Originally Posted by skepticdude

It was not a silly question.

The Christianity of today is mostly abberations of the Pauline sort.

Original Christianity is wholly lost. Jesus nowhere taught justification by faith, nowhere taught that his death would bring about some new covenant, taught that he did NOT come to abolish the law, but to fulfil (which Christians make hash out of, since by their understanding of "fulfil", they equate it with "abolish" whether they think they are doing this or not).

The great debate in Acts 15 about what Gentiles must do to be saved is absurd: If Jesus came to save Gentiles, what's the liklihood that he'd never have given instructions on how much of the Law, if any, Gentiles had to observe to be saved? The fact that this debate occured, implies that the salvation of Gentiles was not part of Jesus' purpose, but only came to be after Christianity evolved as Paul's version gained in popularity.

Peter's Christian Jew-brothers chastise him for eating with Gentiles in Acts 11. But in Christianity, Jews eating with Gentiles is perfectly Christ-like, since Jesus himself ate with Gentiles. What gospel had Peter's concerned brothers converted under? If a false gospel, ain't it peculiar that Peter didn't simply say "why are you criticizing me, Jesus showed us by example that Jews can eat with Gentiles". Peter doesn't say that, because the gospel they all knew, at the time, did not justify Jews eating with Gentiles.

Peter and "even Barnabas" were looked down on by Paul for having acquiesced to the legalistic demands of the "men from James" and ceasing their eating with Gentiles in Galatians 2:12. The fact that Paul's right hand man in the Gentile ministry, Barnabas, could also be led by "men from James" to believe Jews and Gentiles shouldn't eat together even if both are Christians, demonstrates that the "men from James" carried a very high authority. If what the men from James requested was against what Christ taught, Barnabas at least would have detected the obvious heresy and renounced it. Nope. Earliest Christianity was Jewish, not Gentile.

Many people overlook a curious gem in Paul's rebuke of Peter. Paul noted in Galatians 2:13 that Peter (and Barnabas, acting in obvious concert) were going around compelling Gentiles to live as Jews.

You never knew that Peter was a Judaizer until just now, huh?

No apologist can explain how Barnabas could have given in so fully to the demands of men from James, if indeed those men were just false representatives of James who were more legalistic then James. Barnabas knew the gospel, so he'd have know whether those men advocated something true or false. His giving in suggests either extreme gullibility, or that James himself was legalistic to this degree. Apologists wish to choose neither option, but that's all they get. Paul lived in that honor/shame "agonistic" society, but he relates how he refused to give in to the demands of false brothers in Galatians 2:5, so this "honor/shame" rationalization doesn't explain why Barnabas refused to act like Paul and resist the legalistic demands.

Original Christianity was Jewish to the core, and Jesus preached a salvation by works and faith, while Paul directly contradicted that with his justification by faith alone stuff.

Originally Posted by bacht

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This is something I've never seen explained: we know, and certainly the early Christians were painfully aware of, the disastrous defeat in 70. Yet nowhere in the NT corpus is this event referred to directly. Mark seems to hint about it, but Acts stops before the climactic events of the later 60s.

...

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

For my money, Paul's writings are sufficient to establish that somebody by that name was among the leaders of a sect of Christian Jews in Jerusalem sometime before the middle of the first century. We'll probably never know much else about him.

Originally Posted by aa5874

The writings bearing the name Paul establishes no such thing. It is external corroboration that is needed to establish the veracity or the historical value of the epistles.

You cannot use questionable sources to confirm the very same questionable sources, bearing in mind scholars have deduced that there were more than one person who used the name Paul.

The writings with the name Paul may ONLY establish the earliest possible date of writing. That is all.

Originally Posted by bacht

Is it possible that, as a preacher and missionary, Paul never wrote anything himself, that companions either took notes from him or wrote down his ideas after his death?

If Clement is late 1st C, and his letter is genuine, it would indicate that some tradition about someone like Paul existed before Marcion's canon.

Originally Posted by Toto

Who seriously considers that Acts was written before 62? It is generally agreed that Acts was a sequel to Luke, which is clearly based on Mark's language, and that Mark could not have been written much before 70 CE.

There are a few evangelicals who claim that Acts must have been written before Paul's death, since it does not describe his death . . . but this just does not stand up to examination.

Originally Posted by penguinfan

According to Ben Witherington, Acts was written before James' martyrdom. I believe he is one of the leading New Testament scholars out there.

Originally Posted by aa5874

You cannot use questionable sources to confirm the very same questionable sources

Originally Posted by bacht

Is it possible that, as a preacher and missionary, Paul never wrote anything himself, that companions either took notes from him or wrote down his ideas after his death?

Originally Posted by Toto

Ben Witherington is a committed evangelical Christian. He bought the James ossuary hook, line, and sinker (and got a bit publisher's advance for writing about it.)

I mean, he wanted to compare the DNA from blood samples from the Shroud of Turin with DNA from bone fragments in the James ossuary. :rolling: How can such a person be taken seriously?