Posted: Jul 24, 2013 11:24 pm
spin wrote:Seriously, you can't do very much at all unless you first try to read a text literally. Unless the text is epigraphy there is nothing else you can do. You have to contend with what the text says. There are varying degrees of proficiency in doing so.
You have to contend with what the text says in context of what the text is about.
Seriously, these are theological texts; while they are now historically significant texts, they are not texts about significant historical events - they are merely alleged musings of an alleged apostle of a new religion.
spin wrote:Paul
Working from Galatians I have attempted to read the text as literally as possible in an effort to understand what it says, rather than what later interpreters have said it says. >>The result is that Paul argues against prior Jesus believers, indicating that his Jesus knowledge instead comes from revelation << (which doesn't require any supernatural event given todays understandings of psychology). He points to people in Jerusalem who show no knowledge of the gospel Jesus and who advocate torah observance, which Paul's Jesus has abrogated. Paul's writings have been heavily reworked, as can be seen with the attacks on his personality and insertion of later established church oriented notions and interests, so his writings cannot be read slavishly as many christian interpreters tend to do.
"The result"?? ... "his Jesus knowledge"??
Really ???!!
Perhaps you might read Robert M. Price's book
"The Amazing Colossal Apostle:The Search for the Historical Paul" (2012); Signature Books.
"In Price’s new book, The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul ... Price suggests that Paul is a composite of several historical figures, including Marcion of Pontos, Stephen the Martyr, Simon the Sorcerer, and the iconoclastic evangelist who was named Paul. His letters were actually written and edited by other people, including Marcion and an early Church Father, Polycarp of Smyrna."
"Price has joined the ranks of scholars who conclude that Acts was a second-century historical novel based on the writings of ancient authors like Homer, Virgil, Euripides, and Josephus. The result, according to Price, was a collection of stories and myths that have “virtually no historical value,” especially in how they relate to a real Paul. Some scholars have even used word-print analysis and other techniques to show that Polycarp was Paul’s principal editor and sole author of the epistles to Timothy and Titus, a finding with which Price agrees."
http://signaturebooks.com/2012/12/new-testament-scholar-says-apostle-paul-really-existed/
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