Toto

Saudi Arabia is not in the text.

NT Wright accepts the historicity of the epistles and of Acts, but you do not need to agree with him on either point. In fact, his analysis makes more sense if you see Paul's narrative as a construct based on themes from the Hebrew Scriptures. He points out:

avi

Hi Toto, happy new year's eve....

Umm, no, I don't agree with you.

1. "paul" if he really existed, would have been far more influenced by the OLD testment, not the new, especially that, orthodox christians maintain that Paul was written BEFORE the new testament (though, I find aa5874's argument far more convincing, i.e. that Paul wrote AFTER the four gospels.) But whether he wrote before or after those four tomes, he nevertheless makes few, if any, references to the text of those four books. Consequently, it is futile to argue that he followed, or obeyed, or wrote in conformity with, the text of those four volumes. Maybe he did know of the gospel's existence, and maybe he was influenced by them, in writing "arabia" in Galatians 1:17. Or, maybe not.

2. Rather than reference the citations of "Arabia" in the new testament, I believe that we should focus on what that word meant in the OLD testament. There, one finds, in numbers, I think, maybe incorrectly, that there are references to a real city (don't remember which one) in the actual Arabian peninsula, i.e. the desertic component, rather than the "Petraea" component (Jordan, Syria, Egypt), or the "Felix" aspect, corresponding to Yemen.

In my opinion, without a more specific reference than that offered by Galatians 1: 17 it is possible only to speculate about what "Paul" did or did not intend to convey by writing the word "Arabia". I would disregard any references in the new testament, in seeking to elaborate "Paul's" intentions. He was surely an old testament guy, from the get go....

Of course, if all these "epistles" are being churned out in Rome, that could explain the ambiguity. "Arabia" sounds very distant from civilization, regardless of whether it corresponds to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Yemen. No need, in such a case, to specify anything more than "Arabia". It simply means in that case, someplace far away, distant from civilization.

So, no, I don't agree that there is "one thing we know for sure"....

avi

aa5874

Actually the extant data although "a mixture of forgery, deletions, omissions, scribal errors, and unburned manuscript remnants, often "transcribed" from the original Greek", do have a VAST amount of information that can help to get a reasonable picture of the history of the Jesus cult.

And further, not all of the extant data has been corrupted plus there is a profile of the corrupted material.

Once a PROFILE for the corrupted material has been identified then a resolution can be reasonably deduced.

It is no different to identifying the clues, the profile or modus operandi of a "SERIAL" offender even before the offender is actually caught or is even known, for example, a "SERIAL" offender may say the same words to their victims.

The corrupted extant material have certain CLUES and once those CLUES are identified then it is rather reasonably simple to unravel.

The life of "Paul" may not be known but it can be reasonably deduced that "Paul" wrote NO epistles BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

There are so much writings or enough writings of the 1st century about the belief of Jews that it is highly improbable that "Paul" did persecute Jewish people who worshiped a MAN as a God or that Jews believed the crucifixion of a Jewish man had the ability to SAVE Jewish people from theirs Sins contrary to the Laws of the God of Moses.

"Paul" is HISTORICALLY improbable BEFORE the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

stephan huller

So what! By that logic we shouldn't study or consider what life must have been like for the poor in the ancient world. The poorest segments of Roman society didn't leave us documents as they were illiterate. So we should then assume that everyone in antiquity was rich, educated and literate?

There are countless examples of traditions which have not left us with any documents even though we know they existed in antiquity. The Dositheans, the Sadducees (up until the discovery at Qumran), the Manichaeans (until archaeological discoveries), the various Christian and Islamic heresies. To argue that it doesn't exist until we have original MSS from the community is unproductive and misrepresentative.

Marcionite documents have survived into the modern age. The gospel and the Apostolikon happened to have been corrupted by later Catholic editors.

rlogan

Furthermore their strategy was not to dismiss the Marcionite scriptures, but to claim the Marcionites had corrupted the "originals". Once again this follows the rule that whoever's hands these so-called "originals" first appeared in were the most likely authors.

Co-option is the strategy you use when the opposition is too heavily vested to uproot.

It is a bit odd to place so much emphasis on the lack of texts when the state and religious dictatorships spend more than a thousand years destroying anything but officially sanctioned scripture and persecuting "heretics".

We can't even find texts of the sacred official gospels that were cherished and revered instead of hunted and destroyed dating to the periods they were supposedly written. So how can we expect to find copies of heretical scriptures that were violently supressed?

Doug Shaver

Better than what?

I fail the see any strangeness in that. So far as I'm aware, the Greek euangelion carries no implications that the good news has to be in writing.

OK, but that isn't what I'm believing. I'm not denying the existence of Marcionites. Neither am I claiming that nothing the patristic writers said about them was true. The only thing I'm questioning is the assumption that everything they said about them was true.

stephan huller

It doesn't. It has to be a translation of bassora which is just the message that is announced of the coming Jubilee. That's the best explanation that I can come up with for the origin of the term. The idea that this term was restricted to being an oral announcement could certainly work but would only work if it was assumed that the 'gospel' was preached for six months and then another 'gospel' was preached fifty years later by someone else. This from my friend Professor Ruairidh Boid:

There are a number of features in the Christian religion which only make sense in a Samaritan context. Jerome and Origen for instance point out that the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet only looks like a cross in the contemporary Samaritan alphabet (Paleo-Hebrew). This idea of the tav as 'stauros' was very significant in the early liturgy.

The reason I think the written gospel makes more sense here is because it assumes that the narrative captures what it was that Jesus announced in the six months leading up to his crucifixion. In that way it became a fixed narrative and could be referenced as 'the gospel' even though the Jubilee it was announcing had already passed.

aa5874

If you examine the NT you will notice that all authors of any Epistles wrote very little or next to nothing about the "life" of Jesus and the disciples on earth except that Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

In fact, all the non-Pauline epistles have far less information about the resurrection of Jesus and the disciples than the epistle to Galatians alone.

So the late the writings tend to have very little or next to nothing about the "life" of Jesus and the Pauline writings do FOLLOW that very pattern and further "Paul" wrote about his revelations from Jesus AFTER the resurrection.

Only "Paul" in the NT claimed to have "RECEIVED" his Gospel from the resurrected Jesus all others supposedly "recieved" their gospel from Jesus BEFORE he died.

"Paul" PRETENDS to be an INDEPENDENT corroborative source for the resurrection of Jesus.

"Paul" seems to imply that the actual life of Jesus on earth is insignificant. There were people who have been claimed to have done fantastic miracles and many Jews were crucified but ONLY Jesus was raised from the dead on the THIRD DAY.

"Paul" wrote about his CONTACT with Jesus AFTER the THIRD DAY of his death. No other person in ALL of Antiquity but "Paul" in the NT GOT their Gospel from the RESURRECTED Jesus who had ALREADY ascended to heaven.

The Pauline story BEGINS where the Gospels ENDS.

stephan huller

"paul" if he really existed, would have been far more influenced by the OLD testment

That's not necessarily true. It could be argued that there was always an expectation of a better Law superior to the Torah revealed by Moses from Deut 32 and other passages. Various Jewish messianic sects have held this to be true. I would argue that the gospel claimed to be this revelation

aa5874

Jesus was described as the OFFSPRING of the Holy Ghost, the Creator of heaven and earth and was Equal to God and I don't know if there was any EXPECTATION of such a Messiah in Hebrew Scripture or by Jewish Messianic sects..