Cesc

While trying to keep the whole in mind, one must judge on a case to case basis as to what passages might be truthful or not. And in the case of Paul's story about the table fellowship I would argue that it's most likely that he's not lying it took place, but that he's probably putting his heavy spin on the course of the story, and that if we asked Peter or James they would recount a somewhat different story.

We can say that a certain "Paul" never wrote Gal. or 1 Cor 15 or anything else perhaps, and that ends this discussion about him being a witness to the resurrection-belief. We can then discuss Paul's alleged authorship another time.
Or we can say that he is the author of Gal. and 1 Cor 15 and then try to find out what that can tell us about the early resurrection-belief.
I would like to do the latter in this thread.

Perhaps not.

I see what you mean.

I don't know, what do you mean? What are yours?

Toto

You are the one claiming that Paul existed and that at least some of what is attributed to him is actually historically valid. What are your criteria for this claim?

Chili

You should consider that not resurrection itself but destiny after resurrection is the purpose of crucifixion wherein the new world is brought to life, and then place Paul as a victor as ascended to heaven/Rome instead of back to Galilee again as it was for James in Matthew and Mark to make this difference known (to get purified more with fire there).

So here now death and resurrection, historical or not, is where Matthew and Mark present us now eternal suffering, for another 40 years, and die in the promised land nonetheless looking forward even to the day that [the second death] do us part.

Opposite this is where in Luke and John the real Jesus is in heaven as Christ and the Jesus image went poof to leave the imago behind as Christ here now on earth.

Note here that resurrection appears to be a given with no question about it, while we here in our world do not even think about that.

John Kesler

Then what do you make of this passage?

Do you reject the raising of dead people because this is a priori impossible, yet feel obligated to explain what "really" happened to cause the belief that it happened? Did the curtain really tear in two? There's nothing inherently impossible about fabric tearing, so does that mean it's historical? Is what is not "a priori an impossibility" historical by default? If not, what criteria do you use to determine historicity?

Sheshbazzar

Who anywhere near the alleged crucifiction site outside of Jerusalem would have any immediate awareness of the Temple curtain tearing ...much less from which direction the tear had occurred?

How did these Roman guards keeping watch over 'Jesus' way outside of the city, witness to any dead saints appearing to many -inside- of the holy city'?
"saw the earthquake and what took place, they were (immediately?) terrified and said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!"

Something stinks to high heaven in this 'witness'.

Chili

Yes but the temple curtain makes reference to the hymen between the TOL and the TOK so that movement between these two is free, and without the temple tramp Eve in between who here now is called Magdalene by name.

Fully rent from top to bottom is crucial here so that walls seen by others are not really there.

Cesc

My "criteria" for the claim? I'm sorry, but I still don't understand exactly?
Do you mean why I think the guy named Paul existed, who apparantly have written a bunch of letters? To start off, because he seems to have written a bunch of letters.

Toto

OK - there are several possibilities. There could have been a guy named "Paul" who wrote letters. Or there could have been a guy named "Paul" but he didn't write the letters, they were later forgeries in his name, because he was so famous.

Or there could have been a guy named, say, Simon, who was famous, and someone else wrote the letters and called him "Paul" which means "small" to subvert his message.

Or the whole thing could have been fictional - someone decided to write some letters that would demonstrate certain key points of theology or church organization, and later people mistook them for real letters.

These are all possible, and you can think of more possibilities if you try. How can you pick one? We don't have any of the original letters, we don't have any letters outside of a compilation. We don't have any evidence that there were churches that received these so-called letters. (It has been suggested that the letter to the Corinthians was actually a letter to the Cerinthians,a heretical sect.)

We don't even have any indication that Paul existed outside of these letters, or church legends preserved in the Book of Acts or the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, but the amount of history contained in these is questionable.

You might decide that the best explanation of the evidence is that there was a Paul who wrote these letters, but you have to go through a lot of of intermediate steps to show this. What is your basis for rejecting the other possibilities?

Cesc

Yes! Well, not "obligated to", but "interested in". I don't care what caused the belief that the curtain was ripped in two because it's not one of the central pillars of Christianity, but the resurrection of Jesus is and that's why the resurrection-belief is interesting. I don't even know if there ever was a belief about that curtain ripping in who, I think not. It's most likely a literary invention, highly symbolic to the intended audience, conveying a meaning about the significance of the death of Jesus. Maybe the zombie army too.

Was the resurrection of Jesus then also a literary invention? No. Why? Let's never forget that Christianity as a literary philosophy did not arise until the advent of "theology" with the apologetic fathers and what not. There were practitioners first, not authors of the gospels and epistles. Christianity was at first a cult with members practicing the worship of the risen Jesus, it was not at first a literary phenomenon.

In the matter of the resurrection-belief I'm way more interested in Paul than the gospels for several reasons. In my view he's the earliest witness to Christianity that has come down to us, where the gospels reflect a later stage in the history of Christianity, coupled with the fact that they are a different genre altogether. What genre? I don't know precisely, but they are stories told by storytellers mainly for theological and religious purposes.

I never said anything remotely like that.

So let's stay with Paul and just forget the gospels for a while. This exercise requires for a minimum the premise that Paul existed of course.

Cesc

I don't have a thought-out system of criterias for my opinion, at least not at this point in time. On the face of it, I don't have a big issue in accepting what you could call the conventional explanation. That Paul travelled around and wrote some of the letters that are ascribed to him. These letters survived for various reasons being circulated and used for the highly sophisticated and eloquently expressed theology they no doubt contain. At some point after his death, as Christianity spread, he gradually gained fame, not least through his letters, and people went on to "borrow" his authority. The questions that need answering in this scenario are many indeed, but again - on the face of it - it seems to be the most evident imo, the pieces seem to fit pretty good just like that.

I know that's not satisfactory enough for you right now, and my opinion can change with new information, but in this thread I would like to discuss the subject matter on the premise that the letters in question were written by Paul sometime before 60 AD. I understand that this premise is not a certain truth.