Is Christianity based on older myths?

[Mudhammam]

I'm gonna have to say that theories which seriously suggest the figure of Paul to be a literary invention (of who exactly?) are pretty stupid. Paul clearly takes on a mythical portrayal in Acts, but the letters written in his name are deemed authentic by historians for pretty good reasons. Contrary to the way Christians read ancient documents, there are actually critical methods anyone can apply to determine what is likely to have basis in history, at least in its core, amidst the typical exaggerations, false recollections, metaphors, references, etc. that find their way into human writings. Paul is clearly a real person who has some authority in a premature, fragile, divided Hellenistic religion and has traveled throughout the region, probably at the expense of his fellow Christian cultists. He offers us many mundane details and clues that we would expect in an authentic letter rather than a work of literature disguised in letter form for the purposes of instruction by some unknown person. Even if it wasn't written by a person whose identity is really known, we can, as we do with most works of a similar nature, continue to cite the seven actual Pauline epistles as authored by a single individual, a Jew, in the Roman Empire during the first century, propagating a new cult, and for convenience sake call him Paul. It's not like we're talking about a cryptic sage here.

[robvalue]

Interesting.

I get the idea that there may have been one author and so just call him "Paul". But I'm thinking that someone at that time could just write a bunch of stuff, write some letters, creating the character of "Paul" as the author. It's quite possible they'd have the knowledge to make the character convincing. It doesn't mean that they actually did any of the things they described, does it?

As I said I'm unsure about this one. What I'm asking is, is there good reason to think the author of Paul actually did any of the things he said or actually sent letters regarding stuff he had done and not just made up? Obviously him or someone else was adding stuff to it on the supernatural end, or else Paul was mentally ill.

If this was just "the kind of thing this kind of person might do" then that seems suspiciously indistinguishable from a fiction. Are there independent sources outside of the bible which back him up?

[Mudhammam]

Interesting.

I get the idea that there may have been one author and so just call him "Paul". But I'm thinking that someone at that time could just write a bunch of stuff, write some letters, creating the character of "Paul" as the author. It's quite possible they'd have the knowledge to make the character convincing. It doesn't mean that they actually did any of the things they described, does it?

As I said I'm unsure about this one. What I'm asking is, is there good reason to think the author of Paul actually did any of the things he said or actually sent letters regarding stuff he had done and not just made up? Obviously him or someone else was adding stuff to it on the supernatural end, or else Paul was mentally ill.

If this was just "the kind of thing this kind of person might do" then that seems suspiciously indistinguishable from a fiction. Are there independent sources outside of the bible which back him up?

I won't try to psychoanalyze a figure who's been dead for nearly two millennia, but it wouldn't be that surprising if Paul had a mental illness---he was clearly a mystic of sorts and those types often do suffer from some condition, though there is clearly cogency in much of his thought. It's also important to keep in mind that a first-century person involved with any mystery cult would use symbolic or esoteric language to convey a spiritual truth that his audience would understand but outsiders likely would not, so perhaps we should not always take him so literally; and also, it wasn't strange to believe that gods communicated to people through ordinary means---dreams, thoughts, other people---so he may also be simply relating experiences that he believed were divine but that wouldn't have been particularly uncommon, even for other believers in or out of his Greek and Jewish religious context.

In terms of independent sources, we have all of the pseudographic material forged in his name (and included in the New Testament) between the latter quarter of the first-century and the first quarter of the second, which suggests using his name would have carried authority, and I can really see no good reason for this other than that Paul was really the person contained within his own (alleged) writings and eventually mythologized in Acts. That Acts corresponds with some events Paul mentions may allow us to grant that it contains some kernels of historical truth, taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Outside of the New Testament we have Clement's epistle written at the end of the first-century which mentions Paul, his epistles, and again relates some of the things Paul says about his hardships in spreading Christianity. Ignatius, who died in 110 C.E., also mentions Paul through his letters, as does Polycarp, though writing in the first half of the second-century.

There may be more but those are the ones I know about.

[robvalue]

OK I see, thanks. Steve better send you some flowers for that work you did for him!

It sounds like Paul is a little more credible than HJ, then. I'd have to look into all this stuff to make a better judgement.

Thanks for the insight

The problem with "historians" assessing this stuff is that they often seem to rely on bogus, fallacious logic to come to conclusions rather than actual evidence. That's not surprising from a christian "scholar" of course. I'd rather historians stuck to the evidence and what can be reasonably demonstrated without making bogus appeals on top of that.

[Minimalist]

In 160 Ad Justin Martyr wrote his apologia to Emperor Antoninus Pius. In this entire lengthy work he does not mention any Paul even once. This in spite of the claim that Paul brought xtianity to the Romans a century earlier.

There are big fucking problems with the Paul story.

[Mudhammam]

OK I see, thanks. Steve better send you some flowers for that work you did for him!

It sounds like Paul is a little more credible than HJ, then. I'd have to look into all this stuff to make a better judgement.

Thanks for the insight

The problem with "historians" assessing this stuff is that they often seem to rely on bogus, fallacious logic to come to conclusions rather than actual evidence. That's not surprising from a christian "scholar" of course. I'd rather historians stuck to the evidence and what can be reasonably demonstrated without making bogus appeals on top of that.

No problem. I think we must accept that reconstructing history, especially relatively unknown individuals (hell, even most known ones in their time) is mostly guesswork, and never as objective as one might hope for in a science.

[watchamadoodle]

In 160 Ad Justin Martyr wrote his apologia to Emperor Antoninus Pius. In this entire lengthy work he does not mention any Paul even once. This in spite of the claim that Paul brought xtianity to the Romans a century earlier.

There are big fucking problems with the Paul story.

Probably Paul was just one of many early evangelists, and his followers were not yet dominant in 160 AD?

---

I tend to believe that Christianity originated with a historical Jesus, because that is the view of almost all historians, but I find the mythical Jesus more and more persuasive. Apparently the Gnostic Christians did not have their own churches. They went to the same churches as the non-Gnostic Christians. Supposedly they believed that Jesus was not actually human, but I wonder if they really meant that the whole gospel story was a myth? There are so many fanciful gospels written by devout Christians so early. Then there is the evidence that Judaism had gnostic sects - particularly in Egypt... I like the idea that Jesus was a mystical character invented by Gnostics who was supplied with a earthly biography that was later misunderstood to be reality.

[SteveII]

In 160 Ad Justin Martyr wrote his apologia to Emperor Antoninus Pius. In this entire lengthy work he does not mention any Paul even once. This in spite of the claim that Paul brought xtianity to the Romans a century earlier.

There are big fucking problems with the Paul story.

I find it humorous that you use Justin Martyr as a source for Paul's non-existence.

1. Justin Martyr's works did not all survive.
2. In his surviving writings, he did refer to the "memoirs of the apostles" (gospels-plural) multiple times. He believed them to be reliable, and lastly,
3. The following quote suggest you are just wrong.

Reflecting his opposition to Marcion, Justin's attitude toward the Pauline epistles generally corresponds to that of the later Church. In Justin's works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. It seems likely that he also knew Hebrews and 1 John. The apologetic character of Justin's habit of thought appears again in the Acts of his martyrdom, the genuineness of which is attested by internal evidence.[43] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr

[Mudhammam]

I think you're both forgetting that 160 A.D. is too late to have any relevancy for establishing the historicity of a man who, if he existed, probably died about 100 years earlier.

[FatAndFaithless]

Yet again, we see Steve conflating what people claim to believe and what actually happened.