aa5874

But, whether or not the Pauline writer did get revelations and visions about Jesus and was or was not aware of oral tradition, the information from the Pauline writer in Galatians 2 places himself in the PHYSICAL presence of JAMES, CEPHAS, and JOHN, three characters mentioned together several times in the Gospels.


Galatians 2:9 -
And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.

Mark 9:2 - Now, the Pauline writer in Galatians 2.9 is either making a true or a false statement.

Acts of the Apostles places Saul/Paul with Barnabas.

Acts 9.26-27
The author of gMark places James, Peter and John with Jesus at around the time when of the procurator Pilate in Judea circa 26-36 CE, but the events with respect to James, Peter, John and Jesus appear to be non-historical.

How did the Pauline writer manage to be in the presence of James, John and Cephas?

Steven Carr

This is very strange.

I was always taught that Paul was silent.

Conclusions about him were 'arguments from silence'

And now I find that the pages of Paul's letters are not blank at all. Paul does say things.

But because he says things that some people don't want to hear, we are told that he is silent.

bacht

I'm not sure what you're getting at aa. We all know that Acts is a harmonizing document, stitching together the Petrine and Pauline traditions.

The story we're told is that the "pillars" were Torah-observing Jewish Christians who were companions of the earthly Jesus. Paul seeks their blessing and supposedly reaches a compromise allowing him to evangelize gentiles without Jewish law observance. The tension is more pronounced in Galatians than in Acts.

The gospel writers can ignore Paul because their focus is before his career. The proto-Catholics wanted to keep all these strands of tradition and weave them into some kind of coherent origins myth, presumably after the star characters were all dead.

The bottom line of all this is that gentile Christians in the 2nd C saw themselves as inheritors of an originally Jewish sect. Whether any of these stories is true or not, the myth became official church history.

But this is all basic stuff, I don't know where you're going with this.

aa5874

But, surely you must KNOW that there was was NO PETRINE tradition before the Fall of the Jewish Temple.

I am not sure what you are getting at when you make claims about Petrine traditions that have no historical support.

Please STATE EXACTLY WHERE historical information of the Petrine tradition can be sought.

I don't know where you are going with this. There are no historical records of a character called Jesus who was regarded as a Messiah during the time of the procurator Pilate.

Where are you going with your presumption? The Pauline writer clearly stated that he was in the presence of James, Cephas and John who are also found together in gMark.

And why would the Gospel writers invent a resurrection where the visitors to the burial site were fearful or that the disciples stole his body when the Pauline writer had already written that he and over 500 people saw Jesus in a resurrected state?

Well, if you don't know the truth of the stories where are you going with your presumptions?

What! You admit you don't know the veracity of your stories and think that your presumptions are all BASIC STUFF.

Basically, you need to provide some historical source for your stories about Petrine and Pauline traditions before the Fall of the Temple.

If the Pauline writer had a true history then there would have been no need for Acts of the Apostles.

bacht

You know I'm not an academic and I don't have the technical knowledge to argue with you about most of these points. You also know that I don't claim to have a definitive MJ or HJ scenario in my pocket.

I was trying to understand what your argument is in this thread by reviewing the official story in the canon. I still don't know what you're trying to argue here, or how it relates to the theme of "Paul on oral tradition"

aa5874

I am not an academic.

In order to make any assessment of Paul with respect to any oral tradition it must be known when Paul lived or wrote.

There are no historical records external of the NT for Jesus, Paul or Peter before the Fall of the Jewish Temple and further Jesus, Peter, James and John appear to be non-historical characters in gMark and the Gospels.

Now, once you are dealing with an oral tradition and Paul claimed he met James, John and Cephas, the disciples of Jesus, then the veracity of the Pauline writer is questionable.

And once the veracity of the Pauline writer is questionable then the oral tradition of Paul also becomes uncertain.

The oral tradition in the 1st century may be different to the oral tradition of the 2nd, 3rd......century.

This is all basic stuff. I am not an academic.

And again, can you please show what source of antiquity external of the NT and Church writings can establish the actual time when there were Petrine and Pauline traditions.

storytime

Not really.

"This is what we speak, not taught in words of human wisdom that we have heard, but in words taught by the spirit[out of our own imagination], expressing our thoughts as truth and making judgments according to our precepts. For who has the known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? No man can know the thoughts of another. But we have mindful imagination just as He".

What they perceived in their own imagination, they believed. No mystery at all.

aa5874

Romans 15 and Galatians 2 show that the Pauline writer was aware of the Jesus story and wrote fiction.

There is no historical source for Jesus, as a God/man or his disciples, yet the Pauline writer claimed Jesus was a minister of the circumcision.



This is the Pauline writer in Romans 15.8 Mt 5:17- 18 Romans 15:20 - Galatians 2:7-8 Matthew 10:5 - From the internal information found in the canonical NT and the Church writings, the Pauline writer was aware of the Jesus story and the supposed Apostles.

But, there is no historical source external of the NT and Church writings that can place the Pauline writer in Jerusalem before the Fall of the Temple.

Solo

You might want look at Paul's conversion this way (if you want): Paul came into contact with the Jesus apocalyptic lore and opposed it because he was a Phariseic traditionalist. Then he himself had a mystical experience of manic grandeur morphing into psychotic self-annihilaton (there is no other intelligent way (I know of) to intrerpret the origin of the 'end of the world' ideation) which he interpreted as God's instruction to reveal the universal secrets of Christ to the Jerusalem Nazarene movement. He was rejected by James, but he built up gentile following to convince his saints that his revelations are God sent, and his church is a proof of it. He evidently did not succeed but after his death most of his church made common cause with a faction of the emigrating Nazarenes who accepted Paul's cross theology. A strong faction in the Pauline groups however rejected the merger and established themselves as a sepratate church after Marcion. (There was another major early group which rejected the apocalyptic interpretation of the tradition, the Thomasian proto-gnostics, but those are not of interest in the formation of the church).

Paul is not silent on the earthly Jesus: he rejects the belief in the messianic kingdom on earth (1 Cr 15:50), which apparently was what Jesus and his followers sought to bring about. He declares "taboo" on the traditions of Jesus the man, replacing those wholly by the emanations of the Spirit of the risen Lord (1 Cr 2:2, 2 Cr 5:16). Paul crucified himself to the world and lives the holy life of the resurrected Lord: he, and those who follow the model, have the 'mind of Christ'.

Jiri

aa5874

There is no historical source of antiquity that can show there was a character called James a supposed brother of a Messiah called Jesus. There are no historical records of antiquity that can show that people like Saul/Paul and James were asking Jews in Jerusalem to ask a character called Jesus the Messiah, the son of God, their Lord and Saviour, to forgive the sins of the Jews and to abandon the Laws of Moses including circumcision before the Fall of the Temple.

In the Canonical NT, Saul/Paul was placed after the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus and the day of Pentecost, all completely fictitious events. The Pauline writer placed himself after the very same fictitious resurrection and ascension of Jesus and even claimed he and over 500 people saw Jesus in a non-historical state.

It would appear that the entire canonical NT, including the Pauline writings are after the Fall of the Temple since all the information about Jesus and the disciples are non-historical or cannot be supported with any source of antiquity like Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius.

The Pauline writings were written after the Gospels and that is exactly where the Pauline writers got the name Jesus from. In the Synoptics, Jesus came to fulfill the Law, but the Pauline writer claimed the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus made the Law obsolete.

In the Synoptics, Jesus came primarily to the Jews and even asked or warned his disciple NOT to preach to the Gentiles, yet the Pauline Revelation Jesus told Paul to preach to the Gentiles.

The placing of the Pauline writings in the 1st century befote the Fall of the Temple appears to be a part of the manufactured history of the Church.