maryhelena

You know what, spin - I agree with you!

Actually, the whole NT storyline is bs - I only run with that storyline when it serves to help make a point or two...

The reality is historical reality - all the rest is just blowing in the wind - and that includes the NT 'Paul'. 'Paul' the one figure salvaged from the NT wreck? Seems doubtful to me...Obviously, someone, some people were involved - but to go along with the NT storyline in any shape or form is to strain the storyline beyond what it can support. All we have in the NT is a picturesque fantasy of early christian origins.

spin

That might be so, but I've got a guy with an attitude, who is jealous about his accomplishments, who Acts has to accommodate or contain (just as the gospels have to accommodate JtB). Putting his name in inverted commas just makes me ask you what name do you want to call him? If you have a better explanation for the person exhibited in the Pauline corpus, than his having existed, please feel free to share it. As is, I can work with someone with such an attitude. A real Paul has good explanatory power and requires no added extras. One needs no wacky theories for the emergence of christianity. All other hypotheses than a Pauline start of christianity are more complicated.


spin

maryhelena

A rose by any other name is still a rose...

So, yes, run with 'Paul' by all means - a one man originator of early Jewish/Christian ideas works fine by me. After all, that's the usual method of new knowledge, ideas. Once the idea is 'born' ie articulated, others can join the party. Sure, everyone works from what has gone before but the intellectual breakthroughs are not usually from a committee.

I'd keep an open mind though re the possibility that 'Paul' (the NT originator of what became Christianity)could have had another name - or two. I doubt that sockpuppets are that modern an invention - and were probably as useful back then as they are today. Name changing is a great game - from movie stars to fiction writers - and the NT.

Happy New Year, spin - keep at those NT puzzles and who knows but 2011 might bring a breakthrough - or two....

Doug Shaver

Would you please produce a quotation wherein Earl interprets Paul in that way? As best I can recall, he never claims that Paul knew nothing about the church. What he claims is that Paul knew nothing about the man who, according to some churchmen during the second century, founded the church.

Maybe not, but the point of Earl's argument is that no matter what other sources he might have had, he never acknowledges them. That is inconsistent with any supposition that his version of Christianity was anything like the version we find in the gospels and Acts.

I don't doubt that he knew something about the church's history. What I doubt is that that history, or anything Paul knew about it, was anything like the history that was created sometime in the second century and became, in due course, the church's official story about its origins.

Nobody claims that it settles the matter. It's just one datum among all the others that has to be taken into consideration.

Our only source for the church's history is the paper trail that the church itself saw fit to preserve, and most of it, qua history, is worthless.

I don't think Earl is doing that, and I know I'm not.

aa5874

Not at all.

The hypothesis that "Paul" started christianity has ZERO supporting evidence and is IMAGINATION based.

You will have to entirely REWRITE the Pauline story to claim "Paul" started Christianity.

Even the word "Christian" is derived from the Greek word for "anointing" and predates "Paul" by hundreds of years.

The hypothesis that "Paul" was late or did not start Christianity is far less complicated and supported by the evidence.

The Pauline story is not complicated at all.

"Paul" who PERSECUTED the Jesus cult was converted after Jesus was resurrected and received his Gospel of "Salvation through the Resurrection" from the very Jesus who was raised from the dead.

Ro 10:9 - It is EXTREMELY clear that "Paul" in Acts and the Pauline writings were presented as "CORROBORATIVE" sources for the resurrection of Jesus.

1 Cor. 15.3-1 "Paul" SIMPLY did NOT start Christianity, or the Jesus cult in the NT or according to the Church writers. "Paul" simply claimed he "SAW" the resurrected Jesus and got his Gospel "Salvation through the Resurrection" from the very resurrected one.

All we need to find out is approximately when "Paul" wrote.

That is NOT a complicated task, Perhaps time consuming but surely not complicated.

"Paul" simply wrote sometime AFTER the Fall of the Temple. The evidence is there.

"Church History" 3.4.8 "Paul" was AWARE of gLuke. "PAUL" was AFTER the Fall of the Temple.

Don't complicate "PAUL" just USE the evidence.

It is as EASY as ABC.

maryhelena

Paul says he persecuted the 'church' - Earl, as far as I can make out does not go along with this. He does not have such an entity as Paul is referencing.


Which 'church' was Paul persecuting if "Christianity was born in a thousand places".?? How did 'Paul' decided which one of these thousand of christianities he was going to persecute - which one did the Jesus of his revelation direct him to? How, in all this "variety of forms and doctrines" does Paul even get a foot in the door with his very own new vision? Why not simply start up his own show?

So, that's Paul's prerogative is it not - to use or not use any knowledge he had, whichever way he sees fit.
Agreed.

Doug, don't get me wrong re Earl. I admire the work and the years of research that he has done. I simply happen to believe that he only has half the story re early christian origins. Actually, I'll rephrase that - Earl has a theory re Paul and his spiritual Christ figure. While I can fault it re the Middle Platonic related issue, I still think the theory has merit. Paul's spiritual Jesus Christ figure is relevant - and on one level has a purely spiritual context. However, the heavenly things correspond to the earthly things - and it is here that Earl's theory comes up short. It is not a theory of early christian origins at all - it is a theory of the development of christian theology - or spirituality.

It does not help re an investigation into the historical realities of early christian history. That the gospel Jesus figure is not historical is not the end but the beginning of any historical search for christian origins. While the theology or spiritual side of things might be interesting, in and of itself, it should not become a distraction to the far greater search - the historical origins of christianity.

judge

But what is it about Earls book that makes anything he says "strong" rather than weak?

GakuseiDon

Maryhelena, that's exactly it. GA Wells picks up on that as well:

Doherty interprets these passages from the Platonic premiss (sic) that things on Earth have their 'counterparts' in the heavens. Thus 'within the spirit realm' Christ could be of David's stock, etc. But, if the 'spiritual' reality was believed to correspond in some way to a material equivalent on Earth, then the existence of the latter is conceded.

A question for Doug: Doherty's theory incorporates a 'World of Myth" in the realm of flesh, correct? This is not in the true heavens (above the firmament) but somewhere below, where a spiritual being could, in some sense, 'take on flesh' in order to suffer and die.

My question is this: If we are talking Platonic counterparts here (where the lower is but a shadow of the true reality of the higher), then where exactly are the counterparts? Between the World of Myth and the upper heavens? Or between the earth and the World of Myth? Or does it bypass the World of Myth entirely, so that it is between the earth and the upper heavens.

Here is a quote by Doherty from his website to help you:

The whole point of counterpart correspondences between material and spiritual is that they exist in two different dimensions. That's basic to Platonic thinking, going right back to Plato. This is the principle being stated here. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that as far as this writer and this statement and this document is concerned, the firmament and the earth are two different regions, possessing two distinctive natures.

aa5874

Not even "Paul" or NASA can answer such a complex question about the UNKNOWN. God KNOWS.

2 Cor. 12 Myth is not REALITY.

Myth is not history.

Upper and lower heavens are myth locations.

God KNOWS.

angelo

Paul is a [perhaps the primary]witness in shaping of the christian cult. He penned his words at a time when there were NO written gospels to feed his memory or to create his images. His epistles came during the oral period of christianity, or the history of it, when there were no authoritative sources of written kerygma. The so-called Q and perhaps various portions of the passion narrative may by this time been committed to writing before Paul wrote, But there is no way to be certain of this, nor do we have any way of knowing that had access to them. The problem arises because more than half the writings attributed to him aren't authentic, but others writing using his name. For example most scholars don't think he wrote the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. They appear to have been written well after his death, for they reflect a structure in the christian church that did not exist in Paul's time. Also most agree he did not write Ephesians which most think was written by Paul's disciples in the generation after his death perhaps as an introductory piece to a collection of Paul's authentic letters which most scholars agree are no more than 6-7 at most, that began to circulate around the Mediterranean world. In fact there is even some doubt that Colossians is Pauline though it's a minority view.
But no doubt, the genuine Pauline writings are before there were any gospels floating around. And much earlier than 70CE.