Possible the original Pauline letters never mentioned Jesus?

[lsayre]

Why present us with only these two choices as if they are the only potentially viable options?

What if zero letters addressed to churches from the pen of someone actually named Paul ever "already existed" (meaning here as authentic letters to authentic churches), and all of them were instead contrived and carefully crafted (by multiple hands) whereby to fit some (or a multiplicity of some) agenda(s)? Again I must ask why anyone writing letters to real churches with potentially 85-95% illiteracy in attendance would naturally pen them by such a means as to render them highly unintelligible to the intended recipients?

I'll admit right up front to my own undeniable load of confirmation bias, but this two options approach simply wreaks of confirmation bias. Why for example would a church of earnest believers be necessarily labeled as a "myth" community, if not to intentionally bias the argument against selecting this option from the onset? Earnest believers never conceive of their belief as mythological.

The only person who seems to originally have had an interest at all in Paul, and who just happened to possess 10 of such letters, is Marcion. Harnack observed that in much of the second century only one person (Marcion) took any interest in Paul. For such letters to be authentic and highly revered by actual churches of earnest believers, anyone holding that position to be valid must explain why such letters and Paul himself were soon completely abandoned and forgotten, and why such abandoned letters, scattered across many multiple hundreds of miles, and of zero current concern, would somehow thereby wind up in the hands of a reviled heretic named Marcion. And also to be explained would be why such highly revered letters would be seemingly unknown to Justin, even though Justin claims to know Marcion. Did Justin know of such letters and utterly ignore them as being of no relevance to his Christ Jesus?

[gmx]

Why present us with only these two choices as if they are the only potentially viable options?

What if zero letters addressed to churches from the pen of someone actually named Paul ever "already existed" (meaning here as authentic letters to authentic churches), and all of them were instead contrived and carefully crafted (by multiple hands) whereby to fit some (or a multiplicity of some) agenda(s)? Again I must ask why anyone writing letters to real churches with potentially 85-95% illiteracy in attendance would naturally pen them by such a means as to render them highly unintelligible to the intended recipients?

I'll admit right up front to my own undeniable load of confirmation bias, but this two options approach simply wreaks of confirmation bias. Why for example would a church of earnest believers be necessarily labeled as a "myth" community, if not to intentionally bias the argument against selecting this option from the onset? Earnest believers never conceive of their belief as mythological.

The only person who seems to originally have had an interest at all in Paul, and who just happened to possess 10 of such letters, is Marcion. Harnack observed that in much of the second century only one person (Marcion) took any interest in Paul. For such letters to be authentic and highly revered by actual churches of earnest believers, anyone holding that position to be valid must explain why such letters and Paul himself were soon completely abandoned and forgotten, and why such abandoned letters, scattered across many multiple hundreds of miles, and of zero current concern, would somehow thereby wind up in the hands of a reviled heretic named Marcion. And also to be explained would be why such highly revered letters would be seemingly unknown to Justin, even though Justin claims to know Marcion. Did Justin know of such letters and utterly ignore them as being of no relevance to his Christ Jesus?

Many things are unknowable.

My only point is that the 100% consistency of Pauline texts in their reference to Jesus is very likely to imply that those references are native to the text itself.

My most recent post then considers the likelihood of alternative transmission vectors. Yes I've oversimplified. As the truth is unknowable, everything by definition is wild speculation.

I'm comfortable with how I've tried to boil it down to probabilities.

[DCHindley]

Hmmmm,

When I last looked at the use of "christos" (anointed thing/person/leader, or for NT & early church fathers "Christ" which functions as a title for Jesus in his role as a divine redeemer)," "kyrios" (lord), & "theos" (divine), it was occasionally hard to tell what had been originally written and what had been added (as either commentary or injected them into an existing text to redirect the original subject matters to the divine redeemer introduced in the commentary), but I came to the conclusion that the "high" christology used these words differently than does the original narrative. Over time I developed some principles that I used to analyze the more complicated pericopes. The end result, when applied to the 13 letters attributed to Paul, was the separation of the texts into an "original" narrative and "commentary." An early form of this (in English) is hosted at Ben Smith's TextExcavation website, with a nice introduction of his own and my original explanation of method. I would date these versions to around 2001. The letter to Rome, the two letters to the Corinthians and the one to the Galatians, are also available in Greek-English versions if one searches on my name here.

http://www.textexcavation.com/dch.html

Basically, I decided that the word "kurios" was primarily used as an attribute for "ho theos" ("the God" = "the (only) God"), but in the household rulebooks that were appended, it meant "lord" of the household, which sometimes functioned as a euphemism for the Judean God in the sense "lord of the divine household." In the commentary/modifications, it is always referring to the divine redeemer (variously Jesus, Christ, or Jesus Christ/Christ Jesus).

I concluded that the original writer belonged to an extended "household" of a fairly well connected household lord. Eisenman had identified evidence that suggested that this was the household of a Herodian prince. If one looks at the history of the various branches of the Herodian family after the recall of Archaelus, the most likely candidates are Antipas (Galilee & TransJordan), Philip (Batanea, Trachonitis, and other regional tetrarchies up to the borders of Damascene territories), and later Agrippa the "wayward son."

After a lot of pondering, I decided that the most likely candidate is Antipas. It would also explain why the ethnarch over Nabatean affairs in Damascus was trying to apprehend him (Aretas IV & Antipas had gone to war at some point just before 36 CE, so bad blood among their retainers is guaranteed).

You may come to different conclusion about the relationships that exist between these concepts than I have,* but these kinds of things have to be included in an analysis to tho it justice. It does not seem many of the participants of this thread have been willing to do.

DCH

*Antipas, in the 30s, was extremely jealous of the favors heaped upon Agrippa upon the death of Philip, by means of his bona-fide deep connections to the emperor Tiberius and his heirs. However, Agrippa was a lavish spender, always getting deeper and deeper in debt to the imperial family and moneylenders, and was caught taking bribes when Antipas gave him a sweetheart job as a manager of an important agora. At one point, Josephus relates that Agrippa, to escape the clutches of an imperial procurator who had impounded the ship and had him under house arrest, had cut the lines tying the boat to the port dock and fled in the darkness of the night. He was an unworthy prince in Antipas' eyes. Antipas himself, according to recent research, was actually doing a good job ruling his tetrarchy, and felt if anyone should be rewarded with a bigger portion of Herod's old kingdom, it should be him.

Antapas' goal was to be made head of Herod's old kingdom, and like Herod, he came prepared, building up large stockpiles of arms and armor. He also developed extensive trade connections in the process. Remember Paul's mentions of armour of various kinds. When Antipas challenged Agrippa as the more worthy ruler of those sections of Herod's old domain, Agrippa used this fact to his advantage, suggesting that Antipas was preparing to reestablish Herod's former kingdom by force. Whether he was or was not means nothing, as Agrippa won the showdown due to his influence with the imperial family, and Antipas looses everything, being exiled to Gaul and perhaps ultimately to Spain. It would make for a great casino scene in a James Bond movie.

Paul would be one of the retainers of Antipas' extended household. His father was possibly a freedman who adopted his master's religion voluntarily. Paul, born of a convert and circumcised on the 8th day, was considered a full Judean. Like many converts, and sons of converts, he was super zealous for his father's/lord's religion, but later saw that many of the slaves and other retainers, who were still uncircumcised, were also favorably disposed toward their lord's religion, and longed to inherit this abundant future age. He had his revelation that God would not judge these gentiles by the law of Moses or by circumcision, but rather embrace them, simply because they had the same faith that Abraham had that God would realize a fruitful land for his "seed" to inherit. Otherwise, the original "Paul" knew nothing at all about Jesus/Christ. I think that the apocalyptic segments of some of the letters relate to this backstory, where Antipas is the anointed/rightful king of the restored kingdom of Herod, and Agrippa I would be the "anti-anointed" figure.

Of course it had nothing to do with the commentary, which was a 2nd generation belief system that had developed from the gentile members of the original Jesus movement in reaction to the events of the Judean war. That might have room for cosmic figures, but I don't think Paul knew anything about this form of the Jesus movement, much less the original one from the late 20s CE.

[davidmartin]

If the Shepherd of Hermas is the 'record' of the early church in Rome it appears to be... with late 1st century elements to PRIOR to the 'catholic' acceptance of Paul in what, the mid-late 2nd c (and Hermas is only vaguely Pauline)

Then
Paul could have wrote in the 50's/60's but was abandoned. taken over by other strands that predated/competed/came later
only to be revived by Marcion

I think that fits. He tried to take over the movement (against the will of those before him no doubt), failed, then made a "come-back", this time he's not a heretic any more

[lsayre]

If the Shepherd of Hermas is the 'record' of the early church in Rome it appears to be... with late 1st century elements to PRIOR to the 'catholic' acceptance of Paul in what, the mid-late 2nd c (and Hermas is only vaguely Pauline)

Then
Paul could have wrote in the 50's/60's but was abandoned. taken over by other strands that predated/competed/came later
only to be revived by Marcion

I think that fits. He tried to take over the movement (against the will of those before him no doubt), failed, then made a "come-back", this time he's not a heretic any more

A nice summary. I would only add that the comeback likely included some serious redaction. And sadly, all that remains is the post redaction Paul.

[davidmartin]

A nice summary. I would only add that the comeback likely included some serious redaction. And sadly, all that remains is the post redaction Paul.

Whatever redaction there was is eclipsed by the fact he was himself a redactor?
I think there is meat in that angle.
The fascinating thing about him is he seems like an archetypal revisor trying to reformat the basis of the movement to his own perspective
Unless he is actually truly correct he is by definition a flaming heretic
All the crap he moans about is explained by his trying to do that. He's like one of those stereotype images of say a thief holding a bag that says 'swag' on it out of a kids cartoon.
I think quite a lot of his gospel is actually rooted in earlier material but what isn't is enough to separate him from it qualitively because he made it about 'who' not 'what'. He was the leader and no-one else had the right is his schtick and that kind of obscures the similiarities he shares with his predecessors

[schillingklaus]

Hermas is a cheap plagiarism off the Hermetic Poimandres, as already figured by GRS Mead.

[John T]

Possible, yes. Anything is possible. Probable? No!

So tell us, John T --

What do you consider PROBABLE here?

CW

"Is it possible that the name Jesus has been insert into the Pauline letters?"...rgprice

Depending on how you count, the name Jesus is used by Paul over 200 times.

https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_time ... _testament

Anyone can use the word possible but what are the odds? A billion to one? A trillion to one? Compared that to the probability that Paul actually used Jesus in his letters and then you have to ask what is the purpose of such a question? To cast seeds of doubt that Jesus actually exsisted?

You might as well ask if it is possible that the center of the moon is filled with spare ribs?

Possible, yes. Anything is possible. Probable? No!

[schillingklaus]

And even if it was used a gazillion of times, it could be interpolated.

[davidmartin]

Hermas is a cheap plagiarism off the Hermetic Poimandres, as already figured by GRS Mead.

No it isn't. It's a fragmented piece of the church at Rome's backstory, ie their origin
Hermas was ultimately rejected but was scripture for a while, like the Didache and other early writings but because this earlier stuff wasn't in keeping with the rebooted orthodoxy that emerged circa Irenaeus it got canned. So Hermas is ripe for analysing for clues to the origins
and it doesn't rely on Paul's gospel. it doesn't rely on Paul's gospel, neither is it based on the prophets or Jewish scripture
I do not understand how you can comment on what the origins of the Christian movement were when you ignore one of the few documents that elucidate that question. You need a bit of proof behind you. You think the later church fathers are more reliable?