MrMacSon

Of course the evolving Churches would have placed 'high esteem' on Paul's letters, especially in later generations, after the originators and original pushers of them had been long gone, when those later high esteemers did not know their original meaning or use

Yes, as support for them, probably by changing a few names to merge the stories.

MrMacSon

To say "either you have the credibility or you don't" can be a false dichotomy fallacy - some people have credibility in some ares but not others. for example, Erhman is now in that position.

"armchair uneducated scholars opinions can be worthless" - No, even "worthless" opinions help cement opposing arguments.

MrMacSon

You mean a source of genuine forgery??

aa5874

Do you not understand that Duvduv is claiming that the Pauline eistles were NOT tampered with??? All I am saying is that the same information that was NOT inserted in the Pauline writings were also NOT inserted in any other non-gospel books of the Canon.

The Pauline writings are compatible with books that were composed AFTER the Jesus stories were known.

Duvduv

I didn't say they weren't tampered with. I said that if they were, which seems very possible, the tampering was done rather selectively and did not take into consideration anything known of the gospel stories.

Whoever added in Seed of David must have forgotten all the verses of the Hebrew Bible concerning the messiah and Elijah.

Whoever added born of woman must not have known that he could insert the word MARY instead of simply woman.

Very selective additions. No hint of the Baptist, Sermon on the Mount, Bethlehem, nothing.

Even the Paul of Acts doesn't show any interest in visiting Bethlehem or Nazareth or Golgotha. Nothing. And supposedly Acts was written by the same guy who wrote all about those places in GLuke! Hell, Paul spent all that time in Arabia and not a day in Bethlehem or Nazareth or Capernaum? What kind of HJ Christian is he anyway? What was he doing in Arabia? Writing the Quran?!!

Heck maybe even all the interpolations were put into all the epistles and even Acts BEFORE any of the four gospels were even written, meaning that the gospels as we know them were actually written very late. Someone forgot to go back and interpolate into Justin's Dialogue with some direct mention of the gospels and even of the epistles. Maybe the gospels didn't even get written until the 5th century!

Grog

I was still stuck on Bilbo's correspondence with the Elves. I don't think that's mentioned anywhere in his work "There and Back Again." Even it he did claim to write such letters, how would they have been delivered? Wandering trolls?

aa5874

But, DuvDuv, your post is RECORDED.

You actually wrote that "no one must have believed that they could tamper with any writings such as the epistles".

You are all over the place. Please make up your mind.

It is most remarkable that the Pauline writer even claimed Jesus was crucified, died for OUR Sins, was buried, resurrected on the THIRD day, that he was VISITED by Jesus, a fictitious character in the Gospels and he stayed with the apostles PETER for fifteen days and met James the Lord's brother, fictitious characters found in the Gospels yet you imply that the Pauline writer did NOT KNOW of the Jesus story.

1. The resurrected Jesus a fictitious Gospel story character Visited the Pauline writer.

2. The Pauline writer STAYED FIFTEEN days with a fictitious Gospel story apostle called Peter.

3. The Pauline writer MET a fictitious Gospel story character called Apostle James.

4. The Pauline writer met Cephas, James and John, fictitious Gospel story characters.

The Pauline writer KNEW the Jesus story and either believed it was true or wanted people to Believe it was true and INVENTED fiction stories that he was visited by the resurrected Jesus and Met James, John and Cephas.

The Pauline writer has been TRAPPED in his OWN lies.

Jesus, James, John and Cephas were FICTITIOUS characters in the Jesus stories.

Duvduv

BY THE TIME anyone in the Constantinian regime wanted to reconcile the epistles with the gospels, it was believed by then that the texts were too sacred to interpolate anymore, whereas when the earlier interpolations WERE made, it was BEFORE the entirety of the gospel Jesus stories were even written or fixed.

aa5874

You are just inventing stories after stories to harmonize earlier errors. You have NO evidence for your claims and is just going on and on with speculation after speculation without end.

Duvduv

You also make inferences and speculate as well, unless you lived in the 2nd century or so and knew everything.
You don't know for a fact whether "seed of David" is an interpolation or not, and neither do I. However, we both make inferences. Had later churchmen noticed that seed of David implies an Elijah as they found in the gospels, they would have fixed it in the epistle or would have been satisfed that the gospels "complemented" Romans. By that time the texts were too sacred to tamper with.

Just for fun, look at Romans 1:9:
For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

What is the antecedent for the word "whom"? God or witness? And what does it mean "whom I serve with my spirit IN the gospel...." Again, we see a PARENTHETICAL PHRASE that breaks the flow of the sentence which sounds perfectly natural and flows well as:

For God is my witness [...] that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

And this sentence already has Christ as the intercessor of prayer which doesn't make any sense because Paul often prays to God directly without the prepositional phrase in 1:8:

First, I thank my God [through Jesus Christ] for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

Or again in chapter 2 a prepositional parenthetical phrase:

Rom 2:16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men [by Jesus Christ according to my gospel]
2:17 Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,