Early Doherty reads a lot. He pulls out a lot of obscrue texts in an attempt to bolster his fictional and highly imaginative wish list of anti-christian hatred. But the fact of it is, doesn't matter how many strange Alexandrian cults he knows or, or how many peusedpgiraphal texts he can pretend refur to cosmoic crucifiction, the simple fact is Jesus was understood as a flesh and blood person as early as 50AD. That is to say, we can prove that Jesus was noised about as a felsh and blood man, the one form Nazrerath at this period, meaning he was so understood in the previous two decades.
I will start with two examples, but I can find a lot more:
(1) Helmutt Koester's work in Ancient Christian Gosples
Koester traces the textal reading in the Diatresseron back to pre Mrkan redaction. Both he and Crosson place this writting, the Passaion narrative and empty tomb as ealry as AD 50. this includes of course, the idea of an earlthy crucification and flesh blood Jesus and the very same events that are found in the four canonical Gospels.
What this means is that he's going by the actual reading itself, and deducing form it, form the way it's written, in the mannar of textual criticism, the fact of its' early writting. So even though the Diatesseron is late (170) the readings it contains are earlier than the canonical readings, because they were copied form copies of the ealiest ms.
Of course Doherty groupies, I guess we can call them Dohertyiers, sort of like Treckers, love to talk about Paul, their highly imaginative attempts to read into Paul their ideological wish list; but that's unimportnat becasue the simple fact of he matter is, Doherty is just palin wrong, and he can be proven to be wrong by an examamination of the texts in the pre markan redaction!
(2) The Gospel of Tom
Now it's not generally noised about, and of cousre the little posse of NT mutilators at the Internet Defilers wont see it, but Thomas is a core from a very early saying source, stuck inside a very late gnostic frame.
we know this becasue the sayings themselves are not laden with much Gnostic goup, nor are they very ensconced in the Gnostic ideology,but really are rather in agreement with Q to a large extent.
But the non sayings material, the peusdo narratival framework in which these sayings are placed, is laden with the late Gnsotic ponchont for spekaing of the "powers" and so forth.
It is in this sayings core that we find the stament "in flesh I took my stand in the midst of them." So here Jesus says he's flesh. Now we know this is an early saying, because it too anti-Gnsotic. it mentions a Jesus come in the flesh. That also debucnks Doherty, because most schoalrs place the sayings core of thomas with Q in terms of date, and many feel that it pre dates the canonicals. That means Jesus was understood to be flesh and blood from a period prior to the destruction of the temple.
(3) We have at least 23 Gospels and all of them portray Jesus as flesh and bood.
Many of these have been dated to first century, some thought to pre date canonicals. None of them protray Jesus as a cosmic and ehterial. they all see him as a flesh and blood man living on earth.
(4) No other versions
the upshot of this argument is that it can't prove that the eventical are historical. But it does prove that they were thought to be historical from a very ealry period. Probably the most likely reason they are tought to be so is becaus they were historical.
(5) The prhaseology in Heberws.
Jesus is cleary stated to have been flesh and boold and to have had an earthly life. Doherty's answer, at least on the website, is in part to say that Heberws was written by Apollos and thus is Alexandrian so they couldn't have meant the obvious.
this is all off the top of my head, I don't have time to look for sources but I will. But see the book Pricilla Papers by Ruth Hoppin. She argues that Priscilla is a much better candidate for authorship than Apollos. Apollos wasn't even in the inner circle, he wasn't even alley of Paul's.
(6) canonical gospels themselves
consensus of the field to place them all within the first century. So clealry the tendency to pretend they dont' exist is just wishful thinking. They put the flesh and blood Christ in the first century.
_________________
No comments:
Post a Comment