RE: If theists understood "evidence"
October 10, 2018 at 4:26 pm
(This post was last modified: October 10, 2018 at 4:47 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
RR is one of those christians who thinks that the scholarly consensus is whatever his batshit shaman told him. There's really no way to be kind about this fact. Whenever you get pushback about known issues, legendary motiffs, and mythical elements...you can be sure that you're talking to a loon who has no use for scholarship other than to rattle it's bones as though it had something to do with their beliefs.
That a historical paul is only going to be found, if there is one..in authentic paul, is the consensus. The consensus within that is that the paul of authentic paul is not the paul of christian belief (that would be the legendary paul). The consensus of scholarship regarding pauls dual and inextricable claims to traditional judaism and persecutorial authority, is that they are not credible.
It's not a big deal, though, if we place those counterfiet bona fides in their cultural and temporal context. By the time these were written (still sticking with the early date) roman antipathy towards jews (and troublemaking sects of any kind) had been increasing. The next few decades would see the fire in rome (maybe) and the jewish war. Obviously, something was going on in society. The intended audience of this story may well have been used to intrusions by the state into their lives. They would expect it. His placing himself within that apparatus confirms their basic suspicions about the world as it is and the powers that be while simultaneously invoking the shade of something about which the target audience would be immensely dissatisfied. It's a missionary tactic that's still used today. I used to be one of them, now I'm one of you. So maybe he got creative with where he was from, who he was, or what he did for a living, but in the context of his ministry and the timeframe in which he's purported to have built it, do you think that would have seemed important? He was a likely epileptic with no formal training who'd absorbed pagan theosophy, a man who either did or didn't believe that he saw a vision of christ and, pursuant to that vision (real, imagined, or manufactured) created a narrative around himself as an evangelical prop. This would be compounded by later authors doing exactly this same thing, but bigger.
Lying for christ isn't a new thing.
That a historical paul is only going to be found, if there is one..in authentic paul, is the consensus. The consensus within that is that the paul of authentic paul is not the paul of christian belief (that would be the legendary paul). The consensus of scholarship regarding pauls dual and inextricable claims to traditional judaism and persecutorial authority, is that they are not credible.
It's not a big deal, though, if we place those counterfiet bona fides in their cultural and temporal context. By the time these were written (still sticking with the early date) roman antipathy towards jews (and troublemaking sects of any kind) had been increasing. The next few decades would see the fire in rome (maybe) and the jewish war. Obviously, something was going on in society. The intended audience of this story may well have been used to intrusions by the state into their lives. They would expect it. His placing himself within that apparatus confirms their basic suspicions about the world as it is and the powers that be while simultaneously invoking the shade of something about which the target audience would be immensely dissatisfied. It's a missionary tactic that's still used today. I used to be one of them, now I'm one of you. So maybe he got creative with where he was from, who he was, or what he did for a living, but in the context of his ministry and the timeframe in which he's purported to have built it, do you think that would have seemed important? He was a likely epileptic with no formal training who'd absorbed pagan theosophy, a man who either did or didn't believe that he saw a vision of christ and, pursuant to that vision (real, imagined, or manufactured) created a narrative around himself as an evangelical prop. This would be compounded by later authors doing exactly this same thing, but bigger.
Lying for christ isn't a new thing.
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