(April 3, 2015 at 10:11 am)RobbyPants Wrote:(April 3, 2015 at 12:47 am)Minimalist Wrote: Now xtians love to rattle on how "Paul" dates from the first century but the earliest we actually hear of him in solidly datable references is in the mid 2d century and Justin never heard of any "Paul" either....although he did hear of "Paul's" sponsor, Marcion. The whole thing is very confusing because the handful of actual facts we have do not match up to xtian bullshit.
Can you elaborate on this? I thought the Epistles were dated to something like 20 years after the events described in the gospels. Or are you saying that it wasn't necessarily Paul who wrote them?
http://www.marcion.info/
Here, check this out first.
Quote:Marcion wrote the first canon of the New Testament in AD 140. For centuries Marcion has been maligned as a heretic, since the Church Fathers like Tertullian accused him of taking the razor to the Bible and cutting out several of the Pauline epistles; Acts, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. In addition the only Gospel in Marcion's Bible is two thirds of Luke. Actually that's it. One Gospel and ten Pauline epistles, which means no Revelations and no Old Testament.
Christians like to tell us that Marcion changed the Bible to suit his theology. However it appeared to me from the beginning that before Marcion there was no documented history of Christianity as we know it. So for example there are no reliable historical contemporary accounts of Paul, Peter, Luke, Mark or even the Jesus that we think of today. Likewise archaeological New Testament fragments have been dated starting around 190 AD, again consistent with the first New Testament being written 140 AD.
In addition Bible scholars who actually question things have come to the conclusion that some of the Pauline epistles were added later than whoever wrote the first ones. Their conclusions are consistent with Marcion's Bible being the original text.
The group which eventually won out - and there were many xtian/gnostic groups running around the Eastern Roman empire - are called the proto-orthodox by Bart Ehrman. They wrote an origin story of their own and denounced Marcion as a "heretic" but it seems that they were more than willing to take his writings and re-purpose them to their own use. Of course, all we now have is emerged from their process of tinkering. Who the hell knows what Marcion's originals had to say.
