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Paul, Not Jesus Spead Chrisitianity

rhinefire

rhinefire

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I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus. According to this documentary he changed his name to Paul and spent his life spreading the word. It went on to say if it were not for this man Paul it may be that Chrisitanity never would have survived for the lack of followers. One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
 
rhinefire said:
I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus. According to this documentary he changed his name to Paul and spent his life spreading the word. It went on to say if it were not for this man Paul it may be that Chrisitanity never would have survived for the lack of followers. One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
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Well . . . then you made a poor assumption.

There were barely "hundreds of thousands" of total people in the entire region.
 
rhinefire said:
I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus. According to this documentary he changed his name to Paul and spent his life spreading the word. It went on to say if it were not for this man Paul it may be that Chrisitanity never would have survived for the lack of followers. One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
Click to expand...

Apparently there were a lot of Jesus professional peers i.e. other prophets/Messiah's at the time. Paul and Peter were apparently the two who set out to spread the word of Jesus and preserve it for others after the crucifixion.
 
rhinefire said:
I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus. According to this documentary he changed his name to Paul and spent his life spreading the word. It went on to say if it were not for this man Paul it may be that Chrisitanity never would have survived for the lack of followers. One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
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THis is nothing new to me, but my question has to do with whether or not Paul really had an epiphany on the road to Damascus, or whether he simply saw an opportunity to co-opt the movent he had been fighting so ruthlessly?

He never met Jesus while alive, and his own message was not always in alignment with that of Jesus, especially in regards to tolerance, and so I do wonder.

My own attitude is that one should read the red letters and sift though the rest. Red always trumps black in this particular case.
 
Harshaw said:
Well . . . then you made a poor assumption.

There were barely "hundreds of thousands" of total people in the entire region.
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This is false.
 
Guy Incognito said:
This is false.
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I'm afraid not. The population of Judea was estimated around 500,000.

And it's not like you'll even try to back up your assertions, so why are you bothering? Miss me, did you? Your attention whoring is noted.
 
rhinefire said:
I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus.
Click to expand...

Frankly, I have my doubts that Jesus knew that a religion would be named after him at some point in the future.
 
Gardener said:
THis is nothing new to me, but my question has to do with whether or not Paul really had an epiphany on the road to Damascus, or whether he simply saw an opportunity to co-opt the movent he had been fighting so ruthlessly?
Click to expand...

It's hard to say with any certainty. I personally suspect that he actually did have a conversion of sorts, based on a recognition of inherrent conscience, which happens to a good number of people in their mid-life years. As for why he chose Jesus and/or the church as he envisioned it, as the focus of his newfound consciousness, is something we can likely never know. Whatever the case, I'm always pleased to see evolutionary progress, rather than digression, in matters of personal enlightenment. It rarely happens in one big bang, and seems to happen gradually and incrementally.
 
lizzie said:
Frankly, I have my doubts that Jesus knew that a religion would be named after him at some point in the future.
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Christianity is not named after Jesus. It is based on Jesus, who is the Christ.
 
Harshaw said:
I'm afraid not. The population of Judea was estimated around 500,000.

And it's not like you'll even try to back up your assertions, so why are you bothering? Miss me, did you? Your attention whoring is noted.
Click to expand...

As a matter of fact I can back up my assertion. See Menshe Har-El, Jerusalem & Judea: roads and Fortifications, the Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 44, No 1, winter 1981, in support of my contention the the population of the region numbered in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands.

Your own statements in addition to being false, have a glaring absence of citations, so in the future you are well advised not to throw stones from your glass house.
 
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rhinefire said:
I learned something this weekend I never knew. A man named Saul was determined to kill off al followers of Jesus Christ and aided in the murder of nearly all of them. He then had a "experience" that changed him to then spread the word of Jesus. According to this documentary he changed his name to Paul and spent his life spreading the word. It went on to say if it were not for this man Paul it may be that Chrisitanity never would have survived for the lack of followers. One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
Click to expand...

Pick yourself up a Bible, if you struggle with the King James version try a NIV, New International Version. It is much easier to read than KJV. Start out with the Book of Mark. The experience Saul had on the road was Jesus speaking to him. His conversion was instant and he is the Apostle to the gentiles (non-Jews).
 
lizzie said:
Frankly, I have my doubts that Jesus knew that a religion would be named after him at some point in the future.
Click to expand...

He never intended to start a new religion, His thing was to reform Judaism. He was, after all, a devout Jew.

Frankly, I'm surprised that somebody had never heard of St. Paul...the man wrote half of the New Testament.
 
lizzie said:
It's hard to say with any certainty. I personally suspect that he actually did have a conversion of sorts, based on a recognition of inherrent conscience, which happens to a good number of people in their mid-life years. As for why he chose Jesus and/or the church as he envisioned it, as the focus of his newfound consciousness, is something we can likely never know. Whatever the case, I'm always pleased to see evolutionary progress, rather than digression, in matters of personal enlightenment. It rarely happens in one big bang, and seems to happen gradually and incrementally.
Click to expand...

If you read the Bible it is very clear what caused Saul to convert. It was the supernatural work of Jesus who chose Saul to take the message to the gentiles.
 
Neosteve said:
Pick yourself up a Bible, if you struggle with the King James version try a NIV, New International Version. It is much easier to read than KJV. Start out with the Book of Mark. The experience Saul had on the road was Jesus speaking to him. His conversion was instant and he is the Apostle to the gentiles (non-Jews).
Click to expand...

Did he ever claim that Jesus spoke to him? I tend to suspect that his own conscience was speaking to him, and had nothing to do with Jesus himself. He may have been influenced by the teachings of Jesus, but when a person undergoes inner change, it comes from within him.
 
Guy Incognito said:
As a matter of fact I can back up my assertion. See Menshe Har-El, Jerusalem & Judea: roads and Fortifications, the Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 44, No 1, winter 1981, in support of my contention the the population of the region numbered in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands.

Your own statements in addition to being false, have a glaring absence of citations, so in the future you are well advised not to throw stones from your glass house.
Click to expand...

Scanning the references on Wikipedia again, are we? How about you actually post their assertions verbatim, in their words? The chances that you've actually even READ what you cite are vanishingly small.
 
rhinefire said:
One question jumps out at me, if Jesus was the Messiha (sp) why was his following so tiny? Just how many of his follwers were there? I know nothing of the Bible but I always assumed there were hundreds of thousands following him (Jesus) while he was alive.
Click to expand...

From what I understand, his following was rather small overall. He appears to have been sort of like a current-day travelling preacher (or teacher), who stands at the street corner talking about his beliefs on life, and how to live, and some people will tune in to what he has to say. He was thought to be a heretic by many of his time.
 
Harshaw said:
Scanning the references on Wikipedia again, are we? How about you actually post their assertions verbatim, in their words? The chances that you've actually even READ what you cite are vanishingly small.
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I don't think that's on Wikipedia, nor do I have the ability to cut and paste from this journal article. However the thrust is that jerusalem saw an influx of one million Jewish pilgrims to Jerusalem from the region not including the diaspora. This is just one of many citations that fit with the well known fact that the population of the region was in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands. If you were worth my time I would be happy to provide more. But since your position is the ridiculous one, you have the burden of demonstrating it. I'd be happy to retract as soon as you are able to provide so much as a single shred of evidence that there were fewer than one million people living in the levant at the time of Christ.

The fact is that you are wrong, your assertion is baseless. Now Be a man and admit it.

Edit: since I am such a nice guy, and to make sure that none of the innocent third parties reading this are led astray by harshaw's BS, here is a better cite. "the famous calculations of beloch; who placed the Jewish population of Palestine at 2000000, are still the springboard do many discussions. More recent results range from Harnack's estimate of 500000 to Juster's of 5000000 for Jewish population while SW Baron puts the non Jewish population at 300000 the Jewish at 2200000, and FC Grant thinks it 'safer to say 1.5 to 2.5 millions.'". Copied by hand from The Density of Population in Ancient Palestine, CC McCown, Journal of biblical Literature.
 
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Well, we do know Jesus didn't spread Christianity. He was long dead by the time the movement took hold.
 
The person who really gave Christianity a boost was Constantine, who legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire. It was the Romans who spread it to Europe, and the Europeans who spread it to the new world. Had it not been for Constantine, Christianity would have been a minor historical curiosity, a religion practiced for a time in a limited geographic space by a handful of devout followers.

So, why isn't Constantine sanctified?
 
lizzie said:
Did he ever claim that Jesus spoke to him? I tend to suspect that his own conscience was speaking to him, and had nothing to do with Jesus himself. He may have been influenced by the teachings of Jesus, but when a person undergoes inner change, it comes from within him.
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Yes, in Galatians. Chapter 1 starting around verse 11.
 
Guy Incognito said:
I don't think that's on Wikipedia, nor do I have the ability to cut and paste from this journal article. However the thrust is that jerusalem saw an influx of one million Jewish pilgrims to Jerusalem from the region not including the diaspora. This is just one of many citations that fit with the well known fact that the population of the region was in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands. If you were worth my time I would be happy to provide more. But since your position is the ridiculous one, you have the burden of demonstrating it. I'd be happy to retract as soon as you are able to provide so much as a single shred of evidence that there were fewer than one million people living in the levant at the time of Christ.

The fact is that you are wrong, your assertion is baseless. Now Be a man and admit it.
Click to expand...

Oh, of COURSE you can't, and yes, it's on Wikipedia. Never mind that if you actually had it on hand, you could, you know, TYPE it. But you've never actually READ it. You've seen it cited a reference only.

I'm already worth your time, as you've proven by addressing me THRICE in this thread. I haven't bothered with YOU in months, so you MUST have missed me.

Now, of course, you will pretend to ignore me.
 
Harshaw said:
Oh, of COURSE you can't, and yes, it's on Wikipedia. Never mind that if you actually had it on hand, you could, you know, TYPE it. But you've never actually READ it. You've seen it cited a reference only.

I'm already worth your time, as you've proven by addressing me THRICE in this thread. I haven't bothered with YOU in months, so you MUST have missed me.
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See the edit. I then look forward to your heartfelt and humble apology. Please stop spreading disinformation. The population of Judea at the time of Christ was around a million on the LOW END of scholarly estimates. Higher estimates are in the two to three million range.
 
Neosteve said:
Pick yourself up a Bible, if you struggle with the King James version try a NIV, New International Version. It is much easier to read than KJV. Start out with the Book of Mark. The experience Saul had on the road was Jesus speaking to him. His conversion was instant and he is the Apostle to the gentiles (non-Jews).
Click to expand...

I don't know about "immediate" but being struck blind for a few days will sure give a guy something to ponder...especially when people you've never met before look you up and heal your vision with a touch.
 
Dittohead not! said:
The person who really gave Christianity a boost was Constantine, who legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire. It was the Romans who spread it to Europe, and the Europeans who spread it to the new world. Had it not been for Constantine, Christianity would have been a minor historical curiosity, a religion practiced for a time in a limited geographic space by a handful of devout followers.

So, why isn't Constantine sanctified?
Click to expand...

There's some doubt if Constantine's conversion was real, or a political ruse. OTOH, his conversion was a pretty big turning point.

I think he is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox traditions, but not so much in the West. Probably because he had a lot of enemies in Rome.
 
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