The meaning of Jesus' death, without Paul

Doug Mason

I want to ask a couple of serious questions. Hopefully the number of minds will clarify this for me.

1. If we ignore the writings by Paul and those attributed to him, would we get the idea that the death of Jesus was intended to be a substitutionary payment for another person's sin?

2. When "Paul" writes that Christ died for our sins, is he alluding to the Passover or to the Day of Atonment (Yom Kippur)?

Doug

Deputy Dog

Doug

1. If we ignore the writings by Paul and those attributed to him, would we get the idea that the death of Jesus was intended to be a substitutionary payment for another person's sin?

I don't know what else the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world", could mean.

2. When "Paul" writes that Christ died for our sins, is he alluding to the Passover or to the Day of Atonment (Yom Kippur)?

Why not both?

transhuman68

I can't tell you anything that you don't already know, but I'm reading 'Who wrote the new testament?' by Burton L. Mack, and his theory is that Jesus was originally viewed as a man like Socrates, who lived a life of integrity and died a martyr.

'Sins' in Jesus time were viewed as anything that broke the Mosaic Law, so Paul is saying that the Gentiles could be part of the Kingdom of God.

This is all probably wrong, but you DID ask...

sir82

Seems a rather moot question.

Everything we know about the death of Jesus, other than what Paul wrote, comes from the gospel accounts.

Most scholars agree that the gospels were written, at least partially, as a response to, if not a refutation of, what Paul wrote.

I.e., if not for Paul writings, it's unlikely the gospels would have been written at all, and we wouldn't know anything about Jesus' death.

PSacramento

Paul's letters were letter directed to Christians and their congregations, people ALREADy converted by him, typiclaly.

You will not see much mention of HOW Jesus taught and WHAT Jesus taught because that was laready know to them.

Remember, Paul's letters were written YEARS, perhaps decades AFTER he founded those churchs he was writting to.

Paul's views on Jesus death and what it means/meant we inline with teh Gospels, Paul just applied them to whatever situation the letters were intended in resolving, as such his views on Jesus's death were customized.

Add to that the Paul also liked to compare/relate/blend Jesus's death with the OT scriptures and passages because, regardless of the gentiles he converted, he also converted MANY Jews too.

To say the Gospels were written to refute Paul is somehting that is popular but doesn't really hold anything other than opinion and speculation when there is nothing DIRECTLY to indicate this.

Leolaia

"Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:43-45).

This construes Jesus' death as a freeing event for captives, and it is important to distinguish this from the concept of atonement and sacrifice; this concerns a release from slavery, not a pardon of guilt. Paul uses ransoming as a metaphor, but what is written in Mark does not necessarily presume the Pauline scenario (which construes a personifed Sin as the slaveholder).

littlebird

Leolaia, are you saying that he freed captives, to jewish law and not the pardon of sins?

Leolaia

I'm saying that "ransom" is used as a metaphor and one should be careful not to mix metaphors. There are other metaphors, such as that comparing Jesus' death with an atoning sacrifice, that may indeed relate to a pardoning of sins (which is the function of atoning sacrifices), and one may indeed adopt multiple metaphors in making sense of Jesus' death. But it is the ransom metaphor and not the sacrifice one (or a host of other ones) that occurs in this gospel. When you take care to read each gospel or letter on its own terms, you can find differences in the way Jesus' death is understood theologically from author to author. And even in the case of the text I quoted, it doesn't yield just one kind of ransom concept, so it is difficult to know what the author had in mind. Is it a freeing of captives to the Law and/or sin (as Paul conceived of it)? Or is it a freeing of captives to Hades (as understood in the decensus ad infernum tradition)? Or is it a freeing of captives to the Demiurge (as Marcion and other gnostics understood it)? Or is it a freeing of captives to the Devil (as later church fathers understood it)?

Mixing metaphors results in such incoherent chimeras as "ransom sacrifice," a phrase which never occurs in the Bible. Here is a good example of the error that results from mixing metaphors: the Watchtower teaching that death acquits one from sin (i.e. pardons one's sins). This is a serious misunderstanding of the passage in Romans. Paul wasn't talking about one's debt to God but to one's debt to sin (personified as a slaveholder). It isn't justification that Paul was talking about; he was saying that one is held captive by sin (particularly through the Law) until one is dead, but this doesn't mean that one isn't going to be judged by God for deeds committed while under bondage. The point that Paul makes is that Christ's death (which one can join in through baptism) allows one to choose God as his/her slaveholder, and no longer live under obligation to sin, with Jesus making the payment to sin for securing one's release. That's Paul's concept of the ransom. This is very different from the Watchtower concept that one is not responsible for one's deeds once death occurs. Paul also has a concept of Jesus' death as an atoning sacrifice (cf. Romans 3:25, 1 Corinthians 5:7, etc.). He works with mutliple paradigms in order to make sense of the gospel, and none of these are pressed into a single system. The work of synthesizing them was left to later theologians.

littlebird

Thank you leoliai, that was very helpful. I was still thinking under wt understanding, I'll be glad when thats all out of my head.

Doug Mason

transhuman68,

I too have Burton Mack's book, and it makes for very interesting. Perhaps I could suggest a few others:

"St Paul versus St Peter", Michael Golder

"How Jesus Became Christian", Barrie Wilson

"Jesus for the Non-Religious", John Shelby Spong.

And for the early history, books such as those by Charles Freeman: "A New History of Early Christianity" and "AD 381".

Doug

The meaning of Jesus' death, without Paul

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