Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 11-06-2008, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

So what is the evidence for absence? If something does not exist, tell what evidence do you expect?

Absence of evidence! Nothing!

Sure, but as I already explained, that doesn't necessarily imply (doesn't imply logically necessarily) that, if you can't find evidence for something, it doesn't exist.

For sure, if a thing didn't exist it will leave no traces - there will be an absence of evidence for it. But a thing can exist and leave traces that we just haven't come across, or they have disappeared over time, etc.

So, when do you expect to come across the evidence for these things? And who should make the evidence re-appear? And how come you know there is evidence that may have disappeared for something which no-one ever knew?

Do you think I will come across the vanished evidence for Achilles, Hercules, Zeus, Paul and Jesus?

I will just say that Paul is fiction until you get your evidence. I hope you get your evidence soon before all of us disappear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

OTOH if we had good reasons (from a separate argument) for expecting that there should be traces where we're looking, then absence of evidence might have some weight in that case. This is Doherty's argument, for example - and I remind you, again: that's the problem with "Paul" which perenially gives room for doubt about the historical Jesus, which is one of the reasons you do have to give some plausibility argument, in your story, for why "Paul" doesn't have the orthodox feature of emphasis on Jesus' life story IF "PAUL" IS SUPPOSED TO BE A SEAL ON THE TEACHING. And again, I remind you, this critique of your theory accepts the "total Church invention" hypothesis for the sake of the argument.

I place Paul after Justin Martyr and that "Paul" means the "Church".

Now, once I have placed Paul after Justin, I have disturbed the chronology of the NT, Eusebius and the Church writers that mention Paul, and the credibilty of the Church writers are very dismal.

But there is Chrysostom, he made an alarming statement, after Eusebius, sometime at the end of the 4th century.

Homilies on Acts of the Apostles by Chrysostom

Quote:

To many persons this book is so little known, both it and its author, that they are not even aware that there is such a book in existence.

This is incredible, many people are not aware of the supposed disciple of Paul and author of Acts, at the end of the 4th century! But I thought Eusebius claimed Acts was written since the 1st century.

Was Acts hidden? What other books did people know very little about at the end of the 4th century.

gurugeorge · 11-07-2008, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

I will just say that Paul is fiction until you get your evidence. I hope you get your evidence soon before all of us disappear.

"Paul" is eternally either a fiction or not, irrespective of whether we have come across any evidence for him.

He doesn't suddenly cease being a fiction once we find evidence of him, or retain a fictional status so long as we have no evidence for him. He is always and for all time either a fiction or not, irrespective of the status of our evidence.

However, obviously I do think the cultic evidence for someone (either called "Paul", or called something else and subsequently called "Paul") spreading Christianity to the Gentiles in the earliest days is reasonably good. You require external corroboration, I'm (provisionally, of course) happy with internal evidence. I don't find Justin's non-mention persuasive (precisely because he's an early representative of orthodoxy). I find the Tacitus and Pliny evidence for Christians in the 1st-early 2nd century persuasive. I find Walter Bauer's evidence for those Christians being of a type later called "heretical" by the orthodox persuasive. I find some of the qualities of "Paul", being "heretical", to be persuasive of his existence as "the apostle of the heretics" in the 1st century. I am not prepared to throw over the totality of biblical scholarship as you are - like Doherty, I prefer to see what can be done, theoretically, while accepting a good deal of it, and I find the conclusions I can come to in that way quite sufficiently radical.

arnoldo · 11-07-2008, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

I will just say that Paul is fiction until you get your evidence. I hope you get your evidence soon before all of us disappear.

"Paul" is eternally either a fiction or not, irrespective of whether we have come across any evidence for him.

Including this "evidence?"

Source: “Apostle Paul, martyr.”

Toto · 11-07-2008, 06:10 PM

Please do not insult us, arnoldo. The era of the Emperor Constantine was not a witness to the historical Paul, but it was the source of a lot of fake artifacts connected to the church.

aa5874 · 11-07-2008, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

I will just say that Paul is fiction until you get your evidence. I hope you get your evidence soon before all of us disappear.

"Paul" is eternally either a fiction or not, irrespective of whether we have come across any evidence for him.

He doesn't suddenly cease being a fiction once we find evidence of him, or retain a fictional status so long as we have no evidence for him. He is always and for all time either a fiction or not, irrespective of the status of our evidence.

However, obviously I do think the cultic evidence for someone (either called "Paul", or called something else and subsequently called "Paul") spreading Christianity to the Gentiles in the earliest days is reasonably good. You require external corroboration, I'm (provisionally, of course) happy with internal evidence. I don't find Justin's non-mention persuasive (precisely because he's an early representative of orthodoxy). I find the Tacitus and Pliny evidence for Christians in the 1st-early 2nd century persuasive. I find Walter Bauer's evidence for those Christians being of a type later called "heretical" by the orthodox persuasive. I find some of the qualities of "Paul", being "heretical", to be persuasive of his existence as "the apostle of the heretics" in the 1st century. I am not prepared to throw over the totality of biblical scholarship as you are - like Doherty, I prefer to see what can be done, theoretically, while accepting a good deal of it, and I find the conclusions I can come to in that way quite sufficiently radical.

Well, you have done exactly what I have thought. You are not interested in corroborative external information, you just believe or cherry-pick information from internal sources and then imagine that they are plausible, so likely to be true.

I no longer accept plausibility as credible information, facts or external source of information.

And if you have already accepted the internal evidence, then you really are not investigating "Paul", you have accepted him.

spamandham · 11-07-2008, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

And if you have already accepted the internal evidence, then you really are not investigating "Paul", you have accepted him.

That isn't necessarily true. Internal evidence may undermine the idea of a historical Paul.

Internal evidence can be judged objectively, just as external evidence can.

aa5874 · 11-08-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

And if you have already accepted the internal evidence, then you really are not investigating "Paul", you have accepted him.

That isn't necessarily true. Internal evidence may undermine the idea of a historical Paul.

Internal evidence can be judged objectively, just as external evidence can.

It seems as though you have not read gurugeorge's post. He is happy with the internal evidence and have accepted Paul as a figure of history.

Internal evidence can only be judged objectively with the aid of external evidence. Internal evidence on its own is completely subjective.

The statement, "I had a revelation of Jesus" cannot be judged objectively without some external evidence.

arnoldo · 11-08-2008, 01:44 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

Please do not insult us, arnoldo. The era of the Emperor Constantine was not a witness to the historical Paul. . . <edit>

What about Tacitus?

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Thus, by process of elimination we are almost certainly left with a classical source, probably Tacitus (see above at note 4), for frag. 2, demonstrating that frag. 2 is in all likelihood a primary historical source. In addition, since frag. 2 is probably Tacitean, its Christiani can now probably be identified with the Christiani of Tacitus' Annales 15.44.

3. Moreover, in Rom 11.16-24 Paul seems to derive from the Hodayot of the Dead Sea

Scrolls (1QH 14[6].14-17, 15[7].18-19, 16[8].4-11) a root-branch metaphor that originally compared the Qumran community to a tree or planting established by God. All three of these passages from the Hodayot employ netser and thus all were apparently influenced in turn by the parallel Isa 60.21 (one of only four passages in the Hebrew Bible to contain netser), and perhaps Isa 11.1 as well.[20] In Romans Paul deliberately reapplies this metaphor to the Christian community. We can infer Paul's selection of the word "branch" (kladoV) in Rom 11.16-24 was deliberate for the same statistical reasons we were able to infer the Roman general staff in frag. 2 did not just choose their branch metaphor at random either: For the mathematical reasons mentioned above, the odds are overwhelmingly against any random selection by anyone of a branch metaphor for the Nazoreans and, to a somewhat lesser extent, for any other group such as the early Christians who were reportedly linked to them.[21] This principle applies equally well to any direct description of a Nazorean leader such as Jesus as a descendant (= netser) or "branch" of David as, for instance, by Paul in Rom 1.3. We can thus infer that in Rom 1.3 Paul was consciously following Isa 11.1--in part, moreover, because the word netser appears rarely in the Hebrew Bible and only once in connection with David (Isa 11.1), so there can be little doubt under the circumstances as to what exactly Paul was referring to.
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...nazoreans.html

Toto · 11-08-2008, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnoldo

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Please do not insult us, arnoldo. The era of the Emperor Constantine was not a witness to the historical Paul. . . <edit>

What about Tacitus?

Quote:

Thus, by process of elimination we are almost certainly left with a classical source, probably Tacitus (see above at note 4), for frag. 2, demonstrating that frag. 2 is in all likelihood a primary historical source. In addition, since frag. 2 is probably Tacitean, its Christiani can now probably be identified with the Christiani of Tacitus' Annales 15.44.

3. Moreover, in Rom 11.16-24 Paul seems to derive from the Hodayot of the Dead Sea

Scrolls (1QH 14[6].14-17, 15[7].18-19, 16[8].4-11) a root-branch metaphor that originally compared the Qumran community to a tree or planting established by God. All three of these passages from the Hodayot employ netser and thus all were apparently influenced in turn by the parallel Isa 60.21 (one of only four passages in the Hebrew Bible to contain netser), and perhaps Isa 11.1 as well.[20] In Romans Paul deliberately reapplies this metaphor to the Christian community. We can infer Paul's selection of the word "branch" (kladoV) in Rom 11.16-24 was deliberate for the same statistical reasons we were able to infer the Roman general staff in frag. 2 did not just choose their branch metaphor at random either: For the mathematical reasons mentioned above, the odds are overwhelmingly against any random selection by anyone of a branch metaphor for the Nazoreans and, to a somewhat lesser extent, for any other group such as the early Christians who were reportedly linked to them.[21] This principle applies equally well to any direct description of a Nazorean leader such as Jesus as a descendant (= netser) or "branch" of David as, for instance, by Paul in Rom 1.3. We can thus infer that in Rom 1.3 Paul was consciously following Isa 11.1--in part, moreover, because the word netser appears rarely in the Hebrew Bible and only once in connection with David (Isa 11.1), so there can be little doubt under the circumstances as to what exactly Paul was referring to.
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...nazoreans.html

arnoldo - the above quote uses Paul's writings to elucidate the meaning of a particular word. There is no evidence that Tacitus knew anything of anyone named Paul.

spamandham · 11-08-2008, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

It seems as though you have not read gurugeorge's post. He is happy with the internal evidence and have accepted Paul as a figure of history.

I think you need to explain what 'internal' evidence means to you.

I don't consider multiple texts by obviously different authors saying much the same thing to be internal to eachother.

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11-07-2008, 06:10 PM	#104
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Please do not insult us, arnoldo. The era of the Emperor Constantine was not a witness to the historical Paul, but it was the source of a lot of fake artifacts connected to the church.

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