Was Paul Jewish?

[firedragon]

As I see it Paul took a vow in Acts 18 and we don't know why and he was asked to pay the fees for the vow takers in chapter 21.
Is there something wrong with him taking the vow in ch 18 and does it have to be connected with ch 21?

Okay. Lets drop what bible scholars say and follow your thought.

So did he take another vow in 21? It says directly. So what is that vow for?

Thanks.

 

[Brian2]

Okay. Lets drop what bible scholars say and follow your thought.

So did he take another vow in 21? It says directly. So what is that vow for?

Thanks.

I don't think he took another vow in Ch 21. Does it say that he did that?

 

[firedragon]

I don't think he took another vow in Ch 21. Does it say that he did that?

I didnt say he tool another vow. It was you said that acts 18 is not relevant to the latter vow that he was told to take with the four. So in that case, according to you, it should "another".

So what was that for?

 

[ppp]

I disagree that there were a few thousand years between all the events in the OT and when they were written down.

I'm gonna go with the consensus of the people best educated and best trained.

The gauge I used shows that the authors of the gospels could possibly be the ones we are given.

Again scholarship is against you.

 

[Brian2]

I didnt say he tool another vow. It was you said that acts 18 is not relevant to the latter vow that he was told to take with the four. So in that case, according to you, it should "another".

So what was that for?

Did I say that? I don't remember saying that.
Post 78 may have led you to believe I said that but it would mean you had not been following along with other things I had been saying.
I just wonder if it is all sorted now.

 

[Brian2]

I'm gonna go with the consensus of the people best educated and best trained.

Again scholarship is against you.

Who says the scholars that agree with you are the best educated and best trained?
All it means is that you go with the popular vote,,,,,,,,,,,,I think that is meant to be a logical fallacy.
I history the truth seems to come down to a majority vote (not that there is a real vote but that is what it boils down to).

 

[ppp]

Who says the scholars that agree with you are the best educated and best trained?

Your problems with the systems of universities and their rigors and methodologies of research are your problem.

All it means is that you go with the popular vote,,,,,,,,,,,,I think that is meant to be a logical fallacy.

You're confused about what argumentum ad populum means. The fallacy to what you refer is the assertion that because a lot of people believe a thing that it is true. That is not what I'm saying. And if you go back and read my post for comprehension, you will see that.

 

[Brian2]

Your problems with the systems of universities and their rigors and methodologies of research are your problem.

You post implies that scholars who disagree with the consensus are not as educated or well trained.
You are also agreeing with the methodology that makes the initial presumption that scriptures with prophecies in them are wrong.
I don't see that as my problem but your problem.

You're confused about what argumentum ad populum means. The fallacy to what you refer is the assertion that because a lot of people believe a thing that it is true. That is not what I'm saying. And if you go back and read my post for comprehension, you will see that.

You are the one who wants to agree with the consensus, the popular vote. Whether it is in the universities or on the street it is the same thing. It is a fallacy.
But I might be wrong because by the sound of what you wrote the fallacy you present is the one from authority. You want those whom you call more educated and well trained to be right because they are more educated and well trained.

 

[ppp]

You post implies that scholars who disagree with the consensus are not as educated or well trained.

No. You are inferring that, and that is a bizarre inference. The consensus view of the most educated and best trained or historical topics will have various minority views among their ranks. You seem to be stuck in some black and white thinking there.

I am aware that the consensus can be wrong. It has happened before, and it will happen again. But the probability lies with the informed consensus. If I get the World Association of Plumbers to look at my pipes, and the consensus view of that organization is that my plumbing problem is best solved by a rerouting the pipes and adding a thingamabob to the line, then I am going to go with the consensus of the experts. Not the minority view. Not until the minority of experts can get their peers on board.

I do not see the problem with that. In fact, it seem to me to be the only sensible approach for a layman to a given field.

 

[ppp]

You are also agreeing with the methodology that makes the initial presumption that scriptures with prophecies in them are wrong.

Actually, no. I am going with the methodology that does not begin with the initial presumption that whatever is claimed to be true is true. It is a subtle, but important distinction. One that I hope you are able and willing to appreciate.

 

[paarsurrey]

paarsurrey said: ↑
Since Jesus never named his followers as " Christians ", and never invented a new Religion so,I understand, it would be appropriate to say that the Jews of the time persecuted Jesus and his followers . Right?

That sounds right and that is what Jesus said to Saul on the road to Damascus. "Saul why do you persecute me?"

There was no Jesus talking to Paul/Saul, I understand. It was Paul himself cleverly inventing a pretext vision to attract the credulous to assume an Apostle, most probably. It had nothing to do with Jesus and or his truthful teachings as Paul sensed, I get, that Jesus had not died on the Cross, he survived a cursed death on the Cross as G-d had foretold Jesus, and he was heading out of Judea, out the hand of Jews and Romans since. Got the point?

Regards


.

 

[paarsurrey]

paarsurrey said: ↑
Since the authors of the Gospels are anonymous, so nobody can legitimately claim of knowing them. Right?

That could be said of us today, that we do not know 100% who wrote the gospels.
It cannot be said for those who lived at the time however, the may have known and passed that on to others.

A very remote possibility, or impossible, I would conclude, as I quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Got my point?

Regards

 

[Bree]

A couple of days ago I chanced upon a video of a lecture (in Hebrew) by an Israeli historian named Yigal Bin-Nun. The lecture was about the start of Christianity as an organized religion (post-Jesus). I didn't watch everything, but at some point he opined that Paul was not actually born Jewish. The story of his background in Acts was a later fabrication, he said, and - I do not know if this is true or not - Paul never explicitly states he is Jewish in his various epistles. Bin-Nun thought he was a very learned non-Jewish Greek man (perhaps he meant Hellenistic, not sure) with a philosophical background who turned to Christianity and at times seemed to present himself as Jewish to further his preaching agenda.

One thought that I had earlier was that this might explain why Paul spoke of the abolishment of the law in Ephesians 2.
But as I already mentioned above, I have not fully looked into this idea.

Thoughts?

Romans 11: I ask, then, God did not reject his people, did he?+ By no means! For I too am an Israelite, of the offspring of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.+

Acts 22:1 Men, brothers and fathers, hear my defense to you now.”+ 2 Well, when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent, and he said: 3 “I am a Jew,+ born in Tarsus of Ci·liʹcia,+ but educated in this city at the feet of Ga·maʹli·el,+ instructed according to the strictness of the ancestral Law,+ and zealous for God just as all of you are this day.+

 

[Harel13]

Romans 11: I ask, then, God did not reject his people, did he?+ By no means! For I too am an Israelite, of the offspring of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.+

Acts 22:1 Men, brothers and fathers, hear my defense to you now.”+ 2 Well, when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent, and he said: 3 “I am a Jew,+ born in Tarsus of Ci·liʹcia,+ but educated in this city at the feet of Ga·maʹli·el,+ instructed according to the strictness of the ancestral Law,+ and zealous for God just as all of you are this day.+

For the time I accept the Romans quote, as at least one other person has already brought it here, but I really don't understand why people continue to quote Acts when the OP presents a theory that explicitly goes against Acts.

 

[Bree]

For the time I accept the Romans quote, as at least one other person has already brought it here, but I really don't understand why people continue to quote Acts when the OP presents a theory that explicitly goes against Acts.

for someone to 'claim' that the account about Paul in Acts was fabricated, they would want to have some pretty strong evidence. And if they did have such evidence, then the entire book should be thrown out of the Christian cannon. And if you throw out the book of Acts then you can also throw out the gospel of Luke.

Just making a claim that a biblical account is a fabrication does not make it so.

With so many opponents to christianity in the first century, Do you really believe that the much respected Apostle Luke would risk writing such an account and think he could get away with it? That would surely have brought discredit to the newly formed group and put them all in danger.

Acts 1:1 Seeing that many have undertaken to compile an account of the facts that are given full credence among us,+ 2 just as these were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses+ and attendants of the message,+ 3 I resolved also, because I have traced all things from the start with accuracy, to write them to you in logical order,+ most excellent The·ophʹi·lus,+

 

[Brian2]

paarsurrey said: ↑
Since the authors of the Gospels are anonymous, so nobody can legitimately claim of knowing them. Right?

A very remote possibility, or impossible, I would conclude, as I quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Got my point?

Regards

My point is that about 2000 years ago when the gospels were written the friends of the person who wrote a gospel might know who wrote it and the churches to whom the gospel was sent would be told that and so on and so on. Then 2000 years later we cannot say we know who wrote the gospels because we are not the ones who were there when the gospels were written, all we have is hearsay.
All we can say is that the hearsay and other evidence points to the people that we say wrote the gospels.

 

[Brian2]

paarsurrey said: ↑
Since Jesus never named his followers as " Christians ", and never invented a new Religion so,I understand, it would be appropriate to say that the Jews of the time persecuted Jesus and his followers . Right?

There was no Jesus talking to Paul/Saul, I understand. It was Paul himself cleverly inventing a pretext vision to attract the credulous to assume an Apostle, most probably. It had nothing to do with Jesus and or his truthful teachings as Paul sensed, I get, that Jesus had not died on the Cross, he survived a cursed death on the Cross as G-d had foretold Jesus, and he was heading out of Judea, out the hand of Jews and Romans since. Got the point?

Regards
.

It sounds you have made up yet another belief about Jesus and the Gospels that actually deny the Gospel message that the New Testament and Jesus teaches. It is amazing how many different things that people make up about the Gospels and New Testament so they can deny what is taught in the New Testament.

 

[Rival]

@Harel13

Not sure if this is relevent, so sorry if it's offtopic but there is something I'd like to add to the conversation

The author of Luke-Acts (I'll just call him Luke), I've noticed, tends to add in a lot of new things that may be oral traditions he's heard and is wishing to document. Luke seems to take things from lots of different sources and throw them in the pan, so to speak, and many seem to be either later traditions or differing narratives of the same story. He often seems to do this to 'Hebrew-fy' the narrative.

One good example of this is the Magnificat. This is a song that Mary sings on learning about her pregnancy and is in clear imitation of the Song of Moses, the Song of Deborah etc. and is found in no other Gospel. In this way, Luke can clearly be seen adding new traditions that at the same time try imitating old ones.

Another example would be his differing nativity, as opposed to Matthew's narrative. Although similar to Matthew being that he adds a genealogy, another Jewish feature, his is not the same. Instead of Magi, as well, Luke gives us the shepherds, a much more Tanakh-like image than foreign magicians. Luke also mentions Anna the prophetess.

While Matthew seems to be trying to justify his narrative with Tanakh quotes, Luke takes a different approach. I believe this is likely what he is doing in Acts. He's not trying to change the story, the overall meaning, per se - he's trying to Jew it up. This is not quite the same as making Paul out in Paul's best light, but making Paul out to be more Jewish and more acceptable therefore. Paul, as a Jew, doesn't need to make himself acceptable to the non-Jewish churches he's visiting, but evidently the author of Luke-Acts felt the need to add in 'Jewish stuff', likely as a way to cool any tension. To this end, Luke also throws out the Herod narrative - he never says it didn't happen - and doesn't politicise in the way Matthew does.

IOW, while we tend to think of John as being the outlier Gospel, Luke is also a good candidate for this. He includes a lot of 'Lukan' material that seems to be based on alterative sources, rather than necessarily conflicting ones (at times). He seeks to bring the Jews and non-Jews together by crafting a narrative that he tries to make appealing to both. Luke has a tendency to emphasise events in a dramatic way, which he clearly does in Acts as well as his Gospel (see the Magnificat, Simeon's hymn, Zechariah losing his voice, a prophetess, etc.) in a way that tries to imitate what the Jews know from their scriptural traditions, without adding in too much Tanakh prophecy that may as well be meaningless to newly converted non-Jews, thus deviating from Matthew. Luke also could be seen as a refiner - where Matthew misinterprets 'Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey,' and has Jesus riding two animals, Luke notices this bizarre mistake and rights it to one donkey.

Luke seems to be trying to clean things up without necessarily denying it ever happened as a whole.

 

[Kooky]

@Harel13 do you have extra-Biblical evidence that Paul/Saul of Tarsus even existed?

 

[Harel13]

@Harel13 do you have extra-Biblical evidence that Paul/Saul of Tarsus even existed?

The NT isn't part of my Bible, so anything about him is extra-biblical anyway...

In any case, I am not aware that there is any evidence of his existence outside of the NT, though I personally don't have any problem in thinking he existed. Same as I don't have any problem thinking Jesus existed. What either of them was actually like, now that's a different story (and part of the subject of the thread).