Toto

Such as???

... which has a portrait of Paul diametrically opposed to the personality that comes through the letters attributed to Paul.

:huh:

ApostateAbe

Yes, we could not completely rule out forgery based on the point of word usage alone. There are other criteria, however, that contribute to the conclusion. The power of the combined criteria is consilience, which multiplies the probability of the conclusion (more than just summing it) and it effectively rules out forgery, especially if there are no good explanations in favor of forgery.
We can make some pretty good guesses about Paul based on the Paul found in the book of Acts, or just by reading the epistles (forged or not) and infer from his basic character profile. At the very least, we know that he was reputed to be a religiously-educated middle-1st-century Christian Jew who never met Jesus and was an apostle to the Gentiles. We can expect from this character profile that he would fully expect the world would end and Jesus to return within the deadline that Jesus claimed, in contrast to what second-century Christians would believe. We can expect that he would have a tense relationship with Christian leaders who believed Christianity to be a Jew-only religion. We can expect that he would NOT know of the gnostic or the docetist doctrines. We can expect that he would NOT equate Jesus with God. We would expect that he would NOT know of the fall of the temple (unlike all of the gospels) and he would have access to Jerusalem. Those are some examples, and I don't know what else I missed.
I can't imagine that such a reason could be a good one. Who made that argument about "abnormally born"? I sat down and read all of the "authentic" Pauline epistles, and the consistently humble phrasing (if not so humble ideas in substance) struck me as very much a defining style of Paul's writing--showering other people with praise, but effacing and understating his own self. To mask the praising of himself, he often uses the word for "we," not "I" or "me." I'll give you a few examples:

1 Co 9:2 - If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

1 Co 7:10 - To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.

1 Co 15:9 - For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

2 Co 12:11 - I have become foolish; you yourselves compelled me. Actually I should have been commended by you, for in no respect was I inferior to the most eminent apostles, even though I am a nobody.

Ro 3:31 - Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

Ro 7:9 - I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;

Ro 7:15 - For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I {would} like to {do,} but I am doing the very thing I hate.

Ro 16:7 - Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, who are outstanding among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

mountainman

We have the Gnostic "Acts of Paul", a source which is often overlooked in obtaining information about "Paul", like something left in the "too hard basket". The fictional and wildly romantic narratives in the Gnostic "Acts of Paul" may certainly be compared to the far more sedate (but possibly just as fictitious) Pauline letters and the canonical books of the NT. Both the Gnostic texts and the Canonical texts must have been the products of the epoch we are calling "Christian Origins", and must be related somehow - we just do not see yet this ultimate relationship.

A man small in size, with a bald head and crooked legs; in good health; with eyebrows that met and a rather prominent nose; full of grace, for sometimes he looked like a man and sometimes he looked like an angel.

mountainman

If you plot the movement of the Pauline letters from "Paul" to the forgeries of "Pseudo Paul" over the centuries, you will see a steady loss of credibility for the original "Paul". Do you expect this trend to be arrested? IMO the trend will work towards establishing every letter as a pious fraud. But that's just an analysis of the stats over time ...


So based on the assumption that we're dealing with some documents that originated as the actual writings of an actual mid-first-century Christian writer who was called "Paul", who was this second author "Pseudo Paul" who is the author attributed to some documents that were once thought to have originated with "Paul"?

Toto

There is no consilience - there are such disparate elements that scholars still argue over who Paul was or what his theology was.

D'uh. Acts is fictional, Paul's letters are forged, and yet you think you can get some reliable information from them?

No "reputed" - he claimed to have a religious education. Scholars disagree.

Does Paul ever refer to this deadline that Jesus claimed?

You have no basis to expect this - it is in the epistles, but it is not what you would expect from your idea that Paul had a good religious education.

And yet he reflects many gnostic ideas. Forgery? Interpolation? or were the epistles written in the 2nd century?

Paul would have had access to Jersusalem any time before the end of the Bar Kochba revolt. There are passages in the epistles that seem to refer to the fall of the Temple.


Did you notice that some of the epistles are written from Paul with several other people? That might be why he uses "we." Or it might be the royal we.

I'll give you a few examples:

I don't see the humility there.

No humility in claiming to speak for god.

Arguably an interpolation.

"In no respect inferior" does not sound humble.

When Paul talks about "foolish" he refers to the character of the Fool in Greco-Roman theater, and nothing he says is straightforward.

"We establish the law" is not humble.

These is theological - I don't see the humility.

:huh:

I'm just waiting for you to realize that you are completely out of your depth.

aa5874

Analysis of the variants of the Pauline letters tend to show that they were LATE. The LATER a writing less variant rate or more accuracy is expected .

The Pauline writings have an average LOW variant rate of about 25% or HIGH 75 % accuracy while the four gospels has an average HIGH variant rate of about 45% or only 55% accuracy. The variant rate in gMark alone exceeds 50% or less than 50 % accuracy.

The book of Revelation considered to be AFTER the Gospels also show a VERY high variant, about 47% or a very Low accuracy of about 53 %.

The HIGH variant rate or LOW accuracy rate of Revelation is very identical to HIGH variant rate of the Gospels

The Pastorals considered to be Late have a High accuracy rate of 77 % or just 3% above the Epistles to the Churches which tend to also confirm that later writings are expected to be more accurate than earlier writings.

The LOW variant rate of the Pauline writings tend to show that they were LATE or AFTER the Gospels and Revelation.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece

andrewcriddle

Tertullian certainly claims that Marcion 'edited' Paul's epistles but he claims that this 'edition' was a distortion of the version found in the orthodox churches.

(You may doubt Tertullian's objectivity but that is another matter.)

Andrew Criddle

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Andrew Criddle: How do you determine what Paul probably said, what he probably did not say, and which Scriptures attributed to Paul do not have enough evidence either way?

aa5874

But even apologetic sources, other Church writers, do NOT agree with "Tertullian". Hippolytus and Origen give a different picture of Marcion. Hippolytus claimed Marcion used or plagerised the doctrine of Empedocles, NOT "Paul" or gMark, and Origen was NOT aware that Marcion himself mutilated any Gospel in "Against Celsus".

It must be noted that "Tertullian" ADMITTED he actually used an anonymous writing and claimed it was written by Marcion and that "Tertullian" appeared to be around 100% in ERROR with regards to the dating, authorship and chronology of the books in the NT Canon.

And "Tertullian" was a Church writer.

stephan huller

Acts doesn't even know any of the contents of the Pauline Epistles, what kind of a source is this?