Rick Van Vliet

I'm primarily pointing out what it says. That's bad enough. Slaughter of the men and women such that there were none left to preach and he had to go abroad to continue the slaugher.

I just pointed out, when it was claimed the Christian Bible overestimated the slaughter, that it was probably the opposite. And why is it probably the opposite? For the same reason everyone here pretends it wasn't really death and slaughter even though the Christian Bible says so explicitly. The natural human tendency to gloss over the flaws of their heroes.

Me, I don't think Paul ever converted. He continuted to debate and mean mouth the surviving disciples, James, Peter and John until their unfortunate deaths.

aa5874

But, you have no external corroborative source for anything that you claim about Jesus, Saul/Paul and the disciples. You are doing exactly like Christians, you believe that the NT Canon contains truth about Saul/Paul the supposed author of the Pauline writings.

Saul/Paul PERSECUTED NO JESUS BELIEVERS. There is no history external of the Church whatsoever that any person who was a Jew before the Fall of the Jewish Temple asked Jews to worship a man as a God.

We have the writings of Philo, the Jew of Alexandria, his writings did not rot, where he claimed that the Jews selected him to go to the Emperor Caligula, to argue against the deification of men and the worship of statues of the Emperor.

Even the Emperor Caligula declared in a letter that the Jews were the only nation that did not worship him as a God.

And, Josephus also wrote that Jews were willing to have their necks chopped off before they would worship the statues of the Tiberius.

The history of SAUL or PAUL is fiction as found in Acts and the Pauline writings.

Rick Van Vliet

Philo wasn't in Israel. The only writings about that time and place, other than about Jesus, is Josephus, and he mentions Jesus, and some of it is probably by Josephus.

And no, I don't believe everything that's in the New Testament, I'm just pointing out what's in there.

I think those "genuine" letters of Paul were written, or at least edited, by Marcion, the first person to mention them, and he had a complete set, with titles and everything, he used in his Gnostic Bible in 130CE.

But Paul was definitely a horror that decended on the original followers of Jesus. Not like they'd make that up.

Rick Van Vliet

Thomas Jefferson

"Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."

From a letter to W. Short published in The Great Thoughts by George Sildes (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985, p.208).

Albert Schweitzer

"Where possible he (Paul) avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord."

(The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 171)

Carl Jung (Psychologist)

"Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in."

(U.S. News and World Report, April 22, 1991, p. 55)

Etc.

Voice of reason

This makes sense since the gospels were nothing but Solar myths about the journey of the sun through the constellations.

Some later writer thought they were talking about a real character and came up with that nonsense.

Solo

You are misreading the Acts 9:1 verse: it says that Paul "breathed" threats and murder, meaning he was obssessed with, or wanted to cause, mayhem. But for actual acts of "ravaging the church" he did not do more than "dragged women out of their houses and commited them to prison" (8:3). You are misreading the text.

I only claimed that Paul by his own word was not known among those against whom he is said to have committed acts of judicial violence. I think it also highly improbable that Paul would not have been in physical danger from survivors if he was a principal in some mayhem with many fatalities in the community.

Neither the Acts, nor Paul's epistles claim killings on large scale took place. You are misreading the texts.

By the account of the scripture (sacred to Christians), Paul was converted. I personally do not think Paul was converted in the sense he accepted the church had jurisdiction over his mission. And yes, it appears Paul had serious issues with the "pillars" in Jerusalem. But that does not in any way support your claim of his organizing and participating in mass killings of Jesus followers.

Jiri

Rick Van Vliet

Something ambigious about "put to death"? Death doesn't mean death either?

aa5874

ACTS of the Apostles and the Pauline writings are products of the HANDS of the Church yet you conveniently use them as history for PAUL while AT the same Time discredit the veracity of information that passed through the very hands of the Church.

There can be found no credible external source of antiquity, external of the hands of the Church that mentioned Jesus called Christ who was worshiped as a God by Jews in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple, who had the power to forgive the sins of Jews after he himself was caused to be executed for blasphemy.

Now, once Jesus did not exist as found in material that passed through the HANDS of the Church then it must be very likely that people who claimed to have heard from Jesus or SAW JESUS or persecuted Jesus believers in manuscripts that passed through the HANDS of the Church wrote FICTION.

The conversion of Saul/Paul is FICTION in the book which passed through the HANDS of the Church yet you use ACTS and the Pauline writings,the products of the HANDS of the Church , as your source for the history of Paul.

Doug Shaver

By "deep thinkers," you mean thinkers who agree with you, right?

Solo

Verse ?

Jiri