{"id":25974,"date":"2014-09-01T14:11:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T18:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=25974"},"modified":"2014-09-01T14:11:25","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T18:11:25","slug":"myth-of-the-gaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/myth-of-the-gaps.html","title":{"rendered":"Myth of the Gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mythicism doesn\u2019t account for gaps in what Paul writes better than mainstream scholarship does.<\/p>\n

It just fills those gaps with something different, something which is at odds with what Paul does explicitly say in places.<\/p>\n

People who did not previously know about a historical Jesus would be left with \u00a0questions after reading one of Paul\u2019s letters. And people who did not previously know about a celestial Jesus would be left with the same kinds of questions after reading one of Paul\u2019s letters.<\/p>\n

People want information about other people. And when\u00a0they believe in gods and celestial beings, they want information about those too.<\/p>\n

And so the claim that somehow mythicism makes better sense of the gaps in Paul\u2019s letters is not just bogus, but completely<\/em> bogus.<\/p>\n

And that anyone finds the claim persuasive, suggests to me that they have not given sufficient thought to the matter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A good biography cannot include every detail, but it must provide enough. And a good myth may not include every detail, but it must provide enough.<\/p>\n

And so surely the best explanation for the lack of historical and\/or mythicial details in Paul\u2019s letters must be the genre, and not the fact that he thought of Jesus in historical terms, mythical terms, or both.<\/p>\n

And while one can certainly read mythicism into the gaps<\/a> in Paul\u2019s letters, there is nothing in those letters that requires one to do that, and some things Paul says make it much harder to do that. It is most straightforward\u00a0to fill in\u00a0missing information that fits with Jesus having been a Jewish person believed to be the messiah who was crucified,\u00a0as Paul explicitly states, not to mention that this fits\u00a0with\u00a0the slightly later Gospels and all other relevant sources as well.<\/p>\n

\"360px-Jesus_in_the_Sky\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mythicism doesn\u2019t account for gaps in what Paul writes better than mainstream scholarship does. It just fills those gaps with something different, something which is at odds with what Paul does explicitly say in places. People who did not previously know about a historical Jesus would be left with \u00a0questions after reading one of Paul\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":25976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[3757,6506,7853,8815],"class_list":["post-25974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-gaps","tag-letters","tag-mythicism","tag-paul"],"yoast_head":"\nMyth of the Gaps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mythicism doesn't account for gaps in what Paul writes better than mainstream scholarship does. 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