If theists understood "evidence"

[The Grand Nudger]

Continuing, and continuing to limit ourselves to authentic paul.  Was paul an epileptic?  Probably.  

In corinthians and galatians paul makes reference;

I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christwho fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. 5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool,because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces[d]? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

12 I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. 13 As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, 14 and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. 15 Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
17 Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. 18 It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. 19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20 how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!

Now, obviously, the description of the incident on the road to damascus that lends the idea credence is from acts - and that's not historically credible...but it is credible with regards to what people believed about pauls experience.  They described it -as- a seizure, because they thought it was one. 

I understand why you might feel compelled to argue against that - but before you do...let me stress that there's no reason that god couldn't reveal himself during epilepsy..hell, maybe seeing god in that manner fuckin causes one.  

So, in addition to the fact that paul was a bit of a boaster, he was likely epileptic - or at least believed to be.  He certainly seems to be aware of an illness at the heart of his ministry and deeply ingrained in his experience of life.

---

Have we?  

No, we have not.  I directly answered questions you asked.  Yes, it is the majority opinion of new testament scholarship that the bulk of what is attributed to paul and about paul is not authentic.  The majority of the paul as persecutor tidbits we have are in legendary paul.  Limiting ourselves to authentic paul, we find a trivial and vague claim...that -must- be trivial and vague..or else it would not support either the person of paul or the dating of the authentics.

Ok... more to the context of the thread, I'm going to ask what the evidence and reasons for these claims is. 

Authentic paul is the evidence, are you disputing it's value?

And I think that it is off topic, because you jumped from another claim about Paul to something else about Paul. However the purpose of the thread was to discuss evidence, and apparently what "only if theist understood" Your purpose seems to be something else.

Just Stahp. Here I am, discussing the evidence. Do you understand the evidence?

[RoadRunner79]

And this is why I avoid jumping topics, and being lead in different directions.  Because what is said, is just ignored, and they will often just jump to something else again.   Predictable

[The Grand Nudger]

Pushing onward, in summary, and still limiting ourselves to authentic paul and an early date for authentic paul-

The narrator makes vague but still dubious claims.  The only explicit information we have is that he didn't persecute christians in the only place in which open persecution of this sort was possible.  Implicitly, the narrator has his base of operations in damascus..and the damacene authroites did have reason, in the 30's 40's and 50's to suppress what they would have seen as trouble jews.   If his capacity was to point the finger and levy accusations, so that legitimate authorities could spirit away those "trouble jews" this is, at least, plausible.  You have to wonder, though, why the damascene authorities would pick hellenists out as the trouble jews - they were syncretists, sympathizers.  It does, however, explain why a hellenist like himself could have ended up working in that capacity..while paul's hellenism is what we might call a fail condition for service, today...if jewish theocratic elements were looking for an inquisitor.

Take care to remind yourself of saul of tarsus claimed pedigree.  Here again acts raises it's ugly head - but- again it is at least what people believed.  He was a roman citizen from a wealthy family.  If this were true, he would have been educated in the hellenist tradition - and this would explain why his source of reference for hebrew scholarship invariably turns out to be greek.  It would also explain the hellenism present in his positions of faith.  Here, though, lets turn back to galatians..authentic paul.

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.
18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas[b] and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.
21 Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they praised God because of me.

Two things stick out in this.  First, he just flat out says that the gospel he preaches he received from no man.  Secondly, he appears to be (or at least think he is) a celebrity, already, to his audience.  He thinks they've heard of him.  He's a personality.  He has a story to tell. Even in this his tendency to fib about his qualifiactions is made evident (and that's laying aside the fact that the guy thinks god set him aside in the womb, and that people who only know about him through stories in judea are thanking god on account of his "conversion", lol). Rabbinical tradition has never taken seriously the claim that pauls theology is in any way demonstrative of his having outperformed his peers in a hebrew setting - nor have his many expressed sentiments about judaism ever left people with the impression that he was zealous in the tradition of his fathers (a problematic claim on it's own) - entirely the opposite.

[Jehanne]

The Romans were federalists; of course, they granted authority to the local government, in the case of Palestine, that is, the Jews!  And, that's my whole point!!

He could not have done what he claims to have done; either the Romans would have arrested him (and, eventually, they did just that), or, the local Jewish authorities would have done so.  Instead, Paul was doing a bit of "storytelling"; as such, he is not a reliable witness to history.

I was trying to research this some today. I couldn’t find much of anyone advocating this view; a few asking questions, but not anyone seriously trying to put this forth or even trying to refute it. I definitely couldn’t find anyone offering historical evidence to support it.

You reject modern scholarly consensus only to appeal to it?

[The Grand Nudger]

RR is one of those christians who thinks that the scholarly consensus is whatever his batshit shaman told him.  There's really no way to be kind about this fact. Whenever you get pushback about known issues, legendary motiffs, and mythical elements...you can be sure that you're talking to a loon who has no use for scholarship other than to rattle it's bones as though it had something to do with their beliefs.

That a historical paul is only going to be found, if there is one..in authentic paul, is the consensus. The consensus within that is that the paul of authentic paul is not the paul of christian belief (that would be the legendary paul). The consensus of scholarship regarding pauls dual and inextricable claims to traditional judaism and persecutorial authority, is that they are not credible.

It's not a big deal, though, if we place those counterfiet bona fides in their cultural and temporal context. By the time these were written (still sticking with the early date) roman antipathy towards jews (and troublemaking sects of any kind) had been increasing. The next few decades would see the fire in rome (maybe) and the jewish war. Obviously, something was going on in society. The intended audience of this story may well have been used to intrusions by the state into their lives. They would expect it. His placing himself within that apparatus confirms their basic suspicions about the world as it is and the powers that be while simultaneously invoking the shade of something about which the target audience would be immensely dissatisfied. It's a missionary tactic that's still used today. I used to be one of them, now I'm one of you. So maybe he got creative with where he was from, who he was, or what he did for a living, but in the context of his ministry and the timeframe in which he's purported to have built it, do you think that would have seemed important? He was a likely epileptic with no formal training who'd absorbed pagan theosophy, a man who either did or didn't believe that he saw a vision of christ and, pursuant to that vision (real, imagined, or manufactured) created a narrative around himself as an evangelical prop. This would be compounded by later authors doing exactly this same thing, but bigger.

Lying for christ isn't a new thing.

[RoadRunner79]

I was trying to research this some today.  I couldn’t find much of anyone advocating this view; a few asking questions, but not anyone seriously trying to put this forth or even trying to refute it. I definitely couldn’t find anyone offering historical evidence to support it.

You reject modern scholarly consensus only to appeal to it?

I didn't know that I was here.    I have pointed out scholarly consensus before, but it is mostly about their reasons for doing so.   I'm not against scholarly opinion at all, they spend a lot more time on things giving them the knowledge, and ability to organize information better then I can.   However, if they don't give any reason for their claims, I'm a little skeptical.   I don't think that they have a magical ability to peer into the past, sometimes they are wrong, and sometimes bias can cloud their judgement.   So I ask why?

[The Grand Nudger]

If you want to know the reasons for their claims, you can always educate yourself. As far as biblical scholarship goes, the majority are believers...so, if you were going to worry about bias......

...let that sink in. A group of people very likely biased by their deeply held christian beliefs, have decided that scant little of paul is even -potentially- reliable, and that even within what we deem reliable, paul makes contortions of fact, and dubious claims.

They can say this, despite the fact that they have deeply held christian beliefs..because there's nothing in that which contradicts them. Just as I can say it. Your skepticism, in this regard, could only serve whatever superstitious or fanciful ideas you have about paul and the new testament. It's got nothin to do with jesus or god or your deeply held beliefs as a christian.

[RoadRunner79]

That’s why I only learn about evolution, from unbiased people who don’t believe in evolution.

[Crossless2.0]

If you want to know the reasons for their claims, you can always educate yourself.  As far as biblical scholarship goes, the majority are believers...so, if you were going to worry about bias......

...let that sink in.  A group of people very likely biased by their deeply held christian beliefs, have decided that scant little of paul is even -potentially- reliable, and that even within what we deem reliable, paul makes contortions of fact, and dubious claims.

But this is the genius of Protestantism. Thanks to sola scriptura, any run-down schmuck can dismiss the findings of professional scholars if they conflict with his or her "plain" and faithful reading of God's word. Paul's letters are absolutely true. How do we know? Because they are in the True Book.

End of discussion. 

[Deesse23]

That’s why I only learn about evolution, from unbiased people who don’t believe in evolution.

Whataboutism