I have seen how biblical historians can be driven by agenda. And in this case there is more evidence of their agenda than there are facts. Certainly getting Paul closer to the time Jesus was showing how the body can just appear and disappear into thin air would give him more authority to interpret what it meant. So if Paul could have, he would have boasted about the timeline...if it was short. But it was 20 years, so not a word about it from Paul, who boasted about how many people had seen Jesus show how the body can be levitated (the body is not what you think it is.)
According to your historians, what is the best reason they offer to bring Paul within three years of the time Jesus demonstrated the body is not what you think it is?
Here your agenda seems to be showing as well. You only have Paul's word that he was a student of Gamaliel who may have been head of the Sanhedrin. You don't know how active Paul was in the Sanhedrin there being a limited number of them, and Paul never listed among them. At best the student Paul may have been used as an intern, and later as a henchman. That's not the same as "active in" the Sanhedrin as if he were a voting member.
But yah, Paul was heavily complicit in the murder of one of the greatest voices to carry on Jesus' message, Stephen being among a small handful, maybe less than five, who understood what Jesus was saying. This is an OMEN of what was to come. Paul continued to destroy the message, only from a more cerebral method, giving a page to the Jesuits to come. He was a Pharisee, after all.
Again, unabashed agenda driven opinion. Zero evidence for this. They couldn't even find 11 apostles to contribute written testimony (or any testimony) about Jesus let alone Paul. In the letter of James, he is actually complaining about Paul, without mentioning his name. And when Paul talks about "Judaizers" he is talking about James, even though Paul was a Judaizer himself, being the Pharisee that he was, trying to squeeze blood out of Jesus' message with old testament analogies. Peter only mentions that what Paul says is hard to understand. Hardly a glowing endorsement coming from someone who may have spent as many as three years with Jesus and could still hardly understand what he was saying...and years later showing that he still did not understand by the Jewish politics he was playing around the company he kept at meals.
My source for the 20 year date goes closer to the actual events than you would believe, judging from two millennia away. Nor is understanding a time or location anchored phenomenon. From two millennia away i can understand the phenomenon of agenda and the splitting of factions. Nor is closeness to events a guarantor of understanding as admittedly, after three years, the most popular students of Jesus were still asking dumb questions, still not understanding. The Warren Report and the official 911 report also show us that proximity to events in time do not necessarily render honest appraisals of what actually happened and what it meant. Understanding what Jesus meant is not a time based function. And it's my understanding that Paul did not understand any more than a few of Jesus closer students after walking a few miles with him...even the source of my 20 year date.
Depends one what Paul means by salvation. There are two basic types in dispute: the salvation of mankind, or the salvation of Christ. For the salvation of Christ, all that is needed is Christ alone. For the salvation of mankind then is needed the death of Christ. Paul was very much interested in the salvation of mankind, or at least a culled demographic of mankind...as were most Pharisees...who were interested to see themselves resurrected in the future. But instead of resurrection, Jesus told at least one Pharisee, and by implication all others, that they were so slow in understanding that they would need to be born again...in reference to the extra time given to learn through re-incarnation.
My sources weren't Pharisees but did need more time to learn and through subsequent re-incarnation(s) was finally able to make their bodies appear and disappear into thin air, as well traverse the time phenomenon to explain things more clearly.
Finally, Paul himself suffered from cognitive dissonance, just as you do. It was Paul himself who said that in Christ there is "no Jew or Greek". Meaning, salvation is not for Jews or Greeks, so there is nothing available to them except the death of Christ (for those that seek their own salvation). By contrast, Jesus insisted that people lay down their lives for the sake of Christ, meaning, it is for Christ's salvation that people should lay down their lives.
Yes so i distinguish them apart by naming the original Good, and naming the imposter gOd, with a capital O, but missing some very vital qualification. This is not a new concept, the bible itself (in its telling of two different gospels) admits that the gOd of this world is the "devil". My definition of devil is: All That Is Difficult. Self deception is especially very difficult to overcome.
Well yes, it is beyond your comprehension, so why are you commenting with such vigor and assurance?
But not beyond the comprehension of Jesus who called them "sons of the devil" who traced their genealogy back through bloodlines back toward Adam and Eve, who themselves were children of the devil (self deception is very difficult to overcome).
Humanity is the product of self deception, a deception that re-imagines gOd after it's own opinions. Undeceived, there are no males or females, no slave or free, no Jews or Greeks. Undeceived, there is ONLY CHRIST. By insisting on your own existence, you are insisting that besides Good, there is another Good.
A simple question, Who was Jesus Christ?
