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No Evidence for 1st Century Nazareth

outhouse

Atheistically
But Paul was in an excellent position to know about Jesus. He was associated with James and Peter and in fact spent time with Peter. Paul had access to those closest to Jesus and from what we can gather, they tolerated if not supported the mission Paul was doing. So he really was in an ideal position.


having a witness trumps oral tradition.

wish paul was trustworthy. must be hard to pull facts because of the mythical supernatural content he wrote of jesus


the fact he writes little of historical jesus makes me wonder
 

fallingblood

Agnostic Theist
having a witness trumps oral tradition.
That is why Paul is a good source. He had access to witnesses. He was in league with the Jerusalem church, which was headed by the brother of Jesus, and two of his leading disciples. More so, Paul and Peter even spent time together, where Paul most likely would have learned about the earthly Jesus. Paul was in a great position. And as far as we know, even though the Jerusalem church had problems from time to time with Paul, they still supported him.
wish paul was trustworthy. must be hard to pull facts because of the mythical supernatural content he wrote of jesus
Paul separates Jesus into two figures. There is the earthly Jesus, the one who actually lived, who had a brother, was flesh and bone. This is the pre-resurrection Jesus. Then there is the post-resurrection Jesus. This is the mythical supernatural Jesus you talked about. This is Jesus after he is resurrected, and has undergone a transformation (which Paul speaks about the transformation in 1 Corinthians chapter 15). One has to realize this when reading Paul.

For Paul, the earthly Jesus really didn't matter. It was his death, and resurrection that really made an impact on Paul. It is the post-resurrection Jesus that Paul is concerned about.

the fact he writes little of historical jesus makes me wonder
There are a few reasons for this. First, his letters were not intended to spread information about Jesus. Paul had already done that when he went to those areas in the first place. Instead, in his letters, he is only addressing problems and questions that had arisen. Those people Paul is addressing already were followers of Jesus, and we can safely assume that they were already informed about Jesus (otherwise they wouldn't have been in the church).

More so, as I said before, Paul was more interested in the risen or post-resurrection Jesus anyway. That is who we do see in the epistles of Paul for the most part (even though we do see from time to time Paul mentioning the earthly Jesus).

Add to that that we only have a small amount of what Paul actual believed, it is no wonder we don't have much about the earthly Jesus from him. We only have a few letters. There are other letters that are now lost, and there would have been all of his preaching that we simply don't have. We can't really judge Paul completely just based off of his letters, as they only give a very small view of what Paul believed.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
Do you see how ridiculous that statement is? I doubt it. First, your source is shoddy. A burning piece of toilet paper would be better than your source. Especially when it disagrees with actual scholarship. More so, as A_E pointed out, Paul does quote from Jesus or at the very least paraphrases which should be good enough.

Finally, the simple fact that I can quote Jesus even today shows just how ignorant your statement is. You don't need the person you are quoting from to be alive even and they definitely do not have to even be speaking to you. The fact that you imply such shows that you have no idea what the word means. Really you should just quit.

I also think that it's very, very critical that Paul referenced a teaching of Jesus before it appears in the Gospels. This means that there was a teaching of Jesus floating around in more than one form, and Paul's is the oldest one that we have.

I don't think that our friend can appreciate the fact that there's no way to verify in the positive sense that Paul quotes Jesus --- Paul's quote may well be original, and it's modified in the Gospels. The exception for adultery, for example, was certainly added later and that doesn't appear in Paul.

Then there's the earliest appearance of the Lord's Supper - also in 1 Corinthians - that appears later in the Gospels.

You know all this stuff. I just think that this is cool.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
That is why Paul is a good source. He had access to witnesses. He was in league with the Jerusalem church, which was headed by the brother of Jesus, and two of his leading disciples. More so, Paul and Peter even spent time together, where Paul most likely would have learned about the earthly Jesus. Paul was in a great position. And as far as we know, even though the Jerusalem church had problems from time to time with Paul, they still supported him.
Paul separates Jesus into two figures. There is the earthly Jesus, the one who actually lived, who had a brother, was flesh and bone. This is the pre-resurrection Jesus. Then there is the post-resurrection Jesus. This is the mythical supernatural Jesus you talked about. This is Jesus after he is resurrected, and has undergone a transformation (which Paul speaks about the transformation in 1 Corinthians chapter 15). One has to realize this when reading Paul.

For Paul, the earthly Jesus really didn't matter. It was his death, and resurrection that really made an impact on Paul. It is the post-resurrection Jesus that Paul is concerned about.

There are a few reasons for this. First, his letters were not intended to spread information about Jesus. Paul had already done that when he went to those areas in the first place. Instead, in his letters, he is only addressing problems and questions that had arisen. Those people Paul is addressing already were followers of Jesus, and we can safely assume that they were already informed about Jesus (otherwise they wouldn't have been in the church).

More so, as I said before, Paul was more interested in the risen or post-resurrection Jesus anyway. That is who we do see in the epistles of Paul for the most part (even though we do see from time to time Paul mentioning the earthly Jesus).

Add to that that we only have a small amount of what Paul actual believed, it is no wonder we don't have much about the earthly Jesus from him. We only have a few letters. There are other letters that are now lost, and there would have been all of his preaching that we simply don't have. We can't really judge Paul completely just based off of his letters, as they only give a very small view of what Paul believed.


Thank you

paul is my weak link in studies so far, that sheds a great light on the whole subject.

key phrases "small view" and "post ressurrection"


all great points. one thing I'm noticing because paul is so early, chrsitianity seems a little bigger at that time then I imagined. I kept thinking it was a small movement not that widespread in pauls time.


sounds like its a shame we dont know him better
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Do you see how ridiculous that statement is? I doubt it. First, your source is shoddy. A burning piece of toilet paper would be better than your source. Especially when it disagrees with actual scholarship. More so, as A_E pointed out, Paul does quote from Jesus or at the very least paraphrases which should be good enough.

Finally, the simple fact that I can quote Jesus even today shows just how ignorant your statement is. You don't need the person you are quoting from to be alive even and they definitely do not have to even be speaking to you. The fact that you imply such shows that you have no idea what the word means. Really you should just quit.

I am sure you'd like that, but I have decided to call you and yours on the main topic re: Nazareth, and all the poppycock that surrounds it, such as 18 mysterious 'missing years', etc, and now the real inventor of modern Xtianity, that rapscallion/charlatan, Paul, who, by the way, NEVER QUOTED JESUS! Once again: his experience of 'Jesus', was not a direct one, as he never met Jesus, but a hallucinatory one of a vision he had of him, in which Jesus 'spoke' to him.

You might be interested to know that, each year during the winter months, the Zen monasteries close their doors to the public to enter into what is called 'sesshin', or intensive group meditations. During these sessions, students experience many hallucinatory visions of Jesus, Buddha, and Mother Mary, etc. They swear that they are standing right in front of them. These hallucinatory visions are known and understood to be what is called 'makyo'. The Zen Master simply tells them calmly to return to their meditation mats and focus on their breath, over the protests and insistence of the students that what they saw was real. After the students get beyond this critical point, they realize that what they experienced was, indeed hallucinatory in nature. Paul never got beyond this point.

You cannot quote Jesus; you can quote someone else whom you THINK or BELIEVE quoted Jesus, but since you never heard the words roll off of Jesus's lips directly, you cannot quote him. All you need do to verify this is to take a look at the ongoing disagreements between the Pe****ta and the Greek NT primacists as to what Jesus said, and more importantly, what he meant. For example, in the Greek, Jesus said: 'Why hast thou forsaken me', but in Aramaic, he is reputed to have said: 'For this I was saved'. Two completely different meanings and implications.

Paraphrase? Of the words of the Messiah? No. Not good enough.

If we were dealing with a historical document written with the intention of it BEING a historical document, I might give more credence to your statement that you can quote one of its historical figures, but we are dealing with a RELIGIOUS document, which involves not FACTS, but BELIEFS and FAITH. You are to accept what it says on faith that it is true. Well, for one, we already have a glaring hole in the document in terms of its claim that a city of Nazareth existed in the time of Jesus when NO hard archaeological evidence exists to support the claim, and that issue is far less important than the words the reputed Messiah MAY have spoken. For one thing, we don't actually know exactly WHO wrote the four Gospels, and who THEY may have quoted who may have quoted someone else who maybe quoted Jesus, which may have been translated from the Aramaic into the Greek, and on and on and on. So who knows what we are actually looking at when it comes down to quoting what Jesus said. As for Paul, he was in a very non-strategic place in writing about Jesus, some 50 years removed from Jesus actual words.

As for the Greek NT primacists, they insist that the NT was translated from the oral Aramaic tradition into the Greek, but already we are at least one step removed from the original source, a source which is an elusive one to begin with. Furthermore, words spoken in Aramaic can have two and three different meanings, when in Greek, would have only one meaning. How accurate can the Greek translations be, even if their claim to primacy is correct, when they don't even have a good understanding of the language from which they are translating? One clue to the primacy issue is the FACT that amongst all the Pe****ta versions, they agree with one another beyond 99%, an incredible rate of accuracy!
 
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godnotgod

Thou art That
Galatians 1:11-12 "the gospel I preach is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by REVELATION from Jesus Christ".

So here, Paul admits that whatever he knows about Jesus came to him via REVELATION, and NOT direct contact, which, of course, was impossible, as Paul was not a contemporary of Jesus and therefore never met him in person.

Revelation can be a MYSTICAL experience, or perhaps even a HALLUCINATORY one which can consist of an apparition, a voice, or both. Whatever the actual case with Paul is, it is definitely NOT firsthand, so Paul cannot have quoted Jesus, except insofar as he believe that the vision or hallucination he was experiencing was real.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
But Paul was in an excellent position to know about Jesus. He was associated with James and Peter and in fact spent time with Peter. Paul had access to those closest to Jesus and from what we can gather, they tolerated if not supported the mission Paul was doing. So he really was in an ideal position.

That's poppycock! How can you say such a thing? Paul was removed from Jesus by some 50 years or so. That is an 'excellent' or 'ideal' position? I don't think so!
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
That is why Paul is a good source. He had access to witnesses.

Paul makes a short reference to the alleged '500' eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, and that some were still alive when Paul was alluding to them. So you say he had 'access' to them did you? Here we have surviving eyewitnesses to THE most important single event in human history, and Paul never bothers to look them up to interview them, though he had, as you say 'access' to them? Ridiculous!

Then there is the post-resurrection Jesus. This is the mythical supernatural Jesus you talked about. This is Jesus after he is resurrected, and has undergone a transformation (which Paul speaks about the transformation in 1 Corinthians chapter 15). One has to realize this when reading Paul.

For Paul, the earthly Jesus really didn't matter. It was his death, and resurrection that really made an impact on Paul. It is the post-resurrection Jesus that Paul is concerned about.

Oh? And where do you suppose Paul got his ideas from for the 'post-resurrection Jesus'?


More so, as I said before, Paul was more interested in the risen or post-resurrection Jesus anyway. That is who we do see in the epistles of Paul for the most part (even though we do see from time to time Paul mentioning the earthly Jesus).

Add to that that we only have a small amount of what Paul actual believed, it is no wonder we don't have much about the earthly Jesus from him. We only have a few letters. There are other letters that are now lost, and there would have been all of his preaching that we simply don't have. We can't really judge Paul completely just based off of his letters, as they only give a very small view of what Paul believed.

The reason we have so little from Paul about the 'earthly' Jesus is because Paul never knew him. Paul was not interested in spreading the doctrine of Yeshua, because the doctrine of Yeshua held no attraction for the pagans Paul was attempting to convert. It held no attraction for them because they already had a promise of eternal life in Mithra. Yeshua's teachings did not include a bodily resurrection, nor sin redemption via the eating and drinking of divine flesh and blood. And so, in order to bring the pagans into his new religion, Paul cleverly and brilliantly overwrote the teachings of Yeshua with those of Mithra, which included a virgin birth, the eating/drinking of flesh/blood as a means of sin redemption, and the promise of bodily resurrection of both the savior and the converts into a permanent heaven after their deaths.

What Paul did was brilliant: he synthesized three elements: that of the Jewish history as a backdrop to the story for authenticity's sake; the idea of a descending god-man taken from the teachings of Gnosticism; and the idea of a dying and resurrecting god-man taken from his exposure as a child to the mystery religions.

But you are correct: what Paul wrote about was not what Jesus said and meant, but about what Paul himself believed.

"....the New Testament, as we have it, is much more dominated by Paul than appears at first sight. As we read it, we come across the Four Gospels, of which Jesus is the hero, and do not encounter Paul as a character until we embark on the post-Jesus narrative of Acts. Then we finally come into contact with Paul himself, in his letters. But this impression is misleading, for the earliest writings in the New Testament are actually Paul's letters, which were written about AD 50-60, while the Gospels were not written until the period AD 70-110. This means that the theories of Paul were already before the writers of the Gospels and coloured their interpretations of Jesus' activities. Paul is, in a sense, present from the very first word of the New Testament. This is, of course, not the whole story, for the Gospels are based on traditions and even written sources which go back to a time before the impact of Paul, and these early traditions and sources are not entirely obliterated in the final version and give valuable indications of what the story was like before Paulinist editors pulled it into final shape. However, the dominant outlook and shaping perspective of the Gospels is that of Paul, for the simple reason that it was the Paulinist view of what Jesus' sojourn on Earth had been about that was triumphant in the Church as it developed in history. Rival interpretations, which at one time had been orthodox, opposed to Paul's very individual views, now became heretical and were crowded out of the final version of the writings adopted by the Pauline Church as the inspired canon of the New Testament."


http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby2.htm
*****
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
Furthermore, words spoken in Aramaic can have two and three different meanings, when in Greek, would have only one meaning. How accurate can the Greek translations be, even if their claim to primacy is correct, when they don't even have a good understanding of the language from which they are translating?

I wonder where this lie originated.

Do you know, fallingblood?

I've seen this spammed before on RF. It's like these people have never seen a dictionary before, much less a lexicon.
 
A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
to fallingblood:

Plato sure was right about the Cave.

Did you go down that path kicking and screaming? I don't know that I did. Learning hurts though, at least for me. But I don't ever remember in my adult life ever willfully refusing to learn, and especially to learn how to think.
 

fallingblood

Agnostic Theist
I wonder where this lie originated.

Do you know, fallingblood?

I've seen this spammed before on RF. It's like these people have never seen a dictionary before, much less a lexicon.

I remember one of the first things my Greek teacher told me was that Greek is a difficult language to learn and one of those reasons was that Greek words can mean various things. Just recently I had a problem with a simple one. I translated epsilon iota (ei) to if instead of you are because I hadn't paid attention to the accent marks. I spent a good five minutes just tryin to figure out why the sentence I was translating made no sense.
 

fallingblood

Agnostic Theist
to fallingblood:

Plato sure was right about the Cave.

Did you go down that path kicking and screaming? I don't know that I did. Learning hurts though, at least for me. But I don't ever remember in my adult life ever willfully refusing to learn, and especially to learn how to think.

I know I have been stubborn some times when learning something new but I don't think to the point I refuse to learn. I remember before I really started doing more scholarly research into the NT, that I did doubt the existence that Jesus existed (it was more the cause of shock that we really didn't have as much information about Jesus as I thought). I wish I had found a forum like this back then because really, I had no one who could teach me. When I came around though, even though I had a bruised ego because I had to admit that I was very wrong, I accepted it and then worked very hard to correct my miseducation. I would say that learning hurt.

But I wouldn't say I went kicking and screaming. At least I hope I didnt.
 

fallingblood

Agnostic Theist
I also think that it's very, very critical that Paul referenced a teaching of Jesus before it appears in the Gospels. This means that there was a teaching of Jesus floating around in more than one form, and Paul's is the oldest one that we have.

I don't think that our friend can appreciate the fact that there's no way to verify in the positive sense that Paul quotes Jesus --- Paul's quote may well be original, and it's modified in the Gospels. The exception for adultery, for example, was certainly added later and that doesn't appear in Paul.

Then there's the earliest appearance of the Lord's Supper - also in 1 Corinthians - that appears later in the Gospels.

You know all this stuff. I just think that this is cool.
I have to admit that it wasn't until relatively recently that I really got interested in Paul. I have to give partial credit for that interest to you and Oberon as well as my NT teacher.

I agree that is all cool though. There is a lot in Paul that can shine a light on so many things.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
I remember one of the first things my Greek teacher told me was that Greek is a difficult language to learn and one of those reasons was that Greek words can mean various things. Just recently I had a problem with a simple one. I translated epsilon iota (ei) to if instead of you are because I hadn't paid attention to the accent marks. I spent a good five minutes just tryin to figure out why the sentence I was translating made no sense.

That's better than me, lol. I've spend inordinate amounts of time figuring stuff out, especially in German.

But you can't depend too much on accents, because when you go to read inscriptions, papyri, and other ancient materials -- they are almost never accented. I say almost because there may be one that I don't know about somewhere. :eek:

The really fun thing about Greek is not really the definitions of the words, but syntax. That's what really multiplies the possibilities of meaning -- or at least for misunderstanding. Anyway, I say that for others because you already know that.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
There is a lot in Paul that can shine a light on so many things.

Yeah? Like what? What Paul conjured up in his own egotistic mind and peddled as sensational but valid doctrine, while distorting completely the real teachings of Yeshua?
*****



Statements about Paul by Prominent Theologians and Bible Scholars


The fact that Paul spread his own version of Christianity independent of Yeshua' teachings has been well known for centuries. Only the Church doesn't agree to that. Paulianity displays very little of the teachings of the humble Jewish Rabbi, Yeshua, and adds much that Yeshua would have found appalling.
Below are quotations from the writings of renowned theologians and other scholars. Most were taken from Rev. Abba Nazaria's very informative article, "YAHOWSHUA OR PAUL?" (YAHSHUA Or Paul?).



In Christ or Paul?, by Rev. V.A. Holmes-Gore:
"Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught. . . . For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message. . . . That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world. . . . The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness."



The great theologian Soren Kierkegaard, in The Journals:

"In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ"



The brilliant theologian Ernest Renan, in his book Saint Paul:

"True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology."



Will Durant, in his Caesar and Christ:

"Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ. . . . Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known. . . . Paul replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue. It was a tragic change."



Robert Frost, winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1924,1931,1937 and 1943, in his "A Masque of Mercy":

"Paul he's in the Bible too. He is the fellow who theologized Christ almost out of Christianity. Look out for him."



James Baldwin, the most noted black American author of this century, in his book The Fire Next Time:

"The real architect of the Christian church was not the disreputable, sunbaked Hebrew (Jesus Christ) who gave it its name but rather the mercilessly fanatical and self-righteous Paul."



Martin Buber, the most respected Jewish philosopher of this century, in Two Types of Faith:

"The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul."



The famous mystic, poet and author, Kahlil Gibran, in Jesus the Son of Man:

"This Paul is indeed a strange man. His soul is not the soul of a free man. He speaks not of Jesus nor does he repeat His Words. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the Name of One whom he does not know."



The famous theologian, Helmut Koester, in his The Theological Aspects of Primitive Christian Heresy:

"Paul himself stands in the twilight zone of heresy. In reading Paul, one immediately encounters a major difficulty. Whatever Jesus had preached did not become the content of the missionary proclamation of Paul. . . . Sayings of Jesus do not play a role in Paul 's understanding of the event of salvation. . . . Paul did not care at all what Jesus had said. . . . Had Paul been completely successful very little of the sayings of Jesus would have survived."



Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence in his "Letter to William Short":

"Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."



Renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in his Not Paul But Jesus:

"It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle within himself to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul, he will adhere."



Statements about Paul by Prominent Theologians and Bible Scholars

continued below....
 
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godnotgod

Thou art That
The eminent theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, in his Church History of the First Three Centuries:

"What kind of authority can there be for an 'apostle' who, unlike the other apostles, had never been prepared for the apostolic office in Jesus' own school but had only later dared to claim the apostolic office on the basis on his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus. . . . He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears."



The great Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet of nonviolence who won freedom from England for India in an essay titled "Discussion on Fellowship":

"I draw a great distinction between the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus and the Letters of Paul. Paul's Letters are a graft on Christ's teachings, Paul's own gloss apart from Christ's own experience."



Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, in his essay "A Psychological Approach to Dogma":

"Saul's [Paul's name before his conversion] fanatical resistance to Christianity. . . . was never entirely overcome. It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in."



George Bernard Shaw, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925; in his Androcles and the Lion:

"There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus. . . . There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus. . . . It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus. . . . was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith."



Albert Schweitzer, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, called "one of the greatest Christians of his time," philosopher, physician, musician, clergyman, missionary, and theologian in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus and his Mysticism of Paul:

"Paul. . . . did not desire to know Christ. . . . Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded. . . . What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?. . . . The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority. . . . The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it."



William Wrede, in his excellent book, Paul:

"The oblivious contradictions in the three accounts given by Paul in regard to his conversion are enough to arouse distrust. . . . The moral majesty of Jesus, his purity and piety, his ministry among his people, his manner as a prophet, the whole concrete ethical-religious content of his earthly life, signifies for Paul's Christology nothing whatever. . . . The name 'disciple of Jesus' has little applicability to Paul. . . . Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day"



Rudolf Bultman, one of the most respected theologians of this century, in his Significance of the Historical Jesus for the Theology of Paul:

"It is most obvious that Paul does not appeal to the words of the Lord in support of his. . . . views. when the essentially Pauline conceptions are considered, it is clear that Paul is not dependent on Jesus. Jesus' teaching is -- to all intents and purposes -- irrelevant for Paul."



Walter Bauer, another eminent theologian, in his Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity:

"If one may be allowed to speak rather pointedly the Apostle Paul was the only Arch-Heretic known to the apostolic age."



H.L. Mencken, called one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century, in his Notes on Democracy:

"Is it argued by any rational man that the debased Christianity cherished by the mob in all the Christian countries of today, has any colourable likeness to the body of ideas preached by Christ?

"The plain fact is that this bogus Christianity has no more relation to the system of Christ than it has to Aristotle. It is the invention of Paul and his attendant rabble-rousers--a body of men exactly comparable to the corps of evangelical pastors of today, which is to say, a body devoid of sense and lamentably indifferent to common honesty. The mob, having heard Christ, turned against Him. His theological ideas were too logical and plausible for it, and His ethical ideas were enormously too austere. What it yearned for was the old comfortable balderdash under a new and gaudy name, and that is prescisely what Paul offered it. He borrowed from all the wandering dervishes and body-snatchers of Asia Minor, and flavoured the stew with remnants of Greek demonology. The result was a code of doctrines so discordant and so nonsensical that no two men since, examining it at length, have ever agreed upon its prescise meaning. Paul remains the arch theologian of the mob. His turgid and witless metaphysics make Christianity bearable to men who would otherwise be repelled by Christ's simple and magnificent reduction of the duties of man to the duties of a gentle-man."

Statements about Paul by Prominent Theologians and Bible Scholars
 
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