aa5874

There are 14 epistles and the book of Acts that are essentially about some character called "Paul", but it apears to me there was an attempt to hide his identity. I have observed, on going through the Acts and epistles, that the personal information about this character are all ambiguous, and may have been deliberate.
The character called "Paul" is a very significant figure in Christianity and the development of the Christian Church, according to the NT and Church fathers, yet very little is known of this character.

Who was "Paul"?

Romans 11.1 Acts 21.39 The information so far is vague.

Who were 'Paul's" parents?

Romans 16.13 Nothing at all about his parents.

Did "Paul" have siblings, what were their names?

Acts 23.16 "Paul" had a sister and the sister had a son, but that's all, no names.

Did "Paul" have any buddies?

1Timothy 1.2 Titus 1.4 Philemon 1.1 So this "Paul" had buddies called Timothy, Titus and Philemon, and wrote letters to them, but we have a major problem. Biblical scholars claim that this "Paul" who claimed his buddies are Timothy, Titus and Philemon is different to the "Paul" in Romans, who also had a buddy named Timothy.

Romans 16.21 I don't know anything about Paul, not even who his buddies were. I find it odd that some other "Paul" could have written personal letters to someone's close friends and that it took nearly 2000 years to notice the error. If "Paul", Timothy, Titus and Philemon were real people, they would have recognised the forgery, if they were living at the time when these letters were written. I will, therefore, consider "Paul" and his buddies as fiction until further information can be produced.

TedM

aa, biblical scholars believe one of two things:

1. Paul authored all or virtually all of Romans. Therefore "Timothy" is the buddy of Paul.

2. Paul may have authored some or all of the Pastorals. This Timothy would have been the same as the Timothy Paul mentions in Romans.

2. Someone pretending to be Paul may have wroten of the Pastorals. "Timothy" would have been mentioned in the Pastorals because the writer believed the real Paul had a friend named Timothy.

Either way, scholars believe there was a real Paul, and a person pretending to be Paul did so because probably because his audience also believed there was a real Paul, with a friend named Timothy.

Wrong conclusion. What you should conclude is that Paul and his buddies weren't around to point out the forgery, if it was indeed a forgery. Why you conclude that Paul and his buddies are fiction from this is beyond logic.

ted

Toto

We can only speculate about who Paul was. But if he were a normal 1st or 2nd century guy, he had a mother, many siblings, and a lot of friends. "My own son in the faith" sounds like he has metaphorically adopted Timothy - nothing unusual about that.

The letters were not collected and distributed until sometime later, so it is hard to draw any conclusions about whether Timothy might have read the letter and raised an objection as to its accuracy.

The character of Paul in Acts is probably fictional, and may combine features of several different people - the Paul of the letters never hints that his name might be "Saul."

TedM

But he does say he was from the tribe of Benjamin. That's the tribe King Saul--one of the greatest ever--was from. And, I understand that it was common to have two names at the time. So, this doesn't seem a stretch to me--Paul of course sounds like Saul. Paul doesn't say much at all about his background, so I wouldn't have much expecation for him to have discussed a second or earlier name..

ted

yalla

What do we know about Paul?
I'm reading A.N.Wilson "Jesus" and he has this to say:
p.23
" Paul....a large part of what we know about him comes from his own pen....many factual details about himself, with which he peppers his writings - such matters as his place of birth, his educational and medical history and so forth - ....."
p.24/25
"Paul was a native of Tarsus......he was a citizen of the Roman Empire.....tells us that he became a Pharisee [footnote: Phil 3.5]...."

When I read the above in Wilson's book I wondered about from where he sourced those claims. Were the references to this autobiographical material from Acts or the 'genuine letters or the 'other' letters? Wilson is not specific [usually] and has a warning about placing 'too much reliance upon Acts as a historical source' yet seems to include information from it frequently.
So I thought I might check the writings of Paul and Acts to see what personal info can be gleaned and separated out as such into 3 categories - 1. "genuine Paul, 2. "other' Paul, 3. Acts.
And then I decided that was too much work and I might miss something relevant anyway.
But it seems the good folk here have this info at their fingertips.
Care to share?
cheers
yalla

schilling.klaus

This is a fraudulent Roman Catholic interpolation.
It has no relevance for the question who was Paul,
a fictional character anyways.

The name Saul has been chosen because the king of the same name
had persecuted King David, repenting this later on,
as the Catholic forgers made their Paul persecuting the
followers of the Son of David (i.e. of Jesus).

As in the canonical gospels it's midrash on Scripture
torn out of context, a blantantly literary device.
There's absolutely no historical value behind it.

It has been employed here in order to lure Judaising Christians
of mid to late second century into accepting Paul, who had
been considered as the hostile man by those, under the name
of Simon Magos (pseudoclementine stuff)

Klaus Schilling

Toto

Tarsus is only mentioned in Acts.

Paul says in Philippians 3:5 that he was a Pharisee, but Acts goes further and has him a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, and a pupil of Gamaliel.

Acts claims that Paul was a Roman Citizen from birth, but there is no confirmation of this in any epistle, and some evidence against this (Paul says that he was beaten with rods, which would not have happened if he were a citizen.)

yalla

I suspected as much but wanted confirmation and wasn't willing to do the hard yards so thanks.
So would that make Wilson's claim on page 23 inaccurate, or at least misleading, in that the information re Tarsus is not from Paul's own pen?

Toto

Wilson is inaccurate. But he has a lot of company.

TedM

Hi Klaus. Thanks for sharing this.

I can't help wonder however why the interpolator didn't just have Paul say that he used to be called "Saul" as is the case in Acts, if the Benjamin reference was put in to support that idea?

Your midrash interpretation is interesting. What is your support for saying that the verse about being from the tribe of Benjamin is an interpolation?

And while I'm thinking about it, Marcion's version of Galations is reconstructed to exclude Paul's first trip to Jerusalem. Why do you think Catholics interpolate in a first trip by Paul to Jerusalem after 3 years--and not immediately--so that it would coincide better with Acts? How could the interpolator have been so careless?

thanks,

ted