# Did Paul hijack Christianity?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 25, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342 "2010-02-25T01:48:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 9
### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/161 "2010-03-11T00:16:47Z")
(Continued from Part 1)
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> As far as the title “apostle” this was generally applied to anyone who had been a follower of Jesus during his lifetime (later it came to be synonymous with The Twelve + Paul).
Nonsense. Where do you come up with these notions? Please cite your sources for that, all of which contradicts everything I know about those topics, some of which I’ve written above in this post (such as that there were untold numbers of apostles).
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > So the fact that Cephas is, _ **at least 30 years later** _, referred to in the Gospel of Matthew as the “rock” upon which Christ will build “His Church”, it’s abundantly clear that either this Cephas is fictional (as is Jesus) or Matthew’s Cephas and **astorian** ’s Peter are not the same guy.
>
> No, it’s not clear at all. In fact it’s quite a stretch.
First, my statement had two qualified options, not just one. Please cite your compelling evidence that the Gospel’s Peter was the Cephas that Paul met in Jerusalem. You’d be the first, so please don’t keep your evidence from the rest of us!
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > This is further revealed by all the bitter disputes between Paul and Cephus
>
> Paul had a bitter dispute with a fictional person?
As I just wrote, my statement had two qualified options, not just one.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > This is further revealed by all the bitter disputes between Paul and Cephus and many of the rest of the “apostles”, including “the Twelve”, the title given to a more “special” group of the many “apostles” (note that Paul insists that _he_ was an apostle, too, though he never knew Jesus either). Both the title “apostle” and the title “the Twelve” are, again, honorary titles rather than descriptive ones (think of them in light of the special group of twelve Mormon “apostles”, for example). Because if “the Twelve” were actually the direct followers of a biological Jesus (as a literal reading of the Gospels would have it), who would dare argue with such holy personages and criticize them as forcefully as Paul so often did?
>
> Yes, Jesus’ closest twelve disciples
(Your coding errors and lack of ellipses are making me work a lot harder to reply to you, btw.)
As I wrote above, disciples and apostles were two entirely different groups, and we only have evidence for the existence of quite a few of the latter.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> He claimed apostleship based on his vision of the risen Christ.
No, he didn’t. Since the term “apostle” refers to anyone who preached the Christian message, and since Paul did a hell of a lot of that, he considered himself an apostle, and that he most emphatically was and he was right to so consider himself.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > Both the title “apostle” and the title “the Twelve” are, again, honorary titles rather than descriptive ones (think of them in light of the special group of twelve Mormon “apostles”, for example).
>
> Do you have any evidence of this? No? Didn’t think so.
I didn’t recognize until now the kind of tactics you use in debates. You have a right to ask questions or ask for evidence, but you do _not_ have the right to put answers in my mouth.
There are two possibilities: Either “the Twelve” were historical figures who matched the membership given in the Gospels or they were not and were instead part of a group who were simply _called_ The Twelve, just as in Mormonism and other churches. I do not bear the burden of proof here, _ **you do!** _ Establish with compelling evidence that they were historical figures and I’ll acknowledge my mistake. [del]No? Didn’t think so[/del] I await your evidence.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > Because if “the Twelve” were actually the direct followers of a biological Jesus (as a literal reading of the Gospels would have it), who would dare argue with such holy personages and criticize them as forcefully as Paul so often did?
>
> Apparently, Paul would. He considered himself an equal to the twelve based on his personal vision of Jesus and he was clearly the confrontational type. You can’t just say “Paul wouldn’t dare contradict a disciple of Jesus!” You have no way of knowing that. It’s complete speculation. At least the historicists can point to Paul’s accounts of the disputes as evidence.
Those accounts making it extremely evident that either Paul **-OR-** the others could have ended those fractious debates in a single swoop by quoting Jesus’ own words of those of his alleged disciples, yet neither side **ever** does so! That’s simply inexplicable and I’d say quite impossible given human nature and Jewish authoritarianism. It’s what’s called in philosophical terms a _reductio ad absurdum_: Your premise and arguments lead inevitably to crazy absurdities if they were true.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > Suffice to say that if any of the apostles or “the Twelve” were the direct followers of a biological man, we’d have strong evidence of their biological/biographical existence, too. And we don’t.
>
> No, it doesn’t “suffice to say” that. What kind of evidence would you expect (beyond the limited evidence we do have in the gospels and epistles?)
There is no credible evidence of their historical existence in the Gospels or the epistles or anywhere else! The Romans of that era were nearly as bureaucratic and stringent a bunch of careful record keepers as the Third Reich. While they didn’t force people to register their births and deaths and so forth, there were very powerful economic and civil incentives to do so, such that at least some of these people would be in Rome’s records. They were never found. I recognize that that doesn’t _prove_ they didn’t exist, but the lack of such records fits the ethicist position far more strongly than they fit the historicist one.
Furthermore, history is replete with the biographies of biographers and followers of all kinds of historical religious figures, and due to the alleged fantastic nature of Christian origins we should have found at least _one_, but we haven’t!
Again, I do not bear the burden of proof here: **You** have to provide compelling evidence that Jesus and the others _ **were** _ historical figures, something that no one has yet accomplished. No one has to prove an existential negative!
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> The Sanhedrin existed at the time and were much more influential and important; do you have any strong evidence of their biographical existence too?
Are you _kidding_?
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > Conclusion: References to James or to Peter/Cephas provide no evidentiary support for the existence of a historical, biological Jesus.
>
> Even if that were not a very weak argument – you still haven’t shown that Jesus didn’t exist. At best you’ve shown… actually I don’t think you’ve shown anything at all, except maybe that James was not necessarily the biological brother of Jesus. I hope you don’t expect the historical Jesus arguments to topple like a house of cards based on that.
Yikes! What a strawman you’ve got there! Don’t light a cigarette!
Please re-read the history of this debate in this thread. I’m going to hope I don’t have to repeat the bit about who bears the burden of proof here yet again. I was not even _ **attempting** _ to show “that Jesus didn’t exist”, because that’s an impossible task because no one can prove or show the non-existence of something! C’mon, now!
As for an argument based entirely on a house of cards – a house that has already fallen in the eyes of those careful researchers without an agenda and a bias – that’s the historicist position. 2000 years later and no one can point to a single scrap of credible, compelling evidence that Jesus ever existed as a historical figure (the debunking of which began in Germany well over two hundred years ago). What’s taking so long?
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### Author:  [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/162 "2010-03-11T00:49:14Z")
Thanks for the detailed reply – I don’t have much time now but I’ll respond tomorrow.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/163 "2010-03-11T02:14:47Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> In reference to corrobration for James as Jesus’ brothjer, Josephus referred to an execution of James, “the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.” Unlike the _Testimonium Flavianum_ (Josephus’ longer description of Jesus), this James reference is not generally believed to be interpolated. Mythicists still say that it is (and I won’t say their arguments for it are completely without merit), but it’s another grain of rice on the scale (along with the TF and Tacitus).
That’s not quite my view or most other mythicists. The most telling part is that there’s not a single reference to Jesus as the Gospels describe him **ANYWHERE** in Josephus’ _Jewish War_, where if Jesus had existed as a historical figure there _would_ have been such a reference. This is damning stuff!
As Doherty puts it:
> [@Earl Doherty](#):
>
> We might also note in this connection that when Josephus wrote _Jewish War_ and declared Vespasian the object of all those Jewish prophecies, he failed to note that a prominent figure in the recent past had been accorded that honor by many people in a movement which by the 70s was supposedly growing and making an impact, even enjoying the honor of being Nero’s scapegoat for the great fire at Rome. One might think that he would feel compelled to discredit previous claimants to the position he was in the act of bestowing on Vespasian.
The Josephus fragment you bring out – “the brother of Jesus, (the one) called Christ [_ton adelphon Iēsou tou legomenou Christou_]…” is from his _Antiquities of the Jews_, Book 20 (9, 1 / 197-203). But while all still-extant manuscripts contain that or a very similar phrase, none of them come to us from before the 11’th century! As Erhman and others have pointed out, earlier copyists would routinely gather all the copies they could put their hands on and pick and choose among all the copies to favor those they liked down to sentence fragments. Their choices were usually constrained to choose the most popular fragments else they would not sell as many copies because potential buyers would look for their favorite passages before chucking over the change. The free market at work, ruining the accuracy of most things as usual. That practice would have ensured that this reference to Jesus would have been found in all later copies, but there is no reason to conclude that Josephus ever wrote that. Again, had he known of such an individual, even leaving out the miracles, Josephus **would** have known and written far more about him. This is yet another case where the forgers would have been better off not mucking with the text in the first place because an utterly not followed-up-on single reference stands out as a glaring forgery, hurting their case in the process. See what I wrote above concerning the 20 references in Josephus to other Jesus’ that follow a strict pattern versus the one that didn’t and so stands out as the forgery that it is.
Also, the phrase in question, “the brother of Jesus, (the one) called Christ” serves as an identification of James, but what good is an identification based on someone Josephus wrote nothing about? Some have argued that the utterly bogus forgery known as the _Testimonium Flavianum_ that **Dio** speaks of some two books earlier would be enough to serve as a reference to the Jesus in question, but expert Josephus scholars insist he’d never done anything like that ever before in any genuine work! If he makes a reference to someone he hadn’t mentioned recently, he was smart enough to know that not everyone would have all portions of his works and so **every time** he made a distant reference he would repeat the identifying details again to re-orient the reader. Josephus was an excellent writer and would never have made such a rank amateur mistake!
All of this very much _ **screams** _ Christian apologetic forgery at work!
See [Supplementary Article No. 16, JOSEPHUS ON THE ROCKS](http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp16.htm) and [Supplementary Article No. 10, JOSEPHUS UNBOUND: Reopening the Josephus Question](http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp10.htm)
for more detailed rebuttals.
As for your references to “TF and Tacitus”, I’ll bet you don’t credit those, either! You seem far too knowledgeable and fair-minded for that, surely. 0 + 0 + 0 still adds up to 0 no matter how many different ways you try to do the math.
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> I believe that Doherty also calls some passages from Paul interpolations…
None that I’ve ever encountered. I don’t recall either Welles, Wells, Price, Mack, or Doherty ever claiming that. Can you cite your source, please?
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> …and while I don’t want to get into a battle over it (and am neutral over most of it anyway), I do feel like the mythicists can only cry interpolation so many times before it starts to seem a little _ad hoc_.
I don’t follow that line of thinking at all. If there’s a good argument that something is an interpolation, how many of them should _ **not** _ be put forward to avoid some people capriciously referring to doing so as _ad hoc_?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/164 "2010-03-11T02:31:56Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> Dio, would you be so kind as to apply your strong knowledge of Koine Greek to shed light on the most likely interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:5-7?
I don’t have anything particularly enlightening to say, but here goes:
καὶ ὅτι ὤφθη Κηφᾷ εἶτα τοῖς δώδεκα
“And then he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve.”
ἔπειτα ὤφθη ἐπάνω πεντακοσίοις ἀδελφοῖς ἐφάπαξ ἐξ ὧν οἱ πλείους μένουσιν ἕως ἄρτι τινὲς δὲ καὶ ἐκοιμήθησαν
“After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of who remain to this day, but some are also asleep.”
ἔπειτα ὤφθη Ἰακώβῳ εἶτα τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν
“After that, he appeared to Jacob (James), then to all the apostles.”
ἔσχατον δὲ πάντων ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι ὤφθη κἀμοί
“Last of all, he appeared to me also, as one born prematurely [literally, “as an abortion,” “as one aborted”].”
I think it’s notable that he does refer to the five hundred as “bothers” (_adelphoi_), and that he appears to refer to “the apostles” separately from “the twelve.” I can’t come close to untangling this whole passage and finding what Paul was claiming happened historically. He clearly seemed to be talking to people who were already familiar with this formula and its characters.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/165 "2010-03-11T02:59:25Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> I find the notion that Jesus did not exist preposterous. But I think I could be persuaded that it is merely improbable. So help me out.
>
> There were those who alleged that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier. But there are no ancient accounts that say that Xtians made the whole thing up.
There were those who stupidly _repeated_ alleged (but extremely doubtful) Jewish mockery saying that, but it was of no account whatsoever. It was a funny foul-up that was centuries in the making that reached all the way into the medieval Jerusalem Talmud. No one knows for sure how that myth got started, but my personal take on it is that it started as a crass insulting joke once the myth of the virgin birth became widespread. To mock the virgin birth story, the joke’s punch line was that Mary/Miriam had sex with a particular Roman soldier and lied about it to her family. Since for some reason I don’t know a ridiculously large number of Roman soldiers were named Pandira / Pandera / Pantera / Panthera, the joke used one of those names in the punch line instead of a generic Roman soldier and so the bastard child became confused with an unknown figure in Jewish Scripture (the Tosefta) who was a bastard named Yeshua ben Pandera (no timeframe given). Someone – most likely a Jewish scoffer – read or heard of this bastard named Yeshua ben Pandera and since “Yeshua” is the Hebrew equivalent for “Jesus”, stupidly assumed Yeshua ben Pandera was one and the same with Yeshua ha-Notzri (Jesus the Nazarene).
So the whole Yeshua ben Pandera thing was nothing but an insulting punch line from the start and is definitely _ **not** _ a reference to a historical Yeshua ha-Notzri. Poor Jewish scriveners also made the same mistake in the Jerusalem Talmud, but the whole thing is just a sloppy mess of no salience or probity whatsoever.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> There are plenty of cases where followers have exaggerated the virtues of their leader: Dear Leader in N Korea has his sycophants and [Parson Weems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parson_Weems) fabricated a number of stories about George Washington. But I am unaware of a person being invented out of whole cloth within a couple of decades of his purported death. Ludicrous.
Well, then, it’s a good thing I never claimed anything so stupid!
If you had been paying closer attention to this offshoot of this thread, you would have seen this:
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> While Paul didn’t _invent_ Jesus or most of the teachings and parables and sayings (which had almost certainly been accumulating for at least 100 years prior to ~ 1 CE)…
You should have been paying attention rather than just collecting synonyms for “preposterous”. My study leads me to the preponderance of evidence that the origin of the mythical Jesus probably lies in the Righteous Teacher of the Qumran community. The sayings attributed to Jesus, such as that we had in the Q collection (Q for the German _quelle_, not Q for Qumran) had been being collected for possibly much longer still from itinerant Stoic and Cynic philosophers, sophists, teachers, and so forth. At some unknown point, the Righteous Teacher became associated with the name Yeshua (for what should be obvious reasons) and also with Q and whatever other collections of sayings were about in that world.
Viola! Jesus of Galilee is born without a biological father _or_ mother – a mythical virgin birth!
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/166 "2010-03-11T03:14:17Z")
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> Diogenes, I agree with what you’re saying – which makes it hard to take absolute statements like “Jesus didn’t really exist” seriously.
Good thing I never argued anything so stupid then! One off-hand summation does not an argument make. I will repeat for perhaps the 10’th time: I never claimed that “Jesus didn’t really exist” outside of that one-sentence teaser summary. All I claimed in the whole is that the historicists have never provided even a single bit of credible, compelling evidence that he _did_ exist. I do not bear any burden of proof, **you do** , so get to it!
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> But he was the leader of a small Jewish sect in the outskirts of the Empire and his followers were concentrated in a city that was destroyed within a generation – we wouldn’t expect to have much record of his life.
Sheesh. That’s sophomoric pseudo-history, not history. There were churches all over the East and West extremely far beyond Jerusalem for people who had to walk there! I strongly suspect a fictional Jesus was associated with the Righteous Teacher and the Q and other sayings well before 1 CE, so the 70 CE destruction hardly matters in either regard.
Furthermore, **Josephus and Seneca WOULD HAVE KNOWN AND WROTE OF HIM IF HE HAD LIVED!** The fact that they did nothing of the kind totally sinks the historicist position, UNLESS you can cite solid, compelling evidence of Jesus’ historical existence, which no one yet has been able to do.
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> It’s frankly surprising that we have as much as we do, from several different sources, even they are second and third hand accounts written up to a hundred years later.
What’s surprising is how _little_ we have, especially combined with absolutely **zero** credible, compelling evidence of Jesus’ historical existence.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/167 "2010-03-11T03:18:47Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#):
>
> Well, we’re not really so positive about that are we?
I will repeat from my previous post: One off-hand summation does not an argument make. I will repeat for perhaps the 11’th time: I never claimed that “Jesus didn’t really exist” outside of that one-sentence teaser summary. All I claimed in the whole is that the historicists have never provided even a single bit of credible, compelling evidence that he did exist. I do not bear any burden of proof, you do, so get to it!
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/168 "2010-03-11T03:19:20Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> As for your references to “TF and Tacitus”, I’ll bet you don’t credit those, either! You seem far too knowledgeable and fair-minded for that, surely. 0 + 0 + 0 still adds up to 0 no matter how many different ways you try to do the math.
Clearly the TF is at least partially interpolated. I can’t say that the whole thing should definitely be discredited. The Arabic version (while still interpolated), is a point in favor of an original core.
I haven’t seen any serious arguments that Tacitus is interpolated, but the best argument against him as corroboration i that could have simply gotten his story from Christians (or those familiar with Christians) rather than an independent source.
> [@](#):
>
> None that I’ve ever encountered. I don’t recall either Welles, Wells, Price, Mack, or Doherty ever claiming that. Can you cite your source, please?
I said, 'I believe," because I wasn’t positive, but it appears I might have mixed Doherty up with Price:
[Apocryphal Apparitions:
1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation](http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html).
I’m also like 99% sure that Doherty think’s Paul’s eucharistic formula in 1 Corinthians 11 is interpolated, but I don’t have his book in front of me, and would have to do some searching to be sure.
> [@](#):
>
> I don’t follow that line of thinking at all. If there’s a good argument that something is an interpolation, how many of them should _ **not** _ be put forward to avoid some people capriciously referring to doing so as _ad hoc_?
If there’s a good argument, there’s a good argument, but I think the argument needs to be something better than that a passage just doesn’t fit a preferred theory. I’m not actually accusing anyone in particular of doing this, just stating that they need to be careful. I’ve seen amateurs just designate interpolations willy nilly to fit their own theses.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/169 "2010-03-11T04:22:10Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> … I like the point about Hercules, but he didn’t really have organized detractors, did he? And Christians did during the first century, though the point is well taken that they weren’t prominant enough to merit a determined attack.
Nope! They weren’t prominent because they hadn’t heard anything about Jesus or Christianity either! How can you criticize something you’ve never heard of? The likely date for Mark’s completion was about 70 CE, but did you imagine he went down to the print shop to have hardcovers printed and distributed to the bottom drawers of all the hotels in the Empire in a year or two? I seem to recall that it hadn’t begun to see wider distribution until the next century at the earliest. And the apostles preaching could only reach a few people at a time and since they were already drowning in alleged “Messiahs” at the time, who besides Josephus and Seneca would get excited about just one more on the pile? Most likely, the overwhelming majority of people just chuckled about other people’s naiveté and went on with their lives. Why make a fuss about one more “Messiah”? They were 10 for a nickel at the local Walmart. They’d have happily washed windows if there were any.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> I take it as given that Christianity was an obscure cult/Jewish sect before the fall of the Temple. I also believe that Jesus of Nazarath did not merit notice during his lifetime, which would explain the lack of contemporaneous accounts.
No, it wouldn’t! Josephus in particular was a nut about keeping track of all the “Messiahs” for entertainment purposes and he would never have missed the NT Jesus had he ever lived anywhere in any Roman-controlled country. Seneca wouldn’t have missed him either. The preponderance of the evidence tells us that the explanation for the lack of contemporaneous accounts is that there was no historical Jesus to record anything about. Else Seneca and Josephus would have written of him.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> My problem I guess lies with burden of proof: I find it unlikely that Paul and those who came before him would follow somebody nonexistant.
Except for Paul: Only if they _ **knew for certain that he never existed!** _ They, like you, probably just assumed he once existed and had faith in it. It doesn’t even matter _where_ they thought he might have existed, whether on earth or in heaven or anywhere in between. As regards Paul, he got everything he needed and wanted from his spiritual Christ and wouldn’t have needed to believe in a historical Jesus.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> After all, prophets were a dime a dozen: why make one up out of whole cloth?
They did no such thing! They **never _knowingly_ invented Jesus!** They just assumed or had faith that he once existed somewhere, possibly not even on earth but in a supernatural realm above the earth.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> And if you did, wouldn’t you invent somebody from the distant past?
Why distant as opposed to recent? One key aspect of the Christian message is that the end of the world was thought to be immediately immanent. According to the later Gospels, it was supposed to come before some of those present had died, which means Jesus had to have recently lived.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> Paul may have never met Jesus of Nazarath [1], but he knew plenty of people who lived during the time that Jesus lived.
First, what’s this [1] thing? Are you quoting from something? Please link us to it if so.
You’re assuming what is to be proved again. If you mean Paul knew plenty of people who lived during the time you happen to have _faith_ that Jesus lived, then please say so. What’s so impossible is that Paul did indeed know quite a number of such people and yet there’s not a single reference to a historical Jesus or 12 historical disciples! _That’s_ what’s relevant. Had he known of any such details, he most assuredly would have recorded them. But there is no such record.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> Again, I’d like an example of a mythical human who ostensibly lived within 20 years of the original account.
Why? **That’s certainly not what happened in the case of Jesus, as I’ve detailed previously. It was at least a century and probably more, not just 20 years!**
The rest of your post reflects extremely poor knowledge of the historical details we _do_ have.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> … [T]he gospels are full of Ex Tempore rhetoric.
Please show us your evidence that such couldn’t possibly have been deliberately planned by the author; that should be quite fascinating. Not just mind-reading, but reading the minds of the dead and unknown! Or perhaps you imagine that the Evangelists availed themselves of technology that produced the writings in the the cave of Caerbannog: "Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of _‘uuggggggh’_. Or maybe they used dictaphones?
Like I’ve said to youngsters who are surprised by things that look accidental in movies: “You _do_ know that they carefully wrote, choreographed, acted, and edited those “mistakes” into the movie, right?”
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> More generally, I find it implausible that a religion would spring up around somebody who allegedly died a few years ago, but in fact never existed.
**sigh** Please re-read this post and then this thread. Your assumptions are spectacularly unwise and unjust!
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> [1]…though even this claim isn’t clear to me: there’s the _possibility_ that JC successfully survived a Roman execution.
**sigh** In order to survive a Roman execution, you have to have lived first! I assure you that no mythical persons were executed by crucifixion.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/170 "2010-03-11T04:36:34Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> I missed something: the crucifixion date is derived from Mark, which was written in perhaps in 70 CE, about 40 years after the purported death of Jesus. Paul’s conversion was in about 33. According to the mythicists (if I understand this correctly), sometime between Paul’s death in Rome in 63? and 70, it was decided that JC would die in about 30. That’s a very odd date to pick, it’s simply not that distant.
I’m not familiar with such a claim. Would you elaborate?
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/171 "2010-03-11T04:40:27Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> Really? That’s all? That’s your response? I find your attempted _rebuttal_ **mind-bogglingly unconvincing!**
That’s okay, since it’s not a rebuttal and I’m not trying to convince you of anything. And yes, that’s all, because you don’t get extra points for using a greater number of words when the crux of your argument, expressed in few words, fails to begin with.
> [@](#):
>
> You would have us believe that Paul – a writer almost as verbose as myself – wouldn’t write down even a single sentence about personally visiting **God’s** place of death? **God’s** place of resurrection? Nothing about Gethsamane, where **God** struggled with his fate? Not a single sentence about Calvary, center of earthquakes and a three-hour eclipse when **God** died? Nothing at all about visiting the **Tomb of God** or the **Mother of God**?
>
> _This_ is your rebuttal?
>
> Seriously?
You don’t get extra logic points for sarcasm either.
You’ve made a huge unfounded assumption about Paul and then drawn some conclusion from that. It fails miserably and fairly obviously.
Why should we assume that the things you just listed mattered to Paul? Perhaps he was more interested in the actual teachings of Christ and spreading those teachings rather than visiting any of those places, and, if that’s the case then your premise is just empty words based on a false assumption.
> [@](#):
>
> If you read all of the genuine Pauline epistles, you have to come away with the overriding desperation of Paul to assert his authority in his vehement theological struggles with the Jerusalem “Pillars” as well as the membership of his own churches, desperation that would be completely vanquished and resolved by even **one** reference to the historical Jesus. Yet Paul **never** even _hints_ that he _can_ do so, let alone actually does it! It would have solved pretty much all of his problems if he could have done so, yet he never does.
Again, this is merely an unfounded assumption. It’s merely one interpretation of the passages and not a particularly logical or compelling one.
> [@](#):
>
> The alternative – that Paul didn’t _know_ of any historical Jesus and so didn’t even _know_ to try to visit **God’s** place of resurrection – makes several million times more logical sense.
More of the same. What you refer to as compelling logic is merely one possible interpretation for which you have no real weight.
> [@](#):
>
> As for your point (2), I’ve never, ever read _anything_ suggesting that we do not have every one of Paul’s writings. Where does your belief come from? What evidence is brought forth of currently non-existing writings of Paul? I’d like to read more.
IMO this is another example of your tendency to assume things are true without evidence. Why would we assume we have all of his writings? We have what we have, but is there any suggestion that we have them all? None I’ve ever seen. There is however suggestions we don’t.
> [@](#):
>
> 1 Cor 5: 9I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—
Paul refers to a previous writing.
> [@](#):
>
> Eph 3: 2Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly.
Another reference to a previous writing. {although Ephesians probably wasn’t written by Paul it’s attributed to him.}
> [@](#):
>
> Col 4: 16After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
reference to another letter. {Paul may not have written Colossians either.
It’s pretty reasonable to assume we don’t have all of Paul’s writings and unwise to assume we do.
I’ll finish tomorrow
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/172 "2010-03-11T05:00:33Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> … Why would Christian writings contain responses to objections that no one would have been expected to make. The ahistoricity of the founder is simply not anything critics would have found important.
I can’t agree. _ **If** _ they had heard claims of a historical Jesus who had allegedly lived in areas where they or family members of other trustworthy sources had dwelled at the appropriate times, some would have tried to check it out (although they would have accepted those source’s possibly untrustworthy or second-hand word on this, so it wouldn’t be good quality evidence, but they wouldn’t understand that as well as we do now). Either way, we’d almost certainly have heard about it.
Doherty and I contend that they didn’t check it out because very, very few ever heard about it. As you’ve written elsewhere, Christianity was a very small Jewish cult and the Jews were pretty isolated from the more cosmopolitan parts of their communities.
The most parsimonious explanation for the whole enchilada is simply that Jesus never existed as a historical figure and that the early preachers and followers didn’t know or care because they had _ **faith** _. Why faith keeps getting left out of this I simply can’t understand except that it is ignored for the purposes of debate because it makes the historicist position look so much weaker.
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> … One point that should be raised with regard to the HJ vs. MJ question is what are the minimum requirements for a historical person to be fairly considered “THE Jesus.” If he said all of the things attributed to him, and was crucified, but did not perform miracles or rise from the dead, is he still Jesus? what if he only said _some_ of things attributed to him? What if his name wasn’t Jesus? What if the chracter of the Gospels is a composite of more than one historical personage?
**ALL** of them would satisfy _my_ (and I suspect Price’s, Mack’s, and Doherty’s) definition of a historical Jesus, with the exception of the last part since I already believe the sources of Q and the other sayings and the Righteous Teacher are all composite sources of “Jesus”. Since we already believe that, we would not accept that last because it magically converts all us mythicists into historicists by verbal fiat! Surely that’s not reasonable or fair.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/173 "2010-03-11T05:10:16Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> **Ambushed** , Paul’s lack of mention of any empty tomb could very well simply reflect the lack of that tradition being invented yet.
First, that’s in full agreement with my thesis that Paul didn’t visit that or other places because those myths hadn’t been fabricated yet.
But second, that same logic applies to everything else in my lists that Paul didn’t visit or write about! No fabricated myth, no reason to visit those places inserted into the myth, however real they were otherwise. Sherlock Holmes was said to live at 221B Baker St., but the current historical existence of 221B Baker St. is no evidence at all for the historical existence of Sherlock Holmes (although someone once tried to demolish my arguments by citing reports that a boat in Galilee was found from the Christian era! :p)
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> I’m sure you’re aware of the thesis that original disposition of Jesus’ remains were simply unknown (as they would have either been left on the cross or buried in a communal, unmarked criminals’ grave), and that the empty tomb was a fiction created by Mark. The empty grave is not mentioned by Paul, Q or Thomas, but neither is a bodily resurrection. This does not have to indicate total lack of historicity for Jesus, but only for the empty tomb.
Again, that’s in full agreement with my thesis that Paul didn’t visit that or other places because those myths hadn’t been fabricated yet. That was my whole point.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/174 "2010-03-11T05:12:55Z")
> [@Pleonast](#):
>
> Argument from incredulity works about as well for you as it does for Intelligent Design advocates.
If you’ve got an argument to make, please do so. Snide comments are easy to sling.
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/175 "2010-03-11T05:25:28Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> I can’t agree. _ **If** _ they had heard claims of a historical Jesus who had allegedly lived in areas where they or family members of other trustworthy sources had dwelled at the appropriate times, some would have tried to check it out (although they would have accepted those source’s possibly untrustworthy or second-hand word on this, so it wouldn’t be good quality evidence, but they wouldn’t understand that as well as we do now). Either way, we’d almost certainly have heard about it.
The audience for the Gospels would have been mostly Gentiles, living outside of Palestine, after the Jewish-Roman Wars and the destruction of Jerusalem, a minimum of 40 years after the alleged crucifixion for Mark, and 70 years later for John. They would be unlikely to even be Jews, much less Palestinian Jews. They would not be at all likely to have family members or acquaintances with any living memory of the events in question, and no way to research or verify them in any case. How would one be expected to go into a destroyed city and verify whether or not an obscure preacher/rabble rouser had been summarily executed a half century before? Why would they care enough to even try? The vast majority of the audience for the Gospels would not even have spoken the language of Judea, much less been able to embark on some kind of forensic investigation of the claims made about a particular crucified criminal who would have been one among hundreds. The audience for the gospels was far enough removed, temporally, geographically, culturally and lingusitically, from the historical events alleged within them, that it was virtually no possibility of refuation, and even if someone had objected to the story, no one in the fledgling Christian communities would have listened to them or cared in any case. They certainly would not have written down the objections and preserved them for posterity. Most of them couldn’t even read or write anyway.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/176 "2010-03-11T05:26:10Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> It’s actually not an argument from incredulity because if those things had happened historically, you would expect Paul to mention them. It actually is a decent argument against the empty tomb (and the supernatural embellishments associated in the synpotics with the crucifixion, it goes without saying, are fictional accretions), and it indicates that those elements of the Jesus mythos post-date Paul, but they don’t actually indicate that Jesus didn’t exist at all, only that particular components of the familiar story in the Gospels hadn’t been accreted yet. …
You’re right that it’s not proof that Jesus didn’t exist as a historical person, but that’s not the argument I’ve been making. In earlier posts, the claim was made that Paul’s writings contained strong evidence of Jesus’ historical existence. In the course of several individual arguments against that premise, I’ve pointed out that _had_ Paul – the first Christian writer there is and thus the closest in time to Jesus’ alleged lifetime – had Paul known of Gethsemane and Calvary and Mary and all the rest, he definitely **would** have sought them out during his trip to Jerusalem and wrote about what he found. The fact that he _didn’t_ write about these things compellingly shows that he had no reason to look because he’d never heard of those places because they hadn’t been injected into the myth yet! Note again that if _anyone_ would have known of them, _ **Paul** _ would have, since he wrote nearest the time of Jesus’ alleged life and would have heard stories from the “Pillars” if _they_ had known them. So it’s a twofer, Paul didn’t know of them and neither did the Jerusalem apostles else he would have visited and wrote of what he found.
Those are awfully damning strikes against the historicist position, but I never claimed it refuted that position entirely.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/177 "2010-03-11T05:34:36Z")
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> > [@ambushed](#):
> >
> > Second, there were many more than just four canonical Gospels, with three of them being synoptic.
>
> It’s hard to take you seriously when you don’t even know what “canonical” means.
Pray tell, genius, what it means and why my statement isn’t accurate. Are you – the guy with poor spelling who is incapable of getting the bbcode right – trying to capitalize on the trivial fact that I accidentally left off the word “the” there? This should be quite amusing.
Please try to debate this like a grownup.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/178 "2010-03-11T05:48:48Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#):
>
> I always felt that Paul was a misogynistic homophobe and his teachings reflect that. A modern-day example of Pauline Christianity would be the Roman Catholic Church. Is this a hijack? Well when I hear Fundamentalist Christians focus on the sin of “the gays” and exclude every other sin in the Old Testament, then yes it is a hijack. My favorite was when a woman said that I really didn’t go to Church because my pastor was a woman and Paul said “I let no woman speak for me.” (Romans) The conversation ended pretty quickly when I pointed out that according to Paul in Corinthians, she was a common street-walking whore because she wasn’t wearing a hat outdoors.
I certainly agree that Paul was a judgmental bastard who was grossed out by sex and talk of sex and so sought to limit it as much as possible while still producing future Christians.
Nietzsche’s prescient theory – followed by later formal endorsement in psychology – of sublimation seems to be at work here. Paul seems to have sublimated his libido into his genius and his passion for crafting and spreading his gospel. Since he probably couldn’t recognize what he was doing to himself, he likely projected his sexual repression on others in his life and his teachings, thereby causing **enormous** damage to most future Christians.
At least that’s my guess.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/179 "2010-03-11T06:16:02Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> I don’t have anything particularly enlightening to say, but here goes…
>
> “Last of all, he appeared to me also, as one born prematurely [literally, “as an abortion,” “as one aborted”].”
>
> I think it’s notable that he does refer to the five hundred as “bothers” (_adelphoi_), and that he appears to refer to “the apostles” separately from “the twelve.” I can’t come close to untangling this whole passage and finding what Paul was claiming happened historically. He clearly seemed to be talking to people who were already familiar with this formula and its characters.
Thanks for your work, **Diogenes!** You say you “don’t have anything particularly enlightening to say”, but then you refuted yourself and brought forth gold. It never occurred to me that this was probably a liturgical pronouncement. As such, logic really doesn’t enter into it. Else the whole “as one aborted” thing would get pretty weird!
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/180 "2010-03-11T06:35:21Z")
MfM: “Again, I’d like an example of a mythical human who ostensibly lived within 20 years of the original account.”
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> This is not a valid objection in any case because all religious movements have unique components to them. It’s no proof of validity.
Well, there should be _some_ vaguely analogous example that you can point to. And while I reject Philip Nolan, the worship of [John Frum](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/john.html?c=y&page=1) pretty much nails it. The natives were pissed at the European missionaries, so they dreamed up the John Frum character - “Frum” means “Broom”, as in sweeping the colonists from the island.
> [@Smithsonian Article](#):
>
> “John is a spirit. He knows everything,” the chief says, slipping past the contradiction with the poise of a skilled politician. “He’s even more powerful than Jesus." Read more: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/john.html?c=y&page=4#ixzz0hqYWDl7F](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/john.html?c=y&page=4#ixzz0hqYWDl7F)
In the late 1930s, Frum told them to throw off the yolk of the colonists and return to their traditional ways. It was only when the US army arrived that Frum became an American and the story took on the trappings of a cargo cult. It’s not difficult to imagine a believer writing a bio of Frum in the 1950s or 60s. Anyway, I think we can reject the “Ludicrous on its face” hypothesis, regarding the mythicism of JC. (I had also not digested the fact that mythicists weren’t claiming that Paul believed Jesus to have died in 30CE when I made that claim.)
Props to **Blalron** for the catch.
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> It’s also possible (not that I’m advocating for it) that the original movement arose from visonary experiences of one or more people of what they originally perceived as a non-earthly figure (like Mohammed and Joseph Smith talking to angels), who wa later historized as a literal and earthly figure a generation later by people who were personally removed from the original claimants not only temporally, but geographically, culturally and lingusitically.
I guess it’s also possible that such separation might not even be necessary.
> [@DtC](#):
>
> One point that should be raised with regard to the HJ vs. MJ question is what are the minimum requirements for a historical person to be fairly considered “THE Jesus.” If he said all of the things attributed to him, and was crucified, but did not perform miracles or rise from the dead, is he still Jesus? what if he only said _some_ of things attributed to him? What if his name wasn’t Jesus? What if the character of the Gospels is a composite of more than one historical personage?
Circling back, Yogi Bera, Winston Churchill and Mark Twain have all had sayings ascribed to them which they never uttered. I’m agnostic on the question of whether Mark has anything useful to say about the historical Jesus. However, I think we can observe that The Book of Mark passed the laugh test when it was released to the world. If a substantial portion of believers rejected it outright we would have probably heard about it: as it was, it became the template for the following 2-3 gospels.
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