Yes, Paul the Apostle existed but he was Saul of Tarsus, a Jew with Roman citizenship, for most of his life. He became Paul when he moved to Rome around 65 AD to escape the Jewish Sicarii that were trying to assassinate him. Saul/Paul was known to be an epileptic and may have been schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder.
@@abhbible The whole thing is made-up. There is no contemporary evidence for anything in what is being called the "new testament". In fact, in Real History, there were two Herods, Herod the Great and Herod Antipas, his son. Herod the Great died in 4 BC, four years before the supposed "virgin birth". Applying the Salome/John the Baptist story to Herod Antipas makes zero rational sense. Also, Octavian Augustus never ordered a census of Yudea, he didn't care how many Jews there were. The whole story is ridiculous nonsense.
@@abhbible I apologize for the long comment. I don't know if I am reading the narratives of the synoptic gospels carefully, but is "the forgiveness of sins" and "entering the kingdom of God" separate from each other? When I was brought up in my evangelical environment, these 2 were often conflated with each other, where the former is necessary for the latter to happen. But now it seems like that isn't the case? For example, Jesus mentions forgiving the sins of the paralytic man and the woman who cleaned his feet, but he doesn't mention the kingdom of God or inheriting eternal life. But when it comes to the rich man, Jesus has a very explicit method, where he tells him to essentially keep the commandments to gain eternal life. And it does seem like Jesus conflates eternal life with entering the kingdom of God. He doesn't tell him that forgiveness is even a prerequisite. I asked my pastor about this and how this is in line with the idea of belief to have salvation and he told me that Jesus was trying to tell the rich man that it was impossible to keep the law, hence the man's sadness in leaving and Jesus saying all things are possible with God. But the text said that Jesus loved him. Why wouldn't have Jesus come out with it straight about belief if he loved him? Why be so cryptic in a roundabout way especially since that would be the only interaction as far as we know that the rich man would have with Jesus? Matthew too seems even more explicit about this. In Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus says he's here to fulfil the law, not abolish it, he mentions the kingdom of God when talking about the law, and he mentions that the disciples' righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. It doesn't say anything about the law being impossible to keep and therefore needing belief in Jesus to forgive sins. Am I missing something, or could it have been the case that the early Christians who had the synoptic gospels thought of these 2 issues as separate?
How can letters supposedly from an individual and an account by someone supposedly closely linked to that person be considered 'multiple' sources? At best there are two and they are so closely linked that, were Paul to be an invention, both could be part of that invention. And, because it is invalid to prove Paul, using Paul, we have only one source, Acts, and that is clearly not independent. I see no reason to even bother questioning Paul's existence. All he offers us is personal opinion regarding the beliefs and rules of his new religion. These could just as easily have come from anyone. However, we simply do not have multiple independent sources. So much of what Christians claim as evidence is nothing of the kind. It is everyone's right to hold beliefs but it is important to stick to facts, not beliefs, traditions or dogma when assessing historical reliability.
@@abhbible Of course. But you referred to multiple independent sources and there are problems with that. Firstly, we do not know who wrote any of the books of the New Testament, or what access they had to first, second or even third hand information regarding Jesus and Paul. They could all be 100% genuine but we have no way to test that and plenty of reasons to question it. Secondly, as I said before, if we are trying to establish whether or not Paul really existed, we cannot simply assume his letters are genuine or that Luke was his companion, because both of those assertions rely upon the very thing we are trying to discover. Just for fun, let's pretend a scholar claimed that Luke wrote the letters and invented Paul as an authority figure because he thought that people who knew him would never believe it if he offered the messages found therein as his own thoughts. This sounds silly but do we have any way to prove it's not true? Couldn't all the ways you try to prove Paul, also be used by our scholar to prove his idea about Luke? You may have access to information I do not but I am unaware of any other contemporary reference to Paul apart from the New Testament. All we have comes from at least 100 to 200 years later, from people who were already privy to the books that were coalescing into the New Testament. As I said, I'm not saying he did not exist; in fact I think his identity is less important than the message people have taken from the letters (hence the pastorals are still valued even though their authorship is disputed). I am merely commenting on your assertion of multiple independent sources. It is my contention that we cannot definitively establish anything of significance in the New Testament and everything we think we know of Jesus and Paul must come down to belief.
@@theoutspokenhumanist The consensus of biblical scholars across religious lines is that Paul is the author of seven of the epistles that bear his name. That’s something we know. And while we don’t know the names of any of the gospel authors, we have informed portraits of the contexts in which the authors wrote sufficient to know that their authors and audiences were independent of each other. None of this requires Paul and Luke to know one another. None of this requires Luke to have written Acts. If someone claimed the author of Acts wrote the authentic Pauline epistles they’d be shot down immediately and you won’t see any published papers in academic venues making this claim. They write in entirely different ways, with different vocabulary, different literary themes, different genres, different ideologies and theologies, some of which flatly contradict each other, as do their specific historical claims about the relationships between the apostles. The skeptical position “It all comes down to belief” is unjustified, and doesn’t interact with the actual evidence.
@@abhbible I think we have different standard about what we know. The consensus of biblical scholars is merely an informed opinion. If it were truly known, it would be a demonstrable fact and no consensus would be required. It is not true to say we know the gospel authors were independent of each other. We can be fairly sure Mark and John are independent, in as much as they do not rely upon the other two but Matthew & Luke are 85% direct copies of Mark and where they do add their own perspectives they differ hugely from each other. I do agree that their audiences were almost certainly independent, and the gospels seem to be a focus of belief for different churches/Christian groups, as evidenced by Paul’s letters to these communities. I did not claim Paul and Luke knew each other or that Luke wrote Acts. That is Christian tradition based upon the New Testament, as you surely must know. I agree entirely regarding the style etc of Acts and the Letters and I did not say that Luke wrote them. I was merely offering a hypothetical, fanciful, example to make a specific point regarding the way you assert our ability to validate the existence of Paul. I’m surprised you didn’t see that. What actual evidence are you referring to? As I have already made clear, it is invalid to use the bible to prove the bible, or to use Paul’s letters to prove Paul. If you possess genuine evidence for the existence of Paul which does not come from the bible, or from later Christian writers who knew no more than you and I, please let me know. The skeptical position is not, ‘It all comes down to belief’, it is simply that we lack the evidence to be certain of anything claimed by the bible’s authors, with the exception of a few place names and people incidental to the story.
@@theoutspokenhumanist The consensus of scholars in a field is never merely an informed opinion. It’s the knowledge of thousands of people who are in the best position to evaluate the evidence. Consensus forms around demonstration. A demonstration doesn’t eliminate a consensus. You have it backwards here. We aren’t “using the Bible to prove the Bible.” We’re using the Bible to evidence a hypothesis about the Bible. The idea that you can’t use a document to propose explanations about that document is ridiculous and not something any historian takes seriously. Again, biblical scholars across religious lines agree with this methodology.
You don't have one contemporary, independent source for Jesus or Paul. Saying that the bible is a source of these characters is like saying that the book Peter Pan is a source for a boy who could fly, it's not enough you need outside sources.
@@BlackLionSupreme No. You don’t need “outside sources,” for figures. That’s not a criteria, probably because defining “outside what” is impossible to do in a way that isn’t arbitrary. Do you need sources outside the Roman Empire for Roman figures? No. Every text in the Bible was composed outside of the Bible originally and collected together only after the fact. The Bible’s sources are independent of each other regardless of the fact that they end up in a collection later.
@@abhbible outside sources establish credibility and are definitely apart of the criteria of fact checking. We don't have to rely on outside sources of the existence of the Roman Empire because of the overwhelming archeological and independent evidence something you don't have for Paul or Jesus. It's not that you can't use the bible as a reference it's the level of reliability when doing so you have to take under consideration. The bible is not a history book, so when evaluating historical matters it falls short.
@@BlackLionSupreme The Bible is a collection of very different kinds of texts. Some of them are historical and some are not. Making sweeping generalizations about their historical reliability is fallacious. This is why we have these criteria, so we can apply them to each text independently.
I get my daily dose of wisdom from you and Dan McCllelan :)
Thanks so much sir!
Yes, Paul the Apostle existed but he was Saul of Tarsus, a Jew with Roman citizenship, for most of his life. He became Paul when he moved to Rome around 65 AD to escape the Jewish Sicarii that were trying to assassinate him. Saul/Paul was known to be an epileptic and may have been schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder.
Paul self-identifies as Paul in his letters for decades before going to Rome. Everything else in this comment is just made up.
@@abhbible The whole thing is made-up. There is no contemporary evidence for anything in what is being called the "new testament". In fact, in Real History, there were two Herods, Herod the Great and Herod Antipas, his son. Herod the Great died in 4 BC, four years before the supposed "virgin birth". Applying the Salome/John the Baptist story to Herod Antipas makes zero rational sense. Also, Octavian Augustus never ordered a census of Yudea, he didn't care how many Jews there were. The whole story is ridiculous nonsense.
Can we ask questions here on youtube about the bible?
@@CB66941 Sure
@@abhbible I apologize for the long comment. I don't know if I am reading the narratives of the synoptic gospels carefully, but is "the forgiveness of sins" and "entering the kingdom of God" separate from each other?
When I was brought up in my evangelical environment, these 2 were often conflated with each other, where the former is necessary for the latter to happen.
But now it seems like that isn't the case? For example, Jesus mentions forgiving the sins of the paralytic man and the woman who cleaned his feet, but he doesn't mention the kingdom of God or inheriting eternal life.
But when it comes to the rich man, Jesus has a very explicit method, where he tells him to essentially keep the commandments to gain eternal life. And it does seem like Jesus conflates eternal life with entering the kingdom of God. He doesn't tell him that forgiveness is even a prerequisite.
I asked my pastor about this and how this is in line with the idea of belief to have salvation and he told me that Jesus was trying to tell the rich man that it was impossible to keep the law, hence the man's sadness in leaving and Jesus saying all things are possible with God. But the text said that Jesus loved him. Why wouldn't have Jesus come out with it straight about belief if he loved him? Why be so cryptic in a roundabout way especially since that would be the only interaction as far as we know that the rich man would have with Jesus?
Matthew too seems even more explicit about this. In Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus says he's here to fulfil the law, not abolish it, he mentions the kingdom of God when talking about the law, and he mentions that the disciples' righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. It doesn't say anything about the law being impossible to keep and therefore needing belief in Jesus to forgive sins.
Am I missing something, or could it have been the case that the early Christians who had the synoptic gospels thought of these 2 issues as separate?
How can letters supposedly from an individual and an account by someone supposedly closely linked to that person be considered 'multiple' sources? At best there are two and they are so closely linked that, were Paul to be an invention, both could be part of that invention. And, because it is invalid to prove Paul, using Paul, we have only one source, Acts, and that is clearly not independent.
I see no reason to even bother questioning Paul's existence. All he offers us is personal opinion regarding the beliefs and rules of his new religion. These could just as easily have come from anyone. However, we simply do not have multiple independent sources.
So much of what Christians claim as evidence is nothing of the kind. It is everyone's right to hold beliefs but it is important to stick to facts, not beliefs, traditions or dogma when assessing historical reliability.
@@theoutspokenhumanist Letters from someone and a story from someone else are indeed two different sources.
@@abhbible Of course. But you referred to multiple independent sources and there are problems with that.
Firstly, we do not know who wrote any of the books of the New Testament, or what access they had to first, second or even third hand information regarding Jesus and Paul.
They could all be 100% genuine but we have no way to test that and plenty of reasons to question it.
Secondly, as I said before, if we are trying to establish whether or not Paul really existed, we cannot simply assume his letters are genuine or that Luke was his companion, because both of those assertions rely upon the very thing we are trying to discover.
Just for fun, let's pretend a scholar claimed that Luke wrote the letters and invented Paul as an authority figure because he thought that people who knew him would never believe it if he offered the messages found therein as his own thoughts.
This sounds silly but do we have any way to prove it's not true? Couldn't all the ways you try to prove Paul, also be used by our scholar to prove his idea about Luke?
You may have access to information I do not but I am unaware of any other contemporary reference to Paul apart from the New Testament. All we have comes from at least 100 to 200 years later, from people who were already privy to the books that were coalescing into the New Testament.
As I said, I'm not saying he did not exist; in fact I think his identity is less important than the message people have taken from the letters (hence the pastorals are still valued even though their authorship is disputed). I am merely commenting on your assertion of multiple independent sources.
It is my contention that we cannot definitively establish anything of significance in the New Testament and everything we think we know of Jesus and Paul must come down to belief.
@@theoutspokenhumanist The consensus of biblical scholars across religious lines is that Paul is the author of seven of the epistles that bear his name. That’s something we know.
And while we don’t know the names of any of the gospel authors, we have informed portraits of the contexts in which the authors wrote sufficient to know that their authors and audiences were independent of each other.
None of this requires Paul and Luke to know one another. None of this requires Luke to have written Acts.
If someone claimed the author of Acts wrote the authentic Pauline epistles they’d be shot down immediately and you won’t see any published papers in academic venues making this claim. They write in entirely different ways, with different vocabulary, different literary themes, different genres, different ideologies and theologies, some of which flatly contradict each other, as do their specific historical claims about the relationships between the apostles.
The skeptical position “It all comes down to belief” is unjustified, and doesn’t interact with the actual evidence.
@@abhbible I think we have different standard about what we know.
The consensus of biblical scholars is merely an informed opinion. If it were truly known, it would be a demonstrable fact and no consensus would be required.
It is not true to say we know the gospel authors were independent of each other.
We can be fairly sure Mark and John are independent, in as much as they do not rely upon the other two but Matthew & Luke are 85% direct copies of Mark and where they do add their own perspectives they differ hugely from each other.
I do agree that their audiences were almost certainly independent, and the gospels seem to be a focus of belief for different churches/Christian groups, as evidenced by Paul’s letters to these communities.
I did not claim Paul and Luke knew each other or that Luke wrote Acts. That is Christian tradition based upon the New Testament, as you surely must know.
I agree entirely regarding the style etc of Acts and the Letters and I did not say that Luke wrote them. I was merely offering a hypothetical, fanciful, example to make a specific point regarding the way you assert our ability to validate the existence of Paul. I’m surprised you didn’t see that.
What actual evidence are you referring to?
As I have already made clear, it is invalid to use the bible to prove the bible, or to use Paul’s letters to prove Paul. If you possess genuine evidence for the existence of Paul which does not come from the bible, or from later Christian writers who knew no more than you and I, please let me know.
The skeptical position is not, ‘It all comes down to belief’, it is simply that we lack the evidence to be certain of anything claimed by the bible’s authors, with the exception of a few place names and people incidental to the story.
@@theoutspokenhumanist The consensus of scholars in a field is never merely an informed opinion. It’s the knowledge of thousands of people who are in the best position to evaluate the evidence. Consensus forms around demonstration. A demonstration doesn’t eliminate a consensus. You have it backwards here.
We aren’t “using the Bible to prove the Bible.” We’re using the Bible to evidence a hypothesis about the Bible. The idea that you can’t use a document to propose explanations about that document is ridiculous and not something any historian takes seriously. Again, biblical scholars across religious lines agree with this methodology.
Are you a PC gamer?
@@icypirate11 I was in my younger years 😅
You don't have one contemporary, independent source for Jesus or Paul. Saying that the bible is a source of these characters is like saying that the book Peter Pan is a source for a boy who could fly, it's not enough you need outside sources.
@@BlackLionSupreme No. You don’t need “outside sources,” for figures. That’s not a criteria, probably because defining “outside what” is impossible to do in a way that isn’t arbitrary. Do you need sources outside the Roman Empire for Roman figures? No.
Every text in the Bible was composed outside of the Bible originally and collected together only after the fact. The Bible’s sources are independent of each other regardless of the fact that they end up in a collection later.
@@abhbible outside sources establish credibility and are definitely apart of the criteria of fact checking. We don't have to rely on outside sources of the existence of the Roman Empire because of the overwhelming archeological and independent evidence something you don't have for Paul or Jesus. It's not that you can't use the bible as a reference it's the level of reliability when doing so you have to take under consideration. The bible is not a history book, so when evaluating historical matters it falls short.
@@BlackLionSupreme The Bible is a collection of very different kinds of texts. Some of them are historical and some are not. Making sweeping generalizations about their historical reliability is fallacious. This is why we have these criteria, so we can apply them to each text independently.