aa5874

But, you have already claimed you don't care who they are. You are only playing games.

Well, please show or demonstrate what is not deliberately fictitious in the Pauline writings with respect to meeting Peter/Cephas and staying with him for fifteen days.

You only play games. Did you not claim that you consider that the Pauline Jesus did not exist?

Look at post #56 Please make you mind up. Was Jesus factual or fiction? Your arguments are so "chameleon".

Well, if there is no evidence that is what I need. No evidence of Jesus believers is a good indication that there was no Jesus.

Everything adds up.

Well, based on your view, subsequent writers may have made mistakes about the author of the Pauline writings. May be the author who was called
PAUL wrote nothing, had no visions, and did not live during the time of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

There are numerous possibilities that you aren't looking at, because you are FIXATED on your early TEENSY-WEENSY Jesus cult theory.

And what IF "THEY were lying and hyped up their origins"?

Do you see that the evidence is compatible with my theory that they [Pauline writers] were LYING?

Once Jesus did not exist and had no followers or disciples then the Pauline writers are not mad, just LIARS.

Well, you have already claimed THEY WERE LYING....THEY MUST BE LYING....

And, you have also claimed that "I DON'T CARE WHO THEY ARE".

Well, if you really don't care then the Pauline writers were LIARS.

But what world do you live in when you claimed "THEY WERE LYING....THEY MUST BE LYING"....and then later you "DON'T CARE WHO THEY ARE"....?

I have specifically given the evidence to support my theory that the Pauline writers were LYING and were not mad, yet you continue in "chameleon fashion" to mis-represent my position.

Please look at them again before you spout fallacies.

1. Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the Creator, as described, did not exist.

2. Jesus as described, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the Creator, had no apostle called Peter/Cephas.

3. Jesus, as described, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the Creator, had no followers.

It is therefore reasonable to consider that the Pauline writer lied when he claimed he met Peter an apostle and stayed with him for 15 days and that he lied when he claimed he persecuted Jesus believers after Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Creator ascended through the clouds.

But, you have already claimed "THEY WERE LYING....THEY MUST BE LYING...and that you "don't care who THEY ARE"....

You are playing games in "chameleon style".

You appear to be FIXATED on speculation.

But, you appear not to understand EVIDENCE. I have already told you and you have agreed that it matters not one bit whether I trust or do not trust the information in the NT Canon or Church writings to present their CONTENTS as EVIDENCE.

You have appear to have become totally upset or DYSPEPTIC because I showed you Evidence that the Pauline writers were LIARS.

But, you are COMFORTABLE when you wrote "THEY WERE LYING....THEY MUST BE LYING...and that you "don't care who THEY ARE".

But, you really do care.

But, what you say is just not wholly true at all. You have no REAL idea OF all that I have read about the story of Jesus Christ. You have no real idea of my investigations.

You promote fallacies and propaganda.

It is a COMPLETE INVENTION that you propagate by claiming that I rely solely on the concept of LYING when I have used the NT CANON and CHURCH WRITINGS as EVIDENCE and have NOT CLAIMED these sources are all LIES.

I have bolded and highlighted JESUS, THE DISCIPLES AND PAUL. These are the Characters that are fictitious first century entities.

Please, stop promoting mis-leading information that you know is false.

But, you have failed to show the things that are not LIES with respect to Jesus, the disciples and Paul in the NT Canon and the Church writings.

I asked you repeatedly to name ONE TRUE VISION from JESUS, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, to a Pauline writer and you have failed to do so.

I asked you for external historical sources for your TEENSY-WEENSY Jesus cult theory, you did not produce any.

In "chameleon style" you claimed "THEY were LYING....They must be LYING" yet now claim that there are other ways of repeating untruths without lying.

You are playing games.

Now, I have at one time and for a long time considered the NT Canon and the Church writings as FUNDAMENTALLY true with Respect to JESUS, THE DISCIPLES, and PAUL.

Now, after [U]LOOKING at the EVIDENCE presented in the NT CANON, Church Writings, Philo, Josephus and others, I NOW consider that Jesus, the disciples and Paul did not exist as described, and did not exist at the time prescribed and the Pauline writers were lying when they claimed they met an apostle and persecuted Jesus believers.

You claim that you can only speculate. I hold no such view. I do not speculate.

My theories are SOLIDLY SUPPORTED by SOURCES of ANTIQUITY.

There is sufficient information in the NT Canon, Church writings, Philo, Josephus and others to demonstrate that the Pauline writers were not mad, but LIARS and LAST.

aa5874

And that is exactly what I have been telling you. Jesus was not a title, people were called Jesus by their parents when they were babies.

Just look at post #169 Historical sources tend to show people were probably named Jesus when they were babies by their parents just like Jesus in the legendary invented fables.

And it did not matter if your name was SIMON you could get the title Messiah.

gurugeorge

There are two of my uses of "don't care" that you are mixing up. Early on in our conversation, when you were touting your "Paul"=liar theory to me, I said that AT THAT POINT IN THIS THREAD, when you jumped in with me, I wasn't looking into the matter of Pauline dating, and that the theory I was expounding is based on acceptance of the standard dating.

Then, more recently, I pointed out that the logic of the argument I was making stands irrespective of who wrote "there were thousands of Christians at that time". It's not that I didn't care about "who", it's that the logic works whoever it was.

Of course, in the broader view, I do care - I care about the truth, just like you.

Are Peter/Cephas the same person as the later star of the gospels and Acts?

What if the Peter of Acts and the gospels is a later fiction (and yes, I mean a deliberate lie this time), made up on the basis of the Peter mentioned by the Paul writer?

Notice that nowhere in the "Paul" writings does "Paul" say that this Peter/Cephas (or any of the other people he mentions in that connection - i.e. the Jerusalem people, the earlier "apostles") was a PERSONAL DISCIPLE OF JESUS. Think about this.

Could that be a later assumption, retrojected by some Christians onto an earlier form of Christianity?

The trouble with this is, it's like a giant jigsaw in which if you change one tiny part here, it affects the whole picture - the whole picture adjusts. Part of my background is also an acceptance of Walter Bauer's "Orthodoxy and Heresy" - he shows that the "orthodox" writers (the fathers and some of the apologists) found "heresy" already established wherever they went.

Well, that's a curious thing, isn't it?

"Fiction" in the sense of not real, but not necessarily fiction in the sense of deliberately made up, or a lie.

I'm not changing anything or shifting my position around at all, and it is totally compatible with the evidence:-

There was no human Jesus, the Jerusalem people were people who had a revision and spiritualisation of the Messiah idea (placing him in the recent past and having already won his victory, instead of being someone to come, yet to win his victory). They also had visions of this Messiah (i.e. they had visionary experiences of THE Messiah, who they understood in a different way from the way other Jews understood the concept). But they were not, and didn't claim to be personal disciples of the Messiah - they believed the Messiah had already been and gone, and was now back in Heaven. At some point, a person peripherally connected with them had a very similar idea, a similar REVISION OF THE MESSIAH IDEA, and had visionary experiences of a conceptually similar entity. This person is the one who spread the religion to gentiles in the earliest days, and the descendants of this transmission are the "heresies" that the later, orthodox offshoot found already established wherever they went - i.e. they were proto-Gnostic, already tending towards full-blown Gnosticism, plus other variants (which is what you'd expect when, at that time, the movement was not based around a god-man and his teachings, or a man who was later thought to be a god-man, and his teachings; but rather based on the missionary efforst of a person who claimed visionary experience of a god-man, and HIS teachings). Orthodoxy is one offshoot of this loose movement that is initially based on a queer supposition, first found in Mark - that the earliest (Jerusalem) apostles knew the Messiah personally while he was on earth. This disjunction between the facts of the movement in its earliest days, and what people later came to believe about their own movement, about their own cult figure, and the earliest apostles of their movement, is a result of the Diaspora - "chinese whispers" through social dislocation and terrible times, leading to a mistaken view of what the pre-Diaspora movement actually was.

All consistent with the evidence.

As to the latter, I've explained above, as to the former, I've already explained - yes, I have no problem ascribing lying in specific cases, for example regarding early numbers, and regarding the invention of "Peter" (or, more precisely, the invention of him as a rival to "Paul" who also preached in Rome, etc., etc.). In both of these cases, there's a motive that I think could plausiblly suggest lying - or at the very least, people making stuff up that they thought must have happened.


Do you not understand the concept of a visionary experience? I've told you umpteen times. People have visionary experiences of entities that don't exist in reality. They have experiences of something that seems to be there but isn't there. In the case of the Pauline vision ("I got the gospel from no man ...") the only way to make sense of that IF the Paul writing is early, is that it's what we moderns would call a visionary experience, that's explainable (or is starting to become explainable) as a neurological phenomenon.

Now, since there's no evidence of a human Jesus, and a god-man is out of the question, the only option that's left, logically, is either a lie, or a visionary experience. But we have no reason to doubt "Paul"'s word at this point (remember, there's nothing in "Paul" that says Cephas/Peter is someone who personally knew the Messiah - i.e. as a real human being who might later have gotten mythologised into a god-man).

Your theory takes for granted that the Acts/gospel Peter is the "real Peter" (so to speak) - i.e. the real Peter either of a made-up story, or the real Peter in fact. But the idea that the "Paul" writer, when he mentions a Cephas or Peter, is talking about someone who knew Jesus personally, is an assumption, being brought into a reading of the "Paul" text. It's not there - there's nothing in the "Paul" text that says the Cephas/Peter he's talking about knew Jesus personally.

Any assumption to that effect is based on a vague idea that "apostles" is synonymous with "people who were disciples of historical (either god-man or merely human) Jesus". But there's no warrant for that AT ALL in any of the "Paul" writings.

i.e., so far as the "Paul" writings are concerned, in and of themselves (remember our "in a jar in the desert" conversation), the people he is talking about might just as easily be people who were talking about the Messiah through a new ideological filter - i.e. the idea that the Messiah, far from being someone to come, someone expected, is an entity who's already been and done his work, did it secretly ("the great secret" - remember? I think it's in Hebrews too), and the victory he won was of a spiritual nature.

In and of themselves, that's all the (accepted as genuine) "Paul" writings suggest - there's no hint that any of the "apostles" he's talking about, any of the Jerusalem people, personally knew, or were disciples of, this Messiah they are talking about. (To put this another way: supposing there was a passage in the "Paul" writings that said "Cephas told me that Jesus had told him .... " THEN you could say that - depending on other factors - this is EITHER a lie OR actually a little bit of plausible internal proof of a human Jesus figure.)

That's the later idea - that's the idea that creeps in with Mark, the other gospels, and Acts, after the Diaspora, after a great tragedy and the dislocation of Jewish life - and it's retrojected onto the "Paul" writer by the circa 130-150 CE author of Acts.

aa5874

I have repeatedly asked you to IDENTIFY who "THEY" are but you have FAILED to do so.

The author of Acts claimed there about 8000 Jews converted in two days and the Pauline writings essentially tend to indicate that there was a MASSIVE network of JESUS BELIEVERS all over the Roman Empire.

JESUS, the Son of God, the Creator and offspring of the Holy Ghost supposedly preached around the sea of Galilee but the Pauline writers supposedly OUTPERFORMED the Son of God, and preached up and down the Mediterranean Sea covering thousands of miles.

IT must be possible that the Pauline writer lied and hyped up his activities, the Massive Jesus-believers network and travels.

You think the author of Acts was lying or hyped up the numbers, it must be logically possible that the Pauline writers were also lying or hyped up the vastness of the Jesus believers network.

After all there is no historical external source that can demonstrate that there was a character called Saul/Paul who had a MASSIVE Jesus-believers NETWORK all over the Roman Empire before Nero died.

Again, this is your classic "chameleon style" response.

All of a sudden you care about the truth but please tell me how will you ever get to the truth if all you can do is SPECULATE in the REALM of SPECULATION ?

But, did you not just write that you care about the truth? You really care about speculations.

You must know that Acts of the Apostles is about the supposed post-ascension activities of the apostles, including apostle Peter/Cephas and then later Saul/Paul. You must know that the Pauline writer appears to confirm some of the events and characters found in Acts.

And you must know that in Acts and the Pauline writings, Saul/Paul met the apostle Peter/Cephas in Jerusalem.

What if the PAULS of the Pauline writings are later fiction ( some have already been deduced to be forgeries)?

And I mean deliberate lies.

What if the Pauline writer mentioned that he met the apostle Peter to give the FALSE impression that he was alive during the reign of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius?

If you care about the truth explore those possibilities.

You have already claimed "THEY were LYING" and if you care about the truth you MUST IDENTIFY who "THEY" were.

I have IDENTIFIED the author of Acts and the Pauline writers, based on the EVIDENCE from antiquity, as some of those who were LYING and hyped up the numbers.

Well, if you cared about the truth you would notice in Acts of the Apostles that Peter was called an apostle and in Galatians the Pauline writer claimed he stayed with the apostle Peter for fifteen days.

Now, the author of Acts did not included Saul/Paul with the twelve apostles as found in Acts 1.26.

The Pauline writer LIED in Romans 1 when he claimed to be a servant of Jesus and called to be an apostle.

Jesus did not exist and the author of Acts did not even name Saul/Paul as one of the TWELVE APOSTLES.

Think about that if you care about the truth.

No, it is not curious. It is the EVIDENCE from antiquity that clearly indicates that "THEY were LYING."

The JIGSAW puzzle will be SOLVED when YOU REMOVE the wrong piece, the Pauline piece, that you have FORCED into the wrong place.

The Pauline writers and the author of Acts lied about their activities, their association, their chronology with respect to Jesus, and the apostles including Peter.

As soon as you realize that the author of Acts and the Pauline writers were LIARS and HYPED up their origins THEN all your problems with the truth will just disappear in front of your VERY eyes.

Just TAKE the Pauline piece and place it after the Fall of the Temple and BINGO a picture emerges.

Your DYSPEPSIA will vanish.

Of course you are waffling and shifting around. At one time you claim "They were LYING and hyped up their origin", but have refused to identify the Liars.

And when I claim the Pauline writers were LIARS, you then claim perhaps there are MISTAKES not lies.

Let me insert some of your "WHAT IFs".

What if the Jerusalem people was a later interpolation?

What if there was no revision and spiritualisation of the Messiah idea?

What if no victory was won in the recent past?

What historical source of antiquity support your Jerusalem people?

What if they had NO VISIONS.

I need sources of antiquity not unsubstantiated speculations.

What if there was no person peripherally connected to them?

Again, at this point, I need sources of antiquity to show what you say have some credibilty.

What if this person did not do anything as you claimed?

What IS the EVIDENCE to support all these unsubstantiated claims?


It is EXTREMELY CLEAR to me that you do not know or understand what EVIDENCE is.

You have presented all unsubstantiated claims. You have made not one reference to a single historical source of antiquity to support your imagination.

The evidence provided by the NT Canon and the Church writings are NOT consistent with your theory at all.

Not even the Pauline writers presented any EVIDENCE that is consistent with your imaginative speculation.

Please provide an external source of antiquity that clearly identifies a Pauline character before the Fall of the Jewish Temple teaching Jews and Gentiles that JESUS was the son of God, the Creator of everything in heaven and earth and that JESUS could forgive the sins of the whole world because he was raised from the dead.


This is your problem. You refuse to accept that "Paul" was a 1st century invention. You refuse to accept that the Pauline writer was LYING when he placed himself before the Fall of the Jewsish.

If those surrounding "Paul" were invented, (those who Paul supposedly met were inventions), why was not "Paul" invented?

The conversion of Saul/Paul by a BLINDING bright LIGHT was an invention in Acts of the Apostles.

And if the JESUS CULT was TEENSY-WEENSY before the Fall of the Temple, then Paul INVENTED the Massive Jesus-believers NETWORK covering thousands of miles all over the Roman Empire from JERUSALEM to ROME

There is just no external historical sources to corroborate the Pauline writings, "THEY MUST BE LYING".

The ENTIRE NT CANON is actually about events after the Fall of the TEMPLE.




I do not need another lecture on visions. I have a dictionary. It is already known people lie about visions

I need you to tell me specifically the vision or visions from Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, to the Pauline writers that you know or can confirm are true.

Where did Paul get the name Jesus?

Jesus was just a common name based on Josephus but a Pauline write claimed God gave Jesus, the Creator, a name above every other name in heaven, in earth and under the earth.

When was the Jesus story first written? Who first preached about Jesus?

IT was not PAUL. The Pauline writers ADMITTED they were not the first.

An apologetic source claimed the Pauline writers were aware of gLuke.

I have solved the JIGSAW puzzle.

The Jesus story was written first after the Fall of the Temple, but the authors of Acts and the Pauline writers LIED giving the FALSE impression that the JESUS story was already known and circulated since the reign of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and NERO.

What if there was no Pauline vision? You do not apply YOUR what ifs to the Pauline writer and his activities but consistently speculate about the identity and events of other characters that supposedly met Paul.

You have been unable to show that the Pauline writer did have visions and you have been unable to show the actual contents of the visions using sources external of the Pauline writings.

The revelations supposedly from Jesus to John in Revelation are not like the Pauline visions from Jesus.

The Pauline visions are NOT even corroborated by JESUS himself in REVELATION by JOHN.

The Synoptic JESUS did not teach his disciples about any Pauline VISIONS.

The evidence even from apologetic sources is that the Pauline writers and Acts are LIARS since all the writings which were supposedly after the Pauline writings do not reflect any awareness of the Pauline visions which have FAR-MORE THEOLOGICAL DETAILS than found in the Synoptics and Revelations.


Of course, there ARE REASONS to doubt PAUL'S word. The Pauline writings are known or believed to be heavily manipulated and so far, over half of the writing were deduced to have been written by at least two different Pauls.

You have taken for granted that you know the REAL Paul although it has been deduced that there were more that one Paul.

There is virtually no internal corroboration in the Synoptics or John's Revelation for the Pauline visions or the Pauline theology.

The Synoptic theology is [B Simple[/b], the Pauline Theology is Detailed.

The Synoptic SIMPLE Theology must have predated the DETAILED Pauline Theology.

But, any assumptions that there was a Pauline writer in the 1st century is based on Acts a book synonymous with fictitious characters and events. Even the conversion of Saul/Paul is based on fiction.

If Acts is ignored then it is extremely difficult to re-construct the activities of Saul/Paul.

1. There were more than one person who used the name Paul to write Epistles.

2. The conversion of Saul/Paul is fiction.

3. The author of Acts did NOT claim Paul was one of the 12 apostles.

4. An apologetic source claimed Paul was aware of gLuke.

5. An apologetic source failed to mention any character called Saul/Paul or Luke up to the middle of the 2nd century.

6. An apologetic source in the 4th century claimed people did not even know that there was a book called Acts and did not know the author.

There is no warrant for the assumption of a Pauline writer in the 1st century.

You are only concerned about what your assumptions and speculations of the Pauline writings. There is no evidence external of the Pauline writings and Acts that can show that there was an actual Saul/Paul who became a Jesus believer before the Fall of the Temple.

The blinding bright light conversion story in Acts did not happen. Even internally there is no evidence that Paul was actually converted.

The abundance of evidence strongly suggest that the Pauline writers were not mad but LIARS and LAST.

Petergdi

Radically late dating is silly because it involves:

(1) The claim that we need some simple and evident solid proof to date them in the first century, and since our evidence isn't of that sort, it amounts to nothing.

(2) A claim of some little known fact or facts which are supposed to tilt the balance strongly towards radically late dating. The "little known fact" is treated with the greatest possible credulity. Excuses are made for the fact that the academy does not recognise the importance or the truth of the "little known fact."

Someone who was really keen would show familiarity with mainstream Pauline scholarship. Someone who was really keen should notice the differences between what Paul says and how subsequent generations understood him.

Even the pastorals, which might be early second century, can hardly be far into the second century because their idea of church organisation reflects a world where episkopos and presbuter are still synonyms.

Apart from the fact that you obviously find it convenient to believe this, what actually do you find persuasive for this? The idea that the Olivet discourse somehow reflects the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt is cute, but it would only look like a good match if you really really wanted it to be. If you looked at it with any sort of scepticism, I can't see how you could be convinced.

Peter.

Petergdi

I think it possible that the Pastorals may be as late as the early second century. (I don't think they were that late, but it isn't out of the question.) The ten (excluding the Pastorals) were in Marcion's cannon, but Marcion can't have written them. They are far too dependent on the OT for him, and this dependence is all over the letters. Marcion's versions (as reconstructed) have much of the most obvious OT references excised, but this is not enough to change their basic character as heavily OT dependent.

If Ephesians is not by Paul, it must have been written after a collection of Pauline epistles including Colossians was already in circulation. If Colossians was not by Paul (though I think it was) then there must have been Pauline epistles for the writer to draw upon when writing it. So far from casting doubt on the lot, the deutero-paulines tend to push the date of the core letters towards the time of Paul.

Peter.

aa5874

You have NOT provide ONE single piece of evidence to demonstrate the Pauline writings were early.

You are engaged in RHETORIC.

There is a massive difference between EVIDENCE and Rhetoric.

If you had EVIDENCE for an early dating for the Pauline writings you would have provided the EVIDENCE instead of lecturing about being "keen".

When one challenges the dating of any document just by saying the document is early or that scholars believe it is early is worthless.

What scholars believe must be supported by historical sources if not their belief is unsubstantiated.

The early dating of the PAULINE writings is not based on any external corroborative source of antiquity. It is just an unsubstantiated belief.

Petergdi

I did provide an argument in the very next post in reply to Spamandham. I did provide a reason why even the Pastoral epistles should not be dated very far into the second century - the lack of distinction between the offices of elder and bishop which people in the later second century assumed had been separate offices from the beginning.

Reasons for thinking Pauline epistles early:

(1) There is much discussion of the charismata in the Pauline epistles (especially "speaking in tongues"), but in the second century, with the exception of the rise of Montanism, they appear to have been thought of as something common in the Apostolic age which had mostly disappeared. The Montanists thought of their movement as a charismatic revival. It is unlikely that a second century writer merely seeking verisimilitude would write as Paul does, because a second century writer writing as Paul would want to focus on present concerns.

(2) Paul's letters read critically indicate that his doctrines are somewhat different from what his second century readers took them to be. It is very easy (practically unavoidable without great effort) to read later ideas into a work, it is very hard to write a work which would seem compatible with later ideas but does not in fact contain them. In order for a much later writer to have written Paul's letters he would have to have developed a doctrinal system especially for the purpose of having it slightly misunderstood as proto-orthodoxy.

Peter.

aa5874

Again, you have NO EVIDENCE to date the Pauline writings early, you are just making speculative proposals.

You need to refer to some external source from antiquity that mentioned a character called Saul/ Paul or his teachings.

Again, you produce NO EVIDENCE that the Pauline writings were early. You are only expressing YOUR unsubstantiated BELIEF.

Your claim that it is unlikely that a 2nd century writer would write like Paul cannot be shown to be true since it has ALREADY BEEN DEDUCED that many of the writings under the name of Paul were LATE.

You need to find sources preferably external of the NT Canon or even in the Canon that can show that the Pauline writings were early.

BUT, what you wrote makes very little sense. You are claiming that it is hard for the Pauline letters to have been written late when some of them ALREADY have been found or deduced to have been written late.

You must NOW see the absurdity that you have expressed.

You have NOT produce any REASONS for your unsubstanstiated speculative belief just fallacies.

In effect, You have NO REASON to claim the Pauline writings could not be from the 2nd century.

Now it is my position that the Pauline writers are late and after the writings of Justin Martyr.

1. The biography of the Synoptic Jesus cannot be found in the Pauline writings.

2. The Synoptic Jesus taught virtually nothing found in the Pauline writings.

3. The additional details about Jesus in the Pauline writings cannot be found in the Synoptic.

4.The Revelations from Jesus to John in Revelation do not contain any visions from the Pauline writings.

5.The Synoptic "failed prophecy" of the "second coming" cannot be found in the Pauline writings.

6.The late interpolated ending of gMark is compatible with the Pauline writings where Jesus claimed people would speak in tongues. See Mark 16.15-18.

7. The Pauline writings contain information found ONLY in Acts of the Apostles.The Pauline writer claimed he talked in tongues.

8. In the middle of the 2nd century Justin Martyr wrote nothing about any writer or apostle called Saul or Paul who was converted by a bright blinding light with a MASSIVE NETWORK of Jesus believers stretching from Jerusalem to Rome. See Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline writings.

9. An apologetic source claimed Marcion did not use the Pauline writings but those of Empedocles. See "Refutation Against All Heresies" by Hippolytus

10.An apologetic source claimed the Pauline writers were aware of gLuke. See Church History 3.4.8.

11. The Pauline writings contain information found ONLY in gLuke.

12. Philo and Josephus wrote nothing about any NEW religion where a Jewish man named Jesus was worshiped as the son of God and the Messiah who had the power to forgive the SINS OF THE ENTIRE WORLD with thousands of followers in Jerusalem and with a MASSIVE NETWORK of Jesus believers all over the Roman Empire.

13. Many Pauline writings have ALREADY been deduced to be LATE.

Now, the abundance of evidence from sources of antiquity CLEARLY support that the Pauline writings were LATE and at least after Justin Martyr.

You have not produce your EVIDENCE for your unsubstantiated belief up to now, just absurdities or mere proposals.

The Pauline writers were not MAD, just LIARS and LAST.

gurugeorge

I have not "failed" to do so, I've explained that it applies to ANYBODY WHO MAKES THAT KIND OF CLAIM. Pick someone who makes a claim of having large numbers of people - anybody at all, from any time in history - if no large numbers of followers can be found via archaeology or external references, then that claim is in doubt, and seeing as people often boast about the size and power of their organisation, it's a good bet that they're lying.

Oh really? Let's see the quotes from the "genuine" Pauline epistles, where the "Paul" writer "essentially tends to indicate" that there is a "massive network of Jesus Believers all over the Roman Empire".

Or do you think whenever "Paul" mentions a church, that it must be some sort of giant basilica? Try this on for size: Christian churches in those days were just someone's house where a few dozen, at most, gathered, to listen to some madman babbling about his visions, and some of those present were inspired to babble away themselves, and at the end of the day everyone felt very happy and jolly. Usually a fairly well-to-do house though, mind you. It was a teensy-weensy movement of middle-class dabblers in the occult.

See, I want to find out what really went on - what was the shape and size of the movement, in reality; what were the people like, in reality; how did they spend their time, in reality. You seem to be content to go through the text, note some contradictions, pat yourself on the back and make a blanket ascription of "LIES!!!" to it all.

Or, to put it another way, if I were to accept your theory, I'd still be no clearer as to WHAT ACTUALLY WENT ON in those days (pre and/or post Diaspora, whichever, in reality, applies). I'd be no closer to the truth, except in an abstract sense ("oh, ok, it was all lies - but why was it lies, who lied, when did they lie, in what sequence, and for what reasons?" - your theory has no particular interest in these sorts of questions).

Yeah it's possible - but what have you got other than your usual circular arguments to make it plausible?

Where is there an equivalent claim of large numbers of people, in the "genuine" letters of "Paul", to the one in Acts? I totally agree that Acts makes early Christianity seem like a big deal, and Paul's doings are included in that big-dealness - but we have already agreed, there's no external evidence to back that up. And there's no reason to import the Acts claim of big-dealness back into "Paul".

Of course it is, and I would think it plausible IF I could find in the accepted-as-mostly-authentic "Paul" writings, some claim to vastness of the Jesus believers network, someplace where the "Paul" writer "essentially tends to indicate" that he had a "massive network of Jesus followers".

Yup, agreed.

Those quotes are not inconsistent with caring about the truth, and if you think they are, then I think your idea of how reasoning works, and how we do discover the truth, is wrong.

But what if it's the other way round - what if Acts is making stuff up on the basis of the "Paul" writings? We both agree that Acts is LATE, right?

Yes, but again, the Acts version looks to me more like an elaboration of what is really a very sketchy mention of something in passing, in the "Paul" writings. (Note that in the Marcion version of Galatians, the Jerusalem encounter is even less of a big issue.)

Sure, I'm exploring them with you - but you see the trouble is, as I indicated long ago in our discussion, I just find no motive for lies here. Petergdi mentioned something about about the charismatic stuff - I have a similar problem with the idea of someone INVENTING AND CANONISING A TEXT WITH PROTO-GNOSTIC ELEMENTS AT A TIME WHEN GNOSTICISM WAS BECOMING A PROBLEM.

You don't seem to even cognize that there's a problem here at all. It's just totally bizarre, and knocks out the "motive" for lying here. It just makes no sense.

What does make sense is an older layer of genuinely proto-Gnostic stuff, that's the actual origin of the "heresies" the orthodox found already established wherever they went (cf. Bauer), being included in the Canon because it HAD to be, because some of that writing was FAMILIAR to many people (if not from an original pre-Diaspora "Paul", then at the very least from the Marcionite Canon, granted that Marcion was "huge" at the time - but - oops! - Marcion thought "Paul" was from the standard dating time!), and because the orthodox wanted to keep as much of the "old school" on board as possible, if at all possible.

Now, before you dredge up your Justin Martyr again, let me remind you that Justin Martyr is a prime example of early orthodox writing.

Oh sure, I agree with the Acts thing, but the fact you're jumbling the Acts claim to big numbers with some supposed "Paul" claim to big numbers, which can't be found, and which doesn't actually exist, seems to me to be just sloppy thinking.

In actual fact, all you are doing is allowing a background reading of Acts/gospels to influence your reading of the "Paul" writing, instead of seeing what the "Paul" writing says for itself. This is the source of the circularity in your argument.

But of course that's what everybody does, only you are a bit more consistent about it than others. IOW, you are more consistently circular

Yes, but we don't find anything in the "Pauline" writer that suggests "apostle" means "someone who personally knew the Messiah while he was alive and got teachings from him". That's an idea that starts with GMark, and that ball gets picked up and run with in GLuke and Acts - why? Because, again, here we have a MOTIVE.

Humour me and suppose my scenario is true for a moment: if the pre-Diaspora church was small beer, one tiny cult amongst many pullulating cults at the time, and based around some missionary work by a visionary, who never knew, and never claimed to know the cult deity personally, and who never even claimed that the people who were into the cult deity before him knew the cult deity personally; and if the post-Diaspora church in Rome wanted to rationalise, streamline and grow the religion, then the notion that the original apostles (i.e. in reality, merely apostles of the novel Messiah idea), actually knew the Messiah they were talking about personally, and got teachings from him, becomes rather a useful tool, don't you think? Look at the argument in the Pseudo-Clementines: there, what's implicit in the whole Acts fabrication is made explicit, there, a fabricated "Peter" tells a fabricated "Paul" that it surely makes more sense to follow someone who got his teachings directly from the cult figure in person, rather than just from someone who got them from visions which might or might not be genuine. THAT is the nerve, the essence, the nub, the root, of the heavy historicization of the "Jesus Christ" entity. It's all totally the other way round from the way people think it is - the tail wags the dog. It was necessary for the Christ figure to be placed at a specific time in recent history SO THAT the Roman church could claim lineage back to him.

Oh yes, it is indeed very interesting. What it means is that the nascent orthodoxy had a problem: they have CONCOCTED a FALSE LINEAGE based on the notion that the original apostles knew the cult deity personally and got teachings from him, and the Roman bishops are in direct lineage from people (like Peter) who knew the cult figure personally.

Yet, IN REALITY, whatever Christianity exists in the Roman world, in whatever numbers (I reckon no more than a few hundred at this time) was all seeded by this guy "Paul" (or whatever his name was - probably Simon was his real name, and "Paul" a nickname), who DIDN'T CLAIM TO KNOW THE CULT FIGURE PERSONALLY. In reality, the earliest "apostles" were nothing more than the first people to have a revisionist idea of the Messiah.

You are right to suspect there are lies floating around in all this somewhere; but you haven't targeted the right place where the lies are.

The lie (probably initially a GMark error or theological invention or literary trope) is that the original apostles were more than mere proponents of a new idea of the Messiah (that he was in the past, and is not to come) - nosirree bob, they actually were DISCIPLES and KNEW THAT MESSIAH PERSONALLY.

This is the Gordian Knot of the whole mess.

And it's dispelled by noticing that in the "Paul" writings, NOWHERE is there any suggestion that the "apostles" he is talking about were personal acquaintances of the cult deity, far less disciples.

Yes, SOME picture emerges that has SOME coherence and SOME plausibility, but it's lacking the motive. Your explanation isn't really an explanation, it's just a noting of discrepancies and a random ascription of LYING as being responsible for the discrepancies.

Poppycock. (Do feel free to use that word back against me in your subsequent diatribes - it's a lovely word )

I did provide some further back in the thread. But really, you are as familiar with the material as I am - actually more so, by the looks of it (since you were at one time a believer). Nothing new has to be discovered, you just have to shift your background expectations while reading the same old s**t. For example, instead of reading the "Paul" writing with a background sense that "apostle" means "someone who was personally acquainted with Jesus", read it as simply "messenger of a new idea" - and it is legitimate to do this because, as I said, nowhere in the "Paul" writing in and of itself, is there the idea that any of the people he is talking about knew Jesus personally (the only reference that gives even faint hope is Abe's favourite "brother of the Lord", but that's been dealt with and dispatched many times).

Re. the revised messiah - read "according to Scripture" just like "according to the BBC", as an EVIDENTIARY REPORT, and the ONLY EVIDENTIARY REPORT, of some kind of incarnation event. IOW, the "Paul" writer is saying (in the famous 1 Corinthians 15 section), I paraphrase:

"There were a bunch of guys before me who "got it" that the Messiah has already been and done his stuff, they saw the evidence of it in Scripture and some even had visions like me."

IOW - going by the evidence in the genuine "Paul" writings alone, the people "Paul" mentions never knew the Messiah they're talking about personally, were never acquainted with him, THE ONLY PLACE THEY GOT WIND OF HIM FROM WAS FROM SCRIPTURE AND THEIR OWN VISIONS. (Whee! Doing bolding and caps and big letters is fun, fun fun!)

That's exactly what it says on the tin, and it's a far plainer and more objective reading of the evidence than yours. You, when you read that passage, have in the back of your mind the definition of the "apostles" as (supposedly) people who knew Jesus personally, right? Well that's not in "Paul", that comes from the gospels and Acts.

But it would be highly unlikely for a story about Jesus that has no personal disciples being invented AFTER or CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH the stories about him having personal disciples. Just as it would be highly unlikely for writing with charismatic or proto-Gnostic stuff to be inserted into a Canon that was developing a Christianity without much of those things - unless the documents had to be in there, because they were earlier, and because they were known.

(Once again, these posts are getting huge and I don't have the time to go through all of your post and respond - as always, there are interesting points in there, and actually some elements of your reconstruction I don't disagree with.)