Juma

The swedish autor Lena Einhorn has released a book "Vad hände på vägen till Damaskus" (What happened on the road to Damascus) some week ago, supporting the hypotesis that Paulus and Jesus was/were the same person. I havent read the book, for you fluent in Swedish there is a short text about in this news article..

The book seems to indicate that this should be possible by placing the life of Jesus twenty years later than is indicated in the NT (a change that she says is made plausible by comparing timings of events Josefus in and the NT) and the assumption that he did not die at the cross.

I have no idea how convincing her arguments are since I havent read that book. What wonder: Is this a new thought? Is it plausible?

Toto

I thought I'd heard everything, but I've never heard that Jesus might be Paul (or Saul) and I don't know how placing Jesus 20 years earlier would help the case.

There are a number of scenarios that claim that Jesus did not die on the cross, or did not intend to die on the cross.

There is a favorable review in English here with a few quotes from the book.

Google turns up a blog entry on this work:

Like Mushrooms
Saying that Paul invented Jesus is not such a new idea. Saying that Paul was Jesus is unique AFAIK.

Camio

Probably not the kind of references you are looking for, but anyway: in his novel El signo del pez (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1986), German Espinosa mentionned such a theory.

Tammuz

I read about this in the newspaper. I don't believe it's very credible, seems to me to be speculation. Some weird things might be solved, but others would appear instead!

Solo

Apparently, it's the same thing in Uppsala, after a few shots of brannvin.

Jiri

Toto

From the links I found, I gather that Lena Einhorn is a filmmaker, not trained as a NT scholar. She read the texts and tried to make some sense of them, without accounting for the possibility that the texts might be deceiving. For example, there is no solid evidence that Paul ever went to Damascus to persecute Christians, except for the fastastic story in Acts.

Roger Viklund, however, has posted here and on the Jesus Mysteries list. I would be more interested in his book.

Tammuz

Yeah his book is interesting. I haven't read it myself, but I've read the author's site. There, one can read the contents found in the book, which is quite a lot. He seems to be also covering the history of the Israelites, comparing what the Bible says and what archeology says. He also answers some of the criticism which arose.

You could check out his site. Sadly, only two articles have been translated to English.

http://user.tninet.se/~npt994z/

wordy

toto, is it too late to correct your spelling. his name is Viklund.

Einhorn has a brother. Both are trained Doctors in Cancer research. Both writes books about religion. I got surprised she though Jesus and Paulus could be same person. Have not bought the book. It is already a best seller here so most likely it will come in pocket version within a year or so. Translated to english too.

Funny that soo many are interested in Jesus

But she is not alone. Richard Dawkins wrote something very surprising about Jesus. that we as atheists should rescue him from the christian fundies. Richard seems to think he actually existed as a historical person. Isn't that a surprize? To me Jesus more likely is pure myth. Or a rewrite of Barnabas or other revolutionaries. A kind of myth that could be based on stories about real persons but some hundred years after their kife and nobody who actually knew them or him to be alive to tell.

Compare with the idolization re Gandhi. He is almost treated as a semigod or similar. A lot of humanists look up to him. He lived such a long time ago. They had other views at that time. Do we really know him to be as good as they claim?

Anyway. Richard Dawkins seems to see Jesus as a real person that was a child of his time. Deluded and deeply into the views of his close friends view on life. As far as any person who had no study of greek philosphy and such. An ordinary religious preacher. There where hundreds of them those days if I get it. what Richard wanted us to do was to see Jesus as fully human. Us stripping off all the myth and claims and see him as a the falable human he was.

The purpose if I get Dawkins is to make him into a human person. To see him as you and me. That would be humanism. And it would take away all the supernatural quality ascribed to Jesus.

So even one of the most arrogant of atheists as Richard Dawkins are accused of to be seems interested in Jesus? Isn't that surprising?

Tammuz

But Dawkins isn't a historian nor a Bible scholar.

Toto

There are many humanists who like Jesus as a historical character. In fact, humanists are probably responsible for the idea that Jesus was a real person in first c. Palestine who taught peace and communism and pissed off the authorities.