CX

Which people are those? The texts themselves are anonymous. There are no authorial attributions until well into the second century. By that time the early church needed to make the "orthodox" texts authoritative in the face of what it considered heresy and a proliferation of heretical texts.

Bede

CX, it would be more accurate to say there are no recorded attributions until well into the second century. We cannot say, as is often alleged, that the attributions do not predate this by some way.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

CX

Fair enough. The point is the texts themselves do not identify the authors and we have no evidence either way before well into the 2nd century. Although this isn't especially surprising given the tremendous dearth of evidence for the NT prior to the 4th century.

Radcliffe Emerson

Some cholars now believe that Paul started the Christian movement, and the 4 gospels written much later than his letters are drawn upon his basic teachings, with myths about miracles, virgin birth and resurrection added because they evolved out of the story telling in the couple of decades after Paul wrote his letters.
Scholars believe Paul's view of the resurrection was spirtual, not phyisical, and that is what one of the original Christian churches, the Eastern Aramaic church that uses the Peshitta believes too.

rodahi

I would like to quote what a "notable scholar" had to say about the four narratives (gospels):
"Very little has been said thus far about the identity of the several evangelists and the date of the composition of each Gospel. Actually not much is known about these matters. The text itself of each Gospel is anonymous and its title represents what later tradition had to say about the identity of the author...In the case of the first Gospel, the apostle Matthew can scarcely be the final author; for why should one who presumably had been an eyewitness of much that he records depend so slavishly upon the account given by Mark, who had not been an eyewitness?" Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament, pp. 96-97.

Atticus_Finch

I am amazed at how often the myth of "Paul's view of the resurrection was spiritual, not physical..." gets repeated here. It is simply not true and should cause you to question some other myths you accept.

Paul wrote in the first epistle to the Corinthians,

15:1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, 15:2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 15:3 For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 15:4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, 15:5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 15:6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 15:7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

(New English Translation)

Certainly, if Paul believed that Christ appeared to 500 at one time that implies a physical manifestation rather than a spiritual one. There are other references from Paul's epistles which debunk this theory as well. I don't have time to find them again right now.

Regards,

Finch

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Atticus_Finch ]</p>

Toto

To me it implies 1) mass hallucination, a well known phenomenon, as well as 2) exaggerated figures.

Atticus_Finch

You may choose to believe what you like. However, the question was what did Paul believe. This passage shows that he believed in a physical resurrection.

Regards,

Finch

FunkyRes

Bruce Metzger may not be the scholar I was thinking of, I'll have to look in my Metzger book (Or metzger may have changed his mind)

Mark was quite possibly written by John Mark, an understudy of Peter (which is why Mark sometimes has more detail about Peter than the other gospels)

Mathew may have drawn from Mark, but I believe there is still skepticism in that respect.

Radcliffe Emerson

Actually, just like the gospels, there are sections in Paul's letters (such as 1 Corinthians 14 I think, where he orders women to remain silent in church) that scholars do not think were originally written by Paul.
It's also possible Paul created this religion solely to get people to follow him.