Interesting. I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole and seen Thomas Jefferson call Paul the first corrupter of Jesus’ teachings and I’m seeing everything in a brand new way. It makes a lot of sense.
TIL Jefferson published his own "version" of the New Testament. [1]
> Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations.
It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
I'm not really a believer or practicer anymore, but as someone who spent substantial time reading scripture when I was, I've thought a lot about what happens to Christianity if you discard the writings of Paul. If the namesake of Christianity satisfies the claims of the believers, that should be sufficient. Unfortunately, I believe that without Paul's writings, as well as the body of knowledge contained in extra-scriptural writings (commentary through history, catechisms, doctrine passed down by your local church, etc) Christianity pretty much falls apart.
Christianity as an imperial-aligned religion doesn't happen sure, but I'm not sure it falls apart. Jesuism or "The Way," looks a lot more like the Anabaptist traditions, Quakers, Liberation Theology, Christian Anarchism, and secular "Jesus as moral exemplar" movements.
As to the degree that these are falling apart is debatable. They certainly don't have the strong central hierarchy and universalism that Catholic and Protestant sects have, but they seem to endure.
Paul's letters are the earliest evidence of Christianity we have. The gospels weren't written until much later. It wouldn't surprise me if Paul's theology influenced what was written in the gospels.
> I've thought a lot about what happens to Christianity if you discard the writings of Paul.
Without Paul, Christianity reverts to being a variety of Judaism whose leader from the hinterlands got it right about what really mattered in life, as had his predecessors [0]. But he fatally misjudged the big city's religious oligarchs — vassals to their ruthless Roman occupiers — when he relentlessly attacked them and their cozy little setup; at their behest, he was executed by the Roman overlords.
Some [1] of the leader's later followers — his posse, if you will — imagined they'd seen him. But the leader's wealthy and/or well-connected followers are strangely absent from the narrative. Perhaps they had more information about what had really happened [2].
The early postmortem appearance tales eventually mutated into a legend of a warrior-king, raised from the dead — who would return Real Soon Now, to usher in God's reign and establish Israel's rightful place in Creation [3].
Over decades, the tales percolated into Mediterranean Graeco-Roman culture — eventually mutating further still into a tale of a divine being [4] (perhaps hybridized with that culture's myths?).
> It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.
I chose the words carefully for that reason. The prophet of the nascent religion was a human being who was born, lived and died as a human being. Paul did not encounter this man. In his story, he encounters a divine being, and receives a private revelation (gospel) and mission that is distinct from the revelation and mission that the prophet in question gave as a human to his chosen students (apostles).
Paul is, in this terminology, also a prophet. He explicitly says the revelation he tells is not of human origin, and so not passed down to him through e.g. the ministry of one of the students (apostles) of the prophet in question.
It strikes me as unusual to have so much of the theology coming from someone who simply claims private revelation but is not the prophet in question and when the prophet explicitly chose disciples and set a ministry for them.
Not sure why you refer to the person who visited Paul on the Damascus Road with the term “divine being“ when this divine being as you put it specifically identifies himself as Jesus Christ, whom Paul was persecuting. And there’s further dialogue where Jesus communicates additional information to Paul as to the things he must suffer for Christ’s sake. He should also point out that Paul went over Peter and many of the other disciples to accepting him and his recount of the Damascus Road experience, despite the fact that he persecuted the church and was sending people to jail just prior to this encounte. I would take Paul at his word as faithfully recounted by Luke more than I would take your words as once so far removed, and obviously skeptical of the scriptures themselves. The entire New Testament and Christ life focuses on faith, which is supported by actual historical miracles and healings not to mention in Christ resurrection itself. That’s the whole issue, faith and belief versus skepticism and unbelief. It’s the grand drama that’s the whole point of both Old Testament and New Testament, that sprouts in the garden of Eden, where the serpent casted out on God‘s veracity when describing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. of course there will be people like you that argue on the side of skepticism and unbelief and that’s been true throughout history so nothing new here
I called him a divine being to describe the kind of experience it was. There was a historical human form of Jesus that the chosen apostles interacted with. In Paul's testimony he encounters Jesus who is not take the form of a historical human anymore and therefore the type of religious experience this is, is one with the divine. I am not making a Christological argument on the full nature of Jesus.
I am Christian btw, but I support bringing historical and documentary rigor to theology. I also haven't actually doubted anything, at least not of Christ. I've just characterized Paul's gospel and mission as coming from a private and separate revelation, unlike the gospels and missions that the original apostles received.
The point that I made based on that is that it is strange that a lot of the theology of Christianity as it develops centuries later is derived more from the exceptional and privately delivered gospel of Paul, rather than from the gospels of the apostles of Jesus when he also held a historical human form.
I think there is also an obvious scholarly reason for this that doesn't even require belief, which is that Paul's writings are the closest documents we have to the time of historical Jesus. However, that also gives reason for us to be cautious in hanging major theological positions on specific sections in Paul that seem absent from or in tension with the synoptic gospels.
So I’m wondering, do you the epistles Paul wrote as less authoritative and scriptural then the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? I just trying to understand the distinctions you are trying to communicate in your responses. Thank you for sharing and I don’t want to continue to make assumptions like I did in my first comment that miss the mark
To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels.
In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
> In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
As I understand it, a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today). I don't think Old Testament references to the Messiah are all that meaningful as such for this particular discussion. Whether Jesus is or isn't the Messiah is of course a matter of faith.
> Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it.
I'm not sure that follows.
What works do you believe that we have from these 12 people - and how would you evaluate the relative credibility of them and Paul / Saul?
As I understand it, Paul conceded he got all his information <sic> about Jesus from revelation, and there's a compelling argument to be made that his works all describe a different entity (a supernatural one) than the human-like character described elsewhere, and much later, in the NT.
Paul's writings largely precede the gospels, so he wouldn't have needed to "change" them. They were written later. He could have drafted them himself for all we know.
> They were written later. He could have drafted them himself for all we know.
I mean, that's not at all true. You’d have to ignore the same research that tells us that they were written later in the first place to say we have no information with which to reject that they have a common authorship with the Pauline corpus.
There is no mention of the 12 apostles except for IIRC 1 Cor 15 which is likely an interpolation. He mentions only James (bro of Jesus, curiously erased from history), Cephas (/Peter?) and John. And he doesn't use kind words about them...
From the map dialog for Lystra, visited on his first and second journeys:
**
>Second Journey Verses (Acts16:1-5):
>Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
**
I guess you need to have rules if you're gonna let people play the disciple game. Rule #1 - Get circumsized. This rule may be most effective at limiting disciple group size since any uncommitted wannabees would take a hard pass. I'm left wondering whether this could be the origin of "just the tip", or tipping culture?
Luckily for Timothy, Paul was a tent-maker or leather-worker, depending on which translation you favor, so he likely had some really sharp tools and would be able to make short work of this little project. Timothy probably didn't find much delight in pitching tents for a while though. Pretty funny trying to imagine walking around preaching for converts after this operation and wondering whether they had a cone or something like your cat gets at the vet to shield the parts from scratchy robes while walking. Probably lots of talking to God on those journeys.
An argument against the position that the "concept of Jesus" is woven throughout the Old Testament is that the Jews did not accept him as such. And yes, I do know about all the 'christian' reasons why that did not happen, but it is rather obvious that there is no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
> no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah
Funny you mention that. Because those Jews (not all of them, mind you) that did not accept the Messiah did try to change the book of Isaiah. The mental gymnastics about the "Almah" translation continue to this day.
According to the 'Acts of the Apostles', Paul (then still called Saul) was actively prosecuting the followers of Jesus, which by many were considered to be a Jewish sect, like there were more of such sects.
It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.
As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.
That feels like a real stretch considering that Paul is responsible for starting the branch of Christianity that would eventually outlaw any “non-canonical” books about Jesus. Said books would never even have existed if it was true that Paul invented the character of Jesus whole cloth.
The erradication of non-canonical books came way later. There was no such thing at first (during at least the first two centuries following Paul's life).
There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about.
Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
Fair enough, but they were included and they were attributed to Paul. The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. You can put quotes around Paul's name in this context but the effect is still the same.
> The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either.
We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources - and were written 40-100 years after the events they claim to detail.
We don’t know that for sure, and the author of John does clearly identify himself in-text..
Everyone also agrees Luke-Acts is written by the same person, and that Acts shifts to a first-person perspective during the account of Paul’s journeys.
It’s not currently in fashion to think they were written by their the people they are named after, but it’s not implausible; the strongest argument for later dating of the gospels is simply that they all are perceived to clearly prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem, which did occur circa 70AD. But there’s no particular reason, even from a secular perspective, to assume this wasn’t just a reasonable guess about the future given past history and the contemporary political environment. Also, it seems relevant that our earliest sources given them those credits.
Book of John - you may be misinterpreting the claims of authorship / identity there. And 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' is probably not really self-identifying anyway. AIUI consensus is that it was written by a group of people, but we really don't know.
Book of Luke / (some of) Acts - yes, probably the same person, traditionally thought to be a physician friend of Paul / Saul, but again, no authorship provided or sources cited, so we don't really know.
So much in the NT was written to satisfy various OT prophecies that it can all feel a bit contrived - but again, AIUI, the writings in 'Mark' (the first of the four) strongly suggest post-70CE, but perhaps much later.
I suppose anything is 'not implausible' if you're inclined in a certain direction.
> Book of John - you may be misinterpreting the claims of authorship / identity there. And 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' is probably not really self-identifying anyway
We know the "disciple who Jesus loved" is John from John, and in the last chapter, the book is explicitly attributed to him as "the one who testifies of these things and wrote them down", in the typical third-person way of this sort of literature.
If you care what other people close in time thought, we know that for example, Clement of Alexandria believed this based on tradition as well. Of course, we can suspend judgement: we have no way of knowing. But in the absence of clear contradictory evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable to rest on the side of "whatever the text and the closest contemporaries we have thought."
> sources cited,
What do you mean by this?
> AIUI, the writings in 'Mark' (the first of the four) strongly suggest post-70CE, but perhaps much later.
This argument rests entirely on what I alluded to earlier. As I mentioned, from a purely secular perspective, it isn't surprising that someone could guess that Jerusalem would someday be destroyed. It happened many times before! On top of this, the political situation was delicate, and very similar to the last time Jerusalem had been destroyed. But setting all that aside:
Read this and tell me if this is a clear, definite allusion to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70, or a vague handwavy prophecy about "Bad Things Will Happen and the Temple will be destroyed".
Eventually. If anything, it's very confused, since if you assume the passage is talking about the 70AD war, it's clearly also being mixed up with the actual end of the world. It seems just as likely as vague statements that could easily be fit into later actual events. The Greek world was certainly absolutely rife with these things. No doubt it helped the Christians to point to a vague "prophecy" and say "see, we told you!" and helped its spread, which in turn made it more likely for the text to survive to present day.
Historiography is not really an exact science, and it's very fad-driven. The academic consensus goes back and forth over time, depending on what's in fashion and who has died. That’s why relatively unsurprising archeological finds often result in major historiographical shifts.
Hmm - we're going to have to disagree about your confidence in the authorship of the book of John, because wikis from rational to pedia, and deeper tomes I've read on the subject, the consensus appears to be that 'we don't know'.
Clement - a religious (read indoctrinated and partisan) person born 120 years after Jesus was meant to have died, is neither 'close in time' nor relevant.
We have plenty of historical works from the actual time about other things where authors identified themselves, cited their sources, did not obfuscate their meanings, etc - so it's not like that skill was unknown. As you say, 'literature' is an apt word for these stories.
As to before / after 70 CE, I guess we'll have to move on from there also, as I don't have a horse in that race.
> Hmm - we're going to have to disagree about your confidence in the authorship of the book of John, because wikis from rational to pedia, and deeper tomes I've read on the subject, the consensus appears to be that 'we don't know'.
I'm not saying the book is written by John. In fact, I'm saying it's unknowable. What I'm doing is laying out the arguments for and against:
For: The book internally claims to be written by John, and very early authors claim to have been told that traditionally.
Against: John was the latest of the Gospels, and since John was written last based on it's style and on the traditional commentary, and since Mark was written after 70AD because we think it alludes to the Siege of Jerusalem, and because we're told in Acts that John wasn't particularly scholarly, John could not have been written by John because he was most likely dead by the time it was written and he wasn't sufficiently scholarly.
You can see that neither one of these are logical proofs. That's the nature of this type of historiography. There's nothing even close to proof. Consensus, such as it is, is just based on the opinions of the current people in the field, who have to publish or perish (thus we're subjected to papers like "Xenophon couldn't have been at the battle of Cunaxa because his description of Cyrus's head wound differs very slightly from the doctor's"). "Everyone was right" is not publishable, so the debate goes on forever and the fashion changes. Of course some arguments can be stronger than others! For example, a common type of argument goes like this:
Passage X is an interpolation. It exists in tons of the later texts we have, but none of the earlier ones.
This is a probabilistic argument: we can never be certain. It could be the case that Passage X was included in the original manuscript, but that an early, popular copyist elided the passage and his copy spawned many others. But this is how it all goes. We're not making certain arguments. It's really more of a persuasive sport. Assuming you have read a given text carefully and are reasonably well-informed on contemporary history, there is no particular reason you have to accept the current consensus. It isn't based on super obscure expert knowledge. If as a layman, you (reasonably!) want to just accept the current academic consensus, that's fine! It's just important to understand what it is actually based on, and that it doesn't constitute anything close to knowledge or certainty.
> As to before / after 70 CE, I guess we'll have to move on from there also, as I don't have a horse in that race.
That's actually a very important point for the dating of the gospels, which is in turn a major point in the authorship debate.
> Clement - a religious (read indoctrinated and partisan) person born 120 years after Jesus was meant to have died, is neither 'close in time' nor relevant.
Unless you know anyone closer in time and nonpartisan, people like him and Irenaeus are all we've got. And that's typical. Disinterested parties don't usually write popular surviving historical works. This is reminiscent of a popular line of historiography: X isn't true because the author was motivated to believe it. Of course this is always possible but it's a very tiresome argument in the absence of some other evidence.
I don't know what you mean. I have yet to encounter a religion mentioned on this site that wasn't criticized, and if anything lack of religion is criticized far more often than religion.
If Christianity, specifically, gets more criticism it's because this is a forum of primarily Western, thus more likely Christian, users.
People always quote only half of those verses and use it to grind an axe. It's tiresome. Let's get the full text in here:
> Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6:5-9, NIV)
So yes, Paul doesn't rail against slavery and insist that it must be torn down. But the simple fact is that slavery was a fact of life in Paul's day, and he had to deal with the world as it was. Thus he focused his advice on the reality of the situation, not engaging in a vain struggle to overturn the order of society in one step. Even the command to treat your slaves well because you will answer to God would have been a significant change in Paul's day. Progress is made one step at a time, and it's not just to blame Paul for doing the best he could in the conditions of his day.
And, frankly, his advice to slaves is good advice. As the ancient Stoics recognized, the only thing you can control is your own response to the situation life places you in. If you're a slave, that isn't ideal, but you can and should conduct yourself with integrity even in such a situation. That doesn't mean you shouldn't hope to be in a better place someday, but in the meantime do the best you can where you are. That's great advice that everyone should follow.
> Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present herself as the radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33 NIV)
Notice that this is far more than a one-sided "women must listen to their husbands" that it is often portrayed as. Expectations are placed upon both parties, and by far the larger obligation is placed on the husband. He is commanded to "love [his] wife just as Christ loved the church", and Christ loved the church so much that he died for it. Thus husbands are expected to be completely and utterly self-sacrificing for the good of their wives, even to the point of death if necessary. That is no small obligation, needless to say. Even if one doesn't like traditional gender roles, it is disingenuous to portray this verse as some kind of misogynistic oppression of women. In fact men have huge obligations of service and sacrifice placed upon them, in Paul's teaching.
Dunno, man. I read the full quote as "thou shalt be complacent and suffer what comes to thee without complaint, for someday thine misfortune will be alleviated by the grace of God".
Which isn't adequately far from "shut up and get over yourself", from my perspective.
> But the simple fact is that slavery was a fact of life in Paul's day, and he had to deal with the world as it was.
Weird how this only applies to slavery, though. For every other aspect of life, Christians aren't expected to simply accept the evils of the world as immutable and unchangeable.
>And, frankly, his advice to slaves is good advice.
No, it isn't. The only good advice for slaves is to cut the throat of their master and be free as soon as possible.
>Notice that this is far more than a one-sided "women must listen to their husbands" that it is often portrayed as.
It is very much that, according to 1 Timothy:
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
> Even if one doesn't like traditional gender roles, it is disingenuous to portray this verse as some kind of misogynistic oppression of women.
It has literally been the basis for the misogynistic oppression of women for more than a thousand years.
That's just fact. You can spin it any way you like, but the purpose of a system is what it does, and violence against women is what these verses do.
> Weird how this only applies to slavery, though. For every other aspect of life, Christians aren't expected to simply accept the evils of the world as immutable and unchangeable.
When it comes to authority structures, the approach (both in the Pauline corpus and elsewhere in the NT) is pretty consistent, slavery isn't treated any differently than secular political authority generally.
