MS2: Can you clarify please? I don't understand what you mean by the mythologizing takes place on earth and why this would be different from the case with Jesus.
I don’t mean the
act of mythologizing. I mean the
content of the mythologizing. There is no sign of the mythical Jesus in the epistles acting on earth. That is never specified, and is conspicuous by its absence. It is simply assumed because we have always read the Gospels into the epistles.
He certainly is assigned spiritual (I'm wanting to use a neutral term here) characteristics. But I would see him being assigned these because they found such ideas in their scriptures and pinned them onto their man. This doesn't mean they saw him as a transcendent being.
But that is exactly what is missing in the non-Gospel record. The scriptures are NOT “pinned onto” any man. They are not spoken of as prophesying the historical activities of a human being. Christ speaks only out of scripture; he seems to reside there. Scripture is the source of the information about the Son, not a prophecy of him. In Romans 1:2, the gospel of the Son in the prophets foretells Paul’s gospel about the Son, not the Son himself acting on earth. Hebrews 9:8-9 has the tent structure at Sinai forecasting the “time of revelation” (i.e., the writer’s own time); 3:5 has the prophet Moses ‘bearing witness’ to what would be said in the writer’s time, not by Jesus in the writer’s recent past. Even God himself in 4:7-8 is said to have spoken of “another day” which is the writer’s day, not that of Jesus.
As for Jesus sounding like a transcendent being, you don’t have to take my word for it. Herman Ridderbos, a respected scholar of the mid-20th century said this:
“No one who examines the Gospels, and then reads the epistles of Paul can escape the impression that he is moving in two entirely different spheres….When Paul writes of Jesus as the Christ, historical and human traits appear to be obscure, and Christ appears to have significance only as a transcendent divine being.” [Paul and Jesus, p.3]
And as somebody else said a little earlier, there is a similar lack of 'spiritual detail' on your reading. Why, on a spiritual reading, is crucifixion such a big deal?
I don’t get your meaning here. If you mean where did Paul and others get the idea that their Jesus was crucified if it was not based on a known historical event, the same source holds true: from scripture. This is stated directly in Romans 16:25-6. Paul (though probably a later editor) says he is proclaiming his gospel “about Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept in silence for long ages but now revealed, and made known through prophetic writings at the command of God…” Once again, scripture prophesies the revealed gospel of apostles like Paul, not Jesus himself. How do
you get around this particular passage which directly confirms the mythicist contention?
Such passages as Isaiah 53 (which you all know, I have no doubt, and are quite familiar with), and Zechariah 12:10 “They shall look on…him whom they have pierced…and shall wail over him as over an only child, and shall grieve for him bitterly as for a first-born son.” Or Psalm 22:16 (LXX), “They have pierced my hands and my feet.”
Earl Doherty