I love how nuanced this one is. Often, you end up responding to people who are just flatly mistaken, but this is a complicated topic that depends a lot on what one means to communicate with the claims made. Super interesting!
I do not think it is so complicated. Just parse the actual evidence/proof (versus opinion/speculation). I find it takes more faith to believe this person than to believe the simple truth as presented in scripture.
Many Christian sects have emphasized Paul's letters over the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Gospels, because they can use different parts to justify their political agenda. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Christian preachers quote, "Those of you who don't work, shouldn't eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10) as the rationale for the government in the U.S. not to aid those with low-wealth or who are unhoused.
And ignoring the context of that verse and that letter to "end times" people who sold everything and just sat around waiting for Jesus to return. Even Paul found that kind of theology too extreme.
Wonderful video about something crucial -- the Jesus / Paul thing -- not often discussed among Protestants I know but more often among Jews I know. And it's a great pleasure to see DM treat respectable people with the meticulous consideration they deserve (on those rare occasions when they appear)
Thank you Dan for your well-researched, well articulated treatment of this topic. Also, thank you for not being overly confident of positions that don't have substantial data.
I appreciate it when Dan also talks about the “lies to children” versions of Christian bloggers/TikTokers/UA-camrs, where they aren’t really saying things that are untrue or misleading, but they are saying things that are grossly oversimplified versions of the truth on the ground in terms of the scholarly consensuses and also the major points of dissent from the consensus.
Elon Gilad's central point is still valid that many basics of Christianity that followers attribute directly to Jesus are really from Paul's fork, even if it is an oversimplification of the long development process that followed. It is a curious exercise to consider what it would have been without those changes.
It probably would have been as fractured and parochial as it turned out to be. And Paul was innovating and developing rather than inventing. He still had to link back to the source, even if he did try to raise his clout by claiming two mystical experiences. Maybe it would have resembled Hellene-inspired gnosticism more. But yeah, Paul was clearly a very strong personality, charting a course between the Jewish and Greek worlds.
But not exclusively by Paul, which is the problem with his argument. The ideia that a lot of what Christians imagine as teachings of Jesus does not come from Jesus hardly only applies to Paul. Many things in the Gospels don't come from the historical Jesus, but from the gospel authors. Same thing with many other texts. Claim Paul is THE founder of Christianity because he helps shape what Christianity becomes later on is arbitrary. And I know, it may not seem like a big difference in saying "Paul is the founder of Christianity" and "Paul is one of the founders of Christianity", but it does in practice, because of the points people try to leverage by casting Paul as the sole founder, often to reach conclusions unsupported by evidence. To give an extreme example, it would be Mythicists who have claimed that Paul manufactured the story of Jesus (obviously there are less extreme examples). In other words, the correction is warranted not just because its an oversimplification, but because of what one may end up concluding based on that oversimplification.
@@gustavosanabio473 I think it's hard to call someone that was prosecuting people of a group, who then converted, becoming a member himself, a founder of said group.
Great to hear an intellectual dialogue that was interesting and thoughtful rather than just the easy fish in a barrel for a change. Probably won't get as many views, not as fun to watch for some but I enjoyed it.
I think that at least by near the end of his life he knew the apocalypticism was nonsense and he and his followers had started to adjust their message accordingly.
@@Apostate1970 I disagree about him, but of course you are correct about his followers. That's one reason the pseudo-Pauline epistles differ so radically from the genuine ones.
Hey Dan and everybody, I have a question. Based on historical data, when did Christians start praying in Jesus's name and why? When was the 1st denominational split, and why did it happen? Thank you.
The first denominational split was in acts when Peter James and paul split. That's when paul started his false ministry. Jesus was a part of the nazarites or essenes and zealots, and so were his deciples. They were enemies or rebels to the pharisees and saducees. Paul was sent to sabotage the Jesus movement. He tricked hellenic Gentiles to turn from the Torah. It's evidently clear throughout the Bible. Paul was an antiochian and a very hellenistic people. Everything we read was written in Alexanderia, the home of hellenism Christianity.
On the latter, my (seminary-trained, not PhD) quick thought would be: 1) First formational faith split is with Judaism as Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism become distinct 70-100 CE; 2) First major heresy/leader condemnation is Marcion 150 CE; 3) First major formal institutional split is the Catholic/Orthodox Great Schism 1050 CE; 4) but modern “denominations” arguably start with the Reformation and were in a whole mess of splintering throughout the early 16th century as people chose sides with new emerging theologies and power systems. Would be hard to pin down a specific one, imho.
I love your channel and it's so great to see how much consistency in scholarship there is across religious and non-religious historians on this subject. I'm non religious and anti theist and it's partly because of how often i see apologists lie about these things and the religious uncritically believe them (And a million other things) that I believe religion is corrosive to critical thinking in general but it really gives me hope and makes me examine my biases when I hear from deeply religious people like you who can set aside their biases and are willing to probably put up with a lot of criticism from the religious to do the good work of historical research. Great channel and you've earned a subscription.
Paul invented a "gentile" branch of Christianity which was a distortion of Jesus message and was focusing primarily on the crucifixion and the spiritual resurrection of Jesus. He got few right and other things wrong. His branch flourished because of the Empire and politics.
This is how the religion grew though. Jesus focusing only on saving believing Jews was very limiting. I doubt Christianity would even be known about today without Paul.
@@BlueBarrier782 Yes. When a religion becomes a "system" it gets corrupted. True followers of Jesus did not have an empire to protect them and promote them.
We as human beings don’t get to choose who our parents our. If salvation is only intended for certain people, based upon who their parents are…what is the point? If Jesus only wanted to save a certain ethnic group, again…what is the point? Makes no sense considering, according to their own history, all of mankind descended from the same 2 people.
@@wiskyjack_7143just fyi that’s why muslims believe in their thing. That’s it’s the version for non Jews, based on versus on the Bible about something joyous coming from kedar (which is a part of Saudi Arabia). And something that Jesus said in the Bible that sounds like Muhammad’s given name (Idk the exact details of that). There are some rabbis who agree with this. I am NOT trying to convince anyone of anything, just giving out some info about what ppl think to make sense of this point that you made.
@@wiskyjack_7143 I don't think parents are crucial for salvation. It is individual. In case of Jesus it is better not to receive his message than receive it and distort it because it becomes lying about God.
It would seem to me that protestant Christianity is mostly paulianity. Everytime i counter a protestant doctrine it's always a pauline epistle that is quoted back to me . Just an observation.
Ever notice how paul seems to be the one who reveals God as Jesus? as if paul is the messiah that makes God known. That's the sign of a false apostle to me.
@2023-better-research think about it who was the one that says Jesus is God and Lord. The mainstream apologists all use pauls theology to prove he's God. And they act as if he or John were the only ones who knew this while nobody else did. He was the one who called ebionites or non deity believing messianic of his time. So it is as if paul is revealing God, or at least that is what it looks like. In jwish eschatology, the messiah reveals God and rules with his authority. I'm saying paul brought secret mysteries into a movement that warned about false teachers doing that. It adds up.
@@Swordoftruth289 Except verses outside of John and Paul's letters imply Christ's divinity. For example Jesus's statement about forgiving sins. Further it's apparent the early church agreed on the divinity of Christ. Also if Paul were doing what you suggest he'd have a cult like Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddie or Muhammad to name but a few, or more modernly seen in Pentecostal preachers who brand themselves sometimes as 'prophet'. Paul on the other hand doesn't seem to really have likeness here, especially since he did die for these beliefs. Nor did he shift messiah onto himself. The gospel test of you shall know them by their fruits doesn't really out Paul compared to many others either.
1:19 "in the companion volume to the Gospel of Luke, Acts, which I'm not convinced it was written by the same author but a lot of scholars think it was..." Thanks for this Dan and I agree. I remember this theory when I was a teenager and read Luke enjoying Luke's style of writing very much and decided to immediately continue reading Acts. However there is a notable change in tone. Luke's longer, more elaborate sentences and descriptions contrast with Acts more point on point style. Then only exceptions are the speeches in Acts which I agree follow Luke's style, but outside of this and the address to Theophilus I do not see any link to Luke. One notion I have is that Acts may have been collaboratively written first with Luke writing the speeches. Then perhaps some ask Luke to have a go at the Gospels. A video on your ideas would be greatly appreciated as well as references to key articles and books in the debate.
I once wrote a college paper, called something like History of Paulianity for a class about the subject of early Christianity. As someone who had been a Christian prior to this, I'd always found it distressing the degree to which Paul influenced Christianity. More so than the disciples. And I know there were others, such as St Augustine, who also heavily influenced Christianity, and that their beliefs were - in turn - influenced by other non Abrahamic - faiths. But it all started with Paul. A man whose histoey isn't what we were taught and who clearly had his own agenda.
I have some difficulty with the use of the word "persecution" to describe Paul's early record with the Christians. We think of it as describing something like the modern persecution of the Jews. On the other hand the Greek term, as I understand it, describes "hunting out" in the sense of "seeking" or even "disputing" rather than asking for criminal penalties and/or retribution against an outlawed group. In this sense Paul's persecutions might be closer to the modern concept of "trolling" a social media account.
I luv this. my name is Paul (raised catholic) and I've always been interested in the stories/text and history (time-lines) of Paul. It's clear he had a lot of influence and shaping of what was/is. Knowing he never meet the person he was promoting and he's the main influence is wild. (holding that thought in your head) Imagine you're him and you helped persecute the those people you are later promoting/selling this idea too others... blows my mind! Reminds me of ~catholic (guilt) car salesman (conman) and/or imagine someone he knew got whacked or he protected someone he knew and went north to escape (hey Luke, let's get the heck out of this place, now!) Today's stories using real-time audio/video digital data falls short in our modern courts within a month/year and yet these >2k yr - 3rd party stories, 2-10 centuries later, with >10k interpretions are still being processed/reviewed. Can we all agree, getting past the dogma, that going over/over/over/over/over,.. this material, we'd classify this repeating as a form of social insanity?
@Dizzinator2114 correct but its a step in helping people understand the differences in the gospels. Read paul with only the understanding of jesus you find in matthew as well. Luke. John. All of a sudden you find yourself making fewer assumptions and the gospels and paul read very differently then.
I would love to hear the arguments on each side of the Luke/Acts shared authorship debate. I was surprised that you were a skeptic on it, and would be interested to know why (and also why it seems to be the consensus). Thanks for what you do Dan!
To your point, My family visited churches near by of the same denomination, and were all similar. Then had to move 1500 miles for work and the church was almost unrecognizable from its others. It's a telephone game of dogma and culture.
Are you okay? They still believed in the Triune God, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those are the fundamentals of Christianity. The aesthetics are malleable
@dukeofdenver The Resurrection is more important than the atonement for sins via the crucifixion? Ironically, that's a cultural preference of a particular segment of Christian denominations. Others are light on the Trinity and focus on "Jesus died for your sins".
@@dukeofdenver Yup just fine, not sure why I wouldn't be. I was making comment about the part towards the end where he spoke of places like Armenia and Rome being different. I was simply giving my personal experience you can often see subtle changes even much closer to home. I was not attacking anyone's faith nor did I state one was bad, just one thing is very different from the other.
I was under the impression that it was taken for granted amongst critical scholars that the authors of Luke and Acts were the same. I am now curious to know why Dan doubts this?
The Gospels, as we possess them, were quoted in the first half of the second century, yet always anonymously. The attribution of names emerged suddenly around the year 180. The Gospel of Luke, akin to other Gospels, does not explicitly identify its author as Luke, the companion of Paul.
@yeahyeaheddie Yes. I know that. It's just that I have always heard scholars talk about Luke/Acts, as if whoever wrote one, wrote the other. Dan is the first I've heard, other than maybe apologists or theologically driven individuals, who suggested they aren't the same authors.
I don’t know Dan’s specific reasons but I do know that a number of scholars have proposed that Acts was actually written later than the usual consensus of 80-90 CE and was written in the early 2nd century (110-120 CE). They argued that Acts was possibly influenced by the works of Josephus (specifically “Antiquities of the Jews” which was written around or after the commonly accepted date of Acts). If so, this could either point to Luke being written at a later date than 80-90 CE as well or that it had a different author from Acts.
It's kinda funny that some people try to reject Paul in favor of whatever idea of Jesus they have when the entire complex of narratives about Jesus are dependent on Paul. Like, I get it, I think more likely than not that Paul wasn't so great. But that's pretty typical for fringe cult leaders. Assuming there really was a historical Jesus, he'd also have been a fringe cult leader, so... more than likely...
Really appreciate your ability to communicate clearly and logically. Would you consider doing more historical discussion on who Paul was and what he said about Jesus and how and why the gospels were made. The historical dynamic between Jewish scholars and Roman political interests is fascinating, especially as an explanation for the motivation Saul/Paul may have had and whoever wrote the gospels to kind of subvert the Jewish idea of a militant messiah, which motivated their rebellion against Rome.
Paul definitely had huge influence, by opening it to Gentiles, but I think the changes before Paul are often overlooked. Even before Paul's conversion, the movement seems to have reacted to Jesus's death and claimed resurrection by taking faith in that death and resurrection as being essential to salvation. Peter and James seem to have made at least as much contribution as Paul did, it's just that they didn't leave any writings, so it's often ignored.
@@ji8044The faith that Jeff M. is noting isn’t incompatible with Judaism, depending on how one understands that faith. Let’s be more explicit. There are two components of that faith. 1) Faith that the sacrifice by crucifixion wipes away the debts incurred by the falling away from the law, and 2) the resurrection as promise of the future return of Christ and eternal life for the faithful. (If this is a misunderstanding of the basic faith, please correct me.) In the conventional Christian view, this means that Christ cleansed us of our sins, so that we don’t have to adhere to the laws of the Hebrew Bible. Christ represents a new convening, and two commandments supersede all of Jewish Law, those two commandments being to love God with all your heart and to love one’s neighbor as you love yourself. (I think you have to ignore or “reinterpret” parts of the Gospels to get to this point.) But one could also take the view that one can have the faith outlined above and still need to follow The Law. The Gospels report that Jesus said he was fulfilling the law and not replacing it, and that his followers needed to follow The Law more strictly than the Pharisees if they were to go to heaven. Again, we have an example of the multi-vocality of the Bible, and the difficulty of claiming inerrancy if there is a mixture of opinion contained in it. WRT to Paul being the founder or a founder, he apparently did the work as a missionary and organizer. He mentions others in his letters, but I’m not aware of other documentation of the efforts of others. So James and Peter or others might have propounded the idea of spreading Christianity to the gentiles before Paul was on the scene, but it was Paul that took the idea on the road. I’m comfortable with the idea that Paul is the main founder of the religion of Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity (and Protestantism)
We also have the issue that we don't know exactly what Jesus' original teachings exactly were, so we don't know how similar that was or wasn't to what Paul spread.
Nope. Peter and James wanted Gentiles to keep the law in Galatians 2 12 to 14. They didnt believe in salvation by faith for sure. Then we have the Problem, what resurrection? Flesh or spiritual. Paul has a spiritual resurrection. And there is no evidence that the apostles believed in a resurrection at all. Paul's opponents didn't believe in it. The cross was a stumbling block to them.
@@Cr-pj8bz ; agreed. All that can be guessed is that the Jerusalem followers of Jesus hoped that he would return as Elijah was expected to return. Meaning, the idea of a return was within Pharisee Judaism only the Jerusalem group added Jesus to that expectation. All the rest of what the Jerusalem followers believed was within Pharisee Judaism and ideas from the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran.
Matthew 5:17-20 ~ 17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
There is also an extremely entertaining video on this site called Marketing the Messiah. It lacks the nuance Dan is bringing to the table... but in broader strokes explains why Christianity, as MOST of us know it, is more dependent on Paul than Jesus.
Yes, I"ve often called this religion Paulianity---A faith based fixed view belief system that primarily arose from one man's hallucinatory experience of the Kosmic efflugence.
This kind of oversimplified take of the scholarshpi is really rooted in the 19th-century "history of religions schools" which while foundational to modern scholarship are still well over a century in the past from where the field is now
I wonder just how popular Paul’s idea of Christianity would have been if he had insisted that gentile Christians needed to be circumcised. I really don’t think it would have got very far.
@@Cr-pj8bz That’s the point, the Apostle Paul asserted that physical circumcision was unnecessary for the salvation of Gentiles and their membership in the New Covenant, not Jesus.The earliest Christians were Jewish Christians and no where does it seem that the disciples of Jesus, who new him, started preaching that circumcision was unnecessary, Jesus himself would have been circumcised and he never said anything about changing that. So the whole ‘non circumcision’ was a marketing ploy by Paul to gain more gentile members into his new wave Christianity because if he had stuck with circumcision the new gentile Christianity would never have been a big success. So it was Paul who knocked circumcision on the head and not Jesus or God.
Will you please consider doing a video on the history (tradition) of infant baptism versus adult baptism ― why the 'obsession' by some Christians that you can only be "saved" if you are baptised ― as if baptism is a sign of worthiness instead of grace, of God's love for us instead of proofing our love to God.
Jesus was able to forgive the sins of a paralytic simply by stating it. He didn't use any blood to do so. But then we see Paul arguing that Jesus had to die for the sins of mankind as a sacrifice. Is blood needed or not?
One thing that seems to emerge fairly clearly from the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' emphasis on achieving righteousness in one's life. But Paul seems to oppose the idea that anyone can be righteous.
I like the whole "a lot of people think X but I'm not convinced" and "a lot of scholars think X but most think Y, it's up for debate" things in this video. Like, I think this is the most nuance-y, "communicate consensus"-y I've seen Dan.
I think really the issue here is what "founding" means. You can say that Paul's theology has had a major impact on future theology to the modern day, but he was never the first or only voice in the movement.
Paul was not part of the movement. He started a new movement which is our Xtianity today. Jesus, James and Peter had a religion, Paul stated a religion about Jesus.
@@Cr-pj8bzWhat I've thought. He realized that a carnate deity like Jesus would be appealing to the Greeks and Romans, who were used to worshipping gods created in their own image. An incarnate God like the Jews', who had innumerable rules, just wouldn't become generally popular. Especially since Paul's only had one rule, "Believe."
Agreed. Paul was influential but came into a movement with existing leaders and teachings, and his contributions were influenced by other voices in the Jewish and philosophical world he knew well alongside James, Peter, and other disciples. Also, the emergence of “Christianity” as a distinct institution and system of thought postdated Paul by decades at minimum. Paul was most certainly a faithful Jew throughout, and recent scholars argue that he was not in so much contrast to all of his Jewish contemporaries as ~100 CE post-split leaders made him out to be (from both sides).
This is by far the best short summary of the situation, ideas, and people that I have encountered. Hopefully, I think that way not only because I agree with nearly everything. The following contradicts nothing from Dr. Dan. If I understand correctly the hymns embedded in Paul, Paul did not make Jesus into a demi god. Paul was trying to make sense of that possibility in light of Paul's mystical experience, the death of Jesus, and that it all somehow saves. The development from Paul did not have to go😅 as in the later Church but Paul might have found that now-orthodox development acceptable. Thank you for your work. Mike
Interesting ! a sane sensible contribution that allows Dan to flesh out and elaborate on ....! Usually it's poorly presented crazies toying with nutty notions and deferring to Biblical literacy !
If there's something I've learnt in my many years of reading about Judeo-Christian history it's this: whatever you think happened, it's probably much more complicated than that.
Dr. McClellan, have you or other people written something specifically questioning the authorship of Acts (as someone other than who wrote Luke)? Would love to read (or hear) about an alternative hypothesis to the tradition that they were written by the same author, as they seem so different
No, his vision of religion was not realized. The Christianity with which we are most familiar, was formed by many authoritative bishops and numerous councils and the Roman state.
I'm not sure we can read in Galatians 2 a full-throated support for Paul's ideas coming from James. I see a lot of tension hinted at. It's probable that the tension increased after Galatians was written, and that the epistle of James, while not being written by James himself, likely came from a community that had some links to him and the early Jerusalem Church. I really like John Painter's assessment of the James vs. Paul conflict (in his book "Just James").
You can’t say that someone is from Turkey when Turkey would not exist until many centuries later. You can say that Paul was a diaspora Jew and a Roman citizen from Asia Minor.
IDK how anyone can read Galatians and not conclude that Paul WAS preaching “salvation by faith alone”. Luther just digested Paul’s consistent dichotomy of faith vs. works, and boiled it down to a single phrase.
Question, how do Christians explain "God's Plan" for human salvation is only subscribed to by less that half of all human beings worldwide. Today and throughout history most people are/were Asian and thus Buddhist and Hindu. Through in Muslims and that's a big majority of human beings who are not Christian. Doesn't seem to be a very effective "plan", wouldn't you say?
Paul is obviously a great influence on modern, particularly protestant Christianity. In history we often see claims for the influence of one man, when in fact he is a leader of a group of likeminded people or he may promote an idea that then develops further many years later. In Islam, Paul is seen as one of the major inflences that took christianity away from "the true path". I have my doubts if Paul was even a Trinitarian.
If nothing else, Paul was a liar! Romans 3.7. “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through MY LIE unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? King James Bible. This passage shows Paul admitting to be a liar! He is justifying his lies by saying ‘if I can fool people into becoming (Paulian) Christians then does it really matter that I lie’ !?!? He is teaching Christians to deceive in order to further HIS cause, a Christian version of Islamic ‘Taqiyya’.
The dialogue of both the Hebrew man and Dan suggest that the writings of the gospel are somehow a real historical description of Jesus. Yet scholars like Drs Miller, MacDonald, and Carrier clearly show the gospels (written in Greek) as storied mythology reflective of the surrounding literature and culture. There are many examples of the retelling of Homer and other Greek and Roman mythology writers, but one of the biggest whopper tales is Paul’s shipwreck, following almost the same theme as read in Virgil’s Aeneid, especially the telling of the story using the word “we”.
There was Ebionite Christianity, which was exactly what this rabbi describes. They were Jews who followed the law of Moses and they absolutely rejected Paul as a false teacher.
@hamobu The letters of the Apostles and Acts are dated as close as 1-2 AD. And there is no dispute about Christ's divinity there. There were disciples alive during their propagation to voice dissent, if any. Meaning the Ebionites were most likely a heretical offshoot. These shills keep trotting out the same tired arguments.
I think if someone lived at that time as a gentile, and they were sincere in finding the truth, they would follow what Jesus, brother James said he said since he would have spent the most time with him. The idea that people can’t really convert to Judaism is a very new one. If I lived, then I would have converted to Judaism, kept all the laws, reformed the way I was living in accordance to what Jesus said. I find it really heartbreaking. That whatever the truth is has gotten so very lost since then that we really will never know. It’s a huge shame.
It wasn't until the Roman emperor Constantinople forced christianity on his subjects that it really became popular. During jesus life his followers were all localized in his vicinity.
It is right to say that whose to say who wrote the Synoptics, what was the Master Copy and what was the original text itself. BUT If we compare of what we know then the difference is pretty obvious. You would see differences. Now that is another debate of if those differences are even valid or not. Overall, yes, there are differences between the teachings.
A more significant question is who founded those churches that Paul wrote the Epistles to, the ones outside of Judea. They would be the founders of non-Jewish Christianity.
while there's some debate on the textual matters, i think the more physical matters are more directly tied to paul. now, i havent looked specifically into it, and i'm going off of memory of study from two decades ago, the churches paul controlled, who used mostly paul's dogma, are the churches that went on to evolve into the core of modern christianity. personally, i'm pretty sure it is recorded that someone tried to co-opt christianity the moment jesus was dead, the "resurrected jesus that no one recognizes" smacks of a charlatan. and the guy goes away never to be seen again after talking to a couple of folks that actually knew jesus? sounds to me like they let the guy walk because they could then make the "resurrected and transfigured" claim and keep the movement alive. so the fact that paul actually did co-opt christianity seems pretty logical and easy to swallow. especially with how pro-roman he actually was.
I have a question about that word "faith" in Paul's usage. We tend to understand that as "belief", but I know the latin word we typically translate that way, fides, really means something more like "being true to your word"; does the greek word Paul uses carry a similar meaning? Because if it does then his statement would be a much different one: that people are "justified" by... doing what they say they'll do.
WHO exactly did Paul write his letters to?... and HOW were they sent...? and did anyone ever reply?... all seems fairytale to me... Paul sent letters to the Corinthians... ?? really... a nation.. a tribe... a church ?... did they even have churches in Corinth then?...
Well there can only fairly be one actual truth in the end... So logically when judgment comes we will find out beloved... Ultimately what we can all agree on is that time if we do indeed in God is that time will confirm all truth right..? So we gonna find out...
If I hear you right, then since Paul's letters are the earliest known Christian literature, and the Gospels disagree with both Paul and each other, then anyone who is claiming to know what Christianity was really like and what Jesus Really taught before Paul is either speculating, or lying.
the Gospels record Jesus's life, teachings. Matthew was written in 50 A.D. Mark was written in 68 A.D. Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law. Paul and James compliment each other in their writings. James focuses on works after salvation. Paul focuses on salvation in Christ alone.
I would argue that the reason to assume Paul was the innovator of a non-Jewish Christianity is exclusively in his letters. It seems clear that Paul was in competition with the original group, Cephas (Peter?) at the least but seemingly most of the original apostle group, and that his innovations (the dual olive tree idea, etc.) were bringing in Gentile followers and money. It's almost certainly true that the original Christian sect was a pretty innovative offshoot of Judaism, but it also seems pretty clear that *at least* they insisted on circumcision for converts, and thus it seems likely they insisted on the other laws as well.
The biggest takeaway I think, is this: The apostles often times seemed confused and/or not quite understanding Jesus. Paul I’m sure sits squarely in the same camp, especially as a guy who did not know Jesus. It seems he was influential in setting things in motion for expansion, and obviously that comes with his interpretations of things and how he conveyed them. The *interesting* point you made is just how broad Christianity is. I myself have to break out of my thinking where I equate Christian Nationalists here in America broadly with Christianity itself, even though I realize evangelical Christianity is in fact wildly different from what I could find in other countries, and other branches of Christianity.
Of course, how much is the portrayal of the apostles as "confused and/or not quite understanding Jesus" a literary artifact of the Gospel authors. On the part of later Christians who were already influenced by Paul's thought and probably aware of the conflict between Paul and James/Peter.
The new testament is much more univocal than most scholars think. James is addressed to Jews only, regardless whether they believe in Jesus, and thus is more of a manifesto against Jewish practices than preaching doctrine for Christians. Paul even says that if one gets circumcised, they are beholden to the entirety of the law, thus intending Jews to remain a separate group, circumcised their children and keeping their sons for their daughters, and considering outsiders cringe and gross, while gentiles are dissuaded from circumcision, and thus not under the law. Luke has the more primitive Q material, and the simplest explanation is Luke was before Matthew and Matthew used Luke rather than the other way around. Matthew was obviously written by gentiles: they exclusively use the LXX, structuring the story around the prophecies within, unaware of the difference with the Hebrew text, giving it a thin veneer of Jewish authenticity to claim it was the "original account" to compete with Luke, restructuring the narrative into five blocks of teachings to mirror the five books of Moses, and since it was already established that only circumcised Jews were held to the law, made it strictly legalistic to seem it was addressed to Jews, with no fear that they, as gentiles, would be held to this standard. Matthew is also antisemitic, having the Jews demand Jesus be crucified, saying "his blood be on us and on our children" suggesting the Jewish character of the gospel wasn't to evangelize Jews, but to give a kind of mandate to the antisemitism of the early church. That's why I think the Jewish Christians were already extinct when the gospels were written, with people growing up in the Pauline community and being exposed to Paul's epistles and the concept of reading and writing, were the only ones in the habit of writing gospels, with groups like the ebionites being a later development reintroduced from outside judaism.
imho: Whatever one thinks of Paul, the incredible time, energy, travel, blood, sweat, and tears that he put into his ministry could only have been fueled by his transcendental encounters with his beloved Christ deity. I don't think the Jesus followers could have conquered the Roman empire without him.
Speaking of Paul, have you discussed the Mythicist position on your channels? If so, I missed that. Related to that question, what do you think of Richard Carrier's approach applying Bayesian probabilities to the text? I cannot judge the way he uses that tool but it makes sense to the scientist I am that the discussion should not be a dichotomy with the amount and quality of data in hand. Carrier is definitively a controversial figure, so I am citing him only to make clear what I mean by the use of Bayesian probabilities.
You can't really say any one person founded Christianity because it was a movement that grew organically from within Judaism and finally split off to become it's own thing and then continued to develop separately. Near the end when Dan was talking about how Christian practice differs from place to place, you can even see that here in the US. If you were to go to, say, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church and then an Episcopal church, you will see not only radically different worship styles but radically different theologies as well. If you want proof that the Bible is complex and multivocal, there it is.
What’s sad about the diversity of Paul’s theology is because a good amount about him is second hand. But one thing we have about him that we don’t on the others is we have 7 authentic letters. In the 7 letters Paul actually does have a pro Ebonite view of Jesus and the poor etc . The reason Paul said gentiles did not need to follow the law is not because he disagreed with the law. It’s because Paul thought the end was coming soon. Within a year. He thought he would be alive to see it. But the end didn’t come and the gentile churches had to figure out how to run the religion so they turned to people like the mysterious John the elder who Papias and Eusebius confirm was not apostle John . Modern Christianity thought more stems from this John the elder and his students would become the traditional proto Orthodox Church fathers. The only father we can say may have knew the historical Paul and peter was Clement and we see in 1 Clement and his student Hermes who wrote the shepherd a still very Jewish ebionite faith . Paul would want the movement to still keep its Jewish roots if it were to go on 2,000 years. Paul just at the time thought the end was near and there was no time to become fully Jewish or learn all 613 laws. Instead just follow the 7 Noahide laws, believe in one God, believe in the messiah and the knowledge (holy spirit) and you gentiles will make it. If Paul knew the end wouldn’t come in his life time I feel he would want gentiles to convert to the Jesus version of Judaism. He’d be shocked that it became a new religion
This is all extremely useful nuance but I think we should credit OP with having the essential gist importantly correct. We have it from Paul himself that the “acknowledged pillars” of the church (James & the original disciples) initially vehemently opposed his preaching that Jesus had superceded the Jewish law, even if they eventually acceded to his evangelism. And if Paul was not the first or only early Christian to advance such claims, he was surely by a huge margin the most influential in the long run.
This is basically thinking that Protestant and/ or Evangelicalism is the true form of Christianity and completely ignoring the Catholic, Orthodox, and ancient Christianity. They show a Church that is not founded by Paul, but not completely alien from Paul. Sincerely in Xto Mike B. B. From Philly, P.A. U.S.A.
Is it not possible - reasonable, even - to find harmony between Paul's teaching of salvation by faith and James? Or do you reject such harmonization anyway, and if so, on what grounds?
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I love how nuanced this one is. Often, you end up responding to people who are just flatly mistaken, but this is a complicated topic that depends a lot on what one means to communicate with the claims made. Super interesting!
I do not think it is so complicated. Just parse the actual evidence/proof (versus opinion/speculation). I find it takes more faith to believe this person than to believe the simple truth as presented in scripture.
Many Christian sects have emphasized Paul's letters over the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Gospels, because they can use different parts to justify their political agenda. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Christian preachers quote, "Those of you who don't work, shouldn't eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10) as the rationale for the government in the U.S. not to aid those with low-wealth or who are unhoused.
Skipping right over Matthew 25:31-46
And ignoring the context of that verse and that letter to "end times" people who sold everything and just sat around waiting for Jesus to return. Even Paul found that kind of theology too extreme.
@@bdot0276 Jesus: 🤷♂ Share or 🔥💀🔥
Children: 💀
That’s because that directive is for the Church, the Family, and the Believer, not the State.
Wonderful video about something crucial -- the Jesus / Paul thing -- not often discussed among Protestants I know but more often among Jews I know. And it's a great pleasure to see DM treat respectable people with the meticulous consideration they deserve (on those rare occasions when they appear)
Thank you Dan for your well-researched, well articulated treatment of this topic. Also, thank you for not being overly confident of positions that don't have substantial data.
I appreciate it when Dan also talks about the “lies to children” versions of Christian bloggers/TikTokers/UA-camrs, where they aren’t really saying things that are untrue or misleading, but they are saying things that are grossly oversimplified versions of the truth on the ground in terms of the scholarly consensuses and also the major points of dissent from the consensus.
Elon Gilad's central point is still valid that many basics of Christianity that followers attribute directly to Jesus are really from Paul's fork, even if it is an oversimplification of the long development process that followed. It is a curious exercise to consider what it would have been without those changes.
It probably would have been as fractured and parochial as it turned out to be. And Paul was innovating and developing rather than inventing. He still had to link back to the source, even if he did try to raise his clout by claiming two mystical experiences. Maybe it would have resembled Hellene-inspired gnosticism more. But yeah, Paul was clearly a very strong personality, charting a course between the Jewish and Greek worlds.
But not exclusively by Paul, which is the problem with his argument. The ideia that a lot of what Christians imagine as teachings of Jesus does not come from Jesus hardly only applies to Paul. Many things in the Gospels don't come from the historical Jesus, but from the gospel authors. Same thing with many other texts. Claim Paul is THE founder of Christianity because he helps shape what Christianity becomes later on is arbitrary. And I know, it may not seem like a big difference in saying "Paul is the founder of Christianity" and "Paul is one of the founders of Christianity", but it does in practice, because of the points people try to leverage by casting Paul as the sole founder, often to reach conclusions unsupported by evidence.
To give an extreme example, it would be Mythicists who have claimed that Paul manufactured the story of Jesus (obviously there are less extreme examples).
In other words, the correction is warranted not just because its an oversimplification, but because of what one may end up concluding based on that oversimplification.
@@gustavosanabio473 I think it's hard to call someone that was prosecuting people of a group, who then converted, becoming a member himself, a founder of said group.
The whole thing still comes down to I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a Guy...and He was God.
Great to hear an intellectual dialogue that was interesting and thoughtful rather than just the easy fish in a barrel for a change. Probably won't get as many views, not as fun to watch for some but I enjoyed it.
Yes absolutely, Paul founded Christianity, BUT it would surprise the hell out of him to find that out because he thought the world was about to end.
I think that at least by near the end of his life he knew the apocalypticism was nonsense and he and his followers had started to adjust their message accordingly.
@@Apostate1970 I disagree about him, but of course you are correct about his followers. That's one reason the pseudo-Pauline epistles differ so radically from the genuine ones.
this is ridiculously stupid...JESUS founded Christianity
@@glennlanham6309 LOL
@@glennlanham6309 LOL!
Hey Dan and everybody, I have a question. Based on historical data, when did Christians start praying in Jesus's name and why? When was the 1st denominational split, and why did it happen? Thank you.
The first denominational split was in acts when Peter James and paul split. That's when paul started his false ministry.
Jesus was a part of the nazarites or essenes and zealots, and so were his deciples.
They were enemies or rebels to the pharisees and saducees.
Paul was sent to sabotage the Jesus movement. He tricked hellenic Gentiles to turn from the Torah. It's evidently clear throughout the Bible.
Paul was an antiochian and a very hellenistic people.
Everything we read was written in Alexanderia, the home of hellenism Christianity.
On the latter, my (seminary-trained, not PhD) quick thought would be:
1) First formational faith split is with Judaism as Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism become distinct 70-100 CE;
2) First major heresy/leader condemnation is Marcion 150 CE;
3) First major formal institutional split is the Catholic/Orthodox Great Schism 1050 CE;
4) but modern “denominations” arguably start with the Reformation and were in a whole mess of splintering throughout the early 16th century as people chose sides with new emerging theologies and power systems. Would be hard to pin down a specific one, imho.
@@baonemogomotsi7138 Just commenting to get notified of any answers to the _praying to Jesus when?_ question . . .
@@kurremkarmerruk5357 Not yet
@ We must be patient with the scholars; they've only had two thousand and twenty five years to find this answer . . .
I love your channel and it's so great to see how much consistency in scholarship there is across religious and non-religious historians on this subject.
I'm non religious and anti theist and it's partly because of how often i see apologists lie about these things and the religious uncritically believe them (And a million other things) that I believe religion is corrosive to critical thinking in general but it really gives me hope and makes me examine my biases when I hear from deeply religious people like you who can set aside their biases and are willing to probably put up with a lot of criticism from the religious to do the good work of historical research.
Great channel and you've earned a subscription.
Paul invented a "gentile" branch of Christianity which was a distortion of Jesus message and was focusing primarily on the crucifixion and the spiritual resurrection of Jesus. He got few right and other things wrong. His branch flourished because of the Empire and politics.
This is how the religion grew though. Jesus focusing only on saving believing Jews was very limiting. I doubt Christianity would even be known about today without Paul.
@@BlueBarrier782 Yes. When a religion becomes a "system" it gets corrupted. True followers of Jesus did not have an empire to protect them and promote them.
We as human beings don’t get to choose who our parents our. If salvation is only intended for certain people, based upon who their parents are…what is the point? If Jesus only wanted to save a certain ethnic group, again…what is the point? Makes no sense considering, according to their own history, all of mankind descended from the same 2 people.
@@wiskyjack_7143just fyi that’s why muslims believe in their thing. That’s it’s the version for non Jews, based on versus on the Bible about something joyous coming from kedar (which is a part of Saudi Arabia). And something that Jesus said in the Bible that sounds like Muhammad’s given name (Idk the exact details of that). There are some rabbis who agree with this. I am NOT trying to convince anyone of anything, just giving out some info about what ppl think to make sense of this point that you made.
@@wiskyjack_7143 I don't think parents are crucial for salvation. It is individual. In case of Jesus it is better not to receive his message than receive it and distort it because it becomes lying about God.
It would seem to me that protestant Christianity is mostly paulianity.
Everytime i counter a protestant doctrine it's always a pauline epistle that is quoted back to me . Just an observation.
This is often the case with Evangelicals, but maybe a little less so with Mainline protestants who tend to use the Gospels more in their teachings.
Ever notice how paul seems to be the one who reveals God as Jesus? as if paul is the messiah that makes God known. That's the sign of a false apostle to me.
@@Swordoftruth289 What?
@2023-better-research think about it who was the one that says Jesus is God and Lord. The mainstream apologists all use pauls theology to prove he's God. And they act as if he or John were the only ones who knew this while nobody else did. He was the one who called ebionites or non deity believing messianic of his time.
So it is as if paul is revealing God, or at least that is what it looks like.
In jwish eschatology, the messiah reveals God and rules with his authority.
I'm saying paul brought secret mysteries into a movement that warned about false teachers doing that.
It adds up.
@@Swordoftruth289 Except verses outside of John and Paul's letters imply Christ's divinity. For example Jesus's statement about forgiving sins. Further it's apparent the early church agreed on the divinity of Christ.
Also if Paul were doing what you suggest he'd have a cult like Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddie or Muhammad to name but a few, or more modernly seen in Pentecostal preachers who brand themselves sometimes as 'prophet'. Paul on the other hand doesn't seem to really have likeness here, especially since he did die for these beliefs. Nor did he shift messiah onto himself.
The gospel test of you shall know them by their fruits doesn't really out Paul compared to many others either.
1:19 "in the companion volume to the Gospel of Luke, Acts, which I'm not convinced it was written by the same author but a lot of scholars think it was..." Thanks for this Dan and I agree. I remember this theory when I was a teenager and read Luke enjoying Luke's style of writing very much and decided to immediately continue reading Acts. However there is a notable change in tone. Luke's longer, more elaborate sentences and descriptions contrast with Acts more point on point style. Then only exceptions are the speeches in Acts which I agree follow Luke's style, but outside of this and the address to Theophilus I do not see any link to Luke.
One notion I have is that Acts may have been collaboratively written first with Luke writing the speeches. Then perhaps some ask Luke to have a go at the Gospels. A video on your ideas would be greatly appreciated as well as references to key articles and books in the debate.
TY for your clarity Dan, truly appreciate your content!
I once wrote a college paper, called something like History of Paulianity for a class about the subject of early Christianity. As someone who had been a Christian prior to this, I'd always found it distressing the degree to which Paul influenced Christianity. More so than the disciples. And I know there were others, such as St Augustine, who also heavily influenced Christianity, and that their beliefs were - in turn - influenced by other non Abrahamic - faiths.
But it all started with Paul. A man whose histoey isn't what we were taught and who clearly had his own agenda.
Paul had enough ego to go around for everyone 😆
@@BlueBarrier782know it all Paul
I have some difficulty with the use of the word "persecution" to describe Paul's early record with the Christians. We think of it as describing something like the modern persecution of the Jews. On the other hand the Greek term, as I understand it, describes "hunting out" in the sense of "seeking" or even "disputing" rather than asking for criminal penalties and/or retribution against an outlawed group. In this sense Paul's persecutions might be closer to the modern concept of "trolling" a social media account.
Thank you.
So Paul is the Ray Kroc of religion:)
Was looking for this exact joke
Pearly gates, golden arches...
I luv this. my name is Paul (raised catholic) and I've always been interested in the stories/text and history (time-lines) of Paul. It's clear he had a lot of influence and shaping of what was/is. Knowing he never meet the person he was promoting and he's the main influence is wild. (holding that thought in your head) Imagine you're him and you helped persecute the those people you are later promoting/selling this idea too others... blows my mind! Reminds me of ~catholic (guilt) car salesman (conman) and/or imagine someone he knew got whacked or he protected someone he knew and went north to escape (hey Luke, let's get the heck out of this place, now!) Today's stories using real-time audio/video digital data falls short in our modern courts within a month/year and yet these >2k yr - 3rd party stories, 2-10 centuries later, with >10k interpretions are still being processed/reviewed. Can we all agree, getting past the dogma, that going over/over/over/over/over,.. this material, we'd classify this repeating as a form of social insanity?
Reading paul with only what you get from the Gospel of Mark and forgetting all other gospels really changes the way one views pauls christology.
Reading any of it on its own merit changes how you view the New Testament.
@Dizzinator2114 correct but its a step in helping people understand the differences in the gospels.
Read paul with only the understanding of jesus you find in matthew as well. Luke. John. All of a sudden you find yourself making fewer assumptions and the gospels and paul read very differently then.
@ yeah I haven’t went directly into it that way, but I have read Paul ignoring the gospels entirely.
Excellent video, by both speakers.
I would love to hear the arguments on each side of the Luke/Acts shared authorship debate. I was surprised that you were a skeptic on it, and would be interested to know why (and also why it seems to be the consensus).
Thanks for what you do Dan!
I came here to say the same thing. I hope he addresses this.
To your point, My family visited churches near by of the same denomination, and were all similar. Then had to move 1500 miles for work and the church was almost unrecognizable from its others. It's a telephone game of dogma and culture.
Are you okay? They still believed in the Triune God, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those are the fundamentals of Christianity. The aesthetics are malleable
@dukeofdenver The Resurrection is more important than the atonement for sins via the crucifixion?
Ironically, that's a cultural preference of a particular segment of Christian denominations.
Others are light on the Trinity and focus on "Jesus died for your sins".
But the basic tenets of the faith remain the same even if the emphasis is on a different portion as the most important.
@@dukeofdenver Yup just fine, not sure why I wouldn't be. I was making comment about the part towards the end where he spoke of places like Armenia and Rome being different. I was simply giving my personal experience you can often see subtle changes even much closer to home. I was not attacking anyone's faith nor did I state one was bad, just one thing is very different from the other.
I was under the impression that it was taken for granted amongst critical scholars that the authors of Luke and Acts were the same. I am now curious to know why Dan doubts this?
I'd love to see a vid from him if its possible. He's the first I know who wouldn't say they're the same author.
The Gospels, as we possess them, were quoted in the first half of the second century, yet always anonymously. The attribution of names emerged suddenly around the year 180. The Gospel of Luke, akin to other Gospels, does not explicitly identify its author as Luke, the companion of Paul.
@yeahyeaheddie Yes. I know that. It's just that I have always heard scholars talk about Luke/Acts, as if whoever wrote one, wrote the other. Dan is the first I've heard, other than maybe apologists or theologically driven individuals, who suggested they aren't the same authors.
I don’t know Dan’s specific reasons but I do know that a number of scholars have proposed that Acts was actually written later than the usual consensus of 80-90 CE and was written in the early 2nd century (110-120 CE). They argued that Acts was possibly influenced by the works of Josephus (specifically “Antiquities of the Jews” which was written around or after the commonly accepted date of Acts). If so, this could either point to Luke being written at a later date than 80-90 CE as well or that it had a different author from Acts.
It's kinda funny that some people try to reject Paul in favor of whatever idea of Jesus they have when the entire complex of narratives about Jesus are dependent on Paul.
Like, I get it, I think more likely than not that Paul wasn't so great. But that's pretty typical for fringe cult leaders. Assuming there really was a historical Jesus, he'd also have been a fringe cult leader, so... more than likely...
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤thanks Dan!!
Thanks again Dan. ❤
Really appreciate your ability to communicate clearly and logically. Would you consider doing more historical discussion on who Paul was and what he said about Jesus and how and why the gospels were made. The historical dynamic between Jewish scholars and Roman political interests is fascinating, especially as an explanation for the motivation Saul/Paul may have had and whoever wrote the gospels to kind of subvert the Jewish idea of a militant messiah, which motivated their rebellion against Rome.
Peter upon this rock I built my church
Rulers consider religion useful.
Paul definitely had huge influence, by opening it to Gentiles, but I think the changes before Paul are often overlooked. Even before Paul's conversion, the movement seems to have reacted to Jesus's death and claimed resurrection by taking faith in that death and resurrection as being essential to salvation. Peter and James seem to have made at least as much contribution as Paul did, it's just that they didn't leave any writings, so it's often ignored.
To the extent we can ever know, Peter and James remained Jews to the end.
@@ji8044The faith that Jeff M. is noting isn’t incompatible with Judaism, depending on how one understands that faith. Let’s be more explicit. There are two components of that faith. 1) Faith that the sacrifice by crucifixion wipes away the debts incurred by the falling away from the law, and 2) the resurrection as promise of the future return of Christ and eternal life for the faithful. (If this is a misunderstanding of the basic faith, please correct me.)
In the conventional Christian view, this means that Christ cleansed us of our sins, so that we don’t have to adhere to the laws of the Hebrew Bible. Christ represents a new convening, and two commandments supersede all of Jewish Law, those two commandments being to love God with all your heart and to love one’s neighbor as you love yourself. (I think you have to ignore or “reinterpret” parts of the Gospels to get to this point.)
But one could also take the view that one can have the faith outlined above and still need to follow The Law. The Gospels report that Jesus said he was fulfilling the law and not replacing it, and that his followers needed to follow The Law more strictly than the Pharisees if they were to go to heaven.
Again, we have an example of the multi-vocality of the Bible, and the difficulty of claiming inerrancy if there is a mixture of opinion contained in it.
WRT to Paul being the founder or a founder, he apparently did the work as a missionary and organizer. He mentions others in his letters, but I’m not aware of other documentation of the efforts of others. So James and Peter or others might have propounded the idea of spreading Christianity to the gentiles before Paul was on the scene, but it was Paul that took the idea on the road. I’m comfortable with the idea that Paul is the main founder of the religion of Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity (and Protestantism)
We also have the issue that we don't know exactly what Jesus' original teachings exactly were, so we don't know how similar that was or wasn't to what Paul spread.
Nope. Peter and James wanted Gentiles to keep the law in Galatians 2 12 to 14. They didnt believe in salvation by faith for sure. Then we have the Problem, what resurrection? Flesh or spiritual. Paul has a spiritual resurrection. And there is no evidence that the apostles believed in a resurrection at all. Paul's opponents didn't believe in it. The cross was a stumbling block to them.
@@Cr-pj8bz ; agreed. All that can be guessed is that the Jerusalem followers of Jesus hoped that he would return as Elijah was expected to return. Meaning, the idea of a return was within Pharisee Judaism only the Jerusalem group added Jesus to that expectation. All the rest of what the Jerusalem followers believed was within Pharisee Judaism and ideas from the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran.
Matthew 5:17-20 ~ 17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
"If you can't beat them, take them over" Paul maybe
There is a very good book written on this very topic. The author was Hyam Maccoby and the book is titled “The Mythmaker”.
There is also an extremely entertaining video on this site called Marketing the Messiah. It lacks the nuance Dan is bringing to the table... but in broader strokes explains why Christianity, as MOST of us know it, is more dependent on Paul than Jesus.
He was also the first individual who could read and write that came across the Jesus story
it's a shame he had no understanding of science and reality.
I've always questioned the influence of Paul on Christianity.
Whenever I see the title of a Dan video is a question, I already know the answer is going to be "no", but finding out why it's "no" is still fun.
Yes, I"ve often called this religion Paulianity---A faith based fixed view belief system that primarily arose from one man's hallucinatory experience of the Kosmic efflugence.
This kind of oversimplified take of the scholarshpi is really rooted in the 19th-century "history of religions schools" which while foundational to modern scholarship are still well over a century in the past from where the field is now
I've never heard you talk about doubting the authorship of Luke/Acts. Do you have a video about it, or could you do one?
An intelligent and thoughtful response that deals with the complexities rather than the usual YT point scoring...
I wonder just how popular Paul’s idea of Christianity would have been if he had insisted that gentile Christians needed to be circumcised. I really don’t think it would have got very far.
Paul ended the law for everyone.
@@Cr-pj8bzNot for the Jews. Jesus clearly said it was still in effect for them.
Basically, anyone who follows Paul rather than Jesus worships Paul.
Paul knew how to grow it from little arguing cults to a religion. For that, he needed numbers.
@@davidm5707 Paul ended it for everyone. Jesus never said Gentiles don't have to keep the law
@@Cr-pj8bz That’s the point, the Apostle Paul asserted that physical circumcision was unnecessary for the salvation of Gentiles and their membership in the New Covenant, not Jesus.The earliest Christians were Jewish Christians and no where does it seem that the disciples of Jesus, who new him, started preaching that circumcision was unnecessary, Jesus himself would have been circumcised and he never said anything about changing that. So the whole ‘non circumcision’ was a marketing ploy by Paul to gain more gentile members into his new wave Christianity because if he had stuck with circumcision the new gentile Christianity would never have been a big success. So it was Paul who knocked circumcision on the head and not Jesus or God.
Will you please consider doing a video on the history (tradition) of infant baptism versus adult baptism ― why the 'obsession' by some Christians that you can only be "saved" if you are baptised ― as if baptism is a sign of worthiness instead of grace, of God's love for us instead of proofing our love to God.
Jesus was able to forgive the sins of a paralytic simply by stating it. He didn't use any blood to do so.
But then we see Paul arguing that Jesus had to die for the sins of mankind as a sacrifice.
Is blood needed or not?
One thing that seems to emerge fairly clearly from the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' emphasis on achieving righteousness in one's life. But Paul seems to oppose the idea that anyone can be righteous.
Even some of the Pauline matter seems like it's been reworked to suit the narrative of whoever was collecting/interpreting it tbh.
If you were able to ask Paul, he'd probably say yes he is 😆
I like the whole "a lot of people think X but I'm not convinced" and "a lot of scholars think X but most think Y, it's up for debate" things in this video. Like, I think this is the most nuance-y, "communicate consensus"-y I've seen Dan.
I think really the issue here is what "founding" means. You can say that Paul's theology has had a major impact on future theology to the modern day, but he was never the first or only voice in the movement.
Paul was not part of the movement. He started a new movement which is our Xtianity today. Jesus, James and Peter had a religion, Paul stated a religion about Jesus.
@@Cr-pj8bzWhat I've thought. He realized that a carnate deity like Jesus would be appealing to the Greeks and Romans, who were used to worshipping gods created in their own image.
An incarnate God like the Jews', who had innumerable rules, just wouldn't become generally popular. Especially since Paul's only had one rule, "Believe."
Agreed. Paul was influential but came into a movement with existing leaders and teachings, and his contributions were influenced by other voices in the Jewish and philosophical world he knew well alongside James, Peter, and other disciples. Also, the emergence of “Christianity” as a distinct institution and system of thought postdated Paul by decades at minimum. Paul was most certainly a faithful Jew throughout, and recent scholars argue that he was not in so much contrast to all of his Jewish contemporaries as ~100 CE post-split leaders made him out to be (from both sides).
This is by far the best short summary of the situation, ideas, and people that I have encountered. Hopefully, I think that way not only because I agree with nearly everything.
The following contradicts nothing from Dr. Dan. If I understand correctly the hymns embedded in Paul, Paul did not make Jesus into a demi god. Paul was trying to make sense of that possibility in light of Paul's mystical experience, the death of Jesus, and that it all somehow saves. The development from Paul did not have to go😅 as in the later Church but Paul might have found that now-orthodox development acceptable.
Thank you for your work. Mike
Interesting ! a sane sensible contribution that allows Dan to flesh out and elaborate on ....!
Usually it's poorly presented crazies toying with nutty notions and deferring to Biblical literacy !
If there's something I've learnt in my many years of reading about Judeo-Christian history it's this: whatever you think happened, it's probably much more complicated than that.
Dr. McClellan, have you or other people written something specifically questioning the authorship of Acts (as someone other than who wrote Luke)? Would love to read (or hear) about an alternative hypothesis to the tradition that they were written by the same author, as they seem so different
oh, so that’s who we should blame!
No, his vision of religion was not realized. The Christianity with which we are most familiar, was formed by many authoritative bishops and numerous councils and the Roman state.
As others have pointed out, a much more erudite discussion than is typically required, if only everyone posting on UA-cam invited such erudition.
I'm not sure we can read in Galatians 2 a full-throated support for Paul's ideas coming from James. I see a lot of tension hinted at. It's probable that the tension increased after Galatians was written, and that the epistle of James, while not being written by James himself, likely came from a community that had some links to him and the early Jerusalem Church. I really like John Painter's assessment of the James vs. Paul conflict (in his book "Just James").
I have to quote Fort here, "and the explainers explained".
Reference also "THE MYTHMAKER by Hyam Maccoby" which also deals with this subject.
I love the 'fit. McFarlane's Amazing Spider-Man #301 cover is an iconic Spider-Man image. Do you have anything featuring art by Mark Bagley?
Thanks Dan for recommending "Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman for a deeper dive into this topic. I really enjoyed ot.
My headcannon (and I don't know if it's actually true) is that Honi had a better "claim" to being the messiah, but had worse PR.
You can’t say that someone is from Turkey when Turkey would not exist until many centuries later. You can say that Paul was a diaspora Jew and a Roman citizen from Asia Minor.
Awesome as always.
IDK how anyone can read Galatians and not conclude that Paul WAS preaching “salvation by faith alone”. Luther just digested Paul’s consistent dichotomy of faith vs. works, and boiled it down to a single phrase.
Question, how do Christians explain "God's Plan" for human salvation is only subscribed to by less that half of all human beings worldwide. Today and throughout history most people are/were Asian and thus Buddhist and Hindu. Through in Muslims and that's a big majority of human beings who are not Christian. Doesn't seem to be a very effective "plan", wouldn't you say?
Even further, a lot of Christians will tell you that most professing Christians are doing it wrong and aren't *real* Christians.
Paul is obviously a great influence on modern, particularly protestant Christianity.
In history we often see claims for the influence of one man, when in fact he is a leader of a group of likeminded people or he may promote an idea that then develops further many years later.
In Islam, Paul is seen as one of the major inflences that took christianity away from "the true path".
I have my doubts if Paul was even a Trinitarian.
He certainly wasn't. None of the NT authors were. That was a later development.
If nothing else, Paul was a liar!
Romans 3.7. “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through MY LIE unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?
King James Bible.
This passage shows Paul admitting to be a liar! He is justifying his lies by saying ‘if I can fool people into becoming (Paulian) Christians then does it really matter that I lie’ !?!? He is teaching Christians to deceive in order to further HIS cause, a Christian version of Islamic ‘Taqiyya’.
The dialogue of both the Hebrew man and Dan suggest that the writings of the gospel are somehow a real historical description of Jesus. Yet scholars like Drs Miller, MacDonald, and Carrier clearly show the gospels (written in Greek) as storied mythology reflective of the surrounding literature and culture. There are many examples of the retelling of Homer and other Greek and Roman mythology writers, but one of the biggest whopper tales is Paul’s shipwreck, following almost the same theme as read in Virgil’s Aeneid, especially the telling of the story using the word “we”.
Paul worked with John, Peter and James. Paul's writings and accounts were founded on this union.
There was Ebionite Christianity, which was exactly what this rabbi describes. They were Jews who followed the law of Moses and they absolutely rejected Paul as a false teacher.
Ebionites rejected the full divinity of Christ. They weren't Christians, period.
@dukeofdenver if the earliest followers of Christ didn't think that he was divine then maybe that is a later innovation in faith.
While the Ebionites would fade into obscurity, they are purported to have influenced Islam in its early development.
@hamobu The letters of the Apostles and Acts are dated as close as 1-2 AD. And there is no dispute about Christ's divinity there. There were disciples alive during their propagation to voice dissent, if any. Meaning the Ebionites were most likely a heretical offshoot.
These shills keep trotting out the same tired arguments.
@@dukeofdenver more like they are the true Christians and you are not🤣
I think if someone lived at that time as a gentile, and they were sincere in finding the truth, they would follow what Jesus, brother James said he said since he would have spent the most time with him. The idea that people can’t really convert to Judaism is a very new one. If I lived, then I would have converted to Judaism, kept all the laws, reformed the way I was living in accordance to what Jesus said. I find it really heartbreaking. That whatever the truth is has gotten so very lost since then that we really will never know. It’s a huge shame.
It wasn't until the Roman emperor Constantinople forced christianity on his subjects that it really became popular. During jesus life his followers were all localized in his vicinity.
It is right to say that whose to say who wrote the Synoptics, what was the Master Copy and what was the original text itself.
BUT
If we compare of what we know then the difference is pretty obvious.
You would see differences.
Now that is another debate of if those differences are even valid or not.
Overall, yes, there are differences between the teachings.
Do you have a video about the authorship of Luke
/Acts and why you think it‘s not the same author
A more significant question is who founded those churches that Paul wrote the Epistles to, the ones outside of Judea.
They would be the founders of non-Jewish Christianity.
while there's some debate on the textual matters, i think the more physical matters are more directly tied to paul.
now, i havent looked specifically into it, and i'm going off of memory of study from two decades ago, the churches paul controlled, who used mostly paul's dogma, are the churches that went on to evolve into the core of modern christianity.
personally, i'm pretty sure it is recorded that someone tried to co-opt christianity the moment jesus was dead, the "resurrected jesus that no one recognizes" smacks of a charlatan. and the guy goes away never to be seen again after talking to a couple of folks that actually knew jesus? sounds to me like they let the guy walk because they could then make the "resurrected and transfigured" claim and keep the movement alive.
so the fact that paul actually did co-opt christianity seems pretty logical and easy to swallow. especially with how pro-roman he actually was.
I have a question about that word "faith" in Paul's usage. We tend to understand that as "belief", but I know the latin word we typically translate that way, fides, really means something more like "being true to your word"; does the greek word Paul uses carry a similar meaning? Because if it does then his statement would be a much different one: that people are "justified" by... doing what they say they'll do.
Where is God in all of this? And to what extent? What about Messianic Christianity?
Questions . . .
WHO exactly did Paul write his letters to?... and HOW were they sent...? and did anyone ever reply?... all seems fairytale to me... Paul sent letters to the Corinthians... ?? really... a nation.. a tribe... a church ?... did they even have churches in Corinth then?...
What's the earliest possible dating for Mark put forward by reputable scholars?
Well there can only fairly be one actual truth in the end... So logically when judgment comes we will find out beloved... Ultimately what we can all agree on is that time if we do indeed in God is that time will confirm all truth right..? So we gonna find out...
Anyone else here because the Spider-Man shirt and the name Paul in the video title, thinking this was going to be a very different video?
If I hear you right, then since Paul's letters are the earliest known Christian literature, and the Gospels disagree with both Paul and each other, then anyone who is claiming to know what Christianity was really like and what Jesus Really taught before Paul is either speculating, or lying.
the Gospels record Jesus's life, teachings.
Matthew was written in 50 A.D. Mark was written in 68 A.D.
Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law.
Paul and James compliment each other in their writings. James focuses on works after salvation. Paul focuses on salvation in Christ alone.
One just needs to trust God and His Spirit to guide us to the truth and these claims become either irrelevant or repetitive.
Saul never addresses the results of evil or it's behaviors. A constant theme throughout scripture....
I would argue that the reason to assume Paul was the innovator of a non-Jewish Christianity is exclusively in his letters. It seems clear that Paul was in competition with the original group, Cephas (Peter?) at the least but seemingly most of the original apostle group, and that his innovations (the dual olive tree idea, etc.) were bringing in Gentile followers and money. It's almost certainly true that the original Christian sect was a pretty innovative offshoot of Judaism, but it also seems pretty clear that *at least* they insisted on circumcision for converts, and thus it seems likely they insisted on the other laws as well.
The biggest takeaway I think, is this:
The apostles often times seemed confused and/or not quite understanding Jesus.
Paul I’m sure sits squarely in the same camp, especially as a guy who did not know Jesus. It seems he was influential in setting things in motion for expansion, and obviously that comes with his interpretations of things and how he conveyed them.
The *interesting* point you made is just how broad Christianity is. I myself have to break out of my thinking where I equate Christian Nationalists here in America broadly with Christianity itself, even though I realize evangelical Christianity is in fact wildly different from what I could find in other countries, and other branches of Christianity.
Of course, how much is the portrayal of the apostles as "confused and/or not quite understanding Jesus" a literary artifact of the Gospel authors. On the part of later Christians who were already influenced by Paul's thought and probably aware of the conflict between Paul and James/Peter.
The new testament is much more univocal than most scholars think. James is addressed to Jews only, regardless whether they believe in Jesus, and thus is more of a manifesto against Jewish practices than preaching doctrine for Christians. Paul even says that if one gets circumcised, they are beholden to the entirety of the law, thus intending Jews to remain a separate group, circumcised their children and keeping their sons for their daughters, and considering outsiders cringe and gross, while gentiles are dissuaded from circumcision, and thus not under the law. Luke has the more primitive Q material, and the simplest explanation is Luke was before Matthew and Matthew used Luke rather than the other way around. Matthew was obviously written by gentiles: they exclusively use the LXX, structuring the story around the prophecies within, unaware of the difference with the Hebrew text, giving it a thin veneer of Jewish authenticity to claim it was the "original account" to compete with Luke, restructuring the narrative into five blocks of teachings to mirror the five books of Moses, and since it was already established that only circumcised Jews were held to the law, made it strictly legalistic to seem it was addressed to Jews, with no fear that they, as gentiles, would be held to this standard. Matthew is also antisemitic, having the Jews demand Jesus be crucified, saying "his blood be on us and on our children" suggesting the Jewish character of the gospel wasn't to evangelize Jews, but to give a kind of mandate to the antisemitism of the early church. That's why I think the Jewish Christians were already extinct when the gospels were written, with people growing up in the Pauline community and being exposed to Paul's epistles and the concept of reading and writing, were the only ones in the habit of writing gospels, with groups like the ebionites being a later development reintroduced from outside judaism.
imho: Whatever one thinks of Paul, the incredible time, energy, travel, blood, sweat, and tears that he put into his ministry could only have been fueled by his transcendental encounters with his beloved Christ deity. I don't think the Jesus followers could have conquered the Roman empire without him.
Speaking of Paul, have you discussed the Mythicist position on your channels? If so, I missed that. Related to that question, what do you think of Richard Carrier's approach applying Bayesian probabilities to the text? I cannot judge the way he uses that tool but it makes sense to the scientist I am that the discussion should not be a dichotomy with the amount and quality of data in hand. Carrier is definitively a controversial figure, so I am citing him only to make clear what I mean by the use of Bayesian probabilities.
Yep!
You can't really say any one person founded Christianity because it was a movement that grew organically from within Judaism and finally split off to become it's own thing and then continued to develop separately.
Near the end when Dan was talking about how Christian practice differs from place to place, you can even see that here in the US. If you were to go to, say, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church and then an Episcopal church, you will see not only radically different worship styles but radically different theologies as well.
If you want proof that the Bible is complex and multivocal, there it is.
The Torah says Eye for an eye tooth for a tooth, Jesus said Nay.
Yeah, he says eternal torture for an eye and eternal torture for a tooth.
Which Jesus? There are many. One Jesus also says to obey the Pharisees who kept the law and the oral law
Jesus never claimed eternal dammnation
@@fellowgoyimwhite7630 Now explain that to all the Christians.
What’s sad about the diversity of Paul’s theology is because a good amount about him is second hand. But one thing we have about him that we don’t on the others is we have 7 authentic letters.
In the 7 letters Paul actually does have a pro Ebonite view of Jesus and the poor etc . The reason Paul said gentiles did not need to follow the law is not because he disagreed with the law. It’s because Paul thought the end was coming soon. Within a year. He thought he would be alive to see it. But the end didn’t come and the gentile churches had to figure out how to run the religion so they turned to people like the mysterious John the elder who Papias and Eusebius confirm was not apostle John . Modern Christianity thought more stems from this John the elder and his students would become the traditional proto Orthodox Church fathers. The only father we can say may have knew the historical Paul and peter was Clement and we see in 1 Clement and his student Hermes who wrote the shepherd a still very Jewish ebionite faith .
Paul would want the movement to still keep its Jewish roots if it were to go on 2,000 years. Paul just at the time thought the end was near and there was no time to become fully Jewish or learn all 613 laws. Instead just follow the 7 Noahide laws, believe in one God, believe in the messiah and the knowledge (holy spirit) and you gentiles will make it.
If Paul knew the end wouldn’t come in his life time I feel he would want gentiles to convert to the Jesus version of Judaism. He’d be shocked that it became a new religion
This is all extremely useful nuance but I think we should credit OP with having the essential gist importantly correct. We have it from Paul himself that the “acknowledged pillars” of the church (James & the original disciples) initially vehemently opposed his preaching that Jesus had superceded the Jewish law, even if they eventually acceded to his evangelism. And if Paul was not the first or only early Christian to advance such claims, he was surely by a huge margin the most influential in the long run.
This is basically thinking that Protestant and/ or Evangelicalism is the true form of Christianity and completely ignoring the Catholic, Orthodox, and ancient Christianity.
They show a Church that is not founded by Paul, but not completely alien from Paul.
Sincerely in Xto
Mike B. B. From Philly, P.A. U.S.A.
Is it not possible - reasonable, even - to find harmony between Paul's teaching of salvation by faith and James? Or do you reject such harmonization anyway, and if so, on what grounds?
would be more interesting imo to respond to the scholarship of James Tabor on relevant claims