bartwillruth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:49 pm
Greetings Lane,
You have no idea how enthused I was to be directed to this discussion by an acquaintance. Why, you wonder? It is because I have been studying this subject and its implications for 20 years or so. I too put Paul in the first Century BC. Aretas III is a good fit. Yes, I am quite sure Paul was a military man of some considerable rank, writing to fellow soldiers. I agree that he was involved in the Jewish wars, probably the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey and the later war between Octavian and Antonius, likely as an auxilliary sent by Herod.
The parallels between our findings are truly amazing. We are either onto something truly monumental, or we are cranks.
Now allow me to back up to introduce myself. I am recently retired from business, but was academically trained in NT studies. I have a BA in History and Theology, Greek minor. MDiv Summa cum Laude. I was a PhD candidate in NT theology until walking away from faith and devoting myself to reason.
I have debated Richard Carrier quite a bit over dating Paul. I usually find him to be quite solid, but in this case, he is so married to the traditional timeline that he argues against actual evidence while defending mere possibilities.
For several years, I have toyed with writing a book reevaluating Paul's timeline and its implications. I have been held back for lack of complete confidence in the project. Candidly, I have always wanted a second set of eyes and someone to tap the brakes when I get too far out in speculationville.
We have a few differences in the timeline, but that is to be expected. I start Paul's career at around 64 BCE. I have him writing Romans around 43 BCE for reasons I see missing from your discussion. There are a number of things which I could offer that might answer some of your questions hanging out there.
I would like to continue discussion on this, but would prefer to do it via email. If you are interested, my email is bwillruth@gmail.com.
best regards,
Bart Willruth
Hi Bart, very nice to meet another hopeless crank!
While I would prefer to correspond with you on this subject here at the forum, so that we can, as Peter says, get more reader input, I understand the desire for private communication if you are considering writing a book. I kicked around the Idea of writing a book about it myself but have shelved that idea (at least this aspect of dating Paul).
I would be delighted to discuss this with you and help you any way that I can with your book project and will email you so that you have my address.
bartwillruth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 4:20 pm
Another interesting detail. All the oldest manuscripts were preserved on codices. The codex was seemingly developed by the Roman military for quick communication between the legions, ca 50's BCE. The scroll remained the preferred material for writing for centuries. The codex remained almost exclusively used by the legions. It proves nothing, but it is an oddity and is interesting.
The use of the codex, as well as 'nomina sacra' abbreviations for names and titles in early XC's seems to possibly point to a Roman military background, at least to me.
bartwillruth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:49 pmGreetings Lane,
You have no idea how enthused I was to be directed to this discussion by an acquaintance. Why, you wonder? It is because I have been studying this subject and its implications for 20 years or so. I too put Paul in the first Century BC. Aretas III is a good fit. Yes, I am quite sure Paul was a military man of some considerable rank, writing to fellow soldiers.
Back to Aretas and Damascus again..... Over the years this forum has had a number of threads and discussions on this topic. I'll give a link to one of them. Carrier, Aretas and Damascus
While your theory and that of Lane/Jax are interesting they both, in my view, fall short in that they assume that the NT figure of Paul was a historical figure. A scholar to read on the subject of Paul's historicity is Thomas Brodie. (Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery)
Yes, Aretas III is the Aretas that had control of Damascus and lost it to the Romans around 63/62 b.c. But that historical fact does not place the NT Paul (even if one wants to assume a historical NT Paul) in the time of Aretas III. What Aretas III adds to the NT story is a connection to Hasmonean history. It is Hasmonean history that is the ground zero from which sprung the NT story. A historical NT Paul is not needed. History is what is required. (Why mythicists cling on to a NT Paul when they have jettisoned a NT Jesus is something, to my mind, rather odd.....after all - remove the horse and the cart can't drive itself anywhere......love and marriage sort of thing - )
Was Paul one of the Pharisee turncoats? Was Paul involved in the Damascus intrigue as an agent provocateur on behalf of Aristobulus and against Aretas III? Was Aretas trying to stop him before he could do damage? This is, of course, not demonstrable, but it is perhaps a better explanation for why the Pagan king of Nabatea was trying to arrest Paul, than the rewritten Acts story that the Jews were after him because of a religious dispute. The events listed above occurred and are well documented. The question is whether or not Paul the Pharisee was involved and was this the reason for the arrest warrant he mentioned in 2 Corinthians. If not, why would the king of Nabatea want to arrest him?
So - your Paul is involved in the civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus....and Aretas, who sided with Hyrcanus is after him. The take away from this is not a historical Paul - the take away is the civil war between the Hasmoneans around the years 63 b.c. The NT is identifying the root from which it sprung. A Hasmonean root. Research into what became early christianity does not need a historical NT Paul - it has Hasmonean history to deal with. Yes, we have a Jewish Hasmonean historian - Josephus - and it is that Jewish Hasmonean historian that needs to be carefully, very carefully, re-considered regarding what he writes about that history.
What happened to Aristobulus and his two sons - the three of them killed by the Romans. Aristobulus possibly poisoned, Alexander beheaded. Cassius Dio on Antigonus: - "These people [the Jews] Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and so slew him."
There is enough in Hasmonean history, particularly since Aretas III got himself involved with it, for any NT writer to write up a good storyline: Paul - the Hasmonean - delivering a basket full of Jesus goodies to the gentiles. That would be a good outline from which to develop a NT storyline....
(Welcome to the forum....)
While I have treated the writer that calls themselves Paulos as a historical personage here in these threads, I will concede at least the possibility that it is a fictional construct. However, proving that this Paulos is a historical person or that he was writing in the years BCE is not something that I ever intended to do as I can see no way to actually do that given the source material (and lack thereof) that we have at our disposal currently. All that I am doing here is showing that a historical Paulos writing in the mid 1st century is anything but a slamdunk and that other perfectly plausible possibilities can exist. That's all.
Really, all that I am doing is taking a thesis that someone else has proposed and developing it to it's logical conclusion using actual historical sources as building blocks. That person posited a historical BCE Paulos with a few examples and I ran with it and fleshed it out further. It's all just an exercise in possibility, nothing more. I am simply taking passages from the letters deemed authentic and seeing if any of them match recorded historical occurrences. In doing so I have created a thesis that others can study and pick apart to see if it has any merit.
bartwillruth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:49 pmGreetings Lane,
You have no idea how enthused I was to be directed to this discussion by an acquaintance. Why, you wonder? It is because I have been studying this subject and its implications for 20 years or so. I too put Paul in the first Century BC. Aretas III is a good fit. Yes, I am quite sure Paul was a military man of some considerable rank, writing to fellow soldiers.
Back to Aretas and Damascus again..... Over the years this forum has had a number of threads and discussions on this topic. I'll give a link to one of them. Carrier, Aretas and Damascus
While your theory and that of Lane/Jax are interesting they both, in my view, fall short in that they assume that the NT figure of Paul was a historical figure. A scholar to read on the subject of Paul's historicity is Thomas Brodie. (Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery)
Yes, Aretas III is the Aretas that had control of Damascus and lost it to the Romans around 63/62 b.c. But that historical fact does not place the NT Paul (even if one wants to assume a historical NT Paul) in the time of Aretas III. What Aretas III adds to the NT story is a connection to Hasmonean history. It is Hasmonean history that is the ground zero from which sprung the NT story. A historical NT Paul is not needed. History is what is required. (Why mythicists cling on to a NT Paul when they have jettisoned a NT Jesus is something, to my mind, rather odd.....after all - remove the horse and the cart can't drive itself anywhere......love and marriage sort of thing - )
Was Paul one of the Pharisee turncoats? Was Paul involved in the Damascus intrigue as an agent provocateur on behalf of Aristobulus and against Aretas III? Was Aretas trying to stop him before he could do damage? This is, of course, not demonstrable, but it is perhaps a better explanation for why the Pagan king of Nabatea was trying to arrest Paul, than the rewritten Acts story that the Jews were after him because of a religious dispute. The events listed above occurred and are well documented. The question is whether or not Paul the Pharisee was involved and was this the reason for the arrest warrant he mentioned in 2 Corinthians. If not, why would the king of Nabatea want to arrest him?
So - your Paul is involved in the civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus....and Aretas, who sided with Hyrcanus is after him. The take away from this is not a historical Paul - the take away is the civil war between the Hasmoneans around the years 63 b.c. The NT is identifying the root from which it sprung. A Hasmonean root. Research into what became early christianity does not need a historical NT Paul - it has Hasmonean history to deal with. Yes, we have a Jewish Hasmonean historian - Josephus - and it is that Jewish Hasmonean historian that needs to be carefully, very carefully, re-considered regarding what he writes about that history.
What happened to Aristobulus and his two sons - the three of them killed by the Romans. Aristobulus possibly poisoned, Alexander beheaded. Cassius Dio on Antigonus: - "These people [the Jews] Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and so slew him."
There is enough in Hasmonean history, particularly since Aretas III got himself involved with it, for any NT writer to write up a good storyline: Paul - the Hasmonean - delivering a basket full of Jesus goodies to the gentiles. That would be a good outline from which to develop a NT storyline....
(Welcome to the forum....)
While I have treated the writer that calls themselves Paulos as a historical personage here in these threads, I will concede at least the possibility that it is a fictional construct. However, proving that this Paulos is a historical person or that he was writing in the years BCE is not something that I ever intended to do as I can see no way to actually do that given the source material (and lack thereof) that we have at our disposal currently. All that I am doing here is showing that a historical Paulos writing in the mid 1st century is anything but a slamdunk and that other perfectly plausible possibilities can exist. That's all.
Really, all that I am doing is taking a thesis that someone else has proposed and developing it to it's logical conclusion using actual historical sources as building blocks. That person posited a historical BCE Paulos with a few examples and I ran with it and fleshed it out further. It's all just an exercise in possibility, nothing more. I am simply taking passages from the letters deemed authentic and seeing if any of them match recorded historical occurrences. In doing so I have created a thesis that others can study and pick apart to see if it has any merit.
bartwillruth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:49 pmGreetings Lane,
You have no idea how enthused I was to be directed to this discussion by an acquaintance. Why, you wonder? It is because I have been studying this subject and its implications for 20 years or so. I too put Paul in the first Century BC. Aretas III is a good fit. Yes, I am quite sure Paul was a military man of some considerable rank, writing to fellow soldiers.
Back to Aretas and Damascus again..... Over the years this forum has had a number of threads and discussions on this topic. I'll give a link to one of them. Carrier, Aretas and Damascus
While your theory and that of Lane/Jax are interesting they both, in my view, fall short in that they assume that the NT figure of Paul was a historical figure. A scholar to read on the subject of Paul's historicity is Thomas Brodie. (Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery)
Yes, Aretas III is the Aretas that had control of Damascus and lost it to the Romans around 63/62 b.c. But that historical fact does not place the NT Paul (even if one wants to assume a historical NT Paul) in the time of Aretas III. What Aretas III adds to the NT story is a connection to Hasmonean history. It is Hasmonean history that is the ground zero from which sprung the NT story. A historical NT Paul is not needed. History is what is required. (Why mythicists cling on to a NT Paul when they have jettisoned a NT Jesus is something, to my mind, rather odd.....after all - remove the horse and the cart can't drive itself anywhere......love and marriage sort of thing - )
Was Paul one of the Pharisee turncoats? Was Paul involved in the Damascus intrigue as an agent provocateur on behalf of Aristobulus and against Aretas III? Was Aretas trying to stop him before he could do damage? This is, of course, not demonstrable, but it is perhaps a better explanation for why the Pagan king of Nabatea was trying to arrest Paul, than the rewritten Acts story that the Jews were after him because of a religious dispute. The events listed above occurred and are well documented. The question is whether or not Paul the Pharisee was involved and was this the reason for the arrest warrant he mentioned in 2 Corinthians. If not, why would the king of Nabatea want to arrest him?
So - your Paul is involved in the civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus....and Aretas, who sided with Hyrcanus is after him. The take away from this is not a historical Paul - the take away is the civil war between the Hasmoneans around the years 63 b.c. The NT is identifying the root from which it sprung. A Hasmonean root. Research into what became early christianity does not need a historical NT Paul - it has Hasmonean history to deal with. Yes, we have a Jewish Hasmonean historian - Josephus - and it is that Jewish Hasmonean historian that needs to be carefully, very carefully, re-considered regarding what he writes about that history.
What happened to Aristobulus and his two sons - the three of them killed by the Romans. Aristobulus possibly poisoned, Alexander beheaded. Cassius Dio on Antigonus: - "These people [the Jews] Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and so slew him."
There is enough in Hasmonean history, particularly since Aretas III got himself involved with it, for any NT writer to write up a good storyline: Paul - the Hasmonean - delivering a basket full of Jesus goodies to the gentiles. That would be a good outline from which to develop a NT storyline....
(Welcome to the forum....)
While I have treated the writer that calls themselves Paulos as a historical personage here in these threads, I will concede at least the possibility that it is a fictional construct. However, proving that this Paulos is a historical person or that he was writing in the years BCE is not something that I ever intended to do as I can see no way to actually do that given the source material (and lack thereof) that we have at our disposal currently. All that I am doing here is showing that a historical Paulos writing in the mid 1st century is anything but a slamdunk and that other perfectly plausible possibilities can exist. That's all.
Really, all that I am doing is taking a thesis that someone else has proposed and developing it to it's logical conclusion using actual historical sources as building blocks. That person posited a historical BCE Paulos with a few examples and I ran with it and fleshed it out further. It's all just an exercise in possibility, nothing more. I am simply taking passages from the letters deemed authentic and seeing if any of them match recorded historical occurrences. In doing so I have created a thesis that others can study and pick apart to see if it has any merit.
I would surmise that Paul's originals were on codices, but that is unknowable. The fact that a codex could be disassembled might account for the apparent compilation appearance of some of the canonical epistles. They could have been found as separated sections and reassembled at random.
bartwillruth wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:21 pm
I would surmise that Paul's originals were on codices, but that is unknowable. The fact that a codex could be disassembled might account for the apparent compilation appearance of some of the canonical epistles. They could have been found as separated sections and reassembled at random.
As you say, there is no way to know. That Paul's letters were assembled from smaller letters seems pretty reasonable to me. Would love your input at this thread. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3487
There was a series of discussions in which "drive-by" forum participant "spin" offered detailed analysis of which Nabatean king Aretas it was whose ethnarch at Damascus gave Paul such problems.
I seem to recall he was leaning towards Aretas III rather than the usual suspect, Aretas IV.
Of course, opinions vary, but spin's posts are almost always exceptionally well researched. In other words, he cannot be easily "waved away."
IMHO, I (incorrectly) tend to think that this ethnarch was a local representative of the Nabatean peoples who resided in Damascus, and in that case the Aretas who appointed him does not have to be in full control over Damascus, any more than a Jewish Alabarch in Alexandria Egypt. Damascus can still be a "Town/Polis" in Roman Syria under Roman governorship. "Ethnarch" is not a usual term for a full governor of a region, but a duly appointed representative of an ethnicity.
For instance, in Jewish-Roman politics, Archelaus was both a tetrarch as well as "ethnarch," which meant that he represented the interest of Jews wherever they lived before the Romans. His father Herod the Great had similarly represented Jewish interests before the Roman emperors, and won for them a great many concessions over rights of congregation for religious services, exemption from compulsory service in the Roman armies, rights to transfer money donations to the temple in Jerusalem, etc. He may have asked for this title for Archelaus in his will in hopes that Archelaus would follow in Herod's footsteps. Unfortunately for the Jews, Archelaus did not live up to Herod's legacy.
However, I am not sure the Romans formally appointed him as an Ethnarch (representative) although he certainly filled that function. Herod considered himself 100% Judean and did fight hard for them when he offered his two leptons of advice to Romans on how to govern them and still retain their loyalty. Even during the Judean rebellions these rights were respected, at least when it came to Judeans of the Diaspora. For combatants, that was another story.
In Advanced Search, search for "Aretas" in posts by membername "spin."
Spin is still active when he feels up to it, and if you present your case carefully he may jump in with his two centavos from over in Italy (if he's still there).
DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 4:25 am
There was a series of discussions in which "drive-by" forum participant "spin" offered detailed analysis of which Nabatean king Aretas it was whose ethnarch at Damascus gave Paul such problems.
I seem to recall he was leaning towards Aretas III rather than the usual suspect, Aretas IV.
Of course, opinions vary, but spin's posts are almost always exceptionally well researched. In other words, he cannot be easily "waved away."
IMHO, I (incorrectly) tend to think that this ethnarch was a local representative of the Nabatean peoples who resided in Damascus, and in that case the Aretas who appointed him does not have to be in full control over Damascus, any more than a Jewish Alabarch in Alexandria Egypt. Damascus can still be a "Town/Polis" in Roman Syria under Roman governorship. "Ethnarch" is not a usual term for a full governor of a region, but a duly appointed representative of an ethnicity.
For instance, in Jewish-Roman politics, Archelaus was both a tetrarch as well as "ethnarch," which meant that he represented the interest of Jews wherever they lived before the Romans. His father Herod the Great had similarly represented Jewish interests before the Roman emperors, and won for them a great many concessions over rights of congregation for religious services, exemption from compulsory service in the Roman armies, rights to transfer money donations to the temple in Jerusalem, etc. He may have asked for this title for Archelaus in his will in hopes that Archelaus would follow in Herod's footsteps. Unfortunately for the Jews, Archelaus did not live up to Herod's legacy.
However, I am not sure the Romans formally appointed him as an Ethnarch (representative) although he certainly filled that function. Herod considered himself 100% Judean and did fight hard for them when he offered his two leptons of advice to Romans on how to govern them and still retain their loyalty. Even during the Judean rebellions these rights were respected, at least when it came to Judeans of the Diaspora. For combatants, that was another story.
In Advanced Search, search for "Aretas" in posts by membername "spin."
Spin is still active when he feels up to it, and if you present your case carefully he may jump in with his two centavos from over in Italy (if he's still there).
Over the years this forum has had a number of threads and discussions on this topic. I'll give a link to one of them.
