EarlDoherty

I wish people would stop putting words into my mouth.

I'm sure the scholarly world is anxious to hear Bingo the Clown's case for "knowing" that Paul is fiction.

Earl Doherty

aa5874

The Schorlarly world is already aware that others, NOT clowns, have argued that the Pauline writings were all late and AFTER the Fall of the Temple.

One thing is virtually certain in the NT Canon, the Pauline writers and the author of Acts did NOT claim that letters to Churches under the name of Paul were written BEFORE the Fall of the Temple and the death of Nero, that is, before c 68 CE.

Even the Church claimed Paul was ALIVE after gLuke was written while claiming he was crucified under Nero.

Not even the Roman Church wrote the TRUTH about Paul.

ALL we know about Paul is FICTION and Contradictory from the NT and Apologetic sources of antiquity.

Everybody in the 21 st century, the people of the universe, are waiting for the Scholarly world to explain why Paul is NOT fiction.

outhouse

No one with any real credibility follows, that.

aa5874

Well please tell us of anyone with real credibility who ever argued that Jesus was crucified in the Sub-lunar.

You ought to know that since the 4th century the history of Paul and Jesus has been challenged, and not by a clown, but by the very Emperor of Rome.

"Against the Galileans" attributed to the Emperor Julian Who can answer the challenge of the Emperor Julian?

Who can show a non-apologetic source of antiquity that mentioned Jesus and Paul in the time of Tiberius and Claudius?

There is NO one, No Emperor, No Scholar or No clown that can answer Julian.

Jesus and Paul of the NT are all FICTION characters.

outhouse

jesus has some amount of historicity that he was put on a cross by romans. That is what all mainstream scholarships follow.

As do I


A challenge that has no merit.

we now have a wealth of information people in that time did not have.




yes i'm well aware of the small amount of people that reside on the outskirts of mainstream scholarships.

I will also agree that many scholarships are biased due to theism.


many are not.



because jesus enemies took his work and ran with it in a different direction then originally intended is one thing.

the fact his movement gained strength with jesus death is alltogether another.


Add the fact most of what we have was built from oral tradition, makes julians arguement weak.


We all know HJ is not BJ. because ancient writers wrote mythically from oral tradition doesnt mean there is no historicity to be found.

aa5874

Christians Follow their Bishops. You follow mainstream.

I follow sources, evidence from antiquity.

It is FALSE that all Scholars believe Jesus of the NT has some amount of history.


You have NOTHING at all that is credible. There is ZERO non-apologetic source that mentioned Jesus and Paul during the reign of Tiberius and Claudius.

maryhelena

Just as I'm sure the scholarly world is 'anxious' to hear a mythicist case for a Jesus fiction. So, Earl, just where does that type of talk get us?

For myself, the very idea that an ahistoricist/mythicist position can seek to uphold the scholarly consensus position re a historical 'Paul', and then have a historical 'Paul' following on from an ahistorical JC - it truly boggles the mind. An ahistoricist/mythicist has no reason whatsoever to follow the storyline re a NT 'Paul' following on the timeline to JC. No reason.

I am astounded at times to read statements from those who hold an ahistorical position on JC - statements to the effect that:

The NT 'Paul' is shaky ground on which to build an ahistoricist position on the gospel JC. Shaky ground. The ahistoricist/mythicists should not be putting all their eggs in a Pauline basket. 'Paul's' intellectual flights of theology, or philosophy, are not the 'tools' to unseat the historical JC theory. A historical theory is not going to be unseated by theology or philosophy. It needs a historical argument. Yes, that is the way I approach things - but I'm also eager to hear historical arguments from others. Pseudo-history, as in the NT story, cannot be exposed by theological or philosophical arguments. Horses for courses, Earl. However intriguing are 'Paul's' intellectual endeavors - and however fine maybe our interpretation of them - we have to step outside of purely intellectual contemplation - and face the reality on the ground. For those of us seeking early christian history, that reality is, for our NT studies, Jewish history from the time of Herod the Great.

Hard reality I'm afraid. The ahistoricist/mythicist position is not going to be taken seriously unless it can produce an historical argument. 'Paul' is of no help. That writing can be twisted each and every way. Great for contemplation of philosophical ideas - but generating nowhere near enough light to wade into the dark waters of history.

aa5874

There is absolutely NO need to invent any evidence for a Mythological Jesus. We have the Extant Codices, the Church writings, and non-apologetic sources.

The evidence of antiquity show that it was the Jesus story and NOT the Jesus character that started the Jesus cult.

The very first NON-Apologetic source to mention a crucified character who was worshiped by Christians is in the mid 2nd century by Lucian.

The history of the Jesus cult is there for everyone to see. The very first NON-APOLOGETIC writer, Celsus in "True Discourse" against the Jesus story was ALSO in the mid-late 2nd century.

There is NO need to assume the Jesus cult started at a time when there is NO evidence.

Reconstruction of the past is based om the evidence FOUND--not hypotheticals.

The Existing Evidence place the start of the Jesus cult AFTER the letter to Trajan from Pliny or in the 2nd century.

Grog

One doesn't have to accept a writer's veracity to accept the historicity of the writer. A writer can lie, but that doesn't mean he didn't exist. In fact, if he did lie, he did exist.

Historians are experts in evaluating documents, and the veracity of documents. I am not saying, following Carrier, that ONLY experts can do this, nor that experts always arrive at the correct consensus. Whether or not Paul is truthful is an entirely separate subject from when, or if, he wrote. In evaluating Paul and the veracity of his writings, an historian ought to lay out his reasoning, his methods. I do find I am often disappointed in the quality of this aspect of the body of scholarly work on Paul. It is a vast body, though, and does contain some very good work.

However, in the literature I do find scholars regularly questioning Paul's veracity. One aspect of that is to identify Paul's own interest in promulgating the Jesus story and his conflicts with other "apostles" doing the same.

If Paul is either a fiction of the later Church or simply written after 70, there are certain aspects I would expect that he or the forgers of his letters would have included in this body work. One would be a verification of the crucifixion story under Pontius Pilate, but we don't get that. We get 1 Cor 2:8 which seems to indicate that Paul believed Jesus was crucified at the hands of evil spirits, not Romans.

The literature is filled scholars lamenting the paradoxes of Paul. I do admit that most don't question when the "authentic" Paullina was written, almost all presuming a short time following the alleged crucifixion. I have to admit, the number of times I've read scholars counting outloud (well if the Crucifixion was in 29 and then Paul was converted on the road to Damascus three years later, etc., etc) is cause for discouragement in the quality of the scholarly work. However, I also think that to overturn Paul's dating you need more than an argument from silence. Are there problems with Paul? I think that is acknowledged. How did this collection of letters come to be? Again, another problem.

What date does the Pauline writer give for his writings then?

What date should they presume? Maybe they aren't "presuming," maybe they have made mistakes in their assumptions, though. What date, based on the writer's own dating, should scholars presume?

yep, it's a problem.

Why worry about the claims of the Church. Is Paul aware of gLuke? What is the evidence for that?

I don't think Eusebius is a very good source. I think he's engaged in writing fiction, not history.

What does Paul claim then? He doesn't claim he wrote after 68 either, so we can't claim he did? -OR- because he doesn't make a claim that he wrote either before 68 or after 68 (or 68), we conclude from that he didn't write? These works were written by someone, sometime, he doesn't make a claim for when he wrote. So we have to make judgments based on all the available evidence. So far, I do not have a reason to not accept a pre-68 Paul.

Grog

Can you flesh this out some? It seems to me that Pliny references a Jesus cult, so it must have already existed.