Posted: Jun 24, 2019 5:27 am
dejuror wrote: The so-called Epistles of Paul had nothing whatsoever to do with the fabrication of fables about the character called Jesus of Nazareth.
RealityRules wrote:I propose they were one of the first steps; that they were the one of the motivators for the author of the gospel of Mark.
There is no evidence at all to support such a proposal.
1. The short gMark story of John the Baptist is not anywhere in the so-called Epistles of Paul.
2. The miracles in the short Gospel of Mark are found nowhere in all the Epistles under the name of Paul.
3. The story of the baptism of Jesus by John is missing in the Pauline Epistles.
4. The transfiguration and triumphant entry is not at all in the Epistles.
5. The story of the trial of Jesus under Pilate is found nowhere in the so-called Epistles.
6. There is no claim that over 500 persons was seen of the resurrected Jesus in the short gMark.
7. There is no claim in the short gMark that the resurrected Jesus told his disciples to preach the Gospel.
8. There is no claim in the short gMark that the disciples were in Jerusalem preaching the Gospel after the crucifixion and resurrection.
9. None of the disciples was told about or seen of the resurrected Jesus in the short gMark which contradicts the Epistles.
10. The Jesus character in the short gMark commanded his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Christ which would contradict the Pauline Epistles where it is claimed Paul was commissioned by the resurrected Jesus to preach the Gospel
It is extremely clear that the author of the short gMark did not require any NT Epistle, Pauline or not, to fabricate his fables of Jesus.
It was the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE and supposed prophecies about the coming of Jewish Messianic rulers in Jewish writings as stated in writings attributed to Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius that motivated people to invent conspiracy theories which would later become the foundation of a new religion sometime in the 2nd century.
RealityRules wrote:[the Pauline epistles and the Gospel of Mark could have been written concurrently]
Such a proposal is not even logical. There are multiple Epistles which are supposed to have been written over several years and to different congregation in the Roman Empire and in addition many of the Epistles are falsely attributed to Paul.
Yes, it is almost certain that the Epistles under the name of Paul are not the motivation for the Jesus of Nazareth story.
RealityRules wrote:
But sayingdejuror wrote: The so-called Epistles of Paul were invented [using] already existing known and circulated fables of Jesus and attempted to historicise them claiming to be witnesses of events in the Jesus stories that could not have happened.
contradicts your first statement [quoted above]
No, No, not at all. It is you who have contradicted yourself since you admit that it is almost certain Jesus of Nazareth is a construct of Hebrew Scripture and the Fall of the Jewish Temple.
The very Pauline writers claimed that their Jesus was already dead and resurrected, that other people were already preaching about Jesus and that Paul persecuted those who preached about Jesus before the Epistles were written.
In fact it is claimed in the Epistles that the dead and resurrected Jesus told him about the Last Supper, that he was commissioned to preach the Gospel as Peter was.
The Pauline Epistles show that parts of the Jesus story found in the Gospels were known to their authors.
RealityRules wrote:It is likely that "elements for the construction of [Paul's] alleged Jesus the supposed Messiah were directly lifted from Hebrew Scripture or Septuagint" in parallel with Gnostic myths."
The claims about Jesus in the Epistles are almost always from Jewish Scripture or the Gospels. There are no known Gnostic myths before 70 CE which make claims or teachings about a resurrected character called Jesus of Nazareth in the time of Pilate.
There is no known Gnostic myth before c 70 CE which claimed the dead in Christ shall meet Jesus in the air in the 2nd coming.
RealityRules wrote:Yes,
The character called Paul in the NT is unknown by writers who mentioned events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius. Writings attributed to Philo, Plutarch, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger show no historical evidence of a supposed Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin who asked people in the Roman Empire to worship a dead Jew, a crucified criminal, as a God and the Creator.
but note I said "these characters, including Paul, are represented as being active and significant in the period in the lead up to and even start of the First Roman-Jewish War" - ie. represented by the Christian stories as being active pre-War.
Again, Christian stories are not credible historical sources. The claim that Paul is pre-war in the NT is no different to the claim that Romulus was the founder of Rome in Roman mythology.
The time period for Paul in the NT allows us to search for such a character within that time frame however one will never ever find Paul in any historical source. Paul never lived. The Epistles are 2nd century or later propaganda introduced specifically to historicise the fiction called the Gospels.