by fastJehu 44 Replies latest watchtower bible
Link to the Course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927
Intro Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rj3NxOyt7k
It's my first time for a edx-course and I will try "Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul"
Maybe this is for some friends here on board interesting.
This course would also interesting: https://www.edx.org/course/uqx/uqx-think101x-science-everyday-thinking-1185 "Learn how to think better, argue better, and choose better."
I might watch it later, depending on it's agenda...
One thing to note is the almost total lack of Jesus in the works attributed to Paul. That in itself should raise red flags... why did Paul have such little knowledge of the works or teachings of Jesus so shortly after the supposed events?
Enjoy your research...
I JUST JOINED THIS CLASS THREE WEEKS AGO, AND I AM SO EXCITED. Even more so that an ExJw has joined the course as well ;D
One thing to note is the almost total lack of Jesus in the works attributed to Paul. That in itself should raise red flags... why did Paul have such little knowledge of the works or teachings of Jesus so shortly after the supposed events?
How do you figure? Christ is central in all of the Pauline letters. Are you referring to the fact that he doesn't re-tell the gospel stories that were already well known to his audience? To argue that the letters of Paul are inauthentic because of what they don't say seems like an argument from silence. Paul was a theologian. Others were writing, or had written the Gospel narratives. Paul's purpose was not to rehash what was already known, but to explain what the significance of it was. The fact that he doesn't tell the stories about Jesus hardly implies that he had "little knowledge" of them.
How early are you imagining the gospels were written Neon?
This page seems to give a fair summary of the main points: http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/paul.htm
How early are you imagining the gospels were written Neon?
Most conservative scholars would date Mark to the 50s, which would have been the time that Paul was writing his epistles. Luke and Matthew came a bit later, with John bringing up the rear, probably toward the end of the first century. I realize that some of Paul's letters may have pre-dated the Gospels, but the story contained in the Gospels would have been well known within the Christian church even before they were written. Paul quotes creeds in his letters that are thought to pre-date any writings of the NT, but that still carry a high Christology. My point is not really whether the Gospels were in existence at the time of Paul's writing anyway, but that his lack of mention of them can't be used as an argument that he was ignorant of them. That's an argument from silence, and is easily explained by the fact that his purpose in writing was not to recount the Gospel stories, but to expound on the theological implications of the coming and work of the Messiah.
I might add that I am not impressed by arguments for loate dating of the Gospels, based on the idea that Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore the Gospels had to have been written after that event. The presumption is that there can be no such thing as actual prophecy, therefore Jesus could not have known what would happen 40 or so years later. This argument merely begs the question, since the premise of the Gospels is that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God who could prophesy accurately and work miracles.
Neon: The presumption is that there can be no such thing as actual prophecy, therefore Jesus could not have known what would happen 40 or so years later. This argument merely begs the question, since the premise of the Gospels is that Jesus was the Messiah sent from God who could prophesy accurately and work miracles.
You are making a strawman. The argument is we should be sceptical of ancient work which claim to contain a prophecy because true prophecies are (at best) rare while false prohecies are common. Therefore this lend evidence (but does not proove) that at least some parts of the gospels are written after the events they describe.
This page seems to give a fair summary of the main points: http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/paul.htm
Without going into a lot of detail, I see some pretty flawed arguments on that page. I don't have time to pick the thing apart line by line, but here are a few examples:
It is a common Christian view that after Jesus's death, the disciples spread out and started teaching the gospel stories to people in the Middle East. This is not something that can be backed up from the Bible.
Um, has the writer of this article ever heard of the Book of Acts? It's a history of the earliest spread of the Gospel to the world, including the Middle East and beyond.
Paul insists that it was he, and not the apostles, who spread the gospel.
Where does Paul claim that he and he alone, not the other apostles, spread the Gospel? This is a distortion of what Paul wrote.
Paul told Peter ,"to his face", that he was wrong.
Another distortion, this time of Galatians 2. Paul rebuked Peter over a matter of personal hypocrisy, not over his preaching of the Gospel. Paul does not condemn the message carried by the other apostles.
Paul and the Jerusalem apostles just did not get along, although they came to an uneasy truce. Paul accused them of insincerity and of putting in "false brethren" to spy on him.
Paul does indeed speak of "false brethern" brought in (Gal. 2:4), but he never accuses the other apostles of being the ones who brought them in. This is straw man argumentation at its finest. In verse 2, Paul even says that he submitted his Gospel to those in Jerusalem to 'make sure that he was not running in vain' - in other words, to be sure that the message he was teaching was in concord with the Gospel as it had been revealed to the church. The fact that the false teachers had originated in Jerusalem doesn't mean that they were sent by the apostles. In fact, the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 put a stop to the false teaching of these individuals.
Paul makes clear in 2 Corinthians 12:12 that being an eyewitness of Jesus's life was not what singled out an apostle.
That's simply a false and misleading statement. The verse states, "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works."
If I were a policeman and I arrested a criminal, I could say that I had "done the work of a policeman." That says nothing about how I came to be a policeman or what requirements I might have had to meet to do the job.
Likewise, Paul says that he performed "the signs of a true apostle." The signs were what showed other people that he was an apostle, they were not what made him an apostle. In 1 Cor 9:1, Paul defends his apostleship on the basis that he had "seen Jesus our Lord."
Acts 17:2 states clearly that Paul taught 'from the scriptures' and not from the evidence of eyewitnesses. Acts 18:23-28 states that Appollos , after he had been taught what was correct and what was not correct about Jesus, 'showed by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus', not 'showed by eyewitness testimony that the Christ was Jesus'. Romans 1:1-4 states that the gospel came from the scriptures and never states that the gospel came from eyewitnesses. 1 Corinthians 15:3 states that Jesus was raised on the third day 'in accordance with the scriptures' and not in accordance with eyewitness testimony.
The Scriptures (what we would now call the Old Testament) contained many prophecies of the Messiah. The logical way to argue that Jesus was the Christ would have been to show that his life fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, wouldn't it? If Paul had no knowledge of Jesus' life as this article claims, it would have been impossible for him to argue from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.
That's just from one short section of the article, but I think it demonstrates the level of argumentation being employed.
You are making a strawman. The argument is we should be sceptical of ancient work which claim to contain a prophecy because true prophecies are (at best) rare while false prohecies are common. Therefore this lend evidence (but does not proove) that at least some parts of the gospels are written after the events they describe.
My point is simply that if you are arguing whether a miracle has taken place (including accruate prophecy as a kind of miracle), you can't argue against it on the basis that miracles can't happen. That is begging the question. When we consider whether the Gospels were written early or late, if we say that they must have been late solely because the sort of miracle they describe (i.e., true prophecy) simply can't happen, then we are effectively engaging in that fallacy.
If, on the other hand, you are asserting that true prophecy is merely rare and not impossible, there is no reaon to conclude that Jesus - presented as the Messiah of God - could not have been one of the rare cases of a true prophet.
