-Jay-

(My original comment was something of a random muse, by the way...)

To recast my comment, though:

Paul's writings aren't supported by any extrabiblical testimony. (For the sake of this discussion, we can lump in both the Pauline writings considered to be authentic to Paul and those considered to be later forgeries.)

If we consider that the any support for the claims of Paul vis-a-vis Jesus and any notional apostles comes from within a collection of writings that was assembled because the constituent writings supported a particular orthodoxy, then we're tail chasing - Paul's writings tend to support the Gospels/Acts, which in turn tend to support Paul's writings.

There simply aren't any undisputed extra-biblical testimonies that can be appealed to here, and if we're to take the Biblical accounts to be anything other than myth and political propaganda, we really need something external.

regards,

NinJay

Solitary Man

The Extra-biblical criterion itself is biased and unwarranted. You can't point to a body of texts and excuse them all merely because of their association. Paul prior to the Gospels and independent of Q and Thomas. He predates the Gospels, and yet provides support for some of the themes in it, the Twelve being one of them. Besides the fact, ignore the Gospels, and Paul is left alone anyway. You can't wish Paul away, he has to be dealt with. Where did the Twelve come from and what does it mean? Do you know? I don't know of any more reasonable alternative then the one I provided.

So, in other words, if I canonized Josephus, all of his characters he discusses magically disappear as he no longer can be used as an historical source? What kind of ad hoc prejudice is that? The same one that excludes all of the Bible, that's what. Canonization does not mean that the documents all of sudden lack any historicity in and of themselves. It doesn't do anything at all to a text, save preserve them.

You'll have to give me a good reason why.

Toto

Paul's letter to the Corinthians refers to "The Twelve." (Robert Price thinks this is a later interpolation, but I'll play along.) Where do you get the "distinguished" part? Do we know anything at all about the twelve? Or did you mean distinct?

Solitary Man

I did mean distinct. Etymologically there is no difference between distinguished and distinct, as both come from distinguere. Stupid English and its advanced nuances.

aa5874

Your post is just totally bizarre. How can extra-biblical information be UNWARRANTED? Just total nonsense. When will you stop making such naive statements?

Extra-biblical information is always an extremely necessary component in any analysis of biblical texts.

2-J

It's not a strawman . It's essentially what Roger was saying, also I remember Jeffrey Gibson posting on here saying something along the lines of how do we know Socrates existed, on evidence as reliable as that for Jesus. But it's a false argument, the idea that secular, purportedly ancient, texts may be fabrications or have undergone corruption is - fundamentally - irrelevant to their worth.

Solitary Man

OK, perhaps it's not an intentional strawman; perhaps you just don't know what they're saying. I also disagree with the last statement. If all of our ancient texts were in actuality medieval fabrications, they'd all lose their worth substantially. All of our ideas of how ancient history was formed would be turned on its head, and we'd have to reject them outright.

Furthermore, the classification of, say, Cicero as "secular" is very misleading. "Philosophical" texts were just as imbued with religious ideas as Christian documents were. There really isn't that much of a difference upon deep investigation.

But really, it's irrelevant altogether, since any argument for major substantive changes in the NT documents fail with respect to the evidence for it.

2-J

And that would be a huge loss because...?

The loss from the Christian POV on the other hand is, of course, immediately obvious.

And what are Roger and Jeffrey saying then, if what I posted misrepresents them so greiviously.

Clivedurdle

I don't know what has happened to this discussion. Archimedes has been tracked from several directions, including a palimpsest. We have coins, statues, an ankylethera mechanism and much much more.

We have clear evidence that xianity was not monolithic - it never was and is not now, and clear evidence of very strong attempts to enforce a part line, like the Albigensian crusade.

It is logical to treat all these lost xianities equally with the alleged mainstream one and look for the reasons that one won.

What is this orthodox centric world view about? There are other xian galaxies out there.

andrewcriddle

Leaving aside the question of how big a deal the undermining of our knowledge of the Ancient World would be, I think one has to distinguish two types of argument.

Argument 1: I doubt the basic authenticity and integrity of the NT documents because I doubt the authenticity and integrity of most of the documents purporting to come from the Ancient World.

Argument 2: I doubt the basic authenticity and integrity of the NT documents because of specific problems with this material. Problems not found in the majority of documents purporting to come from the Ancient World.

I am concerned that sometimes people are putting forward what are really forms of Argument 1 while giving the impression, (deliberately or otherwise), that they are forms of Argument 2.

Andrew Criddle