St Paul the conman (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Boreades]

[Boreades]

If I remember my Sunday School indoctrination correctly, there was Paul's Letters to the Corinthians (and a few others that needed saving by Romans).

What I want to know now is, where are The Corinthian's Letters to Paul? And the others?

[Angus McOatup]

[Angus McOatup]

[Boreades]

[Angus McOatup]

This book relates that a huge amount of Biblical and other classical material was forged. Not for profit, but for religio-political reasons. He concludes that Acts was forged by someone to further support Paul's authority. For example, 'Luke' keeps going in and out of the first person etc and does not appear to know much about Paul even though the forger is implying that he is Luke the Doctor (i.e. Paul's right hand man). Also Peter I is a fake. The author is also an academic - which makes it very compelling.

[Roger Stone]

Boreades asks: What I want to know now is, where are The Corinthian's Letters to Paul? And the others?

One of the interesting things about the Epistles is that they are very likely to be authentic and well-preserved original documents. Paul travelled around, visiting cities with Christian communities, being recognised locally as a great man; when he has returned to Jerusalem or wherever, and then writes to the communities he has visited at Ephesus, Corinth, Thessaloniki or wherever - those communities are most likely to keep and revere the document, make careful copies, and so forth.
Letters they send to Paul - who would care about them?

[Boreades]

Roger, thanks for mentioning that.

Christianity, as we in the Western world know it, is by universal recognition a creation of St Paul, the Pharisee who was sent to Rome around 61 AD.

Although it is not widely preached in church, Christian scholars (perhaps reluctantly) acknowledge that the religion preached by Paul in Rome was quite different from that preached by Jesus in Palestine and put into practice by James the Just, who was subsequently the leader of the "Christian" community of Jerusalem.

Jesus' preaching was in line with the way of living and thinking of the Essenes. The doctrinal contents of Christianity as it emerged in Rome, at the end of the 1st century, are (firstly) extraordinarily close instead to those of the sect of the Pharisees, to which Paul belonged, and (secondly) seem very close to the Mithraic beliefs.

Historical records (from Rome) are vague, so I'm open to suggestions, but from what I can find, it seems Paul was executed c.67AD, probably on the orders of Nero, together with most of his followers. The Roman Christian community was virtually wiped out by Nero's persecution, but somehow it survived. How?

Perhaps we should be paying more attention to Josephus Flavius.

[Ishmael]

[Boreades]

Ishmael, me old mate, have you forgotten the AEL classes we went on?

"How to be sensitive to other people's beliefs, and how to let them down lightly"

Why do you think I mentioned Josephus Flavius?

[Ishmael]

No idea.

[Mick Harper]

Perhaps you might give 'He/they/it didn't exist' a bit of rest. We all assume that's your position from the off. Unless of course, you care to say why he/she/it didn't exist on each occasion. But obviously you can't just quote from Authority.

[Ishmael]

The central mystery of Christianity is not the resurrection but rather, why in gods name did St. Paul believe in it?

If we take it as given that the resurrection did not occur (and for AE reasons we must---though some may be permitted to disconnect their AE principles after work hours and on Sundays) we are left with a real puzzle. How could such a rich mythology develop around a preaching Rabbi that would, within as little as 10 years, elevate him to the status of a god, gifted with the power to return from the grave? There simply has not been sufficient time from the death of Jesus to the writings of Paul for such confusion to occur.

Reading St. Paul it is clear that we are dealing with a rational, educated and intelligent man. How is it possible for him to have bought into this freshly-minted myth?

The answer is surprising.

He didn't.

We all make the mistake of reading Paul after having read the gospels. But Paul never read the Gospels. They didn't exist in his day. They would be written much later.

If we read Paul, having put aside the Gospel story, it become very clear that, not only has Paul never read the Gospels, he's never heard of Jesus of Naezreth!

All these people have been saying for decades and centuries that "Paul perverted Christianity." The truth is completely opposite. Paul created Christianity. The phoney Gospels perverted his religion.

The Gospels invented an historical Jesus that never existed for Paul. Paul's Jesus is completely mystical and lives in the heavens where he does battle with spiritual forces. Paul's Jesus is a kind of platonic form---a pure idea---outside the world of man but part way between us and God. This is the original Christianity.

You can see Paul's Jesus make his first literary appearance in the Book of Revelation, which should be the first book of the new Testament, as it was written before the others. Read the books in order and you will see how Jesus descends from heaven to Earth, becoming a flesh and blood man only at the end of the process, when the Gospels are written.

[Roger Stone]

A radical suggestion, Ishmael, but I don't see in Paul's references to Christ and the Crucifixion the sort of spiritual Messiah-in-Heaven you describe; it sounds to me that he is describing a historical actual person, and the crucifixion and death of Jesus on Earth as an actual event. For example - Galatians 1:18 "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days; but other of the Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." He's writing about real people and events on Earth, surely?

[Boreades]

I'd like to propose a third alternative.

That Paul and his followers were all executed in Roman, and "Paulian Christianity" was virtually extinguished at that point. The ideas and letters of Paul that survived are all as reported to us by Titus Flavius Josephus (born Joseph ben Matityahu), one of the very few Jewish Priests that somehow survived the mass executions by Vespasian.

Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem, which resulted 'when the Jewish revolt did not surrender' in the city's destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod's Temple (Second Temple).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

What we now call Christianity is possibly Josephus's reinvention (and a combination with Mithraic ritual) of Paul's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. All nicely packaged-up as a new faith that could be adopted by Rome, especially the Roman Army (because of the combination with Mithraic ritual), and spread throughout the Roman Empire, as the "official state religion", usurping or merging with any pagan religions in conquered territories in the process.