mountainman

So what if Paul is a total fabrication?

spin

Conspiracy theories as explanations are almost always flops.

mountainman

The possibility that Paul is totally fabricated needs
to be faced and/or factored in at some stage. At the
moment Paul's "historicity/authenticity/integrity" lives
somewhere at the "un-examined postulate level",
next to the HJ, for many researchers.

There may not require a conspiracy theory as an
explanation for the fabricated literature of Paul.
It may all just be an honest mistake

post tenebras lux

Which would mean that they're not always flops.

Does the following treatise 'flop' in your opinion, and - if so - where?

The Falsified Paul by Hermann Detering

Johann_Kaspar

Indeed it is. But nobody(?) here seems to understand it. Hebrew literature.

Johann_Kaspar

Thanks for the link. Even the name is fake "Paulus".

mountainman

So who do you think may have fabricated Paul?
And where, and when, and for whom?

And finally what events do you think led
to Constantine publishing it (for the first time
in context with the NT and the OT) c.333 CE?

Ted Hoffman

They could have agreed on monotheism. Or on the ten commandments. That God existed and would help all the good Jews like themselves from all evil and all the other Jewish mish-mash 1st cent Jews believed. They were Jews. They had a lot in common. Plus Paul had abandoned his Pharisaic zeal. He wasnt too picky and could shake hands that had just been used in urinating without cleansing himself.
My quest is for the truth, not for your axiom. But you misunderstand. I agree with you: I regard Paul as Original.
Answered already. I can shake hands with you and Chris too. It doesnt mean I agree with you ideologically. You seem to equate hands with Christological and soteriological agreement.
Price argues that 1 Cor 15:3-11 is an interpolation. Feel free to refute the arguments.
I lean toward Doherty's arguments:
[Emphasis mine]

They were competing factions of the emerging Christ cult. It is unclear from Paul's letters what the other guys believed. All we know is that they had differences. In any event, Paul never bothers to ground his Jesus in history or geography. If we assume the "pillars" were HJ proponents, and that Paul was willing to be conciliatory towards them (and we know he was not) we could have seen some efforts to historicize his HJ with formulaic statements like "suffered under Pontius Pilate" or earrhly references like "Jesus of Nazareth".

Ben C Smith

A close and careful reading of the text.

Agreed. And he tells us why. Cephas used to eat with the gentiles, then he withdrew.

I have nothing against such a thing lying in the background. Just show me the evidence.

What if indeed. It does not bother me one whit if Cephas reneged on the original agreement and started to circumcise gentiles. However, Paul writes only that he stopped eating with them. Where is your evidence that he also started circumcising them?

The facts of the case, whatever they may be, are not going to be troublesome. What troubles me is the lack of evidence for a position. Time for you to back yours up, if it is indeed your position and not merely a whimsical what if.

The false brethren are clearly distinguished from the so-called pillars. Galatians 2.2-4. The visit to the pillars did not compel Titus to be circumcised; rather, it was the false brethren who would fain do so.

Otherwise, please present your reading of these verses.

What makes sense to you and what makes historical sense may not overlap very far.

Okay, so show me that they were.

Paul brings Titus in before the pillars, and Titus was not compelled to be circumcised. What is going on there, do you suppose?

Paul never suggests that the pillars did not compel Titus to be circumcised, that Cephas withdrew from eating with the gentiles, and that there was at least one false brother (whoever he was; 5.10) trying to circumcise the Galatians?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I did not ask what they could have agreed on. I asked what they did agree on.

I have presented evidence from 1 Corinthians 15 that Paul and the other apostles agreed on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. I have also presented evidence from Galatians that Paul and the pillars agreed on the noncircumcision of gentiles, which Paul equates with the stumbling block of the cross.

Shaking hands was my shorthand; what Paul wrote was that the pillars extended the right hand of fellowship.

Let us line up the facts of the case:

1. The cross (death of Jesus) was central to the preaching and gospel of Paul (1 Corinthians 1.17; 15.1, 3-4; Galatians 6.14; other references).
2. Paul spoke anathema to any who might have preached a different gospel or a different Jesus (Galatians 1.8-9; 2 Corinthians 11.4).
3. Paul and the pillars shared the right hand of fellowship (Galatians 2.9).

Indeed he does.

Another time, another place. Galatians is enough to prove my point, and if 1 Corinthians 15.3-11 be admitted then the argument is over, as your ensuing quote of Doherty will demonstrate.

Then you agree with me that both Paul and the Jerusalem authorities preached about the death of Christ. Here is what you quoted from Doherty (emphasis mine):

I don't think anyone was holding Paul to the exact letter of his every word. Paul could join the ranks of the widespread Christ movement (one whose apostles did not all owe their derivation or allegiance to the Jerusalem group, as 2 Corinthians 10-11 shows) and still come up with his own interpretation of the figure they worshipped which was sufficiently his own product that he could make such a claim. While he allows in 1 Corinthians 15:11 that they all "preach the same thing," this seems restricted to the Jerusalem group itself, and it has to be balanced by other declarations he makes about various rivals which allow nothing of the sort (as in 2 Corinthians 11:4 and its surrounding context, which clearly indicates that those competing messages about "different" Jesus's are a product of perceived revelation). That revelation, by the way, would have been largely based on their readings of scripture, as Paul himself tells us in Romans 1:1-2 and 16:25-6 (the latter may be pseudo-Pauline), and in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.

Unless language has lost its meaning, Doherty here affirms that Paul and the Jerusalem group both preached the same thing, as per 1 Corinthians 15.11. (We can leave aside the issue of whether or not there were groups who, unlike the Jerusalem group, were preaching completely different kinds of things. This present discussion is about Paul and the Jerusalem authorities in particular.)

What puzzles me is that you are the one who brought this Doherty quote up, and yet you seemed for a while to be denying that Paul and the Jerusalem group preached the same thing.

Ben.