Sheshbazzar

We should know it because we know the Scriptures, and know how to perform simple math.

There is enough information supplied within the Bible to determine right to the hour, -of the week, of the month, and of the year- and which year it was within the Sabbatical Cycle, when each of these NT events would have had to have happened, On schedule.

Most people will never know, because they are dumb sheep who are lazy 'Amen!' sayers, that are too damned stupid and lazy to sit down, study, and actually think and work it out for themselves, but ignorantly depend upon their church's paid liars for their misinformation.

Sheshbazzar The Hebrew




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Will Wiley

There is?

It's difficult to say except I'd argue that paul and Cephas shared ideas about him being some kind of messiah figure. Thats seems to explain there interaction best to me as displayed in authentic pauline letters
It was to counter Spins original assertion.
Would we? And how do you know it didn't? Nothing was added but that doesn't mean nothing was confirmed.
How did you arrive at expecting anything?
Is there any relationship between said miracles and the 'gospel" though?

Where did I backpedal? :huh:

Grog

Yes, as you reveal here:

Could you explain this further? What in the authentic (can we accept that even this designation is tentative?) Pauline letters indicates that Paul and Cephas shared these ideas? I'm not saying there isn't anything there. In general, I agree that Cephas and Paul would have exchanged information about Jesus Christ. I also agree that we should find information about that exchange in the Pauline letters. I am interested in what you think, your studied opinion is, of what elements in those letters can possibly be derived from this exchange.


I think I quoted Paul himself saying that it didn't add anything to his gospel. That what I referred to. Am I wrong? Paul could not be telling the truth, that is a possibility.
Do you have special knowledge of what Paul knew or shared with Peter?

What could be confirmed?

I snipped the rest only because I couldn't see my comments that you replied to. You might have ade some good points, but so far I haven't seen anything but pseudoskepticism.

aa5874

Again, you have NO originals of the Pauline writings dated to the 1st century and cannot PRESUME that Paul MUST have been a 1st century character.

All writings that mention Jesus Christ, the disciples and Paul have to be corroborated BEFORE they can be accepted as credible or historically accurate.

None of the acquaintances of the Pauline writer has ever been corroborated to have lived in the 1st century. Characters like Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Luke, Clement, Peter, James, John, Priscilla, Aquilla, Tertius, Mark and others have NO evidence at all of being from the 1st century.

It is unheard of that questionable sources are regarded as credible while simulataneously discredited as having been manipulated by the "hands of the church".

It is most remarkable that you claim to be agnostic about Jesus but accept Paul as a 1st century figure of history without a shred of corroboration.

Will Wiley

Paul goes out of his way to spend quite a bit of time with Cephas, and he treats Cephas a certain way, he rebukes him for his actions.
In other parts of Pauls letters we can find clues about Pauls attitudes to different people, those with the jesus assembly, those who oppose him , and those who are neutral. Cephas is treated as one who is in the jesus movement, as Paul tries to correct him not about one thing, and its not about jesus.
He's not telling Cephas to follow jesus, hes just correcting his hypocrisy in one area.
Somewhere in Corinthians I think, paul says something like..."what business of it of mine to judge those outseide the (jesus) assembly" Yet there he is judging Cephas. It indicates something about their relationship.

I tend to see Paul as someone who has a message about an historic turning point in history and one of breaking out of traditional religous binds, where one wouldn't need a company of priests to mediate between him (or anyone else) and "god".
Thus the life and earthly actions of jesus weren't that important to him, except his crucifixion perhaps


Well my opinion is just as an amatuer, although I did read the bible quite a few times years ago and I am interested in the religion and understanding it and even moreso helping people extract their minds from some of the bad elements of it.

Paul probably hoped for more than he got
I expect that Paul was very curious about everything, he may not have had much confirmed What he probably had confirmed was that hanging with a guru wont make you one. Each must take the journey themselves
Ok no prob

Diogenes the Cynic

I'm using "vision" as a polite way to say "hallucination." If any of them saw Jesus after the crucifixion (or even if they saw a "sublunar" Jesus) then had to have been hallucinating.
He also uses it in Gal.1:12 to deny that he "received" his gospel from any man. I think he's using the phrase in a negative, rhetorical sense in order to deny owing any fidelity to the Jerusalem church. "My teacher is JESUS."
The word you're talking about (ektroma) can also mean premature birth. In Gal, 1:15, Paul says that God "separated [aphorisas] me from my mother's womb."

It is at least hypothetically possible that Paul had some kind of visible birth defect or characteristic that he knew he had to address. For instance, maybe he was very small (he did claim to have been lowered from a wall in a basket once). Preemies also frequently has vision or hearing problems in adulthood (including temporary blindness sometimes), as well as other neurological issues such as Cerebral palsy.

Paul also alludes to God having given him a "a thorn in my flesh," which he says he repeatedly prayed for God to take away without result. All of that together could be perfectly well explained by some kind of visible feature which Paul could not avoid saying something about. Say, for instance, he was a dwarf (just for instance, I don't actually think Paul was a dwarf, it's just an illustration). It would be an elephant in the room if he didn't acknowledge it, and claiming that God had torn him from his mother's womb early to make him an apostle would be completely in keeping with his ego. He looks that way (whatever way it was) because God needed him so badly he couldn't wait another month.
Nothing in the Pauline Epistles does.
Then why isn't it in the Gospels? It is not a claim attested anywhere outside of 1 Corinthians. It sounds to me like just some bullshit Paul made up (or stretched from some now forgotten incident). No one else in the Pauline tradition - not even Luke - seems to know anything about it, so if it was tradition development, it didn't survive its infancy.
Perhaps, but he was preaching a formula, so a form is to be expected.
You're assuming that he's not talking about separate experiences, or telling different versions of the same story. In the Third Heaven story he claims to have received both apocalypses and visions (optasias, from the same root, optanomai, that he uses for the appearance to Cephas and friends). You are asserting a contradiction where one might not be necessary. You might even be right, but you haven't shown it yet. Paul's language about the appearances is so cursory and empty of information that they can't be shown to contradict anything because we don't know what they were.
I am not innately opposed to such a hypothesis, but I need to see better evidence for it. I reject the notion that we can unpack anything from what really amounts to a single word (ὤφθη - "seen") and discern whether it is or is not compatible with Paul's own "3rd heaven" bullshit.

aa5874

Why isn't the 500 in the gospels you ask??? Why is such a significant claim missing in ALL the Canonised Gospel???

The answer is rather Simply---the Pauline 500 was written AFTER the Gospels were composed.

The DATED NT manuscripts do NOT show that the Pauline writings were composed in the 1st century.

spin

That's just leaving the ballpark.

When you talk about denial you're turning it into an attack on Paul. He indicates a revelation directly from god and it shows the relationship he had with god, a relationship, as I said, inappropriate for him in the 1 Cor 15 context.

That's certainly the apologetic approach. Why not read it for Paul indicating where he thought his knowledge of Jesus came from? It fits his air of superiority much better than him in denial as so many want him.

You can check its weight of εκτρωμα in LXX Num 12:12, Job 3:16, & Ecc 6:3.

You seem to me to be trying to explain away rather than explain.

I have heard so many attempts to rationalize the thorn in his side so often, it becomes a blur.

You can explain things or contextualize them, but this notion of twelve comes out of the blue and gets no later support from the gospels. It's as though the twelve is a romaticized notion.

It's actually related to the Acts of Pilate 12, in which we find, "Pilate therefore, upon this, gave them five hundred soldiers, who also sat round the sepulchre so as to guard it, after having put seals upon the stone of the tomb."

When was there the opportunity for a group of believers to institutionalize such material before Paul wrote??

I'm working from the notion that Paul has tickets on himself which is not reflected in this leveling of his revelation to the sightings of those others.

You can't seriously want to continue the etymological case for semantic similarity. "How's your vision?" "Have you had any more visions?"

sotto voce

andrewcriddle

In Version B of the Acts of Pilate which is most unlikely to be early.

(See Acts of Pilate for the different texts.)

Andrew Criddle