Originally Posted by inquisitive01

We should all take lessons from these "authorities" since they - even though they are only human - must be perfect and must have never made any mistakes.

Oh yeah, thanks for attempting to use previous, yet valid arguments of mine - for the 2nd time (the first had to do with evolution) - against me. Can nothing else be done here but this? Pathetic, to say the least.

Originally Posted by Jagan

You are right that there are only so many ways that people can make up a sentence, but the analysis is not as superficial as you imagine. I mean sure, if you just pull a few sentences out, anybody could have written them. What you look for is trends and commonalities and habits. This can often be done by a computer, too. Yes you write differently in a chat room than a book report, but this isn't going to drastically affect your vocabulary, basic grammar and punctuation, average sentence length/complexity, etc unless you are just typing in blurbs, in which case we don't have much of a writing sample to work with. But tone is another thing that is taken into account, not so much in telling whether two documents were written by the same guy, but in analyzing the authenticity of one document. As noted on Paul Tobin's site, Ephesians has a very different tone than would be expected of a letter from Paul to the Ephesians, who, based on several other letters appears to have been quite familiar with that lot. Ephesians, however, reads nothing like a letter to close aquaintances; it is more like a tract that has the "letter parts" tacked on afterwards.

Obviously things like poetry would be different in certain ways, so our options for comparison are more limited but not completely exhausted. But I don't think you're quite getting it when you talk about essays. You speak as though you think higher critics say something like this: "Well, there's no salutation on Hebrews, and Paul always wrote a salutation, so it couldn't have been by Paul". While something akin to that may be one more straw on the camel's back, it certainly doesn't make or break the argument. What you seem to be neglecting is the fact that in the epistles we don't have a song here, and an essay there, and a poem; they are all personal letters. Paul would not have adopted a substantially different form when writing them (although I wouldn't say the "form" is at all key in determining authorship). What we are looking at is, again, various subtleties and nuances that we all absentmindedly employ when writing almost anything. No one is 100% consistent with himself in writig, but we do have a pretty distinct style with simply our choice of words, punctuation, and structure. You will not be able to sift through a million papers and get every last one of them correct; of course not, as some variation is possible within an author's work and similarity between others is possible. But what you have to understand is that the scholars are aware of this and take it into account. And they have been successful at it, too! It is very careful and thorough analysis, and if it weren't reliable we simply wouldn't have things like Foster's detective work. You sift through hundreds of articles and find that two of them were written by the same person, there's something to your methodology. It's not bullet proof, but it's fairly reliable. This is why certain epistles are disputed (Colossians); they contain enough of the Pauline trademarks that it could have just been on off day for him; but they aren't quite the same as the rest... so we'll never know. Others seem quite blatantly impossible to have been written by Paul due to the differences as well as the content. In the pastorals, for instance, things he says would imply a hierarchical church that did not exist in Paul's time (namely, the official positions of bishops and deacons, complete with rules of ordination). The same sort of considerations indicate late authorship for other letters like 2 Peter and Jude.

Funny you should bring that up. Paul actually contradicts Christ himself on quite a bit. So if you want to agree with Christ you should not listen to Paul. To give you an example, Jesus clearly thinks highly of the Law: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." (Mt. 5:18-19). Jesus claims earlier in the chapter that he came not to destroy the Law and Prophets, but to fulfill them (this is enigmatic, presumably he is just talking about the Prophets when he says "fulfill"). Yet, as we shall see momentarily, Paul says just the opposite.
Now apparently nobody listened to this instruction, since in Acts 10 Peter eats foods banned by the Law. Luke has God give him permission for this, meaning at the very least, Luke also thought the Law was out of style. Paul too seems to think it is rubbish, that we should "avoid Jewish fables and geneaologies" (i.e. the Old Testament. 1 Tim. 1 and a few other verses) and just concentrate on Christ. "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace..."
Pauline theology is also more centered towards the Protestant view of justification by faith, while Jesus seems to value works more than Paul. Keep in mind that scholars date the genuine Epistles as being written earlier than the Gospels, and of course Paul never met Jesus, so he had no real information about him except possibly what he was told by Peter and crew. Second hand info is bound to be hazy in your memory, with a less clear mental picture--he may not have really understood Jesus properly and simply developed his own theology based on this misunderstanding.

But anyway, I'm not necessarily saying Paul was out of line in condemning heresies. The point was that he didn't do so in Corinthians. He said that there should be no "followers of Paul" or "followers of Peter" in the church--because it's all about JC. Elsewhere he considers it blasphemy to disagree with him. That is simply 180 degrees, my friend. Incidentally, the question in 1 Timothy 3 (and mentioned in other verses) was whether the resurrection had already happened. Paul said that it hadn't yet happened.

Pseudepigrapha were common in that time. A pseudepigraphal work is one that is written and claimed to be by a famous person, presumably in order to give it more credibility. Many of the apocryphal books are like this (e.g. Enoch, or the Gospels of Peter and Thomas). Here are some such texts. As you can see, even a few are attributed to Paul, so it is not unheard of to falsely attribute things to Paul (unless of course you actually consider the apocrypha to be authentic... in which case you are really unusual). Why they do this can not be known for sure, but it clearly does happen. Like I said, it is most likely in order to give your book's ideas more credibility. I know you won't agree, but basically the whole NT is thought to be pseudepigraphal except for the Pauline epistles, and several OT books as well. I am not prepared to get into the nitty gritty of all of the books and why they are not considered authentic, but you can probably find someone able and willing around here somewhere...

I agree that this is pretty much the gist of what it's saying. And it's what we've been proposing all along, more or less. God is instrumental in the deception, not "Satan pretending to be God". He may have his valid(?) reasons, I don't know or care, the point is that God is quite party to the lying. And thus, we must consider the implications of this on the claims that he is the God of truth. That cannot be entirely, erm, true if he is an established liar/deceiver.

Amaleq, I'm sure there are indeed failures out there, but this is no more to the point than saying that people who can cheat drug tests throw the very act of drug testing into doubt. The method is sound, the practice is done by humans.

Originally Posted by inquisitive01

That was quite a long post, which seems to serve as "weight" for your arguments (a pattern of yours that I've noticed). However, why not try putting such thought into the accuracies of the Bible, rather than dwelling on whatever might not (certainly not definite) be as accurate?
I think you might find the results and level of accuracy surprising. As for Paul, it's certainly possible that some of these epistles may have been based on things he said, but may have been written by someone other than him.

Originally Posted by inquisitive01

I guess you're asking for some kind of credentials? Go figure.

Originally Posted by Jagan

I'm not sure what it is you're trying to say. What is an "accuracy" in the context of the Bible? As has been established, skeptics and critics acknowledge several genuine, authentic books. We are all just looking to get to the bottom of things and have the most accurate knowledge base possible. Whether this leads us to conclude that parts of the Bible are forgeries, mistakes, or later interpolations, we should not allow our preconceived notions to affect our judgement.

P.S. Being lengthy and thorough is better, in my opinion, than ignoring 75% of all posts and dismissing any arguments found out of hand.

Originally Posted by Spookie Here

Inquisitive01: I appreciate your opinions, but I think it is possible to believe in the teachings of Jesus and still accept and try to understand other religions. Sometimes people think they are Jesus on this earth, but that does not make it true. To avoid doing good works because Jesus may or may not approve is to deprive a lot of people of our best friendship. We should do good work because we are good people and not necessarily because we expect some reward in the hereafter. It has been my experience that those who are obsessed with serial killers are often harboring hidden anxieties and may have killed someone.