Paul reshaping the church

[Aractus]

Of course I'm guilty of selection bias...because the Early Church was. If someone could not prove his apostolic succession, he was not considered a legitimate leader in the Church. And the same went for early writings, also.

This is NOT a problem. Atheists SCREAM that the gospels were written "late" and therefore are untrustworthy. So, you'll forgive me if I hold the gnostic gospels to the same (or higher) standard when it comes to insisting on early documents only.

Define prove. See here's the problem, nothing was ever proven. They accepted writings such as 1 and 2 Peter that were clearly written in the second century, and not by Peter. So by virtue of the fact they got that wrong, it shows they can't be trusted to be right about apostolic authorship either. And I might add that their information about Matthean and Markan authorship was also completely wrong. That's not something that atheists claim, it's accepted by a majority of New Testament scholars today, regardless of their personal beliefs. Yet if you do a Google Search on it it returns but 35,000 results. Wouldn't you know it.. it's just one of those things that Christians would prefer to ignore or remain wilfully ignorant of.

If that is true, then we must discount every historian who ever wrote a line.

Do we have any autobiographical accounts of the reign of Plato? Alexander the Great? Tiberius Caesar? No? Okay, then we can know nothing about them. Bummer.

Don't be disingenuous. If we have two accounts of an event, and one is first-hand and the other isn't then the first-hand account is always preferred unless there's some other reason to distrust it. And if we have two different accounts of an historical event, and one is supernatural and the other isn't, then we prefer the one that doesn't invoke mysticism.

Right. Because during all those weeks, months and years that Paul and Luke walked the dusty roads of their missionary journeys together, there simply wasn't TIME for Paul to tell Luke what had happened in any great detail. Maybe not at all. Ever.

And we certainly have no reason whatsoever to believe that Luke ever sat through a sermon in which Paul told his audience how he had met the Lord. No, siree. Luke had no material from Paul to work with. None.

Acts is probably written after Paul has died, and we don't know whether Luke himself wrote it or whether it was an associate of Luke and either is equally likely.

Right. Paul learned that proto-creed in 1 Co 15 directly from the Apostles in Jerusalem, and he recounted in VERBATIM (apparently even the Greek syntax of that passage is different than his norm style providing additional support for the idea that he was repeating from memory) what he had received at a VERY. EARLY. DATE.

This strengthens my position...not yours.

Very early? Look all the creed demonstrates is they had a belief that Jesus had been risen, not resurrected. That as I pointed out required no immediate evidence following the crucifixion, and could easily have begun due to the disciples finding that the tomb was empty. And there are two likely explanations for this: 1. they went to the wrong tomb, or, 2. the family moved the body in the evening of Nissan 16 (before the disciples came in the morning of the same day). In either case it indicates the family probably didn't want the disciples visiting the resting place of Jesus.

Moved? By whom?

Either Joseph since he had custody of the body, or the family. Neither of whom actually show up in the gospels to refute this hypothesis.

No, the Jews taught that the DISCIPLES had stolen the body.

That's just what Matthew says, it's hardly reliable. I do believe I made the point earlier that as with any "us and them" things in the ancient world, what one culture/group/region/nation says about another needs to be taken with a grain of salt. They tend to make all kinds of stuff up about "them".

None of the gospels or the Book of Acts mention the destruction of the Temple, or the deaths of Peter and Paul. Yet, the martydoms of James and Stephen are mentioned...and they were lesser players. The conclusion that one might easily draw from this is that these books were written BEFORE AD 64...possibly as early as the mid-50's for the gospel of Mark.

There's more than one explanation for that. The Gospels aren't going to mention the destruction of the Temple anyway, they all end after the death of Jesus (Mark) or the supposed immediate aftermath of his death. It's only Acts that you'd expect to mention their deaths and destruction of Jerusalem. It may have been that Luke didn't feel it was necessary to include recent events that everyone seemed to know all about anyway - it'd be superfluous and a waste of papyrus. It may be that Peter and Paul didn't die until the 70's AD, which would increase the likelihood of Luke not mentioning them. The more recent it is the less reason to bother taking about it. Or, they may have been written in the early 60's and it doesn't change anything.