Elena

How so? Because someone wrote, I am Paul and I am writing this letter?
Do you take everything at face value?

Their legitimacy can be challenged because they appeared for the first time after the end of the second Judean uprising and were brought by Marcion. How strange. Where is the evidence that they were written in the first century?

Which authenticity? That they were written by the same author is still no evidence that Paul wrote them.

If you have only small and greatest "possibilities" or "probabilities", I am sorry, but you have nothing. Even the letters you call "authentic" [sic] could have been edited, interpolated, especially the beginnings and the ends, like the gospels.

And you have no evidence outside the bible that Paul ever existed. If one story in Acts is "unlikely to be true", why do you think that the rest is likely to be true?

I am sure you do not understand how the Paul story in Acts was forged, even where his name comes from.

ApostateAbe

I think the patterns of differences between the sets of letters indicate the authenticity of the fitting half. Like, suppose you have two sets of hundred-credit bills of a foreign currency that you know nothing about. You know that there are significant differences between the two sets, differences that indicate that one set is counterfeit for sure (the ink on one set of bills bleeds when wet), which indicates the authenticity of the other set. If evidence can be found that one set of Pauline epistles is a set of forgeries, for sure, then we expect to find evidence that the other set of epistles are forgeries, if all of them really are forgeries. If you propose that they are all forgeries, then you need evidence, because there is nothing unlikely about a man named Paul who wrote a set of letters with his name in the heading.

ApostateAbe

Basically, yes, that is the way the study of history works. If there are writings of a man who names himself in the heading, then the author is likely to have the same name as of that in the heading, unless, of course, evidence can be provided to the contrary.The setting in which Paul writes puts himself in the first century. He writes of meeting James and Peter (brother and disciple of Jesus respectively) at the council of Jerusalem, which must have been before 70 CE (the exile of the Jews from Jerusalem. Yes, but his name is in the heading, so Paul is the most likely author.In Biblical scholarship, historical scholarship, and any intellectual field, we have nothing but probabilities. Absolute certainties are things of religions. The principles applies especially to Biblical scholarship because of the scarcity of data. The greatest probabilities (the explanations that most easily fit the evidence) are what matter most, or at least that is the way it should be.I say that the conversion story is not true and half the letters of Paul are authentic. I mean a difference between "true" and "authentic." "True" means that the account matches the objective reality. "Authentic" means that the person who claimed to write it really did write it, be the substance of the account true or not.I don't believe that the Paul story in Acts was forged. The author of Luke-Acts makes no claim of his identity, though the traditionally-ascribed author is a man named Luke (unlikely). If the author is pseudonymous and never makes a claim of his identity, then the writing cannot possibly be forged. I believe that the conversion story of Paul was written falsely simply by the mechanism of Christian creativity.

aa5874

But, once it has been deduced that more than one person used the name Paul then the real Paul cannot be assumed or it cannot be known if there was a real 1st century Paul.

There is no document that is known to must have come from someone actually named PAUL only that one person may have written most of the Epistles.

The Pauline Epistles may have been written to historicise the fabricated disciples of Jesus.


You are putting forward the fallacy that whatever you think is true must be so.

The PAULINE writers are in a setting that appears to be fictitious. There is no known real 1st century setting where Jesus was raised from the dead or that Jesus could have had a human brother. Jesus was not human based on the very Pauline writers. See Galatians 1.1.

And how was this done? Are you claiming that no Christian realised that Paul's conversion was false?

If there were Christians all over the Roman Empire who knew Paul and knew how he was converted and some of them were actually with him when he was converted, who managed to write a complete false story and get it CANONISED as SACRED SCRIPTURE.?

It must be noted that the false Pauline conversion can be found at least three different times in Acts of the Apostles.

The admittance that the Pauline conversion story is false is a big RED FLAG that may help to show that Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles are part of a scheme to distort the true history of Jesus believers and to historicise fictitious events.

The author of Acts claimed he traveled and preached all over the Roman Empire with Paul, yet produce a most fictitious account of Paul's conversion.

What else is false?

This is Chrysostom on Acts of the Apostles "Homily 1"

Elijah

Hmm I don’t know. We may be both making a fallacy if we argue for one influence exclusively for him not defending himself in the scene. That said I’m not sure how much of a need there was to fit the story to Isaiah 53 or if that was what was just quote mined our of the OT after Jesus didn’t live up to the normal expectations of the what the messiah was going to do, so they had to go grab some text, that probably wasn’t even considered a messianic prophecy to many of the Jews, if any, until it needed to be. I think if it was a talkative Jesus they would have just found something better to fit the scene. It may not have been as good as Isaiah but Isaiah being about the messiah may be stretching it as is.

The point I was making was that his behavior wouldn’t have been seen as a sign of guilt or madness to the Greek speaking world since that kind of behavior was explained at length in the works of their most famous philosopher. To them he is doing what he is supposed to do in that situation and that’s what is being laid out in the story IMO. It’s a just man being unjustly executed not defending himself as Socrates philosophized about.

Socrates: Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same. Gorgias

John 18:37 Then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice."

Yea truth is a really common idea being tossed around but there does seem to be a play on Socrates trial going on somewhat at least IMO.

Larkin31

JD Crossan argues strongly and--to me--persuasively that there is very little likelihood that Pilate ever met face-to-face with Jesus or even debated his execution for any serious length of time--likely was not even notified or consulted. The Romans crucified and otherwise butchered troublesome Jews by the thousands. IMO, the entire thing is a melodramatic fiction putting the two local "kings" face to face for a confrontation. Classic Hollywood! (or, rather, Holy-wood)

ApostateAbe

In my model of the development of Christianity, Isaiah 53 plays a very big part, because gospel authors seemed to go to great lengths to fit the story to perceived messianic prophecies, including Isaiah 53. I don't know if you are familiar with the set of Old Testament prophecies that Christian evangelists present as religious evidence. I grew up with them, but not everyone may be familiar. Here is a table of them:

http://mb-soft.com/believe/txh/proph.htm

A specific example of what I am talking about is Isaiah 53:9, where it says, "His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth."

And, true to the prophecy (sort of), the gospels say that a rich man (Joseph of Arimethea) bought a tomb for Jesus. Joseph was not said to be wicked, but it is hard to explain how a wicked rich man would be charitable to Jesus. The likely reality is that the corpse of Jesus was tossed into the flames of the Valley of Hinnom, along with all the rest of the victims of crucifixion.

Christians have used the Old Testament comparisons to great evangelistic effect, because the parallels seem to be very striking. The myth of the resurrection may not have existed if not for the verse in Isaiah 53 where it says the subject will prolong his days.

Like I said, Socrates must have been an undercurrent in the myth of Jesus. Socrates was the first significant martyr, for example, and Greek Christians may not have as easily spun Jesus' death into martyrdom if not for the precedent of Socrates. The connection should not be carried too far, I believe, because there is no explicit nor sufficiently-implicit mention of Socrates in first-century Christian writings, and the influence must compete with all the other influences on the accounts, such as perceived messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, lies of Christians leaders (such as Peter), myths developed purely from wishful thinking and creativity, and the historical reality of Jesus.

Larkin31

Crossan claims that Jesus' body would most likely be left on the cross to rot, be defiled by birds, and, if it dropped, to be ravaged by roaming dogs. Many executed Jews, according to him, were purposely defiled this way in order to humiliate the Jews and their families as much as possible--the desecration of the body and unfulfillment of the Jewish burial sacrament being the greatest harm in this case.

ApostateAbe

Great, I would love to know the evidence for that, if you happen to have it accessible. The Valley of Hinnom thing was only something I pulled out of my ass because I thought that the Romans would prefer to treat the corpses as garbage.

Larkin31

I read about 4 of his books several years ago. I will see if I can find which one it was in. Probably his mammoth The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (or via: amazon.co.uk)

but maybe it was in his The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus.

by John Dominic Crossan