mountainman

The authors were manufacturing the legitimacy of the character known as Paul by the forged letter exchange between Paul and the 1st century Roman aristocrat Seneca.

The 4th century Christians, who were the authorities, revered and circulated these letters as if they were genuine. It was a racket. The whole thing is a racket of belief.


They dont. In fact if you look at it as an objective investigator, the elegant argument of best explanation is that all these letters of Paul, claiming to be from the first century (i.e. including the Paul-Seneca wrought) are 4th century forgeries, which were circulated and revered by the 4th century christians, because they WERE their own authorities.

MrMacSon

Yes, the so called authentic epistles have been disputed by the Dutch Radicals, and by others -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors...ed.22_epistles ...

mountainman

Eagles? Ents?

In the Gnostic Acts the apostles travel hither and thither using "bright clouds".

mountainman

Do you prefer Jack? Is it a valid question to ask the author of a fictional character why he/she preferred to use the name of Paul and not Jack? Why did Douglas Adams choose the deep and meaningful answer to be 42 and not 52? It follows that the question why the the forger picked the name of Paul to write under, is essentially a secondary and not a primary concern. The primary concern is that these so-called authorite letters of the so-called church, are all most likely piously forged.

MrMacSon

It is hard to tell, but it could have been for quite a while, with many versions of many stories being told for many generations, and told variably in different communities or regions.

And being eventually suppressed or destroyed after christianity began to be established, or suppressed or destroyed by alternate belief systems or variations of them.

Duvduv

If it can be argued that in fact such epistles merge parts referring to the Christ with other parts that are just generic monotheistic sermonizing, then by definition it affects the traditional mythist theory that "Paul" believed in a mythical celestial Christ BECAUSE if there was no Paul then there was no mythist Paul at all and no mythism in the epistles.

In which case it *could be argued* that the epistle combo was produced by evolving orthodox persons who simply wanted to insert points about the Christ to give legitimacy and antiquity to their beliefs. And this would be especially true if ALL THE EPISTLES were produced and publicized as a SET of letters rather than individual letters sent off to individual communities at different times.

Of course to argue that it all could have happened from scratch by incorporating all the NT elements into the set of letters would ignore the fact of their dissemination and wide acceptance at a time before the gospel teachings and stories emerged and before a central hierarchy emerged that wanted to unify all the strands under its authority as smoothly as possible based on texts that even some of the "heretics" accepted, such as Arians and Nestorians.

renassault

With this logic (since you don't present any evidence that they were developed as a set), since there is no evidence that the epistles were developed as a set, they must have been sent individually. There is in fact very little to support your theory, especially since all letters (except Ephesians) have a specific recipient, whether a church or person, and deal with entirely different topics (i.e. Philemon vs. Galatians). Thus a "set" theory, is very unlikely. Moreover, 1 Clement (written c.96) cites less than the 13 (without Hebrews) letters of Paul, which suggests that they did go out individually. Furthermore, 1 Clement, in writing to the Corinthian Church, mentions 1 Corinthians (or 2, but I'm very sure it was 1 Corinthians) as having been sent to the Corinthian Church by Paul. And also, Colossians 4:16 attests to individual letter circulation. Marcion's canon only had 10 of Paul's letters, which is used by many to suggest the Pastorals are 110+.

My questions:

1. To what contradictions are you referring? (Differences of style are not contradictions in the sense it seems you're talking about)
2. Where do you find evidence of cut and paste with interpolations to support this theory as opposed to the consensus, which as far as I understand knows enough Greek to see interpolations if they existed on the scale you are suggesting?

How can you expect a presentation of the individual letters when records of the first century are not the same as those of the 21st? Do you honestly think that someone existed who made records of where every letter in the Roman Empire was sent and to whom?

A theological or factual contradiction shouldn't be confused with a divergence of style. Furthermore, why would a centralized institution order that 13 letters be written by 2+ different people in 2+ different regions? So that the very contradictions you speak of would arise? Or at least the divergences of style? You should know that the ancients also suspected forgeries and some questioned parts of Homer as authentic or not based on, as far as I understand, style and such. So why would anyone order 2 or more places and people to write these, and cut and paste and interpolate? On top of that 7 of these letters have undisputably uniform style, with Colossians as well (its only divergence is the traditional material it employs), 2 Thessalonians (it was probably written a few weeks after I Thessalonians, thus seems like a forgery to some), and Ephesians (same as II Thessalonians, but with less acceptance on style). Not to mention that the Pastorals have often been acknowledged as close to Paul's style, and I don't think that supports an interpolation theory (though some have suggested genuine Pauline fragments used in the Pastorals' composition), because of the aforementioned 7-10 epistles of uniform style. In those 7-10, "contradictions" whether theological or of style aren't really there, and no evidence of cut and paste and interpolated parts, unless you want to count 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians, which only reduces the count to 7-8 epistles of more or less uniform style, as well as the fact that two works written very close to one another would be a better explanation, imo, for 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians, than a cut-paste-interpolate.

Duvduv

Can you name any of the known heresiologists/historians who discussed the epistles of Paul as the official set of epistles other than the ones we know? Do you know of any of those writers who argue with each other about this matter?
I don't think we have to really worry about 1 Clement as a text from the late 1st century either.
As far as contradictions are concerned, I see you didn't read my previous posting about this matter in the thread Pauline Epistles on Resurrection of Jesus, messages in the #80s and #90s.

aa5874

You are using IMAGINARY evidence for your claims about the Pauline letters. No Pauline letters have been dated to the 1st century by Paleography or scientific means. The anonymous letter attributed to Clement is NOT dated to the 1st century so it cannot, cannot, cannot be used to date other letters when the anonymous letter itself may be a forgery.

You MUST, MUST first provide a DATED document from the 1st century that mentioned the Pauline letters.

You cannot do such a thing so your argument is worthless.

Again, you cannot use Anonymous Undated sources as attestation for the Pauline writings.

Duvduv

Looking at the other epistles of James, Jude, Peter and John, one can see how little is directly relevant to Christianity per se, and how the redactors simply wanted to connect them to the agenda of the fleshly Jesus. In each epistle Jesus is mentioned only a couple of times after the introductory salutation.
They too look like regular monotheistic sermonizing that got linked with the emerging orthodox sect.