Bobzammel

The man could write, and was very jealous of "correct" teachings and "His gospel". So why didn't he write one himself? Could it be--as some think--that Paul's Jesus had no real historical basis?

(BTW I find it odd that some say Paul "changed" Christianity when Paul's letters for the most part predate the writing of the gospels-if anybody "changed" Christianity, it was the Gospel writers themselves!)

Egoinos

Quite. I don't understand the people who think they can seperate Jesus' words from the Gospels from the rest of the text, and from Paul's letters, and say they have found the "original" or pure Jesus which Paul distorted. As the Gospels were written after the domination of the churches and Christian theology by Paul, and the synoptic gospels (esp. Luke) seem to have been fairly directly influenced by him, it strikes me as impossible to separate those things.

Geoff Hudson

Bob,

I think that Paul's letters and the gospels as originally written were consistent. None of the original documents contained a reference to Jesus, but were about the Spirit of God. They were changed by later editors who superimposed Jesus and the message of the cross (for example in Paul's letters) and changed the name of John the Prophet to Jesus in the case of the gospels.
It wasn't Paul who changed 'Christianity', it was the editors - may be some of those priests who were out of a job after the destruction of the temple.

Geoff