Freethought & Rationalism Archive

outhouse · 02-07-2013, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

PS you may want to read Candida's article/book on persecution and mythology

Please give an exact reference to any portion you think relates to this discussion in Candida Moss' The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (or via: amazon.co.uk)

And I don't know why certain members of this forum continually refer to female scholars by their first name. It's disrespectful.

First of all, she doesnt even mention paul at all.

second im asking you to supply one source that states Paul didnt persecute since you stated no scholars back it

outhouse · 02-07-2013, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chili

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

it doesnt mention this is all mythology and that scholars discount it as such. your turn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

Before becoming a follower of Jesus, Paul zealously persecuted the newly-forming Christian church, trying to destroy it. He likely traveled from synagogue to synagogue, urging the punishment of Jews who accepted Jesus as the messiah.[5] He held the coats of those who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to death.[Acts 7:58; 8:1; 22:20] He also went from house to house, dragging both men and women Christian believers to prison.[8:3] He caused believers to be bound and probably tortured in an attempt to get them to deny their faith in Christ. When they refused, he voted to have them condemned to death.[6:10-11] [22:4,19]

This also goes against OP stating paul is looking for early Christians in Synagogues

Are you on Paul's side here, or is it just me?

Cants stand Paul.

But I do think he was a headhunter shortly after jesus death.

The Temple may have found the oral trdaition after passover was scary it was so vast, and they should have placed the whole group on the cross instead of just its leader. Which was probably a ploy to avoid a riot and keep the money flowing in. Once passover was over and the temple treasury fed, someone like Paul was hired to clean up the mess.

Toto · 02-07-2013, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

...

You dont have the knowledge to discount or refute Powell's statements. Of course you cant so you dont even try, you just attack his credentials because of your failure to attack his knowledge.

Yes I have the knowledge. I know that his only source for his statement is the Book of Acts, and I know that only a subset of Christian believers today believe that there is any historical value there.

The rest of you post shows that Powell first and foremost was trained in theology, not history.

outhouse · 02-07-2013, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

...

You dont have the knowledge to discount or refute Powell's statements. Of course you cant so you dont even try, you just attack his credentials because of your failure to attack his knowledge.

Yes I have the knowledge. I know that his only source for his statement is the Book of Acts, and I know that only a subset of Christian believers today believe that there is any historical value there.

The rest of you post shows that Powell first and foremost was trained in theology, not history.

You really need to read the details. What are your credentials to talk down to a Professor, classical internet blogger?

have you authored a book yet, or are you even working on a book?

You would be supprised how much you learn just trying to author something.

outhouse · 02-07-2013, 01:37 PM

Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution.

But is educated enough to know Paul existed, posting a paul mythicist wont cut it.

Toto · 02-07-2013, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution.

Robert M. Price doubts that Paul persecuted anyone. He has two PhD's and reads Greek. He knows more than you do.

Many others doubt the historicity of Acts - they think that Paul might have persecuted someone somewhere, but was not the bloody executioner that you read about in Acts.

Read any book Richard Pervo. He is not a Paul mythicist by any stretch, but he thoroughly demolishes the idea that Acts embodies any sort of history. E.g. Dating Acts (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Chili · 02-07-2013, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution.

But is educated enough to know Paul existed, posting a paul mythicist wont cut it.

Paul was gnostic and knew.

outhouse · 02-07-2013, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution.

Robert M. Price doubts that Paul persecuted anyone. He has two PhD's and reads Greek. He knows more than you do.

Many others doubt the historicity of Acts - they think that Paul might have persecuted someone somewhere, but was not the bloody executioner that you read about in Acts.

Read any book Richard Pervo. He is not a Paul mythicist by any stretch, but he thoroughly demolishes the idea that Acts embodies any sort of history. E.g. Dating Acts (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Pervo, ah yes <remove inflammatory material>

I respect some of Prices work, to bad hi sarrow is out of whack.

But from you i will need sources of prices word for word.

Toto · 02-07-2013, 05:24 PM

I have heard Price say this on his podcast, and I intend to get his latest book.

For now, in his essay The legend of Paul's conversion, he notes:

Quote:

To suspect or reject the historical basis of the story of Paul's conversion as we read it in Acts is certainly nothing new in the history of scholarship. Indeed, one might have thought the issue settled long ago, with a negative verdict, by Baur, Zeller, and Haenchen.2 The contradictions and implausibilities of the three linked episodes (Paul's persecution after Stephen's stoning; his vision of the Risen Jesus on the Damascus Road; and his catechism and baptism by Ananias) are well known. To review just a few of them, and thus to beat a dead horse, the Stephen martyrdom (as Hans-Joachim Schoeps,3 followed by Robert Eisenman,4 suggests) is a fictionalization of the story of the martyrdom of James the Just in similar circumstances (as one can still glimpse in Acts 7:52, "... the Just One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."). Luke's reduction of the Jewish Sanhedrin to a howling lynch mob is not to be dignified with learned discussion. Worse yet, Saul has been appended to the narrative by means of a typical Lukan blunder. The Law mandated the casting aside of the clothes of the one executed, not those of his executioners, but Luke has Saul play coat-check for the mob. And then Saul does not so much spearhead as personify the persecution, which, as Haenchen notes,5 is primarily a piece of "darkness before the dawn" hagiography anticipating the impending conversion of the enemy of the faith. The whole church is supposedly dispersed, jailed, or tortured into blaspheming Jesus, but the Apostles and myriads of their followers remain unmolested all the way into chapter 21. Saul obtains a hunting license from the high priest to persecute Jewish Jesus-believers in Damascus, though in fact the jurisdiction of that worthy extended into Damascus no more than did that of Quirinius into Bethlehem.

That the Damascus Road Christophany is the creation of Luke is evident, first, from the fact that, for artistry's sake, he quite properly varied the details between his three accounts, even as he had with his two accounts of the Ascension, a full forty days apart. As James Barr said regarding the latter case, a writer who is so little concerned for consistency cannot very well have been striving for historical accuracy.6 Second, as Gerhard Lohfink notes, Luke's stories copy standard scriptural type-scenes (to borrow Robert Alter's phrase).7 The scenes "work" because they prompt the reader to recall the biblical prototypes. Since he offers them as transparent literary allusions, he simply cannot have expected his readers to take such scenes as historical reportage. And the Damascus Road episode certainly does embody such a type-scene, the kind Lohfink calls the "double vision." In such a sequence a heavenly visitant grants the protagonist a revelation, adding that at the very same moment he/she is appearing to someone elsewhere with instructions to meet/help the protagonist.8 A third reason, and the strongest of all, as we will see, is that, while Paul's epistles provide nary a historical peg from which to hang the Lukan tale, there are strikingly close literary prototypes on which Luke seems to have drawn.

MrMacSon · 02-07-2013, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution.

But is educated enough to know Paul existed, posting a paul mythicist wont cut it.

that's "appeal to authority", and 'argument from ignorance' based on authority.

The fact is nothing verifies whether there was a single person who wrote the texts attributed to Paul. Nothing. And many of those texts have had their authorship dispute, even the so-called 'undisputed epistles'.

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02-07-2013, 01:37 PM	#25
outhouse Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Auburn ca Posts: 4,269	Anyway, still waiting for you to post a single scholar who discounts pauls persecution. But is educated enough to know Paul existed, posting a paul mythicist wont cut it.

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