Duvduv

AND WHAT ABOUT "PAUL'S" EXCLUSIVE REVELATION OF THE CHRIST THAT PRODUCED THE ONLY TRUE GOSPEL, TO THE EXCLUSION OF ANY OTHER? ISN'T THAT A FUNDAMENTAL TENET WORTH MENTIONING ELSEWHERE, OR DO ONLY THE GALATIANS IN CENTRAL TURKEY DESERVE THAT INFORMATION?!

aa5874

Again, you need to provide SUPPORTING evidence for your claims.

I have PROVIDED WRITTEN statements to show that the Pauline writings are really Similar and that the Fundamental TENETS were REPEATED in all the so-called Authentic Epistles.

The Pauline writer preached the Fundamental Tenet that Jesus was RAISED from the dead.

Romans 10:9 - 1Corinthians 15:17 - Galatians 1:1 - Ephesians 1:20 - Philipians 3:10 - Colossians 2:12 -
1Thessalonians 1:10 -
The Pauline writings are fundamentally similar.

Duvduv

Unfortunately your citations have nothing at all to do with the issue of the claim that what the writer says in Galatians is an exclusive revelation TO HIMSELF ALONE, which is wholly unique to Galatians.
Maybe others would like to join the discussion. I think aa5874 and I have gotten as far as is possible.

aa5874

You seem not to understand that Galatians is a part of the Canon of the Church and should be KNOWN, NOT only by the Galatians, but by ALL CHURCHES of the Roman Empire.

Once Galatians was part of the Canon of the Church and was PUBLICLY read and circulated then it is irrelevant whether or not all the Epistles contain the very same information.

Galatians 1:8-9 - All Churches which had a Canon with Galatians should BE AWARE that the Pauline Gospel was FINAL.

This is the PRECISE reason for Canonisation so that the ENTIRE PAULINE GOSPEL and TEACHINGS would be KNOWN by ALL the Churches where the Canon is available.

Duvduv

The only way this whole situation can make any sense to me is if it is a mistake to believe that a given epistle was sent ONLY to the recipient community. Ergo, who is to say that for example, the epistle to Galatians was sent ONLY to "Galatians" (whoever they actually were)? What if the epistle was sent to all the communities associated with the sect? In this case it is not hard to fathom that they would have eventually been widely and easily known and "collected" because instead of being sent only to one place, they were each actually sent out to 10 or 20 communities.

Alternatively, it could be argued by aa5874 (though I have great difficulty accepting this idea) that a single Roman author in the 4th century produced them and distributed them widely and together already as a fabricated COLLECTION.

In either scenario it would not be hard to understand that ideas appearing only in a single epistle (i.e. Galatians) do not appear elsewhere because the sender intended for all communities to know about all his epistles. The only question under this scenario would be why the writer would bother to address individual communities instead of all the communities of the sect if all were to be recipients of all his letters. Perhaps it was his way of enabling his criticisms or issues of his members to be accepted more easily when each community thought he was only addressing a different community but not their own.

Duvduv

Then we face the issue of the contrast between the world of the epistles in general and the world of the gospels in general, and the appearance of the gospels emerging from several sects reworking a Christ story versus the epistle Christ story, and which one(s) emerged first, or whether they emerged independent of one another but perhaps in the same period from different places.

Did the epistles emerge from Turkey and the gospels from Alexandria and Antioch from a common original source?

aa5874

You must be extremely careful when attempting to express my ideas. I did NOT state that the epistles were written by a single ROMAN writer and did NOT argue they were written in the 4th century.

At this present time, I am arguing that the so-called authentic Pauline writings are NOT fundamentally different to each other and most likely written by the same source and have produced written statements in the Pauline writings to support my position.

To avoid any further confusion I request that you express your ideas and let me express mine.

Duvduv

That's fine. I was expressing my ideas. But don't you want to explain your hypothesis of how assorted epistles got written and adopted as part of a sect seeing as how they all seem to emerge from the same overall orientation in light of what I suggested?
Why would he tell his readers in Galatia that his revelation of the Christ was unique and different than those of anyone else?

In any event it is quite likely that the Christian communities accepted the epistles simply because they had received them early when they were originally written (i.e. all epistles were distributed to more than the receiving community) and were in no position to feel like rejecting them once the gospels stories started coming around (either the canonical ones alone or anything coming around that ultimately were either canonical or non-canonical, BEFORE accepting a canon established by an emerging church hierarchy).

aa5874

I have no corroborative evidence that people of Galatia, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Philippi, Colosse and Rome ever saw, read, and heard of epistles from a character called Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee about a resurrected Jew called Jesus Christ in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

ALL the Epistles under the name of Paul appear to be chronologically and historically bogus in the same way as the Epistle to the Corinthians attributed to the fabricated Clement of Rome and "Against Marcion" is attributed to Tertullian.

You should understand that the Pauline writings were supposed to be circulated and collected by the Churches Before the Fall of the Jewish Temple. If they were not collected and circulated at that time and there were no churches then it is EXTREMELY unlikely that writings under the name of Paul would have been known and circulated AFTER the Fall of the Temple.

The Pauline writings appear to be FABRICATED with Acts of the Apostles to be placed in the CANON of the Church with sole intention to DECEIVE.

The writings of many apologetic sources are so manipulated that it is extremely difficult to determine the actual authorship and dating of the Pauline writings.

Duvduv

Yes, you make a very valid point that we have no corroborating evidence that ANYONE in any of those towns received any epistles from anybody, including someone who called himself Paulus (=The Small One). I have mistakenly taken the "fact" of their having been received for granted, and it appears most of the scholarly community does also, which would appear to be a leap of faith.

Going one step further, it is very noteworthy that unlike debates over the assorted gospels and who accepted what, the EPISTLES seem to always be presented as a group, as if they were ALWAYS known to have been these epistles of Paul and no other set. Only vaguely did one writer state that letters falsely attributed to Paul were distributed. Of course this subject is not pursued, and really means very little.

But we don't see historical sources saying that early Christians only knew of 25 epistles or of 5 epistles, and later Christians knew of others. Or that apologists wrote that "Paul" had written also 1 Alexandrians and 2 Alexandrians, Epistles to Andrew, Epistle to Sicilians, or Epistle to the Africans INSTEAD of the ones identified as part of the canon.

Plus NO ONE argued that for example some Christians only accepted the Ignatian epistles and rejected all or most of the Pauline epistles.

So one would question whether each individual epistle written by "Paul" was EVER EVEN SENT OUT AS AN INDIVIDUAL LETTER TO AN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE EXISTED. Indeed, we do not have clear corroborative evidence of flourishing communities that received the epistles at all. IF NO EPISTLES WERE LIKELY SENT OUT TO INDIVIDUAL CITIES, THAN EITHER THEY WERE SENT OUT EVERYWHERE OR MORE LIKELY SENT OUT AS A COLLECTION, OR POSSIBLY NEVER SENT OUT ANYWHERE TO THE RECIPIENT COMMUNITIES AT ALL.
These possibilities would explain why they are always represented as a group, whether in the apologists' writing or in places such as the so-called Athanasius canon.

However, it still remains to be understood how such letters representing a different Christ story than the gospels emerged from Roman sources even under the circumstances of misrepresentation or falsification. Why would the gospel stories tell tales that are never found in the epistles and vice versa? Unless the epistles found their way around the Mediterannean BEFORE the gospels, which all emerged from other sources?