Rational BAC

The only thing you can really "trust" is a probably somewhat accurate oral tradition that eventually got written down by somebody or other. I have no problem with that. Of course the Gospels are errant. So what? You do the best you can with what you got. The Gospels give us the story of Jesus. And that story we can interpret as we will.

Now compare that with Paul. Granted he was a person, a historical person, whose dates are easily ascertained. But so what? He "interpreted" the life of Jesus in his own personal way. Now one can say that Paul was somehow inspired in doing that. I do not accept that.

I do not accept the personal opinions of Paul concerning the life of Jesus as being divinely inspired. I think he was just a guy who mostly made up things as he went along. His letters read like personal memos by a very egotistical but sleep deprived CEO to his "troops".

And I will repeat that Paul made things much easier for Christianity to expand enormously. In that I think Paul was doing God's will. But I think that God's will for us modern day Christians is to realize that the expansion of Christianity was Paul's ONLY purpose and that he was full of shit in most of the things he wrote.

I will take a corrupted oral tradition that I can make my own personal determinations about any day of the week over the personal determinations of Paul. I am just as good an interpreter as Paul. We are all just as good interpreters as Paul.

sharon45

Jesus as written in the NT never existed that is clear enough on many points. I will only say one quick point so as not to go off this thread as it already has so far.

Nothing is written about jesus at the time he was suppose to have lived only many decades later. Now how it is such an 'important' man with so many for and against him, such an 'authoritative speaker' and leader, and even the 'worker of many great wonderous miracles', as told in the NT's gospels, how could such a figure escape anything being written about him near enough to his supposed existence.

Rational BAC

You are assuming that stories only existed if they were written down however. A very modern day idea that is. I assume that the oral tradition concerning Jesus was circulated soon after His life. And give or take some, what was finally written down by Lord knows who 40 plus years later fairly accurately reflected that oral tradition. Not perfectly of course. Some corruption, some inaccuracy after all those years. But essentially accurate.

Now why Paul doesn't seem to know much about the details of that oral tradition?

That is a bit of a puzzler. Could be it was such a very common oral tradition among the early Christians that Paul saw no need to bring those stories up. He was just adding on to what "everybody" already knew from hearing those stories over and over and over.

And almost all of what Paul wrote were in letters addressing particular problems within particular churches. There was no reason to go into detail about stories that those he was writing to knew by heart.

(Kind of a weak argument I realize, but works for me).

abe smith

from way out in left field, my long-time "analysis "of the Paul thing:

Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee and a Jew, grew up in the Greek city of Tarsus >>> stongly saturated, the city, w/ the Greeks of that time's "pagan" and strongly "physical" Weltanschauung. (A city in which the gorgeous ephebes exercised naked in the gymnasia. Of course, the Jew, Paul knew all about Sodom & Gomorrah.... Certainly he could NEVER have accepted the Greek culture's freewheeling attitudes about all-that.

My theory is that Saul was a crypto-homosexual; and extremely conflicted about this fact. Then, Bango! along came the DEAD divine Lord of the (apostate) believer-sect of Not-yet-christened "Christians". Hence, Saul rechristened "Paul" was able to solve his conflict by falling -in-love with the gorgeous spiritual DEAD guy; whom Paul would be able to see, meet (at last) and cuddle-up to in Heaven for all eternity. Wow! how could Paul resist a combination like that? think about it.

Hence Paul invented "Christianity" and its Manichaean denial of the Body, and of human sexuality, and so solved his own dirty "Problem". So much the worse.