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Comment by Salgat

19 days ago

Most people don't realize this but Paul is the earliest known Christian writer and the earliest surviving source for the Gospel. His letters also independently corroborate not only Jesus' existence as a real person (in addition to secular sources), but also that Jesus' close followers genuinely believed they met Jesus' resurrected form. Since Paul's witness is dated to within 3-5 years of Jesus' death, this also shows that the Gospel didn't develop as a myth/legend, but as something people genuinely believed who had personally met Jesus. It's a fascinating story of a Jewish religious scholar who hallucinates on the road to Damascus, has a sudden complete change of heart, and ends up transforming Christianity from a local Jewish cult into a worldwide religion.

Another fascinating topic in biblical study is the criterion of embarrassment, where the early Christian writings left in bizarre and unflattering events that members of a cult would generally leave out. The most obvious example is the crucifixion itself (considered by Jews to be extremely shameful and cursed), the repeated unflattering presentation of the disciples (portrayed as regularly confused, lacking in faith, petty about status, falling asleep at critical moments, even rejecting Jesus at the end), even Jesus' own despair when he was publicly humiliated and executed, crying out asking God why he was forsaken. This is in contrast to Islam, which has Jesus rescued and replaced at the moment of execution.

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Salgat

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rietta  19 days ago

Spot on. The Criterion of Embarrassment is a powerful tool here; the fact that women were the primary witnesses to the resurrection is a classic example, given that a woman's testimony held little to no legal weight in 1st-century Roman or Jewish contexts. If you were inventing a myth to gain social traction, you simply wouldn't write it that way.

Your point about verisimilitude extends to Onomastics as well. Research shows that the New Testament Gospels accurately reflect the specific frequency of Jewish names in 1st-century Palestine. In contrast, Gnostic texts often use names that don't fit the era or geography, frequently showing 3rd-century Egyptian linguistic influences instead. It suggests the canonical authors had "boots on the ground" knowledge that the later Gnostic writers lacked.

spacebanana7  19 days ago

I feel we should be hesitant about claims like this. It might well be true that Paul was the earliest writer.

But it also seems strange that Matthew, a presumably literate tax collector, wrote nothing at all before Paul despite being a disciple during the time Jesus was around.

  • Salgat  19 days ago

    Mind you I am only saying the earliest known writer, it's likely that most Christian writings are lost to history. And technically we don't even know who wrote the Gospels with any certainty. Only Paul's 7 undisputed letters are universally accepted by secular scholarship as being genuinely authored by Paul, the authorship of the rest of the New Testament is disputed.

    • spacebanana7  19 days ago

      There has never been a manuscript of a Gospel with anyone other than the traditional author attributed. And they’ve always been cited by the traditional names - even in Islamic, Jewish or heretical writings.

      The arguments made in favour of Paul’s authenticity largely come from internal textual cues - but is that really more persuasive?

      I don’t mean to suggest too strongly one side of the Gospel authorship debate over the other, only that these issues mix objective facts with subjective interpretation in a way that makes it very difficult to outsource to scholarly consensus.

      3 replies →

  • hackingonempty  18 days ago

    I would expect Jesus to be the earliest writer.

    • Salgat  18 days ago

      While Jesus is portrayed as extremely fluent in Jewish scripture, he's only ever shown to have written once and in the ground. Nothing exists indicating he ever wrote any works to be passed down. Some theologians theorize that Jesus purposely avoided writing due to parallels with the Old Testament's written laws that condemned man, while Jesus came to do the opposite.