Why are Paul's writings in the Bible?

[LinuxGal]

These issues have been known and alot of ink has been spilt on them for over a century.  Thus, it's grandstanding and not debating, imo, to pretend that mythicists are nuts - just because they agree with the consensus -about the character in magic book- but choose not to use the negotiated language of jesus nuts.  Put another way, even the people who hold to a historic paul can (and often do) acknowledge all of this, and say..like bart ehrman is famous for with jesus..that even so, they still think there was some real boy that we know absolutely nothing about because of the circumstances of history and religious development.  Let it sink in.

Jerome was willing to contract the account in Acts that Paul was born in Tarsus by relating a tradition that he was born in Galilee instead.  The account also gives Paul's age, which fits well with evidence in Philemon.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dail...ical-paul/

This falls under the same criterion of embarrassment by which we can be assured Jesus was baptized and crucified.  A fictional superhero story wouldn't go there.

[GrandizerII]

These issues have been known and alot of ink has been spilt on them for over a century.  Thus, it's grandstanding and not debating, imo, to pretend that mythicists are nuts - just because they agree with the consensus -about the character in magic book- but choose not to use the negotiated language of jesus nuts.  Put another way, even the people who hold to a historic paul can (and often do) acknowledge all of this, and say..like bart ehrman is famous for with jesus..that even so, they still think there was some real boy that we know absolutely nothing about because of the circumstances of history and religious development.  Let it sink in.

Jerome was willing to contract the account in Acts that Paul was born in Tarsus by relating a tradition that he was born in Galilee instead.  The account also gives Paul's age, which fits well with evidence in Philemon.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dail...ical-paul/

This falls under the same criterion of embarrassment by which we can be assured Jesus was baptized and crucified.  A fictional superhero story wouldn't go there.

Assured is a bit of a strong word, though scholars like Ehrman/Tabor are confident about quite a number of thinkgs about the historical Jesus or historical Paul, a bit too confident to my liking. But they are the experts here, not me.

But that aside, there are what appear to be inconveniences that are better explained by a historical personal basis, because otherwise would require explanatory extensions that are quite ad-hoc given what we do know and observe. So Jesus having to get baptized by someone who is supposed to be inferior to him is one of them.

But anyhow, back to Paul, taking a look at the link.

[GrandizerII]

I had a look at that link. Some of the thngs I naturally agree with (because the thought has crossed my mind several times since leaving the faith that Paul was quite a BSer, though Tabor trusts Paul more than I do apparently, and because Acts is all one big book of legends about the Apostles):

Acts’s claim that Paul grew up in Jerusalem and was a personal student of the famous rabbi Gamaliel is also highly suspect.

...

Whether Paul even lived in Jerusalem before his visionary encounter with Christ could be questioned. In Acts it is a given, but Paul never indicates in any of his letters that Jerusalem was his home as a young man. He does mention twice a connection with Damascus, the capital of the Roman province of Syria (2 Corinthians 11:32; Galatians 1:17). Whether he was in Damacus, which is 150 miles northwest of Jerusalem, in pursuit of Jesus’ followers, or for other reasons, we have no sure way of knowing. The account in Acts of Paul’s conversion, repeated three times, that has Paul sent as an authorized delegate of the High Priest in Jerusalem to arrest Christians in Damascus, has so colored our assumptions about Paul that it is hard to focus on what we find in his letters.
Paul connection to Jerusalem, or the lack thereof, has much to do with the oft-discussed question of whether Paul would have ever seen or heard Jesus, or could he have been a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion in A.D. 30. Since he never mentions seeing Jesus in any of his letters, and one would expect that had he been an eyewitness to the events of that Passover week he surely would have drawn upon such a vivid experience, this argues against the idea that he was a Jerusalem resident at that time.

Likewise, Paul’s high placed connections to the Jewish priestly class in Jerusalem we can neither confirm nor deny. All he tells us is that he zealously persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it (Galatians 1:12). Some translations have used the English word “violently,” but this is misleading and serves to reinforce the account in Acts that Paul was delivering people over to execution. The Greek word Paul uses (huperbole) means “excessively” or zealously. We take Paul’s word that he identified himself as a Pharisee, but there is nothing in his letters to indicate the kind of prominent connections that the author of Acts gives him.

This is why any argument along the line of "well, why wasn't Paul mentioned in any secular/Judaic source at the time" is moot since these are often based on the legends/exaggerated details about Paul rather than what anything Paul may have actually said that sounded genuine.

Personally, I think whatever Paul meant to say exactly regarding persecuting Christians in his past life, he was exaggerating what he did, to make himself sound like he was the worst of the worst before he became the best of the best. So maybe there is a grain of truth to him having been mean to Christians, but I think this got overblown through his exaggerations and through the beliefs of later Christians

As for Paul not being born in Tarsus, maybe. I don't know if we should take Jerome as authority given he came much later. And even if he was using an earlier source, what was it exactly? I don't personally have enough details related to that to put any stock in this tradition.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah yes, the criterion of embarrassment. An airtight piece of thinking if ever I saw one. Wherein we posit that if someone says something we think would be embarrassing, it's probably true.

Another counterfactual, we know people invent seemingly embarassing stories, but whatever. The idea that a fictional superhero story wouldn't "go there" is absurd. It did go there. Regardless of whether there were a real boy, it went there.

[Bucky Ball]

I suppose he's frustrated.  You checked him at every point.  Called him on the argument from silence.  Invoked the principle of parsimony (aka Ockham's Razor)...as in, why would someone try to forge an unknown author named Paul?  So he fell back on the same dodge we get from the Jesus mythicists, that even secular historicists are in the pay of Big Christianity.  Truth is, Christianity is really Paulianity, and religions don't just fall out of the sky or evolve like languages.  There's a Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard somewhere that starts the damn thing.

You are flattering me too much here, and I like it, lol.

And yes, that's a great point you make here.

LOL

Not frustrated, (at all) just surprised that's all you two have. 
(LG you could have at least given credit to where you got "Paulianity" from.) That's not what YOU called it in this thread. 
I asked asked for support for an argument from "consensus." 
You failed, just as almost everyone whoever made it. It's a pet peeve of mine. No one really has any FACTS to support the argument, 
and in fact very few real historians who are not "economically obligated" even study Paul, (ie those WORK for church related institutions, from which they would be FIRED if they actually questioned Paul or Jesus). Then you both (falsely) claimed I was a Paul mythicist. I am not. You failed to read the paper I wrote years ago and put in the spoiler. 

So yeah, you both got it 110 % wrong. 

ta ta

[GrandizerII]

You are flattering me too much here, and I like it, lol.

And yes, that's a great point you make here.

LOL

Not frustrated, (at all) just surprised that's all you two have. 
(LG you could have at least given credit to where you got "Paulianity" from.) That's not what YOU called it in this thread. 
I asked asked for support for an argument from "consensus." 
You failed, just as almost everyone whoever made it. It's a pet peeve of mine. No one really has any FACTS to support the argument, 
and in fact very few real historians who are not "economically obligated" even study Paul, (ie those WORK for church related institutions, from which they would be FIRED if they actually questioned Paul or Jesus). Then you both (falsely) claimed I was a Paul mythicist. I am not. You failed to read the paper I wrote years ago and put in the spoiler. 

So yeah, you both got it 110 % wrong. 

ta ta

I did read your paper that you quoted within spoilers, which you posted only recently (unless I missed an earlier post in which you did). And that's why I asked you if you believed Paul was real then, because it seemed like you did when you wrote that paper. So why the fuss then about one part of what I said, when I didn't actually even use that as an argument in answer to your original question, but rather as a statement that the points I made are in line with what NT scholars say? Why did you drag us down into a very unproductive exchange where you wanted me to unreasonably list every single NT scholar holding to a consensus (and then furthermore, demand further a selection of these scholars meeting your criteria for not "economically obligated" which you now just confessed only few are with regards to the subject at hand, which confirms that you've indeed been trying to rig a game against me). Also, you can't be surprised if you knew you weren't going to get what you demanded. Hence, why I still think you did this in bad faith.

And anyway, you can;t fault me or LG for thinking you were a Paul mythicist if you were using arguments suggesting you might've been.

Also, in your response to Boru, unless I misunderstood you, you said something about a poll from scholars (I'm guessing NT scholars) on this subject? Couldn't this be a chance to show there is no consensus then? Do us layfolks have access to that poll?

What's with the "ta ta" thing by the way? Are you saying bye bye (in some supposedly humorous fashion) each time you reply to me now? You're playing hot and cold with me or something?

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that what Bucky has been trying to communicate is not the position that Paul (or any other character) is wholly and purely mythological, but that the consensus of scholars on their historicity, while it exists, is not actually based on any evidence. It asks us to maintain a nested doll of other convenient assumptions for which there is likewise, no evidence. All the while, there's significant evidence to the contrary even as acknowledged by that consensus.

They can ask questions of motive - but this is explicitly fallacious. A failure of their own imagination. They can selectively apply the criterion of embarrassment. There are tons of unflattering narratives about Paul that the consensus thinks are purely fictional - the linked article described one right below invoking the principle..ironically. -but they can't point to any evidence of any historic paul. Truth is, despite having thousands of coins and manuscripts and inscriptions and warehouses full of archeological artifacts from the first century, the consensus can't even find any evidence of christians in the so called apostolic age.

[Bucky Ball]

pid='2172191' dateline='1696392847']

Alright, so I've just gone through all this text, but not sure I understood all key points here. What is the takeaway exactly? What is the relevance exactly to what we've been arguing about here? Or is this just sharing something from what you previously wrote up for a lecture or something that you thought would be an interesting read? Was Saul of Tarsus real or not?

Off-topic, I didn't understand what your issue was with Thomas being one of the "Twelve"? If there were 11 in the room, and Thomas was away, what's the problem exactly here? Nevermind, I see what you mean. 11 at that point, as in Paul wasn't an item then. Still, there were 12 at that point, per "John", and Paul is overlooked/ignored there. ETA: Also, forgot about Judas.

I copied it in, to demonstrate ONE point. I am not a Paul mythicist. 
That's the only "takeaway". 
Obviously someone wrote the damn letters, .. someone who had familiarity with other sources. 
And that someone was an Apocalyptic Jew, who remained an Apocalyptic Jew, who was and remained in the Jewish Apocalyptic tradition, even after "conversion".

[The Grand Nudger]

It very much seems like the romanizing influence was also the christianizing influence. This is a pretty good candidate for why "paul" was important. Paul -as written- was a romanizer.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It very much seems like the romanizing influence was also the christianizing influence.  This is a pretty good candidate for why "paul" was important.  Paul -as written- was a romanizer.

Hence the name change.

Boru