outhouse

Ive seen a few scholars question it and say it is a possibility he wasnt, since we are forced to use Act's as one primary source.

I think he's a stone cold Roman myself.

he took a jewish sect and preached the message to gentiles, while traveling to roman capitols.


Following Crossan, theres 3 types of worshippers back then. Jews, gentile/romans, and god fearer's who were romans worshipped Yahweh.

I find paul fitting into this god fearer crowd more then anything.

la70119

I'm not sure if he was even a god fearer. So much of his epistles were about being the Jewish Law being revoked by Jesus on the cross, and how if anyone would keep the Law, he would come under a curse.

Then there are the telltale signs that Paul wrote after 70 CE.

Toto

Paul as Roman and links in that thread discuss Paul's citizenship

James The Least

Robert Eisenman makes the case that Paul was a Herodian -- a priestly party that supported Herod but opposed the Pharisees.

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7605-herodians

I don't think Paul was a Pharisee. His philosophy makes a lot more sense without that supposition. Scholars have built incredibly torturous arguments trying to explain why a Pharisee would have had so little knowledge of Judaism and want to do away with the Torah. The best explanation is that he wasn't ever a Pharisee.

sotto voce

Torturous, I'm sure.

Duvduv

The Saul/Paul of Acts was supposedly raised a loyal Pharisee and disciple of Rabban Gamliel and yet earned Roman citizenship.....The Paul of the epistles knows nothing of Saul, R. Gamliel or Roman citizenship.

A better question is of course whether the fellow written about in Acts and whose name appears on epistles even existed at all. Acts is one book as compared with the Islamic hadiths which number in the thousands, and there are still reasons to question the existence of Mohammed. So Paul all the moreso.

Solo

Paul as a Roman citizen is a legend created midway through Acts to likely to add the rationale to Paul's legendary end in Rome. We know from Romans that Paul intended to come to Rome on his own to preach the gospel (Rom 1:15, 15:22), so Paul in Acts suffering gross machinations from the despicable Zionists is likely just a ploy of the Lord Jesus to get himself proclaimed in Rome (Acts 23:11).

The thing to observe is when Paul is arrested, beaten and shackled in Philippi (Acts 16), on a bonkum charge that Jewish beliefs are contrary to Roman custom, he does not peep a word about his being a citizen. It is only when he and Silas are released, Paul claims his rights.

Best,
Jiri

sotto voce

That's not known. It may be that their protests were ignored, or unheard in the haste and uproar. The evidence is that, because they released the prisoners after one night, the magistrates realised they had acted under crowd pressure, even before they knew that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens.

Solo

What evidence ? There is nothing in the text that supports your little theory. They just sent the cops with an order to the jailer to release Paul and Silas. Luke is so mentally disorganized that he has the jailer's family baptized before he moves the scene into their house. He does not indicate that the men were brought back to prison evem though it is there the magistrates go (16:39-40). In 16:36 the jailer reports the news brought by the cops to Paul who then addresses the cops directly.

It seems that Luke also forgets in 21:39 that Paul is a Roman citizen (Rōmaios), when he declares him before the tribune a ciitizen of Tarsus, 'no mean city'. It is only when it comes to the beating, that the narrative seems to recall the authorial decision on Paul's status that was made earlier. and improvises a dialogue with the tribune to correct the mistaken impression he left with the official earlier. Luke does sometimes give the impression of making stuff up as he goes along.

Best,
Jiri

outhouse

thanks was reading that yesterday before the post.

its made good sense so far