burning flames

since the paul letters are the oldest doccuments, to the best of our knowledge, where did he get his ideas about jesus and god from?

later

Solitary Man

While he says he received his mission from God, and he frequently cites the LXX as inspiration, he had previously considerable interaction with Christians already, and later tries to buddy up with the "leaders" of "Christianity" at the time - the Pillars, so it is more than plausible that Paul received information from both of those sources.

burning flames

so christians in the very early days thought jesus was god, messiah, son of god, etc?

burning flames

what is the LXX?

Toto

LXX = Septuagint, a Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, dating to about 300-200 BCE. It was used by Hellenistic Jews who had started to used Koine Greek as their first language. Later Christians adoped the Septuagint as part of their sacred scripture.

You can google Septuagint. This is probably the best website for your purposes:

http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/

Paul was a Jew, so he got his ideas about God from his Jewish background. If you could figure out where he got his ideas about Jesus, you could go to the head of the class. He probably used a combination of inspiration and scripture.

burning flames

thank you Toto

aa5874

Well, it appears to me that there are many "Pauls". As you might be aware, the "Pauline" epistles is considered to have more than one author by Biblical Scholars and it seems to me that the epistles were written late, or heavily interpolated at a late date.

"Paul" may have gotten his ideas about God from the Septuagint, however, there is very little informatin or history about Jesus in the epistles, which could have been inserted by an interpolator.

dog-on

Isn't it just as plausible that, while reading the LXX, our good friend "Paul" thought he had a revelation (couldn't stomach the no pork stuff), and invented the God that would allow him to eat his bacon and eggs?