Sheshbazzar

Acts 22:4 purports to be 'Paul's' verbatim testimony (narrated first person singular) If we discard this 'testimony' as being fictional, it leaves open question as to what else in the entire account, and in 'Paul's' other 'sayings' was likewise invented, by being pulled out of some writers arse.

Seriously, is there -anything at all- in any of these 'Pauline' writings that can be trusted to have originated with any real 'Paul'?
How can anyone tell, exactly when and where the words of unknown others are being stuffed into the mouth of 'Paul'?
We cannot know what any real Paul 'meant' about anything, because Paul's words are NOT Paul's words, but some unknown and unidentifiable writers words.

'Paul's' own words then cannot be trusted to tell us anything at all about the real Paul (or even if there ever was a real Saul/Paul)
We do not, and cannot ever know this real 'Paul' based on the contents of these canonical texts, where anything at all contained therein could be, and most likely was fabricated by the unknown writer(s).
If we cannot trust even a sentence of the history of 'Paul' as they present it, then effectively there is no real 'Paul' to be recovered or known, Only utterly untrustworthy accounts of events, actions, and words fabricated by unknown writers, resulting in an invented personality in an equally invented church history.

And 'Luke'? just who exactly is this 'Luke'?
Why, if this 'Luke' is the real Luke, does he not ever identify himself as being the narrator of Acts?
Why does this 'Luke' not consistently relate his personal observations in the first person singular?
And most important of all, why does this 'Luke' have to make a bunch of shit up, and stuff words into a 'Paul' characters mouth?




.

bacht

Maybe, or maybe the subtext is the expulsion of Christians from synagogues, which removed them from the legal protections the Jews traditionally enjoyed.

Vivisector

I don't view any of the long speeches that "Luke" records for anyone (Mary, Stephen, Peter, Paul) as reliable records of what these persons might have said. I suppose it's possible that the writer somehow captured the gist of what these persons said, but I can't think of a case in which I'd want to argue for it. If I recall correctly, training in rhetoric sometimes included composing speeches for historical figures that were plausible based on the situation and what was known/supposed about the figure. For example, Biggus Dikkus's homework assignment might have been to compose a speech for Julius Caesar on the occasion of his urinating in the Rubicon. I think "Luke" does this kind of thing often.


A tough proposition, no doubt. I think Paul can be "recovered," and imperfectly, only from his own (seven) letters, though the Pseudo Clementines might have preserved some somewhat historical events in his life.


Would be grateful for other opinions, since I'm away from my books, but I think it was relatively common literary technique then. Even though it might have been more accepted then, it certainly complicates life for anyone now trying to figure out what (if anything) a camera or recorder would have captured.

Cheers,

V.

DCHindley

Given the words used (see below), Paul is extremely precise when he says he practiced the customs of the Jews according to the way "his fathers" did it. In Romans 16:11 Paul speaks of his "kinsman" Herodion. Look at the Greek words used: γένει in Gal 1:14 and συγγενῆ in Rom 16:11. I've long suspected that Paul was associated with a household of one of the many Herodian princes.

One of the traditions of well to do Roman households was to grant freedman status to especially capable and trusted slaves. Inscriptional evidence suggests that the manumitted slaves of Jewish masters were sometimes, perhaps always, expected to fully adopt their masters' faith as part of the deal.

Somewhere in Paul's past, I think his paternal grandfather was such a manumitted slave. As with many converts, the conversion is undertaken with gusto. When they are allowed to retire (freedmen were not really free of their former master now patron, and could retire only with the permission of the former master's family), they often went to live in Judea. This kind of patron-client relationship persisted to successive generations although not always with the Roman citizenship that went to the freedman himself.

IMHO, Paul was a gung-ho Jew, the son of a son of a Convert, who didn't take well to a new movement, the "Congregation of God", probably within prominent Jewish households, that felt that they could be just as "God fearing" as any circumcised Jew, without the circumcision part. Paul at first tried as best he could to hamper this kind of thinking. "If circumcision," he thought to himself, "was good for my own forefathers, it's good enough for ... well ... everybody!" However, I think he was also troubled by his opposition. Maybe it took a literal bolt of lightening to cause his poor overheated brain to melt down, and out of the ashes rose a new opinion. "Yes! Abraam was justified before God by his faith that God would fulfill his promise to have many sons in spite of the obstacles, well before he actually circumcised himself to become Abraham, and so could these men be justified before God on the basis of faith!" An epiphany! He reasoned that God had decided, even before he was even born, to make Paul his messenger to faithful gentiles. And so he did.

DCH

(Gal 1:11-16 RSV) 11 For I would have you know, brethren (ἀδελφοί used in sense of "fellow travelers"), that the gospel (εὐαγγέλιον "good news") which was preached (εὐαγγελισθὲν "declared as good news) by me is not man's gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation [of Jesus Christ]. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism (τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ "according to the customs of the Judeans"), how I persecuted (ὑπερβολὴν ἐδίωκον "utterly pursued") the church of God (τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεου "the congregation of God") violently and tried to destroy it; 14 and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people (ἐν τῷ γένει μου "among the family/kindred of me"), so extremely zealous was I (περισσοτέρως ζηλωτὴς ὑπάρχων "I lived the life most zealously") for the traditions of my fathers (πατρικῶν μου παραδόσεων "traditions of my fathers"). 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal [his Son] to me, [in order] that I might preach him among the Gentiles (ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν "in the nations").

Romans 16:11 Greet my kinsman (συγγενῆ "relative") Herodion.

I bracketed off the Christ language consistent with my has-to-be-wrong-because-we-weren't-taught-anything-like-this-in-Sunday-school theory that Paul was not a Christian, and that all Christ language was added by an editor/redactor.

aa5874

"Paul" supposedly lived about ONE HUNDRED years before Marcion and there were NO Catholics ( No UNIVERSAL) doctrine about Jesus during the time of Marcion.

Based on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen there MANY various beliefs by Christians.

Even up to the middle of the 3rd century ORIGEN makes mention of the non-orthodoxy among Christians.

There is NO need to speculate about "Paul". The story of "Paul" has ALREADY been written. We ONLY need to verify it's veracity and the evidence from antiquity suggests that "Paul" was indeed a fraud and wrote NOTHING before the Fall of the Temple.

Montgomery Scott

_________________________________

I personally do not know if Paul existed. I think he probably did, as a Jewish/Christian minister of the First Century, with his fame and death being passed down through the generations, with the subsequent generations saying how great the guy was.

To answer your questions perhaps, and this comes from the Bible.

1.) Paul was originally named Saul, and he was a member of the Jewish Temple and Christianity was an apostate religion to be destroyed. He was an enforcer and his job was to hunt these people down and kill them. Plain and simple. This has been done for thousands of years from anceint times until today.

2-3.) Saul was on the road ready to kill some more Christians, when Jesus himself came from a cloud in a flash and asked Saul why he was persecuting Him? Saul was blinded and had to be carried to Damascus where he was healed.

Usually if a Supernatural Being comes down to say Howdy, talks to you and blinds you, that is pretty good testimony that this Being exists. Much different than modern believers who never see that flash of light and have to live on faith alone to carry through for the day. It is a lot easier to believe in a God if God himself shows Himself to you.

4.) Preaching to other people, how many of them are going to believe that God Himself came down one day and blinded Saul and all that wonderful stuff and expects everyone else to believe it as the truth? The blinding on the way to Damascus story made as much sense back then as Oral Roberts seeing a 900 ft. Jesus in the 1980's, or any crazy claiming to see God in the 21st Century

spin

Part of our problem in attempting to fathom this is that we are so prepared to understand "church" as a christian entity--a meeting of christians. However, when Paul used the term, it was prior to the establishment of a christian significance of the term. It earlier meant assembly or congregation and nothing more specific. That should be how we understand Paul's use of the term, so we must eliminate a purely christian object as to what Paul was trying to destroy. He was according to his own testimony a zealous conservative Jew. Anything outside those constraints would be worthy of destruction.

Again we have a word being understood in a purely christian sense that was prior to christian owning of the term, ie "gospel". Wasn't the message of any proselytizing religion "gospel"?

Take for instance the followers of John the Baptist. According to the indications in Acts 18:24ff people continued to spread the religion of John the baptist, which may be a gospel: the end is coming and if you submit and be baptized you can be saved in the day of wrath. Apollos was pulled aside when the christians saw he basically had it right. He just lacked the Jesus bit, so they set him straight. In this case the Jesus bit would be "what was new/different about the gospel Paul received by revelation".

God supplied the specific mechanism of salvation through Jesus.

The coming end. Repentance. Salvation.

It is certainly part of his credentialism, but so is the fact that Paul was selected before his birth for his calling to preach Jesus (Gal 1:15). (One has to wonder if the same ego that pitted himself against the Jerusalem messianists would suddenly be so self-effacing in 1 Cor 15:8-9.)

Craigart14

It's hard to worry much about what the NT says once you start thinking of it as fiction with an agenda. One very common feature of today's conversions stories is "I used to be an atheist." It seems to reinforce the "truth" of the "good news" if the convert claims he was once an opponent. Why would the temple priesthood send Paul to a foreign land (Syria) to persecute a wayward group of Jews? There were other heretical sects closer to Jerusalem. What did Paul expect to accomplish by himself with a few companions in a land where neither he nor the Temple had any authority? The writer(s) of Paul's letters may simply have been cooking up a convincing conversion story. "Paul" states elsewhere that lying in order to save souls is perfectly all right, and today's evangelists have certainly accepted that idea. One (can't think of his name, but I head him say it on his own TV show) claims that he has physically visited heaven, and of course Pat Robertson claims he broke the world leg press record at age 76 by 600 pounds. In the video he had assistants load the machine for him. I doubt that they could all share the same specific delusion, so it seems obvious they were all lying. Why not Paul?

Craig

Vivisector

This is a great point; there are several words that, at this remove, are difficult to associate with anything but a Christian context. Certainly "church" is one. When I look at instances of how Paul used the word, though, it seems likely his use provides at least some clues as to what formed a/the basis of the assemblies/congregations, including:

Rom 16:16: "churches of Christ"
1 Cor 1:2: "church of God"
1 Cor 10:32: "Jews, Greeks or the church of God."
1 Thess 2:14: "God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus."
1 Cor 12:28: "And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues."

He uses the term many more times, but from passages such as these and regardless of the "church's" state of evolution toward something we would recognize as a Christian church, it seems that he associated the term with God and Jesus, that he separated the church from both Jews and Greeks, and that he associated it with apostles. In your view, did Paul use the term "church" outside such a context when he stated that he persecuted the church?

This is a great point and example. Do you consider such a message (imminent destruction, repentance, salvation) as sufficiently offensive to Paul that he would have "persecuted" it (another of those words that probably needs to be separated from contemporary connotations), especially given JtB's reported popularity?


I can get somewhat closer to understanding this if your suggesting that the churches Paul persecuted associated the teaching of destruction, repentance and salvation with Jesus. Otherwise, I'm left continuing to struggle with how Paul would have associated Jesus with this gospel in the absence of prior (to his revelation) knowledge of Jesus.

True, but we know that he deliberately became "all things to all people." I'd consider it strikingly inconsistent had the two approaches appeared in the same epistle, but as it stands, I interpret this as evidence of situational adaptability in Paul's style.

Always grateful for your thoughts.

Cheers,

V.

Toto

Bible Geek from June 1 addresses the question. Price seems to think that the charges that Paul persecuted the church refer to the conflic with Ebionites, and were not real persecution.