stephan huller

What am I supposed to say to this?

And all else that follows. I don't know where you get this idea from:

The usual understanding is that Jesus was crucified by the Cosmocrator (which incidentally was a title of the Emperor). Can we get on to an intelligent discussion of the authority of Marcionite interpretation of the writings of the Apostle?

aa5874

Well, your idea that Marcion is the earliest authority on Paul is just mere propaganda and actually has no historical source. You are promoting "Chinese whispers".

What are you talking about? Please name an Emperor who was called the title of "Cosmocrator" by Marcion?

You know that you have nothing written from Marcion himself and you seem intelligent.

stephan huller

On a good day I am intelligent but as Hesiod notes there are lucky and unlucky days.

Cosmocrator was a title of the Emperor of the Roman Empire.

aa5874

This is not good enough. You seem to be playing a game. I need sources of antiquity.

Please name an Emperor that was called the title of Cosmocrator by Marcion.

stephan huller

Not having English as a first language is causing problems for you. I never said anything about Marcion claiming this and that about the Emperor. The facts simply are that κοσμοκράτωρ was a title of the Emperor. Marcion would have known that as would anyone else in antiquity.

Irenaeus has Marcion's Christ destroy "all the works of that god who made the world, whom he calls κοσμοκράτωρ" (Adv. Haer. 1.27.2; 40 cf. Eph 6.12). The fact that κοσμοκράτωρ was a title of Caesar may well explain why the statements associated with the Marcionites might have accounted for the Catholics having a better relationship with the (real) rulers of the world.

spamandham

I may be going astray since this was from memory, but doesn't Tertullian tell us as much?

aa5874

But, if you understand English why are you claiming that Marcion is the earliest authority on Paul when you have ALREADY claimed Marcion did NOT exist?

I don't understand your language or the games you play.

Did Marcion exist? If he did NOT then he could not have been the earliest authority on Paul.

I hope you understand my English.

Say that again in English.

You mean Mark?

judge

I dont think there is this "refusal" you think exists.
Who cares (in an obsessive way) whether he existed? Who cares (in an obsessive way) whether we can know for certain?

Two kinds of people. Religious nuts, and anti-religious nuts.
Of course we can doubt whether nearly any ancient figure that we know of existed. But what is your alternative WRT Paul?

Presumably if you think paul did not exist, then you will have to come up with some unlikey conspiracy theory.

Do you even have the bare bones of such a theory?

aa5874

The proposal or claim that there was some Paul who preached that Jesus was called the Messiah, and was the Creator of heaven, equal to God and was RAISED from the dead to save mankind and ALL Jews from sin BEFORE the Fall of the Jewish Temple cannot be verified or corroborated by any external source of antiquity.

There is virtually ZERO credible external evidence for Paul before the Fall of the Temple and even internally the Pauline writers are claimed to have been aware of gLuke.

The character that the PAULINE writers called Jesus the Messiah, over 100 times has not been located anywhere in the first century in any non-apologetic source. The most expected character the Messiah of the Jews was known to the Pauline writers but somehow the historians and writers of the day and those afterwards never wrote about the Pauline resurrected Messiah.

The Pauline characters are fiction characters. They ALL stayed with the FICTION character called apostle Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem.

It would appear that People, likely from the Church, simply wrote fiction many decades after the Jesus story and used the name "Paul".

mountainman

From the perspective of ancient historical methodology, the 1st century author (whose books and letters were collected after his death) sage and activist figure of Apollonius of Tyana has a far greater "historicity" than Paul, has been compared to both Paul and Jesus, and actually appears by name in Codex Bezae -- "Apollonius" and not "Apollos".

The bare bones is the straightforward referential integrity of facts and evidence. (See above).
It is this "Paul character" who has no "external corroborative evidence".
Furthermore, and far worse, is that the "internal corroborative evidence" exhibits fraud.

It is therefore IMO highly unreasonable to presume Pauline authenticity.
The letters of Paul and Senecca still need to be added to
the index of discussion, and these are common forgeries.

My opinion about pious forgeries follows Momigliano ...

it must be clear once for all that Judges and Acts,
Heroditus and Tacitus are historical texts to be examined
with the purpose of recovering the truth of the past.

Hence the interesting conclusion that the notion of forgery
has a different meaning in historiography than it has in
other branches of literature or of art. A creative writer
or artist perpetuates a forgery every time he intends
to mislead his public about the date and authorship
of his own work.

But only a historian can be guilty of forging evidence
or of knowingly used forged evidence in order to
support his own historical discourse.

One is never
simple-minded enough about the condemnation of
forgeries. Pious frauds are frauds, for which one
must show no piety - and no pity.