Is reassessing Paul's timeline a direct and necessary consequence of deeming the Gospels and Acts as non-historical?

[Giuseppe]

I still find some mythicists repeating some version of the phrase "within a few years of the crucifixion" or "the presumed date of the crucifixion." This imposes the later beliefs of Christian writers into the earlier writings of Paul as though he was writing in response to a historical Jesus which is a conclusion at odds with that of the Christ-myth theory. It is simply improper methodology to assume a chronology for Paul based on the later assignment of a date for a historicized Jesus and the immediate inauguration of the Christian movement. Bottom line: reassessing Paul's timeline is a direct and necessary consequence of deeming the Gospels and Acts as non-historical. Re-dating Paul would likely impact our understanding of his thoughts and purpose.

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/ ... .html#more

The author goes to examine Aretas.

In my opinion, Aretas appears to be an interpolation.

So, without Aretas in Paul, is is as if we had the Jesus story without Caiphas, Herod and Pilate.

Paul would become a nebulous figure who can be dated in any time before the Marcion's publication of the Apostolikon.

I think that a Jewish mythicist has been able to find successfully Paul in the talmudic sources.

[ABuddhist]

For my part, no - redating Paul is not a necessary consequence of deeming the Gospels and Acts to be non-historical. But such a thing leaves me more open to such arguments.

[Chrissy Hansen]

I don't think Aretas is an interpolation (never found good reasoning for this one, personally), but I also don't think it is necessary to redate Paul on the basis of the Gospels... mostly because I largely view the Gospels as separate entities already reliant on the Pauline epistles, especially Mark and Luke. So at that point, whether the Gospels date to 70 CE or to 150 CE, is irrelevant to me in the end.

[GakuseiDon]

Is reassessing Paul's timeline a direct and necessary consequence of deeming the Gospels and Acts as non-historical?

Dr Carrier doesn't believe so, at least for his mythicist theory. Carrier appears to agree with the consensus of biblical scholars.

As Carrier writes in his OHJ, page 260-1:

The current consensus in regard to the canonical Epistles is best summa­rized in Bart Ehrman's Forged. Seven letters are commonly agreed to be authentically written by the apostle Paul in or around the 50s CE. [12] Those are 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. With the possible exception of Philemon (which has no rel­evant content for our purposes), I think that assessment is probably correct - although we know that even these seven letters have been meddled with.

The footnote reads:

[12] This dating is perhaps too gullibly based on Acts; but Paul certainly wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters; and he wrote well after Aretas assumed control of Damascus (which he mentions in 2 Cor. 1 1 .32), which was between the years 37 and 40; and most (if not all) of his literary activity came fourteen to seventeen years after his conversion (Gal. 1.15-18; 2.1; possibly also 2 Cor. 12.2); all of which argues for his letters being written in the 50s. Gerd Ludemann, Paul, the Founder of Christianity (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), details why we should trust a chronology derived only from Paul's letters and not from Acts.

Gerd Ludemann was a biblical scholar.

[Giuseppe]

Gerd Ludemann was a biblical scholar.

yes, he was the same biblical scholar who conceded that the silence of Paul about a historical Jesus is very much unexpected and surprising.

[neilgodfrey]

I think the person quoted in the OP is correct insofar as he speaks of a "reassessment" of the timeline of Paul and not necessarily a change in that timeline. But I seem to be out of step with others here, so maybe someone can tell me what I'm missing.

Does not the traditional dating of Paul's letters depend on "pillar apostles" in Jerusalem being the same persons identified in the gospels, and hence alive and active in the mid-first century? Similarly, Paul's references to imprisonment, persecutions, ship-wreck, letter to the Romans -- aren't these related to the time-settings of Acts?

If the Gospels and Acts can be placed anywhere between 70 and 170 ce and if they are fictional narratives, then does it not follow that we are entitled to at least reassess the possibility that Paul's writings are likewise datable any time up to around the mid-second century?

If there is a "historical core" to the Gospels and Acts, and even if they were written as late as the mid-second century, then would not the orthodox time-line of Paul hold firm? Paul would then still have to be a contemporary of the three leading apostles of the Gospels; he would still need to be unacquainted with Rome in the 60s.

(I don't think Aretas needs to be decisive in dating Paul at any period. Paul's letters are replete with such tropes from the OT righteous persons and letter writing was an art that was taught, like other arts, with multiple fictional exercises. It might be a genuine historical reference but the odds are the same for it being a fiction. Until external or independent evidence comes along the settle the question that's how the odds must remain.)

[ABuddhist]

Does not the traditional dating of Paul's letters depend on "pillar apostles" in Jerusalem being the same persons identified in the gospels, and hence alive and active in the mid-first century? Similarly, Paul's references to imprisonment, persecutions, ship-wreck, letter to the Romans -- aren't these related to the time-settings of Acts?

If the Gospels and Acts can be placed anywhere between 70 and 170 ce and if they are fictional narratives, then does it not follow that we are entitled to at least reassess the possibility that Paul's writings are likewise datable any time up to around the mid-second century?

We certainly are entitled to reassess such a thing, but I personally support a 1st century CE Paul for the following reasons:

1. The existence of Gospels, based upon Paul's letters but replacing his minimal (even if not mythicist) portrayal of Jesus makes sense if Paul's letters were decades (if not centuries!) older than the gospels.

2. The so-called Pastoral letters attributed to Paul, which are dated to the 2nd century by mainstream and most mythicist scholarship, seem to be later because their content reflects a more developed church, theological disputes, etc.

3. If the letters had been severely edited in dependence upon Acts, then I would expect them to be easier to reconcile with acts's chronology. I am not denying that the letters probably were edited in some way in order to present a similar message to that in Acts, but by "severely edited in dependence upon Acts" I refer to the idea of making acts and the letters portray a similar career, range of journeys, etc.

4. The traditional, mainstream, explanation for Paul's letters' marginality in early Christians' writings (such as Justin's) is to me quite plausible - that the letters were regard as too contaminated by heresy to by trusted or cited.

I am aware that my arguments may be accused of relying upon incredulity and/or inertia, but I hope that you may find my perspective to be interesting - if only to refute.

[Giuseppe]

I believe much to the power of the conversions.

The author of this book was an eager follower of van Manen.

He gave up to his previous radical thesis and he concluded that at least one of the Gnostic authors who wrote under the name of Paul, worked before the 70 C.E.

[Irish1975]

Once the canonical narrative about Paul (Acts + late redactions in the epistles) is understood to be a 2nd-century fabrication, there is nowhere else to situate a historical Paul in the early history of Christianity. The question then becomes, why are all the witnesses to the Pauline Corpus so late in the historical record, i.e. from the era of Marcion and Polycarp onward? (The belief that 1 Clement and Ignatius are pre-Marcion—even if they did constitute substantial witnesses to canonical Paul—is based on nothing.)

Aretas? Even the most conservative Pauline scholar agrees that 2 Corinthians is a pastiche. In its context in chapter 11, the Aretas passage comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. No one can make it mean anything other than an echo of the story in Acts. Ridiculous to call that historical evidence.

[Giuseppe]

if the best Radical Criticism's thesis is that the epistles were a collection of previous mini-epistles, how can you prevent that the first of these writers wrote before 70 CE ?