Steven Carr

Do we have early members of the Egyptian's fan club claiming the Roman's were God's agents , sent to punish wrongdoers, after they killed him?

tanya

Rotating away from taxes, back towards Bart Ehrman, and his reliance (together with spin) upon Paul's epistles, (i.e. ancient material, not part of the 4 Gospels) to make a case for an historical Jesus, may I inquire why Ehrman does not cite from the Quran? Or, perhaps he does, and I have not yet come upon that section?

With regard to Paul, I found this thread very informative:

Since Bart Ehrman finds Paul's epistles attractive as evidence supporting an historical Jesus, why not also cite the Quran's evidence? But, if it is genuine evidence, why no mention of Paul, who supposedly traveled to Mecca, perhaps to start a congregation there, among the many Jews living in urban areas of the southern Arabian peninsula)?

Duvduv

Who claims that Paul traveled to Mecca? I guess you mean that the Quran should have picked up on the statements about his trip to Arabia?

Yet the standard claim is that the only texts Muhammad could have known were non canonical ones among Christians in Arabia who were not orthodox . But why? There were contacts of Arabs with Egypt and Syria.
Then how did the Quran know about the Trinity? And if Arabian Jews spoke about it why not Arabian Christians?

Sheshbazzar

Josephus would not be the first Jew to have ever 'fudged' a figure. (an understatement of -massive- proportions )

More likely Josephus simply had no personal knowledge of this legendary 'the Egyptian', and was simply repeating some inaccurate word of mouth information.

Diogenes the Cynic

Paul is a primary source.

aa5874

You PRESUME Paul is a primary source.

You PRESUME the veracity and credibility of Paul.

You PRESUME your OWN history.

The Pauline writings are UNCORROBORATED sources suspected to be MANIPULATED.

outhouse

much to late to be used for any accurate information

outhouse

he was popular AFTER his death.

mainly to the poor hard working jews that were for the most part, illiterate.


This movement gained steam as people hated the roman infection in the church. tensions were high on the brink of war and this new message eased their frustration.

All before the romans stole it to, possibly a attempt to regain control they new they were loosing

outhouse

they are not suspect, they were manipulated.


oral tradition was the primary source, paul was unknown to most

tanya

This is an interesting diversion, yet, still very much in tune with Bart Ehrman. How does one define "primary source"?

I don't know the answer. In my opinion, a primary source is someone who physically knew the person under discussion. I know of my Uncle Harry, who died when I was an infant, and maybe I even met him, before his death a few weeks after our one and only encounter, but, I have no recollection of that event. Would you still maintain that I am a primary source for information about uncle Harry? Even if you believe that "Paul" was a real person, and did write n epistles, where n=7->14, he himself acknowledges that the Jesus he knows, or knew, had been murdered, and resurrected from the dead. By definition, that's all she wrote. Paul is writing supernatural nonsense.

Further, has not there been some considerable bandwidth on this forum devoted to exposing known and suspected forgeries within Paul's letters.

Finally, how can anyone claim Paul's writings about a fictitious person, as "primary"? Is Clark Kent a primary source for information about Superman? Is Paul (Bunyan) a primary source for Babe (the blue ox)?

Have we no other illustrations of fiction in which the imaginary protagonist is himself/herself an author?

If "Paul" was a genuine observer of Jesus' disciples, Peter and James, then, why aren't these guys, especially "Paul", mentioned in the Quran? Why do the Muslims call Jesus, ISU, as if on stephan huller's mailing list (yesh)?