mountainman

Is there any reason to seriously doubt the existence of Bilbo Baggins?


Philosopher Jay, just in case Paul turns out to be another "Apollos", I think it should be mentoned that a description of Paul was circulated by the Gnostics as follows:


Sounds like a dangerous customer. Would you buy a used car from a man fitting such a description?

Best wishes



Pete

jgoodguy

The available text speaks of a preacher in the backwaters of the Roman Empire that never had a gig in a big city. Maybe he is a mythical small time preacher or a historical small time preacher. But he is a small time preacher without a gig or a megachurch. Dime a dozen in the back woods of the South.

jgoodguy

Nor would I trust him to baptize my daughter or niece in a 'private' ceremony.

dx713

Paul self-described himself as a small man, and with "a thorn in his flesh".
Theory abound to what that was, but I like the one saying he was sexually impotent, and tried to solve his problem by imposing restrictions on the rest of the civilization.
(and yes, I wouldn't let a man with such issues with sexuality near my daughter)

JonA

From where are people drawing things about Paul being a sexual deviant?

J-D

I haven't read the details of your post yet, but I can tell you that the basic idea of Paul getting in trouble for embezzling church funds (if not with your specific details) has been suggested at least once before that I know of, specifically by Robert Graves and Joshua Podro in their book The Nazarene Gospel Restored (or via: amazon.co.uk). The detail I recall from there (it's a while since I looked at the book) is that they quote a remark attributed to Paul about a flaw or fault which he describes as a 'thorn in his flesh' and suggest that he was referring to his avarice. I could look up the details of what they say if you're interested.

DCHindley

Is this by chance going to end up with Lucian's Death of Peregrinus being interpreted as a parody of Paul? :constern01:

You are probably going to have to look at the Jewish practice of moving significant amounts of cash, given as freewill offerings and/or temple taxes, to Jerusalem in a more or less organized manner. Herod the Great managed to get the Roman emperors to sanction the practice, in spite of the fact that the Romans wouldn't let anyone else do it, as a reward for Jewish contributions to Roman hegemony. We know it was at times tested by governors who confiscated money en route to Jerusalem, but ultimately forced to release it again to the Jews by imperial decrees.

Before the first Jewish war, the exact manner by which this was done is unknown. After the war, the temple tax went into the Roman treasury but freewill offerings still went to Judea and Galilee for the support of the poor. Of this process we do know something. The men who took on this task seemed to have been called "apostles" (at least by Epiphanius). Evidence from Jewish lore suggests that wealthy Jews vied for the honor and probably did not use any of it for their own purposes, but this may not have been the universal practice.

I have suggested that Paul was one such (pre-war) Apostle, only in his case he wanted authorities in the temple to accept offerings from his gentile god-fearers as if it was temple tax from Jews. Extreme negative reaction to this innovation, ultimately, is what did in Paul.

Could Paul's enemies have charged him with embezzlement? Possibly. That some fakers took advantage of Christians is suggested by the Didache. The proto orthodox accused Montanus and his prophetesses of ordering sumptuous banquets from their followers, which they themselves enjoyed. The accounts of the martyrs also speak of Christians bribing guards to allow them to pass food and other comforts to the confessors held in prison awaiting certain death.

DCH

mountainman

One source for example is "Epistle of Titus, the Disciple of Paul, on the State of Chastity" also known as .... The Pseudo Titus Epistle:

Embedded in this text is trhe following standalone extracted story

"A peasant had a girl who was a virgin.
She was his only daughter,
and therefore he sought Peter
to offer a prayer for her.

After he had prayed,
the apostle said to the father
that the Lord would bestow upon her
what was expedient for her soul.

Immediately the girl fell down dead.
O reward worthy and ever pleasing to God,
to escape the shamelessness of the flesh
and to break the pride of the blood!

But this distrustful old man,
failing to recognise the worth of the heavenly grace,
i.e. the divine blessing, besought Peter again
that his only daughter be raised from the dead.

And some days later, after she had been raised,
a man who passed himself off as a believer [20]
came into the house of the old man to stay with him,
and seduced the girl, and the two
of them never appeared again. [21]


[20] The text runs: "homo vinctus fidelis."
Our translation is based on Harnack's assumption
that a scribe errorneously replaced the original "fictus" by "vinctus".
Ficker (NTApo,p.228) understands the "homo vinctus" as
"the slave of a believer" or "a bewitched Christian man."

[21] Augustine ascribes this story to the Manichaean apocrypha ...

Diogenes the Cynic

John Shelby Spong speculates that Paul's "thorn" was that he was a repressed homosexual, but I doubt that's likely. People didn't have a concept of fixed orientation back then.

I think the mostly likely explanation is that Paul had some kind of persistent physical malady, probably something painful - backaches, migraines, something like that. A lot of conventional speculation is that he had epilepsy.

Paul describes it as a physical pain which he says he has prayed to God to remove. He also says it was given to him by God to temper his pride, so it wouldn't make sense for him to interpret something like avarice (or sexual deviance) that way.

JonA

Something visual or muscle related might be a good start.

It is unlikely he was actually illiterate, so his 'large letters' (Gal 6:11–17) could have been an indication of his illness.

I really doubt he was talking about being a sexual deviant.

Jon