Mathetes

Yes, this is translated wrongly almost everywhere. The only thing that Clement says is that both Peter and Paul gave testimony or were witnesses of Christ, not that they were killed.

rlogan

heh. I'd say it's more like mother goose, and the letters are the "nursery rhymes".


Been having my doubts about Paul for some time. Once we've broken the back of the historical Jesus premise, the repercussions radiate outward in every direction.

If no Jesus, then there is no Mary or Joseph, no 12 disciples, no Judas, and etc. There is no brother of Jesus (James) for Paul to have met in the so-called "Jerusalem group". So would it not reasonably follow that Paul is also suspect as a literary device and not real?

We do have an emerging "Christ" movement, where at some point down the road, Pauline "authorship" is used as a pseudonym for contrived authority in more than a dozen documents. That is where the parallel to Mother Goose's nursery rhymes comes into play.

There may be a handful written by the same person: Romans 1&2, Corinthians, Galatians, and maybe Philemon, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. But from these we do not construct the Paul of legend.

Who really was this individual?

Toto

Even if there was no historical Jesus, there still was an early Christian church, and probably a preceding Jewish sect that became the Christian church.

This early church might well have included someone named James who had the title "Brother of the Lord" and someone named Cephas, and a missionary named Paul or Saul or something like that. ("Paul" translates to "Shorty" or Runt".)

The Paul depicted in Acts might as well be a fictional character, but I assume that there was someone named Paul who wrote some letters, but the letters were probably "improved" by later commentators.

TheBigKahoona

Whether or not you believe in a historical Jesus, most scholars (Jews and Christians alike http://www.onhigh.org/PaulTheApostle.htm) have always accepted the fact that Paul existed and was influential to the early church. What was made up concerning his life and death by later generations is another story, and, as I said earlier, his sanity has also been called into question.

Here is a good site that deals with the question although, as you may notice, the site is not exactly complete. However, it sets a good groundwork for the evidence of a historical Paul.

http://kevin.davnet.org/articles/paul.html#Conclusions

Roland

I always love the logic in the Christians' case here.

That would be like saying that Mark wrote his gospel on early Easter morning because it doesn't show any of Jesus' appearances later that day...or Matthew, Luke and John wrote their gospels before Jesus' ascencion 40 days later because they don't mention that pivotal event in the story!