The Quest for the Historical Paul

[Minimalist]

I think you pulled that out of your ass.

[Minimalist]

http://www.radikalkritik.de/nashville.htm

The name ‘Hollandse Radicalen’, Dutch Radicals, has been given to a group of Dutch New Testament scholars at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In spite of their many different opinions, for example about the historicity of Jesus, the Dutch Radicals agreed that none of the so-called Pauline epistles were authentic. They argued that these epistles were written in the second century.[1] Even the famous ‘Tübingen school’ did not include the four main epistles in their critical interpretation of the letters of Paul: Romans, 1-2 Corinthians and Galatians. In this regard the ideas of the Dutch Radicals were rather extreme. The most well-known Radicals[2] are A.D. Loman[3], W.C. van Manen[4] and G.A. van den Bergh van Eysinga.[5] Van Manen is the most influential representative of the Dutch Radicals.

Generally I could give a shit about the 'doctrinal' paul.  I'm more interested in the 'historical' version of this phony but there are scholars who annoy the piss out of fundies.

[vorlon13]

I think you pulled that out of your ass.

Unable to keep track of all his lies, the lying liar, Joseph Smith, lied his best multiple times, and gifted his (bewildered? gullible?) followers with several (6? 7? ??) versions of his visitation lie, and since he wasn't that good at lying (not that it mattered to his gullible followers), his multiple lying lies were grossly inconsistent with each other.

Some lies were dictated to scribes, he apparently lied up a few more inconsistent versions from his own lying lips to other followers, he approved for publication some more lying versions penned by other lying liars in his organization, and much to the horror of the church elders of the time when it was discovered (1960s), he committed another lying pile of lying lies to actual paper with his own actual handwritten lies from his own lying hand.

Anyhow, the church had already deemed another lie to be the official lie, so when the handwritten lies (in Joe's on lying hand, you will recall !!!!!) was discovered in the archives (no wonder from then on it has become MUCH more difficult to get copies of these or other lies out of there) rather than call even more attention to all the lies, they decided to just ignore the latest lie filled version of Joe's visitation lie since, regardless of how that particular lie came to be created and how it became known, it was just easier at that point, and hey, what's a few more lies, even if the church hierarchy knew they had (again) fucked up royally, and it was just easier to throw another lie onto the lie pile and just issue a statement saying that all the versions were (get this!!) remarkably consistent.

And true to form, the chronically and compulsively gullible members of the flock, by now, so filled to the very brim with lies, lies, lies, more lies, and some more lies on top of that, just decided to go with that obvious lie too since 'rocking the boat' over all the lies doesn't even occur to them anymore.

[Minimalist]

Unable to keep track of all his lies, the lying liar, Joseph Smith, lied his best multiple times, and gifted his (bewildered? gullible?) followers with several (6? 7? ??) versions of his visitation lie, and since he wasn't that good at lying (not that it mattered to his gullible followers), his multiple lying lies were grossly inconsistent with each other.

He was probably astonished that anyone believed him.  Lying fuck.  He was the Trump of his day.

[vorlon13]

And what of Paul ??

[Minimalist]

"Paul" was either

1.  Some sort of gnostic who wrote a few letters,

2.  An amalgamation of several people discussing their adherence to a typical Hellenistic god-in-the-sky character,

3.  An invention of Marcion to serve as his prophet - in much the same way that mohammed was invented to serve as islam's prophet,

4.  Some combination of 1 or 2 and 3.

[brewer]

I'd rather have a quest to find this Paul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec4UU-RS2cU

[Minimalist]

Let us continue with the ideas of the Dutch theologian, W Van Manen:

Van Manen locates the home of Paulinism at Antioch or perhaps Asia Minor beginning at the end of the first century or the start of the second and thriving by 150 CE.[37] Fragments from this Gnostic Pauline circle were later compiled into the familiar epistles, each and all of which are in their present form redactional compositions, finally receiving a catholicizing overlay. “We do not know by whom the collection was made, nor yet what influence his work had upon the traditional text. Perhaps we may suppose that it led to some changes.


Probably the collection was not wholly the work of one person, but arose gradually through additions.”[38] Van Manen’s theory belongs with the others we have lumped together under the paper-apostle approach in that it tends to minimize the interval between the writing of the letters and their collection. In this case, both the writing and the collecting are seen as occurring early in the second century.

So...Syria in the second century, not Greece or Rome in the first.

[Minimalist]

duplicate

[I coulda had a V8]

I have always thought Paul was full of shit. He claims to be a super Pharisee who is working for the Sadducees rounding up Christians to kill them until he meets a ghost on the way to Syria.
Well, it has all the big words that easily impress twice born Christians except…
The Pharisees and Sadducees were enemies; they hated each other’s guts. A Pharisee would never work for the Sadducees and the Sadducees would never employ a Pharisees to do their most important bidding especially one who would be so easily spooked by the ghost of a dead man.