Layman

Umm, Paul intentionally sought out the apostles and spent more than two weeks with Peter. That's plenty of evidence.

Well, since he refers to him as a "pillar" of the Jerusalem Church and, this is rather untrue. What is true is that Paul and Peter had a confrontation, which was all the more upsetting to Paul because Peter was contradicting his previous actions. The message is that the message of Jesus is more important than any one man.

Actually, it is based very much on facts. The fact that Paul uses language indicating he's relying on tradition. The fact that Paul is recounting things Peter had seen, when we know he sought Peter and and spent more than two weeks living with Peter. It would be unduly speculative to conclude that they never discussed any tradition about Jesus at all. It is based on the fact that Paul continued to work with the Jerusalem Church and they worked with him. Which would not be the case if he invented his own traditions and ignored theirs. It's you who are desperately scrambling to ignore the obvious.

Well, since they appear in all the manuscripts, they are substantially different than the Christian accounts in the Gospels and Price has not been able to persuade any of hundreds of scholars on the subject that he even has a reasonable argument here, you are once again grasping at straws.

Of course Paul's authority is dervived from his encounter with the risen Christ. But that does not mean he ignored what others had to say about the earthly Christ. Remember, he sought out the Apostles. He decided to stay with Peter for more than two weeks. He admitted they were pillars of the Jerusalem Church. He tried to raise funds to support the Jerusalem Church. To suggest that simply did not care about their Jesus traditions is more desperate grasping at straws.

And you (and Doherty) are being extraordinarily anachronistic. When Paul says "Gospel" he is not talking about something like the Four Cannonical Gospels that lays out a biography of Jesus. He's talking about the message that Jesus is the Christ and salvation for Gentiles and Jews can be found through Him. Which, of course, he DID claim to receive from Christ. But to jump forward 30 or 40 years and claim Paul was talking about ALL knowledge of the historical Jesus when he said "Gospel" is simply desparation.

Layman

Of course, although Toto lives on planet Doherty, the fact that Paul was a leading Jew charged with persecuting Christians means that he very likely already knew much of what Christians were teaching. And as a Jew contemporary to Jesus, he probably had heard about Jesus and the events that happened (and that were claimed to have happened) in Jerusalem.

Afterall, Paul admits to be a zealous persecutor of Christians. It's obvious something about their message offended him. And it follows by necessity that for something in the message to have offended him he would have had to know something about that message.

And according to his sometime companion Luke, Paul had heard Stephen preaching the message about Jesus and Paul met with other Christians immediately after his conversion on the road to Damascus.

So it's obvious that Paul started out with some knowledge of the historical Jesus before he became a Christian. Obviously he did not get this from a "divine revelation" that had not happened. So just as obviously Toto is just once again ignoring the obvious -- the "Gospel" to Paul did not encompass "every fact known or preached about the historical Jesus." Because if we accept the latter definition, Paul "knew" the "Gospel" before he converted. Which of course, is ridiculous, because Paul tells us that his "Gospel" came from Jesus himself. So obviously Paul is not using "Gospel" to mean "the facts about the historical Jesus" but does take it to mean the truth of the Christian message that salvation is by faith in Jesus and is open to Greeks and Jews.

leonarde

I submit that although it is likely that as a persecutor of early Christians Paul had a rough
idea of the claims of the Resurrection, he did
not have (since he did not require it) the
in-depth knowledge of Christianity that one would
expect of a missionary. And we know that he did become a full-time missionary, travelling to parts of the Meditteranean where there was no knowledge of Jesus. There were
,no doubt, questions for Paul. And to prepare himself for these missionary journeys he needed a
tad more background knowledge: both of the
historical Jesus and of the teachings of those very first believers.....He almost certainly
got it from the earliest disciples, since they were readily at hand.

Cheers!

Layman

I agree that Paul was likely to seek out Christians to get a better understanding of their teachings and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

My main point is that Toto's argument that Paul's statement that he received his Gospel from Jesus means that he never learned anything about Jesus from humans is silly. Paul no doubt already possessed a certain amount of information about Jesus and Christianity before he became a Christian.

Vorkosigan

Don't worry about it. Having watched you lie before, I really wasn't expecting anything different this time.

And if you think that texts have a "plain meaning" that can be understood without interpretive schema, you should ask your university for a refund. "Meaning" resides in the interplay of text and frameworks for understanding it.

[ October 04, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

NOGO

I am surprized at the way many people use the words "no doubt". In the sentence above they actually mean the exact opposite. Why not use the words "I guess" instead.

Toto

I can play that game too. Paul "no doubt" was not interested in the historical Jesus because his religion was based on a mystical savior who died and was reborn on a sublunar plane of existence. Early Christianity was "no doubt" a mystery religion, and since the mysteries have been lost, we can never really understand it.

Layman

Or, instead of playing linguistic twister, you could respond to my reasons.

Since Paul apparently hated Christians with a passion and tried to persecute them, its reasonable to conclude with confidence that he knew something about their beliefs.

Toto

But what exactly can you conclude that he knew? That's the puzzle. Maybe he "knew" that they worshipped a dying and rising savior from the sublunar plane. Maybe he "knew" that they took mushrooms, and he was the 1st century DEA. We'll never know.

Layman

Sigh.

This is all irrelevant to the point. You have been yammering and insisting that Paul would never have recited a tradition about Jesus -- even though Paul uses precise Rabbinic language showing he did just that -- because "his gospel" came directly from God. In response, I have pointed out that by "gospel" Paul does not mean to say that everything he knows about Jesus came from God. The "Gospel" to Paul is the message that Jesus saves -- Gentiles and Jews. The notion that "Gospel" means "Biography about Jesus" is anachronistic.

To further illustrate this point, I pointed out that Paul obviously had learned some things about Jesus and Christianity before his Christianity, and therefore it's silly of you to argue that he would never learn anything about Jesus or Christianity from humans.