Toto

I would like this thread to be a collection of evidence for or about the historical Paul.

I have always assumed that Paul must have been a historical figure in the early church or in one of the Jewish movements that was a precursor to Christianity; that he must have had some importance for people to either save his letters or write them under his name; and that his depiction in the Book of Acts of the Apostles is almost all fictional, written as a historical novel for a theological purpose. I do not assume that any particular part of his letters is reliable, or that we can really tell anything about inter-Christian debates in first century Christianity from what is written there. I assume that he was not really very prominent, since he left no impression on the non-Christian writers who might have been expected to notice him (most notably Josephus.)

From Antiqua Mater by Edwin Johnson, who follows the Tubingen school and identifies Paul with Simon Magus:

Johnson goes on to state that Justin Martyr knows nothing of Paul.

There are mentions of "Paul" in letters attributed to Clement and Ignatius, but these cannot be dated with precision, and at least some letters attributed to these two are clearly forgeries.

We have clear mentions of Paul in connection with the Gnostics, and by Irenaeus and Tertullian:

Here is an essay by a seminary drop-out, putting forth the case that Paul was Simon Magus, which cites Eisenman (it has been a while since I read this essay, and I am quite unconvinced by Eisenman's attempt to identify Paul with the hotheaded Saulus mentioned in Josephus.)

Toto

For reference, Interpolations in the Pauline Letters explains why I do not think that we can rely on the letters to know a lot about Paul; although Acts is even more unreliable.

Rick Sumner

The evidence is prima facie. Thus the burden of proof rests on the dissenter to provide reasonable grounds to doubt, rather than on the affirmer to establish grounds for acceptance. This is standard practice.

Such a dissenter has the following difficulties:

1) You need to establish a *reason* to think that anyone would have had both the knowledge and the reason to mention Paul.

2) You need to explain why a predominantly anti-Semitic later church would create such a flagrantly Pharisaic Paul.

3) You need to establish that the internal evidence points to a later provenance (the Dutch radicals tried this, and largely failed).

4) If you're planning on following the Simon Magus notion, you need to establish some reasonable sources of evidence for Simon Magus. You don't just get to be skeptical about Paul and apply a different standard of evidence for Simon Magus. This is specious at best.

As for your claims in particular--that we can't tell anything of debates in the early church--you need to establish a reason to believe that the issue of circumcision would have been brought up in a church we *know* was predominantly Gentile in later times: The issue had already been resolved, they had no reason to need to resolve it again. Likewise table-fellowship.

These are issues that only make sense in the context of a predominantly Jewish church that had a Gentile mission.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Toto

If half of the stuff in Acts were true, I would expect him to make some impression on someone. If you admit that Acts is fiction, no problem.

Er - did you read the second paragraph? I am not assuming that Paul was mythical, since he does not fit a mythic type.

I do not assume that a later church invented Paul - I assume that he was Jewish, but not necessarily a Pharisee. I do not see the Paul of the epistles as "flagrantly" Pharisaic. He has some familiarity with Judaism, but is more likely to be claiming the higher status of a Pharisee. The Pharisees did not persecute heretics as Paul is portrayed as doing in Acts, or even as he describes himself as doing.

The later church was anti-Judaic but still claimed the authority of being the True Heirs of Abraham.

Could you detail how they failed?

I have no intention of following the Simon Magus notion - that's all it is, although it has some respectable adherents. I linked to the Mahatma Randy essay because it provided some different perspectives, although I think that it is wrong to rely on Eisenman.

I intended this thread to be a collection and examination of what evidence there is, not a tit for tat.

Edited to pick up the last edits:

Do you have some positive evidence as to when the issues of circumcision and table fellowship had been resolved? How and why do we know that the church in the first-early second century was prodominantly Gentile?

Rick Sumner

It depends on how you're defining fiction. Do I think Luke embellished? Absolutely.

He actually claims to be a Pharisee, quite explicitly. And he describes himself as persecuting at the order of the authorities--Sadducees.

The discussion of Paul as a Pharisee requires a far, *far*, broader investigation than can be carried out here--as I just noted on another forum, what we end up doing with such brief exchanges is headhunting--viewing Pharisaism through the light of Paul, rather than understanding Pharisaism in its own right before comparing the two.

I'd suggest E P Sanders _Paul and Palestinian Judaism_. There's really no mistaking Pharisaism for anything but Pharisaism.

They didn't establish secure evidence for such a provenance. They attempted to highlight areas that seemed to respond to gnosticism, while ignoring areas that are seemingly proto-gnostic, for but one example.

I'd thought this a continuation of our discussion elsewhere. Apologies if I was mistaken.

Of course not. It's the argument from silence you're so fond of in your acclaiming of Doherty. Nobody mentions it, thus there's no reason to presume it was an issue.

Are you aware of any reason to presume it wasn't predominantly Gentile? The authors are predominantly gentile, writing to predominantly Gentile audiences, by the mid-second century for sure.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amaleq13

Are there any known examples of the Sadducees employing a Pharisee to carry out persecutions?

JoyJuice

Or why not just the temple guards rounding up followers of the way. Why Paul?

Clivedurdle

The way that can be followed is not the way!