Historical Jesus

[HansMustermann]

That said, correct, a character doesn't NECESSARILY have to be real, for people to put their words in his mouth. I mean, forget Paul, the best example there is Jesus himself. Everyone's been putting their stuff in his mouth like he's a catholic altar boy

 

[Skeptical Greg]

You don't seem to understand that up to now [20th April 2000] that the Roman Church does not know that at least some of the supposed Pauline letters must have been written by fraudsters.

Make that " does not care " ...

 

[HansMustermann]

Probably the best summing it up, really. I mean, they still base doctrine on 1 Timothy for example, even though their own scholars know it's forged.

 

[Darat]

That said, correct, a character doesn't NECESSARILY have to be real, for people to put their words in his mouth. I mean, forget Paul, the best example there is Jesus himself. Everyone's been putting their stuff in his mouth like he's a catholic altar boy

Or as Jesus said

“Don’t listen to that HansMustermann, he’s a tool of the devil”

 

[Darat]

Make that " does not care " ...

Not so much don’t care so much “yeah you’re not catching us out with that one, we took care of that 1800 years ago”.

 

[dejudge]

Once it is understood that NT Jesus did not exist then claims about the non-historical character in the so-called Pauline Epistles are extremely critical in understanding the veracity and history of the supposed author.

Since Jesus did not exist then whatever was written about him was made up, that is, the Jesus stories are total fiction.

Since the Jesus stories are total fiction then the claims that he had disciples/apostles in his company in Judea are total fiction.

The post-resurrection stories of Jesus and his disciples/apostles are also total fiction.

The NT stories in the Gospels are total fiction.

Jesus and the disciples/apostles are ONLY stories.



Now, in order for the Pauline writer to claim he was a persecutors of people who believed the Jesus stories it must mean that all the Jesus the stories predated the so-called Epistles of Paul.

1. The fable that Saul persecuted believers predated all the Epistles.

2. The fable in Acts that the apostles/disciples were filled with the Holy Ghost and talked in tongues were made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he talked in tongues.

3. The fable in the Gospels that there was a Last Supper with Jesus and the disciples/apostles was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he received the information from the resurrected Jesus.

4. The fable in the Gospels that Jesus died and was resurrected on the third day was made up before all the Epistles were invented.

5. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul was shipwrecked was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he was shipwrecked in the Epistle to the Corinthians.

6. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul met Peter and James was made up before the Galatians Epistle was composed.

7. The fable that Jesus was God Creator in gJohn was made up before the Epistles.

8. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul traveled to Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Galatia , Thesalonica and other places were already made up before the Epistles.

9. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul preached Christ crucified in the time of Claudius was made up before the Epistles were composed.

10. The fable in Acts that believers were baptised was made up before the Epistles.


The Pauline writers in order to hide their sources of information and deceive their readers they falsely claimed that they received them from a resurrected Jesus who never ever existed.

The Pauline writers either made up stories or used the Gospels and Acts to fabricate their fraudulent historically useless writings.

 

[abaddon]

Dejudge.

I asked you a question which you never answered.

There could have been a historical jebus, some zealot wandering the Levant 2000 years ago.
There could have been a bunch of them (and there were) that got munged into a singular composite.
There could have been no jebus at all.

As an atheist, I don't care. I am entirely comfortable with any of those. Because it doesn't matter to me.

However it matters very much to you.

Why does it matter so very much to you?

You never can answer that question.

Now, it might be that you will claim that it matters to me as well since I obviously post in these threads. Well, of course it matters to me because the god botherers are attempting to impose their god beliefs on me and everyone else. So of course it matters to me. Whether or not there really was a HJ or not is irrelevant to that reality.

But it matters very much to you. And you refuse to say why.

 

[HansMustermann]

@dejudge
Are you just going for proof by assertion at this point? Because you haven't actually supported any of this in any way so far. I mean, I'm all for discussing this kind of stuff, but what you're doing isn't a discussion, and isn't supporting it, it's just repeating the same assertions over and over again. Sadly we're not in the Hunting Of The Snark and you're not the bellman, so it doesn't just become true if you repeat it verbatim 3 (more) times

Besides, by now you're not even making any sense. I mean I'm all for debating the merits of the individual points on that bulleted list on their own, but for most of them there is absolutely no valid connection between that assertion and Paul being able to claim that he persecuted Xians. Most of them don't even have anything to do with it. Just asserting that those must have been true to reach a conclusion doesn't make it so.

 

[maximara]

Yep, the Barabbas story is total bollocks. That whole shtick of Pilate offering a traditional Passover amnesty was just a pile of horse feces - there was no such tradition as an amnesty to be be granted at Passover.

Pilate was a cruel, nasty and vindictive son of a bitch. The idea that he was somehow uneasy about killing a preacher was totally out of character. He would not be afraid that the Jewish crowds would yell at him and think bad of him. More than once he set sword wielding soldiers onto protesting crowds, killing them until the rest dispersed. Pilate would have offed Jesus in a heartbeat without a second thought.

It's not just the Barabbas story being total bollocks but every time you can actually cross reference claims about Jesus they don't fit with actual history - the census having people go to a totally different location then where they actually lived, the way the Romans handled Jesus capture, crucifixion, and later the body disappearing/going walk about , the irregularities in John - even Irenaeus pointed out that Jesus' comment only made sense if he was past the age of 45 which put his crucifixion in the time of Claudius Caesar (41 CE minimum) as he stated in Demonstrations (75), and the list goes on.

 

[dejudge]

Dejudge.

I asked you a question which you never answered.

There could have been a historical jebus, some zealot wandering the Levant 2000 years ago.
There could have been a bunch of them (and there were) that got munged into a singular composite.
There could have been no jebus at all.

As an atheist, I don't care. I am entirely comfortable with any of those. Because it doesn't matter to me.
However it matters very much to you.

Why does it matter so very much to you?

You never can answer that question.

Now, it might be that you will claim that it matters to me as well since I obviously post in these threads. Well, of course it matters to me because the god botherers are attempting to impose their god beliefs on me and everyone else. So of course it matters to me. Whether or not there really was a HJ or not is irrelevant to that reality.

But it matters very much to you. And you refuse to say why.

You appear to be confused.

You have contradicted yourself.

One time you say that you don't care about the historicity of your jebus and then shortly after you say you do.

Why do you mis-represent yourself?

 

[HansMustermann]

Now, in order for the Pauline writer to claim he was a persecutors of people who believed the Jesus stories it must mean that all the Jesus the stories predated the so-called Epistles of Paul.

But to return to this, basically I highlighted for you the one word that seems to be where you wave logic goodbye and plough straight into nonsense land.

No, there is no requirement for ALL stories to have been already written to have Jesus believers. The only requirement is to have SOME stories.

In fact, if you had ANY clue about the history of that time, you'd know that they'd continue making up more and more Jesus stories for more than a MILLENNIUM after, not just have the whole canon appear complete and whole at the same.

No, seriously, there is a Gospel Of Barnabas which borrows from Dante, so it's THAT late. The general consensus is anywhere between the 14'th and 16'th centuries, with most leaning towards the end of that. We're talking a millennium and a half after the supposed Jesus. The idea that you can just arbitrarily draw a line in the sand where it suddenly goes to ALL Jesus stories existed from NONE did, is just that nonsensical.

But basically it's not just back then. Even nowadays fanfic or in some cases official fic can spawn decades. All the Star Trek stories span from the 1960s to 2020. Works based on Lovecraft span even longer. And even before that, stories were routinely changed and republished. E.g., the version of Cinderella we have is the last iteration of changes to an ancient Egyptian story, where even the original message was changed.

But basically in simpler words believing that there were no fans until ALL the stories had been written is just as dumb for Jesus, as believing there were no Snow White fans before the Disney version. You have to be that completely disconnected from all reality to believe that for any set of stories either they're ALL there or there's NONE.

And to get to that silly list of yours:

1. The fable that Saul persecuted believers predated all the Epistles.

And you start strong, with the silliest nonsense first. Basically you create an infinite recursion right off the bat. If that logic works generally, and not arbitrarily just for the Epistles, then this is what you get: before someone wrote about someone persecuting Xians, ALL the stories must have been written, including the story about someone persecuting Xians. I.e., the story must have existed before it existed.

2. The fable in Acts that the apostles/disciples were filled with the Holy Ghost and talked in tongues were made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he talked in tongues.

This is utter nonsense, because neither invented that. The idea that special people could start speaking in a divine language, unintelligible to normal people, can be traced back at the very least to the 1st century BC. Whichever Xian story came first, just borrowed that from existing Jewish mystical nonsense.

But even here ultimately the bigger problem is that idiocy at the top: assuming that either ALL the stories existed, or there were no believers. There is no such requirement for any particular story, including the glosolalia bit.

3. The fable in the Gospels that there was a Last Supper with Jesus and the disciples/apostles was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he received the information from the resurrected Jesus.

BS. A communal meal, often actually called the supper of whatever their saviour was, was already stock and parcel of the Hellenistic saviour cults. So big surprise that the Xians too would have one, and end up having to regulate what constitutes a meal.

But even here ultimately the bigger problem is that idiocy at the top: assuming that either ALL the stories existed, or there were no believers. There is no such requirement for any particular story, including the Lord's Supper bit. (Incidentally Paul never actually calls it the Last Supper.)

4. The fable in the Gospels that Jesus died and was resurrected on the third day was made up before all the Epistles were invented.

The first recorded instance of a deity going to hell, dying, being hung up, and resurrecting after 3 days precedes Xianity by almost 2 MILLENNIA. It's the story of Inanna. So the idea that someone must have had to wait for the WHOLE Xian canon to be written before having that idea is patent nonsense.

5. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul was shipwrecked was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he was shipwrecked in the Epistle to the Corinthians.

Again, basically you create the same infinite recursion as for #1, if it weren't arbitrarily limited to just the epistles. Otherwise you have the recursive loop that before someone got shipwrecked going to preach to some Xians, to have Xians, you have to have ALL Xian stories already written, including the story of someone getting shipwrecked while going to see some Xians. I.e., the story must have existed before it existed.

But when you need to limit that no, no, see, this logic ONLY applies to this bit here, that's your clue that what you're doing is actually illogical.

But additionally basically it's based on not knowing what it's about. It's a version of Jonas. What Paul is saying is that he too is like Jonas, another messenger of God to the heathen. Whoever invented that story, basically just nicked it from the OT. As such, it didn't need any other preconditions.

6. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul met Peter and James was made up before the Galatians Epistle was composed.

Other than that dumb assertion that ALL stories must have been already written, I don't see how that even follows.

7. The fable that Jesus was God Creator in gJohn was made up before the Epistles.

Here you're seriously getting into nonsense land, because Paul never says that Jesus is the creator.

Note however that even if he did, the Logos being the firstborn and actually doing the creation is from Philos. Who preceded both. So saying that anyone must have waited for John to have that idea is patent nonsense.

But again, Paul says no such thing, so that's all a huge non-sequitur.

Amazing what kind of BS you can write with confidence when you're not burdened by actually having any actual clue WTH you're talking about, eh?

8. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul traveled to Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Galatia , Thesalonica and other places were already made up before the Epistles.

Aaand we're back to the same nonsensical recursion loop, ladies and gentlemen

9. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul preached Christ crucified in the time of Claudius was made up before the Epistles were composed.

Ditto.

10. The fable in Acts that believers were baptised was made up before the Epistles.

Again, you're just making an argument from not knowing WTH you're talking about. Baptism was stock and parcel of Hellenistic personal saviour cults. E.g., it's mentioned in both the cult of Isis and that of Serapis (i.e., the final iteration of Osiris.) And it's mentioned even in Judaea in the case of John The Baptist.

So the idea that anyone MUST have waited for Acts to do the same thing every other cult was already doing, is just nonsense. A pre-existing idea like that could have been nicked at any given time.

 

[dejudge]

1. The fable that Saul persecuted believers predated all the Epistles.

And you start strong, with the silliest nonsense first. Basically you create an infinite recursion right off the bat. If that logic works generally, and not arbitrarily just for the Epistles, then this is what you get: before someone wrote about someone persecuting Xians, ALL the stories must have been written, including the story about someone persecuting Xians. I.e., the story must have existed before it existed.

You don't know what you are talking about.

The Epistles were written after the fable that Saul persecuted believers.

Did not the Pauline writer state he was a persecutor BEFORE he started to preach?

How illogical can you be?

It is just total nonsense that Paul could have written Epistles before he was a persecutor.

2. The fable in Acts that the apostles/disciples were filled with the Holy Ghost and talked in tongues were made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he talked in tongues.

This is utter nonsense, because neither invented that. The idea that special people could start speaking in a divine language, unintelligible to normal people, can be traced back at the very least to the 1st century BC. Whichever Xian story came first, just borrowed that from existing Jewish mystical nonsense.....

Again, you don't know what you are talking about.

The fable that the apostles/disciple were filled with the Holy Ghost and talked in tongues predate the conversion of Paul.

It is completely ridiculous that Paul could have written Epistles before he was converted.

3. The fable in the Gospels that there was a Last Supper with Jesus and the disciples/apostles was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he received the information from the resurrected Jesus.

BS. A communal meal, often actually called the supper of whatever their saviour was, was already stock and parcel of the Hellenistic saviour cults. So big surprise that the Xians too would have one, and end up having to regulate what constitutes a meal.....

How illogical can you be?

The story about Jesus and the Last Supper in Corinthians happened before Paul was a persecutor.

The anonymous Pauline author must have written the Epistle after he received information from his resurrected Jesus.

4. The fable in the Gospels that Jesus died and was resurrected on the third day was made up before all the Epistles were invented.

The first recorded instance of a deity going to hell, dying, being hung up, and resurrecting after 3 days precedes Xianity by almost 2 MILLENNIA. It's the story of Inanna. So the idea that someone must have had to wait for the WHOLE Xian canon to be written before having that idea is patent nonsense......

You post more nonsense.

The story that Jesus died and resurrected was not written 2000 BCE.

The anonymous Pauline writer in Corinthians claimed he received information that his Jesus died and was raised from the dead on the third day.

The story that Jesus died and resurrected must have been known before the Epistles were written.

5. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul was shipwrecked was made up before the anonymous Pauline writer claimed he was shipwrecked in the Epistle to the Corinthians.

Again, basically you create the same infinite recursion as for #1, if it weren't arbitrarily limited to just the epistles. Otherwise you have the recursive loop that before someone got shipwrecked going to preach to some Xians, to have Xians, you have to have ALL Xian stories already written, including the story of someone getting shipwrecked while going to see some Xians. I.e., the story must have existed before it existed.......

You have no understanding of basic logic and chronology.

The claim by the writer called Paul that he was shipwrecked must have preceded the writing of the Epistle.

6. The fable in Acts that Saul/Paul met Peter and James was made up before the Galatians Epistle was composed.

Other than that dumb assertion that ALL stories must have been already written, I don't see how that even follows.

Again, you have no idea of logic or chronology.

The story by the so-called Paul that met Peter and James is expected to happen before he wrote the Epistle about meeting them.
.

7. The fable that Jesus was God Creator in gJohn was made up before the Epistles.

Here you're seriously getting into nonsense land, because Paul never says that Jesus is the creator.....

I never said Paul wrote that Jesus was the Creator.

The Epistles are products of fraudsters who fabricated a character called Paul no earlier than the late 2nd century.

8. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul traveled to Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Galatia , Thesalonica and other places were already made up before the Epistles.

Aaand we're back to the same nonsensical recursion loop, ladies and gentlemen.

You don't know what you are talking about.

In Acts there is no claim anywhere that Saul/Paul wrote Epistles up to c 62 CE. The stories in Acts predate all the Epistles.

9. The fables in Acts that Saul/Paul preached Christ crucified in the time of Claudius was made up before the Epistles were composed.

Ditto.

The anonymous Pauline writer implied he preached Christ crucified since the time of Aretas c37-41 42 CE so the fable that Christ was crucified must have predated all the Epistles.

10. The fable in Acts that believers were baptised was made up before the Epistles.

Again, you're just making an argument from not knowing WTH you're talking about. Baptism was stock and parcel of Hellenistic personal saviour cults. E.g., it's mentioned in both the cult of Isis and that of Serapis (i.e., the final iteration of Osiris.) And it's mentioned even in Judaea in the case of John The Baptist.

You are still showing a lack of basic logic and chronology.

An anonymous Pauline author claimed he baptised people. The story that he baptised people must occur before he writes the Epistle about the baptisms.

This is just basic logic.

All the fables about Jesus and Paul in the so-called Pauline Epistles were made up before the Epistles were written.

 

[HansMustermann]

Right, so basically at this point your argument has basically devolved from not knowing what you're talking about to pretending to not even understand what you read (e.g., reading that something was copied from cults that existed for 2000 years, and turning it into your own dumb strawman that "The story that Jesus died and resurrected was not written 2000 BCE"), equivocating between different versions of your claims (e.g., between something happened before X and your original claim that specifically the passage in ACTS must have happened before), and other dishonest nonsense. Got it. Well, it was clear all along that that's the best you can do, really. No big surprise there

 

[HansMustermann]

But in any case, let's return to the core on which all this nonsense seems to be built on, which is basically the same "they couldn't have made it up that early, because people would know he's lying" nonsense that the apologists do. Pointed at a different conclusion, but that seems to be the same gist of it.

Well, actually we know that Xians were not bothered by that. And let me give just one example:

So circa 172 AD, emperor Marcus Aurelius is surrounded by the Quadi barbarians and is apparently miraculously saved by divine intervention. (A storm came, really. That was the whole miracle.)

Emperor Marcus Aurelius actually starts minting coins to commemorate the event between 172 and 174 AD. But even without all the connecting evidence to the miracle, what's important is that they show a pagan god in a pagan temple and proclaiming it to be "Religio Augusti", i.e., religion of the Emperor. So, you know, he doesn't seem to have witnessed a Christian miracle, at the very least.

In 174 AD the column comemorating the event is finished, clearly depicting the pagan miracle.

Somewhere between 177 AD and 180 AD (depending on which historian you trust), Apollinaris Claudius writes a story in which the Emperor has a whole Christian legion, and their prayers to Jesus caused the miracle, and the Emperor himself was so impressed that he gave them the name The Thundering Legion. (On account of the storm, see? Incidentally, he didn't. The legion is already attested as having that name in 64 AD.)

Now that's not just 5 to 8 years after the fact, and while most witnesses were alive. The consensus is that it's most likely while Marcus Aurelius himself was was still alive. Because it's actually addressed to the emperor. It's a sort of an open letter, claiming point blank, basically, "hey, you've personally seen that our miracles work." They were already making BS about him witnessing a Christian miracle and honouring a Christian legion (when in fact they weren't even allowed in the army in his time) WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE.

The column was also still very much there. (And in fact, still is, if a bit damaged by acid rain in mothern times.) Let me stress that: not only there were witnesses around, there was this effing big stone monument depicting what really happened. There were those coins in circulation where, nope, far from honouring his Christian legions, the Emperor suddenly felt a need to reaffirm that the emperor's religion was something pagan. Etc.

Not only it was very much possible to verify that the Christian version was BS, it required one to ignore actual physical evidence (such as those coins) to believe the Christian BS.

But it was written anyway. And copied by the Christians anyway.

So yeah, the idea that they wouldn't make up some BS too soon after the event, doesn't really stand up to evidence. They actually show no such restraint. And their congregation doesn't seem skeptical enough to be bothered by it.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

dejudge,

This is my first post to this forum, and it is to a well-evolved discussion, so pardon me if I'm confused, but it sounds to me that you are conflating the internal chronology of stories' events with the external chronology of when the stories telling those events were written.

Acts recounts events before Paul could have written any epistles, and does not mention those epistles, therefore Acts was written before the Pauline epistles.

Do I have this right?

Genesis recounts the creation, and does not mention the birth of Moses, therefore Genesis was written before Moses was born.

The Phantom Menace recounts events before The Empire Strikes Back, and does not mention Luke Skywalker, therefore the Phantom Menace predates the Empire Strikes Back.

There are any number of reasons gLuke might not have mentioned the epistles, even if he knew about them. Perhaps he considered such letter-writing simply part of the routine business of the church, and not especially noteworthy. You cannot rule out those other reasons without more information than I suspect you have. I think you need a better argument for why Acts predates the Pauline epistles.

 

[dejudge]

dejudge,

This is my first post to this forum, and it is to a well-evolved discussion, so pardon me if I'm confused, but it sounds to me that you are conflating the internal chronology of stories' events with the external chronology of .when the stories telling those events were written.

Perhaps you are confused. I am not conflating anything. Please tell of the external chronology of when the stories telling those events were written?

Acts recounts events before Paul could have written any epistles, and does not mention those epistles, therefore Acts was written before the Pauline epistles.

Do I have this right?

My argument that Acts of the Apostles was written before all the so-called Pauline Epistles is not only based on the fact that the author of Acts wrote nothing at all of Saul/Paul as a letter writer to Churches and did not make reference to a single verse of any Epistle.

Acts of the Apostles, as the name implies, is supposedly about what the so-called apostles did.

The author of Acts mentioned over 130 acts of Saul/Paul and travelled with him around the Roman Empire but never mentioned a single act of writing a letter to any Church by Saul/Paul.

If the Epistles were not written before Acts of the Apostles then the author could not have claimed Saul/Paul wrote them and could not have made reference to them.

That is exactly what has happened.

I will argue forever or until eternity that Acts of the Apostles was written before the Epistles until evidence can be found- no evidence has ever been found.

Genesis recounts the creation, and does not mention the birth of Moses, therefore Genesis was written before Moses was born.

When was Moses really born and when was the creation story fabricated?

The Phantom Menace recounts events before The Empire Strikes Back, and does not mention Luke Skywalker, therefore the Phantom Menace predates the Empire Strikes Back.

Are those fiction movie characters?

There are any number of reasons gLuke might not have mentioned the epistles, even if he knew about them. Perhaps he considered such letter-writing simply part of the routine business of the church, and not especially noteworthy. You cannot rule out those other reasons without more information than I suspect you have. I think you need a better argument for why Acts predates the Pauline epistles.

Why have you assumed the author of gLuke wrote Acts?

Are you aware that gLuke was falsely attributed to Luke?

You seem not to understand the difference between speculation and reason. Your speculation about what may or may not have happened is rather useless.

It is most absurd for people to argue that the Pauline Epistles were written
c 50-60 CE and before Acts because of baseless speculation.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Perhaps you are confused. I am not conflating anything. Please tell of the external chronology of when the stories telling those events were written?



My argument that Acts of the Apostles was written before all the so-called Pauline Epistles is not only based on the fact that the author of Acts wrote nothing at all of Saul/Paul as a letter writer to Churches and did not make reference to a single verse of any Epistle.

Acts of the Apostles, as the name implies, is supposedly about what the so-called apostles did.

The author of Acts mentioned over 130 acts of Saul/Paul and travelled with him around the Roman Empire but never mentioned a single act of writing a letter to any Church by Saul/Paul.

If the Epistles were not written before Acts of the Apostles then the author could not have claimed Saul/Paul wrote them and could not have made reference to them.

That is exactly what has happened.

So that’s a ‘yes’ to my question.

An argument needs not just observations and conclusions, but also inferences linking said observations to those conclusions. You observe correctly that, if Acts were written before Paul wrote the Epistles, it could not mention the writing of those Epistles. However, it does not follow that, if Acts does not mention the writing of the Epistles, that it was written before the Epistles. That is affirming the consequent.

The argument you need, in order to have any logical force, is that, if Acts were *not* written before the Epistles, then they *would* mention those Epistles. Then your contention could follow from your observation by modus tollens. You have given no reason to think that that is the case.

You go on to complain that I do not seem to understand the difference between speculation and reason. I would point out that *your* position, if it is to be based more on than just affirming the consequent, depends crucially on speculation, namely: the conjecture that the author of Acts would have perforce mentioned Paul’s letters had he written after them. Counter-conjectures about other reasons why the author might have not mentioned Paul’s letters (e.g., He didn’t know about them, he didn’t consider them that noteworthy compared to stuff like miracles and exorcisms, etc.) are a relevant rejoinder to that conjecture.

 

[HansMustermann]

Perhaps you are confused. I am not conflating anything. Please tell of the external chronology of when the stories telling those events were written?



My argument that Acts of the Apostles was written before all the so-called Pauline Epistles is not only based on the fact that the author of Acts wrote nothing at all of Saul/Paul as a letter writer to Churches and did not make reference to a single verse of any Epistle.

Acts of the Apostles, as the name implies, is supposedly about what the so-called apostles did.

The author of Acts mentioned over 130 acts of Saul/Paul and travelled with him around the Roman Empire but never mentioned a single act of writing a letter to any Church by Saul/Paul.

If the Epistles were not written before Acts of the Apostles then the author could not have claimed Saul/Paul wrote them and could not have made reference to them.

That is exactly what has happened.

I will argue forever or until eternity that Acts of the Apostles was written before the Epistles until evidence can be found- no evidence has ever been found.

I'm sorry, but

1. If you want to make a positive claim, then you can help yourself to the burden of proof.

You don't get to just assert a positive. The only default is basically that we don't know. Anything else is not supported just because you argue the same assertion "forever or until eternity". Again, we're not in The Hunting Of The Snark, and you're not the Bellman. You don't get something to be true by just asserting it once more.

2. What you're doing here is just postulating a necessity out of the ass. There is no requirement that any particular piece of fanfic (which really is all that Acts is) recounts all the details about any particular character or circumstance.

In fact, virtually none do that. In fact it's just NORMAL for a piece of fanfic to tell a DIFFERENT story. Otherwise it would be just a copy, not fanfic.

That goes for both ancient and modern ones. E.g., the Nixon in Futurama or Dr Who also doesn't mention a lot of stuff that Nixon had been mentioned doing -- e.g., Watergate -- but it would be utterly dumb to take that as an indication that Nixon's story was invented after those Dr Who episodes. E.g., the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella and the original ancient Egyptian story both miss or differ in significant details from each other, but it would be dumb to conclude that therefore the Egyptian version was written after Brothers Grimm version. E.g., the infamous 1973 Mary Sue story doesn't mention a lot of details from the Star Trek original series it's set in, and changes the characters in key ways, but it would be dumb to take that as meaning that the original Star Trek series came after the Mary Sue story. Etc.

But especially for ancient mythmaking it's just NORMAL to take an existing and recognizable story -- whether you actually used the same character names or not -- and make your own key changes to it. That was the whole POINT. Otherwise you'd be just copying the existing story.

3. So far you've also just dodged the issue that for such forgeries and fake biographies to be worth anything, the name Paul had to ALREADY carry some authority and be taken for real by the audience. In fact, a lot more so than even names like Peter or James, judging by the sheer amount of such. The whole POINT of forging a book in someone else's name was just a fraudulent appeal to authority.

So if Paul's story starts in Acts, how did that happen? If all those churches were founded by Peter and James and the like, and those were the names they knew, what's even the POINT of forging letters in some NEW guy's name? What is your take of how that happened?

Go on. Have a coherent theory there, if you want it to not just make historical sense, but more sense than the traditional narrative.

When was Moses really born and when was the creation story fabricated?

It's a modification of earlier creation myths in the area. As for when specifically Genesis was composed, most scholars place it anywhere between the 10'th century BC (with some heavy modifications in the 5'th) and the 6'th century BC. In any case, centuries after the events it purports to tell.

Are those fiction movie characters?

In the form described in the book, pretty much.

Why have you assumed the author of gLuke wrote Acts?

Nobody just assumes that, and I already told you repeatedly about the style analysis and all. Including that that's how we know that whole swathes of it are written by someone else. By more than one, in fact.

At this point you're just back to your silly style of sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that whatever objection your CT doesn't have an answer to, verily it never even existed.

Are you aware that gLuke was falsely attributed to Luke?

It's not exactly a revelation for anyone who's had even the most superficial interest in the topic

You seem not to understand the difference between speculation and reason. Your speculation about what may or may not have happened is rather useless.

It is most absurd for people to argue that the Pauline Epistles were written
c 50-60 CE and before Acts because of baseless speculation.

1. If it were just baseless speculation, sure, you'd have a point.

BUT even more importantly

2. The same applies to YOUR speculation. Especially when what that's all you appear to have to support it. Just because you repeat the same assertions over and over again, doesn't mean they somehow magically become anything else.

Again, if you want to be just the guy falling back to the null hypothesis, then just say we don't know. The moment you assert a certain order, that's when you get a burden of proof.

 

[abaddon]

You appear to be confused.

You have contradicted yourself.

One time you say that you don't care about the historicity of your jebus and then shortly after you say you do.

Why do you mis-represent yourself?

Can you read?

It matters not to me whether or not a HJ existed. I don't care one way or the other.

It matters a lot to me that the christian loons try to impose their various jesuses on ME right now.

How difficult is that to figure out?

Do you ******* need me to explain it again in shorter words or what?

 

[dejudge]

So that’s a ‘yes’ to my question.

An argument needs not just observations and conclusions, but also inferences linking said observations to those conclusions. You observe correctly that, if Acts were written before Paul wrote the Epistles, it could not mention the writing of those Epistles. However, it does not follow that, if Acts does not mention the writing of the Epistles, that it was written before the Epistles. That is affirming the consequent.

The argument you need, in order to have any logical force, is that, if Acts were *not* written before the Epistles, then they *would* mention those Epistles. Then your contention could follow from your observation by modus tollens. You have given no reason to think that that is the case.

It is apparent that you joined this thread very late and may not be familiar with the contents of Acts of the Apostles and other writings of antiquity.

It would be expected that the author of Acts would mention that Saul/Paul wrote letters to Churches or anyone especially when the author mentioned those who gave letters to Saul/Paul.

1. In Acts 9.2 it is claimed Saul/Paul received letters from the high priest giving him authority to arrest believers of the Church in Damascus.

2. In Acts 15 It is claimed that the Church of Jerusalem as advised by James with the elders and apostles wrote letters to the Gentiles of the Churches of Antioch, Syria and Cilicia and gave those letters to Saul/Paul and his travelling companions to be delivered .
The contents of the letters Saul/Paul received are also found in Acts 15.

3. In Acts 28 It is claimed Saul/Paul being a prisoner, was sent to Rome and that he met with Jews however during the meeting the Jews admitted they had not received any letters about Paul from Judea.

4. In Acts 24 -Acts 28 it must be noted that Saul/Paul was held as a prisoner for about 2-3 years prior to going to Rome for the first time so it is extremely unlikely that the Epistle to the Romans was written by Saul/Paul when he was held in bonds.

5.In Acts, Saul/Paul did not have any letter for anyone or Church upon arrival in Rome.

It is clear the author of Acts mentioned those who gave letters to Saul/Paul and even shared the contents so it would be expected that the author would have mentioned the letters Saul/Paul wrote and would have given some details of their contents.

Based on Acts of the Apostles and other writings of antiquity Jesus, the disciples and Paul are fiction characters and all the Epistles are fraudulent historically worthless writings fabricated no earlier than the 2nd century.