I don’t know what sort of case Raphael Lataster presents in his latest book, but I have read his previous book, Jesus Did Not Exist, which I found completely unconvincing. His interpretation of Paul strikes me as so implausible that only the most solid evidence would suffice to establish his view. Needless to say, such evidence is not to be found, and particularly not in 1 Cor. 2:8. The most that could be said is that the “rulers” *might* be supernatural beings. But would even that pose a serious problem for a historicist interpretation? If one or more actors in a drama are supernatural beings, does it necessarily imply that the other actors are also supernatural beings?
We need only look to Paul himself to see that this isn’t the case. Paul tells us that he was prevented from going to the Thessalonians by Satan (1 Thess. 2:18). Presumably, this does not imply that Paul himself was a supernatural being. While we are on the subject of individual Pauline passages, it might be worthwhile to comment on Gal. 1:19. I find Lataster’s comment on this curious: “with even Christians arguing about its meaning”. Does Lataster imply that the meaning of the passage is in doubt because Catholics have disputed its meaning? I’m not sure how this squares with Lataster’s desire to have a debate “between atheists”.
I am also perplexed by Lataster’s apparent obsession with “hypothetical sources”. Firstly, the case for historicity in no way depends on the assumption that written sources underlie the Gospels. Secondly, these sources are far less hypothetical than Lataster’s speculations about Christian origins. After all, Luke tells us that many accounts had been written about the life of Jesus.
In view of some of the comments on this thread, I would like to offer a general observation about theories of Christian origins. When we speculate about the causes of things, we should always try to keep our speculations simple. The more elaborate the speculation, the less likely it is to be true. Anyone who has an elaborate theory about the writing of the Gospels which involves detailed speculation about the creation of individual scenes in the Gospels, bears a very heavy burden of proof.
This is probably not the place for an extended debate, so I shall restrict myself to making this one comment.
I don’t know what sort of case Raphael Lataster presents in his latest book, but I have read his previous book, Jesus Did Not Exist, which I found completely unconvincing. His interpretation of Paul strikes me as so implausible that only the most solid evidence would suffice to establish his view. Needless to say, such evidence is not to be found, and particularly not in 1 Cor. 2:8. The most that could be said is that the “rulers” *might* be supernatural beings. But would even that pose a serious problem for a historicist interpretation? If one or more actors in a drama are supernatural beings, does it necessarily imply that the other actors are also supernatural beings?
We need only look to Paul himself to see that this isn’t the case. Paul tells us that he was prevented from going to the Thessalonians by Satan (1 Thess. 2:18). Presumably, this does not imply that Paul himself was a supernatural being. While we are on the subject of individual Pauline passages, it might be worthwhile to comment on Gal. 1:19. I find Lataster’s comment on this curious: “with even Christians arguing about its meaning”. Does Lataster imply that the meaning of the passage is in doubt because Catholics have disputed its meaning? I’m not sure how this squares with Lataster’s desire to have a debate “between atheists”.
I am also perplexed by Lataster’s apparent obsession with “hypothetical sources”. Firstly, the case for historicity in no way depends on the assumption that written sources underlie the Gospels. Secondly, these sources are far less hypothetical than Lataster’s speculations about Christian origins. After all, Luke tells us that many accounts had been written about the life of Jesus.
In view of some of the comments on this thread, I would like to offer a general observation about theories of Christian origins. When we speculate about the causes of things, we should always try to keep our speculations simple. The more elaborate the speculation, the less likely it is to be true. Anyone who has an elaborate theory about the writing of the Gospels which involves detailed speculation about the creation of individual scenes in the Gospels, bears a very heavy burden of proof.
This is probably not the place for an extended debate, so I shall restrict myself to making this one comment.