Toto

I don't think he goes into the origin of the myth that in that particular book. What he does there is deconstruct the attempt to extract history from the gospels.I think this is a useful counter to the misimpression that you might have gotten from Bart Ehrman that it is easy to find a basis for a historical Jesus from the gospels.

ApostateAbe

Great, I am still glad to hear that. After I read the first few pages, I was worried that his target audience is conservative Christians and I was wasting my time.

dog-on

Well Abe, besides texts, none of which can be shown to have come from 1st century Palestine, what is this evidence, exactly?

ApostateAbe

The evidence is the texts. If you decide to stick to the maximum latest dates for the composition of those texts instead of the most probable dates, then, yeah, I guess there is no evidence for first century Christian Jews that would be satisfiable to you. And that's fine, because a plausible theory can shift probabilities in your favor. I encourage you to build a plausible timeline of the beginnings of Christianity without first-century Christian Jews. Maybe it will be more plausible than the more "obvious" theories, I don't know. I think Toto already made such a timeline. You can adapt your timeline from it. See if you fit in the earliest Christian writings to the timeline (Toto left them out).

dog-on

Simple, the translation of the Hebrew texts into the LXX allowed for many people throughtout the Roman empire to make shit up, using that text as a basis for their "revelations".

No need for Palestine, or even Jews for that matter, at all.

No Robots

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ApostateAbe

OK, yeah, I know it is easy to make a claim and leave everyone else to sort out the details, but I think a convincing theory has to supply the details. For example, when was "Paul's" epistle to the Galatians written, who wrote it, and why? The answers should supply a cogent explanation for why "Paul" gets into a very bitter dispute with "Cephas" or "Peter" over whether or not Christian Jews should be allowed into the community. You should include an explanation for why the book of Acts presents a much friendlier and more unified perspective of the same event (the Council of Jerusalem).

dog-on

Paul and Galatians come to us through Marcion. I have no problem with a historical letter writer named Paul, so his name is not an issue.

Paul's dispute with Peter is Marcion's dispute with the Orthodoxy. Second century stuff.

Acts is a mid to late second century document created by the orthodoxy for the purpose of subjugating the writings and the legend of Paul to the Orthodox position. That is why the letter writing is not mentioned in Acts and why Acts seems to contradict some of the writings in the letters themselves. This is also when the Pastoral epistles were added to the Paulines.

Ever wonder why Paul is only found as a collection and always includes letters that we know are not actually Pauline?

Anyway. Stuff like that.

dog-on

Not at all. The NT has been nothing but a curse to the Jews.

Toto

What does this have to do with a historical Jesus? Paul never met Jesus, and all this happened after the time of Jesus or after the time of the myth.

Perhaps this will help: The Spuriousness of So-called Pauline Epistles Exemplified by the Epistle to the Galatians