For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[DeistPaladin]

If Marcion c.85 – c.160. invented Paul, how did the teachings of a Jewish sect get taken to the Gentiles? I had a go at inventing Fred just to see if I could come up with an idea about how Christianity could have got started without a Jesus or a Paul. I found no Jesus easier to explain than no Paul so I had to resort to somebody Paul could have been based on.

I'm not arguing that Marcion invented Paul. I am questioning whether or not Paul wrote anything consistent with Trinitarian beliefs. How much was added later?

We do know that Paul's authorship of some of the epistles attributed to him is questionable. Roughly half of them are considered to be of questionable authenticity. Interpolation was also a problem and it's reasonable to question how much has been changed.

We do know:

1. Paul was the poster boy for Marcionite Christianity.
   
2. Marcionite scripture primarily included Paul's epistles
   
3. Paul in Acts was later reworked as a character to be submissive to other church authorities. His passive nature sits oddly alongside his bombastic epistles where he felt like he answered to no one but Christ.
   

Now, remember the church habit of incorporating the prophets of other religions. The Christians did this with the Mandeans, followers of John the Baptist. The Mandeans were rivals of the early Christians and yet the Gospels depict their messiah groveling at the feet of Jesus. That's how it works. Icons of a victorious church always wind up with the icons of the losing church kneeling before them.

So what do you think? Do you believe that Paul pointed to Trinitarianism and Marcion hoped no one would notice? Or a later victorious church inserted a few choice words into the Pauline epistles we have today?