I have already responded to that quote from 1 Corinthians. If you snag that one sentence by itself, you can claim it's talking about multiple Christiani communities with different theologies. If you actually read 1 Corinthians and consider it along with the rest of the New Testament, you see that it's talking about no such thing. Paul specifically mentions personal rivalries and conflicts, but not major theological arguments. If major theological arguments about the nature of Jesus were erupting in Corinth, don't you think that Paul would have addressed that in his letter? Instead he focused on addressing personal conflicts.
Doherty doesn't just snag one sentence out of context. He spends a lot of time discussing the first 3 chapters of 1 Corinthians, as well as 2 Cor 10-12, and Gal 1. To say Doherty's case comes only from one sentence is completely misrepresenting what Doherty says here.
Yes, Paul is diplomatic in his argument against Apollos in I Cor., but later in 2 Cor. Paul takes off the gloves:
2 Cor. 11:4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.
2 Cor 11: 19-20 For you, being so wise, tolerate the foolish gladly.
For you tolerate it if anyone enslaves you, anyone devours you, anyone takes advantage of you, anyone exalts himself, anyone hits you in the face.
That sounds like a major theological argument to me.
Now as for the fact that Paul believed in an earthly Jesus, repeating the evidence would simply involve repeating much of this thread. In his first sentence of Romans, Paul says that Jesus was "was born of the seed of David according to the flesh". You responded that this was metaphorical rather than literal. I asked why we should interpret this as metaphorical when, as far as I know, ever single use of that phrase in relevant ancient writing was literal. You didn't answer.
Paul does not say that a recent Jeus on earth was the seed of David.
What he says is that he was called to the gospel of God which he got
from the scriptures "Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom 1:3) Paul says he gets this
from the scriptures. He never says these scriptures were talking about a recent man on earth.
I have found that, often when Paul quotes the Old Testament he is taking the verse completely out of context, and is assigning it a figurative meaning that has nothing to do with what the verse literally meant in context. How do you know he is not simply taking "seed of David" figuratively?
Or again, Paul refers to James the Brother of Jesus. You say that he is referring not to a literal brother but rather a group of followers of Jesus. I asked for some evidence that any group of followers with that name existed and didn't get any.
The word "brother" in Acts and the epistles often refers to somebody other than a physical brother. (See
BibleGateway.com - Keyword Search: brother ). How do you know this use of the word brother has to mean a literal, physical brother?
As I asked before, if you only had the epistles to go by, would you be arguing that, since James was called the brother of the Lord, therefore God must have brothers, therefore God must have been incarnate, and so therefore a literal Jesus must have existed on earth? Can you see how this is taking far too much from one phrase?
Or again the issue of the quote in 2 Thessalonians which you have to dismiss as inauthentic despite a total lack of manuscript evidence for that position.
I explained this to you before. I Thess 2:15-16 appears to speak of the fall of Jerusalem of 70 AD in the past tense. Since this book was probably written around 50 AD, many scholars agree that those 2 verses were inserted later.
Or the many quotes, passages, metaphors, and other similarities shared by the gospels and the Pauline epistles.
What quotes? Please show me a clear quote of Jesus in the Pauline epistle.
Yes, there are some similarities in the teachings of Paul and the gospels, but this could be nothing more then the product of the same times, with similar traditions of sayings and teachings in common use.
Or the additional evidence provided by the Epistle of James.
What evidence from James?
And in addition to what's been mentioned in this thread, there are a great many other proofs of the point that could be mentioned. For example, in 1 Cor 2, Paul says that the crucifixion of Jesus occurred at the hands of present-day rulers of this world.
Paul actually says in I Cor 2: 8
Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Now which princes of this world is he referring to?This verse is commonly thought to refer to demonic princes behind the crucifixion.
To start off with, much of what Doherty says is false. For instance: "Acts was written a number of decades into the second century", thus allowing him to dismiss what it says as non-historical. However, the arguments for both early dating and historicity of Acts are persuasive, which I won't go into here but you can find other threads about the topic.
I've heard the arguments for an early Acts. The later date makes more sense to me, and to many scholars. There is no clear reference to the book of Acts until 170 AD. Marcion, for instance, around 140 AD, accepted 10 Pauline epistles and a modified book of Luke, but doesn't mention Acts. Since it is very difficult to tie-in the story from the book of Luke to the Pauline epistles without Acts, and since Marcion was widely condemned as a hertetic, one would think he would have wanted to use Acts to verify his views.
Acts also shows signs of drawing from Josephus' work from 90 AD, indicating Acts was at least after 90 AD.
You rely very heavily on Doherty and it seems that without him you won't have much, yet I find it very hard to trust a guy who fills his articles with whoppers like that.
You seem to treat Doherty's writings as though they were Burger King: Every time you go there, you look for whoppers!
No, it is not a whopper to say Acts was written late. Many critical scholars have given a strong argument favoring this position.
Now the bulk of the article you linked to discusses Apollos of Alexandria, offering him up as the main piece of evidence that there were widely divergent theologies concerning Christ circulating in the early church. However, the evidence Doherty offers is rather lame. He argues that the five verses about Apollos in Acts must have been changed long after the fact. (That there's no manuscript evidence to support this claim goes without saying.)
No, Doherty does not argue that Acts was changed after the fact. He argues that the author of Acts wrote much later than Paul, and modifies the story of Apollos to make him look more like Paul then the original claims about Apollos.
His claim is that it doesn't make sense for Apollos to be a preacher of Christ and at the same time not be familiar with baptism in Christ until being informed by Aquila and Priscilla. However, it's a big leap from there to being "confident that Acts has recast traditions".
Doherty documents his reason for that leap, and it is not the reason you list. Would you care to share his actual reason?
Next Doherty tells us what Apollos really believed.
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All this based only on the fact that Apollos came from Alexandria. I hope we can agree that deciding what a person probably believed based only on the city that person was born in (we don't even know whether Apollos lived there for any significant length of time) is not a sound method.
Are you reading what Doherty wrote? Doherty mentions the historical background of Alexandria, and then goes on to show from I Corinthians that Paul was condemning Apollos of Alexandria for teaching things that are close to what the people of Alexandria are known for. The historical context of Alexandria helps to understand what I Cor. is saying. Doherty is not deciding what Apollos taught based simply on where Apollos was from.