The Pauline Corpus are very late writings.

[Leumas]

...
The downside is that you can't do that unless you study enough Greek, Latin, probably Hebrew and Aramaic, and classical philology to be a genuine expert on the subject. (I'm not and I've never claimed that I am).
...

What an amazing argument... in other words you are saying

Neither he nor you know and cannot even hope to know. Only "experts" can know.​

So your argument is nothing but

• Argument from biased Authority
• Appeal to majority
• Argument from incredulity
• Argument from credulity

Your argument is THE SAME as the only argument left for theism

You cannot prove god cannot exist therefore he does... there!!!​

Unfortunately for your argument, unlike for the 1800 years when humanity was utterly duped by the Christian "experts" in fairy tales and poppycock, we today have books that are opposed to the Christian "experts" in myths and claptrap and they can no longer subdue and burn those books along with their writers because they expose the emptiness of their "expertise" in fables and hogwash.

So there are experts that tell you that you are wrong and that he is right.... have you read these experts' books? Or have you only read books that enforce your WISHED UPON view?

Here are a couple of books about Paul

• The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul
  
  First, the closer scrutiny the Pauline texts receive, the clearer it becomes (and by now it seems mighty clear indeed) that the epistles present us with many of the same challenges the Gospels did. They appear to be filled with the same variety of redactional seams, non-sequiturs, and double-audience rhetorical tricks we find in the Gospels. In short, the historical Jesus problem replicates itself in the case of Paul. The epistles reveal themselves to the discerning reader to have exactly the same sort of limitations as the Gospels do: both are collections of fragments and pericopae contributed and fabricated by authors and communities of very different theological leanings. Both present barriers to the access of the individuals under whose names they appear, not open doors.​
• The Fabricated Paul. Early Christianity In The Twilight
  
  This exciting history of the spuriousness of all the Pauline writings allows the time of earliest Christianity to appear in an entirely new light and invites a critical consideration and new evaluation of presumably certain facts of Christian history.​

Also, unfortunately for your claim that one cannot know because one is not an expert in multiple dead languages, here is a book that WILL ENABLE even the non-experts to know

• The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-four Formative Texts
  
  In this monumental work, Professor Price offers an inclusive New Testament canon with twenty-seven additional sacred books from the first three centuries of Christianity, including a few of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi writings. Price also reconstructs the Gospel of Marcion and the lost Gospel according to the Hebrews. Here, for the first time, is a canon representing all major factions of the early church.
  
  As an interpretive translation, Price’s text is both accurate and readable and is tied more closely to the Greek than most previous translations. Price conveys the meanings of words in context, carefully choosing the right phrase or idiom to convey their sense in English. ...
  
  Within the collection, each book is introduced with comments about the cultural setting, information about when a document was probably written, and significant textual considerations, which together form a running commentary that continues into the footnotes. The findings of scholars, documented and summarized by Price, will come as a surprise to some readers. It appears, as Price suggests, that most of what is known about Jesus came by way of revelation to Christian oracles rather than by word of mouth as historical memory. In addition, the major characters in the New Testament, including Peter, Stephen, and Paul, appear to be composites of several historical individuals each, their stories comprising a mix of events, legend, and plot themes borrowed from the Old Testament and Greek literature.
  
  In the New Testament world, theology developed gradually along different trajectories, with tension between the charismatic ascetics such as Marcion and Thecla, as examples, and the emerging Catholic orthodoxy of such clergy as Ignatius and Polycarp. The tension is detectable in the texts themselves, many of which represent “heretical” points of view: Gnostic, Jewish-Christian, Marcionite, and proto-orthodox, and were later edited, sometimes clumsily, in an attempt to harmonize all into one consistent theology.
  ...
  The critical insights and theories on display in these pages have seldom been incorporated into mainstream conservative Bible translations, and in many ways, Price has made the New Testament a whole new book for readers, allowing them, by virtue of the translation, to comprehend the meaning of the text where it is obscured by the traditional wording. Whatever usefulness teachers, students, and clergy may find here in terms of pedagogical and inspirational value, The Pre-Nicene New Testament is guaranteed to provoke further thought and conversation among the general public—hopefully toward the goal of more personal study and insights.​

 

[Leumas]

The Pauline texts are not necessarily written by Paul but just by the same individual.

Not even that.

The case with the Pauline epistles can be likened to the 1001 Arabian Nights... the stories are supposed to have been the telling of a woman called Scheherazade who told the stories to a despot king over 1001 nights so as to avoid having him cut her head off.

Some make the mistake that the woman Scheherazade was a real woman... not stopping for a second to think that she might have been just another protagonist of the fables as any of the other fables she is depicted to have narrated.

More laughably, some people could think that the stories might have historic content just because they mention factual places and real human beings like caliph Whatshamacallhim etc.

Yet even more astoundingly preposterous is when some others argue that Ali Baba and his 40 disciples were historic just because there are thieves in real life.

There is nothing magical about run of the mill thieves so why couldn't Ali Baba have been just a real man whom the all too real Scheherazade just embellished a little in her historical tall tales about him.

You see, had a despot Emperor 1600 years ago believed the 1001 Arabian Nights were the words of God and enforced it by the sword as such for 1500 years on numerous defeated and vanquished benighted peoples in replacement of their own equivalent but deemed inferior and false fables, then maybe today we might have numerous "experts" arguing for the existence and reality of Scheherazade and Aladdin and Sinbad too.

Read this book to see how the equivalent of the 1001 Arabian Nights was indeed enforced on benighted and vanquished cultures wiping out numerous other fairy tales which today Christian "experts" deem to be fairy tales while arguing incessantly that Christianity is not so much.

• Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years

 

[dejudge]

The Pauline Corpus are very late writings.

In order to argue letters under the name of Paul were early some have claimed that a writing attributed to Clement mentions Paul and a letter to the Corinthians.

But, let us examine the so-called Clement letter, line by line and word by word.

1. The letter is really ANONYMOUS.

2. The ANONYMOUS letter states NOWHERE that Paul wrote letters to Churches since 50-60 CE.

3. There is NO corroborative historical data for Clement.

4. The earliest manuscript with the so-called Clement Epistle is dated to the 4th century.

5. The very Church writers did not know when their supposed Clement lived, when he was bishop of Rome, what he wrote, when he wrote them and when he died.

6. The Anonymous letter attributed to Clement was UNKNOWN by many Christian writers and supposed BISHOPS of the Church.

The Anonymous letter attributed to Clement is completely useless to date letters under the name of Paul to c 50-60 CE.

 

[Brian-M]

I believe this is why the notion of innocent until proven guilty is so popular. However, who decides the "innocent" side in this case? What's the default going to be?

Strictly speaking, it should be: Not-guilty until proven guilty.

That's the null position. You don't accept the claim that someone is guilty until you have evidence of their guilt, nor do you accept the claim that someone is innocent until you have evidence of their innocence.

(Of course, for practical reasons, you don't lock people up simply because you don't have evidence that they're innocent, because if you did that you'd have to lock everyone up, because anybody could be guilty of something for which no evidence of their innocence is possible.)

Now apply this to the Pauline Corpus, it's neither guilty nor innocent of being an early work until proven to be or not be an early work.

While it's generally true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, in situations where you'd normally expect to find evidence of something's presence, the absence of evidence of presence is evidence of absence.

For example, if you take a look around somebody's house and yard, and you see no dog, you don't hear a dog, you see no dog-food, no water-bowl, no leashes or dog-toys, ect, then this absence of evidence of a dog would be evidence of absence of a dog.

Sure, there could be a dog. It's possible that a dog is on the property. Maybe it has squeezed itself behind the sofa, or is taking a nap in a wardrobe somewhere. But the apparent utter absence of both dog and dog paraphernalia is more than adequate to conclude that the dog is "innocent" of existing.

What dejudge is doing is making a case for the Pauline Corpus being "innocent" of early existence based on the same kind of lack of expected evidence that supports the case that a dog is "innocent" of existing on somebody's property.

 

[fuelair]

Bible all faked - story at eleven!!!

 

[David Mo]

Here's one example of what you could do: go through facsimiles of the oldest extant manuscripts of Pauline epistles and show that language in them is not 1st century Greek but from 3rd or 4th centuries. Show that the texts contain anachronisms that make it impossible that they are from the first century. In short, do the stuff that led scholars to conclude that Daniel was written much later than the claimed date.

The downside is that you can't do that unless you study enough Greek, Latin, probably Hebrew and Aramaic, and classical philology to be a genuine expert on the subject. (I'm not and I've never claimed that I am).

I agree with the first paragraph.

About the second paragraph, I think you can try another thing, without the need for studying neither Aramaic nor ancient Latin. You can present here some studies of qualified historians and maybe we can comment their arguments. But the litanies of Dejudge or the maximalist points of view (not manuscript, not authentic) are absolutely null. There is no relation between his premises and his conclusions.

 

[David Mo]

There are two main problems with the question of the historical Jesus and the historical Paul now.
First of all: The usual standards of evidence used in empirical sciences and Law courts are not applied in the history of Antiquity. When we have to date an ancient text that is usually (in 99%) known by more modern manuscripts and for references in other texts, we have to consider some conditions in what the text could be false. Some of these contrary evidences had been mentioned by Marras above. The more or less weight of the evidences implies a more or less degree of suspicion. To find absolute evidence about a fact of the ancient world is rather the exception.
Secondly: The evidence about particular facts or individuals in history of the Antiquity is far less consistent than our knowledge of global/social events. The psychological reasons of Alexander the Great to invade Persia are more uncertain than the effect of the invasion about the ideology of royalty in the Hellenistic world. Alexander’s psychology is a subject for novels or imaginative biographies more than a purely historical one. The problem with the historical Jesus or Paul is that we are engaged in some individual events (“Jesus” and “Paul”) and not in collective beliefs (ideology of the early Christianity). And this is so because the background is not a historical one. This debate is being developed outside of the contemporary trends of historical research. It involves believers and atheists or agnostics in a quarrel hardly compatible with the usual development of the history as a human science.

Having said this, the present debate is interesting for some collateral reasons.

Some problems in the background:
1. Is the mere existence of an obscure prophet in Jerusalem in the first century relevant for the cause of atheism or Christianity? No.
2. We have some absolute reasons to belief that this individual existed or not existed? No. There are only some hints in one sense or another.
3. Why the hell we waste our time discussing this irrelevant question among atheists and agnostics? This is an interesting question. I have not a simple answer.

 

[Aepervius]

"...wrote in 1889..."

Oh, well, if you can't trust scholars writing 126 years ago, who can you trust?

It is a fallacy. Because it was written 2000year ago or 126 does not mean it is less true than if it was written today.

The question is not WHEN it was written, but rather "did archeological evidence or other study provide evidence to the contrary".

 

[calebprime]

It is a fallacy. Because it was written 2000year ago or 126 does not mean it is less true than if it was written today.

The question is not WHEN it was written, but rather "did archeological evidence or other study provide evidence to the contrary".

-Some new evidence has come to light: Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls.

-Times have changed. It used to be career suicide to question the Bible.

So, for these and many, many other reasons, scholarship has progressed somewhat.

It would also be a logical fallacy to think that, if someone points a gun at you and says they're going to shoot you, that they are necessarily going to shoot you.

 

[Aepervius]

-Some new evidence has come to light: Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls.

-Times have changed. It used to be career suicide to question the Bible.

So, for these and many, many other reasons, scholarship has progressed somewhat.

It would also be a logical fallacy to think that, if someone points a gun at you and says they're going to shoot you, that they are necessarily going to shoot you.

I am not disputing any of this, I am just pointing out that just implying it is wrong because its i 126 year old like Tsubbablubba implied is a fallacy.

 

[dejudge]

-Some new evidence has come to light: Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls.

-Times have changed. It used to be career suicide to question the Bible.

So, for these and many, many other reasons, scholarship has progressed somewhat......

If you have a copy of "Did Jesus Exist" by Bart Ehrman you will be shocked to see what he wrote concerning the veracity of Paul.

The claims by Paul are true because he SWEARS by God.

The truthfulness of Paul is confirmed by God.

Page 120 "Did Jesus Exist?"

"When Paul swears he is not lying, I generally believe him."

Page 122 "Did Jesus Exist?"

When Paul says that he "received" the tradition "from the Lord" he appears to mean that somehow--in a revelation?--the truthfulness of the account was confirmed to him by God or Jesus himself."

The bankruptcy of some so-called Scholars is appalling.

It is clear that there is no historical evidence for Paul and the Pauline Corpus so Scholars just BELIEVE Paul because he SWEARS by God.

 

[Craig B]

The bankruptcy of some so-called Scholars is appalling.

It is clear that there is no historical evidence for Paul and the Pauline Corpus so Scholars just BELIEVE Paul because he SWEARS by God.

It is your bankruptcy that is so appalling. People who attach importance to Paul swearing to God, believe in Paul's honesty, not necessarily in the accuracy of his statements. Honesty in saying you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky doesn't necessarily really mean you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky, does it? It means you think you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky.

I think we've discussed this before, dejudge, in terms of possible hallucination and mental disorder.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I am not disputing any of this, I am just pointing out that just implying it is wrong because its i 126 year old like Tsubbablubba implied is a fallacy.

I was referring to what Calebprime pointed out, and the fact that if the best scholar you can find to support your view lived 6 generations ago, well, that's really a pretty good indicator that you don't have a super strong case.

Seriously, the argument in this absurd thread are conspiracy theory level. It's pretty hard to take them seriously.

 

[dejudge]

The bankruptcy of some so-called Scholars is appalling.

It is clear that there is no historical evidence for Paul and the Pauline Corpus so Scholars just BELIEVE Paul because he SWEARS by God.

Page 120 "Did Jesus Exist?"

"When Paul swears he is not lying, I generally believe him."

Page 122 "Did Jesus Exist?"

When Paul says that he "received" the tradition "from the Lord" he appears to mean that somehow--in a revelation?--the truthfulness of the account was confirmed to him by God or Jesus himself."

It is your bankruptcy that is so appalling. People who attach importance to Paul swearing to God, believe in Paul's honesty, not necessarily in the accuracy of his statements. Honesty in saying you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky doesn't necessarily really mean you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky, does it? It means you think you've heard the voices of dead people talking to you from the sky.

I think we've discussed this before, dejudge, in terms of possible hallucination and mental disorder.

Please, you are not making any logical sense.

Possible Hallucinations, mental disorders, voices of the dead and talking from the sky are completely useless to show that letters under the name of Paul were composed c 50-60 CE and that Paul was a figure of history.

You have only exposed your own bankruptcy.

The Pauline Corpus is not history but the product of possible hallucinating mad MEN who SWEAR by God they heard voices of the dead from the sky.

 

[dejudge]

I was referring to what Calebprime pointed out, and the fact that if the best scholar you can find to support your view lived 6 generations ago, well, that's really a pretty good indicator that you don't have a super strong case.

Seriously, the argument in this absurd thread are conspiracy theory level. It's pretty hard to take them seriously.

What an absurd statement!!!

Why are people using IMAGINARY manuscripts of the Pauline Corpus which they claim were composed c 50-60 CE [ about 2000 years] to support their view?


What a super strong case for an historical Paul????

You don't have a clue!!!

Please, you seem to be "one of the distinguished army of crackpots" who have invaded this forum.

 

[Marras]

What an amazing argument... in other words you are saying

Neither he nor you know and cannot even hope to know. Only "experts" can know.​

No. I'm saying that if Dejudge wants to convince people that his argument is correct, he has to support it with evidence. And the only way he can gather the evidence is that he becames an expert himself. And he can do it if he wants to do it.

I myself am not interested enough in the subject to spend the thousands of hours of work that are needed to acquire the expertise, my research time is spread between two other narrow historical subjects that have nothing to do with church history. I'm slowly becoming an expert on those, but I've had to read hundreds of books and other publications to get the general background and to spend hundreds of hours in the archives poring through folders searching for information about the specific topics (curiously, arguing over the internet has not been a significant source for information, though occasionally someone has pointed me towards a book that I've missed). And yes, I've had to learn a new language for one of the subjects and my lack of complete fluency is a significant obstacle for the research.

I don't have time to start a third research topic, definitely not something as large as history of New Testament manuscripts.

Dejudge, on the other hand, spends a lot of time posting about his theories. He apprently feels strongly about them, but the ugly truth is that they will be ignored if he doesn't spend the time to first become an expert on the subject and then to gather and present the evidence in a scholarly format. If he is correct, there will be the evidence in the texts.

Being able to read the original sources is the first step on the road to expertise. It is such a basic thing that it always surprises me when people thing it's not necessary, it's like the folks who insist that they don't need to know mathematics to reform the modern physics. Translating a text always destroys some nuances from it.

It's not the case that either Bibical fundamentalists are correct or Dejudge is correct. They are not the only options. In a very simplified form the possibilities are:

1. Paul wrote his epistles and their contents are divinely inspired.

2. Paul wrote his epistles and their content is ********.

3. The epistles were forged before 175.

4. The epistles were forged after 175.

Dejudge is making a positive assertion that case 4 is true. If he wants to convince people of that, he needs provide positive evidence for that. Posting ten thousand posts about "imaginary manuscripts" won't convince anyone except for the anti-theists who are willing to believe any claim as long as it is against religion.

I personally believe that it's a combination of 2 and 3: Paul existed, wrote some of the epistles attributed to him while the others were later forged in his name, and their contents were not inspired by god because god does not exist. I'm not trying to convince you or Dejudge of that, believe whatever you want to believe.

I'm trying to point out that if he wants to change peoples' opinion, he has to give support for his claims. If he is correct, he can do it. If the bulk of the eary christian corpus are late forgeries, then there will be evidence for that in the text. There will be anachronist things where language and societal context is at odds with the supposed date and place of authorship, there will be texts that are supposed to be written centuries apart but that can be shown to have the same author, and other things like that. The discrepancies won't be as big as they are for Daniel, the time space is shorter and if they were that glaring someone would have already spotted them. But they will be there.

Dig that evidence up and show it for the world to see.

 

[Craig B]

Please, you are not making any logical sense.

Possible Hallucinations, mental disorders, voices of the dead and talking from the sky are completely useless to show that letters under the name of Paul were composed c 50-60 CE and that Paul was a figure of history.

Yes but epistles written by them are evidence. The mental disorders are not evidence, even if the statements are honest. This is very difficult, dejudge, so don't bother your head about it.

The Pauline Corpus is not history but the product of possible hallucinating mad MEN who SWEAR by God they heard voices of the dead from the sky.

I think you're now referring to the historicity of Jesus, which you must submit to the arbitration of the Moderators.

 

[dejudge]

No. I'm saying that if Dejudge wants to convince people that his argument is correct, he has to support it with evidence. And the only way he can gather the evidence is that he becames an expert himself. And he can do it if he wants to do it.

Your statement is quite illogical.

Based on your own absurdities, you yourself will still have to become an expert to know if I have gathered the CORRECT evidence to support my argument.

You have already admitted you are NOT an expert.

You have no idea if I have already gathered the CORRECT evidence.

How can a distinguished crackpot who admits he is not an expert and doesn't know Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic be convinced when he has no idea what the CORRECT evidence is or should look like??


It is rather strange that Marras has forgotten billions of people who BELIEVE that Paul was a figure of history and that letters under the name of Paul were composed c50-60 CE are not experts and have ZERO historical evidence for their BELIEF about him.

It is well known throughout the world that one does not have to be expert to EXAMINE or PRESENT evidence.

After examining writings of antiquity it has been found that Paul and the Pauline Corpus were INVENTED no earlier than c 175-180 CE or AFTER "True Discourse" attributed to Celsus.

Experts have already admitted that Paul was not a figure of history and that we have NO authentic letters under the name of Paul.

Essentially, ALL the PAULS were FRAUDS and letters were forgeries or falsely attributed but you don't know that because you are not an expert and have not gathered any evidence.

 

[Craig B]

Essentially, ALL the PAULS were FRAUDS and letters were forgeries or falsely attributed but you don't know that because you are not an expert and have not gathered any evidence.

Even if he was an expert and had gathered plenty evidence, he wouldn't know that.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

It is well known throughout the world that one does not have to be expert to EXAMINE or PRESENT evidence.

After examining writings of antiquity it has been found that Paul and the Pauline Corpus were INVENTED no earlier than c 175-180 CE or AFTER "True Discourse" attributed to Celsus.

Then would you please present it?
The only evidence you have provided so far is that the oldest extant manuscripts date back to that time, but that can mean a lot of things.
The oldest copy of Aristotle's work still in existence is from the 9th century CE, yet nobody claims that these works are medieval forgeries, attributed to an ancient Greek.
Your reply to Marras' post comes down to "I know what you are, but what am I?", and you ignore his points.

Do you have evidence for your claim that the Epistles were written in the late 2nd century AD and backdated?