spamandham

Why did people follow David Koresh? Religious people are often zealous nutjobs who follow a charismatic leader for no rational reason. That's not out of the ordinary.

'gospel' != "Gospel"

The mere fact that the epistles use the word 'gospel', does not imply it's the same 'Matthew/Mark/Luke/John Gospel' that we tend to think of when we use that word. It doesn't matter if the Bible Gospels contradict Paul. I'm willing to agree for the sake of argument that the Bible Gospels are indeed fictional. Paul makes it pretty clear what he's referring to. His cult was not obligated by Jewish laws and customs. That's all he's referring to. He's not referring to some long lost book, he's referring to cult doctrine. But even if he were referring to some long lost book, that's not out of the ordinary either. We have countless references to long lost books within the tomes of the ancient works.

Matthew and Mark have no bearing on the historicity of Paul.

Again, Paul does not refer to any book called the 'Gospel of Circumcision'. He's using the word 'gospel' in the ordinary sense it was used in his day, not the sense in which we tend to use it to refer to specific written works.

The works attributed to Paul sound like writings you might expect from a charismatic and somewhat delusional religious leader. They are ordinary not mythical in nature. Period fiction is universally magical and fantastic in nature. I can see no valid reason to conclude that Paul was fictional.

mountainman

The works attributed to Paul were for simple-minded people.
They are written in bad greek, and would have had no serious
audience until they were decreed as "religious" by Constantine.

Then, once the academics started looking at his works they began
to be declassified as fraudulent texts and forgeries. At that time,
in the fourth century, how many scores of forgeries were rife?
Have a quick look at the forgeries under the name of Lucian,
and the controversies which arose thereform. (And many others).


Once there were fourteen, now there are less than a handful.
The rest have been assessed as forgeries. The writing is on
the wall that the author Paul was part of a frabrication.

The fabrication was not divinely inspired, but was assembled
by Roman intellectuals, or by intellectuals under the direct
order of a Roman intellect, in the Greek language, and most
likely, lavishly written in an ancient Greek script, before
being glued into a codex containing the 500 year old LXX.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

aa5874

Total fallacy! You cannot differentiate between apologia and history.

John F Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas on November 22 1963, that's history, all other conspiracy theories may just be apologia.

No credible non-apologia extant source has claimed or wrote that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified at any day during the days of Pilate. Jesus has no known history, only apologia.

aa5874

Nothing could be farther from the truth. In a circumstantial case, every single piece of information is critical, whether supernatural or physical.

If it can be shown that gMatthew and gMark was written in the 2nd century or that the main characters mentioned by them are fictitious or lived at some other time, and Paul, in the epistles, claimed to have met them at a time when he could not have ,then, it may be deduced that Paul is either fictional or lived at a time when he should have been already dead.

I am not referring to any book called the Gospel of Circumsion, I am making reference to the doctrine of the Gospel of Circumcision. Jesus of the NT never teached such a doctrine, according to the NT.

The message was clear and simple, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel, he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved...."

And by Eusebius' account Jesus was known all over the world long before Paul and further Jesus had already commisioned 70 disciples to evangelise all over the world.

The entire chronology, conversion and ministry of Paul are fiction.

spamandham

I do not have the expertise needed to detect such ancient forgeries, and will simply cede to those better versed if there is reasonable concensus that certain works are fraudulent.

I'm also willing to concede that even the 'genuine' Pauline works contain significant editing by others, 1 Cor. 15 comes to mind as a specific example. That said, we do have a handful of 'genuine' epistles, where the writing style and message is consistent enough to conclude they shared authorship. These contain numerous claims by a fellow named 'Paul' to be the author (sometimes in a rather forced way that indicates a redaction by someone NOT Paul, ironically).

We have further corroboration by Tertullian that claims Marcion's cult was devoted to this Paul character. The descriptions Tertullian gives in regards to the beliefs of Marcion do not conflict with the epistles we have, sans the obvious later pastoral stratum that has Paul reciting parts of creeds that refer to Jesus in historical terms in a few places.

Another bit of evidence in favor of a historical Paul, is that Acts has Saul's name changed to Paul. This indicates an attempt to harmonize two competing traditions, one involving a Saul (of the OT?), and one involving Paul. This is only evidence of two competing traditions, but the fact that there was indeed a Paul tradition at the time Acts was written adds to the weight of a historical Paul, which really didn't need much weight anyway since Paul is depicted in rather ordinary terms.

Finally, Paul is presented as a rather ordinary cult leader in conflict with similar other cults. There is no obvious motive for someone to invent him whole cloth under the ordinary historical assumptions that Christianity came to flourish in the 2nd century (I'm aware of your contention of that).

So, aside from the idea that Christianity was invented by Constantine complete with a forged history, which most of us don't find plausible, I can't see a reason to claim Paul was a fictional character. What would be the motive of inventing such an ordinary character and tacking him onto what would otherwise be a nice tidy complete work of propoganda?

spamandham

Paul does not ever claim to have met the authors of the Gospels of Mark or Matthew. Paul does not indicate any knowledge at all of those books, either implicitly or explicitly. Paul is completely oblivious of them. That's why they're irrelevant. The names attributed to the anonymous works we call Matthew and Mark (and Luke and John), were assigned at a time much later than the writings themselves or of Paul's letters.

(by the way, Paul never even mentions anyone named Matthew, and the Mark he mentions is clearly not the NT author of the Gospel of Mark).

Why do you assume Paul is familiar with the NT Gospels? He certainly doesn't indicate any such familiarity. So the fact that the NT Gospels make no mention of this is irrelevant. All that shows is that Paul did not base his theology on the NT Gospels. So what?


You have not demonstrated that. All you've demonstrated is that Paul was unfamiliar with the stories in the NT Gospels and did not base his theology on them - a point only Christian apologists would argue against. (plus you've demonstrated that the Damascus road story is implausible, but again, why would that undermine the historicity of Paul?)

mountainman

Ancient historical plausibilities are relational things. Someone has to do the boundary riding, and all I am trying to achieve is to provide an equally plausible account of the appearance of the new testament and all its associated paraphenalia by means of a simple profane and political history in which there is no need to resort to miracles, ressurections and the like. I am not claiming innerrancy in this thesis, which I think you (and some others here) understand. I am happy to be governed by the evidence in the end.
I feel compelled to defend the idea just in case it is actually more or less the way things happened back then. But if I can be shown that the idea is not as plausible as the alternative, I will retire, with good memories of a pleasant battle of wits with some educated souls.


One motive would be to provide a substitute for the pagan Apollos, Pol, otherwise known as Apollonius of Tyana, with whom your man Paul shares a suprising long list of coincidental synchonisms, and whom we know is entitled to be perceived with a greater historicity that Jesus Christ, as can be indicated by a comparitive assessment by a number of objective criteria. Apollos is mentioned by name in the acts, and Apollonius by name in the Codex Bezzae.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

aa5874

I have shown that Paul has no history. These are the facts.

1. No credible non-apologetic writer or historian made mention of Paul.
2. Biblical scholars claim more than one person is called Paul in the Epistles.
3. Paul's conversion is fiction
4. Paul received nothing from Jesus, Paul is liar.
5. One of the authors called Paul appear to have written parts of the epistles after gLuke was written.
6. Justin Martyr, in his extant writigs never mentioned Paul or epistles to the Churches.
7. The history of Paul in Acts is fictitious and the Church father, Eusebius, cannonised this fiction.

Paul is fiction.

spamandham

But such a simple explanation already exists, that does not have Eusebius inventing Christianity whole cloth, but even using ancient dialects, writing styles, and even going so far as to add various strata to the writings (something that was undetectable in ancient times, but that we can pick up on with new anayltical tools)! Surely the man was not THAT clever!?

Isn't such a hypothesis more incredible than the hypothesis that no miracles actually happened, yet stories were written that claimed they were?

Thanks for the thread post. I'll check it out.

spamandham

I don't consider this evidence of a fictive Paul unless it can at least be shown there was a good motive for inventing such a character. If anything, he seems to interrupt what would otherwise be a nice tidy bit of propaganda.

I'm inclined to doubt that anything written in ancient times has arrived to us in pristine condition. That doesn't mean that every place person and event mentioned is fictional.

Certainly the version recorded in Acts is, but Paul didn't write Acts. So this adds no weight to your argument. In Paul's own record of his conversion, he admits it might have been a dream. Don't project Acts into the epistles.


Paul might very well be a liar, or he might merely be deluded. Is everyone who lies a fictional character?

Einstein is regularly attributed with quotes he never said. Does that imply Einstein was a fictional character, or does it instead reinforce the idea that he was historical? That later writers would attempt to give credibility to their own writings by claiming they were Paul's attests to the ancient authority assigned to Paul. At worst, this is a no-op in the Pauline historicity discussion. At best, it is further evidence that Paul is NOT a fictive character.


I'll leave that one alone. You and Ben are debating it already in another thread. It would be unusual if that turns out to be true, but not in any way compelling toward your claim.

The bogus story about Paul in Acts demonstrates a prior tradition in regards to Paul that the author is attempting to syncretize with some other historical Jesus tradition. The changing of Saul's name is strong evidence of an attempt to syncretize two pre-existing traditions. That doens't imply Paul was fictive, but instead, implies a pre-existing Pauline tradition at odds with the tradition of the author of Acts.

The only point you've made in this list that is worth anything at all, is #6, assuming it pans out.