Loomis

How do you know that the author of "gurugeorge’s genuine Paul" was aware of ACTS?

Have you explained this already? Maybe I missed it.

gurugeorge

But as I've said now several times, and you've avoided answering each time - there is nothing in the Paul writings that says, directly, in and of itself, that apostleship in the Paul writings means the same as apostleship in Acts.

(To give you an example of something that would have that clear logic, suppose Paul said something like "Cephas told me that Jesus had said to him .... ". Then you would have EITHER a small bit of internal corroboration of a living human being, OR a better rationale from your point of view to say that Paul is a liar, and therefore the incoherencies must put him later.)

In the Paul writings there is no suggestion that any of the people he is talking about personally knew and were disciples of a living entity.

If the meaning of apostleship in Paul is different from the meaning of apostleship in Acts (and in the gospels) then that knocks out a huge chunk of your rationale for saying the Paul writing is the writing that's telling the porky pies.

Remember, part of your rationale is that Paul must be lying because he's talking about meeting and staying with a person who was a personal disciple ("apostle" in the sense of Acts) of an entity that has no external corroboration (the Jesus Christ entity).

But IF the meaning of apostleship in Paul does NOT include the connotation that an "apostle" is someone who knew personally, and was a disciple of, an entity that has no external corroboration, that pulls the teeth out of your argument somewhat.

The meaning of apostleship in the "Paul" writings DOES NOT obviously and clearly include such a connotation.

This is actually the correct way of conceptualising the famous "silence" in Paul. What the historicist project needs is proof of euhemerism as the type of the Jesus myth - i.e. it needs evidence of a human being, so the HYPOTHESIS of euhemeristic origins for this myth can be confirmed. There's no external evidence, that's for certain - but a tolerable case could be made for there being internal evidence if the apostles mentioned in Paul were clearly, at any point in the epistles, spoken of as being disciples of some entity who was obviously alive. But that link is missing. It would also make YOUR argument more plausible - since you are taking a "hard line" wrt the lack of external evidence (which is quite alright, it's another way of going about it.)

So far as the "Paul" writings are concerned, "apostle" could very easily, clearly, obviously and on the face of it, mean someone who is simply a messenger of a new idea - specifically, a revised idea of WHAT THE MESSIAH WAS.

OR we have positively identified the fact that someone wrote Acts aware of some of the things Paul said in his epistles, and elaborated on them, adding their own "spin" - i.e. that the "apostles", the "Peter" and "James", etc., that are mentioned by "Paul" in the epistles, were personal disciples of, and personally knew, an entity that we have good reason to suspect didn't exist.

aa5874

I have NOT avoided any questions. I have presented a most comprehensive POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION of "Your genuine Paul", he is SAUL/PAUL in Acts.

"Your genuine Paul" ADMITTED he was in the BASKET in DAMASCUS by the WALL.

Acts 9:25 - 2Corinthians 11:33 - I am not interested in suppositions and speculations. I need Evidence from some source of antiquity.

I have provide the EVIDENCE that "your genuine Paul" was SAUL/PAUL.

You cannot counter EVIDENCE with "suppose Paul said".

I showed you what "your genuine Paul" said already. He admitted that it was him in the BASKET in DAMASCUS by the WALL.

"Your genuine Paul" claimed he met an apostle called Peter. I will show you what he said in Galatians 1.18-19

It must be your obligation to show, not by speculation, that when "your genuine Paul"--SAUL/PAUL used the word 'apostles" that he could not and did not refer to the apostles of the non-entity called Jesus.

And you have avoided one of the LIES of "your genuine Paul"-Saul/Paul, he said he persecuted Jesus believers, but Jesus did not exist.

This is another LIE.

Galatians 1:13 - Acts 22:4 - "Your genuine Paul"and Saul/Paul are the same LIARS.


I have POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED using EVIDENCE from sources of antiquity that "your genuine Paul" is Saul/PAUL.

It is not all necessary for the Pauline writings and Acts to be true in order to IDENTIFY the characters. Both fiction and non-fiction books may contain characters that can be identified within the story line.

In the NT Canon, Peter was called an apostle of Jesus and you cannot demonstrate that Peter, one of the apostles in Galatians 1.18-19 is not the same or could not be the same character as Peter in Acts or the NT Canon.

"Your genuine Paul" was one them LIARS, he was not mad at all.

gurugeorge

No, it is your obligation to show that the meaning is the same, in order to demonstrate your point. You can't just take it for granted.

I can raise doubt. Here is the doubt: in the "Acts" writing, the Peter CHARACTER (whether real or fictional) is clearly the DISCIPLE of a supposedly-historical Jesus Christ entity (who has no external attestation).

But in the "Paul" writing, there is NO SIGN that the Peter CHARACTER (whether real or fictional) is the DISCIPLE of a supposedly-historical Jesus Christ entity (who has no external attestation).

You can't cling to the label "NT Canon" and simply take it for granted that it really is of a piece.

aa5874

Complete utter rubbish.

The NT Canon has established that Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, had an apostle called Peter in gMatthew, gMark, gLuke, gJohn, Acts of the Apostles, Galatians, 1 and 2 Peter.

That is more than sufficient to established that wherever the name Peter is found refers to the apostle Peter unless the author makes a distinction.

Your argument is worthless. You cannot raise any doubt and if you attempt to raise doubt I will ask you how did "your genuine Paul" become an apostle?

It was not established in the Gospels, Acts, the general Epistles or Revelation that "your genuine PAUL" was an apostle.

Saul/Paul was not called an apostle in Acts.

Saul/Paul was "your genuine Paul".

"Your genuine Paul" was not called an apostle in Acts.

"Your genuine Paul" made himself an apostle or just simply lied about it.

Now, in Galatians 1.18-19, the Pauline writer did not attempt to deal with the meaning of "apostle or apostles". The Pauline writer simply claimed he met Peter in Jerusalem, stayed with him for fifteen days, but did not see the other apostles only James the Lord's brother.

But, you cling to "your genuine Paul" found in the very NT Canon where just about half of the writings with the name "PAUL" have been deduced to have been written at different times and by different authors.

Off all the writings in the NT Canon to be taken for granted, the Pauline writings are probably the worst. It would appear that the Pauline writers were accused of LYING since in antiquity and it can be shown that they were.

And again, you have refused to address another obvious lie. "Your genuine Paul" claimed he persecuted Jesus believers and Saul/Paul persecuted Jesus believers in Acts.

Jesus did not exist before the Fall of the Temple. "Your genuine Paul" lied about his persecution.

Petergdi

I think there are a couple of salient points that need to be taken into consideration in any theory of Paul:

1) Paul engages in damage control. This is especially evident in 1 Corinthians in which he must have previously taught them something which either amounted to "Ignore all rules" or something misunderstandable as that. If people understand "ignore all rules" to amount to "live like Spinoza" then it is the best system, but most people can't or won't receive it that way. (J. A. T. Robinson learned the same hard lesson, it hadn't occurred to him that so many people would misunderstand his quasi-antinomianism after he explained it so well.) If Paul were a literary creation, how can one explain the damage control?

2) Paul's letters assume knowledge of his preaching. Some people here make a big point of his near silence about the earthly life of Jesus, but even with what I regard as the absurd premise of Jesus-mythicism, the problem that he doesn't explain the the background remains. There is some background necessary to understand much of what he is writing about and it isn't supplied in the letters, but his original readership must have had that background. It is a kind of paradox that the things which are clearest for us about Paul are the things that his readers found difficult - the things that were understood by his readers, he doesn't explain fully. This is a natural situation for a real-life Paul writing letters to churches, but how could this happen with a purely literary creation?

Peter.

spamandham

Although I'm not arguing that Paul is a literary creation, it's easy enough to explain a literary creation taking on the role of damage control. All that would be required would be that *someone* gaffed, and needed a literary creation to fix it.

There is not a lot of background context provided regarding social norms of the 1800s within the Tom Sawyer series either, but we know for a fact Tom is a literary creation. It's ordinary for writers to skip over that which is well known regardless of genre.

In the case of Paul, this implies either that we do not have all the letters that provide a literary context (quite possible), or the context found in the letters mirrored the reality of the writer. Neither of these possibilities is even slightly implausible.

Petergdi

It isn't "Paul" fixing someone else's mess, it is Paul fixing Paul's mess. If the mess were created by another letter, we don't have it, and at any rate it involves sequential interaction with someone believed to be Paul.

Right. It has to be well known to the audience. If the background is literary, then is it a synoptic type gospel or what? There has got to be something, either preaching or a text.

Missing letters might be a viable solution. Was it distributed all in one go, and we only got part 2 for some reason? Or is there a sequence of letters with interaction between the readers and the writer? If it is a sequence with interaction, how would that work with a literary creation?

What does "context found in the letters mirrored the reality of the writer" mean? The context has to be shared between the writer and reader or there won't be communication. It isn't the general milieu of the period as it is with Mark Twain.

Something like the book of Revelation is comprehensible with the combination of a tradition of Jewish apocalyptic literature, knowledge of the Gospel, and some awareness of Roman politics. There is excellent reason to believe that the original readers would have all three. People who lack that background find it mostly incomprehensible, even if they don't always realise that they find it incomprehensible. But for Paul's letters there isn't something with a long prior existence which a large number of people knew about comparable to the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic to provide the context.

Peter.

gurugeorge

No it isn't. You have no idea who wrote these things, or in what sequence, and whether the entities spoken of were conceived in the same way by the people who wrote them. The Canon is a compilation of writings from various sources, not the work of one hand, and it is already a firmly established fact in the field of biblical studies that the texts are filled with tendentious and contradictory theologizing, with different conceptions being touted at various points.

Therefore you have no idea whether "apostle" is meant the same way in Acts as it is in Paul, especially in light of the fact that, in Paul, this "Peter" is not spoken of as being a personal disciple of any Jesus entity we might reasonably construe as having been at one time alive.

You have an unexamined trust that the various unknown authors had in their minds the same conceptions, consistently throughout the Canon. On the basis of holding the conceptions steady, you note contradictions with fact. But in view of the fact that the work is a compilation by various hands, the conceptions are no more guaranteed to be internally consistent throughout, than they are guaranteed to be consistent with reality.

Solo

It is interesting to note that the only reference to Peter (Cephas) in the Pauline corpus that alludes to him as an 'apostle' is Gal 1:18-19, by implication that hinges on a single word, 'heteros'. (went to Jerusalem to see Cephas...but of the (other) apostles I saw none...). By contrast, 1 Cor 9:5 mentions Cephas outside of the group the "other apostles" and 1 Cor 15:5 (which may not be authentic Paul but is early nonetheless) mentions him outside the "twelve".

Jiri