Talk:Paul of Tarsus

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Contents 1 Unmaried Paul 2 Archives 3 Merge New Perspective on Paul here? 4 Another View of Paul 5 Cultural depictions of Paul of Tarsus 6 Proposed link 7 Saul's Letters of Credit 8 Revision needed 9 Paul of Tarsus - the BBC TV series broadcast in the 1960s 10 Timeline

[edit] Unmaried Paul

The argument is made that Paul wrote that he was never married. While that it seems likely to be the case, we still cannot be sure from this excerpt: "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am" (1 Cor 7:8). Just because a person is not married does not mean that person was never married. This should be more fully clarified. Stevecrozz 03:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archives

I have archived previous discussions, as it was getting very unwieldy. Follow links at the top of the page. David L Rattigan 09:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge New Perspective on Paul here?

The content of New Perspective on Paul does not seem to me to merit an article apart, and is already dealt with here, even if not with quite as much detail. Lima 08:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The New Perspective on Paul is a major movement in New Testament scholarship. The article gives far more information than is included here, and has plenty of scope for improvement and expansion. Paul of Tarsus is a long enough article as it is without merging more information into it. David L Rattigan 09:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the suggestion to merge. NPP deserves a separate article. Jim Ellis 13:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the suggestion to merge these two articles. Paul of NC 18:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

An excellent article on the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), Federal Vision (FV) theology, and the Reformational understanding of the Christian doctrine of justification can be found at [1]

Since not even one editor has agreed with the idea of merging the two articles, I am removing the "merge" tags I put there. I very much appreciate the input that there has been. Lima 12:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another View of Paul

This section is heavily POV and also smells of original research. While it is a viewpoint held to by some, it needs to be rewritten in NPOV. 152.23.75.21 21:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed; it looks like someone just put their divinity school paper up on Wikipedia. It should be heavily edited or removed altogether. I haven't read the article closely enough, but perhaps it already says what other sections say. -Patstuart 22:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural depictions of Paul of Tarsus

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 18:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed link

I have been instructed to post my website: http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/appp.html for review. Please, if any reader think it is worth to be posted, do so. Bernard Muller

[edit] Saul's Letters of Credit

Can somebody fix the main article to explain how, exactly, Jerusalem had sufficient power to extradite Christians from Damascus? Was Damascus a vassal state at the time, held in subjugation by Jerusalem, somehow? Weren't both Jerusalem and Damascus equally compelled to render tribute to Rome? How would either one of them have had enough money left over to pay for the kind of arrests and prosecutions that we are now led to believe were so much more common in Rome a hundred years later, when the likely audiences of Acts were more likely to accept is a reliable, historical account?

Are there any records of Roman provincial governors managing the persecution of Christians in 60 AD? Are there any payroll ledgers that mention either Saul or Paul working for the governor there? (Every now and then some archaeological digs yield up payroll and requisitions ledgers.)

In Acts, Saul is said to have made a name for himself in Jerusalem as a notorious persecutor of Christians, and - based on that reputation - somehow obtained certain "letters of credit" with which to effect the extradition of Christians from Damascus to Jerusalem. This looks like an unsubstantiated claim deserving a citation outside of Acts. Did Saul have any notoriety at all, either as an upstanding Jew, a Roman man of means, or an intrepid persecutor of the Jews? Can somebody cite a source (outside of Acts) where Paul was said to have been a successful baiter and persecutor of Christians? Is the account in Acts the sole source for connecting Paul with Saul?

At least one work, "Saint Saul" by Donald Harman Akenson (Oxford University Press, 2000) argues that the final version of Acts was not circulated until long after an earlier letter to the Galatians was already received. More importantly, the letter was apparently recovered from where it had been sent, and if it was only fragmentary at that point, reassembled or recompiled by an unnamed devout Christian of the 1st or 2nd century, and copied and passed along, before Acts was even drafted for the first time. If there are intermediate hands at work, those hands might well have belonged to an heir to Luke's line, if not Luke himself rewriting what he had already written 10 or 15 years earlier. Akenson sees a conflict between Acts and the Letter to the Galatians, and argues that the Letter to the Galatians had, at least at the start, a measure of chronological priority.

Jews were generally not roman citizens and thus had no appeal to Roman juridical procedures, instead they were governed by Jewish authorities. Financially speaking, persecutions are cheap, sometimes even profitable if the persecuted has wealth. The persecutions in the 60s AD were undertaken by Nero in the city of Rome, and many sources, including Roman historians, attest. As far as "pay-roll legers", I think you overestimate just what archaeology is capable of. In ancient history, sources are virtually nil, and our written texts which we have almost always survive in medieval vellum manuscripts in their oldest form. Sometimes the sands of Egypt yield some papyrus, but we never could expect to find the kind of sources you request. Our information on Augustus Caesar's imperium is built off some thin sources. We know almost nothing about his heirs to the throne. If it were not for Tacitus, we would know almost nothing about the conquest of Britain, &c.

The sources for Paul are his own letters and Acts, soemthing we are lukcky to have as nothing exists similar in the case of 99% of people in the Roman world. There are some apocryphal texts on Paul, but they have no real biographical value. The difference between his comments in Galatians and Luke's description in Acts, which is concerning his conversion, has been known since antiquity and subject to understanding ever since.Lostcaesar 07:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC) Sorry to mess this about - my mistake Roger Arguile 20:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revision needed

I have made a few deletions on the ground that this article no longer distinguishes between the views of serious commentators and both famous people who have not expertise in this area and cranks. It is far too long and lacks any real guidance to the reader as to what are the serious contenders for believability. I fear that, as so often in matters religious, everyone who has an interest thinks that they have a right to a view and to add information. It needs a lot of work to disentangle the wheat from the chaff and to give it some focus Roger Arguile 20:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

From 'Scholarly Views' onwards a complete rewrite is needed. Those scholars cited represent but a small and not necessarily representative sample of US scholarship. As long as WP is not the preserve of the USA it is very important to remember the existence of German and British, not to mention Italian etc. scholars. That the editor has read a few books is not enough for the kind of good scholarship towards which WP aims. I am sorry to be cruel. I feel it would be better to delete the whole of the article from SV onwards and start again. Roger Arguile 21:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

'Alternative Views' Some brief reference might be made to Maccoby and others but we have too many oddball views in extenso here. Having taken the bull by the horns and removed the very extensive coverage of Michael White, a scholarly conspectus is needed. Frankly Professor White's views are not hugely original; Ed Sanders, by contrast, gets very small short shrift and Dunn even less. A decent bibliography for those wanting scholarly views would not go amiss. What happened to Kasemann, Ck. Barrett, Raymond Brown (who gets a brief mention), and what about Karl Barth? (I think he wrote a slightly(!) influential commentary on Romans). Roger Arguile 21:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the note very long because, as I have indicated, a revision is being worked on which may supercede the request to hive off material into other articles. I think that the suggestion insufficiently notices the particular problems of dispersing informatin which needs to be all of a piece. Roger Arguile 22:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I have now revised the Life, taking into account, but not concealing the inconsistencies between Acts and Paul's own wriritng. I have reduced the number of links as being far too many. I am very keen to have discussions about wwhat I have done but the above produced no response so I went ahead. I am working on the Writings at present because I believe that some mainstream scholarship needs to be presented for the benefit of readers. PLEASE COMMENT Roger Arguile 18:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I have now attmpted to respond to some of the comments. May I suggest that it is not possible to provide simply alternative views of the chronology and leave the reader to decide; there are to omany imponderables and uncertainties. There are at least five views each of which depends on making asusmptions but none of which reconciles all the statements. There may be texual errors, St. Paul's memory (about fourteen years) may have been faulty' Acts' informants may not have known the whole story and so on. What I have presented is a very short resume of a considerable debate. (I have identified fifteen major works on the subject). To opt for any of them could be regarded as POV. Could anyone wishing to make a change contact me here first? I know that is asking for a lot. Roger Arguile 14:43, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paul of Tarsus - the BBC TV series broadcast in the 1960s

Paul of Tarsus was the title of a BBC TV series first broadcast in 1960 and repeated in 1962 in which the actor Patrick Troughton played the title role. DFH 19:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline

Is it just me or is the timeline in the opposite order from what you would expect? It goes from 80CE to 20CE as you read down, I'd have thought it would be the other way around. --Joey Roe ^talk/contrib 17:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)