R. G. Price - On the Mythic Jesus

[Minimalist]

Wow, are you also questioning the historicity of Paul?

Part II - Saul/Paul

There are few historical markers in Paul but the few that there are cause problems.

One of them is in 2 Corinthians which is, ironically, considered one of the authentic Pauline epistles by scholars. It contains this escapade.

2 Corinthians 11

32 In Damascus the governor, under Aretas the king, was guarding the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desiring to arrest me; 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and escaped from his hands.

Now, for reasons which should soon be obvious, xtians try to twist their scrotums into knots showing that the Aretas in question was Aretas IV, king of Nabatea who died in 40 AD. Aretas is not mentioned in any of the gospel accounts but Josephus steps in to save the day. Aretas’ daughter was married to Herod Antipas and when he divorced her in order to marry Herodias, wife of his brother Philip, Aretas attacked Antipas’ territory and whipped his army. This was a bad idea as attacking a Roman ally usually was. When last we hear of Aretas IV he is fleeing the army of the governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, who had been ordered to go after Aretas IV by Tiberius around 36 AD. Vitellius took the opportunity to replace the long-serving praefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate as well as the high priest Caiaphas. Before he could catch up with Aretas word came that Tiberius had died and Vitellius suspended his campaign awaiting further orders from the new Emperor Caligula. So Aretas survived.

Now xtians have concocted all sorts of explanations for this discrepancy. Aretas IV never ruled Damascus. It was a Greco-Roman town, part of what was known as the Decapolis under the eye of the governor of Syria who was based in Antioch. Xtians have suggested some sort of “settlement of the east” but ancient writers do not seem to know anything about it. What we do know is that when the aforementioned Philip died his territories were ordered added to Syria by Tiberius. Upon his accession to the throne, Caligula countermanded that order and appointed his boyhood friend, Herod Agrippa to the vacated throne. Then, in 39, Caligula booted Herod Antipas into retirement and added Galilee and Perea to Herod Agrippa’s realm. That’s it. In 41 Caligula was murdered and Herod Agrippa (who had spent most of his time in Rome with Caligula) was involved in the ascension of Claudius ( another boyhood friend!) to the throne. Claudius promptly gave Judaea and Samaria to Herod Agrippa thereby reuniting the kingdom of Herod the Great under one ruler for the first time since 4 BC. In all of this...there is not a word about Damascus OR Aretas IV who was probably still trying to get the shit out of his pants after his fortunate escape. However, with typical circular logic xtians insist that the Romans must have “given” Damascus to Aretas because “Paul” says so. A glance at a map will show the utter absurdity of the idea.



Damascus is far to the north whereas Nabatea is well to the south. Suggesting that the Romans “gave” Damascus to Aretas would be akin to the US telling Mexico “sorry about the Mexican War...you can have Nevada back. Oh, and good luck getting to it, because we are keeping Arizona, New Mexico and California.” Moreover, when Jewish rebels attacked the 12th legion as it withdrew from Jerusalem in 66, Josephus recounts that the good citizens of Damascus rose up and massacred the Jews in residence which certainly makes it seem as if it were a Roman town.

So....is “Paul” full of shit? Maybe not.

There was a king Aretas III of Nabatea who did take and rule Damascus for a while. The only problem for xtians is that he captured it c 84 BC and lost it to Pompey the Great when he came rolling through with his legions in 64 BC. The Romans controlled Damascus after that. It was a valuable piece of real estate as the western terminus of the silk road. The Romans did not give prime real estate away to people who not so long before were on the top of the Most Wanted list.

Of course by now you must have sensed the problem. We actually DO have a King Aretas ruling Damascus which makes “Paul’s” James Bond style escape at least possible. The only problem is the time. 84-64 BC is inconvenient to the bible story. In fact, inconvenient is the wrong word... it blows it out of the fucking water.

But that is not the only problem. Then there is Corinth itself. In 146 BC a Roman consul by the name of Lucius Mummius sacked Corinth and, tired of the Greeks constant scheming sent a message by leveling the city. The message was clear. Cut The Shit...We Are In Charge. Corinth remained a vacant lot until Julius Caesar decided to settle a colony of his veterans there (always pragmatic those Romans...like Carthage the site was simply too valuable to be left vacant) in 44 BC.

Of course Caesar was killed in 44 and from 44 to 31 civil war raged with Greece being a primary battleground. It is unlikely that there was any great growth going on until Augustus settled things down after Actium. Supposedly by the time old Paul gets there in the 50's AD Corinth is a thriving town with a substantial Jewish population and even some xtians. But. History and archaeology suggest otherwise.

In 67 Nero decided to hack a canal through the isthmus of Corinth a monumental task using manual labor but hey..when you’re the Emperor you can do what you want. Titus Flavius Vespasianus, then campaigning in Galilee as part of his mission to crush the Great Revolt sent Nero 6,000 slaves to use in the construction. It isn’t hard to figure out where he got them from.

I took this photo of the modern canal completed in 1893.



It goes just as far in the other direction but the work did not continue after Nero’s death. The next thing we hear about Corinth is the rather disquieting news that Vespasian, now Emperor after 69, had to ‘re-found’ the colony as it was not thriving. So...on the one hand we have “Paul” portraying Corinth as a going concern with lots of Jews and on the other Vespasian regards the colony as a flop...and archaeology backs Vespasian. The city began to grow but this is not the end of the problems for old Paul.
A second century Greek geographer named Pausanias traveled extensively and left a detailed account of his travels.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html

Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans.

For a man who was fascinated by shrines and temples and wrote about everything he could find the fact that he found neither xtians nor Jews in Corinth nor synagogues or churches or even shrines in the mid 2d century should be a problem.

When you add Pausanias to Vespasian to Nero and the failure of Caesar’s colony to grow you end up with a serious credibility problem for old Paul....and we haven’t even considered the nonsense written in the book of acts.

I’ll give you some time to digest.