@caissad4
There is NO secular (non-religious) evidence for the existence of Saul/Paul.
Why should I adopt your assumption that the New Testament documents are of no historical relevance?
Are you suggesting non-believing historians who realize the historical importance of letters attributed to Paul, do so because they are Christian believers?
Your starting point assumes your conclusion. Ie. Those interested in circulating and copying and preserving the letters of Paul were incapable of knowing or telling the truth, is a form of question begging. Its a genetic fallacy also.
"Motives render the documents of no historical significance."
Your presupposition that what Christians circulated and read in their congregations is not historically significant if you don't believe the teaching of those letters, is poor education.
I reject the implied premise as paranoia.
It seems to me that you are erecting an extra line of defense against the message being taught there by sticking your head in the sand and telling yourself of the non-existence of the writer.
Before you subject Paul to this conspiracy theory you fell for the same tactic against Jesus of Nazareth.
Scholars from this school try to distinguish the Jesus of history from the miracle-working Jesus of faith. They assume, of course, there is a difference between the two. Why make this distinction?
In academics, everyone has a starting point. The place many scholars begin is not always clear to the public, but it is critical to understanding and evaluating their conclusions. Magazine stories about Easter are quick to point out that scholars reject the resurrection. But why do they reject it? A closer examination reveals their starting point. In a materialistic view of the universe, resurrections do not happen. Therefore any reports of revived corpses must be myths added to the records years latter.
Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar makes this clear: "The Gospels are now assumed to be narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements that express the church's faith in him, and by plausible fictions that enhance the telling of the gospel story for first-century listeners."
The reasoning often goes something like this: The Gospels contain fabrications because they record events that are inconsistent with a "scientific" (i.e. materialistic) view of the world. Resurrection accounts, then, are myths. Furthermore, if Jesus predicts an event that comes to pass decades after his death (the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, for example), this must have been added after the event occurred, since prophecy (a kind of miraculous knowledge) is impossible. The Gospels, then, were written late and could not be eye-witness accounts.
Your starting point is naturalism which you haven't proved but assumed.
Your collected "facts" are already assumed to conform to your naturalistic world-view. Your bias has rigged all interpretations of the facts beforehand. No analysis which doesn't pre-assume YOUR starting point is dismissed at the offset.
The resurrection is an invention ; the miracles are myths; there is no prophecy in the Bible; the Gospels were written long after the events took place and not by eyewitnesses. Starting with ones conclusions, though, is cheating. Nothing has been proved, only assumed.
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Tactics, - A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions, Gregory Koukl, Zondervan, pgs. 172,173 ]
Paul's Gospel is The Gospel
03 Mar '19 10:21
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