SteveB

I didn't read all 98 responses, so someone may have provided these links already.

In the mid 1800's, an attorney who was a staunch agnostic/athiest set about to disprove the validity of the gospels, and their tale. He was partly responsible for starting Harvard's Law School. Yes, THE Harvard.


His name was Simon Greenleaf. Two individuals I know of so far have dismissed this individual solely because they appear to believe that anyone who was a believer was totally incapable of real reasoning. So, if you want to dismiss this man offhand because you think him too weakminded to have any real intelligence, I guess you'd have to dismiss Harvard's law school as well.

What they failed to acknowledge/realize was that he started his position as a non-believer seeking to prove once and for all that this whole bible thing, hence christianity, was a fraud.

Here is the Kansas City, Mo. Law School link to the history of the book that came out of this work.

University of Missouri- Kansas City Law School

Here is a link to a downloadable PDF copy of the book Greenleaf wrote.

Google's link to Simon Greenleaf Book on testimony of four gospels

I will forewarn all takers-- this is a book written in 1847, so the language will be mid 1800's language. It's also a very long text- 568 pages. The PDF file is 13.7mb.

Toto

Debunked

neilgodfrey

So the moral of the tale is that Bible-reading kills brain cells?


Neil

aa5874

And "Paul" is deduced to be more than one individual.

What really was written by the individual called "Paul"?

Whatever you believe.

And your belief about what the individual called "Paul" wrote cannot be tested, the belief cannot be corroborated.

Whatever is believed about "Paul" is irrelevant, except there is no external corroboration for such an individual.

spamandham

I would argue that these contradictions are evidence of pseudepigraphy, rather than evidence of Paul being a muddle headed moron who couldn't figure out what he meant by 'gospel'.

...but there seems to be a general attitude of "assume it's genuine until proven otherwise", in spite of the fact that vast swaths of writings previously attributed to Paul, have now been conclusively shown inauthentic.

aa5874

It is my position that "Paul" may be a code for the "Church". These letters appear to be more doctrinal rather evangelical and may have been put together by a "team", a body or group of writers.

The letters of the writers called Paul have been deduced to have been written by more than one person, the letters appear to have contradictions in doctrine, there appears to be interpolations, the chronology of the letters are uncertain, there are no known external confirmation of any writer called "Paul, and the veracity of the letters themselves cannot be confirmed, it is not really known or it cannot even be tested that anyone called "Paul" ever claimed to have had revelations.
These letters can only be accepted on faith.

Amaleq13

The tangent about Paul's gospel has been split out into its own thread. The title is Paul's Gospel.


Sorry, Joe, for the boring title.

spamandham

hmmm....aa stepping off into the deep end of the speculative pool? It's refreshing to see you take a position that isn't just "you have no proof therefor it's false".

I don't think what you're stating is any less likely than any other Paul speculations. I still prefer Detering's Paul, but also allow for the dreaded HISTORICAL CORE!!!! (all children should scream and run from the building).

I've argued here before that it really doesn't make a lot of sense that these "letters" - presumably delivered to their recipients - ended up gathered back together to form a canon. The simpler explanation to me is, they were never mailed in the first place but were written to look as if they were letters.

Johnny Skeptic

Are you proposing that miracles happened because credible sources recorded them? If not, then what you said does not make any sense.