Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Bucky Ball]

The first time anyone said that there even was a collection of letters of a "Paul" was 150 years after he *supposedly* wrote them.
There is a Latin document (165-185 CE) called the Muratorian Canon, a list of Christian writings. Thirteen Pauline letters appeared in the list.
There are a number of theories proposed by scholars about how these came about, and no firm concensus. The theories are fairly complicated, but it was not until (according to one major theory) late in the 1st Century that verious communities looked for and started sharing latters which were written to individual churches. Just like Deuteronomy just happened to be "found" during a temple remodeling, there are no firm dates or archaeology to prove what's in the Pauline literature is actually from whom they say it is, and the fact that some known letters are included we know he didn't write, makes then all suspect, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sure that's true, Bucky,  but the vast majority of scholars date the earliest writings of Paul's epistles to 50 AD.  Giving these dates the benefit of the doubt, even 50 AD still leaves almost 20 years before Paul writes anything about the son of god walking around the planet.  I donno, I live in reality.  If the son of fuckin god is here on earth talking to people and has an important message for all humanity (and rmember,  these people are totally convinced he's the son of god because he came back from the dead) I'd think this god would make sure his followers were writing it down immediately so it could be accurate and souls would quickly be saved from burning in eternal hell.  

But nooOOOOOooo.  Instead these followers diddle around for decades and rely on oral stories before anything is put on a piece of second grade papyrus paper which crumbles easily and has to be copied over and over again.   Either this god is amazingly stupid or the fairy stories evolved and eventually became embellished enough for anonymous people to finally write them down.   

I think it was our wonderful Aliza who said, "Jesus: the Paul Bunyon of 1st century AD." Or something similar to that.  LOLOL

Paul was a Jew. A "son of god" (and there were many) simply meant the person was righteous. Generals, prophets, other leaders ... etc were "sons of god". It didn't mean then, what it means now. There were many early Christianities, (see Ehrman book of the same name). It took decades to centuries for orthodoxy to develop. Also related, and somewhat interesting, (as it ws so different than we assume it always meant), is the topic of "divine beings" in hebrew culture. Many PhD diisertaions have been written on the topic. The "heavenly host" consisted of many divine beings, (but that didn't mean they were gods, AND it also didn't mean in ANY WAY, that the divine beings had ANY had "equivalent" status in Hebrew culture as "the Father", ie Yahweh. Jesus in any Hebrew culture (the original) could not have been a *junior* Yahweh. He still could have been a "son of god", and a "divine being", yet in NO way, would that have made him a god, or equivalent to God. There was one Yahweh god. Even if Jesus was a divine son, for Jews, that would not make him an equal being ... until non-Jew (later) Christians turned him into part of a trinity.