Discuss Paul's contradictions with Jesus?

[outhouse]

There was nothing except for uppercase/majuscule letters in hellenistic greek texts. In other words, their was no "lowercase" zeta.



Even according to apologetic sources, it did.

You mean the OT worshipping roman authors who wrote the bible and made the jews out to be the bad guys??

heres the material im talking about with the Z

for what its worth, I have a hard time thinking paul is any sort of zealot

Zealotry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Taking the Greek word zelotes in Acts 22:3 and Galatians 1:14 of the New Testament to mean a 'Zealot' with capital Z (the earliest Greek manuscripts are uncials or all capital letters), an article[11] by Mark R. Fairchild suggests that Paul the Apostle may have been a Zealot, which might have been the driving force behind his persecution of the Christians (see stoning of Saint Stephen) before his conversion to Christianity, and his incident at Antioch even after his conversion.

While most English translations of the Bible render this Greek word as the adjective "zealous", the word is a noun meaning 'adherent, loyalist, enthusiast; patriot, zealot'. A 'Zealot' with capital Z, however, would suggest a member of the particular Zealots, the group that emerged in Jerusalem ca. AD 6 according to Josephus, see above. In the two cited verses Paul literally declares himself as one who is loyal to God, or an ardent observer of the Law, but see also Antinomianism in the NT. This does not necessarily prove Paul was revealing himself as a Zealot. A translation (the Modern King James Version of Jay P. Green) renders it as 'a zealous one'. Two modern translations (Jewish New Testament and Alternate Literal Translation) render it as 'a zealot'. The Unvarnished New Testament (1991) renders Galatians 1:14 as "...being an absolute zealot for the traditions...". These translations may not be inaccurate, but it is disputed by those who claim it gives the wrong association with the "Zealots".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

That's the issue:

What does "Unmistakably Pauline" Mean? Comparing to the other Epistles? Which epistles? Ephesians?

You have to understand how (in general) textual criticism works here. That is, while textual criticism is mostly about whether or not this or that line is original, or filling in gaps, or identifying corruptions/additions/etc., here the issue is authorship. There is a great deal of research on this:

We have a series of letters written by an author claiming to be named Paul. It's true that (for various reasons) authors would write works (like letters) using another's name (e.g., some or all of Plato's letters). What do these pseudepigraphical texts have in common? There is a great deal of literature on the subject, ranging from works which deal with the topic on a general level (e.g., the edited volume Der griechische Briefroman: Gattungstypologie und Textanalyse) to those which deal with specific letters (e.g., Foucart's "La VI[SUP]e[/SUP] lettre attribuée à Démosthène"). There are also nice collections of these letters (e.g., Costa's Greek Fictional Letters which includes the original greek and translations as well as commentary). Searching through this literature we find a few interesting things:
1) Pseudepigraphical letters were almost always attributed to well-known historical individuals like Socrates, Plato, Euripides, etc. In other words, nobody would bother to write under Paul's name unless he was a well-known figure (at least in early "christian" circles).
2) Those which are not are part of a literary tradition (e.g., the work of Aelian) which dates not just after Paul, but after our earliest actual papyri of Paul's letters (e.g., p46), and are not seperate creations but parts of novels.
3) Unlike with, say, the letters of Cicero, where our manuscripts date (as is typical) from the 9th or 10th centuries CE, we have extant textual attestation for Paul's letters a mere ~150 years after they were written. We also have an incredibly large number of copies to compare. Thus we are in an excellent position from a textual critical point of view, and this allows us to determine which letters are almost certainly those of Paul, which are questionable, and which are almost certainly not written by Paul.

That's without getting into the references to Paul in early christian literature outside the NT.[/quote]


There's little doubt that there was a certain Paul who wrote letters which were disseminated among early christians. There's also little doubt that others wrote in his name. But how do we know this second part? Well here we are in a bit of a better position than with, say, the letters of Plato (not just because of textual evidence, the fact that Paul was writing centuries later, etc.). Plato wrote dialogues. The letters he wrote are going to differ in lexical usage, style, and so forth because they belong to a different genre and register than his other works. With Paul, we have only letters, and only people trying to imitate him. If his imitators use language Paul doesn't, or show awareness or concern with things that Paul wouldn't, it makes it more likely they are inauthentic. But how do you determine these things, especially style/syntax/lexicon? How do you determine what is Pauline to compare what isn't? There are numerous methods, but for simplicity let's look at some simple. We have Paul, and people imitating Paul. Those imitating him are likely to use their own language, insert their own "fingerprints" into their writing. They may use words that Paul never uses in another letter, even when he could. They may overuse a word Paul uses, to be more like Paul. Paul may in general favor certain word ordering (Greek is flexible) or other constructions, and too much deviation from them in one letter likely means it is inauthentic. By narrowing the Pauline corpus using these and other methods, we get closer and closer to a Pauline corpus we know is almost certainly authentic. The questionable ones can be compared to these. With Galatians, we have no reason to doubt authorship, and any comparison to Acts necessarily fails because whether or not Galatians agrees or disagrees is irrelevant.

There are detractors.

So far you've mentioned one, whom I'm not sure is a scholar at all.

Feel free to expound. I've heard numerous times that Galatians is the "most Pauline" of the Epistles.

It's impossible to have the "most Pauline." What you can have is one that has the least reasons for us to doubt its authenticity.

I don't think we're on the same page, explain.

But I think the best argument is, besides the fact Galatians kinda clashes with Act's account of the Jerusalem Council and the issue of the flight to Arabia, it invariably seems like it was intended as a reaction to Acts itself[/quote]
Later christian authors tended to try to make known accounts cohere. From scribes to the composition of the diatessaron the direction was always towards resolving discrepencies, not creating them. At times, of course, an author would write pseudepigraphical work which was deliberately designed to counter an earlier text, view, account, etc. (e.g., many of the so-called gnostic gospels). However, we don't have that here. We have a rather minor variance between Acts and Galatians. It may matter to someone trying to argue that the bible is the literal word of god (and therefore any contradictions are serious problems), but not from a textual critical standpoint.

I don't see the relevance to the issue of it being interpolated.

Mark, Paul, and Q all seem to agree that Jesus forbade divorce and remarriage. The addition in Matthew 19:9 is the exception (the fornication clause). The rest is all multiply attested not only in the gospels, but in Paul, and therefore is the earliest and best attested teaching we have.

Why? When do you think the Pauline Schism was in full swing, and why were there Christians making sacrifices at the Temple?

I meant the assumption of a "Pauline Schism".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You mean the OT worshipping roman authors who wrote the bible and made the jews out to be the bad guys??

Among other things, yes. Jesus is thrown out of his hometown, his family thinks he's crazy, he hangs out with the "wrong crowd", he's at odds with the Pharisees, "scribes", and priests, and in the end he is executed and his followers (at least initially) persecuted both by other Jews and then romans.

 

[sojourner]

Discuss Paul's contradictions with Jesus?

I have far more important things to discuss with Jesus other than Paul's contradictions.

 

[outhouse]

Among other things, yes. Jesus is thrown out of his hometown, his family thinks he's crazy, he hangs out with the "wrong crowd", he's at odds with the Pharisees, "scribes", and priests, and in the end he is executed and his followers (at least initially) persecuted both by other Jews and then romans.

I think this was more of a geohraphic location problem more then a jesus problem.

the Saducees had the temple, treasury and government corrupted. which included the Sanhedrin.

Some of the the Pharisees were raping the hard working people for tithes using roman muscle.


galilee was home to zealots and were apposed to the corruption. jesus standing up to these people yes, was different then the Esenes, and Pharisees and Saducees and because he was in a sect of JtB he wasnt a normal Zealot either.


But a jew he was, I guess in this case "in who's eyes" is a better statement


with only the roman version of what happened, we have lost so much historicity with the hellenistic mythology later added


but its obvious hard working jews in Galilee hated the roman infection into judaism that kepty them starving, while Sepphoris the romans were living in opulence. Judaism was heavily divided on its own without jesus.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But a jew he was.

Of course he was a jew. That doesn't mean he and his followers only rubbed one group of fellow Jews the wrong way.

 

[Shermana]

You have to understand how (in general) textual criticism works here. That is, while textual criticism is mostly about whether or not this or that line is original, or filling in gaps, or identifying corruptions/additions/etc., here the issue is authorship. There is a great deal of research on this:

I understand there's a great deal of research on this, and I'm well aware of how textual criticism, though I believe in this case it would be or also be Higher criticism, would it not? That's the underlying issue though, whether the "textual criticism" has a real basis in its arguments, so maybe we should make a whole new thread on the subject if we want to discuss the higher criticism issues involved with Pauline authorship, as I don't want to veer too far from the thread topic, though I suppose it's related, since Ephesians is clearly forged and is an oft-used counter to the Messianic view.

That's without getting into the references to Paul in early christian literature outside the NT.[

That itself is a whole another subject in itself, as to whether the "orthodox" Christians who refer to him weren't quoting from recently-made forgeries. Like the Pastoral epistles for example. Do you believe Paul wrote those? Most scholars clearly didn't. Yet we see references to them in Church Father writings. Whether those references themselves are forged is another subject for debate.

There's little doubt that there was a certain Paul who wrote letters which were disseminated among early christians

Yes, I don't doubt that some writings, or at least parts of them (Like I've said elsewhere, Goodspeed believes Romans and Corinthians were made up of patchworks), the issue is figuring out why one is a forgery and one is not. Maybe I should start a whole thread on Galatians and Pauline authorship, your input would be welcome.

.

There's also little doubt that others wrote in his name. But how do we know this second part? Well here we are in a bit of a better position than with, say, the letters of Plato (not just because of textual evidence, the fact that Paul was writing centuries later, etc.). Plato wrote dialogues. The letters he wrote are going to differ in lexical usage, style, and so forth because they belong to a different genre and register than his other works. With Paul, we have only letters, and only people trying to imitate him. If his imitators use language Paul doesn't, or show awareness or concern with things that Paul wouldn't, it makes it more likely they are inauthentic. But how do you determine these things, especially style/syntax/lexicon? How do you determine what is Pauline to compare what isn't? There are numerous methods, but for simplicity let's look at some simple. We have Paul, and people imitating Paul. Those imitating him are likely to use their own language, insert their own "fingerprints" into their writing. They may use words that Paul never uses in another letter, even when he could. They may overuse a word Paul uses, to be more like Paul. Paul may in general favor certain word ordering (Greek is flexible) or other constructions, and too much deviation from them in one letter likely means it is inauthentic. By narrowing the Pauline corpus using these and other methods, we get closer and closer to a Pauline corpus we know is almost certainly authentic. The questionable ones can be compared to these. With Galatians, we have no reason to doubt authorship, and any comparison to Acts necessarily fails because whether or not Galatians agrees or disagrees is irrelevant.

That's exactly the problem, we these "Methods "nonetheless are still subjective and speculative. However, you say "We have no reason to doubt authorship", and obviously others besides Mcguire (such as those whom he quotes from) have doubted this. So if we want to discuss this fully without going too off topic, I think we should make a whole thread devoted to the specifics where we can go over the style, Greek usage, character, manuscript details, etc.

So far you've mentioned one, whom I'm not sure is a scholar at all.

Who is and isn't a "Scholar" then? He does quote from others though.

It's impossible to have the "most Pauline." What you can have is one that has the least reasons for us to doubt its authenticity.

And that's the issue: What are those reasons, and why are they not subjective and why can we be so sure about them? Theological content? Obviously the forgeries can be a bit tell-tale from their style, but many "Christians" say the opposite, saying that the dubious Pastoral Epistles ARE the same style. It's subjective and speculative.

Later christian authors tended to try to make known accounts cohere.

But they also make contradictions sometimes. See the ending of John, which clashes with the endings of Matthew and Luke. Maybe that's another thread topic though.

From scribes to the composition of the diatessaron the direction was always towards resolving discrepencies, not creating them. At times, of course, an author would write pseudepigraphical work which was deliberately designed to counter an earlier text, view, account, etc. (e.g., many of the so-called gnostic gospels). However, we don't have that here.

We don't have that here because....? As for resolving discrepancies, they apparently didn't always do that job, in fact sometimes they created more.

We have a rather minor variance between Acts and Galatians

Minor? Why isn't it major? And if so, why aren't minor details important? Court cases are decided by minor details. It's minor details that we are sometimes able to determine interpolation issues like with Westcott and Horts NWI's from the Alexandrian text.

. It may matter to someone trying to argue that the bible is the literal word of god (and therefore any contradictions are serious problems), but not from a textual critical standpoint.

Why wouldn't it matter from a textual critical standpoint? So far I see nothing but subjective arguments that don't get into the actual meat of the issue.

Mark, Paul, and Q all seem to agree that Jesus forbade divorce and remarriage. The addition in Matthew 19:9 is the exception (the fornication clause). The rest is all multiply attested not only in the gospels, but in Paul, and therefore is the earliest and best attested teaching we have.

We'll have to call a stalemate for now because 9b is still nonetheless regarded as an interpolation, for whatever manuscript-reasons we can discuss on another thread.

I meant the assumption of a "Pauline Schism".

I thought this was the standard scholarly view that the Church was originally all Jewish and it only later after its first few decades saw a gentile anti-Judaizing schism, heavily said to be due to Paul's influence. We also have the Pseudo-Clementine literature which FC Baur says was much an attempt to attack Pauline views, even saying Simon Magus was code word for Paul. We see evidence that the Nazarenes and Ebionites were divided on their acceptance of Paul. Who is to say the Ebionites and Nazarenes weren't the originals and then Paul came along to change things later?

Obviously the Marcionites wouldn't have had a following if the issue of Dejudaizing wasn't in its heyday back then.

 

[Shermana]

I have far more important things to discuss with Jesus other than Paul's contradictions.

Well at least you seem to admit that Paul contradicts him, that's a great start. But I question if you have far more important things to discuss if you're posting here.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

That itself is a whole another subject in itself, as to whether the "orthodox" Christians who refer to him weren't quoting from recently-made forgeries. Like the Pastoral epistles for example. Do you believe Paul wrote those? Most scholars clearly didn't. Yet we see references to them in Church Father writings. Whether those references themselves are forged is another subject for debate.

I was quoting (being lazy) from an earlier post I made, and that post too was already a copy of something I had written elsewhere to address the argument that Paul never existed. Thus it isn't entirely applicable here. What's important is establishing why we know that 1) Paul did write letters and 2) not all of what we have was written by him (meaning both that their are entire letters which were not authored by Paul, but also that parts of letters he may have or did write are likely not from him).

That's exactly the problem, we these "Methods "nonetheless are still subjective and speculative.

Some, yes. Some, not so much. That is, many analyses used to determine authorship of ancient works, or whether or not one author is responsible for two different works, can be tested. That's how many of them are actually developed: testing writing samples to see if various statistical analyses accurately determine authorship or accurately spot imitation. It's no different in principle, for the most part, than detecting art forgeries or modern imitations. Research in linguistics, psychology, socio-linguistics, textual criticism, communications theory, etc., all show how genre, register, particular media, and individual style (internal lexicon/syntax, literary skill, education, familiarity with the language, etc.) shape any given text. It is often possible to tease out with a high degree of accuracy which of these (or which combination) is responsible for what. Often this makes life more difficult when it comes to ancient authorship, for reasons I already mentioned. Does Plato's lexical usage and idiomatic syntax differ significantly in certain (or all) of his letters because he didn't write them, or because we are comparing them with writings we know are his but which are too different in genre/register to use for comparison? It's hard to tell.

But we don't have that problem with Paul. All we have are letters written to the same type of audience following the same "guidelines" which are "specified" by genre and register. If letters differ significantly, especially in their use of constructions or idiomatic syntax, then we have every reason to suspect different authors. What we find are a number of letters which cohere strongly, and others which don't cohere nearly as strongly either with the "base" or with each other. And we aren't dealing with particularly skillful imitations here either. But that's just language. There are other clues. Do the letters address concerns which are unlikely to have developed during Paul's day, but which we know were an issue for later generations? Are their indications they are written in response to something or with the knowledge of something (e.g., Acts) which Paul could not have known about? And so on.

Statistical and linguistic/stylistic analyses are sound tools for narrowing down the base, and other methods are equally sound when it comes to the probability that a Paul did not write a given component of a letter or write the letter at all. But they only get us so far. Because in some cases there are reasons to doubt, but there are good explanations for these reasons, and thus the issue of authorship in some letters is unresolved, and will remain so.

However, these problems don't exist with Galatians.

However, you say "We have no reason to doubt authorship", and obviously others besides Mcguire (such as those whom he quotes from) have doubted this.

What others? If we're both reading the same paper ("Did Paul Write Galatians?"), then I'm having trouble finding where others are cited as supporting the author's thesis. First, most of his sources are quite old. Second, the main use of secondary scholarship seems to revolve around whether or not there was a direct literary relationship between Acts and Galatians, but the "one modern scholar" cited who argues that this relationship exist (Enslin, in his 1938 paper) argued that the author of Acts used Galatians (among other letters), not the reverse. The issue is that even granting such a relationship exists, how does one argue directionality (which author used which)?

So if we want to discuss this fully without going too off topic, I think we should make a whole thread devoted to the specifics where we can go over the style, Greek usage, character, manuscript details, etc.

Feel free to start one and link to it here if this post still leaves you with questions or contains much you disagree with/find problematic, and I'd be more than happy to participate. That would (as you say) prevent this thread from straying too far off topic.

Who is and isn't a "Scholar" then?

That of course is subjective. But I think here at the very least we should limit it to those who can actually read ancient Greek and who have read a good deal of modern scholarship on the subject and address it. McGuire begins with what many consider the final nail in an already well-sealed coffin when he discusses the New Testament Studies article from the 60s which use computer analysis to confirm authorship. But he does not really address those who disagree or their reasons. He moves immediately to a rather radical and definitely dated school of thought beginning with the work of Bauer and continues from this already "out there" approach to something even more radical without ever addressing those who argued against the "Tubingen" school of thought, let alone the reasons for thinking that any direction of literary dependence between Acts and the letters is from the author of Acts' use of the letters, not the reverse.

But they also make contradictions sometimes. See the ending of John, which clashes with the endings of Matthew and Luke.

But that's because John shows no awareness of Matthew or Luke. It's a different tradition. The position you are arguing requires that a later author be aware both of Acts and at least some of the Pauline corpus, and yet deliberately create a disrepency between the two.

We don't have that here because....?

Well if you can think of a good reason that a later christian would go out of her/his way to create this particular disparity, by all means I'd be happy to hear it. But in those texts where we do find disparities which were deliberately created between the written tradition and the text in question, it is quite obvious. For example, in gnostic texts we have Jesus only appearing to die, in direct contradiction to the passion narratives in the gospel. Crossan's theory aside, all of our passion narratives, and certainly most, are dependent at least on Mark or John or both. But the canonical tradition was problematic for later early christian theologies in which Jesus could not have actually died. So texts were written with false authorship claiming something different happened.

It's minor details that we are sometimes able to determine interpolation issues like with Westcott and Horts NWI's from the Alexandrian text.

Minor details are often useful when it comes to whether a particular word or line has been changed. Not in a thesis which posits uses such details to posit that a later author created the work based off of an earlier one, only to disagree with it. So, for example, the fact that Matthew and Luke cohere so well (close to verbatim) with Mark in so many cases makes it quite improbable that there is no literary depedence between the three. The coherence between Matthew and Luke and the Q hypothesis (combined with other arguments) get us directionality (i.e., Mark came first). However, if someone wants to say that, for example, John or Thomas, didn't just use an independent oral tradition, but that the author had some written version of one or more of the synoptics, than the key is to show this through close similarities that can't be exaplained other than by literary dependence. What McGuire does is first argue for the quite disputed position that the author of Acts knew of the and had read at least some of the Pauline corpus. This is difficult to defend because in order to demonstrate such dependency we would expect more coherence, and where we don't find it, we'd need compelling arguments for why it isn't there (otherwise, there is no argument), yet we don't have that (or at least, few are convinced we do). Even more problematic is to go from taking as demonstrated this dependence and then postulating that it shows the author of Galatians took looks account and changed it. The whole reason for thinking the two are related at all is because of the similarities: one author wasn't just aware of the author, but actually used the other to create his/her work. So if the account is changed, there should be a good reason for the author to have felt that s/he had to 1) use the other text at all, and 2) change it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

..continued from previous post

I thought this was the standard scholarly view that the Church was originally all Jewish and it only later after its first few decades saw a gentile anti-Judaizing schism, heavily said to be due to Paul's influence.

Jesus and his followers were Jewish. But so was Paul. The problem with the notion of "anti-Judaizing" is demarcating what constitutes "judaism." The early christians thought of themselves as followers of the one true god, but like other groups within Judaism differed in terms of what this meant. Eventually the differences becamse so clearly pronounced that we can say not only that the christians were no longer jews, but no longer thought of themselves as such. However, it isn't clear when we can start saying this with confidence. Paul uses terms like "Israelite" "Jew" "Hebrew" in ways that render demarcation particularly difficult. Clearly, Paul seems to have thought that there was a significant difference between those who believed in the risen Christ and other followers of YHWH. However, it isn't at all clear that he was alone here, or what this entails. Most argue (and I agree) that accusing Paul as being anti-semitic is about as meaningful as accusing Jesus or John the Baptist or Philo as being anti-semitic. Certainly, both Paul's writings and other early christian texts were used for anti-semitic purposes. But during Paul's day they reflect more of a sectarian type of tension. The belief that Jesus rose from the dead clearly pre-dates Paul, as does the re-interpretation of this resurrection as signifying Jesus' messianic status. The divide between the Jesus sect and other Jewish sects was there before Paul, existed alongside him, and continued apart from him, though his missionary activities and his stance on (for example) circumcision and similar issues definitely made a difference. However, to call Paul a "second founder" has increasingly become controversial. And even if this is more or less accurate, the notion that there is some wide gulf between Judaism and Christianity after Paul which would not have existed (and did not exist) without him is hard to believe.

We also have the Pseudo-Clementine literature which FC Baur says was much an attempt to attack Pauline views, even saying Simon Magus was code word for Paul. We see evidence that the Nazarenes and Ebionites were divided on their acceptance of Paul. Who is to say the Ebionites and Nazarenes weren't the originals and then Paul came along to change things later?

You're talking about a 150 year old argument. Our knowledge both of first century judaism, hellenism, gnosticism, and early christianity has greatly increased since then. But to address your question: one issue is the terminology itself. Paul didn't have a word, nor (apparently) felt that one was necessary to describe the Jesus movement. He was Jewish, following god and god's risen christ. Only later, as differences within christianity and between christianity and other sects/religions increased did groups become identified with such specific names as "ebionites" or "nazarenes" or "arians" or even "christians".

Obviously the Marcionites wouldn't have had a following if the issue of Dejudaizing wasn't in its heyday back then.

How does that follow? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Marcion was an extreme on a spectrum, the opposite (if you will) of what it appears the Ebionites were. He rejected entirely the Jewish tradition. Yet this rejection was problematic enough for Marcion and his followers to be rejected themselves. Too much importance was given to the "jewishness" of the ever increasingly distinct christianity.

 

[Hawkeye112200]

I have been gone for over a week. I am not going to redress each post in here.

Take Paul and Jesus out of the equation.

Please present information from any of the epistles that contradict with anything in Acts, or the Gospels.
No need to worry about who wrote what.

That is what this thread is about. I can appreciate everyone slinging some good and some horrible scholarship around, but that will never solve anything.

So, please stick to this new request, as this is my thread. I am changing the scope of the OP as to make this move in a direction that was intended from the beginning. Although, it was interesting reading everyone's input on the people in question.

 

[F0uad]

I spent the last few weeks going over a few of the Pauline letters, largely in part from the many comments I have read on this forum about all the contradictions between Paul's writings and the Gospels.

Would anyone care to present some of them to me, so I can understand your reasoning? I had a tough time finding obvious or not so obvious occurrences. I am sure someone here is much more knowledgeable than me, so I would like to learn more and dialog/debate about it.

I would only ask, that if you are going to copy and paste something from the internet, that you be prepared to speak on the behalf of the position that states it is a contradiction. I am not looking to just read a list of internet pastes, but also an explanation for why it is a contradiction.

I will give one example

Paul says:

Rom.13
[12] the night is far gone, the day is at hand.


Jesus(p) says:

Luke.21
[8] Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name,
saying, . . . `The time is at hand!' Do not go after them.

In my understanding of reading Paul's work he indeed believed that Judgement-day was close and that Jesus(p) would uplift him.. Yet Jesus(p) tells us not to follow these people.

 

[Shermana]

I will give one example

Paul says:

Rom.13
[12] the night is far gone, the day is at hand.


Jesus(p) says:

Luke.21
[8] Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name,
saying, . . . `The time is at hand!' Do not go after them.

In my understanding of reading Paul's work he indeed believed that Judgement-day was close and that Jesus(p) would uplift him.. Yet Jesus(p) tells us not to follow these people.

I never considered that one yet, thanks Fouad.