The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

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Giuseppe
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The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by Giuseppe »


The other problem in testing the historicity of these reports is that Paul appears to be preaching for the resurrected rather than for the pre‑resurrected Jesus. I have also analysed in the first Chapter that the resurrected Jesus was unknown in the earliest texts of Matthew and Mark, and the question remains as to when exactly the first resurrection stories were published. There is no textual evidence that the first such stories appeared before the Great Revolt, unless one accepts that the Acts and some of the Epistles were written before and not after the Revolt. At this point I would like to return again to the first Chapter, to the work of those scholars who claim that the Acts and ʺPaulʺ are products of the second rather than the first century. If not, and they do report about a historical Paul who was active before the Great Revolt, then one should question what exactly this historical rabbi Paul was trying to do when Galilee and other parts of Israel were fighting in the revolts? Was he on the side of the Holy Warriors or against them? Is it possible that a historical rabbi Paul sided with the revolutionaries, and travelled abroad in order to find Diaspora Jewish and possibly Gentile support for the Messianic movement against Rome? Could this explain why a number of Jews in the Diaspora synagogues did not want to listen to Paul and his Messianic message, fearing the consequences? At this point I believe that one should pay some attention to the Romans, chapter 11, where ʺPaulʺ begins with the declaration that he is a proper Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin and talks about violence and disasters in Israel, which profited the Gentiles of the world. Then Paul explained to the Gentiles that he became an Apostle to save/accept some of them, because their inclusion/acceptance would bring ʺlife from the dead.ʺ My question here is whether this ʺacceptanceʺ of the new blood of the Gentiles would bring hope to Israel (meaning allies against Rome), or whether this was written at a much later stage, after the repeated depopulation Israel suffered in the second century. At that later time was there any need to re‑create the flock with new sheep, or else face extinction? One should also question why exactly ʺPaulʺ comes back to his fellow Israelites to whom he previously stated that he was a genuine Jew, to explain to them that without a sufficient number of Gentiles joining Israel, Israel could not be saved? In light of these observations, I believe that Paulʹs mission to the Greeks deserves to be re‑examined within the historical context of the Galilean Messianic revolts. In the course of time this mission might have been altered and interpreted as spiritual, but its historical beginnings could have been very different and closely related to the political struggle for the survival of Israel.


These words of Georgios Sidirountios have been written in 2016, but it is incredible how Joseph Turmel was arrived to that same conclusion about Paul in the first years of 1900.

I see the imprint of genius in Turmel.
SaosSidirountios
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by SaosSidirountios »

Hi Giusepe. Thank you for bringing this here. Could you please give me a reference for Joseph Turnel, title, page number? I do not know his work.
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maryhelena
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

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SaosSidirountios wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2024 5:15 am Hi Giusepe. Thank you for bringing this here. Could you please give me a reference for Joseph Turnel, title, page number? I do not know his work.
I don't know anything about the man but this book might be of interest. Think I'll download the kindle sample.

In his autobiography Joseph Turmel (1859–1943) has left an intensely personal account of his struggles to reconcile his Catholic faith with the results of historical-critical methods as those impacted biblical exegesis and the history of dogma. Having lost his faith in 1886, he chose to remain as a priest in the Church, even while he worked to undermine its teachings. He did so initially in writings published under his own name and, as his conclusions became increasingly radical, under a veritable team of pseudonyms. He was excommunicated in 1930.

Image

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Turmel
Giuseppe
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

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SaosSidirountios wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2024 5:15 am Hi Giusepe. Thank you for bringing this here. Could you please give me a reference for Joseph Turnel, title, page number? I do not know his work.
Joseph Turmel's books are found here.

In his Life of Jesus Turmel argued for a seditious Jesus.

Turmel held the view that "a historical rabbi Paul sided with the revolutionaries, and travelled abroad in order to find Diaspora Jewish and possibly Gentile support for the Messianic movement against Rome". Accordingly, he saved of the epistles as genuine only tiny bits that could reflect a such portrait of Paul, and removed the rest as interpolations. This point is made by Turmel again and again in the his commentaries on Paul, all available in English in the link given above on Vridar.
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by SaosSidirountios »

Dear Giusepe and Maryhelena, you cannot imagine how I feel to have discovered you here. Thank you for your kind reply and information. I lived in isolation and in libraries for many years, and I do need your help to come into contact with what is going on. I am in the process of updating and correcting my thesis in order to publish it.
Just like Turnel, I also started as a Christian who wanted to help the Church. Once upon a time I was ordained a reader. After some years of living inside the primary sources I became an atheist. At some later point, and after studying pre-Christian material, I realised that much of the best of pre-Christian wisdom and ancient religious traditions did pass into Christianity (during the course of a number of centuries and not just in the first). Jesus-God is the composite product of the best ancient philosophical and religious inheritance. It is good to believe in Jesus, and I am trying to become Christian again.
My wish now is that Christianity should not weaken further. It could learn from its past, confess, "pay" compensations to any of its victims, try to get rid of many of its corrupt leaders and revive.

For some time I was angry and saddened with the so-called establishment which during some centuries did so much to ditch the "truth", and which later, during the course of more centuries, did so much not to discover the "truth." Now I am no longer angry and I just want to help.
Christianity should not fear historical Jesus the Revolutionist, the leader of a movement involved into the struggle for Freedom and Independence. However, it is likely that the so-called Academic and Church establishments will usually be against Jesus.
Giuseppe
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

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SaosSidirountios wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2024 9:41 am historical Jesus the Revolutionist,
Hi Georgios, I remember that in your thesis you mentioned again and again a Greek scholar and politician active during the Resistance, a proponent of the seditionist Jesus (I go to memory, I don't remember the name). Have you thought to translate in English his best works about Jesus?
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by SaosSidirountios »

Hi Giuseppe. Yanis Kordatos. He was a great mind sidelined both the right and the left in Greece because of his honesty in political issues. Not a trained historian, but he spent most of his life writing about history. Many books.

I mention what I think are his most important points in my introduction. He was a Marxist, and his analysis of history often is based on causes only a Marxist can think off. He started his work on Jesus after he became aware of an article written by Robert Eisler.

Unfortunately I do not have the time to translate him. Any time I have should go in the updating and publication of my thesis. Georgesaos.com is mine, and there you will see a fourth forbidden history which explains how Christianity became established by force much later, between the 4rth and 7th centuries. There is nothing of my Early Christianity work in georgesaos.
I would be most grateful if you send me an email. I need your advice.
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maryhelena
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

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SaosSidirountios wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2024 9:41 am Dear Giusepe and Maryhelena, you cannot imagine how I feel to have discovered you here. Thank you for your kind reply and information. I lived in isolation and in libraries for many years, and I do need your help to come into contact with what is going on. I am in the process of updating and correcting my thesis in order to publish it.
I've started reading your thesis - the info regarding the early scholars coming to grips with a seditious element in the gospel story is very good. However, I've hit my first hurdle.....

Just like Turnel, I also started as a Christian who wanted to help the Church. Once upon a time I was ordained a reader. After some years of living inside the primary sources I became an atheist. At some later point, and after studying pre-Christian material, I realised that much of the best of pre-Christian wisdom and ancient religious traditions did pass into Christianity (during the course of a number of centuries and not just in the first). Jesus-God is the composite product of the best ancient philosophical and religious inheritance.

It is good to believe in Jesus, and I am trying to become Christian again.
My wish now is that Christianity should not weaken further. It could learn from its past, confess, "pay" compensations to any of its victims, try to get rid of many of its corrupt leaders and revive.
Afraid it's on the downhill run.....
But then, one never knows - out of the ashes something new can be built.....if it truly believes in it's core doctrine, life, death and rebirth - then perhaps it can welcome it's time of torment as a chance to rebuild something of value. However, it must first open it's eyes.....

As to wanting to become christian again....I don't know how you define what a christian is, what ideas, dogma, theology or what have you, that identifies one as a christian.

For some time I was angry and saddened with the so-called establishment which during some centuries did so much to ditch the "truth", and which later, during the course of more centuries, did so much not to discover the "truth." Now I am no longer angry and I just want to help.
Whatever the avenue through which one comes to the knowledge that what christianity teaches in the way of dogma and theology is for the birds - best is simply to turn ones back on the peddlers of nonsense and strike out on ones own. Once the penny drops - there is only the rough road forward. Indeed, one can just sit it out - it's all nonsense - but some of us want answers. Answers not for anything else but ones own satisfaction, ones own curiosity.
Christianity should not fear historical Jesus the Revolutionist, the leader of a movement involved into the struggle for Freedom and Independence. However, it is likely that the so-called Academic and Church establishments will usually be against Jesus.
I'm afraid christianity should indeed be in fear of a seditious Jesus. Christian scholars have lived in their pacifist Jesus bubble for so long that the shock of finding their cherished Jesus has roots in Hasmonean history will be enough to send them running for the hills. Jewish history is a most sensitive issue..........................

Hope I'm not sounding too negative - research is not negative, it's empowering - it's the men in frocks that attempt to draw the lifeblood out of it....(well at least they wore frocks last time I entered a church.... ;) )

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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by SaosSidirountios »

Thanks for starting the thesis. When I was writing I was not trying to become Christian again.
I assume you met a hurdle/s just in my comments above.

For over two million years our mammal character is designed by nature to follow leaders. We also are designed by nature to have a sense of justice. We are made to want to follow a just, wise leader who will help us survive and prosper by answering our needs. Instead of this leader we often get dangerous leaders who are feeding on us.
All this was very well understood by important ancient philosophers. Mankind's needs for safe leadership did produce those philosophers. Many philosophers were trying for long to create wise, honest, strong and good leaders. Mankind's needs produced Jesus the permanent leader-Savior through the minds of the philosophers. According to theology (which is philosophy), Jesus pre-existed his any appearance on earth. Jesus-God is part of a Holy Trinity, without beginning and without end. The Savior Jesus appeared on earth just after a time when philosophy reached its highest levels ever, and not any time before. In essence Jesus appeared on earth very recently.

We are created by a force or forces if you wish, which pre-existed us, which composed us out of things visible and invisible. There is an entire creation, a multiverse inside and around us which we should always try to understand by reason, but which will always remain outside our capabilities. God is all what we understand, all what we do not understand, all what made us. God is inside everything, creates everything and no matter how much we try we will never fully understand what God is. There is no beginning and no end of God because we do have limits. Jesus is the link God gives to the man to move above the limits of thought and existence.

It is very easy to say we do not need any religion at all. What is hard is to study religion and realize that others who lived long in the past might have been much more wise than us in many aspects. Dawkins may be a great mind but my conclusions so far are that we cannot create civilisation without religion because religion is the product of long-lasting thought made in order to help mankind move forward. Christianity has accumulated inside it millennia of ancient Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish and other ancient wisdom. To through all this in the bin and start our own new project based on our faith that we are clever-reasonable and we can find the truth just by our new modern selves, may soon become fatal for Western Europe and the US. Socrates, Dawkins' father and one of the main heroes which inspired the formation of Jesus, was not an atheist himself.
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maryhelena
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Re: The precise point about Paul where Georgios Sidirountios meets Joseph Turmel

Post by maryhelena »

Good morning, George
It's good to get a sense of where someone is coming from in any intellectual exchange. So thanks for the above. I'll get a response posted maybe tomorrow - today is my day off - ;) Its the final day of the 6 Nations rugby - so three back to back games of rugby, Cardiff, Dublin and Lyon (France).

A general point on religion, basically christianity. Interesting interview with historian Niall Ferguson (married to Ayaan Hirshi Ali.) Brought up by two atheist parents - and now ''“I know I can’t achieve religious faith,” he went on, “but I do think we should go to church.........

I did love the quote the article ends with:

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each of them Christianity has died,” G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man. “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

https://www.convivium.ca/articles/grave ... ave-faith/

The response to that is of course - the disciples did not recognize Jesus after he came out of his grave.... ;)

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For any rugby fans - although it is Scotland that Ireland play in Dublin this afternoon - here is a Welsh choir singing Ireland fans stadium song...

Welsh choir sings The Fields of Athenry in Dublin.
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