"A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Peter Kirby
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Irish1975 wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 4:04 pm
Peter Kirby wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:37 pm The paper is unconvincing in its argument that Philostratus could have managed to write a life of Paul without dealing with him as a Christian. And also in suggesting that Paul's activity as a Christian could have been a minor part of his life.

Our own Andrew once pointed out where the letters of Paul assume a pre-70 temple, and when there are few anchors for speculation already, I'm not eager to dig up the ones we have.

Overall, the kind of work that must be what Neil means when he says non-biblical scholars are left feeling queasy.
Irish1975 wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:55 pm Guys, a case could be made that Acts of the Apostles assumes a pre-70 life of Paul.

We have so few anchors for speculation already.

#NotLettingGo

/s
Peter Kirby wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:19 pm Do I hear the hiss of an unmoored speculator scorned?
Hmmm.

FWIW, I have seen the Doudna paper, and to me it reads like a poor imitation of Philip K. Dick's whacked out novel Valis. Sober historical criticism it is not.

Anyhow, to explain myself, I was light-heartedly poking fun at your tangential comment on a 1st century Paul. I think the supposed references in the Pauline Corpus to a temple are as superficial as those in Hebrews, 1 Clement, etc. Scribes of the 2nd century would, of course, have wanted to write as though from the vantage point of the pre-70 world. It is their chronology! And to do so would have been anything but difficult for them, in light of everything that is written in the NT. All to say, I cannot stomach any such "evidence" for dating the Pauline Corpus to the 1st century. The conventional portrait is always ultimately predicated on the validity of Acts, whether our historians want to admit it or not.

I don't perceive (my own) skepticism of the standard account of Christianity as "umoored speculation." Quite the opposite.

But maybe I misunderstood where you are coming from.
Fair enough.. there is a conversation worth having about the dating of the Pauline letters. But I don't think it's unusual to refer to internal evidence as part of examining provenance. This does not entirely depend on an evaluation of whether they're likely to be real letters. For example, Hebrews is not a real letter, but it could still be pre-70 without artifice.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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There might be a few people here who could answer this question...

Where do you think the case is made best, currently, for a post-70 date of the Pauline letters (most especially Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans)?
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:17 pm There might be a few people here who could answer this question...

Where do you think the case is made best, currently, for a post-70 date of the Pauline letters (most especially Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans)?
1 Corinthians is surely the epistle more full of valentinian gnosticism (see Droge). I would start from there.

As second place, I would place Galatians 1 and 2. What I find suspicion is that in 15 years Paul does only two visits in Jerusalem. This is expected if the Judea was a dangerous place, a place of war or a place known for the hostile inhospitality of his inhabitants. The thought goes to that passage of Philostratus where it is said that Apollonius avoided accurately the passage through the Judea, because the Jews hate the rest of the world (I go to memory). The implication is that Apollonius couldn't go through the Judea because he would have made no miracles there because of the hostility of the Jews against him (as Gentile). The paulinized Jesus of Mark couldn't do miracles in Nazareth for an identical reason: too much pauline.

ADDENDA: the passage I mean is this:

For the Jews have long been in revolt [...] against humanity; and a race that has made its own a life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separated from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Susa or Bactra or the more distant Indies.

[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 5.33; tr. F.C. Conybeare.]
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Compare two accounts:



This is how the story grew up, that it was during his conduct of the siege of Jerusalem that the idea of making himself emperor suggested itself to him; and that he sent for Apollonius to ask his advice on the point; but that the latter declined to enter a countrynote which its inhabitants polluted both by what they did and by what they suffered, which was the reason why Vespasian came in person to Egypt, as well because he now had possession of the throne, as in order to hold with our sage the conversations which I shall relate.

(Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 5.27, source)

I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

(Galatians 1:19-20)

If the parallelism is correct, then Paul's first visit to Jerusalem was a fake news.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Giuseppe wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 9:27 pm What I find suspicion is that in 15 years Paul does only two visits in Jerusalem. This is expected if the Judea was a dangerous place, a place of war or a place known for the hostile inhospitality of his inhabitants.
The text emphasize the independence of Paul's mission, and it's also expected if Paul wanted to maintain a non-subordinate position with respect to those in Jerusalem. The text also emphasizes Paul's mission to the Gentiles, and it's expected if Paul's travels took him to Gentiles.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:56 am
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 9:27 pm What I find suspicion is that in 15 years Paul does only two visits in Jerusalem. This is expected if the Judea was a dangerous place, a place of war or a place known for the hostile inhospitality of his inhabitants.
The text emphasize the independence of Paul's mission, and it's also expected if Paul wanted to maintain a non-subordinate position with respect to those in Jerusalem. The text also emphasizes Paul's mission to the Gentiles, and it's expected if Paul's travels took him to Gentiles.
Why couldn't Paul "maintain a non-subordinate position with respect to those in Jerusalem" in the same Judea?

My point is that he avoided Judea, more than Jews. And that is more expected if Judea was an inhospital place.

ADDENDA: the episode of the Independent Exorcist in Mark proves that one (and one posing as Paul) could be independent also by remaining in Judea.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Giuseppe wrote: Tue Apr 04, 2023 9:12 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Apr 04, 2023 7:56 am
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 9:27 pm What I find suspicion is that in 15 years Paul does only two visits in Jerusalem. This is expected if the Judea was a dangerous place, a place of war or a place known for the hostile inhospitality of his inhabitants.
The text emphasize the independence of Paul's mission, and it's also expected if Paul wanted to maintain a non-subordinate position with respect to those in Jerusalem. The text also emphasizes Paul's mission to the Gentiles, and it's expected if Paul's travels took him to Gentiles.
Why couldn't Paul "maintain a non-subordinate position with respect to those in Jerusalem" in the same Judea?

My point is that he avoided Judea, more than Jews. And that is more expected if Judea was an inhospital place.

ADDENDA: the episode of the Independent Exorcist in Mark proves that one (and one posing as Paul) could be independent also by remaining in Judea.
The point is that your argument here has no merit.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:17 pm There might be a few people here who could answer this question...

Where do you think the case is made best, currently, for a post-70 date of the Pauline letters (most especially Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans)?
They show an advanced level of theological ideas that seem to go up against the image of a simple, earthy faith (an image that can be doubted)
It's hard not to see Paul as a theologian that's part of a movement already quite well developed. What dating his letters pre-70 does is affirm the movement was already (or always was) at an advanced level theologically. I've never seen a compelling argument either way, we are talking 50 years here trying to date! either 50/60 AD or 100/110 AD. Only 50 years.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

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Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:03 am
The point is that your argument here has no merit.
then I try with a totally different argument.

The strongest argument to doubt the authenticity of all the Pauline epistles is that there is evidence that the epistles were edited even before they were sent to people different from their authors.

The evidence is that we have only one single corpus of pauline epistles. If the earliest manipolations/changements/interpolations of the epistles were happened before their collection in a single corpus, then we would have (as result) more different collections of the same versions. Since there are zero different collections (as final product) but only a single corpus (a single collection), then what is more probable is that the manipolations/changements/interpolations were made by the same original authors, even before that they sent those epistles to various people and before that someone (Marcion?) collected all them.
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Re: "A Case for Apollonius of Tyana = Paul..."

Post by Giuseppe »

The argument is inspired to Jarek Stolarz's post on Facebook; in particular:

The consensus is shown in the Zuntz figure.

Image
Paul sends his original letters (x) and they are copied and edited in different places by different people. That's how x-versions of them are created. After that, someone collects some x-versions and makes a Corpus out of them on a long quest of research and exploration. Which is nothing more than an invention of helpless biblical scholars, because what do they know about such journeys.
I claim that x are the only letters that have been sent. The originals (x) were simply redacted on the spot and the letters were sent only after redaction. x. They were sent to different places in unison and so in different places there was a copy of the same collection of Paul's letters.

I can easily imagine as example of this redaction "made on the spot" (i.e., even before the letters were sent) the famous passage of 1 Corinthians 2:6-8.

6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

  • Was it marcionite? No, because Marcion accused only the Demiurge for the death of Jesus.
  • Was it catholic? No, because catholics insisted on Pilate as the killer of Jesus.
Was it a passage made by someone who was not a marcionite, not a catholic, and wrote probably even before Marcion collected the epistle? Probably yes.
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