Jeremy D

I screened The God Who Wasn't There tonight. I know that the position that Jesus was not a historical person is not a widely-accepted belief among scholars. I think the strongest argument Flemming made in his movie was the timeline that showed that Paul kinda/sorta knew Jesus and then, 40 years after Jesus died, Mark wrote something about him.

How solid is this argument? I've googled around about this and gotten a different answer every time.

razlyubleno

Well Paul himself never claims to have met Jesus, except through revelation. He claims to have met Peter, though, but that doesn't mean we're talking about Peter the disciple of Jesus.

"Mark" is the name given to the writer of gMark by the church fathers. But all of the attributed authorships seem invented to give apostolic authority to the gospels. It's unlikely the real author ever knew Jesus, even if Jesus did in fact exist. And it's unlikely his name was Mark.

razly

Steven Carr

Well, according to the Gospels, Lazarus was so famous that people tried to kill him too, and his fame was huge.

I wonder why not one person outside the Gospels (ie including Acts) name him, when he was so famous.


Had Paul heard of Mary Magdalene, Judas, Thomas, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Lazarus, Bartimaeus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Joanna, Salome, Martha, Jairus, Simon of Cyrene, the other Mary?

Had *anybody*?

aa5874

But there are other details that make it clear that the writer Paul was talking about Peter, the apostle of Jesus.

Galations 1.18
Peter was called an apostle of Jesus and was in Jerusalem based on the NT. The writer Paul is claiming to have met and stayed with him for fifteen days.

One big problem.

Peter was a fictitious character fabricated by authors of the Jesus stories long after "Paul" died. According to the church history, "Paul" died under the hands of Nero but the first gospel was written sometime after the Fall of the Temple after Nero himself was dead.

It is clear that "Paul" wrote fiction. The writer Paul was not writing in the first century. He knew no-one, that is, no apostles of Jesus.

Now, according to church writings, "Paul" knew Luke. He was a disciple of Paul. Luke wrote the gospel called Luke and Acts of the Apostles.

According to church writings "Paul" was aware of the gospel of Luke.


Another big problem.

The gospel called Luke was written long after "Paul" was dead. Paul, it is claimed, died during the reign of Nero, but the gospel called Luke was written, it would appear, after gMark and gMatthew, long after the Fall of the Temple and very long after the death of Nero.

"Paul" knew no-one except fictitious characters in the 1st century.

razlyubleno

That's neat. But it doesn't say, "Peter, the disciple of Jesus, whom the gospels speak of." That there was an apostle named Peter (which was hardly a rare name, surely), proves very little.

razly

aa5874

An apostle is even more specific than a disciple.

An apostle is a chosen disciple.

Based on the NT, Peter was chosen by Jesus.

That is why Peter is called an Apostle, personally chosen by Jesus, unlike Paul who claimed he was an apostle chosen by Jesus in a fictitious state, after he rose from the dead by revelation.

"Paul's" apostleship is certain fiction.

Toto

This is a dilemma for NT scholarship. The mainstream of scholarship has no coherent explanation, and has to resort to hypothetical "oral traditions" that were not written down until it was clear that Jesus was not about to return, and even then were filtered through the language and imagery of the Septuagint. Mythicism is a more economical solution.

razlyubleno

Paul seems to have considered an "apostle" to be anyone chosen by God to preach the good news of Christ Jesus. Paul does not seem to be aware of any special meaning of "apostle" above and beyond that.

This is to say that he considered himself and Peter both to be apostles. And I don't agree that the words "apostle" and "disciple" overlap in their meanings. "Apostle" does not imply "disciple" in the sense of "one of the twelve," at least not for Paul.

Peter is just another apostle. To Paul's mind, there is nothing special about Peter.

razly

Amaleq13

No, it is the opposite. A disciple specifically refers to someone who was actually a student of Jesus. An apostle is anyone "sent out" to preach and that was clearly not restricted to former disciples.

aa5874

Why are you claiming that you know what was in "Paul's" mind?

Now, Jesus of the NT had only 12 Apostles or 13 if the replacement for Judas is considered but had many many more disciples based on the NT, and one of the disciples who was not an Apostle was also called Cephas.

There was one Apostle called Peter/Cephas and another disciple, [b]not an apostle, called Cephas, one of the seventy disciples.

This is an excerpt from Church History.

Church History 1.12.22.
It is clear that using the word apostle was the distinguishing factor.