Paul reshaping the church

[Aractus]

I realize that you a from Protestant stock, but neither the Catholic Church nor any of the Orthodox Churches would agree with you (unless the latter did so in an attempt to weaken Peter's claim of universal supremacy...but that is for another thread).

Well they don't have to agree. Read One God One Lord by Larry Hurtado . It's considered an essential textbook by the majority of Biblical Colleges today, Hurtado is considered an expert, and it says first century Judaism was highly malleable - and by extension early Christianity. A view shared by many other scholars such as Bart Ehrman.

The evidence you're presenting suffers from clear selection-bias. You want to reject all the Gnostic texts because they were written outside the first century. That's the claim and the reasoning behind why Orthodox/Catholics/Protestants reject their validity about what they have to say about first century events. Therefore, if those can't be considered, neither can second century documents by church fathers that discuss first-century events. Without that you have zero evidence of who the head of the church was from 50AD onwards. Against Heresies is written more than a century after Peter and Paul died.

All branches of Christianity that existed in the second century, whether Gnostic or Orthodox, claimed apostolic succession.

No he didn't. He had a revelation "about" Jesus on the road to Damascus, he doesn't even claim to have had a vision of Jesus - let alone "met him" (Galatians 1:15-16).

Aractus, I respect your knowledge and intellect, but you blew it here. To begin, I had a "revelation" about who I was going to marry four years before we began dating. Paul's experience was not like that. You know these verses, so your misinterpretation is shocking. Let's review:

Acts 9
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

Now, you can call this what you want, but Paul himself says, "last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born (1 Co 15:8)." Since 1 Corinthians is not one of the books whose Pauline authorship is questioned, I think it is reasonable for us to let Paul speak for himself about whether he saw the Lord or not, don't you?

This is what happens when you try to put things together that don't belong together. Firstly, we discount anything Acts has to say about the event as it's hearsay. We have Paul's version and that's a first-hand account. He says he received a revelation about Jesus in Galatians, and never expands upon it. Ever. In Corinthians you have an early Christian creed taught to Paul by other believers. All he's doing is reciting it in his letter, that's not evidence that he met Jesus, or that he had a vision of him. It's no different to recounting the Nicene Creed.

Is that what resurrection meant in the context of first century Judaism, Aractus? Peter, Mark's source for this material, was nothing if not Jewish.

It's what RISEN meant. Mark doesn't mention resurrection, nor does Paul.

You know that how? Remember that Paul had been to Jerusalem not once but twice and had stayed with the apostles there for 15 days on the second occasion. Do you think it is reasonable that he might have gone to Mass with them on the two Sundays he was in town? Yeah, me, too.

And are you really going to suggest that Paul did not ask Peter, James and John for all the details about Jesus' final hours? C'mon...what else did they discuss if not these things?

Again, think critically. He doesn't know about Judas because it's not important. It's barely even worth a short mention by Mark. It's only when Matthew and Luke are written later that Judas becomes an important character. His character grew overtime. Sure, he was one of the disciples. But beyond that I'm not willing to even agree that he betrayed Jesus since the evidence for it is so wafer-thin. He might have handed Jesus over for other reasons that later on become perceived as betrayal.

There it is in bold, red print, Aractus...Paul mentions that Jesus was raised on the third day. And notice that Paul emphasizes that he is following a time-honored tradition of the Pharisees by "passing on" what he himself learned from others (the apostles in Jerusalem).

So, this passage from 1 Co 15 is a proto-creed of the early Church, it reflects the truly ancient belief of the Church that Jesus was raised from the dead dated to within just a few years of the resurrection itself (thus free from embellishment), it was received directly from the eyewitnesses in Jerusalem, and it is unquestionably genuine Pauline text.

Like I said, he says he was raised. And actually, as I pointed out above, that's just a creed he's recited. The fact is he doesn't say he was resurrected, and returned to earth in bodily form to go about meeting people. Yes they believed he was raised - it didn't require any immediate evidence. In fact, what probably happened after Jesus died and was placed in Joseph's tomb is that Joseph of Arimathea handed the body over to Jesus's parents and they reburied it in a grave and some years later put it in their ossuary. Not only is this a logical explanation, but it's the most likely explanation as well since Joseph's tomb was clearly a temporary measure.

Meanwhile they don't tell the disciples because they don't want anything to do with them, and the disciples go and find an empty tomb up to 12 hours or so after the body was moved and then conclude that Jesus was risen.

That's fine. But they didn't have any concept of the resurrection until much much later. The earliest possible date for Matthew/Luke is 60AD - that's 30 years since he died. Until then there's no evidence they had a concept of resurrection. And most scholars think that Matthew & Luke were written around 75AD, which is more like 45 years after he died. In either case there's plenty of time for the mythology surrounding his death to expand, and the belief that he was risen to the celestial realm grows into the belief that he was "resurrected" and returned to earth to appear to his disciples before being risen to the celestial realm.