Why are Paul's writings in the Bible?

[LinuxGal]

Quote:

There is an odd contradiction which is interesting in Matthew. In the Hearing at the house of Caiaphas, (the High priest), two men come forward and say "This man said 'I can destroy the temple of God, and rebuild it within three days' ". In fact Jesus NEVER says that in public in Matthew, only in private to the Apostles.

That's why Matthew says the two men are false witnesses.  Except they aren't, if you go by John 2:19:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

[The Grand Nudger]

-by the Consensus of Scholars™...you can never go by john.

[LinuxGal]

-by the Consensus of Scholars™...you can never go by john.

[Silver]

-by the Consensus of Scholars™...you can never go by john.

But, but, but, John 3:16.

[LinuxGal]

Quote:

In Q, Jesus is lined up with the prophets, and in the pattern of Deuteronomy, and he is rejected by the people. By the time Mark is written, the passion has been added.

Q is defined as that material found in both Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark.  But if Matthew declined to use some passages found in his copy of Q because it didn't fit his agenda (Jesus as the new Moses), then at least part of the L source was found in the lost Q. And the reverse is true for the M source (Luke had an anti-Galilean bent).  The underlying assumption is that each of the gospel authors used every scrap of everything he had on hand.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and the trouble begins all over again.

Explaining narrative agreement or disagrement by ideological consistency does not seem to fit with the notion that the inclusion of alleged asserted or implied biographical details... embarrassing or otherwise... has anything to do with the hypothetical historic person. If biographical details of the hypothetical historic person were left out because they didn't fit a later authors ideology, or included because they did, all biographical details even in the event of a historic person must be assumed to be suspect.

Yet it does seem like this is exactly what biblical authors and those who didn't make it into magic book but exist in the periphery did, and had always done. When they recounted their version of a character it was yet another version of someone elses version of a character. There need be no real person at the end of this chain, only characters - and here again we're still assuming there was one, it's just that it wouldn't appear to have anything to do with the literary tradition that gave us our set of possible biographical details. That there are any of them in magic book at all relies on nothing more than a deeply motivated assumption as such.

All of this, in the context of what magic book is actually about - a fantasy pitch regarding miracle working magic men. You cant trust acts and you cant trust john and you cant trust most of what was attributed to paul and we assume that the authors of luke and matthew took liberties specific to their own interests and there's a whole lost document that no one's ever seen and no one seemed to know anything about. It would be weird that arguing for any component of the consensus would seem to deflate the overall conclusion of the consensus if it weren't so comprehensively the case with every single component of it. The consensus builds a very strong case for mythical or legendary characters at absolute best and then throws it's hands in the air declaring it good evidence for historicity instead.

[LinuxGal]

The consensus builds a very strong case for mythical or legendary characters at absolute best and then throws it's hands in the air declaring it good evidence for historicity instead.

We watch Paul himself create a character with the traditional Jewish aversion to blood who nevertheless asks his followers to drink his blood, Greco-Roman mystery cult style, if only in a symbolic sense, and we would normally be inclined to go "AHA!  GOTCHA!" but Paul, in his undisputed letters, says he met this same fellow's brother.  And the existence of that brother is supported by Josephus.  Then later the proto-orthodox tradition that became pre-eminent in the Jesus movement developed a tradition that Mary was ever-virgin, so they attempted, Stalin-like, to erase James from history.  But today mythicists tell us the same adherents of the proto-orthodox view added interpolations mentioning "James the brother of the Lord" to every extant copy of Galatians and Antiquities of the Jews.  That takes us into grand conspiracy territory, and the same impulse that led to my atheism makes me critical of mythicism.

[GrandizerII]

The consensus builds a very strong case for mythical or legendary characters at absolute best and then throws it's hands in the air declaring it good evidence for historicity instead.

We watch Paul himself create a character with the traditional Jewish aversion to blood who nevertheless asks his followers to drink his blood, Greco-Roman mystery cult style, if only in a symbolic sense, and we would normally be inclined to go "AHA!  GOTCHA!" but Paul, in his undisputed letters, says he met this same fellow's brother.  And the existence of that brother is supported by Josephus.  Then later the proto-orthodox tradition that became pre-eminent in the Jesus movement developed a tradition that Mary was ever-virgin, so they attempted, Stalin-like, to erase James from history.  But today mythicists tell us the same adherents of the proto-orthodox view added interpolations mentioning "James the brother of the Lord" to every extant copy of Galatians and Antiquities of the Jews.  That takes us into grand conspiracy territory, and the same impulse that led to my atheism makes me critical of mythicism.

Not necessarily that grand of a conspiracy theory, but it's just there are more parsimonious accounts than "everything is myth at the core". It's not enough to say it all started out as a myth and not have to account for what happened exactly. You need to give an account that's not excessive and that is still somewhat based on what the available relevant texts indicate/imply. But good luck getting some folks here to understand, especially when they think they understand this stuff better than NT scholars do or they think historicists are are really mythicists but they just don't want to accept it as such or that historicist scholars aren't certain of anything related to the historical Jesus or Paul (which is blatantly false).

[LinuxGal]

But good luck getting some folks here to understand, especially when they think they understand this stuff better than NT scholars do or they think historicists are are really mythicists but they just don't want to accept it as such or that historicist scholars aren't certain of anything related to the historical Jesus or Paul (which is blatantly false).

Slim pickins here.  Taylor Swift on one hand and Jesus Mythicism on the other.

[Fake Messiah]

Paul, in his undisputed letters, says he met this same fellow's brother.  And the existence of that brother is supported by Josephus.  Then later the proto-orthodox tradition that became pre-eminent in the Jesus movement developed a tradition that Mary was ever-virgin, so they attempted, Stalin-like, to erase James from history.  But today mythicists tell us the same adherents of the proto-orthodox view added interpolations mentioning "James the brother of the Lord" to every extant copy of Galatians and Antiquities of the Jews.  That takes us into grand conspiracy territory, and the same impulse that led to my atheism makes me critical of mythicism.

If you want to know what mythicists tell us about TF2 it is that Paul did mention James brother of the Lord, but that seemed to be a title as he ascribes to other characters to be the brother of the Lord as well. Josephus did mention James brother of Jesus, but in the continuation says it is "Jesus, the son of Damneus." The fragment “who was called Christ” was inserted into the text very clumsily since it is different Jesus, and a jew, Josephus, would not call someone messiah (Christ).