Duvduv

I do not want to imagine. Sound familiar?
The fact is that these elements are missing entirely from the epistles and Acts.
Neither a single citation concerning the promised messiah or Elijah, or about anything including any aphorisms from the Christ at all. Your excuses sound like those of a Christian believer and apologist about this.

aa5874

You must be using your imagination because you are the one who are making excuses. I show you the ACTUAL WRITTEN statements found in the Pauline letters.

Please, get a Bible and examine the Epistles.

The Pauline writer was CALLED to preach the Gospel AFTER Jesus was RAISED from the dead.

Paul claimed he RECEIEVED his Gospel the resurrected Jesus.

Now, what year did these things happen in the Pauline letters???

The letters do NOT say.

Non-Apologetic sources and the DATED EVIDENCE show that Paul could have ONLY known of Jesus, Cephas, John, AFTER the 1st century.

Paul could NOT have met an actual human Jesus.

Duvduv

But you asked me to imagine and it is unnecessary.
I KNOW about Paul's calling. I also know about his selective biography INCLUDED in Galatians and Acts.
The biographies leave those elements out entirely from his earlier life, and his seed of David metaphor ignores the pertinent elements related to being that Seed of David messiah.
Why is this so difficult to understand?!

aa5874

My position is that the Pauline writings are Non-historical.

What exactly are you arguing about???

Duvduv

I am not arguing about anything. All I have pointed out is that the epistles simply do not include Tanakh references to anything concerning the davidic Messiah or his precursor, Elijah in relation to the Baptist despite the single reference in Romans to Jesus being the Seed of David.

I also pointed out simply that neither the epistles nor Acts have Paul show the slightest interest in any location where the canonical gospel Jesus visited.

I have also pointed out that had the author(s) of the epistles known about Acts they would have mentioned the fact at least in Galatians that Paul was known as Saul, that the Jews were after him in Damascus, and that he knew who John the Baptist was, among other things.

Just observations, not arguments.

Derlid

Jesus was not of the line of David
Jesus did not rebuild the temple or preach in it and make sacrifice (non human of course)
Jesus did not bring about world peace.

All three of those things are needed btw to fulfill the prophecy of The Messiah.

I don't think of Paul as anything more than a religious zealot, but with a particularly driven form of zealotry, I also think he was probably winging a lot of the stuff he wrote as well, being as he has only hearsay as sources or maybe not even that.

Duvduv

Yes, Derlid, I know all of that, and I do not believe that the Jesus of the NT existed. I was simply pointing out anomalies in the epistles themselves concerning the man who is said to have believed in the Christ as the messiah and who allegedly lived in Judea during the lifetime of Paul.

Indeed, as I have pointed out, not only does this STORY of apostle not mention a single verse relevant to the davidic messiah (of GMatt and GLuke as well) and Elijah, and does not show the slightest interest in any location where the Christ walked, but we are not given the slightest bit of information by the author(s) as to what Paul was allegedly doing in his life during the lifetime of Jesus when hundreds and thousands of people were said to have known Jesus. Within two or three years of the crucifixion according to the chronology from Acts anyway, this Paul became a freelance persecutor.

But we are not told WHY this happened, or what this Paul knew about Jesus before and after the crucifixion and what caused Paul to become an active persecutor.

Of course Galatians and the other epistles don't even shed any light on their own about WHEN the Christ lived or what he was doing wherever he was in relation to Paul himself. Paul was in Damascus, Arabia, Jerusalem. But we don't know from the epistles even where his Christ was.

Derlid

The information isn't there because either Paul did not think it was relevant or it was simply trivial. Paul lived and worked quite a significant time after Christ was supposedly dead if we accept he existed, which is quite controversial. The first few decades of Jesus life don't exist either, probably because waxing lyrical about an apprentice building chairs and tables probably would not of had much import in the story.

I have no doubt Paul existed. I do however doubt who his sources were, and if any of the sources had any knowledge of people who had met Christ, let alone Christ himself, so what you are probably looking at is a sort of Chinese whispers, where non important information is either not mentioned or simply does not or did not exist, just like many historical accounts as they mover further from first hand the level of detail starts to fade, probably the best examples are the Gospels or the canonical ones anyway which sound like wishful thinking at best, and sheer fantasy at worst.

Perhaps a good question would be not did the historical Jesus exist, but are there sources that are from the time period Jesus lived or close, if not why not and doesn't that suggest something in and of itself?

As to disagreements in texts about what happened, the Gospels themselves differ in their accounts of the story, I have no reason to expect that two people writing about something will differ on what they in fact saw and heard or in the case of the Gospels what several hundred filterings of the story will render it into. Hell even those who first hand witness events differ wildly sometimes on the details they saw.

aa5874

Well, my observation is that the author of Acts composed Acts of the Apostles BEFORE the Pauline letters were written.

Only TWO sources MENTIONED Paul in the NT outside the so-called Pauline Epistles.

1. The author of Acts of the Apostles.

2. The author of 2nd Peter.

Now, again, some MOST remarkable observations.

The author of Acts mentioned Saul/Paul 152 times and NEVER once claimed Paul wrote to the Churches.

The author of 2nd Peter mentioned Paul ONE time and Immediately claimed he WROTE to Churches.

2 Peter 3:15 NIV

In and outside the Canon, Apologetic sources that mentioned Paul ONE time claimed he wrote to the Churches.

Apologetic sources that mentioned Paul claimed he WROTE to the Churches EXCEPT the author of Acts.

In Acts, Saul/Paul was a travelling EVANGELIST NOT a letter writer.

In Acts, Saul/Paul PREACHED in the Synagogues of the Jews outside Judea in the Roman Empire.

In Acts, Saul/Paul DELIEVERED letters from the Jerusalem Church.

In Acts, the author CLAIMED he Traveled, Preached and Prayed with Saul/Paul.

In Acts, There is NO mention of the Pauline Revealed Gospel--Remission of Sins by the Resurrection.

It is my observation that Acts of the Apostles was COMPOSED BEFORE the Pauline letters since it would have been virtually impossible for the author to have forgotten them.

Duvduv

.......you make good points, except that you still see that the letters knew nothing about Saul as well, and those other matters. I am resolving this simply by asserting that Acts and the epistles emerged from different places and were brought together as part of the set of books authorized, and later made holy canon by the Orthodox.

Regardless of the provenance of the texts and when they emerged, it is amazing that the apologists (at least after Chrysostom) never bothered to examine all the very obvious gaps and contradictions between the epistles and Acts and resolve them.

Anyway, I am glad to see you are softening up. Mazel tov!