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I would think that Paul’s view was shaped in part to existing traditions…I also think that Paul believed he had an “insight” into these traditions…some of them perhaps conflicting…and came up with something he could accept. “Revelation” or “insight”…I don’t think the two are very disimilar.
You are correct…I do not accept Acts as factual early church history. Paul’s own letters conflict with some of the stories in Acts about Paul’s life…Paul’s letters contradicts Acts on some points…which I’m sure you are aware of.
Acts is a mythic story to bolster belief…it is an amalgamation of various stories circulated among those first Christians…“sacred myth” which gave them a “common history”.
I came from the opposite view…I started out as a “religious conservative”…I came from a very conservative evangelical tradition that never really answered the questions in life I had. When my wife and child died I “lost faith” in the “magic world view” which my conservative Christianity had taught me. I had already been involved in the Society of Friends for several years…and it was a long process to come back to “faith”.
I found a reasonable faith in the writings of John Spong, Hyam Macoby, Burton Mack and others. I found strength in my new understanding of the human condition…which was very much opposite of the conservative/fundamentalist view I had previously held.
As you do not share the “presuppositions” of such writers…I do not share the presuppostions of the conservative position…it makes no sense to me…the development of Christianity in the works of Spong, Macoby, Mack, Pagels, Crossan, Borg and recently Erhman makes much more sense to me. I can once again “see” the Hand of God where before His influence was very capricious, spiteful, petty.
While you want to dialog about my beliefs and you wish to leave out the “scholars” we each can pull from the woodwork…I am not able to separate their influence in providing me a framework where I can attest to “faith” again. I’ve wished I could speak to Bart Erhman about his loss of faith…I think I understand him a little…and after reading his last book…I see he wishes he could believe but he has to be honest with himself.
I have to be honest with myself…I cannot pretend to separate my beliefs and my own “religious myth” I have constructed in order to frame my faith…and I dare say neither can you…you may claim your conservative ideas and beliefs are your own…and I am sure they are…but you use more conservative writers and theologians to “frame your religious mythos”…just as I use more “liberal writers” to frame my “mythos.”
“Did Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper exist in independent oral tradition or did it not?” No and yes…I am sure he was familiar with the various oral traditions…and he used his own insight of Judaism and his familiarity with the Gentiles, since he lived among them in the Diaspora, to formulate his views.
I “know” the same way you “know”…it makes sense to me and the other position does not. I am able to frame my beliefs in such a way that it does not make “faith” an impossibility…and being open to “faith” I have experienced a profundity of life I never thought possible…my life has meaning again…I was snatched from the abyss by a Hand that was there when I called for help…how do I know…I’m still here and my life has meaning to me…I am at heart a mystic I guess.
You are correct…I do not accept Acts as factual early church history. Paul’s own letters conflict with some of the stories in Acts about Paul’s life…Paul’s letters contradicts Acts on some points…which I’m sure you are aware of.
Acts is a mythic story to bolster belief…it is an amalgamation of various stories circulated among those first Christians…“sacred myth” which gave them a “common history”.
I came from the opposite view…I started out as a “religious conservative”…I came from a very conservative evangelical tradition that never really answered the questions in life I had. When my wife and child died I “lost faith” in the “magic world view” which my conservative Christianity had taught me. I had already been involved in the Society of Friends for several years…and it was a long process to come back to “faith”.
I found a reasonable faith in the writings of John Spong, Hyam Macoby, Burton Mack and others. I found strength in my new understanding of the human condition…which was very much opposite of the conservative/fundamentalist view I had previously held.
As you do not share the “presuppositions” of such writers…I do not share the presuppostions of the conservative position…it makes no sense to me…the development of Christianity in the works of Spong, Macoby, Mack, Pagels, Crossan, Borg and recently Erhman makes much more sense to me. I can once again “see” the Hand of God where before His influence was very capricious, spiteful, petty.
While you want to dialog about my beliefs and you wish to leave out the “scholars” we each can pull from the woodwork…I am not able to separate their influence in providing me a framework where I can attest to “faith” again. I’ve wished I could speak to Bart Erhman about his loss of faith…I think I understand him a little…and after reading his last book…I see he wishes he could believe but he has to be honest with himself.
I have to be honest with myself…I cannot pretend to separate my beliefs and my own “religious myth” I have constructed in order to frame my faith…and I dare say neither can you…you may claim your conservative ideas and beliefs are your own…and I am sure they are…but you use more conservative writers and theologians to “frame your religious mythos”…just as I use more “liberal writers” to frame my “mythos.”
“Did Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper exist in independent oral tradition or did it not?” No and yes…I am sure he was familiar with the various oral traditions…and he used his own insight of Judaism and his familiarity with the Gentiles, since he lived among them in the Diaspora, to formulate his views.
I “know” the same way you “know”…it makes sense to me and the other position does not. I am able to frame my beliefs in such a way that it does not make “faith” an impossibility…and being open to “faith” I have experienced a profundity of life I never thought possible…my life has meaning again…I was snatched from the abyss by a Hand that was there when I called for help…how do I know…I’m still here and my life has meaning to me…I am at heart a mystic I guess.