jgibson000

We do?

Thank you Marvin B. Gardner.

And your degree is from where?

Jeffrey

P.S. Forgive me for asking, but what you write above makes me wonder: Have you been sleeping with Yuri?

jjramsey

That would have more force if Biblical scholars had not already come to believe a host of "laudably heretical" ideas (to borrow a turn of phrase from Jacques Berlinerblau), such as the idea of the JEDP documentary hypothesis, Second Isaiah, the implausibility of the Lukan census, that some of the Pauline letters are pseudopigrapha, and so on. If the case for Jesus as a myth were compelling, it would be just one more heretical idea among many accepted by biblical scholars.

jgibson000

My understanding of what qualifies something as a rant is that it has to be an "harangue: a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion"

So far as I can see, what I wrote was a calm and precice and emotionless statement of fact. If anyone here is engaged in ranting, it's you Ted.

I don't see anywhere in my message that I made such a claim or, more importantly, that I made a straw man out of what stands behind the MJer's claim about the crucifixion of Jesus by the ARCONTES. In fact, it seems to me that Earl's latest reponse shows that I have summarized it absosolutely correctly.

Isn't it the case that what Mjers claim vis a vis what is stated in 1 Cor 2:6-8 not just that ARCHONTES are demons, but that when the ARCONTES/demons crucified Jesus they did not do it not on earth and through human intruments? And is it not the case that if they admit that Paul thought humans somehow took part in it, and that it took place on earth, then the idea that it was a purley "spiritual" event that "took place" in a heavenly realm falls to the ground?

Jeffrey Gibson

EarlDoherty

Can anyone make sense of this? How can Jeffrey claim he has summarized my position “absosolutely correctly” when he can’t even make himself understood in describing it?

“…they did not do it not on earth…” ?????

“And is it not the case that if they admit…” Who is “they?” MJers? What MJer, let alone myself, “admits” that Paul thought humans somehow took part in it? Does he mean scholars like Brandon? I’ve said clearly that this is the case. Is he claiming that because Brandon believes that Paul thought humans somehow took part in it (even though Paul never says a word in that direction), this destroys the mythicist argument? Because Brandon et al. think that Paul thought so? That’s equivalent to saying that because Brandon believes there was an historical Jesus, the mythicist case “falls to the ground.” It’s nothing more than the old appeal to authority. I hope this is not an indicator of the extent of logical thought Jeffrey is capable of.

What I am saying is that Brandon and everyone else is reading that additional thought into Paul’s words illegitimately, words that, as Brandon makes clear, speak entirely in terms of the rulers and demon spirits in the heavens, that “Paul attributes the Crucifixion, not to Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders, but to these planetary powers….Paul had lifted the Crucifixion completely out of its historical context…” The idea that such powers worked through earthly leaders and that it was those earthly leaders who actually crucified Jesus, is nowhere to be found in Paul. That is Brandon reading such an idea into Paul, overriding his clear recognition of what Paul was saying.

And has anyone asked themselves (including Brandon) why Paul would do such a thing? Not only Paul, but all the rest of the early Christian writers, who similarly have nothing to say about earthly rulers and an earthly crucifixion? What strange twist of the mind (and of so many of them) causes such a cosmic translation of an earthly event, wherein the earthly dimension of it is completely lost sight of, never worked into the picture? Would anyone like to offer an explanation for this ‘mystery’?

Earl Doherty

jgibson000

Leaving aside the fact that the above is a non sequitur, how you have the temerity to claim -- let alone make as the basis of you claim the assessment that Earl is "better (sic) knowledgable" about his thesis than you are and "more articulate regarding (sic) his theory" than you are -- that you don't speak for Earl is just mindboggling.

You speak for him -- that is to say, you try to tell us what he thinks and what he claims -- all the time.

And let's be sure the analogies we use in order to make a point are apt.

You should have been speaking not of a neighbour of Gould and Eldredge (who may or may not actually know them, let alone try to make piublic their claims), but of anybody who takes it upon him/herself to represent, popularize, and defend Gould's and Eldredeg's views, as you have done with Earl's..

And yes, such a person can damage (and demonstrably has damaged) the theory they are trying speak for and defend -- or at least make people think that the theory is has little worth and is to be rejected. Just look at what Haeckel and Spenser did in the minds of the genreal public to Darwin's theory of "natural selection".

Jeffrey Gibson

EarlDoherty

Before I comment on Rick Sumner’s posting, this will notify everyone that my Rebuttal on Alleged Refutations of the Jesus Myth is now up on both sites. It is in three parts, a total of 43,000 words (don’t say I didn’t warn you), starting with:

Refutations1
and
Refutations1

As I also comment along the way on Christopher Price’s article (on Bede’s site) “A History of Refutations of the Jesus Myth,” I would appreciate it if someone would let him know of this article, as I am quite sure he will want to have a look at it…

Rick,

In your posted ‘response’ to my views on 2 Peter: You argue in Hebrews 12:27’s use of dnlow:

And what do you think Paul’s or the author of Hebrews’ “revelation” consisted of? Struck by a bolt from the sky, falling down and having a vision? Revelation for these Christians was doing precisely this: reading scripture and finding the meaning they want to see in it and deciding that they have this insight through revelation from the Holy Spirit. When Paul declares Galatians 1:11-12 that his gospel (see 1 Cor. 15:3-4) is through revelation, he isn’t talking about the road to Damascus and a blinding light knocking him from his donkey. You can be sure he’s talking about poring over the sacred texts and getting a “revelation” about how to interpret them. Otherwise, there must have been a lot of highway accidents in Palestine for all the revelations made to Christian prophets. Even the TDNT talks of the “seeings” of 1 Cor. 15:5-8 being “convictions of being in the presence of,” rather than some dramatic appearance of Christ’s own person, flesh or spirit.

Your vast number of so-called contrary examples of the use of dnlow are in contexts which cannot entail ‘revelation.’ I never said that the verb itself cannot be used in other contexts. In looking at my passage in the 2 Peter article, I see that I need to make that clearer, that in the context of this epistle the reference should be taken as one imparted through revelation, and not by a human Jesus speaking to Peter.

You say “it is clearly assumed that the audience knows what he is referring to,” by 1:14. I can see no reason why you say it makes no sense without the readers’ prior knowledge. They may have it, they may not. The writer, pretending to be Peter, is declaring that he will soon be leaving them, and adds that he has been told/revealed this by Christ. There is no assumption, or necessity, either way. It is virtually an aside. His reference to himself reminding his readers of “these things” is about what he has said in the previous chapter.

By demanding that Matthew, Mark and Luke should have referred to such a tradition, if it existed, is locking yourself into the standard paradigms that Gospels and epistles inhabited the same common world. The forger of 2 Peter is in a line back to the Pauline-Petrine cult embodied in the epistles. The Gospel writers come from the Galilean Kingdom-preaching line of things and their line of contact to legendary apostles of the Christ may not be as thorough as some epistolary writers. (Actually, it’s only that of Mark, since everyone else is in all likelihood dependent on Mark for any ‘knowledge’ of figures like Peter.) In any case, you offer a pretty slender reed to base a claim of knowledge of the Gospel of John by 2 Peter, when nothing else in the entire epistle suggests such a thing. In fact, there is nothing in the epistle beyond this verse which suggests a knowledge of any Gospel, and several indications that such a knowledge is clearly lacking. None of these which I outline (under “A Second Century Silence”) do you address. For example, if the writer can speak of a Gospel prediction that Jesus had told Peter of his death, why when he says in 2:1 that “you will have false teachers among you,” does he not equally include mention that Jesus himself had prophesied this very thing?

You dispute my claim about “gnwridzw” by coming up with an example of it used in a different way. Then we get the throwaway line that “it is a common term, sometimes used in relation to "divine mystery." Very common indeed: Ephesians 1:9 “making known to us the mystery…”, Eph. 3:3 “made known to me the mystery by way of revelation…”, and 3:5, 3:10 “the wisdom of god made known to the rulers in the heavens…”, Col. 1:27 “God made known the mystery…” So is it or is it not widely used in the sense of “making known a divine mystery” and how is that different from your admission that it is “used in relation to divine mystery”?

You list all of the “differences” I point out between the Transfiguration in 2 Peter and that in the Synoptics, and then think to dismiss them all by pointing to one similarity: the words of God spoken on the mountain. This can hardly tip the scales. It’s from the Psalms. If Mark is reworking for his “historical” scene a tradition about a vision to early apostles including Peter, his inclusion of the Psalm verse will be natural, and 2 Peter’s use of the same verse hardly indicates a reliance on Mark, especially as the words are nowhere near identical between the two. You never do answer the question of why, if 2 Peter is drawing on the Gospels’ Transfiguration scene, it omits so many key elements.

And yes, indeed, all the other Gospel accounts are dependent on Mark. As I said earlier, it is Mark who had the cross-over contact with the epistolary side of things. It is he who created the syncretism between the Kingdom-preaching world of Q and the cultic world of the epistles. That’s what made him unique and why it was he who was responsible for the composite story which produced Christianity as we know it. The rest simply took up his ball and ran with it. How or why he did that, what unique position he was in to do it, is the great question, which I speculate on in chapter 19 of The Jesus Puzzle. But that uniqueness renders it unremarkable that no other Gospel writer was familiar with the 2 Peter tradition. They moved in different circles, and everything they created was ultimately dependent on Mark and their discovery of him, to which they added the teaching content of the Q document (which said nothing, by the way, about Peter or any other apostle).

And yes, Mark is largely drawing on scripture to narrate the event, because midrash is the method he uses throughout the entire Gospel to craft its features. But this does not preclude its inspiration coming from a (perhaps vaguely) known tradition about a vision to Peter and other apostles. That tradition gives Mark his setting on the mountain, the hearing of the heavenly voice. Even the writer of 2 Peter has drawn on scripture to give his scene substance. The “honor and glory” of verse 17 comes from Psalm 8:5, something Mark does not use. If 2 Peter is drawing on Mark, how could he possibly leave out the references to the presence of Moses and Elijah? Your claim that 2 Peter knows of Mark’s scene is clearly rendered “implausible,” to use your own term. And you fail to address my comments on verse 16. Why would this writer, anxious to impress on his readers “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” use as an example of the latter the scene of Transfiguration, and not the much more powerful example of his bodily resurrection? (Many mainstream commentators have asked the same thing.) That is truly an example of the “implausible.”

You also fail entirely to address my observations about the following verse 19 which I will reproduce below.

Sorry, Rick, but your rebuttal to my article is nowhere near adequate. Perhaps it is not surprising that when I talk of ‘overwhelming’ evidence in the epistles against an historical Jesus, you fail to see it. As to why that is, and why the vast majority of NT scholars don’t see it either, I think my just-posted article on the so-called refutations of Jesus Mythicism should provide some insight. (And into which side is afflicted with “overactive imaginations and inflated self-worth.”)

Earl Doherty

jgibson000

Is it really that I cannot make myself understood, or that in what I wrote I did a poor job in expressing what I intended to say in that, when composing my sentence, I infelicitously added a second "not" by mistake (or poor editing) and didn't catch this before I sent my message out?

Surely it's the latter since it seems that you had no problem in making sense of and understanding that what I meant to say was "... they did not do it on earth".

Not one. And that is, as you know, exactly what I was claiming.

No, and you know I don't because Brandon is not am MJer.

Seems to me that if anyone has misunderstood anything here and hasn't read carefully what another person has written , it's you, Earl. My point was that you don't admit this, because if you did, and as your screed above shows, you'd have no case.

But thanks for proving my points that

1. "the mythicist (or at least Earl's) interpretation" of the ARCHONTES mentioned in 1 Cor 2:6-8 is not just that they are "demons", but

2. that they are demons who carried out Jesus' crucifixion (a) without human aid, (b) at no specific time in human history, and (c) in a heavenly not an earthly realm, and

3. that there is not a single one of the scholars whom Earl (or Peter Kirby) lists -- and, notably, not a even among those who do actually believe that the ARCHONTES spoken of in 1 Cor 2:6-8 are demons -- who supports that interpretation.


Jeffrey Gibson

Rick Sumner

The scare quotes are a nice touch. I like that. I'll now look at your "reply." Aren't empty rhetorical ploys fun? Of course, they don't add much, but they do feel good to use! Let's one feel all smug and the like.

I've taken the liberty of snipping some portions of your "post," mostly those that seem to be simple reiterations of points we're in agreement on (such as dependence on Mark).

On this point you have no quarrel with me (which is why I snip your later examples). "Revelation" frequently referred to an epiphany. My argument regarding delow is not that it cannot refer to a "revelation," it's that your suggestion that it is placed "without much doubt" in the realm of revelation is wrong. There is ample room to doubt.

You've acknowledged that this is true--I noted in my posting that it was included in my discussion because it remains on your website, and thus should for purposes of completeness.

If you would care to instead suggest the converse--that it does place it "without much doubt" in the realm of revelation, then the passages I cite are more than pertinent. There is no epiphany in the vast majority of the examples I cite (Josephus, again, was especially fond of using the term to refer to anything observed).

Here, again, is the problem. It's not that you "need to make that clearer," it's that you hugely overstate your case, which is precisely what I argued to begin with. And, again, precisely what you have already acknowledged to be true. If your earlier assertion, that you will remove "without much doubt" is still true, then we have no quarrel here. Again, it was included because it remains on your site. I am obviously aware that you're recognized the problem--you've said as much. Not only that, I say as much in my article. So why do you ignore the disclaimer I provide?

The existence of such a prophecy would come as a rather startling revelation to a group that didn't know it. More importantly, the author is writing long after Peter's death. Claims to apostolic authority would be unnecessarily damaged by alluding to such a prophecy if the recipients did not know and accept it.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There is no previous chapter. This appears in 2 Peter 1.

You're presuming your conclusions. Petrine independence is the very issue at hand, thus you cannot conclude that other seeming allusions (the seeming allusion to the transiguration, the "thief in the night" of 3:10).

You cannot use the premise that 2Peter does not know the gospels as an argument against 2Peter's knowledge of the gospels.

Firstly, there doesn't need to be anything else. Secondly, the Transfiguration is a thoroughly Markan creation (I'll deal with this more below--you confuse a Markan creation with 2Peter's direct dependence on Mark).

Because I don't need to. I recently put a blog post up on relative dependence using an analogy from The Wizard of Oz. It goes like this: In Baum's book, Dorothy's shoes were silver. In the movie, they were changed to ruby, in order to exploit the magic of Technicolor. Because of this, I can safely state that every telling of the Wizard of Oz that has ruby slippers is directly or indirectly dependent on MGM's musical. To suggest otherwise is absurd.

It does not matter if the story has been fundamentally altered on every level (and it has been, many times). If the shoes are red, it is silly to suggest that it does not know, directly or indirectly, Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale.

Likewise here, I don't need to explain silences to make my case, all I need to do is show that 2Peter knows the shoes were red.

Your putting words in my mouth, I did not state that it was not "widely used" in that sense, I stated that it was not a "technical term used to describe. . .". The former is accurate. The latter implies that it is its bog-standard, default reading. Which it isn't.

That's two strawmen for two lexical arguments. One must wonder if you read my "response" thoroughly enough to justify your apparent belief that they deserve scare quotes. It begins to look like you just "read" it.

Because it doesn't need the key elements, which play on precursors laid out in the narrative, most explicitly in the Markan narrative (which is why Matthew and Luke keep it), not quite as strongly in the Johannine narrative (where a transfiguration is unnecessary, hence his rejection of it).

And you confuse "dependent on Mark" with "directly dependent on Mark." The version 2Peter knows is, on the basis of the words employed, quite clearly Matthew or Luke's.

I'm aware of what Q said, and doubt it existed. But that's neither here nor there. You aren't addressing the concern: The redactor of John 21 was sympathetic to Peter, and uses the passage to counterbalance the apparent tradition of a false prophecy about the beloved disciple. That is all the earmarks of a Johannine creation. What circles he moved in has nothing to do with that.

I argue why the other gospel authors don't know it--they don't know it because John made it up. You offer no substantial rebuttal to that. What it boils down to is that the prophecy of Peter's death is distinctive to the context of John 21--there is no reason to suggest that it ever existed outside of it.

As an aside, Midrash really isn't apt. Someone should probably come up with a different word for it, though nobody ever seems to.

2Peter draws on scripture to bolster much of what he says. That's how they wrote in general. Even among authors who clearly knew an HJ. Every element of Mark's transfiguration shows clear signs of Markan redaction. While a tradition could exist, it's not evidenced to, and not necessary to explain the narrative. This all goes back to Occam's Razor--if you can't show that a separate tradition is a necessary entity, it is logically inappropriate to accept such a postulate.

You need to establish a non-Markan core--something that is best understood outside of the Markan narrative--to create the necessity for the extra entity.

Why would he need to? 2Peter's point is that he was witness to Jesus' majesty--it's an appeal to his own authority. Naming Elijah or Moses doesn't further that.

I suppose the obvious answer is that 2 Peter is appealing to things Peter witnessed. There is no account, in any of the sources I am contending 2 Peter knew, of Peter witnessing the resurrection. But even beyond that, why would he point to the transfiguration and not the "resurrection" that occurred on a spiritual plane, that you postulate in your assessment of the epistolary record? You're not in a much better boat. The silence is equally puzzling from either end.

And I didn't address it because it isn't necessary to do so, for the reasons noted above--he knows the shoes were red. Thus he knows Judy Garland's Dorothy, not Baum's. This type of cut and paste scholarship, postulating a new lost source or tradition for everything we can't thoroughly explain, died with Streeter.

By way of analogy (and another I've pointed to on my 'blog), Star Wars was definitely influenced by The Wizard of Oz. The fact that key elements from the latter are missing does nothing to negate that.

Why would any early Christian or Jew (two groups that were not that far apart) look anywhere but scripture for their understanding of the Messiah? Try to look at this from the perspective of the ancient, rather than the modern. Of course things were done to bring scripture to fulfillment. There is no other reason for the Messianic Age to occur.

No more or less so than it is to me that you don't see the converse.

ETA I'm genuinely curious as to if/how you plan on handling Paul. The argument from the "revelation" of the "gospel" or "mystery" constitutes a not-insignificant portion of your negative argument (the oft referenced Argument From Silence), and constitutes a large portion of your argument from "revelatory language," one of the few positive arguments you assemble.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

jgibson000

Leaving aside the issue of how much it begs the question to assert that Paul never makes such a thing clear or that his readers would have thought so, not to mention how much of a non sequitur it is to ground any expectation of what Paul should or should not do in what the author of Ascension of Isaiah 9 allegedly does not do, I think two things need to be pointed out:

1. that virtually everything you state here about the Ascension of Isaiah is untrue, and

2. that premises upon which you base your claim that the statements in chapter 11 of Ascension of Isaiah are later clarifications of what is stated in chapter 9, are invalid.

In the first place, your claim that "there is no reference to earthly rulers ..., let alone to any earthly content" in the statement in Chapter 9:14 that “the god of that world will stretch out his hand against the Son, and they will lay their hands upon him and hang him upon a tree, not knowing who he is. And thus his descent, as you will see, will be concealed even from the heavens so that it will not be known who he is” is belied by the fact that that statement is prefaced in vs. 13 by

"The LORD will indeed descend into the world in the last days, (he) who is to be called Christ after he has descended and become like you [i.e., Isaiah] in form, and they will think that he is flesh and a man" (Knibb p. 170).

So, contrary to what you claim, it is noted, even in Chapter 9 and especially at vs. 14, that the the God of that world's (i. e. of the earth and where humans live) stretching out of his hand against the Son is something that will (indeed, is to, and can only) take place not only on earth but [B]after[b] the Son's incarnation.

In the second place, your statement that according to 9:14 it is "Satan and his demons in the heavens", who do the "hanging" spoken of there overlooks not only

(a) the fact that this hanging upon a tree is spoken of in vs. 14 as something that is at the time of this speaking a future event -- and, more specifically, something that will not occur until after the Son takes on flesh, but

(b) that the referent of "they" in vs. 14's phrase "they will lay their hands upon him and hang him upon a tree"" is not, as the context of the verse and major textual witnesses to it show, to Satan and his demons in the heavens.

There is no mention of Satan's "demons in the heavens" in the either vs. 14 or in the verses immediately preceeding vs. 14. Nor is there any mention anywhere in Chapter 9 that "the God of that word" (the earth) (who here BTW is not deemed Satan) has any demons under his control in any realm, earthly or heavenly. So it is highly unlikely that "Satan and his demons in heaven" is the referent of "they"

But more importantly, as is shown by the 2nd Latin and Slavonic witnesses to this text, which have "and he will hang him upon a tree and kill him" and "and they will hang ... and he will kill him", the original (Greek) text of vs. 14 was not read and understood by those who were familair with it as conveying this sense. Rather it was read and understood as conveying something quite different vis a vis who the referent of the "they" was (and most likely what we find said in this regard later in Chapter 11), as well as vis a vis how many agents were responsible for the hanging and the killing.

In the third place, your claim that Chapter 11 is not only later than Chapter 9, but is a Christian interpolation into an older text of the Ascension of Isaiah, designed to "clarify" and make more orthodox what was said about the son and his hanging in Chapter 9 (have I read you correctly on this?), has, so far as I can tell, little to no scholarly or lingustic support.

For as Knibb (see p. 143) and virtually all other Ascension of Isaiah scholars who take into account the Ethiopian MSS tradition and the witness of Latin 1 (e.g. R.H. Charles) note, the whole of Chapters 6-11, including chapter 9, is a Christian work that not only is a non composite literary unit, but one which stems from one hand.

So not only are the two Ascension of Isaiah passages that you claim are "contrasting" not so; They do not in any way illustrate the "point" you are trying to make.

On the contrary, they show that your "point" has no legs to stand on, based as it is upon selective quotation from, and a misreading and misrepresentation of, what the Ascension of Isaiah actually says.

Jeffrey Gibson

Solo

I am not sure where Earl Doherty saw a donkey in the text of Acts 9, but I suppose it was the same revelation which tells him that the euaggelion up emou in Gal 1:11 crossreferences kata grafh in 1 Cr 15:3., a view rather bizzare considering that the two passages are obviously at loggerheads. In Gal Paul asserts his gospel comes directly from God and not men, whereas, in 1 Cor 15, that it comes from the scriptures. Wells dismisses the latter passage in The Jesus of Early Christians (p. 136-7)pointing out the utter improbability of Paul referring to OT, later softening his stand in Historical Evidence in Jesus, but again arguing strongly in Jesus Myth for the interpolation position quoting R.M.Price, Apocryphal Apparitions 1 Corinthians 15:3-11, JHC2(2), 66-69, an J.C.O'Neill (The Recovery of Paul's Letter to the Galatians 1972) who called the pericope "a later credal summary not written by Paul" (p.27n6). There are other big issues with 1 Cr 15:3-11 which we can review later.

Doherty's way of handling the texts is facile and demeaning to the faith. Surely, he must have heard by now that most of the supernatural "events" relate to known medical issues. One can read about them in Sunday newspapers. Paul's revelation was a real thing (internally) that most certainly did not relate to interpreting texts (see 1 Cr 12-14 - interpreting relates to the works of pneuma). Paul started to preach his gospel because he was ill (Gal 4:13). And just in case anyone here can't find an exeget who could explain to your satisfaction the meaning of 1 Cr 2:1-5, try this for something new in the debate: very commonly it is asserted that the disease is a greater torture than any other, that the patient would far far rather endure any bodily pain than disorder of the mind (Emil Kraepelin, Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, Edinburgh 1921, p 22.)

This is how Christianity was born, Mr Doherty, in a desperate cry of a sick man whose brain went haywire (as it always does after epiphany, 2 Cor 12), filled with the thought of God, and the cry for God, which envisioned an obscure, confused, despised and brutalized peasant seer from Galilee, whom he as Saul considered a deluded fool and whose unruly followers he persecuted, as a double of God’s one and only progeny. And how did he get that idea ? His brain told him that God destroyed him the way he destroyed Jesus, by making him mad first !!! Saul was then crucified mystically along Jesus (Gal 2:20, Rom 6:6), for Paul to reveal the mystery of the resurrection and spread the gospel of love.

And an interesting thing happened: out of Paul’s manifestly insane schema sprang a creed of active, acted, benevolence, a creed that has never been surpassed by any, religious or secular, for depth of conscience and unfeigned love of humanity. Did this Paul's God not create a beacon of hope to guide humanity for two millennia ? Does the fact that Paul also believed unsoundly that his love was compulsory, change a thing ? No, of course, it doesn’t change a thing! For one, nearly all of those first Christians Paul recruited came in as volunteers: not because God ordered them, but because they felf sorry for, and were intrigued by the man’s who was shaking and going bonkers in front of them, and talking gibberish they could not comprehend. Most came because they needed Paul. They were won by his selfless dedication and sincerity. Whatever he really was, he did not come to them dealing cheap thrills, trinkets or charms.


Jiri Severa