WinAce

I just thought I'd mention that this topic has been immortalized here. Yes, all the usual childish antics are there.

Toto

So I'm Tutu? Does he think there's something insulting about being compared to Desmond Tutu? And he's moved me from LA to South Africa?

I wonder if this man amuses himself with crude racial jokes. What a maroon.

If I were Helen I would be upset at an idiot like JPHolding trying to support me. It would be like the KKK holding a rally in my honor.

Toto

The more I look at this, the more racist it looks.

Ted Hoffman

Of course Toto. He can't help being who he is. He must have had a terrible childhood or had a terrible time as a prison librarian to sink his self-esteem so low. He only feels better by insulting people.

Jelly-filled Panties arbirtarily knocked off my Iron and took the breath of a monkey that has eaten a banana and used that instead of my moniker. Morons will always be morons.

I think he did a good job of changing the page and yet retain the format - that was impressive. This guy has his whole life to waste doing crap like this.
His loss.

Ted Hoffman

A toad in a pile of mud. Thats his element - the crass nonsense. He wades, swaggers, snickers, eats, and sleeps on the arrant crap that he dabbles in.
A veritable monument of what an idiot can do with his idiocy.

CX

There are several possibilities, but given Paul's own testimony (and that from other sources) that he was a fanatical believer (first in Pharisaic Judaism then in Xianity) it's not all that questionable that he could have been susceptible to the same kind of ecstatic religious experiences really fervent believers have today. While it's true he did benefit from his Xian mission, he was probably pretty well off as a pharisee so I can see no compelling reason for him to switch religious brands aside from some transformative religious experience. He very well may have believed the experience he claimed to have was real. Believers do all the time even today.

chimaira

helenm "Why would it lie on the subject of him?

chimaira .
I does not know ...


2 Corinthian ones 12:7-10 And for that I is not swelled pride, to causes excellence of these revelations, it m 'was put a sliver in flesh, an angel of Satan to slap me and to prevent me from take pride me.

HelenM

I try not to get upset about things I can't control.

Helen

SLD

I think the whole argument of Paul’s lying is rather pedantic. I think we are trying to put him into our world as if his epistles were some sort of deposition under oath. Paul wrote in terms that 1st Century listeners and readers would understand and was not really concerned with giving a formal deposition of what happened. His conversion story is not the truth, and I would argue that both Paul and his followers knew it. He wrote letters to Greeks who would have been familiar with the mystery cult language and the literature of their day. His story is too similar to Euripides play, the Bacchae where King Pentheus is converted while hunting down followers of Dionysis and the spirit of the Human-God Dionysus tells him not to “kick against the pricks”.

Does that make Paul a liar? Well, not in the sense that he was deliberately trying to deceive people. It does makes him a story teller, but I don’t think he was deliberately trying to convince people that this is what actually happened because they wouldn’t have bought something like that – they knew their mystery cult stories and Euripides too well. Nor do I think Paul expected his followers to believe that the story was literally true – but that it was a nice story that they were comfortable and already familiar with.

I think the same thing can be said about a lot of other books in the Bible. The point has been made about the infamous line of the Jews: “His blood be on us and on our children” Why is that in the Bible? What point does it serve? On its face it doesn’t really seem to fit. But if we understand the time frame in which it was written we see that its author never meant it to be taken literally. It is merely a way that early Christians, already brutally persecuted by Nero, could distance themselves from those revolting Jews: “See we’re not like those rebellious Jews, we’re not Jewish, stop persecuting us, the Jews killed Christ not the Romans. We’re on your side too!!” Who cares whether the Jews really said such a thing at Jesus’s trial; it’s just a good story.

The way I view the New Testament authors is the same way I would view any fiction writer of today. They didn’t mean for their story to be taken literally, but they did hope for a deeper understanding about the meaning of a dying and rising God saving you from your sin if you have faith in him and he loves you very much.

Of course, the story is still not true, but it’s only a lie if you meant for your audience to actually believe it.

SLD

Bobzammel

I think Paul-and other early leaders-kind of twisted a great deal of Old Testament writings, especially Isiah.(sp?) Look at Paul's qoutations from the OT and then go back and examine those verses in context. It's the same problem with the allegedly fufilled Jesus prophecies...they've been warped ever so slightly to argue for the new POV.