gstafleu

True, but that is a difference in degree at best. Paul clearly says that he got his gospel from no man but from God and the scriptures. So, given the Joseph Smith example, what compels us to assume that Paul's revelations weren't of the same kind as those of Smith? Shouldn't we at least be agnostic on the issue?

Gerard Stafleu

Doug Shaver

The only thing compelling me to believe one way or the other is my understanding of human nature in general and religious experiences in particular.

I'm not saying that Paul actually had gotten a revelation from God. All I'm saying is that he probably really believed he had gotten a revelation. And, if he really believed it, then he was not lying. He was just mistaken.

Smith, on the other hand, produced a document and claimed to have seen the plates on which it was originally written and from which he copied it. It is not credible that there actually were any such plates, and so he was either hallucinating or lying, and I doubt that he was hallucinating.

gstafleu

So Smith made the mistake of adding too many details? I only clued in to how Smith got his revelations a little while ago. Until then I'd probably have agreed with you on Paul: he had some kind of "visions" (dreams, schizophrenia, whatever), and he probably was sincere otherwise. But in Smith we have a counter example, the only example, I think, in recent times of someone who started a (more or less) major religion by revelation. And that guy is a fraud. I don't think we can just ignore that counter example.

Say a new revealer popped up today, wouldn't one of more serious possibilities in the mind of observers be "Fraud"? Mind you, "sincere nut case" (insert friendlier description if desired) would also be a possibility. But without more research, I'd say both scenarios would have to be equally considered. What do we have for Paul to make us lean one way or the other?

Gerard Stafleu

Solo

Don't understand your objection: are you saying that Paul did not write 1 Cr 9or that he was faking it ?

Jiri

mountainman

One respondent to the article wrote:

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

DCHindley

Maybe because no one ever accused Paul of being a con man, well, except the ebionites who thought he only converted in order to learn how to pass for a Jew so he could marry the high priest's daughter. Silly ebionites (if they thought Paul could really trick the high priest, or his daughter - are we sure these folks were really jews themselves?). Silly Paul (if he also thought he could pull that trick off, which is a joke since the high priest's daughter could only marry a man born a jew, not a convert - dad would certainly ask for Paul's pedigree).

Joe, on the other hand, found magic spectacles, claimed to have found tablets of gold and brass that were not available fo inspection and which were magically snatched up to heaven, and also claimed to translate a number of egyptian heiroglyphic texts which we now have found and translated for real as something completely different.

Just can't say the same about that genius Paul.

Hi ho

Kilgour Trout

gurugeorge

It's a good question. I once read somewhere that "the best con artists are those who believe their own con" - I think it was in the context of a biography of L Ron Hubbard, who seems to have actually believed in Scientology, although that would seem to be hard to establish. I don't know if that saying is true or not, but it does kind of make sense in that, according to cognitive science, lying is energetically expensive for the brain to sustain. (Incidentally this line of thought is also at the root of some recent ingenious attempts to show how morality might have bootstrapped itself into existence.)

IOW, it's "cheaper" for a con-artist's brain to believe their own scam, it's easier to fool others if they consciously believe their own stuff. (Of course part of them knows what they are doing, but one can whip oneself up into a belief state fairly easily.)

So it might be more complex than JS just thinking up a wheeze to mulct the gullible - it might have started off like that, but he might eventually have come to believe his own scam. Same for Castanada, maybe even the same for Paul.

But the other angle to all this is to look at the quality of the writing. It seems to me that "Paul" (whoever he was) was a genuine religious genius. Some of his sayings have passed into folk wisdom, they're that good. It's tricky because there's a lot of "garbage" in Paul's letters too, but when I recently looked into a few passages from Marcion's version of Paul and compared it with extant Paul, the "garbagey" stuff seemed to be plainly a result of interpolation, and the slimmer Marcion Paul was much more robust, direct, and even more genius-like. (Actually another poster here, can't remember who he was, showed me that it's not that simple, Marcion did make some additions, and some snippages, but there was also some later orthodox slather. But the real Paul according to that guy's analysis was still a very strong, clear voice.)

I'd rank some religious founders like this (a random bunch):

JS started as a deliberate con, ended up believing his own con. Same for L Ron Hubbard.

Castaneda was a conscious con, but also a clever guy who deeply understood some classical mystical and magickal writings and recast them. Same as some of the popular New Age writers, like the Conversations with God guy, or the writer of the currently popular "The Secret". Even L Ron Hubbard is a bit like this to some extent, since Scientology has some stuff ripped off from psychoanalysis and also ancient classics, so there's nuggets of truth in there (sort of).

Paul was a religious genius who had visions that compelled him to believe what he said (they were, to him, direct empirical evidence, he spoke to his "Jesus" as you would speak to someone in a dream, and his "Jesus" spoke back). Same for Mohammed. Their productions weren't any sort of conscious attempt to do anything, they just had these experiences that compelled them to speak forth.

Maybe later they got wise to how useful their stuff could be to further their own interests (especially Mohammed).

Doug Shaver

It would be a possibility. It is a possibility in Paul's case. Establishing likelihood, though, requires evidence. I see no evidence that Paul was insincere. I do see evidence of insincerity in Smith's case, but the evidence relevant to Smith's case has no bearing on Paul's case.

Doug Shaver

No, his mistake was not how many details he provided. His mistake was in the nature of the details he provided. It is ordinary for religious people to believe that God has been talking to them. It is not ordinary for them to believe that God has provided them with something as tangible as a set of plates on which a book has been written.

Malachi151

I don't buy these "trickster" and "con artist" ideas for the origins of the Jesus religion at all.

I find it to be really a lack of imagination and a lack of understanding to come to the conclusion that if this person weren't real, then he had to have been intentionally cooked up in order to deceive people.

What then about the 30,000+ other ancient gods of the region? Was each of them also the spawn of some great conspiracy or trickery?

I don't think so.

I think that people and circumstances can simply become confused.

I don't think that Paul was a con man. I don't think that anyone consciously invented "Jesus Christ" the man.

Legends simply grow over time and space. Things get lost in translation. People make assumptions. People believe what they want to believe. And at this time and place in history, confusion, delusion, and obsession abounded. Really, if you look at the conditions in the Mediterranean at the time of the origin of this cult, its basically a perfect storm.

Cults and fanaticism and stories and legends and gullibility abounded in this place and time. There was no way to know from one town the the next really if what was going on other than by what you heard. Who could verify anything back then, and why would anyone even have tried?

Literally thousands of gods/heroes were being worshiped in various ways. "Jesus" was just one more out of thousands.

The singular importance of this figure and this story didn't exist during the time of its origin, it only seems so singular now. Back then it was nothing.

There was a cult on every corner advocating a different godman. It was a virtual pressure cooker of myths and legends and stories mixed with reality.

People believed in gods that came to earth in human form, they believed in humans born of gods, they believed in gods born of humans, they believed in animals as gods, gods that could take the form of animals, people that could raise the dead, dead that could heal the living, etc., etc.

Based on what we know from the letters of Paul, there is nothing in the letters of Paul that would have stood out as radically different from the other religions.

I don't think that Jesus was worshiped as a man during Paul's time, at least by what we can conclude from Paul's letters.

It wasn't until the first Gospel was written that "historical Jesus" came on the scene. I think that it was the Gospels that created the idea of a real live Jesus man. Its very clear that all commentary on the life of Jesus comes from the Gospels.

There isn't one single Christian apologist from the 2nd century or any other time who wrote one single thing about Jesus that didn't come from the Gospels.

Everything that is written about the life and deeds of Jesus comes from the Gospels.

I don't that the the writer of the first Gospel was trying to deceive anyone anymore than the writers of the hundreds of Greek myths were trying to deceive anyone.

The first Gospel was simply one more fictional mythical story that got believed as literally true in a time people all over believed lots of fictional stores as literally true.

To me this whole issue isn't even a mystery. Its just that this particular myth came to define our culture.

At base though, I don't see this myth as any more difficult to explain that any other Greek myth or any other Jewish myth, or Egyptian myth, or Roman myth, etc.

The only difference really has nothing to do with the origin of the myth, it only has to do with the later influence of it.