Paul reshaping the church

[athrock]

Firstly, we discount anything Acts has to say about the event as it's hearsay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Details were added over time, but that is not unexpected. If I tell you about my honeymoon more than once, you'll get more information as I recall more and have time to recount more of them. If you hear the same account from my wife, she will emphasize different things and fill in the missing details that I omit. But that's not the same as making stuff up that never actually happened during the trip, is it?