aa5874

After reading the NT, early Christian writings and other non-Christian writings, I no longer accept the authorship of NT as stated.

Christians of antiquity appear to have the propensity to write blatant fiction and have FAITH that whatever they write is true. These early Christian writers even provided witnesses for every fictitious event

For example, early Christians wrote that Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, this is obviously not true, but they have produced witnesses for this event.

So if a Christian writer claimed "Paul" wrote the Epistles, it can be completely false even though they provide witnesses.

Early Christians writers had witnesses for the transfiguration and the ascension of Jesus, and also the angel Gabriel.

Based on those facts, I don't think it would be such a difficult task for Christian writers to find witnesses who could swear that everything in the NT about "Paul" is true.

And early Christian writers have used the God of the Jews, the Devil, angels and even accepted historical figures as witnesses to their fictitious events.

spamandham

Well, if we agree that writings were falsely attributed to Paul, including abject forgeries in the case of the non-genuine Pauline epistles that were attributed to Paul, as well as somewhat free editing even of those that are considered genuinely Pauline, then the idea that even the 'genuine' epistles did not originate with Paul is not absurd.

For whatever reason, the early church viewed Paul as an authority and didn't hesitate to have him speak for them. The question then is, at what point did that begin?

Detering, in "The Falsified Paul", expresses his view that "the Pauline letters in their entirety are inauthentic." on page 3, and makes a good case that Paul is a renamed Simon Magus.

I'm not arguing against a historical Paul of some kind, but I just don't see an overwhelming case for a historical Paul, and it doesn't seem just to write people supposing that off as conspiracy lunatics.

Toto

The Dutch Radicals consider the Epistles of Paul to be second century forgeries. They also think Clement and Ignatius' letters are forged. That's about the most extreme position that anyone has taken.

Robert Price does not go that far. There is nothing inherently unreasonable about the idea that Marcion had an existing stock of letters from Paul, or some composition like that, with interpolations and excisions happening through the first part of the second century. See his Evolution of the Pauline Canon.

aa5874

I consider that the character "Paul" was invented, sometime late in the 2nd century.

Also, it was unrealistic for Ignatius to write letters promoting Christianity when he was condemned to die for being a Christian.

I find it very dubious that Ignatius would be supplied with paper, pen and ink to write all these epistles to christian churches while condemned.

The Ignatius letters appear to be fabricated.

spamandham

The difference between you and the radicals, is that they (well, at least Detering) see the strongest case to be that there was a historical personage upon which the legendary (or fraudulent if you prefer) Paul was based.

I know you've talked about not being convinced by Detering in the past, but I'm not sure we ever went into the details of why.

aa5874

The epistle of 1 Cement does NOT confirm in any way that a person called Clement knew about "Paul" or any epistle written to the Corinthians.

This epistle merely shows that the name "Paul" and passages from Corinthians are in the epistle called 1 Clement.

Nothing else.

It is claimed Clement died 101 CE, yet the estimated date of the writing of 1 Clement is from 80-140 CE.

1 Clement does NOT tells much of any thing, and 1 Clement may also be a forgery.

See www.earlychristianwritings.com

Also http://saints.sqpn.com/saintc14.htm

neilgodfrey

Part of the problem implicit in the OP question is the assumption Marcion was active from 144 c.e. But that date is based on Harnack's acceptance of a claim by Tertullian that is itself tendentious and problematic against both his larger argument and the evidence of Justin Martyr. It is reasonable to think that Marcion was active much earlier, even as early from 110 c.e. (Justin, for example, around 150 c.e., expresses great surprise that Marcion is "still" active at that time.)

I"ve posted the (lengthy) details here and here.

As for Paul's writings, Justin in mid-second century can't bring himself to mention the name of Paul. Tertullian tells us Paul had been co-opted by the heretics. So if Marcion is to be dated earlier, even closer to the time of Clement and Ignatius, then we have questions to answer re their favourable citation of Paul.

aa5874

Perhaps I can give a very short explanation.

• The Jesus of the NT, the Son of God, was a fictitious character.

• There were no followers, disciples or apostles of Jesus of the NT until the Gospel stories about Jesus were written

.

• In the NT, the Gospels stories were written after the fall of the Jewish Temple, sometime at or after 70 CE.

• With the Jewish Temple still intact and with no Jesus story or followers of Jesus of the NT, Paul's revelations would have been useless.

• Paul met Peter and James, two fictious characters fabricated with the Jesus story which was written after the fall of the Jewish Temple.

• Philo and Josephus never mentioned any person named Jesus, disciples of Jesus, any multitudes of followers, any churches of followers of Jesus or any teachings of Jesus.

• Justin Martyr in all his extant writings at around the middle of the 2nd century did NOT mention Paul, Acts of the Apostles, the epistles to any of the Churches or the epistles to Timothy, Titus or Philemon, even though he mentioned Marcion, the memoirs of the Apostles, the Acts of Pilate and the revelation of John, even quoting over 50 verses from the "memoirs".

• Justin Martyr made NO mention of followers of Jesus during the days Claudius, but mention oddly enough, followers of Simon Magus who were called Christians during that time.

• About 25 years afterwards, Irenaeus, and Tertullian and Origen sometime later, all mentioned Marcion, Paul, Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles to the seven Churches.

Based of the writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen, it would appear that Paul" was invented for the sole purpose of circumventing Marcion's doctrine and try to authenticate the claim that Jesus of the NT, the begotten son of God, preceeded the Jesus of Marcion. And further that the all followers of Jesus always believed he was fully God and man and this was primarily due to Paul's evangelism to the Gentiles.

It would appear that the Christian writers like Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius did not realise that there were no records of Jesus, followers of Jesus or churches until after the fall of Jewish Temple when (their) Paul would have already been dead.

In effect, the Paul of the Christian Church died even before Jesus was born.

Ben C Smith

Please note that the OP did not ask about evidence for the historicity of Paul; it asked about evidence for the Pauline letters having existed before Marcion.

Ben.

spamandham

This is interesting. Are you suggesting there were actually two Jesuses (Jesi?), one from Marcion, and a later "Jesus Christ" invented by the Catholic church?