Paul’s seven letters (or five? six?), flawed as they may be, are as close as we can get to primary evidence in the search for early Christian origins.
James, John and Cephas/Peter? Their scant stories, such as they are presented by Paul, may very well have been fabricated by Paul, or he may have
very loosely based them on real people. The concepts associated with those men held by many today could very likely have been shaped by the author of GMark, as he brought Paul’s heavenly Christ spirit down to earth in his tale set in recent times --- a tale far more accessible to a wider audience than Paul’s scripture-based heavenly Christ.
Strictly my opinion of course, to rely on Robert M. Price to paint an accurate picture of Paul is to be misguided. Have you read his relatively recent,
The Amazing Colossal Apostle ? In my opinion, Price has built a complex house of cards with an all-too shaky foundation.
Even more problematic, in my opinion, Price has missed or ignored the consistent personality and on-going human dramas threaded through several of Paul’s letters --- on-going dramas that would be inconceivable in Price’s picture of a “pile of literary scraps” (p. 534) consisting of fragments patched together by so many competing factions over so many decades.
Added verisimilitude in Paul’s letters? It’s possible. But the five letters (generally considered to be authentic) addressed to his congregations reveal human dramas, Paul’s hubris and thirst for authority, distinct personalities and cultural paradigms for each congregation, and clashes of cultures between Paul’s Jewish provenance and his gentile converts that are all so well integrated, intertwined, and consistent that for it all to have been concocted by a clever author or redactor to add believe-ability to the letters is itself beyond reasonable belief.
And one can’t ignore that portions of Galatians and 1 Corinthians fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces (
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2396). Together they reveal a significant portion of Paul’s back-story.
I think Price’s characterizations of a “pile of literary scraps” and “a pile of flaking puzzle pieces” (p. 534) provide a much better description of his evidence, than of Paul’s letters.
some drama –
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3253&p=71356#p71356