maximara
Remember I am talking about what Paul preached shortly after his conversion while what we have is some 20 or perhaps 30 years later. We simply don't know what Paul what was teaching before the mid 50s to 60s CE
We aren't completely in the dark, though. Paul writes retrospectively about his preaching career. We have a real break in
1 Coritnthians, since we can see him changing the story right then and there (people are going to die before Jesus shows, so only
some of us escape death). There is no prize for reverse engineering what Paul's story was originally.
Which is at odds with the Gospels and Acts. Jesus has returned in Matthew 28, Luke 24, John 20–21, Mark 16, and Acts.
Yes, the story changed, even during Paul's career, never mind the further decades before the canon closed. The "return" for Paul, however, refers to after the "sightings."
John 21 is set during the sighting phase, and the take-home message is that Jesus' return will be substantially delayed compared with what had been the last-ditch "apostolic generation" forecast.
But Jesus is still coming - even in Islam. What remains constant is that when you and I and everybody else eventually see Jesus, all at the same time, not just private visits, it will be big.
Logic based on a bad premise isn't good logic.
No, Paul's logic is fine. Logic tells you some of what else is true if your premises are true, assuming the premises themselves aren't contradictory. That's it. Logic doesn't help choose the premsies, except sometimes, if they are contradictory, then you can detect that. But not always.
In your little story, what the human would actually say is "Who gives a damn what the world would be like if elephants were pink? They aren't." OK. But if you happen to want to know anyway, then logic will oblige. "Who gives a damn what the world would be like if dead people didn't stay dead? They do." Well, what do you know... lots of folks find that premise interesting and want to know more. Fantasy + logic = Ka-ching.
Logic requires constancy and clearly Paul was waffling more then a politician running for office.
Not really. Paul changes his premises over time. Everybody does. It's called learning. We have no examples of Paul writing simultaneously to different audiences, so there is no way to tell, from what reaches us, that there was anything that would fairly be called "waffling."
If the reader accepts only the current story, and is unwilling to apply sceptical heuristics to the whole succession of stories (something like Feynman's principle - if the more carefully you look, the less that is supposedly there, then consider that there is nothing there at all), then that's on the reader, not on Paul. Of course, we, the living, are long past Paul, and some of the current Christianities contradict themselves (never mind each other, and never mind Paul).
