RE: Resurrecting the thread "The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianit...
March 17, 2014 at 1:46 pm
I haven't read the book and probably never will.
I'd have to see individual arguments to know if he has any case against the received view of the majority of modern critical scholars.
I very much doubt that Jesus was a Pharisee. The passages denouncing the Pharisees seem authentic.
Most view Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet associated with John the Baptist and possibly the Essenes.
He may well have been an illiterate Galilean peasant (but certainly with a flair for rhetoric) in which case the texts showing him reading in the synagogue were invented.
I don't think he ever claimed to be the messiah or the apocalyptic judge known as the Son of Man. He was just foretelling the imminent arrival of God's judgment.
Paul does claim to have been a Pharisee in Philippians, one of the epistles considered to be authentic. So again, what's the evidence against Paul's training as a Pharisee? That the positions in his letters contradicted Pharisaic doctrines? Big deal. I was once an ultra-devout Christian and am now a raging atheist.
Right after claiming to have been a Pharisee, Paul says that he has thrown it away and considers it like garbage for the sake of "the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ."
I've mentioned recently in other threads a theory of uber-liberal Christian, Bishop John Spong. He believes that Paul was suppressing homosexual desires. Thus his best efforts to follow the law brought him no peace from his inner conflicts.
I'd have to see individual arguments to know if he has any case against the received view of the majority of modern critical scholars.
I very much doubt that Jesus was a Pharisee. The passages denouncing the Pharisees seem authentic.
Most view Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet associated with John the Baptist and possibly the Essenes.
He may well have been an illiterate Galilean peasant (but certainly with a flair for rhetoric) in which case the texts showing him reading in the synagogue were invented.
I don't think he ever claimed to be the messiah or the apocalyptic judge known as the Son of Man. He was just foretelling the imminent arrival of God's judgment.
Paul does claim to have been a Pharisee in Philippians, one of the epistles considered to be authentic. So again, what's the evidence against Paul's training as a Pharisee? That the positions in his letters contradicted Pharisaic doctrines? Big deal. I was once an ultra-devout Christian and am now a raging atheist.
Right after claiming to have been a Pharisee, Paul says that he has thrown it away and considers it like garbage for the sake of "the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ."
I've mentioned recently in other threads a theory of uber-liberal Christian, Bishop John Spong. He believes that Paul was suppressing homosexual desires. Thus his best efforts to follow the law brought him no peace from his inner conflicts.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
