Amaleq13

Does this mean you have no answer to my question about the motivation(s) of the Gospel authors?

spamandham

I have no idea obviously. Why is that relevant?

aa5874

Why would you think such a thing?

andrewcriddle

Hi Toto

Could you clarify ?

Are you suggesting that Paul's letters could be genuine letters written by a real Paul to real churches but dated say 100 CE or later, or just that they could be 2nd cwentury pseudepigraphs ?

Andrew Criddle

neilgodfrey

You are making a number of assumptions about where I am coming from that I don't think are warranted by anything I've posted here. I certainly don't see the gospels as literal history -- or any sort of history at all, nor do I take Paul's letters at face value. I've been what some, particularly those who like to impose black and white labels in debates, would call a "Jesus-Paul mythicist" for a long time. Though I think the term is silly and pointless and unhelpful in any discussions that attempt to explore the nature of the evidence and origins of Christianity.

Neil
http://vridar.wordpress.com

Toto

I have not surveyed the field, but one example immediately comes to mind. Josephus (a propagandist for the Jewish people) relates a story of Alexander the Great (a known historical figure) dropping by Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Hebrew God because of the astounding accuracy of a prediction in Daniel (yet to be written).

neilgodfrey

The Gospel of Peter sets a story in the time of Pilate and Herod, and further tells us that the name of the centurion who guarded the tomb was Petronius.

It also affirms that on the very day Herod and Pilate spoke to each other the earth shook the moment Jesus' body touched the ground.

The Proto-Gospel of James is set in the time of Herod and Augustus, specifically named, and in their time a mountain split in two to hide Elizabeth and John -- in a scene directly involving action and dialogue with Herod and his servants.

Yet the assumption underlying your question is that these stories have a prima facie right to be read as true. I suspect your concern is only to argue the historicity of the canonical gospels and to judge them by different standards?

Toto

Either of those options is a possibility. I think that Robert Price thinks of the letters as second century pseudipigraphs.

Or Paul could have been a figure in post-70 CE Christian history (he is supposed to have been the teacher of Theudas, who taught Valentinus; we don't know how old Theudas was when he taught Valentinus or when he studied under Paul, but normal lifespans would place Paul in the late first or early second century.)

Even if Paul existed, the churches might not have existed - the letters could have been just a literary form to convey Paul's philosophy to a magical number of seven churches, which might have been real or hypothetical. (Are these related to the seven churches in Revelation?)

(On Theudas, there is a pertinent thread here but it doesn't touch on the dating problems - it tries to use this as evidence for a historical Jesus.)

Valentinus is supposed to have written most of his surviving work in Alexandria, between 117 and 138 CE. If Theudas were 70 in 120 CE, he would have been born about the time Paul started his preaching and 12 when the standard timeline has Paul arrested and taken to Rome. If Theudas were 50, he would have been born after Paul's presumed death. Of course, Theudas could have been fictional, or a student of a Pauline tradition, but it is hard to make these numbers work.

Amaleq13

Well, it wasn't obvious that you didn't know the answer but I would think the relevance is rather obvious since an affirmative answer would certainly support any attempted comparison.

When one is making a comparison between things, it is generally best to establish that they are, in fact, sufficiently similar to warrant the comparison or to justify the conclusion. Common sense, really.

Amaleq13

Because your "response" completely failed to address the question. You either don't understand the question or you can't answer it or you are refusing to answer it.