aa5874

Well, there is no evidence that any character called Paul existed in the 1st century.

One of the main problem with the Pauline writings is that Jesus as described by the writer did not exist. No person named Jesus, the son of God, Messiah, Lord and Saviour ever resurrected from dead and ascended to heaven.

Ro 14:9 - The statement by the Pauline writer is utterly false once Jesus was only human.

Now it is hardly likely that the Pauline writer would have made a known false statement while he was alive in the 1st century to people who would have known that Jesus being human did not ever rise from the dead, it is more likely that someone pretending to be Paul wrote that Jesus rose from the dead when Paul, if he ever lived, had already died.

The Pauline writer claimed Jesus created the world, heaven and earth, and everything visible and invisible.

Colossians 1.16 Now, once Jesus was human, the Pauline writer wrote BLATANT fiction. Jesus did not create heaven and earth and everything else in the world.

Surely if the Pauline writer did ever go in front of a live audience in Judaea or Rome, and claimed a man, recently executed for blasphemy, created heaven and earth and everything visible and invisible, and not only that, but that he made heaven and earth for himself, he would have been the laughingstock of the habitable earth.

No sane person would make such outrageous false claims in front a live audience unless they expected to be immediately beaten or stoned to death.

Jesus the son of Ananus was beaten to a pulp just for saying Woe unto Jerusalem. See the writings of Josephus.

There is a historicity disconnect.

Jesus could have only been a man.

The Pauline history of the man Jesus is total fiction.

It must be that someone or some persons pretended to be Paul and wrote at some other time and backdated the letters.

Now, Justin Martyr did not write a single word about any character called Paul, his churches, his doctrine or his travels all over the Roman Empire. Justin wrote nothing about Saul as found in Acts and Justin wrote at the middle of the 2nd century.


Now, the Pauline writer would have had serious credibility and mental problems if he delivered his incredible tales to a live audience.

But who or what wanted Pauline churches in the first century? Who or what needed people to believe that there was a character called Paul who personally knew the disciples or apostles of Jesus, including Peter and the Lord's brother,(the Lord's cousin), and was in contact with Jesus in a resurrected state?

It is almost certain that it was the Roman Church.

The Pauline letters appears to have been written in part or wholly by the Roman church sometime after the writings of Justin Martyr.

The historicity disconnect appears to have occurred when the Roman Church wrote their history.The true history of Jesus believers got disconnected, even Josephus at AJ 18.3.3 and 20.9.1 and THEN Paul was inserted in the writings of other authors, including Irenaeus and Tertullian.

spamandham

How could reading Acts possibly help us understand what Paul was thinking? Surely you realize that Paul did not write Acts?

spamandham

This is a legitimate analysis, and not the only time Paul tells us his ideas were derived from (jewish) scripture. Even more damning than his consistent quotes from the old testament, is his complete lack of any quotes from the Gospels, as well as any quotes he attributes to Jesus! Why does he not quote his messiah to make his case!?

This is too odd to atribute to oversight. Paul's Jesus is not the Gospel Jesus, IMHO, this is the only reasonable resolution of the dilemma.

aa5874

Who wrote Acts? Who wrote all the Pauline letters?

I hope you realize that no-one knows when and who really wrote anything in the NT.

The author of Acts could have written the epistles to Timothy, Colossians, or the Romans or any epistle regardless of the name attributed to the epistle.

There is no guarantee that the author of any epistle or gospel has been correctly assigned.

aa5874

This could not be true.

The Pauline letters were canonised by the Church with the Gospels, they all propagate the very same Jesus who is the son of God was betrayed in the night after they had supped, was crucified, buried, rose on the third day and ascended to heaven.

1Co 11:23 -
1 Corinthians 15.3-4Col 1:16 - The Pauline Jesus presented in the NT is the Jesus of the Gospels.

show_no_mercy

But then we have to determine what kind of "messiah" 1st century Jews were looking for. Certainly the current Christian view of the "messiah" isn't what all Jews were looking for in the 1st century.

bacht

But it's all midrash isn't it, pseudo-Paul searching the scriptures for anything remotely messianic and then re-interpreting it as evidence for the syncretistic Christ? As gJohn has it Christ IS the Word; isn't this the key to all of it, a superman arising from quill scribbles?

aa5874

After all is taken into consideration, the Pauline story is just incredulous and is almost certain not to have been preached by any real person to a live audience at the time.

Once it was claimed Jesus was executed for blasphemy, any person making any supernatural claims about Jesus, within a few years of his execution, that he was the son of the God of the Jews, the creator of the world, invisible and visible, who created the world for himself would have immediately suffered the same fate as Jesus.

The Pauline writer is claiming that he personally, and to a live audience, propagated that the man Jesus was the Son of the God of the Jews, the Messiah, the Lord and Saviour and should be worshipped as a God.

The Pauline writer had no eyewitness account of this Jesus. This writer must get his information from some other source, either from the dead Jesus or from what appears to be Hebrew scripture.

The Pauline writer would promote the very blasphemy for which Jesus was executed, within a few years of the blasphemer's death, but even worse would also claim Jesus was the creator.

The Church writers would have the readers believe that Paul was highly successful in propagating the blasphemy among the Jews and Gentiles all over the Roman Empire.

The Church writers suffered from a historicity disconnect.

They failed to realise that Paul's gospel was far more repulsive than that of Jesus. In the Gospels Jesus did not even call himself the Creator, the Pauline writer called Jesus, a mere man, the Creator of heaven and earth.

It must be clear by now that no person ever promoted such absurdity within a few years of the supposed execution of Jesus in the first century.

The authors of the Pauline epistles suffered from a historicity disconnect when they tried to merge history with fiction. The Pauline writers produced a most incredulous and absurd story where the authors themselves manufactured fiction and participated in the very fiction they fabricated.

Paul heard from a dead man who was the Creator of heaven and earth. The ultimate historicity disconnect.

andrewcriddle

But if you say that Paul regarded the Psalm as Messianic, (although most of his fellow Jews did not) , because he held unusual ideas about the Messiah, then I think you have to explain why he held those unusual ideas.

It is clear that Paul saw his understanding of Christ as justified by Scripture. But in order to develop this to the point where it genuinely helps us to understand Paul one has to do one of two things.

Either show why Paul's scriptural exegesis is, from a certain starting point, genuinely convincing; or suggest what extra-scriptural reasons led Paul to his unusual way of interpreting Scripture.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

But, the Pauline writers must have known that there were no justification in calling a man a God or to worship a man as a God. It is hardly likely that a Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrew and a Pharisee would have propagated that Jesus was to be worshipped as a God with the ability to forgive sin after he was dead.

This is how the Pauline writer describes himself.Php 3:5 - There is no information from any Jewish writers of antiquity where Jews, or Pharisees, claimed a man was to be worshipped as a God with the ability of forgive sins while at the same time was the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Pauline writers had no justification in interpreting Psalms 69 as they did once it is understood that Jesus either did not exist or was only human.