Sheshbazzar

Doubtful that would have been the intention. The goal would be to insert latter devised theological and doctinal material into earlier writings to make it appear that this late devised material had been there all along. Many exaples of this have been identified.
Other than a few Church teaching 'authorities' most people would not have possessed or had access to any actual early copies of of Saul of Tarsus's writings to compare with.
Once the Christian Church authorities declared 'brother Paul wrote....thus and thus' it wouldn't have even mattered to most what any earlier genuine writings had once contained, ....even if one had the actual earlier text, direct from the pen of the original author in hand.
The Church was the ultimate authority in deciding exactly what it was that 'brother Paul' had wrote, not any competing or earlier texts.

I doubt you will find many accredited textual scholars who would support that proposition.
The normal progress is that earlier writing are redacted, edited, and updated so as to appear to give early support to latter ideas.

These statements are about LATTER Christian claims made for the texts. It does not deal with what the internal content of the texts reveal.
That is a late Christian claim. The Book called Matthew however nowhere claims to have ever been written by any Matthew. Same with all those other claims, they are all late and have no bearing at all upon when, or by whom these texts were actually originally written.

That does not concur with the opinions expressed by most recognized textual scholars.
Thus this off-the-wall view of the progression of textual develpment is certainly not 'clear' to those who make their livings working with these writings every day.
If any writings are found with information that show parts are early and parts are late then it is most likely the LATE parts that are historically bogus.

In effect EARLY Saul was likely the real Paul, but we no longer know what it was that Saul of Tarsus actually wrote, and what other LATTER unidentifiable Pseudo-Paul's have added to, or deleated from what Saul wrote.
What we can be cetain of, is that what we now have are not the genuine unmolested writings of a authentic 1st century Pharasic Jew named Paul.

Duvduv

It is probably noteworthy that ancient church writers never invoke any "midrashic" or "hadith" material from anywhere about the life, background, family or education of Paul at all. Nothing to fill in any gaps in the canon.
Of course there is nothing of this kind on Jesus either.

aa5874

Your claim is utterly erroneous. NO EARLY writings of the Pauline letters have ever been found and identified.

ALL the Pauline writings that have been found are DATED to the mid 2nd century or later.


That is PRECISELY what I am arguing against. I am arguing against the Presumption that the Pauline writings were early and then interpolated with late material.

There were NO EARLY Pauline writings so any information found in the Pauline writings that appear to be early are either fiction or were inserted to give the false impression that they were early.

For example, the Pauline writer claimed that he met the Apostle Peter and James in Jerusalem in Galatians 1. Such a false statement was either originally in the Galatians or was added later to give the erroneous impression that the Pauline writer was a contemporary of Jesus, the son of God.

Again, and again, NO Pauline letters have ever been actually recovered and dated before c 68 CE or in the 1st century.

My argument is completely compatible with the actual recovered dated manuscripts.

The Pauline letters are ALL LATE writings, that is, AFTER the mid 2nd century or later.

I can no longer accept your imagination and unsubstantiated speculation as a valid support for your argument.

Toto

How would you classify the Acts of Paul?

And what does this have to do with The Myth Theory of aa5874?

Duvduv

I didn't see that this had the status of a midrash in the many sources of apologetic literature referring to the teachings and doctrines of the Church.
In any case this thread has been wandering and we are all joining in. Not unlike in many other threads.

Sheshbazzar

Naturally, it was only after the mid-second century CE that Christianities inventors found and heavily intepolated these old and forgotten Jewish writings with their pagan Platonic Greek based theology.
That is your Theory. I don't happen to buy it.
And I doubt you will ever be able to sell that line of reversed reasoning to the worlds foremost textual scholars.

As we now have them certainly. But I'll stick with my premise that the texts we have were founded and fashioned on the content of earlier texts which have not yet been recovered

That is your perogative.
However your intransigent and dogmatic closed mindedness does not entail that all others are bound to be likewise closed minded.
I will not allow your self-imposed myopic limitations to blind or silence me.

I stick with my view that there were earlier seminal Jewish texts upon which our known Pauline Epistles were based.

aa5874

Again, I no longer accept your imagination as evidence. In this thread you must, must, must PRESENT evidence--a source.

Where do you get your stories from??? The Sky???

I already know that you buy what you imagine which is exactly like those who claim the Pauline writings were early WITHOUT a shred of corroboration.

It is reversed reasoning to argue from your imagination before you have any credible evidence.

You are now actively engaged in selling your imagination as support for your stories about Saul.

Sheshbazzar

Yeah, Bah! Humbug! right aa?

And a Happy New Year to you too aa.

aa5874

All the best for the New Year to you also.

Duvduv

As we see below in chapter 32 of Contra Celsum, Origen becomes defensive about the identity of his Jesus rather than simply suggesting that the person vilified by the Jews and Celsus was ANOTHER PERSON from the 1st century BCE. Yet he does not do that.

The only reason could be that the author as the fictional author did not know the sources from the Jews directly that would have been able to distinguish between his Jesus and the Yeshu of the Jewish tradition, or would have felt cornered given the fact that the nativity story includes one Mary and Joseph, and the Jewish version Miriam and Yosef Pandera.

And if this is the case, there is the possibility that the parent figures of the nativity story itself was adopted by the gentiles from the Jewish story without even realizing that this would be libelous to their new religion, or perhaps that the names were inserted specifically by a disloyal author to cast aspersions on the official imperial religion.

CHAP. XXXII.

But let us now return to where the Jew is introduced, speaking of the mother of Jesus, and saying that "when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera;" and let us see whether those who have blindly concocted these fables about the adultery of the Virgin with Panthera, and her rejection by the carpenter, did not invent these stories to overturn His miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost: for they could have falsified the history in a different manner, on account of its extremely miraculous character, and not have admitted, as it were against their will, that Jesus was born of no ordinary human marriage.