Acts: Paul's story

[1over137]

So, I finished reading Acts. I'd like to present some words below (from ESV) showing about Paul. This might help some unbelievers, even more if there are other historical documents about him. What are they?

from Acts 22:

3“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel1 according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day. 4I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, 5as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished.

6“As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. 7And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ 8And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ 9Now those who were with me saw the light but did not understand2 the voice of the one who was speaking to me. 10And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ 11And since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus.

12“And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, 13came to me, and standing by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. 14And he said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; 15for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. 16And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’

17“When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance 18and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ 19And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. 20And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’ 21And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”

So, Paul was not just anybody, but an educated fellow.

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

So, Paul was not just anybody, but an educated fellow.

Paul was highly educated and so was Luke. God used both to write significant portions of the New Testament but don't count on educated people to be...lovers of God.

These days, I go around to a lot of schools to shut down their automated coffee machines for the summer months. This work takes about 30 minutes to two hours depending on the complexity of the machine and during that time I hear the most stupid things coming from some very smart people. Here are some examples:

-in a kindergarden, the woman in charge of buying books for the coming year ordered a series of books Madonna wrote on values. Madonna - the pop star - is now going to be a values model for some poor Canadian children. Madonna has replaced Jesus! I heard the woman ordering the books over the telephone. I turned and looked at her, half expecting her to be wearing a clown suit!

-in a university, two professors were chatting about ''Universal Consciousness'' and the importance of ''getting chakrahs aligned with the Universe's energy.''

-in a school for children aged 6-11, movers were re-arranging the furniture to align it with the principles of Feng-shui to facilitate the circulation of ''the energy field.''

My point is, 1: smart people can be quite foolish, and, 2: education is no vaccine against nonsense.

FL

[RickD]

But FL, those are Canadian smart people. Canadian geniuses have an IQ equal to a person of average intelligence in most other countries.
If you remember Bob and Doug McKenzie(from the 1980's), they were both members of the MENSA society of Canada, eh.

[1over137]

such nonsense

What I meant was that intelligent unbelievers may start reading Paul (and Luke) as well as look at historical sources about them (are there any?). Also Rich (site owner) was given Luke to read first. How to know whether Paul was not speaking nonsense? Well, he was healing people, but ...

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

How to know whether Paul was not speaking nonsense?

Atheists will see nonsense in Christianity because they hate God, and for no other reason. The Bible is an historical document and its reading is much different from the reading of mystical books like the Koran or the Bahgavad-gita. Atheists seek to denigrate God's actions in the Bible or those he ordered his people to do. The mystical nonsense of other faiths is not criticized by atheists.

Another stupid belief I come across in schools/universities is The Third Eye: an invisible eye in the middle of one's forehead. Howard Klemp's photo* is also to be seen here and there.

FL

*Howard Klemp is a god born in Wisconsin, USA. He is the leader of EKANKAR.

[1over137]

I was searching the net on the Paul as a historical figure and found some site with following quotes from various people, scholars. You are not going to like it but I had to post it since I need to explain things out.

"Paul derived this narrative of the last supper, not from companions of Jesus, but as one of the private revelations [sic] to which he was liable. It rests, therefore, on no basis of fact, but, like much of Paul's conception of Jesus, is partly, or wholly, an a priori construction of his own mind (Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, The Origins of Christianity, University Books, 1958 (1910 rev.) (1909), 251).

"Luke did for Paul what Artapanus had done for Moses. He is thereby revealed as a writer of historical fiction." (Richard I. Pervo, Profit With Delight The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles, Fortress, 1987, 135).

"Kaufmann Kohler...the distinguished Talmudic scholar and editor of the Jewish Encyclopaedia, wrote in 1902 that 'nothing in Paul's writings showed that he had any acquaintance with rabbinical learning'--a judgement with which I entirely concur" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204.).

"So Paul's claim to expert Pharisee learning is relevant to a very important and central issue--whether Christianity, in the form given to it by Paul, is really continuous with Judaism or whether it is a new doctrine, having no roots in Judaism, but deriving, in so far as it has an historical background, from pagan myths of dying and resurrected gods and Gnostic myths of heaven-descended redeemers. Did Paul truly stand in the Jewish tradition, or was he a person of basically Hellenistic religious type, but seeking to give a coloring of Judaism to a salvation cult that was really opposed to everything that Judaism stood for?" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204. ).

"The best witness of the historical existence of Jesus is, paradoxically, Paul, the alleged mainstay of the mythological view " (Charles Guignebert [1867-1939], Professor of the History of Christianity in the Sorbonne, Jesus, University Books, 1959 (1935 English) (1933 French), 73).

"Marcion [c.100 - c.160 C.E.], unlike some Gnostics, relied more on biblical materials than on Greek philosophy. In particular, he emphasized Paul's teachings [Marcion's version], asserting that the original twelve apostles had misunderstood Christ's message by thinking him to be the messiah prophesied by the Old Testament rather than understanding him to be sent by the true God. Because of this misunderstanding, it was therefore necessary for Paul to receive a special revelation to correct it " (Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, 1992, 91).

"To compose 'letters' under another name, especially under the name of persons whose living [examples?] presentment, or real [examples?] or supposed spiritual equipment, it was proposed to set before the reader, was then just as usual as was the other practice of [B.] introducing the same persons into narratives and reporting their 'words,' in the manner of which we have examples, in the case of Jesus, in the gospels, and in the case of Peter, Paul, and other apostles, in Acts." [2 forgery (propaganda) styles] (Encyclopedia Biblica A Critical Dictionary of the Literary Political and Religious History The Archaeology Geography and Natural History of the Bible, T. K. Cheyne, J. Sutherland Black, eds., "OLD-CHRISTIAN LITERATURE", Willem Christiaan van Manen [1842-1905], "Professor of Old-Christian Literature and New Testament Exegesis, Leyden" (xv), 4 Vols., Adam and Charles Black, 1902, Vol. III, 3473. [A Classic!].

"As the first few characters [Jesus. Paul. Et. al.] are regarded, more or less, as myths, therefore there is not any very marked conduct to be mentioned in connection with them. " [D.M. Bennett 1818 - 1882] (D. M. Bennett [1818-1882], Editor of "The Truth Seeker," author of "The World's Sages, Thinkers, and Reformers," "Thirty Discussions, Bible Stories, Essays, and Lectures," "Interrogatories to Jehovah," "What I Don't Believe; What I do Believe: Why and Wherefore," and joint author of "Christianity and Infidelity--the Humphrey-Bennett Discussion," "The Bennett-Teed Discussion," etc., etc., etc., The Champions of the Church: Their Crimes and Persecutions, Liberal and Scientific Publishing House, Science Hall, 141 Eighth Street, New York, 1880, 19-20. [This copy: Library of Congress, via Interlibrary loan].

"It is curious and perhaps significant that the two pagans whom the Church took most warmly to its bosom were Vergil and Seneca. Seneca is commended highly by the Latin Fathers and came to be regarded as virtually one of them. This distinction is in part due to the apocryphal [Forged] correspondence with St. Paul" (Moses Hadas, Jay Professor of Greek Columbia University, Hellenistic Culture Fusion and Diffusion, Columbia U., 1959, 57).

"Paul, who did not know the historical Jesus " (The Five Gospels The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, The Jesus Seminar, Macmillan, 1993, 5. 345).

"We can find no proof of his [Paul] historic reality. The 'Acts of Paul and Thecla,' which contain a sketch of his personal appearance, are declared by Tertullian to be the work of an Asian presbyter and a fiction. Tertullian himself, while expressing the most audacious doubts as to Paul, turns the writings ascribed to him to the account of Catholicism, and endeavour to force the Paul of the 'Acts of the Apostles' [Fiction!] upon his contemporaries " (Edwin Johnson, 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 240-241).

"Marcion [c. 100 - c. 165 C.E. ] is the first in whom, as we learn from Tertullian, traces are to be found of an authoritative group of epistles of Paul " (Encyclopaedia Biblica, T. K. Cheyne, J. Sutherland Black, eds., "PAUL" [A Classic!], E. Hatch and W. van Manen [1842-1905], Adam and Charles Black, 1902, Vol. III, 3634).

"With respect to the canonical Pauline epistles...none of them [were] by Paul; neither fourteen, nor thirteen, nor nine or ten, nor seven or eight, nor yet even the four [of F. C. Baur 1792 - 1860, et. al.] so long 'universally' regarded as unassailable. They are all, without distinction, pseudepigrapha (this of course, not implying the least depreciation of their contents). The history of criticism, the breaking up of the group which began as early as 1520, already pointed in this direction " (Ibid., 3625).

"One of the strongest pieces of evidence to our mind, negatively, that the Paul who has so long captivated our admiration and love is not historical, positively, that he is the product, like all similar figures, of religious passion and imagination is that Lucian [c. 117 - c. 180 C.E.], whose glance embraced the great seats of supposed Pauline activity, betrays no knowledge of any such vigorous personality as having left his mark upon the Christian communities from a century before his time (Edwin Johnson, 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 253-254).

"His [Justin Martyr, St. c. 100 - c. 165 C.E.] silence about Paul, when he had every reason to cite him in his anti-Judaistic reasonings, is a silence that speaks--a void that no iteration of unattested statements, no nebulous declamation, can ever fill (Ibid.).

"Similarly in Paul there is a complete silence about the empty tomb; and it is likely that Paul did not know of this tradition. In any case, he is more interested in the present reality and future significance of the resurrection than in the purely historical aspect of the event " (Origins of Christianity, R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed., "The Story of the First Easter", J. K. Elliott, Prometheus, 1985, 318).

"it is characteristic of the post-Pauline writings that they are literary creations in their own right, and do not presuppose supplementation by an oral or another written message" (Ibid.).

"the body of eighty-two clearly established readings from the text available to Marcion [c. 100 - c. 165 C.E.] is an invaluable window into the state of the early second-century text of Paul's letters. Through it one can see for oneself the fluid state of the text of that time" (The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, "A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion", John J. Clabeaux, 1989, 5-6).

"it is in connection with Marcion that we hear for the first time of Paul" (Edwin Johnson, 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 251).

"In considering the background of Paul, I have returned to one of the earliest accounts of Paul in existence, that given by the Ebionites ["the poor"], as reported by Epiphanius. This account has been neglected by scholars for quite inadequate and tendentious reasons " (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and The Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), xii).

Boulanger, in his "Life of Paul" ["written in French"] has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and from the writings of the fathers, as they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of Christians at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the Word of God. The following extracts are from the second chapter of that work. The Marcionists (a Christian sect) assumed that the evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manicheans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites, and the Sévénians, adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of Christians, accused the Scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarines, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a pagan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he caused himself to be circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he quarreled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the observance of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances. --Author.' [footnote of Thomas Paine c. 1795] (Thomas Paine [1737-1809], The Age of Reason, Citadel, 1974 (1948) (1794 Paris), 173).

"And it is still a question whether 'Paul,' that figure which suddenly starts up in Gnostic company at the middle of the second century more 'hebraises,' or more 'hellenises,' or whether so-called 'Paulinism' be not a heterogeneous mixture of conservatism and innovation; whether the current portraits of this latest 'apostle' do not present variations irreconcilable with the hypothesis of a historic individual" (Edwin Johnson 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 233-234).

"The inconceivable complexity of such antitheses of doctrine led Julian [331-363 C.E. (Emperor)] to describe Paul as the prince of charlatans...[Greek phrase], but not to deny his authorship of the writings attributed to him. This purely general defence, however, loses its force when an attempt is made to apply it to the particulars. The arbitrary and inconsequent use of the particle...[Greek word], for example, does not seem adequately explained by the favorite resource of modern Protestant philosophical Paulinists--namely, the Apostle's supposed training under the unfortunate Rabbis. Van Manen's hypothesis of the use of sources really explains this peculiarity in the work of a "Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking writer," such as the author or redactor of the Epistle to the Romans undoubtedly was. And, as he [van Manen] observes elsewhere, no one has arrived at a psychology--any more than a logic--of Paul which has satisfied other students" (Ibid.).

'"Either this man [Paul] was never a Rabbinic Jew at all, or he has quite forgotten what Rabbinic Judaism was and is"'. [Footnote (C.G. Montefiore, Jewish Quarterly Review, January, 1901)]. (Thomas Whittaker [1856-1935], The Origins of Christianity with An Outline of Van Manen's Analysis of the Pauline Literature, "3rd. " edition, Watts, 1914, 125).

'The only hypothesis that satisfactorily explains the peculiar agreement in the style of the whole collection, and at the same time the differences not merely between one Epistle and another, but between different parts of the same Epistle, is that which has been set forth -- namely, that none [Pauline Epistles] were written by the Apostle Paul, but that all proceeded from one circle or "school"' (Thomas Whittaker [1856-1935], The Origins of Christianity with An Outline of Van Manen's Analysis of the Pauline Literature, "3rd. " edition, Watts, 1914, 136).

"The Pauline Epistles generally are assigned to the period between 120 and 140 A.D." (Ibid.).

"Paul was the greatest fantasist of all. He created the Christian myth by deifying Jesus" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204. ).

"The myth [Jesus] adumbrated by Paul was then brought into full imaginative life in the Gospels, which were written under the influence of Paul's ideas and for the use of the Pauline Christian Church" (Ibid., p. 205).

"Paul quotes nothing that is found in our Gospels (Lk. 22, part of 19 and 20 being set aside as an interpolation) except the saying about (I Tim. 5 18) the 'labourer worthy of his hire'....But this is also found in the Didaché" (Encyclopaedia Biblica, T. K. Cheyne, J. Sutherland Black, eds., "GOSPELS" [A classic!], Paul Schmiedel [1851-1935], Adam and Charles Black, 1901, Vol. II, 1825).

"Books of the New Testament, dates of the: The determination of the dates of the various books of the N.T. is beset with difficulties and uncertainties. In the first place, none of these works is explicitly and definitely dated by its author. Nor does any writing contain unmistakable references by which it might be accurately dated. Further, it is highly probable that most of the authors are unknown to us, save for Paul, for apart from his letters the books in the New Testament are almost without exception either anonymous, or, what is worse, pseudonymous. Finally, the external attestation to their authorship and date is meager and as a rule unreliable" (An Encyclopedia of Religion, Vergilius Ferm, ed., Philosophical Library, 1945, 83) .

"The group [Pauline Epistles]...bears obvious marks of a certain unity--of having originated in one circle, at one time, in one environment; but not of unity of authorship". [van Manen 1842 - 1905] [The Ecclesiastical Corporation--at work!] (Encyclopaedia Biblica, T. K. Cheyne, J. Sutherland Black, eds., "PAUL" [A classic!], E. Hatch and W. van Manen [1842-1905], Adam and Charles Black, 1902, Vol. III, 3626).

"The man [Paul] and his message are not identical with the letters" (Leander Keck, Paul and His Letters, Fortress, 1979 (First Edition) (1988), vii).

"What we have are those forms of Paul's letters which were prepared for church use long after Paul himself wrote them" (Leander Keck, Paul and His Letters, Fortress, 1979 (First Edition) (1988), vii, 14).

"Did Paul dominate Christianity in his own time as much as he now dominates the NT? Or does Paul's place in the canon make him loom larger than he actually was?" (Leander Keck, Paul and His Letters, Fortress, 1979 (First Edition) (1988), vii, 3).

"The problem concerning the Pauline literature consists in determining the exact manner in which it was altered, rewritten, and expanded before it was accepted by the Catholic Church" (Martin A. Larson, The Story of Christian Origins or The Sources and Establishment of Western Religion, Village Press, 1977, 437).

"The only reasonable conclusion is that, since Paul was the great Gnostic spokesman more than fifty years before his writings became orthodox, these were revised and expanded by a process of Catholic forgery" (Ibid., 438).

"Paul Easily Corrupted. It was particularly easy for the Catholics to revise and expand the Pauline literature since it was used very little outside the heretical communions until after 170" (Ibid.).

"Marcion [c. 100 - c. 165 C.E.] accepted only ten Pauline epistles and that his version did not contain many of the passages found in our canonical. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was the actual corpus of Pauline literature as it existed late in the first century" (Ibid., 529).

"The manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name" (Thomas Paine [1737-1809], The Age of Reason, Citadel, 1974 (1948) (1794 Paris), 65).

"for Marcion the only Canonical Scriptures were ten of the Epp. of St. Paul [Marcion's versions (alterations by Marcion himself, are argued) (he either rejected or did not know the *Pastorals) and an edited recension of the Gospel of St. *Luke. " (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., Oxford, 1974 (1957), 870).

"Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them." [Thomas Paine 1737 - 1809] ([Sir] A. J. Ayer, Thomas Paine, U. Chicago, 1988, 150).

"A map of the Mediterranean region showing the routes of the hero and heroine of a novel inevitably brings to mind the school-bible's map of the travels of St. Paul. Here Xenophon's Ephesian Tale is mapped" (Tomas Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity, U. California, 1983 (1980 Sweden), map [end papers].

"(When Paul is not talking about himself he is usually issuing orders about how everybody should behave.)" (Robert Carroll, Wolf in the Sheepfold The Bible as a Problem for Christianity, SPCK, 1991, 123).

"Paul's letters provide the starting point....He cannot resist manipulating his audience. He resorts to devious strategies of control. Yet the same man speaks of love and freedom" (Graham Shaw, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, The Cost of Authority Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament, SCM, 1983, back cover).

"In the name of that Lord Paul demands unity and obedience. He is to be seen subduing critics, subjecting the faithful to his unsolicited censure, and giving firm rulings to their most intimate queries. It is a style that the officials of the Vatican can rightly claim as their own. " [which it (was) is!] (Graham Shaw, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, The Cost of Authority Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament, SCM, 1983, 62).

"The responsibility of Paul for Christian anti-Semitism has been overlooked because of the settled prejudice that Paul came from a highly Jewish background. It seemed impossible that a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews', a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Pharisee of standing could be the originator of anti-Semitic attitudes" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and The Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 203).

"All the grand christological claims of [Paul] release and reconciliation end in practice by reconciling slaves to their lot and conniving at their exploitation" (Graham Shaw, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, The Cost of Authority Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament, SCM, 1983, 135).

"Paul uses the rhetoric of deliverance and reconciliation; at the same time he often acts in ways which domineer and divide" (Graham Shaw, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, The Cost of Authority Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament, SCM, 1983, 183).

"When Rome was at the apogee of its power, it became infected by the lethal virus of the Jewish heresy--which had been imported by St. Paul, and others of his ilk who might be compared to plague vectors. What Xenopsylia cheopis (the flea), most commonly incriminated as a plague vector, did to humanity pales into relative insignificance compared to what St. Paul did to the Roman empire and to civilization in general" (Soledad De Montalvo, Women, Food and Sex In History, 4 Vols., American Atheist, 1988, Vol. II, 448).

"St. Paul of Tarsus--of whom it is doubted was no [has been (ha sido)] more than a legend" (Eduardo del Rio Garcia, aka RIUS, Manual of a Perfect Atheist, American Atheist Press, 1984 (1981 Spanish), 84).

"The figure in this creed ["Apostles' Creed"] is a mythical or heavenly figure, whose connection with the sage from Nazareth is limited to his suffering and death under Pontius Pilate. Nothing between his birth and death appears to be essential to his mission or to the faith of the church. Accordingly, the gospels may be understood as corrections of this creedal imbalance, which was undoubtedly derived from the view espoused by the apostle Paul, who did not know the historical Jesus. For Paul, the Christ was to be understood as a dying/rising lord, symbolized in baptism (buried with him, raised with him), of the type he knew from the Hellenistic mystery religions. In Paul's theological scheme, Jesus the man played no essential role" (The Five Gospels The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, The Jesus Seminar, Macmillan, 1993, 7).

"Why? What possible reason could there have been for Paul and James and the other writers to ignore practically the whole earthly career of Jesus? Does it not raise a presumption that there was no such earthly career? What other possible reason could there have been?" (George Luther Clark, A Lawyer Looks at the Bible, Vantage, 1956, 184).

"Our opponents ask: If Jesus was not an historical personage, how is it that no one ever doubted his existence? We reply with the further question: Granting that he was an historical personage, how is it that not only does the Talmud never mention him, but, apart from the gospels, not a single work belonging to the early Christian period gives us any intimate detail about the life of this personage? Examine Paul's Epistles! As we shall show in the next chapter, they do not tell a single special fact about the life of Jesus. Read the other Epistles of the New Testament--Peter, John, James, Jude, and the Epistle to the Hebrews--and the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, the letter of Barnabas, the Pastor of Hermas, the Acts of the Apostles, etc. Nowhere in any single one of these early Christian documents do we find even the slenderest reference to the mere man Jesus, or to the historical personality of Jesus as such, from which we might infer that the author had a close acquaintance with it. His life, as it is described in the gospels, in all its human detail, seems to have been entirely unknown to these authors " (Arthur Drews [1865-1935], The Witnesses To The Historicity Of Jesus, Tr. Joseph McCabe, Arno, 1972 (1912 Watts), 58-59).

"My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts--the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document." (Letter to Ken Schei [author of Christianity Betrayed]) Carl Sagan (Scientist: Author)

"My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts--the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document." (Letter to Ken Schei [author of Christianity Betrayed]) Thomas Jefferson

"Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord." Albert Schweitzer

"Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ." Wil Durant (Philosopher)

"Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life." Walter Kaufman (Professor of Philosophy, Princeton)

"No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus" George Bernard Shaw

"The new testament was less a Christiad than a Pauliad." Thomas Hardy

"As we have seen, the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the conflict between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, James and Peter. Peter and Paul, in later Christian tradition, became twin saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have been repudiated with horror. The work of the author of Acts was well done; he rescued Christianity from the imputation of being the individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree, as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called Jerusalem Church, conceived as continuous in spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of Rome. Yet, for all his efforts, the truth of the matter is not hard to recover, if we examine the New Testament evidence with an eye to tell-tale inconsistencies and confusions, rather than with the determination to gloss over and harmonize all difficulties in the interests of an orthodox interpretation." (H. Maccoby, The Mythmaker, p. 139, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986)

"If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ, they needed look no farther than Paul." (Paraphrased. Looking for a copy of "Not Paul, but Jesus" in order to retrieve the exact quote.) Jeremy Bentham (English Philosopher)
"Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in." (U.S. News and World Report, April 22, 1991, p. 55) Carl Jung (Psychologist)

"Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference." (Song, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991) Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)

[Beanybag]

I'm in agreement with the criticisms on Paul myself - I'm not a fan. Definitely the least of the NT authors (although my opinion is, and has been, in the very small minority). I'm not even sure why he's considered an apostle as he did not know Jesus before his death, so it seems accurate to say he did not know the historical Jesus. He was responsible for most of the NT revisions to the OT (abandoning food laws and rituals) but did not make changes to views on slavery, women's rights, or homosexuality. Much of the modern obstacles of Christianity have been in overcoming these obstacles put up by Paul. I'm not really concerned with whether or not Paul existed though.

[PaulSacramento]

I was never a fan of my namesake, until I stopped reading Paul with the eyes of others and also understood how, even to contemporaries, what he said wasn't always clear.
Paul was a philosopher, not (just)a preacher/teacher.
And reading him that way helps a lot.
First off, many of the controversial passages are such because, well, Paul was a work in progress and wasn't always "right" in how he said things ( zeal and whatnot).
Paul did make it clear when HE said things ( Not the Lord but I...) and when the Lord was speaking through him ( Not I but the Lord...).
There is also the (debated) contension that not all of the letter attributed to Paul were written directly by Paul and in some cases, may even have been altered in places ( The pastoral letters).
Not getting into that debate that, unless some original manuscript comes around won't be resolved anytime soon, and going on what we do have that is attributed to Paul, what we have is this:
A brillant Philospher ( to quote the athesist Anthyone Flew).
A Zealous preacher
An uncompromising teacher
A failed human that struggled with his mission, his faith and his sins - just like the other apostles and all other christians before and after him.

Let us never forget that it was from Paul that we have, perhaps, one of the best descriptions of true and ideal love ever written.

[1over137]

Couldn't Paul study Socrates and Aristotle? http://brainmass.com/philosophy/great-p ... ers/196379

[PaulSacramento]

Couldn't Paul study Socrates and Aristotle? http://brainmass.com/philosophy/great-p ... ers/196379

What does Greece have to do with Jerusalem?
Remember that quote?

[PaulSacramento]

And Paul's is much better:
The Excellence of Love

13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body [a]to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of [c] prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I [d]became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror [e]dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the [f]greatest of these is love.

[1over137]

Couldn't Paul study Socrates and Aristotle? http://brainmass.com/philosophy/great-p ... ers/196379

What does Greece have to do with Jerusalem?
Remember that quote?

Seems that Paul was educated in the Hellenistic culture: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=543461

Which quote?

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

I was searching the net on the Paul as a historical figure and found some site with following quotes from various people, scholars. You are not going to like it but I had to post it since I need to explain things out.

I skimmed over the quotes you provided and noticed that many of the authors were either atheists or unbelievers (which amounts to the same). So it isn't upsetting to read their thoughts. Their ideas are what I would expect from Ps 14:1 type people. When one is born spiritually, or born-again, or confirmed spiritually - whichever term you use - the Holy Spirit removes the veil of blindness that prevents the Scriptures from being understood by those who are perishing - willfully - in unbelief.

God gives the understanding of what is in the Bible, Dt 29:4 (read the context, Dt 29:2-6). Jesus, in Matthew 13:13-15 quoting Isaiah 6:9-10, confirms that those in willfull disbelief will be blind by their own fault and will be unable to understand the Bible. Only in the recognition of Jesus as Lord is the veil of spiritual blindness taken away, 2Co 3:14. There are many other verses relating to spritual blindness in the Bible: I've only provided a few here. Essentially, this blindness is self-inflicted and is a result of a person believing in the god of this age, 2Co 4:4. With this in mind, re-read the following post and look for the god this person believes in.

I'm in agreement with the criticisms on Paul myself - I'm not a fan. Definitely the least of the NT authors (although my opinion is, and has been, in the very small minority). I'm not even sure why he's considered an apostle as he did not know Jesus before his death, so it seems accurate to say he did not know the historical Jesus. He was responsible for most of the NT revisions to the OT (abandoning food laws and rituals) but did not make changes to views on slavery, women's rights, or homosexuality. Much of the modern obstacles of Christianity have been in overcoming these obstacles put up by Paul. I'm not really concerned with whether or not Paul existed though.

Can you name Beanybag's god?

FL

[Icthus]

I read over your list of quotes, 1over, and most of them aren't very good. Some are very out of date, and many come from very poor sources, ones that claim Jesus never existed, that all of Paul's letters were fake, that Marcion was the first to mention Paul, ideas that aren't taken seriously by most of academia. Almost all scholars accept at least seven of Paul's letters, which include the most important ones and the early creeds. I don't have much time now, but I'll go into more detail sometime later, if you don't mind, on some of the mistakes present in the list.

[Icthus]

Well, I guess I have a little time now, after all. Let's begin!

Of course, there's no need to address the claims of men like Carl Sagan and George Bernard Shaw. They were great men with great minds, but frankly they have no business in a discussion of Paul. Now, as for some of the others (only a few for now):

"Kaufmann Kohler...the distinguished Talmudic scholar and editor of the Jewish Encyclopaedia, wrote in 1902 that 'nothing in Paul's writings showed that he had any acquaintance with rabbinical learning'--a judgement with which I entirely concur" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204.).

"So Paul's claim to expert Pharisee learning is relevant to a very important and central issue--whether Christianity, in the form given to it by Paul, is really continuous with Judaism or whether it is a new doctrine, having no roots in Judaism, but deriving, in so far as it has an historical background, from pagan myths of dying and resurrected gods and Gnostic myths of heaven-descended redeemers. Did Paul truly stand in the Jewish tradition, or was he a person of basically Hellenistic religious type, but seeking to give a coloring of Judaism to a salvation cult that was really opposed to everything that Judaism stood for?" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204. ).

"The best witness of the historical existence of Jesus is, paradoxically, Paul, the alleged mainstay of the mythological view " (Charles Guignebert [1867-1939], Professor of the History of Christianity in the Sorbonne, Jesus, University Books, 1959 (1935 English) (1933 French), 73).

"As the first few characters [Jesus. Paul. Et. al.] are regarded, more or less, as myths, therefore there is not any very marked conduct to be mentioned in connection with them. " [D.M. Bennett 1818 - 1882] (D. M. Bennett [1818-1882], Editor of "The Truth Seeker," author of "The World's Sages, Thinkers, and Reformers," "Thirty Discussions, Bible Stories, Essays, and Lectures," "Interrogatories to Jehovah," "What I Don't Believe; What I do Believe: Why and Wherefore," and joint author of "Christianity and Infidelity--the Humphrey-Bennett Discussion," "The Bennett-Teed Discussion," etc., etc., etc., The Champions of the Church: Their Crimes and Persecutions, Liberal and Scientific Publishing House, Science Hall, 141 Eighth Street, New York, 1880, 19-20. [This copy: Library of Congress, via Interlibrary loan].

"Paul, who did not know the historical Jesus " (The Five Gospels The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, The Jesus Seminar, Macmillan, 1993, 5. 345).

"We can find no proof of his [Paul] historic reality. The 'Acts of Paul and Thecla,' which contain a sketch of his personal appearance, are declared by Tertullian to be the work of an Asian presbyter and a fiction. Tertullian himself, while expressing the most audacious doubts as to Paul, turns the writings ascribed to him to the account of Catholicism, and endeavour to force the Paul of the 'Acts of the Apostles' [Fiction!] upon his contemporaries " (Edwin Johnson, 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 240-241).

"With respect to the canonical Pauline epistles...none of them [were] by Paul; neither fourteen, nor thirteen, nor nine or ten, nor seven or eight, nor yet even the four [of F. C. Baur 1792 - 1860, et. al.] so long 'universally' regarded as unassailable. They are all, without distinction, pseudepigrapha (this of course, not implying the least depreciation of their contents). The history of criticism, the breaking up of the group which began as early as 1520, already pointed in this direction " (Ibid., 3625).

"One of the strongest pieces of evidence to our mind, negatively, that the Paul who has so long captivated our admiration and love is not historical, positively, that he is the product, like all similar figures, of religious passion and imagination is that Lucian [c. 117 - c. 180 C.E.], whose glance embraced the great seats of supposed Pauline activity, betrays no knowledge of any such vigorous personality as having left his mark upon the Christian communities from a century before his time (Edwin Johnson, 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 253-254).

"His [Justin Martyr, St. c. 100 - c. 165 C.E.] silence about Paul, when he had every reason to cite him in his anti-Judaistic reasonings, is a silence that speaks--a void that no iteration of unattested statements, no nebulous declamation, can ever fill (Ibid.).

"And it is still a question whether 'Paul,' that figure which suddenly starts up in Gnostic company at the middle of the second century more 'hebraises,' or more 'hellenises,' or whether so-called 'Paulinism' be not a heterogeneous mixture of conservatism and innovation; whether the current portraits of this latest 'apostle' do not present variations irreconcilable with the hypothesis of a historic individual" (Edwin Johnson 1842-1901, published anonymously, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins, London: Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1887, 233-234).

'"Either this man [Paul] was never a Rabbinic Jew at all, or he has quite forgotten what Rabbinic Judaism was and is"'. [Footnote (C.G. Montefiore, Jewish Quarterly Review, January, 1901)]. (Thomas Whittaker [1856-1935], The Origins of Christianity with An Outline of Van Manen's Analysis of the Pauline Literature, "3rd. " edition, Watts, 1914, 125).

'The only hypothesis that satisfactorily explains the peculiar agreement in the style of the whole collection, and at the same time the differences not merely between one Epistle and another, but between different parts of the same Epistle, is that which has been set forth -- namely, that none [Pauline Epistles] were written by the Apostle Paul, but that all proceeded from one circle or "school"' (Thomas Whittaker [1856-1935], The Origins of Christianity with An Outline of Van Manen's Analysis of the Pauline Literature, "3rd. " edition, Watts, 1914, 136).

"The Pauline Epistles generally are assigned to the period between 120 and 140 A.D." (Ibid.).

"Paul was the greatest fantasist of all. He created the Christian myth by deifying Jesus" (Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, "1987" Pb. (c1986), 204. ).

"Why? What possible reason could there have been for Paul and James and the other writers to ignore practically the whole earthly career of Jesus? Does it not raise a presumption that there was no such earthly career? What other possible reason could there have been?" (George Luther Clark, A Lawyer Looks at the Bible, Vantage, 1956, 184).

Let's start with these. It should be noted that Hyam Maccoby, quoted many times here, is rather a looney. Few scholars doubt that Paul was an educated Jew (these sources keep mentioning the rabbinics as if they prove Paul was a fake, though they came after Paul and don't necessarily reflect on him). Pauline studies has largely moved away from the idea that he was a Gnostic or Hellenistic Syncretic. He was a lot of things, but he was a Jew first. Funk claims that Paul didn't know Jesus, which may very well have been true, but he almost certainly new OF him, and several other quotes suggest he didn't exist. That is a fantastic claim--even most of those who believe Jesus never existed accept that Paul did. And if there was ever a consensus that Paul didn't write any of his letters, it has certainly changed by now, one hundred years after one of the list's sources claims.

Now I've actually run out of time, but Paul is one of my favorite subjects, so I'll certainly be back.