The Historical Jesus III
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As I have shown before this is nonsense. The Quest for the Historical Paul article give a good overview of the issue; we have FOUR Pauls in the NT:
"1) Authentic or Early Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon (50s-60s A.D.)
2) Disputed Paul or Deutero-Pauline: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians (80-100 A.D.)
3) Pseudo-Paul or the Pastorals: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (80-100 A.D.)
4) Tendentious or Legendary Paul: Acts of the Apostles (90-130 A.D.)"
As the article states "There are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point"
So to have any intelligent debate Paul as a historical person one is restricted to the Authentic or Early Paul and his SEVEN epistles. The Deutero-Pauline, Pseudo-Paul and Tendentious or Legendary Paul are NOT even on the table.
Even that is not true.
Take a look at List of Predatory Publishers 2014 over at Scholarly Open Access. The number of questionable publishers has exploded from 18 in 2011 to 477 in 2014 and that is NOT counting the questionable stand alone journals (302 in 2014). Scientific Research Publishing alone has some 244 psudojournals and you don't even have to be able to write...they evidently accept random text generated papers.
If that list is not depressing enough take a look at the main page and such pieces of joy as Joseph Publishing Group (add another 18 questionable journals to the freaking pile with just these guys) and International Journal of Education and Research.
I have seen the future and in terms of "peer reviewed" journals being reliable just on the merits of being peer reviewed it SUCKS big time.
As I said before unless it is truly connected to an established respected academic publisher (such as Wiley or Sheffield Phoenix Press) peer review doesn't mean anything.
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It has been already shown that "Paul" was not a figure of history and that the Pauline Corpus are ALL forgeries or false attribution.
Maximara, Please, stop wasting your time because you are INCAPABLE of presenting and NEVER could produce any contemporary evidence for the character called Paul in Acts or the Pauline Corpus.
It has already been shown that the Pauline Corpus is UNKNOWN by ALL NT authors and that Multiple Christian writings of antiquity show ZERO awareness of "Paul", Pauline Churches, the Pauline Revealed Gospel, the Persecution by Paul and letters to Churches.
Maximara, your claims about "Paul" and the Pauline Corpus are baseless and un-evidenced.
Who are you trying to fool?
We KNOW the evidence from antiquity.
The Pauline Corpus is historically bogus [a work of deception] and "Paul" was really a GROUP of writers who attempted to historicise the fiction that Jesus was RAISED from the dead.
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No it hasn't as been. What we have is that the Pauline Corpus that belong to the Deutero-Pauline and Pseudo-Paul are forgeries and the Tendentious or Legendary Paul of Acts is next to totally useless in filling out the details of Authentic or Early Paul and his seven epistles.
As to work I linked to states anything outside the Authentic or Early Paul is in the “Use Sparingly with Extreme Caution.” category.
"As a general working method I have adopted the following three principles:
1) Never accept anything in Acts over Paul’s own account in his seven genuine letters.
2) Cautiously consider Acts if it agrees with Paul and one can detect no obvious biases.
3) Consider the independent data Acts provides of interest but not of interpretive historical use."
So what can be said of the Authentic or Early Paul using JUST the seven epistles?
"• Paul calls himself a Hebrew or Israelite, stating that he was born a Jew and circumcised on the eighth day, of the Jewish tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5-6; 2 Corinthians 11:22).
• He was once a member of the sect of the Pharisees. He advanced in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries, being extremely zealous for the traditions of his Jewish faith (Philippians 3:5; Galatians 1:14).
• He zealously persecuted the Jesus movement (Galatians 1:13; Philippians 3:6; 1 Corinthians 15:9).
• Sometime around A.D. 37 Paul had a visionary experience he describes as “seeing” Jesus and received from him his Gospel message as well as his call to be an apostle to the non-Jewish world (1 Corinthians 9:2; Galatians 1:11-2:2).
• He made only three trips to Jerusalem in the period covered by his genuine letters; one three years after his apostolic call when he met Peter and James but none of the other apostles (around A.D. 40); the second fourteen years after his call (A.D. 50) when he appeared formally before the entire Jerusalem leadership to account for his mission and Gospel message to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:1-10), and a third where he was apparently arrested and sent under guard to Rome around A.D. 56 (Romans 15:25-29).
• Paul claimed to experience many revelations from Jesus, including direct voice communications, as well as an extraordinary “ascent” into the highest level of heaven, entering Paradise, where he saw and heard “things unutterable” (2 Corinthians 12:1-4).
• He had some type of physical disability that he was convinced had been sent by Satan to afflict him, but allowed by Christ, so he would not be overly proud of his extraordinary revelations (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
• He claimed to have worked miraculous signs, wonders, and mighty works that verified his status as an apostle (2 Corinthians 12:12).
• He was unmarried, at least during his career as an apostle (1 Corinthians 7:8, 15; 9:5; Philippians 3:8).
• He experienced numerous occasions of physical persecution and deprivation including beatings, being stoned and left for dead, and shipwrecked (1 Corinthians 3:11-12; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27).
• He worked as a manual laborer to support himself on his travels (1 Corinthians 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 9:6, 12, 15).
• He was imprisoned, probably in Rome, in the early 60s A.D. and refers to the possibility that he would be executed (Philippians 1:1-26)."
And that is IT.
So what we have is a prolific letter writer who by his own account gets called on the carpet for trying to take the Jesus cult in a certain direction and finally winds up imprisoned awaiting execution.
Rather then the majorly important figure of Acts what we have is on par with one of those many Restorationists who if it wasn't for the printing press history would NOT even know existed. One would no more expect history in a pre printing press world to record such a person then the name of the head slave of the Emperor's household. And that is exactly what we see.
The Authentic or Early Paul is essentially a nobody a Prophet Fred who was trying to push the cult in a particular direction who was puffed up into a major character by his followers.
Thanks to a Smithsonian article called "In John They Trust" we KNOW Prophet Fred is a real person and yet in our printing press internet world we know LESS about Prophet Fred then Authentic or Early Paul.
Prophet Fred (who was very much alive in 2006 when the article was printed) was credited with raising man's wife from the dead just two weeks previously at the time of the interview with a man who claimed to be Prophet Fred's brother-in-law.
dejudge, by the logic (and I use the word very loosely here) because Prophet Fred has no personal writings and was never personally met by the writer of the article and does supernatural things he cannot exist. Tell us just what planet of nonsense is that coming from?
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What absurdity you post!! You do not understand what 'authentic' means
We have hand written manuscripts P 46 [parts of the Pauline Corpus] dated to the 2nd century or later. We have NO 'authentic' Pauline writings if it is argued that Paul died in the 1st century.
In addition, to verify that a writing is authentic ONE MUST have a KNOWN established ORIGINAL version.
There is none for the ENTIRE Pauline Corpus.
maximara said:
What a most hilarious methodolgy.
You are engaged in circularity.
You have MERELY PRESUMED that there are authentic Pauline writings and then re-applied your PRESUMPTIONS as facts
maximara said:
Everything about "Paul" in the Pauline Corpus is WITHOUT corroboration OUTSIDE the NT and Apologetics.
You have NOT a clue that you NEEDED to present credible historical independent sources of antiquity to CORROBORATE the historicity and veracity of "Paul".
It is completely unacceptable, extremely absurd, and void of logic, at any level of investigation to use ONLY the claims of the one whose historicity and veracity is questioned.
Your methodology is the worst that I have seen and is universally bizarre.
Paul is the evidence for Paul!!!! What nonsense!!!
Which of the Multiple VARIANT manuscripts of the Pauline Corpus did "Paul" write?
P 46, the Sinaiticus Codex, the Alexandrinus Codex, the Vaticanus Codex....?
You have NOTHING but Presumptions and Assumptions.
You really don't know what you are talking about.
You have no idea how history is done.
You are INCAPABLE and NEVER have presented the SUPPORTING historical data for your Paul but have shown that YOU BELIEVE the Pauline Corpus in the Christian Bible is evidence of its own veracity and historicity.
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He wrote all of them. Then he learned how to draw, and illuminated the Book of Kells. After that, he borrowed a printing press from Gutenberg and ran off a few copies of the whole Bible.
Either that, or it is possible for scribes to make copies of texts written earlier by different people, a thing you can't seem to understand.
It is so extremely easy to deduce that the Pauline Corpus is a compilation of very late writings.
Anyone who has examined the short gMark would quickly recognise that the version of the Jesus story in that Gospel PREDATES the version of the Jesus story in the Pauline Corpus.
It will be noticed that if the same event with Jesus is found in the short gMark and the Pauline Corpus that the latter will have a LATER Embellished version.
A quick example of LATER Embellishment can be found in gMatthew about the Temptation of Jesus by Satan.
Examine the short gMark. There is just ONE verse.
Mark 1:13
1. Jesus was in the WILDERNESS.
2. Jesus was Tempted there for 40 days.
But examine the LATER Embellishments of the Temptation in gMatthew. Instead of ONE verse we now have ELEVEN verses of Embelishments.
The Temptation also took place at the JEWISH Temple and on an exceedingly high mountain.
Matthew4
The Temptation story in gMatthew is a LATER Embellished version when compared with the version in gMark.
Now, it can be easily shown that the version of the Resurrection story in the Pauline Corpus is a LATER Embellished version when compared to the short gMark.
Examine the short gMark version of the Resurrection story.
No-one is documented to have been SEEN of the Resurrected Jesus on the THIRD day in the short gMark.
Only ONE man in WHITE clothes claimed Jesus was resurrected.
Mark 16
Examine 1 Corinthians 15.
The LATER EMBELLISHMENTS ARE BLATANT.
1 Corinthians 15
It is so so easy.
The Temptation of Jesus at the Jewish Temple in gMatthew is a LATER EMBELLISHMENT.
ALL the post-resurrection Visits in the Pauline Corpus are LATER EMBELLISHMENTS.
The version of the Jesus stories in gMatthew and the Pauline Corpus are LATER than the version in the short gMark.
We all know the LATER EMBELLISHMENTS in gMatthew, gLuke, gJohn and the Pauline Corpus.
There are more BLATANT LATER EMBELLISHMENTS in the Pauline Corpus.
Anyone who has examined the short gMark would quickly recognise that the version of the Jesus story in that Gospel PREDATES the version of the Jesus story in the Pauline Corpus.
It will be noticed that if the same event with Jesus is found in the short gMark and the Pauline Corpus that the latter will have a LATER Embellished version.
A quick example of LATER Embellishment can be found in gMatthew about the Temptation of Jesus by Satan.
Examine the short gMark. There is just ONE verse.
Mark 1:13
1. Jesus was in the WILDERNESS.
2. Jesus was Tempted there for 40 days.
But examine the LATER Embellishments of the Temptation in gMatthew. Instead of ONE verse we now have ELEVEN verses of Embelishments.
The Temptation also took place at the JEWISH Temple and on an exceedingly high mountain.
Matthew4
The Temptation story in gMatthew is a LATER Embellished version when compared with the version in gMark.
Now, it can be easily shown that the version of the Resurrection story in the Pauline Corpus is a LATER Embellished version when compared to the short gMark.
Examine the short gMark version of the Resurrection story.
No-one is documented to have been SEEN of the Resurrected Jesus on the THIRD day in the short gMark.
Only ONE man in WHITE clothes claimed Jesus was resurrected.
Mark 16
Examine 1 Corinthians 15.
The LATER EMBELLISHMENTS ARE BLATANT.
1 Corinthians 15
It is so so easy.
The Temptation of Jesus at the Jewish Temple in gMatthew is a LATER EMBELLISHMENT.
ALL the post-resurrection Visits in the Pauline Corpus are LATER EMBELLISHMENTS.
The version of the Jesus stories in gMatthew and the Pauline Corpus are LATER than the version in the short gMark.
We all know the LATER EMBELLISHMENTS in gMatthew, gLuke, gJohn and the Pauline Corpus.
There are more BLATANT LATER EMBELLISHMENTS in the Pauline Corpus.
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Let me set down Paul's doctrine of resurrection. Read this passage, and then I will explain why is is evidently earlier than the Gospel account. (There is no description of the risen Jesus in the original text of gMark.)
But Paul never encountered with his physical eyes, the body of Jesus risen from the tomb. The gospels tell us that certain disciples were in the presence of the same flesh of Jesus, risen from the dead. Paul says that their experience was like his. Therefore it was a vision of a Jesus now in heaven. The doctrine of the physical rising of Jesus, found in the gospels, had not yet been invented. Instead, we have visions of a dead person.
Moreover, far from being unique to Jesus, this will happen to all of us!
Also, it will not be the same body, into which Thomas could put his hand in the very same wounds that had been inflicted on it. Far from that is Paul's doctrine!
Did you read verse 51? You don't even need to die, but you will be changed immediately when the Kingdom of God arrives, whether you are at that moment dead or still alive, and you will take on an immortal form. That is the important element of Paul's thinking here. This is more or less the opposite of what happens to Jesus, who keeps - it is stressed many times - the same body that was crucified.
Paul's doctrine is not the same as that which developed later, as the above clearly shows. It is quite evidently earlier than the Gospels, as scholars correctly acknowledge.
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I realize that you, Craig, and Ian S, and maximara accept as truth, the verdict of the "scholars", regarding the notion that Paul's epistles preceded Mark's gospel.Craig B said:
I do not.
I am puzzled why no one has yet addressed the substance of dejudge's comments, regarding elaboration of the same pericope in Mark's gospel, as described in Paul's letter to the Corinthian congregation.
I concur with dejudge's assessment, that Paul embellished Mark's gospel, and am equally puzzled, why no one on the forum has thus far commented on the substance of my post 391, which represents my own, perhaps inadequate, attempt to demonstrate the logic of dejudge's position, regarding a significant addition to the original story in Mark's gospel.
To put the matter in a different light, how can we defend the idea that Mark, possessing Paul's epistles, elaborated a story of Jesus, a history if you wish, which ignores the meat and potatoes of Paul's substantive declarations?
Further, how do all of those "scholars" explain the omissions of crucial details in Mark? Do they posit that Mark deliberately ignored the details found in Paul's epistles? How do scholars explain the fact that scribes copying subsequent editions of Mark's gospel did insert the word kaine, if that single word had not been deemed significant? It certainly challenges Judaism. It grants Paul authority to make a huge change to the fundamental principle guiding the religion, and it could not, in my opinion, have been ignored by both Mark and Matthew, had they been in possession of Paul's change in the contract with God, i.e. the new covenant.
You write that everyone except dejudge believes that Paul wrote first, but how then, do you explain Mark and Matthew ignoring Paul's change in the covenant, if they wrote after Paul? Do you wish to assert that Paul's faction, which preceded Mark and Matthew's faction, violated the laws of Judaism, so that those gospel authors felt compelled to ignore Paul's text? But then, how do you explain the overlap in stories, including the last supper, if Paul did not have Mark's gospel, before him? Do you mean to write, that "scholars" and yourselves, acknowledge the veracity of Paul's claim to have learned of the events of the last supper, including Jesus' blood oath, by hallucination, rather than by reading Mark's gospel? I can understand how true believers, and superstitious folk could accept such nonsense, but scholars?
Which is more logical: Mark wrote a story. Paul used Mark's gospel, then, to create his own version;
or, Paul learned of Jesus' life by divine intervention, and then, Mark, having read Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, [Mark living in Alexandria, Egypt, at the time, only a hop skip and a jump away from Corinth, in Greece--what's ten thousand kilometers among friends], took, without acknowledgement, the main elements of Paul's story, and simply ignored whichever details, in Paul's letter to the folks in Corinth, seemed unimportant, (like the fact that Paul had changed Moses' covenant) in writing his own story?
I'm sure it's of no great significance, but the distance from Corinth to Alexandria is 984.92 km / 531.81 nautical miles.
Summarizing then, the nuts and bolts of post 410, do "scholars" maintain that Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, describing Jesus' explanations of the blood oath to his compatriots gathered round the dinner table, based not on reading Mark's gospel, but on hallucinations, and visions of the supernatural? How did Paul come by the knowledge of what Jesus had said, according to these scholars, absent intercourse with the apostles themselves, i.e. Mark's gospel?
I maintain that the letter to Corinthians had been composed well after, decades subsequent to issuance of Mark's gospel.
Which was more facile in that era of strife and restricted travel: procurement of a private letter addressed to a group resident somewhere in Corinth--no one knows where--, or acquisition of a published document sold by hawkers on every street corner in Alexandria and Rome?
I maintain that the letter to Corinthians had been composed well after, decades subsequent to issuance of Mark's gospel.
Which was more facile in that era of strife and restricted travel: procurement of a private letter addressed to a group resident somewhere in Corinth--no one knows where--, or acquisition of a published document sold by hawkers on every street corner in Alexandria and Rome?
What I mean by saying that P46 is supposed to be (according to the usual dating almost always cited by all bible scholars and afaik almost all other authors), is that P46 at circa.200 AD is said to be the earliest relatively complete and almost fully readable manuscript from which we can be pretty sure of all that the author was saying about his Jesus beliefs.
For other fragments that are reliably said to be probably earlier than P46, afaik they are either nowhere near as complete and/or nowhere near as fully readable, such that we can be as confident as we are with P46 that the missing or illegible parts of those earliest gospel remnants could not of contained words or sentences showing that the writers belief in Jesus was actually no more than belief in a spiritual Jesus.
Afaik, P46 is more extensive, more complete and more readable for the actual detail that has been used to give a more-or-less full reading of what that author actually said about his Jesus beliefs.
Although there are, as I say, apparently small fragments such as P52, which are said by some to possibly date as early as 125 AD, and much more extensive remnants which are said to perhaps pre-date P46, afaik none of those are in such extent and such condition that we can be reasonably sure that the missing or illegible parts would not have contained sentences or words that could have shown that the authors were actually describing only a spiritual belief rather than clearly describing a human Jesus.
I think that P46, if it truly dates to 200 AD, has to count as the earliest account of anyone's complete beliefs about Jesus. At least, afaik, that is the case.
Well I don't!
Why do you think I regard Paul's letters as pre-dating any gospel writing?
I have made it clear at least 100 times in this thread (literally 100 times!), that all I am saying about the date of Paul's letters is that bible scholars and even most sceptic writers such as Carrier, Ellegard, Wells, Doherty, Avalos etc., all seem to regard Paul's letters as pre-dating any gospels.
All I have said about that is - if those bible scholars and sceptic authors are right to think that Paul’s letters came before the gospels, then on that specific basis, we can draw the sort of conclusions that I have described. That's all.
What is preventing who ever wrote Mark from using Paul's writings as a source as far as the blood oath is concerned?
Remember that the area Paul and early Christianity were in was about the size of modern Israel...at best around 8500 square miles. The United States only has three states smaller then this: Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Travel even on foot through this region was doable within a reasonable period of time.
Pope Clement I's only extant letter 1 Clement is generally dated to the late 90s CE mentions Paul and as shown previously though he doesn't mention him by name Paul's ideas show up in Justin Martyr's writings. Yet of our Gospels themselves not so much as a line is paraquoted until the 130s.
As I also mentioned before Marcion of Sinope is thought by some to be first editor to put some the "Pauline" epistles into the form that they more or less have had over the centuries c140 CE. While it was stated that his Apostolikon contained 10 epistles of Paul we don't know which epistles they were.
The Apostolikon may have included some or even all of the "lost" letters of Paul rather than any of the pseudepigraphic or questionable letters:
1) The earlier letter to Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:9)
2) the Severe Letter (2 Corinthians 2:4 and 2 Corinthians 7:8–9)
3) an earlier epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:3–4)
Given Marcion of Sinope's Evangelikon was some form of Luke and his idea that the true God had sent Jesus to save us from the incompetent and-or malicious demiurge that the Jews worshiped I wouldn't put it past Marcion to "improve" what Paul wrote. On a side note Marcion held the Evangelikon was also the work of Paul.
So we have Paul and his writings either referenced or used long before Marcion shows up with our first actual use of a Gospel as a definitive Christian work which Marcion credits to Paul.
What or where do you propose or deduce that area is?
What evidence do your have for Christianity in the 40s being outside of the area that is effectively modern Israel?
If we point the churches Paul was writing to from c 55 to c 65 then we have to ask if he was actually writing to followers of Jesus or to the remnants of other messiah cults to convince them that Jesus rather then their original founder was the messiah.
Just as the spirit of John Frum was said to have been around since the 1910s but didn't hit critical mass until 1940. Having Paul as a converter of already existing messiah cults to the Jesus "brand" seems to make some degree of sense. It would certainly explain the wild diversity reported in Against Heresies (c180); I can't see that kind of fragmentation if Paul and the Gospels were co authored in the 130s.
I can see exactly that kind fragmentation if Paul was converting lready existing messiah cults with one sub cult writing the Gospels later and them creating an elaborate back history for those works.
I think that is highly plausible; which is why I asked the question.
Paul was supposedly from Tarsus and spent a reasonable amount of time in Ephesus in Asia Minor. Miletus and other places in Anatolia features in his journeys, too.
He wrote letters to other places, of course: to the Galatians (also in Anatolia); the Thessalonians, Philippians, and the Corinthians - all in Greece.
The Book of Revelation mentions the Seven Churches of Asia: Ephesus, Magnesia, Thyatira, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Pergamon, and Laodicea.
The tradition of John the Apostle was strong in Anatolia. The authorship of the Johannine works 'traditionally' and plausibly occurred in Ephesus, although some scholars argue for an origin in Syria.
Christianity took over pagan churches in some of those areas.
.
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Christian writers of antiquity claimed "Paul" knew gLuke and commended it and that the Pauline Corpus was written AFTER the Apocalypse of John so the Pauline writers could have used not only gMark but also gLuke and the supposed Revelation of John.
Against Heresies 3
Origen's Commentary of Matthew 1
The Muratorian Canon
The Muratorian Canon
Church History 6
It is extremely clear that for HUNDREDS of years Christian writings of antiquity have acknowledged that gLuke was known to the Pauline writers and that gLuke is the GOSPEL of "PAUL".
I have PRESUMED and ASSUMED Nothing.
I PRESENT the evidence from antiquity to SUPPORT my argument.
It can also be confirmed that the Pauline writers knew of gLuke by examining 1 Cor.11.24-26 and the LATER EMBELLISHED gLuke
1 Corinthians 11:24
The supposed Pauline revelation MATCHES the version of the Last Supper of the LATER EMBELLISHED gLuke.
Luke 22
There is still MORE evidence from antiquity that the Pauline Corpus was a very Late compilation and was UNKNOWN up to at least c 180 CE or AFTER the writing of "True Discourse" attributed to Celsus c 175-180 CE.
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