For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

One thought was a traveling preacher who was trying to get followers and was leading the movement. Another was the man who would have created the cult (who we refer to as Paul, which is an odd name. While it sounds like "Saul" there is no real connection between the two).

Paul's names are a bit mysterious.

Mark Powell concludes that "Saul/Paul seems to have had two names: his given Hebrew name ('Saul') and a more Roman-sounding name ('Paul') for use in the Gentile world (similarly, Silus was called 'Silvanus')".[6]

According to baby names, Paul is derived from the Roman family name Paulus, which meant "small" or "humble" in Latin.

There are other conjectures as well. But if you look up Rabbi Eliezer on Wikipedia, you see that the lack ofscholarship causes Christians to believe that Rabbi Eliezer was a secret Christian, while ignoring that he openly disputed and denounced them in other places.

Is this Eliezer ben Hurcanos? The only mention of Christianity I could find is in the section about him being charged for heresy.

At last he remembered that once, while at Sepphoris, he had met a Christian who communicated to him a singular halakhah in the name of Ben Pandera, (Jesus) that he had approved of the halakhah and had really enjoyed hearing it, and, he added, "Thereby I transgressed the injunction,[33] 'Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house,' which the Rabbis apply to sectarianism as well as to heresy".[34][35]

Oh, one more fun Jewish tradition: Paul was really a Greek, a convert, who converted to marry a Jewish woman he was in love with from afar. After converting, he asked for her hand, but she said that since she was the daughter of a Kohen, she was not allowed to marry a convert. And so he got pissed, cursed the Jews, and went on his evil rampaging quest.

It's probably a polemic, but it's a fun one!

I remembered something about the Ebionites. The Early Christian Writings site has this to say about the Gospel Of The Hebrews

Irenaeus Against Heresies, i.26.2. But the Ebionites use only that Gospel which is according to Matthew, and repudiate the Apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the Law.

Irenaeus lived (2nd century – c. 202 CE) so Paul traditions appear to have been well established by then. In the wikipedia article about Ebionites, reference 84 says -

"[The Ebionites] declare that he was a Greek [...] He went up to Jerusalem, they say, and when he had spent some time there, he was seized with a passion to marry the daughter of the priest. For this reason he became a proselyte and was circumcised. Then, when he failed to get the girl, he flew into a rage and wrote against circumcision and against the sabbath and the Law " - Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30.16.6-9

I haven't been able to track down an online version of the Panarion to check it out for myself. If Epiphanius really did say this it indicates that this story was known in his lifetime (inter 310–320 – 403) and his biography reveals where he could have heard it.

Epiphanius was born into a Christian family in the small settlement of Besanduk, near Eleutheropolis (modern-day Beit Guvrin, Israel),[2] and lived as a monk in Egypt, where he was educated and came into contact with Valentinian groups. He returned to Palestine around 333, when he was still a young man, and he founded a monastery at Ad nearby [3] which is often mentioned in the polemics of Jerome with Rufinus and John, Bishop of Jerusalem. He was ordained a priest, and lived and studied as superior of the monastery in Ad that he founded for thirty years and gained much skill and knowledge in that position.

So, maybe people who were anti-Paul decided that he actually started out as Paul then told everyone his name was Saul so they'd believe he'd been born a Jew. When he didn't get what he wanted he reverted to his real name because it was useful outside Judea. Paul claimed to be a Roman citizen in Acts 16.

37 But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”

38 The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed.

None of this proves that Paul really existed, of course, but stories about him definitely existed.