Your piece contains a lot of sense, but perhaps errs in just accepting the "mainstream" account of how Christianity originated.
> "This flow hides how stories about an apocalyptic human Jewish preacher developed into competing stories about a divine being who existed before creation"
Except that, as you yourself then say, the earlist writings (Paul's letters) contain almost nothing about a "human" Jesus. Paul seems to have no conception of Jesus as a recently-lived human. Instead, Paul seems to regard Jesus as a divine being who is known from scripture and from visions. So, the development of the stories could be the reverse of your statement.
Just as one example, what does Paul do after becoming a Christian on the Road to Damascus? Surely he would have gone immediately to talk to all the Christians who had lived alongside Jesus, and asked them everything they could tell him about Jesus?
But no, what he actually does is, not talk to any Christian, but instead wander around Arabia for three years (which only makes sense if, in Paul's mind, the only source of information is scripture and visions).
Then when he does go to meet other Christians he explicitly tells us that he got none of his teachings from any person (only direct from Jesus in visions, plus scripture). So, Paul was totally unaware of "Q" or any similar oral accounts.
> " then move on to the eloquent quotations of Q ..."
Except there's no evidence at all for Q. The hypothesis of Q comes purely from scholars refusing to even counternance the possibility of gospel writers simply making stuff up, so they must have got it from somewhere, so let's hypothesize Q.
But if Paul seems utterly unaware of Q, or anything along those lines, then doesn't that suggest that there was no Q, nor anything similar?
> "The Gospel called Mark was written about 65-70 CE."
How do you know that? It was almost certainly written post AD71, after the destruction of the Jewish temple. That's because the work seems to be a theological allegory, linking stories of the death of Jesus to the destruction of the temple (several passages explicitly do this).
There's actually little evidence for the existence of the gospels prior to Marcion in about AD 130s. Maybe Marcionism was the original Christianity (later superseded by the now orthodox Christians, who denounced earlier versions as heresy); Marcion was, after all, the first person with a version of the New Testament.
Thus, dating of "Mark" is perhaps somewhere AD71 to AD140. (Ditto for the other gospels.)
> " These were written about 80-85 CE, and the author of Luke wrote the Book of Acts around the same time."
The Acts Seminar dated Acts to about 110 to 120 AD (for a whole set of reasons that are hard to summarise). That would then put "Luke" in a similar timeframe.
So, there's a whole alternative scenario along the lines:
1) Early Christians (Paul) thought of Jesus as divine (not as a recently lived human).
2) Post the AD-70s revolt, "Mark" wrote a theological allegory that storified Jesus and turned the destruction of the temple into the death of the messiah.
3) Somewhere AD 100 to AD 130, "Matthew", "Luke" and others embellished and added to the story, putting their own theological spin on it. The crucial bit being that all of these gospel stories were largely made up for theological reasons.
4) Different conceptions of Jesus competed for dominance (check out the large number of 2nd-century Christian writers whose works are called "against heresy" or similar). What is now the mainstream won out, over the Marcionites and others.
I agree with some of what you say. Paul does focus on a divine Jesus, certainly after his resurrection and possibly before his birth, and the second part of that complicates the simple human to divine evolution theory.
But Paul does also treat Jesus as a human person who was born and crucified, even if he does not focus a lot on his human life. He is also recorded as meeting the Jerusalem apostles. So he seems to believe Jesus existed as a human person.
You may well be correct about Q being hypothetical (which I described as possible) and about the dates of the Gospels (particularly Mark). I don’t think those details are central to the general evolution of the story.
I should revise my Mark reference to something like ‘The Gospel called Mark was probably written around 70 CE, during or shortly after the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple.’
Where we agree most is that there were competing versions of Jesus, that the winners retrospectively labelled the other versions as heretical, and that Marcion is an example of that.
The Paul version (most importantly divine plus also human Jesus) may have run alongside the current Gospel versions (starting as human then becoming divine Jesus).
And Marcion and other versions were part of the competing landscape.
Hi Michael, thanks for your response. I thought I'd amplify why it seems that Paul did not think of Jesus as a recently-lived human.
In saying that, it's important to realise that, in the Greek/Roman world, gods and angels were not abstract beings just sitting in heaven, but were beings flitting between earth and the heavens, with doings and deeds. So Paul *did* think of Jesus as a being who was crucified and resurrected, but not as a recently-lived human.
At the start of Galations, he tells us: "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ".
But if Jesus was a recently-lived human teacher, telling the disciples all of the stuff later recounted in the gospels, then how could Paul have learned all that other than by being taught it by the disciples? (Did Paul not know any of it? Is Jesus supposed to have dictated it all again to him in a vision?)
Then Paul tells us: "But when God ... was pleased to reveal his Son in me [Road to Damascus] my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas [Peter] ..."
How can he *not* have been intensely interested in learning everything that Jesus had said, and doing so by going to the disciples and asking them everything? This only makes sense if Paul regarded Jesus as a divine being, knowable only from Scripture and visions, not as a recently-lived human.
Note that Paul never shows any awareness of the concept of a "disciple" (someone who had met the human Jesus) as opposed to an "apostle" (like himself, who may not have). He never refers to any person as having met a human Jesus (as opposed to a post-resurrection vision). He never quotes any person as recounting any saying of Jesus, anywhere in the letters. He does quote OT scripture about a hundred times, but, with one exception [below], he never recounts any story about a pre-crucifixion Jesus.
He continues: "Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem ... I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders [later listed as James, Peter and John] , I presented to them the gospel that I preach ..."
How can he think that he knows what to preach better than they do?
"... As for those who were held in high esteem -- whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism -- they added nothing to my message."
If the conventional account is true, how can it possibly be that Paul learned nothing of Jesus or his teachings from any disciple or any other human? Was the community *not* buzzing with sayings of Jesus and tales of his deeds?
"When [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, ... When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to [Peter] in front of them all, [...]"
Paul seems openly contemptuous of the authority of people who, supposedly, lived, breathed and dined alongside Jesus for three years. He seems to have no conception that Peter could reply: "Look mate, I dined with Jesus a hundred times and talked to Jesus a hundred times, you didn't, and Jesus told me ...".
So, yes, there was a proto-Christian sect centered on Jerusalem in Paul's time prior to the AD 71 war (and likely Paul, Peter, James, etc were all real people and leaders of the sect), but all of this only makes sense if, to that sect, "Jesus" was a divine being known from OT Scripture, and the human-ified stories in the gospels were not yet written.
So, is there any sign at all in Paul's letters of a *human* Jesus? Well, there's one reference to "... James, the Lord’s brother", which many take to indicate a biological brother. Except that usage of "brother" was common (then as now) for fellow Christians, and indeed only a few sentences before Paul uses the same Greek word, saying "brothers and sisters", where everyone accepts that he meant fellow Christians. And if Paul really did think of James as the biological brother of Jesus, how can he be so dimissive of him?
Then there is one recounting of the Last Supper, from which we can gather that such a ritual was established in the sect at that time. But what Paul says is: "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ...".
So Paul explicitly says that this is not a story told by the disciples, and adopted by the early church, but is again something that Paul says he learned in a revelation from Jesus, which he (Paul) then passed on to the church.
And those two items really are the best signs of a human Jesus in Paul's letters!
Your piece contains a lot of sense, but perhaps errs in just accepting the "mainstream" account of how Christianity originated.
> "This flow hides how stories about an apocalyptic human Jewish preacher developed into competing stories about a divine being who existed before creation"
Except that, as you yourself then say, the earlist writings (Paul's letters) contain almost nothing about a "human" Jesus. Paul seems to have no conception of Jesus as a recently-lived human. Instead, Paul seems to regard Jesus as a divine being who is known from scripture and from visions. So, the development of the stories could be the reverse of your statement.
Just as one example, what does Paul do after becoming a Christian on the Road to Damascus? Surely he would have gone immediately to talk to all the Christians who had lived alongside Jesus, and asked them everything they could tell him about Jesus?
But no, what he actually does is, not talk to any Christian, but instead wander around Arabia for three years (which only makes sense if, in Paul's mind, the only source of information is scripture and visions).
Then when he does go to meet other Christians he explicitly tells us that he got none of his teachings from any person (only direct from Jesus in visions, plus scripture). So, Paul was totally unaware of "Q" or any similar oral accounts.
> " then move on to the eloquent quotations of Q ..."
Except there's no evidence at all for Q. The hypothesis of Q comes purely from scholars refusing to even counternance the possibility of gospel writers simply making stuff up, so they must have got it from somewhere, so let's hypothesize Q.
But if Paul seems utterly unaware of Q, or anything along those lines, then doesn't that suggest that there was no Q, nor anything similar?
> "The Gospel called Mark was written about 65-70 CE."
How do you know that? It was almost certainly written post AD71, after the destruction of the Jewish temple. That's because the work seems to be a theological allegory, linking stories of the death of Jesus to the destruction of the temple (several passages explicitly do this).
There's actually little evidence for the existence of the gospels prior to Marcion in about AD 130s. Maybe Marcionism was the original Christianity (later superseded by the now orthodox Christians, who denounced earlier versions as heresy); Marcion was, after all, the first person with a version of the New Testament.
Thus, dating of "Mark" is perhaps somewhere AD71 to AD140. (Ditto for the other gospels.)
> " These were written about 80-85 CE, and the author of Luke wrote the Book of Acts around the same time."
The Acts Seminar dated Acts to about 110 to 120 AD (for a whole set of reasons that are hard to summarise). That would then put "Luke" in a similar timeframe.
So, there's a whole alternative scenario along the lines:
1) Early Christians (Paul) thought of Jesus as divine (not as a recently lived human).
2) Post the AD-70s revolt, "Mark" wrote a theological allegory that storified Jesus and turned the destruction of the temple into the death of the messiah.
3) Somewhere AD 100 to AD 130, "Matthew", "Luke" and others embellished and added to the story, putting their own theological spin on it. The crucial bit being that all of these gospel stories were largely made up for theological reasons.
4) Different conceptions of Jesus competed for dominance (check out the large number of 2nd-century Christian writers whose works are called "against heresy" or similar). What is now the mainstream won out, over the Marcionites and others.
Thanks, Coel, that’s very interesting.
I agree with some of what you say. Paul does focus on a divine Jesus, certainly after his resurrection and possibly before his birth, and the second part of that complicates the simple human to divine evolution theory.
But Paul does also treat Jesus as a human person who was born and crucified, even if he does not focus a lot on his human life. He is also recorded as meeting the Jerusalem apostles. So he seems to believe Jesus existed as a human person.
You may well be correct about Q being hypothetical (which I described as possible) and about the dates of the Gospels (particularly Mark). I don’t think those details are central to the general evolution of the story.
I should revise my Mark reference to something like ‘The Gospel called Mark was probably written around 70 CE, during or shortly after the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple.’
Where we agree most is that there were competing versions of Jesus, that the winners retrospectively labelled the other versions as heretical, and that Marcion is an example of that.
The Paul version (most importantly divine plus also human Jesus) may have run alongside the current Gospel versions (starting as human then becoming divine Jesus).
And Marcion and other versions were part of the competing landscape.
Hi Michael, thanks for your response. I thought I'd amplify why it seems that Paul did not think of Jesus as a recently-lived human.
In saying that, it's important to realise that, in the Greek/Roman world, gods and angels were not abstract beings just sitting in heaven, but were beings flitting between earth and the heavens, with doings and deeds. So Paul *did* think of Jesus as a being who was crucified and resurrected, but not as a recently-lived human.
At the start of Galations, he tells us: "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ".
But if Jesus was a recently-lived human teacher, telling the disciples all of the stuff later recounted in the gospels, then how could Paul have learned all that other than by being taught it by the disciples? (Did Paul not know any of it? Is Jesus supposed to have dictated it all again to him in a vision?)
Then Paul tells us: "But when God ... was pleased to reveal his Son in me [Road to Damascus] my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas [Peter] ..."
How can he *not* have been intensely interested in learning everything that Jesus had said, and doing so by going to the disciples and asking them everything? This only makes sense if Paul regarded Jesus as a divine being, knowable only from Scripture and visions, not as a recently-lived human.
Note that Paul never shows any awareness of the concept of a "disciple" (someone who had met the human Jesus) as opposed to an "apostle" (like himself, who may not have). He never refers to any person as having met a human Jesus (as opposed to a post-resurrection vision). He never quotes any person as recounting any saying of Jesus, anywhere in the letters. He does quote OT scripture about a hundred times, but, with one exception [below], he never recounts any story about a pre-crucifixion Jesus.
He continues: "Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem ... I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders [later listed as James, Peter and John] , I presented to them the gospel that I preach ..."
How can he think that he knows what to preach better than they do?
"... As for those who were held in high esteem -- whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism -- they added nothing to my message."
If the conventional account is true, how can it possibly be that Paul learned nothing of Jesus or his teachings from any disciple or any other human? Was the community *not* buzzing with sayings of Jesus and tales of his deeds?
"When [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, ... When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to [Peter] in front of them all, [...]"
Paul seems openly contemptuous of the authority of people who, supposedly, lived, breathed and dined alongside Jesus for three years. He seems to have no conception that Peter could reply: "Look mate, I dined with Jesus a hundred times and talked to Jesus a hundred times, you didn't, and Jesus told me ...".
So, yes, there was a proto-Christian sect centered on Jerusalem in Paul's time prior to the AD 71 war (and likely Paul, Peter, James, etc were all real people and leaders of the sect), but all of this only makes sense if, to that sect, "Jesus" was a divine being known from OT Scripture, and the human-ified stories in the gospels were not yet written.
So, is there any sign at all in Paul's letters of a *human* Jesus? Well, there's one reference to "... James, the Lord’s brother", which many take to indicate a biological brother. Except that usage of "brother" was common (then as now) for fellow Christians, and indeed only a few sentences before Paul uses the same Greek word, saying "brothers and sisters", where everyone accepts that he meant fellow Christians. And if Paul really did think of James as the biological brother of Jesus, how can he be so dimissive of him?
Then there is one recounting of the Last Supper, from which we can gather that such a ritual was established in the sect at that time. But what Paul says is: "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ...".
So Paul explicitly says that this is not a story told by the disciples, and adopted by the early church, but is again something that Paul says he learned in a revelation from Jesus, which he (Paul) then passed on to the church.
And those two items really are the best signs of a human Jesus in Paul's letters!