Monday, February 10, 2014

If St Paul Killed Christians --

-- that is to say, if Saul of Tarsus, before his conversion to Christianity, when he renamed himself Paul, killed Christians --

* Why do we know the name of only one of his victims: Stephen, traditionally the first Christian martyr? Well, actually, in one New Testament passage Paul says only that he stood by and watched with approval as Stephen was killed, and in another he says that he imprisoned some other Christians, both men and women -- whose names are never mentioned. And neither are any of the names of any of the people who stoned Stephen, nor of any of the Sanhedrin who condemned him to death. There are no names whatsoever associated with Saul famous horrible persecution of Christians except for his own name and Stephen's.

* Why do we hear neither of Saul's co-persecutors attempting to kill or imprison him after his conversion, nor of any Christians objecting to his conversion because of his persecuting past, nor attempting to take revenge for that persecution -- nor, for that, matter, attempts at revenge by non-Christian relatives or friends of Saul's victims?

It could be that we learn none of these details in the New Testament or other early Christian writings simply because Paul and the author of Acts, Luke, most likely, had other things on their minds as they wrote. Or it could be that Paul invented Stephen -- and all other Christians before him, and Jesus, and St Peter and a few other things too -- without it ever occurring to him that 2000 thousand years later, the absence of certain details in his stories might seem odd to some weirdo who posts on the Internet and calls himself a monkey.

* How many un-life-like details like these have to be noticed and commented upon before the experts -- the supposed experts, the academic Biblical scholars and theologians -- acknowledge that it seems possible that the entire story of the origins of Christianity, including all the earliest accounts of Jesus, may be fictional, mythical?

As I've said again and again, I'm not claiming to have proven a damn thing here about the origins of Christianity. All that I, if not many if not most if not all of the people referred to as mythicists, am saying, is that it doesn't seem completely certain to me that Jesus existed, and that I would like to see the question discussed by the aforementioned supposed experts. And as I've said repeatedly, since that's all we're saying, it seems misleading to refer to us as mythicists. People with open minds, would seem to me to be a more accurate designation.

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