The Christian creeds are so obviously anachronistic

Funny that, I read them as a logical conclusion from and development of the texts!

On non xian witnesses, Terry Jones Barbarians is of note about how catholicism has controlled and rewritten our history, and the early debates about xian ideas being taken from other myths and stories is of note.

No i couldn't trust them. The people who have maintained and copied these documents have been caught out altering these documents to promote their particular religious beliefs. Lying for jebus has been going on for 2,000 years, so has killing for him (heresy). There is no good reason to give any credibility to references contained in those documents to the religion of those who are responsible for the copying those documents.

There are no non-Christian witnesses to Jesus.

Even if we were to accept all of the texts that you mentioned, none of them were witnesses, they were reporting what others told them.

It looks like there aren't actually any xian witnesses either!

willhud9 wrote: I know that Paul of Tarsus wrote many letters to different cities, we have several of them.

On that point - does anyone know what is the date of the oldest relatively complete readable copies that we have of the Pauline Letters?

IanS wrote:

willhud9 wrote: I know that Paul of Tarsus wrote many letters to different cities, we have several of them.

On that point - does anyone know what is the date of the oldest relatively complete readable copies that we have of the Pauline Letters?

About twenty or so years after Jesus is supposed to have died.

He was not a witness to Jesus...he just had a hallucination vision.

As far as I have ever heard there are no witnesses of Jesus either christian or non, only hearsay.

Onyx8 wrote:As far as I have ever heard there are no witnesses of Jesus either christian or non, only hearsay.

(The word "witness" was being used in a somewhat different sense as "witness to a notion of the witness's era". We tend to use "eye witness" when we want to make the distinction.)

MrFungus420 wrote:

IanS wrote:

willhud9 wrote: I know that Paul of Tarsus wrote many letters to different cities, we have several of them.

On that point - does anyone know what is the date of the oldest relatively complete readable copies that we have of the Pauline Letters?

About twenty or so years after Jesus is supposed to have died.

He was not a witness to Jesus...he just had a hallucination vision.

No I don't think so. That would make it the oldest document in the entire Jesus saga by far.

What you seem to be thinking of, is the fact that religious sources almost always quote the date when they think the documents were originally written. But we do not actually have copies from those early dates. That appears to be true for all the documents in the Jesus saga ... true for not only the non-religious sources such as the writing of Josephus and Tacitus, but also in fact for the Gospels.

For example - Josephus is said to have written his stuff between 93-94AD. But we do not actually have any copy of that work from anywhere near that date. Instead the earliest copy we have apparently comes from the 11th century, ie 1000 years later!

The same thing applies to the Gospels. They are always said by Christians and religious historians to date from around 70ADto 110AD. But in fact the earliest relatively complete readable copy of any gospel apparently dates to the 4th century.

So that question remains - does anyone know what is the date of the earliest known relatively complete and readable copy of Paul?

To partly answer my own question - after the above reply I found the following in Wikipedia re. one of the so-called “pseudepigraphical” texts of Paul, ie not actually written by Paul. Though of course what I really want is a date for any of the genuine Paul Letters -

From Wikipedia - the so-called Bodmer Papyri-X which is thought to date from the 4th century contains some (or all?) of the so-called Third Epistle to the Corinthians which is believed to be a pseudepigraphical text, ie not actually written by Paul. Here are the Wiki. Links -

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


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Epis ... orinthians

"The Third Epistle to the Corinthians is believed to be a pseudepigraphical text under the name of Paul of Tarsus. It is also found in the Acts of Paul, and was framed as Paul's response to the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul. The earliest extant copy is Bodmer Papyrus X ".

spin wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:As far as I have ever heard there are no witnesses of Jesus either christian or non, only hearsay.

(The word "witness" was being used in a somewhat different sense as "witness to a notion of the witness's era". We tend to use "eye witness" when we want to make the distinction.)

OK, its nice to define words before using them if one is not going to use the common definition.

Onyx8 wrote:

spin wrote:

Onyx8 wrote:As far as I have ever heard there are no witnesses of Jesus either christian or non, only hearsay.

(The word "witness" was being used in a somewhat different sense as "witness to a notion of the witness's era". We tend to use "eye witness" when we want to make the distinction.)

OK, its nice to define words before using them if one is not going to use the common definition.

In the context that is how the term is used. The texts I refer to in the o.p. are frequently called "pagan witnesses" as a google search will show.

IanS wrote: No I don't think so. That would make it the oldest document in the entire Jesus saga by far.

So? Most of the scholarship that I have seen reaches this conclusion. The "Pauline" documents were the first to be set down in writing. Because they were letters. It was not for some time after this that manuscripts written in Koine Greek appeared that later became that basis for the 'Apostolic' gospels. Bart Ehrman is one of the most accessable sources for this sort of thing.

Nicko wrote:

IanS wrote: No I don't think so. That would make it the oldest document in the entire Jesus saga by far.

So? Most of the scholarship that I have seen reaches this conclusion. The "Pauline" documents were the first to be set down in writing. Because they were letters. It was not for some time after this that manuscripts written in Koine Greek appeared that later became that basis for the 'Apostolic' gospels. Bart Ehrman is one of the most accessable sources for this sort of thing.

The relevance is that, afaik we do not actually have any copies of Paul dating from anywhere in, say, the 1st century.

It is believed, that Paul originally wrote his letters around 50AD-60AD, but we do not have either the originals, nor afaik any relatively complete readable copies until some centuries later ... at least that is the case with most of the early writing about Jesus. it’s the same with the gospels for example - apparently (according to Wikipedia, and I think it’s common knowledge) the earliest relatively complete copy of any of the four canonical Gospels dates to the 4th century.

Because Paul is thought to be the earliest of the writers, and may have been copied by later writers, it is important to know what date we actually have for the information that we read in Paul (ie that is not, 50-60AD, but apparently some time significantly later ... how much later?).

IanS wrote:Because Paul is thought to be the earliest of the writers, and may have been copied by later writers, it is important to know what date we actually have for the information that we read in Paul (ie that is not, 50-60AD, but apparently some time significantly later ... how much later?).

It is difficult to date Paul. The one independent means that I've seen attempted is the use of the story of Paul being let down the wall of Damascus during the time when Aretas had control of the city (2 Cor 11:32). This Aretas was the king of the Nabataeans and there were a number of them. The apologetic use of this material believes that it was Aretas IV who reigned during the first half of the first century. However, Damascus was ultimately under Roman control at the time and Nabataea (ie Petra) was outside the Roman empire, so a Roman Damascus being under the control of a ruler who was not a Roman vassal is ridiculous. Yet there was a time when Aretas III had control of Damascus just prior to the initial Roman intervention into Syria, ie before Pompey's forces arrived in 65 BCE. If there is any veracity in the basket story, then Paul would be dated a century earlier. Now there is a lot of apologetics as to the Aretas story, which imagines that Caligula gave Damascus to Aretas IV (just check out the last paragraph of this [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretas_IV_Philopatris"]Wiki crap[/url]), but it has no historical basis.

If we sweep the basket story under the carpet, I think that there may be a vague indication that Jerusalem was stable and relatively free to enter, suggesting a time before the Jewish war and most certainly before the Bar Kochbah period after which no Jews were allowed into the city. There is no sense that Jews were personae non gratae in Paul's dealing with Jerusalem, which would be the case after the Jewish War.

I can't remember if Ellegard discusses Aretas, but he is interesting that Paul seems to be involved in quite a complex international organisation, with hierarchies and various positions, and he notes this complexity in organisations takes time to grow.

spin wrote:

IanS wrote:Because Paul is thought to be the earliest of the writers, and may have been copied by later writers, it is important to know what date we actually have for the information that we read in Paul (ie that is not, 50-60AD, but apparently some time significantly later ... how much later?).

It is difficult to date Paul. The one independent means that I've seen attempted is the use of the story of Paul being let down the wall of Damascus during the time when Aretas had control of the city (2 Cor 11:32). This Aretas was the king of the Nabataeans and there were a number of them. The apologetic use of this material believes that it was Aretas IV who reigned during the first half of the first century. However, Damascus was ultimately under Roman control at the time and Nabataea (ie Petra) was outside the Roman empire, so a Roman Damascus being under the control of a ruler who was not a Roman vassal is ridiculous. Yet there was a time when Aretas III had control of Damascus just prior to the initial Roman intervention into Syria, ie before Pompey's forces arrived in 65 BCE. If there is any veracity in the basket story, then Paul would be dated a century earlier. Now there is a lot of apologetics as to the Aretas story, which imagines that Caligula gave Damascus to Aretas IV (just check out the last paragraph of this [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretas_IV_Philopatris"]Wiki crap[/url]), but it has no historical basis.

If we sweep the basket story under the carpet, I think that there may be a vague indication that Jerusalem was stable and relatively free to enter, suggesting a time before the Jewish war and most certainly before the Bar Kochbah period after which no Jews were allowed into the city. There is no sense that Jews were personae non gratae in Paul's dealing with Jerusalem, which would be the case after the Jewish War.

What concerned me was a rather different question. Namely - what date do we have for the first readable copies of what Paul was supposed to have written?

The point being - although religious sources always like to claim the earliest possible date for documents such as Paul and the Gospels, eg typically claimed as circa 50AD to 100AD, if in fact all we have from the earliest copies are just some fragments (if even that), then it's very difficult if not impossible to have much if any idea of what Paul or any of these authors actually wrote.

Instead all we can know is what we read in the more complete copies made by unknown authors (presumably themselves Christian believers) from about the 3rd or 4th century onwards.

IanS wrote:What concerned me was a rather different question. Namely - what date do we have for the first readable copies of what Paul was supposed to have written?

The point being - although religious sources always like to claim the earliest possible date for documents such as Paul and the Gospels, eg typically claimed as circa 50AD to 100AD, if in fact all we have from the earliest copies are just some fragments (if even that), then it's very difficult if not impossible to have much if any idea of what Paul or any of these authors actually wrote.

Instead all we can know is what we read in the more complete copies made by unknown authors (presumably themselves Christian believers) from about the 3rd or 4th century onwards.

Both Irenaeus and Tertullian cite materials from Pauline texts. I have recently been looking at 1 Cor 15:3-11 as interpolation and we learn from Tertullian that Marcion may well have used a version which had a different version of v.3 and the rest is missing. Irenaeus, a few decades earlier may have know two forms of 1 Cor 15, one like Marcion's and one like the standard version. So there are fragments of Paul in the 180s & 200s. Of course, most think that Marcion's texts are bowdlerized versions, but that needs to be demonstrated. The texts he preserved may have been early. As for dated Pauline papyri, P46 which is a good source for all the major Paulines is dated at c.200.

Answers one and two are much the same. I voted for 1 but 2 would have done just as easily.

The quest to disprove the existence of jesus is misplaced, and often involves such irrational conspiracy theories that it is damaging to rational scepticism if associated with it.
There are enormous problems with chrsitian influence over our culture but the more irrational conspiracy theories about interplotations and the existence of jesus shouldn't even come up on the radar.
All of which makes me think i should have actually voted for "this question is complete bollocks"