Paul --- A Rock and a Hard Place

[Bernard Muller]

to spin,

What follows is not a response to the question.You don't muddy your thoughts explaining how Encolpius is not a real person by your reductiveness. You rehearse the same sort of non-historical mantra that most apologists use for their efforts to give Jesus historicity.

I wanted to base my argumentation on the external evidence, mostly outside the gospels. There is no evidence outside the Satyricon on the existence of Encolpius as a man, but there is for Jesus called Christ, as a man, in writings done before the gospels and also by non-Christians.

There is no evidence here. Paul's savior by necessity had to have suitable characteristics, just as Stan Lee's characters have to have certain characteristics.
The following litany involves no contemporary indications. They are all to be expected given the tendentious nature of the means of preserving the literary material you are naively presenting.

So Paul invented a man Jesus by necessity! But if that man already had existed, that would make things simpler.
And then, if Paul invented Jesus the man, a lot of questions would be asked on the identity of that crucified, but we do not have a trace about Paul responding to that in his epistles.
And I do not think that a humble poor Jew of no reputation, dealing only with Jews, and then crucified are suitable characteristics for Paul's Savior.
Also, Paul had also James as the brother of the Lord ("Lord" being a title used for Jesus a lot), and Paul met that James several times.
But again, for whatever reasons, you will reject all that with some metaphors or hard rhetoric.

The onus is not on others to show unauthority, once some of the content has been universally accepted as bogus. You have to do the piss bucket test to extract the good piss from the not good piss. You know that at least there is bad piss in the bucket. How do you know there is good piss? How can you then extract it?

Since when the testimony in Ant. 20, 9, 1 is universally accepted as bogus? It is rejected by some (including all Mythicists because they have to) for reasons which are highly questionable.

About Tacitus, I reviewed the thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=274&hilit=procurator and conluded your case for interpolation was weak.
As for "procurator", because Pilate was called "epitropos" by Josephus and Philo (and probably others) and "epitropos" can mean procurator, a mistake by Tacitus is understandable.

These last two are just silly. You cannot expect to get any historical materials from undated, unprovenanced, anonymous sources.

For Hebrews, its author declared he already visited the addressees of the epistle. So they would be aware to his identity. And because parts of his epistle are heretical to Jewish beliefs, he probably did not want to put his name in it for fear it fell into the wrong hands.
And then, by investigating its content (with also Paul's epistles), I dated this epistle. Of course you would call that Gematria.
For gMark, the author had reason not to reveal himself so he would not be asked about from where he got that fiction and embellishments, all of that new for his audience.
BTW, you do not reveal yourself also. spin cannot be your real name. What are you hiding?

Cordially, Bernard

[iskander]

A widely recognized contradiction in Paul’s story is demonstrated by these citations from 1 Corinthians and Galatians. These two letters share several common themes regardless of the very different issues addressed, and I think they were written in close order and time ---

Sure, Paul claimed that his revelation came from god, not man, but his story still had holes. Paul claimed to have persecuted the faith before his revelation (Galatians ch. 1) --- how could he persecute a faith before learning about it? Yes, Paul created a conundrum for himself, but no such system is perfect. And Paul, in his hubris, tried to have it both ways.
...

robert j

Paul was persecuting an odd aberrant sect which he did not understand. But God revealed to him the meaning of the story. God reveals divine mysteries to people in most religions and Paul learnt from his experience.

It is very simple if one accepts the possibility of revelation.

[spin]

to spin,

What follows is not a response to the question.You don't muddy your thoughts explaining how Encolpius is not a real person by your reductiveness. You rehearse the same sort of non-historical mantra that most apologists use for their efforts to give Jesus historicity.

I wanted to base my argumentation on the external evidence, mostly outside the gospels. There is no evidence outside the Satyricon on the existence of Encolpius as a man, but there is for Jesus called Christ, as a man, in writings done before the gospels and also by non-Christians.

There is no evidence here. Paul's savior by necessity had to have suitable characteristics, just as Stan Lee's characters have to have certain characteristics.
The following litany involves no contemporary indications. They are all to be expected given the tendentious nature of the means of preserving the literary material you are naively presenting.

So Paul invented a man Jesus by necessity! But that if man already had existed, that would make things simpler.
And then, if Paul invented Jesus the man, a lot of questions would be asked on the identity of that crucified, but we do not have a trace about Paul responding to that in his epistles.
And I do not think that a humble poor Jew of no reputation, dealing only with Jews, and then crucified are suitable characteristics for Paul's Savior.
Also, Paul had also James as the brother of the Lord ("Lord" being a title used for Jesus a lot), and Paul met that James several times.
But again, for whatever reasons, you will reject all that with some metaphors or hard rhetoric.

The onus is not on others to show unauthority, once some of the content has been universally accepted as bogus. You have to do the piss bucket test to extract the good piss from the not good piss. You know that at least there is bad piss in the bucket. How do you know there is good piss? How can you then extract it?

Since when the testimony in Ant. 20, 9, 1 is universally accepted as bogus? It is rejected by some (including all Mythicists because they have to) for reasons which are highly questionable.

About Tacitus, I reviewed the thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=274&hilit=procurator and conluded your case for interpolation was weak.
As for "procurator", because Pilate was called "epitropos" by Josephus and Philo (and probably others) and "epitropos" can mean procurator, a mistake by Tacitus is understandable.

These last two are just silly. You cannot expect to get any historical materials from undated, unprovenanced, anonymous sources.

For Hebrews, its author declared he already visited the addressees of the epistle. So they would be aware to his identity. And because parts of his epistle are heretical to Jewish beliefs, he probably did not want to put his name in it for fear it fell into the wrong hands.
And then, by investigating its content (with also Paul's epistles), I dated this epistle. Of course you would call that Gematria.
For gMark, the author had reason not to reveal himself so he would not be asked about from where he got that fiction and embellishments, all of that new for his audience.
BTW, you do not reveal yourself also. spin cannot be your real name. What are you hiding?

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard, I could depiffelate all this nonsense, but it isn't worth the effort.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,
The relative short sentences in 1 Thessalonians were argued by Trilling but, as you demonstrated for 1 Th 1:9-10, there are longer sentences in the epistle. However, I think rather strange that a short clause "to serve a living and true God" is followed by a much longer one which encapsulate creedal statement in a concentrated way, with "Son" appearing only here in the whole epistle.
Also this creedal statement is presented as a certitude when at 1:3, we have "steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
Yes Paul implied his converts were sons of God in 1:1, 3; 3:11, 13 but "Jesus Christ" or "Jesus" in the same verses is only Lord and never the Son.
Waiting, most of the times, implies idleness. And I do not see why it would not be so when Paul stated some of his converts were idling.
Yes Corinthians 15 employs both roots and any interpolator would know likely the second root from other Paul's epistles.

That's a lot of arguments for interpolation in a short clause only, some weaker than others, but taken together, strong enough to suspect an interpolation.

Did you look at the other two cases of "Son" in 1 Corinthians? I had more wordings there to work on.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

to Ben,
The relative short sentences in 1 Thessalonians were argued by Trilling but, as you demonstrated for 1 Th 1:9-10, there are longer sentences in the epistle. However, I think rather strange that a short clause "to serve a living and true God" is followed by a much longer one which encapsulate creedal statement in a concentrated way, with "Son" appearing only here in the whole epistle.

Maaaaaybe.... This still seems pretty weak.

By the way, there are quite a few short sentences in this epistle, some of them famously so. It is just that they sit in amidst other, much longer sentences sometimes.

Also this creedal statement is presented as a certitude when at 1:3, we have "steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."

I do not think Paul implies any incertitude regarding the object of hope. The only incertitude is whether or not we humans will follow through to the end.

Waiting, most of the times, implies idleness.

I disagree. Waiting implies that what is waited for has not arrived yet. It does not imply that the one waiting is idle in other aspects of life.

That's a lot of arguments for interpolation in a short clause only, some weaker than others, but taken together, strong enough to suspect an interpolation.

There is something to be said for your observation that 1.10 sounds credal. But is it a rule that Paul can never sound credal? He is a believer, after all, so surely he can sometimes sound like one..., right?

Did you look at the other two cases of "Son" in 1 Corinthians? I had more wordings there to work on.

Not yet. Not in detail. Hopefully soon.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,
I made some revisions on why I think 1 Th 1:10 in an interpolation. However it is not why I want to talk about on this post, but about the math I used in order to call an interpolation from several independent arguments (6 in the case of 1 Th 1:10).

I do not expect any one of my arguments to be a "killer" demonstrating I am be right without any doubt. Far from that. I certainly not list my arguments for that reason.
However if I list 6 independent arguments, and each one of them can be weighted as having 20% chance to show it is an interpolation, then my 6 arguments collectively would put me over 100 %.
So what about the other 80% for each argument? Would that mean it shows there is 80% chance it is NOT an interpolation? NO, it shows there is 80% chance it does not show it is an interpolation.
Of course, that can be demonstrated by throwing dices. Let's use 6 dices. Throw them many times together then let's look if any of those shows a 1 on top. Well, for each dice, there is 16.7 % chance the result will be 1. But for the 6 dices together, the average result will be close to 16.7 X 6 = 100%.
I said close, that is not quite 100 %, because there will be times none of the 6 dices will show a 1 on top.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

I do not expect any one of my arguments to be a "killer" demonstrating I am be right without any doubt. Far from that. I certainly not list my arguments for that reason.
However if I list 6 independent arguments, and each one of them can be weighted as having 20% chance to show it is an interpolation, then my 6 arguments collectively would put me over 100 %.
So what about the other 80% for each argument? Would that mean it shows there is 80% chance it is NOT an interpolation? NO, it shows there is 80% chance it does not show it is an interpolation.
Of course, that can be demonstrated by throwing dices. Let's use 6 dices. Throw them many times together then let's look if any of those shows a 1 on top. Well, for each dice, there is 16.7 % chance the result will be 1. But for the 6 dices together, the average result will be close to 16.7 X 6 = 100%.
I said close, that is not quite 100 %, because there will be times none of the 6 dices will show a 1 on top.

That is not how this math works.

[Peter Kirby]

I do not expect any one of my arguments to be a "killer" demonstrating I am be right without any doubt. Far from that. I certainly not list my arguments for that reason.
However if I list 6 independent arguments, and each one of them can be weighted as having 20% chance to show it is an interpolation, then my 6 arguments collectively would put me over 100 %.
So what about the other 80% for each argument? Would that mean it shows there is 80% chance it is NOT an interpolation? NO, it shows there is 80% chance it does not show it is an interpolation.
Of course, that can be demonstrated by throwing dices. Let's use 6 dices. Throw them many times together then let's look if any of those shows a 1 on top. Well, for each dice, there is 16.7 % chance the result will be 1. But for the 6 dices together, the average result will be close to 16.7 X 6 = 100%.
I said close, that is not quite 100 %, because there will be times none of the 6 dices will show a 1 on top.

That is not how this math works.

This problem is actually pretty easy to explain (with a basic understanding of algebra and probability, which is asking for something...)

Suppose we have six independent events. Independence means that we can simplify many calculations... suppose that each of these events has a certain probability p = 0.2 to occur. Let "X" be the number of such events that do actually occur. This is a binomial distribution, and the probability that a certain number of them occur is given by:

Binomial distribution


Where n = 6, p = 0.2, k = the number that actually occur (that we want the probability of), and "(n k)" = "n choose k" = n! / (k! (n-k)!).

Checking the probability that X >= 1 is especially simple. We just find the probability that X = 0 and compute the complement, i.e., 1 - Pr(X=0).

Pr(X=0) = ("6 choose 0") * (0.2)^0 * (0.8)^6 = (0.8)^6 = 0.262144.

1 - Pr(X=0) = 0.737856

So if you have six independent events with probability 0.2 each, the probability that at least one occur is 0.737856.

An intuition to use here is that if none occur, then the "not-occurring-event" happens six times in a row, which probability is given by 0.8 ^ 6. So if more than none occur, then the probability of that is 1 - 0.8^6, because either none occur or at least one occur.

I will let the reader decide whether this is the best model for settling the questions themselves...

(I will particularly not argue with Bernard about math... it is far too depressing and frustrating...)

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

That is not how this math works.

Why not? Are you thinking about Carrier's use of his Bayes theorem?

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

to Ben,

That is not how this math works.

Why not? Are you thinking about Carrier's use of his Bayes theorem?

No, of course not. I just remember enough from math class to know you do not add the probabilities (16.7% + 16.7%, and so forth) and then trim a bit off the top so that you do not end up with 100% or more! You multiply probabilities (or apply exponents to them if they are all the same).

Refer to Peter's post for the math. The part of the equation that has 1 minus the probability to the power of n minus k is the part where the probabilities are being multiplied, not added.

ETA: I had a post composed in which I calculated the odds of NOT rolling a 1 for each die roll, multiplied to get the odds of not rolling a 1 across six die rolls, and then subtracted from 1 (= 100%) to get the odds of rolling at least one 1 in six die rolls. But Peter's post beat mine to the thread, is more comprehensive, and proves (as if proof were needed) that he is a better authority on the math than I, so refer to his stuff for the nitty gritty details.