show_no_mercy

I just read some wacky stuff on wikipedia (serves me right, eh?) that Paul and Simon Magus were the same person, with Paul being Simon's "new name" after he converts to Christianity.

Thoughts?

Roger Pearse

Evidence?

boneyard bill

There's a fellow who wrote an extended article on this that was linked on these boards at one time. I bookmarked it on my old computer, but now I have a new one so I lost all my bookmarks.

His argument is that the letters of Paul were actually written by Marcion. Marcion is the first to have come up with Paul's letters. He claims the letters represented Marcion's views but that there was a real Paul and that was Simon Magus. In his view, Simon was an early and revered Christian evangelist who was also known as Paul so he attributed these letters to him to enhance their authority. Simon Magus was thought to have had leprosy, and he suggests that that was Paul's "thorn in the flesh." Simon was also known as Simon "Atomokos" which means "tiny." The word "paul" means "small." There were other arguments but I don't remember them.

It struck me that his theory was plausible, but I don't know how you could possibly prove it without some fantastic new archeological discovery.

Toto

Did Simon Magus exist?

RParvus

Here is what Robert M. Price writes in his “The Pre-Nicene New Testament” :

“Does the identification (that in Acts of the Apostles Simon serves as a substitute for Paul) mean that some Christian authors occasionally used Simon Magus as a satirical mask for Paul as Baur thought? Or does the identification do deeper? Was the historical Paul actually Simon? Hermann Detering and Stephan Hermann Huller think so.
… Detering and Huller turn Baur’s position on its head: instead of Simon being a polemical mask, Paul is the orthodox, sanitized version of Simon, a kind of ventriloquist dummy for orthodoxy once Simon and his letters had been co-opted by the emerging Catholic Church.” Pp. 33-34

Littlejohn

Greetings at all!

I do not know if it can affect anybody, however I'm now posting in the RavingAtheists forum:

http://ravingatheists.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=23

All my best wishes and greetings

Littlejohn
.

neilgodfrey

nothing whacky about the thesis at all -- it is available here *www.radikalkritik.de/FabricatedJHC.pdf

neil

(nothing to be embarrassed about re wikipedia, either -- see http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty.../2005/12/69844 )

bacht

Yes, and Simon's partner Helen may have had a parallel in Paul's Thecla. The story about Simon trying to buy a magic trick from Peter may reflect the earlier conflict between Peter and Paul, and Paul's offering of charity to the Jersualem group being interpreted as an attempt to "buy" apostolic status [Acts 8].

Simon was supposed to have been the successor to John the baptist yes?