Paul reshaping the church

[The Atheist]

I am quite certain that many biblical characters quite fail in any regard due to the fact that reason wins over bias.

Define "fail". And then define which characters you mean specifically that you are "quite certain" never existed. David? Solomon?

As I've pointed out elsewhere, characters such as the Patriarchs - including Abraham, Moses, and Joshua are not historical but do have a metaphysical reality. I.e. no one consciously decided to make them up. That's not to say that things were not put into the Bible consciously for ulterior motives - in fact the evidence shows that they were. By 180 AD we have Irenaeus making that claim of all the Gnostic texts. But how does he know what was or wasn't an "authentic" text? I mean he makes all kinds of wild claims about Gnostic Christians in "Against Heresies", but we also know that by the late second century that there were rumours held by Romans that Christians were cannibals (see Octavius) which just goes to prove you can't trust wild allegations made by outside groups or interests. During this time the church mainly met in secret, in people's homes. Their activities and agenda were hidden from outsiders, much like the Freemasons or the Illuminati. Because they were doing things in secret, and then did anti-social public behaviour, of course rumours are going to start spreading about them.


So just because in 180AD Irenaeus believed the Pauline tradition of Christianity rather than one of the Gnostic traditions, it doesn't make it any more valid than the alternative flavours of Christianity of the day.

I haven't read Against Heresies in a few years, but my understanding is that Irenaeus rejects the Gnostic texts because, unlike the traditional texts, they were neither ancient nor universally revered. He makes the claim that there was a universal faith and that it was held by churches all over the known world--churches that had little contact with one another due to the great distance between them (a point he emphasized, if I remember correctly). The Gnostics, on the other hand, were isolated groups that sprang up at random with their own peculiar texts.