Did Paul Invent/Manipulate Christianity?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zadeth
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Gia_B said:
That would require everyone, including the non-Christians he knew before his conversion, to be in on it.
Click to expand...
No, it wouldn’t. It never even would have had to happen, it may have just been written that way. Are you familiar with legends?
Dozens or even hundreds of people would have to go along with something that flew in the face of public knowledge. Paul went around getting people thrown into prison, threatening people and even ask for (and receiving) approval from the high priest. These are public things that the general population would notice and remember.
Click to expand...
And how do you know this? If Paul invented the story, of course it would say that if thats the image he was trying to depict.

Youre still attempting to use the Bible to prove what happened in the Bible is real. Circular reasoning is fallacious.
 
SonOfMan said:
No, it wouldn’t. It never even would have had to happen, it may have just been written that way. Are you familiar with legends?

And how do you know this? If Paul invented the story, of course it would say that if thats the image he was trying to depict.

Youre still attempting to use the Bible to prove what happened in the Bible is real. Circular reasoning is fallacious.
Click to expand...
I ask again, what is your source? How are you backing this all up? It seems like your argument so far is “It’s made up because I want it to be and I reject your sources because they are yours.”

Also, you have been consistently ignoring how I have pointed out that your little theory makes no sense given how the people around Paul could reasonable have been expected to act. It would be easy for them to know if Paul’s claims were true or false, as they would have been around to know if it happened or not. Contrary to your claim that making everything up would be an easy way for Paul to build credibility, saying something that dozens of people could easily refute is actually a real good was to discredit Paul. His opponents should have been all over this easy target, but they weren’t. Why? Well it’s either because it wasn’t all a bold-faced lie or everyone was just stupid.

What’s that you say? People probably did call him out but there’s no way those intellectually disingenuous Christians would put it in the Bible? Fine. Find me a non-Biblical source with someone calling out Paul for making stuff up and prove to me that you’re not just making stuff up.
 
Gia_B said:
It seems like your argument so far is “It’s made up because I want it to be and I reject your sources because they are yours.”
Click to expand...
You have provided exactly zero sources for your claims. The Bible is not a source. The Bible is assertion after assertion that needs a source in order to be credible.
Contrary to your claim that making everything up would be an easy way for Paul to build credibility, saying something that dozens of people could easily refute is actually a real good was to discredit Paul. His opponents should have been all over this easy target, but they weren’t. Why? Well it’s either because it wasn’t all a bold-faced lie or everyone was just stupid.
Click to expand...
What dozens of people? You mean the dozens of people the Bible alleges? Well yeah, Ive addressed that already: they may not have been real. Therefore, non-existent people cannot refute any of Paul’s claims and Paul can say anything he wants if its his story.

Quick example:

Last Thursday in a secret government facility, I helped a group of aliens escape to their home planet. Obama and his henchmen tried to assassinate me, but miraculously I got away.

So you see, Obama and his agents would have never tried to assassinate me if I wasnt really trying to help aliens escape. I mean, what other explanation could there be for why Obama wanted to kill me?
 
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

***Thirteen off topic and bickering posts have been removed.

Kindly remain on the topic of “Did Paul Invent/Manipulate Christianity?” and do not depart from it or this thread may be removed and infractions issued.***
 
Paul could not have done this since we have the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles from other sources…Then in addition we have a great many epistles from several apostles.

Paul was certainly prolific, but his writings (in spite of what some n-Cs or unbelievers may assert) are not the core of the Christian Gospel by any means. Paul certainly wrote from his own perspective, but then so did all the other canonical authors. 🤷

None of that really makes that much difference since Jesus Christ and His teachings are the core of Christianity and thus far we have spent 2,000 years learning and seeking to better understand them and implement them in our daily lives.
 
To answer the question and stay on topic: It seems very likely that Paul invented/manipulated Christianity.
 
SonOfMan said:
To answer the question and stay on topic: It seems very likely that Paul invented/manipulated Christianity.
Click to expand...
Why? There were 12 (+) other Apostles.

Ignatius of Antioch, an early Father of the Church, lived around the late 1st and and early 2nd century. We have a good amount of his writings that he sent to various churches and individuals on his way to martyrdom.

His writings are thoroughly Catholic (and traditional Christian), expressing such things as Christ’s divinity, the atonement on the cross, the Virgin Birth, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the structure of church clergy/hierarchy.

Yet Ignatius is known to be influenced by Peter, whom he is a successor to in Antioch, and John, whom he heard preach.

“Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . predestined from eternity for a glory that is lasting and unchanging, united and chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God” (*Letter to the Ephesians *1 [A.D. 110]).

“For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (ibid.,18:2).

“[T]o the Church beloved and enlightened after the love of Jesus Christ, our God, by the will of him that has willed everything which is” (*Letter to the Romans *1 [A.D. 110]).

“Take care to do all things in harmony with God, with the bishop presiding in the place of God, and with the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles, and with the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the business of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father from the beginning and is at last made manifest” (ibid., 6:1).

“Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes” (*Letter to the Smyrnaeans *6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).
 
Zadeth said:
I’ve seen some argue that Paul was the driving force of the spread of Christianity, and he may have came up with the idea of Jesus being the Messiah and promoted the rejection of the Torah; and the concept of the Trinity only came out of Nicaea because the Pauline branch was the loudest/most prominent.
Click to expand...
Jesus himself claims to be Messiah in many places, and Christianity (Christ is the Greek word for Messiah) is based on this fact. Christianity couldn’t be accounted for historically if Jesus didn’t claim to be Messiah.

St. Paul never convinced Christianity to abandon the Torah because 1) we still have it (check the first five books of any Christian Bible) and 2) he never advocated such a thing (the scholar has to provide evidence for such an untraditional claim).

A few scholars in the recent past and today (Dr. Ehrman and some others) have introduced the idea that there are multiple “branches” of early Christianity, that somehow all of them are equal, and that the Pauline branch, whatever that one is :rolleyes:, was able to win in the end. This is a modification from Hegal’s idea that there was Pauline Christianity in opposition with Judaic Christianity, and Petrine Christianity, which won out, is a synthesis of the two.

Even Hegal’s view stems from the wreakage of Protestantism (its not coincidence that Biblical criticism in its modern form started in Lutheran Germany). Luther, by forcing Paul to teach faith alone, alienated the other New Testemant writers from Paul, especially James, as well as the Gospels, and many secular scholars, following this tradition, pit Scripture against itself.

St. Augustine wrote about this: one who reads Scripture with his own heretical doctrines will become frustrated with the contradictions, and lose faith: which is what had happened.

Christi pax,

Lucretius
 
Lucretius’ phrase “that somehow all of them were equal” is, I think, the key difference between these scholarly opinions and the beliefs of traditional Christians.

We know there were teachers of “other gospels” and variant doctrines all the way back to the beginning. Paul himself writes about them in the earliest books of the New Testament, and the other NT writers agree. Where we differ from the position of Dr. Ehrman is that we do not believe every such group or teaching had an equal claim to be carrying on the true teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, and correspondingly we do not believe that the eventual “winner” was a matter solely of historical chance and/or political influence.

Likewise, we know that the ancient Israelites spent a great deal of time worshipping deities like Asherah and even combining her worship with that of Yahweh as a god/goddess pair. The Old Testament repeatedly records the people’s falling away from monotheism and having to be drawn back to it by the appearance of a prophet or even a terrible disaster. We just think, in agreement with the OT writers themselves, that such worship represented a divergence from an older and “proper” way of worshipping the Lord, not an “original” or equal version of Judaism.

Usagi
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top