spamandham

Ok. Why do you find "Paul was a historical person" substantially more parsimonious than "Paul was not a historical person"?

Do not the known pseudepigrapha, which are of a form similar to the "geniune" letters (letters supposedly from Paul to churches) not cast serious doubt on the authenticity of all the letters? Is it really more parsimonious to think there was only half fraud rather than full fraud?

It is as proven as anything in ancient times can be, that the church was in the business of concocting its own history. You agreed as much already when you acknowledged the fraudulent letters that were introduced in the 2nd century.

Nothing that comes from a propaganda machine as this should reasonably be taken at face value, and *the entire New Testament* passed through the hands of these propagandists.

Radical ideas such as Simon Magus = Paul, or the idea that Paul was the outright fictional invention of Marcion, or that Paul is the evolution of "the liar" adversary of The Teacher of Righteousness...are worthy of more consideration than the preposterous idea that the church engaged in historical fraud in the late 2nd century, but they only added letters while diligently preserving essentially in tact everything that preceded that time - (or equal consideration as a minimum).

I think this is the proper conclusion as well. The question is, why? It could be because Paul was historical, but it could just as easily be because Paul was a known legendary name not based on anyone of history. Greco/Roman culture had vast quantities of gods based on no-one of history. This was a culture that made few distinctions between stories and reality.

If you were a second century church spin meister, and you were tasked with reigning in a bunch of disparate churches, wouldn't it be helpful to claim that all those churches were originally founded by the same guy, and that guy had passed authority on to you?

aa5874

Once it is admitted that Jesus of the NT did not exist at all, then the Pauline letters become extremely problematic.

A non-existent Jesus would not have been betrayed.

The writer of the Pauline letters claimed Jesus was betrayed.

Such a statement of the betrayal could have been found to be false if made within a few years of the supposed betrayal.

How did Paul manage to evangelise the Roman Empire with such a false statement about a non-existent Jesus?


A non-existent Jesus could not have been crucified and shed his blood.

"Paul" himself wrote that Jesus was crucified and shed his blood.

That statement could have been detected to be false if made within a few years of the supposed crucufixion.

How did "Paul" manage to start so many churches using a fictitious crucifixion and betrayal?

A non-existent Jesus could not have resurrected on the third day.

The writer of the Pauline letters claimed Jesus was resurrected on the third day and that over 500 people saw Jesus.

The entire statement is easily found to be fiction if made within a few years of the supposed resurrection.

How did "Paul" manage to get his letters to become SACRED scriptures almost immediately?

Why did the author of Acts of the Apostles fabricate a fictitious conversion of his close companion "Paul", at least three times, and yet his Acts was also regarded as SACRED scripture?

Once it is admitted that Jesus of the NT did not exist, then the letters of the Pauline writer and along with his post-conversion history in Acts become extremely problematic.

"Paul" is too good to be true.

It would appear that the writer Paul was long after the written gospel.

Examine Matthew 16.28


Mt 16:28 - The writer "Paul" avoids or omits this problem, an indication that gMatthew was written before the Pauline letters.

It is known Jesus would come like a thief in the night.

1Th 5:2 - "Paul" does not make the same mistake as "Jesus". "Paul" is absolutely aware of the gospels.

Clivedurdle

Yes.

Because we have evidence of that in Revelation, and the fact that I agree with Pagels about the gnostic Paul. We are looking at something with underlying and contradictory messages.

It is a cleverer fraud to use something older and tweak it. In some ways it can be thought not to be fraudulent but an improvement, another cover version like a rap version of something.

remember one of the main tasks of the library of alexandria was to rewrite Homer for the current time. Similar processes may have happened here, especially as there is no reason this stuff should not have been written in Alexandria.

spamandham

The contradictory nature is evidence of editing and rewriting over time.... i.e., all of it is practically useless in regards to determining whether or not there was a historical Jesus, a historical Paul, a historical Apollonius or a historical Romulus. If we had extremely detailed knowledge of the subculture and all the writers involved producing these things, we might be able to extract fact from fantasy, but we don't. All we have are the end works of the legend making process, and we have no idea who the writers even were or what their motives were.

It's just the ordinary process of legend/myth/propaganda we all know and love. This type of process is known to produce legendary and mythical characters bearing little or no resemblance to any historical figures.

Any reasonable theory that does not presume a historical Paul is probably better argued than the case for a historical Paul ever has been. Has any serious scholar ever started with the presumption that there was no historical Paul, and let the evidence prove otherwise?

True, but when we have letters known to be whole cloth frauds, is it really reasonable to claim that other letters attributed to the same character, bundled with the fraudulent letters by the same organization, and of the exact same nature ...are not also whole cloth frauds?

storytime

What a story!

"The only coherently presented message in any of the letters is that gentiles can include themselves among the "seed of Abraham" that will inherit the land of Canaan as long as they have faith like that which Abraham did. The Christ theology is all rag-tag and tacked onto these arguments about faithful gentiles in a way that makes no coherent case."

Sounds like you hit the point.

"How did Paul manage to evangelize the Roman Empire with such a false statement about a non-existent Jesus?"
"How did "Paul" manage to strt so many churches using a fictitious crufixion and betrayal"?

Well, he didn't do it alone. Churches already existed throughout the Empire maybe? Even when Jesus was alive and preaching? Jesus said he had many disciples other than the twelve he had chosen. The twelve were specifically chosen for a reason? Maybe to sit on thrones as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel?

If Jesus had hundreds of disciples ready to come into his kingdom, may this indicates his saying about "some standing here shall not taste death til they see the son of man coming in his kingdom with power and great glory."

"How did Paul manage to get his letters to become sacred scriptures almost immediately?"

He didn't. It took a lot of passing around of his letters over a few years, and lots of scribal additions along the way. But we have no letters from those churches addressed to Paul, do we? But did Paul consider his letters as sacred? Or.. did he consider them to be mere forms of communication to the churches? He seemed to be acting as top administrator in directives of how the gentiles should organize and run everything. Also how the gentiles(and Jews) should practice their religions. Paul would have consigned "sacred" to his existing Jewish scriptures, would he not?

"Declaring it all fiction does not explain why it was written."

We can then speculate on this as well.

Knowing his scriptures and his laws that prohibited Jews from speaking to gentiles, and "Saul" having known the "way" of the Christ followers, and persecuted them, why the sudden change in his strategy to undermine them, if it can be called that? What was "Paul" up to? Why did Paul give hope to gentiles via faith alone? Maybe the simple answer is from one of Pauls admonishions to the gentiles: "As ye have received the spiritual things from the Jews, ye should also return the favor by giving them material things". (sorry, can't remember the exact quote) Paul saw a way to coerce the Gentiles into sending goods and services to Jerusalem[Jews]. Preaching hope to the Gentiles by faith accredited to Abraham and a promise of inheritance equal with the Jews - land, heaven, approval of the Hebrew god via Jesus his son. Just what the Gentiles had been waiting for? Inheritance? This makes me ask, who were the Gentiles? And why would Gentiles if they were non-Jewish people have believed Paul's gospel?

But Jesus didn't promise the Gentiles anything, although he wasn't discouraging converts to his form of Judaism.

What a strange and deceptively arranged story. :devil1:

aa5874

Now, it would appear that the Pauline letters or parts of them were written even after Acts of the Apostles.


In Acts of the Apostles, the author gave a chronology of activities for Saul/Paul after his conversion in Damascus to Jerusalem.

It would be expected that if the author of Acts had read or was aware of the Pauline chronology that he would have placed the "Paul's" chronology in his Acts. He did not.


Acts 9.19-28 Now "Paul" will give another account of his whereabouts and his version is different to Acts of the Apostles.

"Paul" corrected the author of Acts.

He did not go to Jerusalem right away, he went to Arabia and then returned to Damascus after three years.

He did not see the all apostles as Acts claimed, he only saw Peter and James the Lord's brother.

The author of Acts appeared not to know or was not aware of "Paul's version.

Galatians 1.17-19Galatians 2.1 "Paul" details appear to be after those of Acts of the Apostles.

Paul was absolutely aware of the Jesus stories.

Doug Shaver

Obviously, either one can be stated with equal simplicity, but the parsimony issue does not concern the hypothesis itself. It concerns the number and plausibility of presuppositions required to support the hypothesis.

I don't think it's parsimonious to assume fraud in any case, if by "fraud" you mean a deliberate deception undertaken for the perpetrator's personal enrichment, material or otherwise. I think it most parsimonious to assume that early Christians were similar to modern Christians in terms of their motivations and epistemological skills, and to assume furthermore that, in those respects, Christians are no different from human beings in general.

I believe all religions are mistaken. I do not believe that any of them is, or originated as, a fraud, with a very few possible exceptions as to origin.

The notion that some of the Pauline epistles are genuine requires no assumptions at all that are uniquely applicable to Christianity. There are many confirmed instances, in secular as well as ecclesiastical history, of documents being falsely attributed to earlier writers of undisputed historicity.

Let us call the epistles that are usually regarded as authentic the "original" Pauline writings so as not to beg the historicity question. So we have original writings and pseudopigraphical writings. The pseudopigrapha are known to be forgeries because the evidence clearly shows their author could not have been the same person who wrote the originals, no matter who that person actually was. So, the original author either was who he presented himself to be -- some kind of Christian preacher/teacher/missionary/evangelist/prophet/whatever, living sometime before the First Jewish War, going by the name of Paul -- or else he was pretending to be such a person even though no such person actually existed. The latter hypothesis looks rather more complicated to me than the former, and so I think it needs to be supported by facts that are not in evidence. But if they're not in evidence, then they don't get to be called facts. They have to be called assumptions, and there goes your parsimony.

It is proven that what the church came to believe about its history was not consistent with the facts of its history. The discrepancy, in any particular instance, can be attributed to ordinary human shortcomings, or else we can presuppose some kind of conspiracy on the part of church leaders to perpetrate a massive scam. I find the former far more persuasive, not to mention consistent with a lifetime of observation of people's doxastic tendencies.

That something should not be taken at face value does not imply that an impartial investigation must conclude that it is fraudulent. Anyway, an investigation that presupposes every Christian document to be nothing but a pack of lies can hardly be considered impartial.

That might or might not be a preposterous idea, but it isn't my idea, and so your evaluation of it is irrelevant in this context.

Maybe, maybe not, but since Paul was not alleged to be a god, I fail to see the relevance.

Right. That's why we have to make the distinction ourselves, insofar as we can, using whatever evidence has survived from their time to ours.

I don't think my answer to that question would be relevant. You're assuming that a certain event happened, and you're asking what I would have done if I had been a willing participant in that event. The correct answer is obvious, but it has nothing important to do with the question of Paul's historicity.

Amaleq13

You could use the same "argument" and "evidence" to reach the opposite conclusion. That usually suggests there is something wrong with the reasoning of the argument or the nature of the evidence.

If the letters of Paul were written after Acts, it would be expected that the author read or was aware of the Acts chronology and he would have placed that chronology in his letters. He did not. :huh:

The author of Acts corrected "Paul" or was not aware of the differing chronology.

Since no actual argument for the direction of influence is given, an equally empty assertion serves the opposing claim just as well.

The author of "Paul's" version appears not to know or be aware of the author of Acts' version.

Acts' details appear to be after those of "Paul".

Since no actual argument for the direction of influence is given here, either, an equally empty assertion serves the opposing claim just as well.

And there continues to be no credible evidence or argument to support this assertion. Here, it is also a non sequitur.

spamandham

In the case of the known pseudopigrapha, it is inconsistency with the other letters that has exposed the deception, not internal inconsistency. There is no reason that one of the letters we've identified as pseudopigrapha might actually be the only original of all of them. I'm not saying this is likely, only that it is not less likely.

...but that's exactly what happened in the case of the pseudopigrapha! The idea that all the letters fall into this category is not more complex than the idea that only half do.

I have yet to see anyone explain in reasonable terms how all these letters distributed to various churches and people came to be consolidated by the end of the 2nd century, at the very time that the pseudopigrapha arrived on the scene and that numerous noncanonical works featuring Paul also show up.

Yes, it's possible that someone consolidated a few originals and then made up the others, but is that really simpler than the idea that they were all made up? The pseudopigrapha are not merely edit of originals, they are whole cloth fakes.

There are 13 books in the NT historically attributed to Paul. Of these, 6 have been proven beyond reasonable doubt as pseudopigrapha. If a grand conspiracy is required to generate 13 fake letters, then the same degree of conspiracy is required to generate 6 fake letters. Why even bother with 6 fakes if you've gone to the trouble to gather up 7 originals? It makes no sense.

Of course, no grand conspiracy is required in either case...just the simple work of propaganda and fake relics at a time in history when writing mostly served the purpose of propaganda, and fake relics were a cottage industry. The noncanonical Christian literature is filled to the brim with similar obviously faked up works from the same time period.

It's not a presupposition, it's a conclusion based on examining the evidence, both internal and external. Of course, that doesn't mean there was no historical Paul, but it does mean any decent argument is sufficient to tilt the balance.

:huh:

Paul is a hero character 2nd only to Jesus himself in the eyes of the church (including the early church).

bacht

Yes of course presuppositions are bad, but we've already had centuries of NT analysis based on the presupposition that the texts are truthful reports of real events and people. Since none of these stories can be collaborated by non-Christian evidence doesn't that leave open the possibility of deliberate deception?

I can accept that there might have been an apocalyptic preacher like Paul who set aside the Torah in order to include gentiles before the last judgment. Once the eschatological urgency was past, early catholics might have used Paul's letters to support their developing theology of a universal saviour. But these are speculations, reading between-the-lines of the authorized account, which reads like heroic mythology. As spamandham implies, the canonical texts are only slightly less fantastic than the rest of the NT apocrypha, the "best of a bad lot" if you like.