Toto

I ran across this interesting response to the usual talking points about how Paul refers to Jesus as a human.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (15): What Did Paul Know?

outhouse

The NT states this.

7 are thought to be his, and not disputed.


Says who?


Its my opinion there was a Paul. Not one of the scholars or professors I learn from make and sort of claim like that.

face it Paul has historicity no matter who may claim differently at this point in time.

MrMacSon

The gospels cannot be considered reliable sources.

Some of the undisputed epistles are disputed - the Dutch Radicals maintained that the external evidence for attributing any of the letters to Paul is so weak, that it should be considered that all the letters appearing in the Marcion canon were written in Paul's name by members of the Marcionite Church and were afterwards edited and adopted by the Catholic Church.

AQ Morton saw Galatians as the benchmark for refuting Pauline authorship of most other epistles;

see A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman, Paul, the Man and the Myth (1966).

Nobody knows anything about Paul other than via the writings attributed to him

aa5874

We are dealing with evidence from antiquity not what you think.

Whether or not Paul existed the Pauline letters were not composed before c 62 CE or up to the time Saul/Paul arrived in Rome based on Acts of the Apostles.

Based on "Against Heresies" 2.22 the Pauline writings are fiction since it was claimed Jesus was crucified when he was about 50 years of age after being about 30 years of age in the 15th year of Tiberius.

The abundance of evidence from antiquity support the claim that the Pauline letters are all forgeries.

If Paul did exist and wrote nothing then his existence is of no real historical value with regards to the character called Jesus.

andrewcriddle

I think it causes serious problems for mythicism if one accepts that Paul believed that Jesus had been a human being upon earth, despite possible questions about the reliability of Paul's information.

Andrew Criddle

MrMacSon

If Paul was really what writings attributed to his character was - a person, not a character.

Whether Paul believed Jesus was a human being is independent of whether Jesus really was a human being or not.

Furthermore, the Pauline writings hardly recalls any facts about Jesus as a human being; essentially, only as a spirit.

Onias

None of this really relates to the OP. Please start another thread.
Onias

aa5874

After reading the information provided in the link Jesus was not a militant but fiction character.

In the earliest story of Jesus he was not the Prince of Peace but a Son of a God.

One cannot ask if the original Jesus was a militant and expect an answer in the affirmative when no actual evidence for such a character has ever been found.

In the NT Pilate found NO fault with Jesus.

The NT supports the claim that the Jesus character did NOT exist when it specifically described Jesus as the Son of a God, born of a Ghost and a Virgin without a human father who walked on the sea before he transfigured.

NT Jesus was originally NOTHING real and was merely believed to have existed exactly like the Myth Gods of the Jews, Greeks and Roman.

It is unheard of that a militant was a miracle worker and was not known to carry a weapon.

xaxxat

Onias

aa,
You just do not seem to understand me. Since the gospels are fictional, JC is only a militant or a pacifist or the Son of God WITHIN that fictional narrative. Likewise the fictional Pilate would find no fault in a man who claimed to be the King of the Judeans, but a real Pilate certainly would.

But in the real history of that era, there were many Judean militant zealots such as Judas the Galilean and his sons whose actions are reflected to some degree in the militant actions of the fictional JC and are also inversely correlated with JC's more predominant pacifist side.

In many ways the fictional JC gospels are a satire of the historic messiah-aspirants of the day.
Onias