Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle having been set apart for the Gospel of God which he promised beforehand though the prophets of him in writings holy concerning the Son of him the one having come of the seed of David according to the flesh the one having been declared Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead Jesus Christ the Lord of us through whom we have received grace and apostleship unto obedience of faith among all the nations on behalf of the name of him among whom are you also called of Jesus Christ to all those being in Rome beloved of God called to be saints grace to you and peace from God the father of us and Lord Jesus Christ.
First I thank the God of me through Jesus Christ for all of you because the faith of you is being proclaimed in all the world. My witness is God whom I serve in the spirit of me in the Gospel of the Son of him how unceasingly mention of you I make ….
Paul called to be an apostle having been set apart for the Gospel of God which he promised beforehand through the prophets of him in writings holy to all those being in Rome beloved of God called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God the father of us.
First I thank the God of me for all of you because the faith of you is being proclaimed in all the world. My witness is the God whom I serve in the spirit of me how unceasingly mention of you I make ….
Paul’s writings are the oldest parts of the New Testament, predating any of the Gospels.
Is this a prelude to the argument that Paul’s original letters weren’t even about Jesus/ That those passages were later interpolations so that, as Wikipedia says of George A. Wells’ beliefs, “Wells now believes that the Jesus of the gospels is obtained by attributing the supernatural traits of the Pauline epistles to the human preacher of Q source.”
If so, I could see how you could abstract the Jesus material from some of the letters, but not all, even of what Wells would characterize as “genuine Pauline” letters. I believe that there are some letters where, if you tried to do that, you’d have to end by discarding the letter altogether.
The Greek text of Romans 1, 1-17, after the references to Jesus are removed, just happens to contain exactly 1000 characters. Within this text the word God is used 8 times. In all 8 instances the first letter of the word God, or when it has one, the first letter of its definite article, is an even number of characters from the beginning of the text. In 7 out of the 8 instances the word God, or its definite article when it has one, is an odd number of words from the beginning of the text. The odd one out is the only instance when the nominative (o theos) is used. If the positions of the first letters are totalled and divided by 8 the result identifies the first letter of the Greek word for the now, the present moment.
My next posting will be about the strange way Ssul’s name changes to Paul in Acts. Saul just happened to be in the presence of Sergius Paulinus and Barjesus when his name changed - with no explanation as to why.
I’m following a line of thought that Paul was a playwright and that Jesus, King of the Jews, was a character concocted by him. Paul wrote Mark, as a play. Later the text was altered and Catholicism was born.
I agree, it becomes a truly headbanging mess when one tries to figure out how Christianity evolved from whatever the events were that started things. Paul … an apparently real person who wrote some stuff, became Paul the supposed author of texts that are at the core of Christianity. There is a 2nd century play by a non-Christian Roman that describes a religion that was perfectly acceptable to the authorities whilst the founder was alive, but when he died a single individual took over, altered the sacred texts, wrote others of his own and made himself very wealthy. Christianity as we know it could have been the work of someone similar to modern day founders of religious cults. A kind of 2nd century Ron L Hubbard or a Rev Sun Moon.