(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: Paul writing are directed toward communities of believers, to churches, and not to unbelievers, and are focused primarily on issues with the individual christian communities he's writing.
Except when his audience isn’t familiar. In his letter to the Romans, introducing himself and his message, there is not a single direct citation of Jesus’ teaching. In fact, in Romans 15:3-4 Paul all but tells us there are no stories about Jesus to draw upon – nothing but what we read about in the Jewish scriptures.
Also Paul feels the need to repeatedly remind his congregations of what he himself has already taught them – why should he have any qualms doing the same for Jesus?
(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: he was born of woman
You're probably talking about Galatians 4:4 but if you look at KJV you won't find "born" but "made" which is a right translation of "genomenos" that Paul uses here and in 1 Cor. 15:45, where Paul says Adam “was made,” not born, by God; using the same word, genomenos, as he uses for Jesus. Paul uses it yet again in 1 Cor. 15:37 when describing the new celestial bodies created by God awaiting believers in heaven. Paul does use the word genomenos hundreds of times, usually to mean “being” or “becoming” – but never to mean a human birth.
Indeed, if you actually read Galatians 4 you would see it is an allegory about mothers, as Paul tells us explicitly (4:24). As Paul explains (4:24-31), using the two wives of Abraham (one a slave, one free), Lord’s “mother” in this metaphor is the same we are all born to: the mother of slavery, the mother of the old covenant “under the law,” whereas once Jesus died to that mother, he became the heir to God under the mother of the new covenant, the heavenly Jerusalem and freedom.
(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: He also mentions Jesus message throughout his writing,...., returning good for evil, on divorce, on the elevation of love, as the highest command and virtue
Like I told you before, Paul repeatedly insists that he learned nothing of his Gospel from anyone else, despite all this, you still want to claim that Paul quotes from Jesus, but in every case (including the one on divorce), it’s never quite like anything we find in the Gospels… and anywhere Paul says something that sounds close to something from the Gospels’ Jesus.
(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: the Lord's supper
Actually Paul mentions a lot of suppers because Lord's supper was already a very familiar pagan ritual. By Paul’s time, communion rituals involving bread and a cup of wine or water had long been a staple feature of the pagan mystery faiths found throughout the Mediterranean world. Even the name he uses for this ritual he claimed came exclusively to him is actually a term taken from the mystery cults, kuriakon deipnon, “the Lord’s Supper (or “the lordly supper”).
The similarity was so great that Paul expressly forbids his followers from participating in pagan sacred meals: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table table and of the table of demons!” (1 Cor. 10:21).
Needless to say the honorary title of the cult gods in the mysteries was Kyrios, “Lord”
(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: He also writes of his encounters with his disciples, and brother
Brother? You mean the one that Jesus renounce along with the rest of his family? So how does it make sense that he had privileged status? Also Paul didn't say Jesus's brother but Lord's brother, and Lord's brother is a title Paul uses to call all sorts of people, perhaps proxy for Christians, like 1 Cor. 9:5 “Do we not have the right to take along with us a sister-wife, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephasdo?”
If you actually read Paul’s genuine epistles you could have easily seen that he speaks about James in the same way he refers to his fellow believers, all brothers of Christ and sons of God.
(April 15, 2019 at 11:36 am)Acrobat Wrote: In fact Paul quotes Jesus words from the Lord supper "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, every time you drink it, in remembrance of me." 1 Cor 11.
Actually Paul is just re-writing Genesis 14:18, the priest-king Melchizedek, like Christ, also takes bread and wine and offers a blessing. Moses, too, offers a blood sacrifice in Exodus 24:8, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.”
