this, given the overriding philosophy of the day which saw all things on earth as counterpart copies of primary manifestations in the higher spiritual realm. And as the mythical stories of all savior gods contained human-like features, including births from women, such a characteristic of the spiritual Christ would not have seemed out of place.A glance back to the sentiments of Galatians 3 should confirm that, however Paul saw Christ as born of woman, born under the law, he didn’t see him as arriving in the present time through that birth. The key verses are 3:23 and 25:Before this faith came, we were close prisoners in the custody of the law, pending the revelation of faith . . . Now that faith has come, the tutor’s charge is at an end.Clearly, the present event of salvation history is not the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whose life and death are once again missing from the picture. Rather, it is the arrival of faith in the response to the missionary movement represented by inspired apostles like Paul. Here Paul is consistent with the way he expresses himself in many other places.