Paul of Tarsus - the first Christian?

I'm just now getting around to this thread so my comment is late. You've touched here on what some have developed into the mythicist postition that Paul was not talking about an earthly Jesus at all. Doherty's Jesus Puzzle website goes into this in great detail.I found Doherty's ideas fascinating but have some doubts because of a couple of mentions in Paul that seem earthly. The historist seem to have a slightly greater probability in their arguments. Still I'd be interested in what you think of Doherty or other mythicist postitions.lfen

Brian,Imagine finding you in a NT thread! It's sounding like you accept or at least find most likely an historical Jesus that failed and his disciples not accepting his death?What do you think of the mythicist position that Paul was preaching a Christ from a higher realm and only later did Mark by midrash create a story of an historical person based on passages from the OT? I'm thinking particularly of Earl Doherty's Jesus Puzzle, but there are other mythicists.lfen

What often strikes me is that all through the universe gravity, weak and strong and electro magnetic forces work. The whole things works over a large complexity of scale. Impressive. Then people come along and claim that the creator wrote or caused to be written a manual to this universe and this manual lacks clarity, hasn't been properly preserved, and is lacking key information, is filled with ambiguity etc. etc.Seems to me that we can be certain that the universe and the bible were not the product of the same entity. The level of craftsmanship is a dead give away. The bible looks just like the kinds of things committees of human beings are producing even to this very day.lfen

Well the committee part was first of all a reference to how the books were selected for inclusion by different churches. The role of copyists and attribution of anonymous works to known authors is not exactly a committe but how many of the epistles of Paul are his and how many have been included under his name written by someone else? The answer varies from all are Paul's to none with the mainstream somewhere in between.Luke and Matthew both draw on Mark but have their own angle and then including all four gospels brings together a diverse and sometimes conflicting set of view points. Committee is not an exact analogy and there may be a better way to characterize the way the bishops of the early church arrived at their victories and compromises as to what the standards of belief (creeds) should be.The committe part also refers to the differing agendas of the authors and books so that you find sections that favor belief over works, or stress the importance of works etc.My comments were directed to the literalist fundamentalist for whom Genesis is a consistent factual scientific history of the world. The Bible as a record of the thoughts, feelings, lives of a community and tradition is of interest to me and I think that is a valid approach to that collection of books.lfen

This book is about the Old Testament. I've posted about it once in a thread to which Arachnophile replied.The secular Bible : why nonbelievers must take religion seriously
Author : Berlinerblau, Jacques.
Publisher, Date : New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
ISBN : 0521853141 (hardback) - Description : xiii, 217 p. ; 24 cm.Berlinerblau has a Ph.D. in ancient languages and I think this is a book that those interested in the Bible ought to read. Not neccesarily to agree with but he provides a very textual based analysis.Basically he points out that the Bible was written by aggregates of scribes and copists over hundreds of years and that after centuries of copying there are many passages in the bible that no longer make sense.Translators do their best to come up with what it might mean but reading it in the original or a literal translation would find between missing words, uncertain words etc. it's impossible to tell what the original meaning of some passages was. I was surprised to see the condition of some of the texts.I came away with the impression of how ancient some of the bible was. How it has been preserved and yet that preservation has not been perfect by any means.lfen

The epistles came first however and then later the gospels. I would say the gospels built on the ideas of Paul as well as other apostles.Have you read Doherty's Jesus Puzzle?http://home.ca.inter.net/oblio/home.htmI don't see enough evidence one way or the other for a historical Jesus, but whether understood as a historical teacher or as Paul's spiritual saviour I think it's clear that there were quite a few ideas and interpretations of what his functions was and what the religion taught and a number of these conflicting theories were included in the NT selection. It's contradictory and if there was a historical teacher I don't see how we can ever sort out his teachings from all the interpretations and misunderstandings.lfen

The function that Smith and the LDS perform for me is as a relatively modern example of the power of book based religion to organize a large social group in a total belief system.Jews, Christians, and Muslims have centuries of traditions that function in their cultures. But it didn't take long for LDS to create the same thing. This demonstrates to me how important, even "sacred", language is to humans. Language has extremely fundamental functions in human culture.It's clear to you and I that Joseph Smith made up his religion. But that is not clear to millions of Mormons. For myself the same is true for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The wonder to me is that all of these belief systems though socially and culturally very functional are also trasnparently flawed human creations whether ancient or modern and yet the millions of believers can't see through this illusion! Why? That is the puzzlement to me.lfen

I know some like Mithras and Hercules appear to be not based on historical characters. I didn't know Paul Bunyan was. I haven't yet gotten Google to yield any sources that point to a person.I think there might have been a historical teacher. Even if that is the case, I suspect we will never know what he taught.I'd like to think he had experienced an awakening like the Buddha and was killed before he had barely started to teach it. But that is simply my personal preference. I see no evidence beyond a few lines in the Gospels that might have come from other sources like the Cynics.lfen