hakeem wrote:.... If NT Paul claimed NT Jesus lived and died then stories of NT Jesus must predate the writings of the Epistles.
1. NT Jesus was said to be God's son and made of a woman before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
2. NT Jesus had apostles before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
3. NT Jesus was crucified before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
4. NT Jesus resurrected and appeared to the twelve before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
5. Believers in NT Jesus were persecuted by NT Paul before he wrote his Epistles.
6. NT Paul preached the same Gospel of Jesus as those he persecuted before he wrote his Epistles.
7. There were Pillars of the Church before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
8. NT Paul was the LAST to see the resurrected Jesus before he wrote his Epistles.
9. NT Jesus carried out the ritual of the Eucharist before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.
10. NT Jesus stories were known to NT Paul before he wrote his Epistles.
The Gospels, stories of Jesus, predate the writing of Epistles by NT Paul.
You have made baseless assumptions about later additions to the so-called Pauline Epistles.Jax wrote:I feel that your premise doesn't account for later additions to the letters of Paul and that you are treating the letters as if they were the unnaturally long letters that we have today.
No existing manuscripts of the so-called Pauline Epistles show any significant differences between them. In fact, the Pauline Epistles have far less variants than the Gospels. Later NT writings usually have far less variants per page than the Gospels which would support the argument that the Pauline Epistles are later than the Gospels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Tes ... anuscripts
The Pauline writers show that they were aware of the Gospels or written stories about Jesus when it was claimed they received information from the resurrected Jesus about the ritual of the Eucharist which is almost a word for word copy of gLuke or the Memoirs of the Apostles.
There is simply no evidence whatsoever that the so-called Pauline Epistles were composed before the Gospels--none.