Origins Of Christianity

[WAB]

Thomas Gray wrote, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

People just doofused it up.

 

[steve_bank]

How did Christianity get started? Fiction mixed with Jewish tradition and a lot of literary license.

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa

www.lobsangrampa.org

T Lobsang Rampa wrote books about his experiences as a Tibetan Monk. I read Third Eye as a kid. It was not until the 80s I learned he was an outright fraud. In court he claimed his body was taken over by a dead Tibetan Lama. Con artist or mentally ill and delusional, who knows. But people believed his writings.

T. Lobsang Rampa, a British plumber who claimed to be a Tibetan lama, gained a significant following for his books about Tibetan Buddhism and spirituality. While some found his works to be enlightening and inspirational, leading them to explore spiritual paths, others viewed his claims with skepticism and questioned his identity and the authenticity of his teachings.

Lobsang Rampa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Contoversy over authorship

Explorer and Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer was unconvinced about the book's origins and hired a private detective from Liverpool named Clifford Burgess to investigate Rampa. "In January 1957, Scotland Yard asked him to present a Tibetan passport or a residence permit. Rampa moved to Ireland. One year later, the scholars retained the services of Clifford Burgess, a leading Liverpool private detective. Burgess's report, when it came in, was terse. Lama Lobsang Rampa of Tibet, he determined after one month of inquiries, was none other than Cyril Henry Hoskin, a native of Plympton, Devonshire, the son of the village plumber and a high school dropout."[3] The findings of Burgess' investigation were published in the Daily Mail in February 1958.[4] Hoskin had never been to Tibet and spoke no Tibetan. In 1948, he had legally changed his name to Carl Kuon Suo before adopting the name Lobsang Rampa.[5] An obituary of Fra' Andrew Bertie, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, claims that he was involved in unmasking Lobsang Rampa as a West Country plumber.[6]

Rampa was tracked by the British press to Howth, Ireland, and confronted with these allegations. He did not deny that he had been born as Cyril Hoskin, but claimed that his body was now occupied by the spirit of Lobsang Rampa.[7] According to the account given in his third book, The Rampa Story, he had fallen out of a fir tree in his garden in Thames Ditton, Surrey, while attempting to photograph an owl. He was concussed and, on regaining his senses, had seen a Buddhist monk in saffron robes walking towards him. The monk spoke to him about Rampa taking over his body and Hoskin agreed, saying that he was dissatisfied with his current life. When Rampa's original body became too worn out to continue (following the events of his second book Doctor From Lhasa where, as a doctor in charge, he was questioned and tortured to the brink of death by the Japanese after being seized in the advance following the capture of Nanning as part of the Battle of South Guangxi), he took over Hoskin's body in a process of transmigration of the soul.[8]

Rampa maintained for the rest of his life that The Third Eye was a true story. In the foreword to the 1964 edition of the book, he wrote: "I am Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, that is my only name, now my legal name, and I answer to no other."

To Donald S. Lopez Jr., an American Tibetologist, the books of Lobsang Rampa are "the works of an unemployed surgical fitter, the son of a plumber, seeking to support himself as a ghostwriter."[9]

The authorship controversy was dramatised in a radio play, The Third Eye and the Private Eye, by David Lemon and Mark Ecclestone, first broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in August 2012.[

 

[NoHolyCows]

By my reckoning, this discussion thread originates with the notion which claimed that Paul plagiarized other human authors, a claim which later was expressed alternatively as Paul having been influenced by other humans, with the original notion then including the conclusion: therefore, Paul was not divinely inspired.

Of course, such a notion as that is not even close to being sound. But, it is not even valid. And that is at the very least because it utterly lacks the characterization of "divinely inspired" which would be needed to achieve simple validity.

The topic of exegesis later enters the discussion thread. It seems that the point of bringing in exegesis was supposed to be that, by virtue of exegetical techniques, exegesis establishes that Paul was not divinely inspired. I am willing to re-phrase the immediately prior sentence to: I guess the point of bringing in exegesis was supposed to be that, by virtue of its techniques, exegesis establishes that Paul was not divinely inspired. I am willing to go with that re-phrasing because I did not notice - maybe I just did not recognize - a case being made which established that Paul was not divinely inspired. Regardless, the exegesis aspect of the discussion will be taken up in a later posting, but that might not be until the latter part of next week.

Intertwined with the exegesis matter was some complaint about Paul having failed to provide "evidence" sufficient to establish either preponderantly or factually that he had been divinely inspired. And here we can but imagine someone insisting that Paul prove to that insistent doubting person or convince that person that Paul had an actual experience of actual divine inspiration.

At no point did anyone here accuse Paul of “plagiarism” in the modern sense of copying whole texts without attribution. The actual issue has always been Paul’s own claim in Galatians 1:11—that his gospel “did not come from man nor through man” but by revelation of Jesus Christ—and whether any human compositional or transmission processes could be ruled out. You have invented a straw-man “plagiarism” argument to distract from the real question: if Paul’s message truly bypassed human origin, we should find an unbroken chain of manuscripts preserving his words intact. Instead, we have centuries-old papyri like P46, Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus riddled with thousands of variants, spelling corrections and explanatory glosses—undeniable proof of human agency in copying and editing. Your invented “plagiarism” premise misrepresents the debate and ignores the overwhelming documentary evidence that Paul’s letters were shaped by fallible human hands.

Paul himself spelled out his understanding of “divinely inspired”: his message came by a direct heavenly revelation on the Damascus road (Galatians 1:12). It wasn’t a technical guarantee of flawless transcription; it was his claim to authority over rival teachers. Demanding a narrow, academic definition of “divinely inspired” before we test that claim only lets the assertion go unchallenged. In practice, divine inspiration should leave a detectable imprint—unique vocabulary, unbroken transmission, consistency across manuscripts—but none exists. Instead, the textual record shows human variation at every turn. Your argument fails because it sets an impossible standard for “divinely inspired” and then declares the discussion invalid until that standard is met, all while ignoring the concrete, human-shaped evidence in our earliest witnesses.

Exegesis doesn’t prove divine inspiration any more than literary criticism proves a novel was written by angels. What exegesis does do, however, is expose every layer of human artistry: Paul’s reliance on Hellenistic rhetorical forms, his weaving of Old Testament quotations, and the redactional fingerprints visible in every surviving manuscript. When scholars analyze vocabulary choices, compare variant readings across Papyrus 46 and Codex Vaticanus, or trace Paul’s use of common Greco-Roman letter conventions, all they uncover is a text shaped by fallible minds in specific historical circumstances. There is no hidden divine signature lurking beneath the surface; every exegetical insight points to human composition, transmission, and editing. Insisting that exegesis hasn’t “established” a lack of divine origin only retreats behind an unfalsifiable barrier: if you refuse to allow any human-centered explanation to count, you’ve abandoned reason altogether.

Paul offers no such proof. He never names independent witnesses to his vision, produces a transcript of an audible voice, or points to fulfilled prophecies predating his letters. His sole “evidence” is his own testimony, delivered in a private vision on the road to Damascus. In every field that examines extraordinary claims, you demand multiple attestation, documentary records, or external corroboration—none of which Paul provides. His experience remains a solitary, unverifiable assertion. Absent any outside confirmation—archaeological, epigraphic, or testimonial—his claim stands on faith alone. Demanding evidence for a supernatural event isn’t pedantry; it’s the universal standard by which we distinguish between genuine historical occurrences and personal conviction. There is simply no room left for accepting Paul’s divine-inspiration claim as anything other than unsubstantiated.

Such a demand, such an insistence is essentially nearly identical to the challenge supposedly posed to the claim that the words of the Quran came to Muhammad from God through Gabriel such that those words not only did not originate with Muhammad but those words were also not put together into expressions with Muhammad as author. (There are reasons for instead thinking of Muhammad as inspired rather than as a mouthpiece, but there is no need to go into that here.) The Muhammad-doubted story basically boils down to be a conflict pretty much like this: Yeah, if Muhammad is a prophet, then show me some miracle that he did. That demand, obviously, is rife with its own impoverished notions about the nature of prophecy and prophets.

An analysis of the "evidence" concept could be useful here as well, but that will be by-passed for now.

In this discussion, part of the issue regards "Paul's gospel" which is to say the good news which Paul says he was divinely inspired to express. He does not claim to have been possessed whenever he expresses whatever is that gospel, and inspiration is not possession. Or, if one prefers to use enthusiasm in place of possession, Paul does not claim he was subjected to enthusiasm whenever he speaks whatever is the good news. The distinction between divine inspiration and enthusiasm (when used to indicate possession) has inspiration fit with Paul's prioritizing prophecy over speaking in tongues, and the inspiration-enthusiam/possession distinction is also compatible with Jewish understandings.

As Emmanuel Levinas notes in his essay, The Ark and the Mummy, "Enthusiasm is, after all, possession by a god. Jews wish not to be possessed, but to be responsible." And in the case of an inspiration which is not a possession, Paul is responsbile for the expression of the good news he preaches. Paul could even say that at some times he is inspired yet again - not that an inspiration more contemporaneous with yet another expression of the shared good news makes a difference in terms of inspiration because, in either case, the inspiration and the expression would be distinct inasmuch as the words used would be chosen by Paul to express his understanding. This is to say that Paul's words are not the allegedly inspired message (or information) itself; rather, Paul's words represent or signify that message (or information), and those words are a matter of Paul's authorship.

Equating the demand for evidence in Paul’s case with the challenge to Muhammad misframes both debates. In Muhammad’s instance, early Muslims pointed to the Quran’s linguistic excellence and fulfilled prophecies as “miracles,” yet every measure of its form and content reflects the Arabic literary milieu of seventh-century Arabia—regional vocabulary, poetic conventions, and historical allusions that no divine fingerprint demands. Likewise, demanding evidence for Paul’s claim of divine inspiration isn’t an “impoverished notion” but the only way to distinguish personal conviction from objective history. In both cases, extraordinary origin stories should leave extraordinary traces—unique linguistic breaks, documentary attestations, contemporaneous corroboration—and nowhere in Paul’s epistles or Muhammad’s recorded sermons do we find proof that sidesteps the clear marks of human authorship.

You cannot indefinitely postpone defining “evidence” while still demanding it—or not—at your convenience. In historical disciplines, evidence includes contemporaneous accounts, archaeological findings, manuscript dating, and independent attestations. Paul cites none of these for his Damascus road vision: no eyewitnesses, no public record, no preserved transcript. By contrast, we possess multiple independent copies of his letters showing human editing. Declaring “we’ll bypass evidence analysis” only reveals a preference for faith over fact and abandons any claim to rational discourse.

Whether Paul frames his experience as “inspiration” rather than ecstatic possession makes no difference to the historical facts: his letters read as composed, cohesive arguments, not transcriptions of trance-induced revelations. In 1 Corinthians 14 he explicitly ranks prophecy—meaning orderly speech for the congregation—over speaking in tongues, showing he valued intelligible human communication, not incoherent utterance. That priority underscores that his “inspiration” functioned like any author’s creative insight, filtered through his education, cultural assumptions, and rhetorical skill. Claiming a divine source while simultaneously adhering to clear, human literary conventions exposes “inspiration” as a post-hoc stamp of authority, not an observable breach in the human chain of composition.

Levinas’s point only highlights that Paul never claimed to be a passive conduit; he composed fluent, structured Greek letters with the hallmarks of human rhetoric—logical arguments, scriptural citations, classical comparisons—exactly as any learned author would. Every surviving manuscript, from P46 to Vaticanus, is riddled with spelling corrections, marginal glosses, and deliberate redactions introduced by human editors. A responsible author’s imprint is everywhere; no divine dictation escaped human intervention. Claiming responsibility for one’s words underscores human agency, not supernatural authorship.

Then there is the matter of the good news itself. What precisely is this gospel? Once it is expressed, is it not subject to being re-expressed, differently expressed? Of course it is, because it is to be understood rather than idolized, and understanding comes about with some sort of re-expression, even if that re-expression occurs within the privacy of the thinking person's own mind, a re-expression giving birth to the understanding which comes to the person's mind even when the person participates in a ritualized public liturgy which uses expressions that can otherwise seem to be in tension with the understanding as represented in the re-expression.

It is unfortunate if an understanding person is ever too fearful to share his or her understanding, because that understanding is never to be regarded as being without need of still furthered development. Consequently, one reason understanding is to be shared is for the purpose of being questioned so that it can be re-expressed again in an attempt at furtherance of understanding. Of course, another reason would have to do with the possible benefit which others might get from being exposed to a personal and even alternative understanding. Related to this is a feature of the Talmud which Levinas puts forth in his essay, Messianic Texts: "There is always a second opinion in the Talmud; without necessarily opposing the first, it raises another aspect of the idea." He also provides this quote from Tractate Sanhedrin 34a: "One biblical verse may convey several teachings".

This means that were Paul or anyone else ever to assert explicitly that some church practice or organizational structuring, for instance, were to be done because the speaker had been divinely inspired to say that this was so, despite what such a speaker hoped to achieve by seeming to claim divinely approved license, inspiration itself is not a justification which dispels the need for understanding and therefore questioning. In addition, inspiration in and of itself is no justification for claiming that the message is not to be challenged or for claiming that there is to be no discussion about whatever the matter at hand happens to be.

The point is that inspiration can be claimed, but a claim of inspiration can never be a claim that discussion is not needed and is not to be had. And that is because understanding is the goal and because understanding is always to be furthered (such as in terms of what acts are to be done). Furthermore, the development - the improvement - of understanding is always to be prioritized (with expression as acts often being regarded as superior to verbalized understanding alone). All of which is to say that divine inspiration can be actual, and yet the understanding that follows can be less than ideally expressed. Clearly, even if an understanding is in some way mistaken, that does not negate all possibility of there having been actual divine inspiration.

The gospel’s mutability proves it is a human product, not a locked divine download. Early communities already reshaped Paul’s message: the creedal kernel in 1 Corinthians 15 expands into narrative in Luke and Acts; theological emphases shift from justification by faith to social ethics in later epistles. That ongoing re-expression, in private meditation or public liturgy, shows the “good news” lives in human minds and cultures, not in a single immutable revelation. A truly divine utterance would resist such fluid reinterpretation—and leave behind a stable, pristine text—which Paul’s does not.

That dialogical ideal—sharing, questioning, second opinions—demonstrates that even sacred texts invite endless human debate. Paul himself retracts or refines positions (his evolving stance on circumcision or women’s roles), showing that his own gospel was provisional. The Talmud’s multiplicity mirrors the New Testament’s contested authorship and variant doctrines. If divine revelation were a fixed deposit of truth, it wouldn’t call for continuous human interrogation. Instead, what we see is the unmistakable signature of living, human traditions wrestling with interpretation, not a single, unerring voice from beyond.

Exactly right. History shows that invoking divine inspiration has repeatedly been used to close down debate—from medieval popes declaring their decrees infallible to modern cult leaders demanding unquestioning obedience. Yet Paul’s own letters are studded with challenges and rejoinders: he recounts public disputes in Galatians 2, he invites Corinthian feedback in 1 Corinthians 11, and he urges Thessalonians to “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Divine inspiration never supplanted scrutiny; in Paul’s case it coexisted with vigorous argumentation. Any claim that inspiration automatically immunizes teaching from challenge collapses under the weight of Paul’s own recorded dialogues.

That formulation renders divine inspiration unfalsifiable. If every misstatement is chalked up to human misunderstanding, the hypothesis of a supernatural source cannot be disproven—and therefore can explain nothing. In practice, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence: prophecies, miracles, independently attested documents. Paul offers none—no transcript of a voice, no co-witnesses to his Damascus vision, no preserved autograph immune to scribal error. Instead we have centuries of variant readings, glosses, and editorial interpolations. Allowing “actual inspiration” to coexist with demonstrable errors turns the concept into a vacuous stamp of approval, not a testable historical claim.

Understanding is always subjective. Even when there is intersubjective agreement, understanding is subjective and individually so. And this means there can be no such thing as an objective understanding if "objective understanding" means not-a-subjective understanding. "Objective understanding" could conceivably be intended to indicate merely a widely accepted understanding devised by someone other than the person exposed to the expression of that understanding, but even that would not suffice to remove the subjective nature of the understanding.

Interpreting ancient texts is indeed influenced by the reader’s perspective, but it remains an objective discipline when grounded in transparent methods. Philology fixes word meanings in their original Koine Greek contexts; textual criticism traces variant families from P46 to Vaticanus to reconstruct earliest attainable readings; historical analysis situates Paul’s arguments within first-century Judaism and Hellenistic rhetoric. When multiple independent scholars apply these tools to Galatians 1:11, they converge on the same core meaning—that Paul claimed revelation, not human invention. That convergence demonstrates that “objective understanding” exists, even as individual nuance remains. Denying any possibility of objectivity abandons the very standards that make reasoned discourse possible.

NHC

 

[DBT]

Corinthians 2:13

"When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths."

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

At no point did anyone here accuse Paul of “plagiarism” in the modern sense of copying whole texts without attribution.

With that remark, it becomes difficult to distinguish NHC non-sense from deception.

Did anyone here accuse Paul of plagiarism? Yes, someone did.

Not to mention Paul's plagiarism of Greek philosophy.

Jumping over from a post by DBT.

A wide subject of which I have only an overview.

DBT: Not to mention Paul's plagiarism of Greek philosophy.

So there we have not just evidence but actual proof that someone accused Paul of plagiarism.

But there is more!

... much of Paul's work comes not from Jesus or God, but Greek philosophers ...

It was more than just influence. Some of it copied practically ad verbatim.

And that usage was contemporary. Obviously. Ah, but was that contemporary usage “in the modern sense of copying whole texts without attribution”?

Once the NHC mis-characterization of plagiarism as a matter of “whole texts” being copied without attribution is rightly put aside (since the threshold for plagiarism“in the modern sense” does not require “whole texts”), then,contrary to the non-sense put forth yet again by NHC, it turns out that the original statement which NHC erroneously imagined to have successfully contradicted was, in fact, absolutely correct: “this discussion thread originates with the notion which claimed that Paul plagiarized other human authors, a claim which later was expressed alternatively as Paul having been influenced by other humans”.

Mis-direction, mis-characterization, and what sure looks like an outright case of deception typifies what has come to be expected from NHC.

That apparent deception was convenient, because it allowed NHC to avoid the illogic which asserted human influence as sufficient for disproving even the possibility of divine inspiration.

Okay, so NHC does not yet argue well, and that necessitates considering whether what looks like deception actually is an instance of intentional deceit.

After all, what can appear to be mere deceit could actually instead be the result of intellectual limitations or laziness.

On the other hand, what appears as laziness or the current limitations of an intellect might actually be a well enough formed devotion to disinterest in the subjectivities of other persons. But that devotion would not explain the NHC plagiarism deception.

Oh well, whether as limitedness or as laziness or as devoted disinterest in others, whatever it is, it is most detectable as an inability or unwillingness to bother with the burden of possibilities. Logic as well as truth suffer greatly as a consequence. For example, there is the non-sense which bursts forth in the following, notable, and stunning NHC incoherence:

if Paul’s message truly bypassed human origin, we should find an unbroken chain of manuscripts preserving his words intact.

Huh?!?!?! That is some fantastically bizarre non-sense.

If Paul was divinely inspired to preach (whatever was) his gospel, the gospel he preached, the good news he wished to share, then we should have manuscripts preserving words intact?!?!?!

Huh?! There is no way to even begin to make sense of that notion. Not that it really matters argument-wise, because there is still the previously noted (and ignored) fact that “such a notion as that is not even close to being sound. But, it is not even valid. And that is at the very least because it utterly lacks the characterization of 'divinely inspired' which would be needed to achieve simple validity.”

At least the following is less painfully incoherent.

If you reinterpret his words ... you undercut the plain meaning of his statement.

There are problems aplenty with the remark cited immediately above (including the part the ellipsis leaves out), but, since the focus is now being set upon exegetical techniques in general (which are really techniques for arriving at an understanding), the vast bulk of the problems with the above cited remark will be ignored here. Instead, the focus commences with the notion of a “plain meaning”.

Whatever is a plain meaning, it is necessarily not an uninterpreted meaning. The phrase refers to an understanding which itself is an interpretation.

If the meaning is the understanding of the speaker, then the meaning is the product of the speaker's interpretation of factors that contribute to and are incorporated within the speaker's formulated (i.e., authored) understanding as well as the expression of that understanding (whether the understanding is expressed to the speaker's own self or to others).

Meaning as understanding is subjective and necessarily so.

Does understanding ever differ from expression? Of course it does.

The fact that understanding can differ from expression helps to explain why an understanding can be expressed variously without necessarily altering the understanding. The expression of an understanding can often be revised without the substance of the understanding itself being modified (thereby indicating a desirable trans-contextual or a trans-perspectival quality to the understanding).

Understanding is subjective, and expression represents an attempt to reify or make of the understanding an object for consideration (even if that attempt is by means of analogy or metaphor so as to possibly overcome language/expression limitations).

Meaning can also be understood as the understanding devised by the expression recipient. That meaning is also subjective and interpreted (and, of course and at the very least, internally expressed by the recipient).

With meaning as understanding, is the alleged plain meaning that of the speaker or the communication recipient?

It actually does not matter, because, in both cases, the fact of interpretation leaves the purpose of the phrase plain meaning as proclaiming an allegedly sole legitimate interpretation, as if the alleged plain meaning interpretation is the only possibility left after extensive (if not all possible) scrutiny.

But here is a problem. For a communication recipient to claim to have discerned a plain meaning (by whatever means) is for the recipient to claim in effect to have read the mind of the communicating person, the speaker.

However, in order to achieve what amounts to an in effect mind-reading means that alternative interpretations have to have been taken into account, and this means that reinterpretation in terms of alternative understandings are absolutely necessary if the solely actual (or plain) intended meaning is to be achieved by a communication recipient.

A claim of having attained a plain meaning - the one and only possible correct understanding - without having demonstrated the impossibility of alternative understandings signifies a ruse.

Do alternative or reinterpreted understandings or meanings ever “undercut” other understandings? Are alternative or reinterpreted understandings ever incompatible with other understandings had from or with the same expression?

Certainly.

Comparing “variant readings [or expressions, and], trac[ing] a term's usage across contempora[neous]literature” can well be useful for situating an expression within an historical frame or even within a more particular context, but, such analysis is apart from any considerations into the subjectivity, the understanding of the speaker, and such analysis can be conducted without interest in the thinking of the expressing speaker since the framing rather than the meaning/understanding is the interest/goal.

All the same, any exegesis conducted with disinterestedness in the subjectivity/understanding of the speaker can never itself determine the meaning, the understanding of the speaker. Sometimes exegesis with context considerations can provide insight for motives which themselves might help explain why a speaker produced a particular expression for the particular context. However, that still leaves the deeper speaker subjectivity beyond reach of the exegesis.

In order to investigate the understanding, the subjectivity of the speaker, it is necessary to go beyond the words used. It is necessary to go beyond the expressions used to begin to get a sense of the concepts at work as well as the process and extent or depth of the speaker's subjective conceptualizing.

Take, for example, the following:

Jews were and are very parochial.

I speak from experience

A purely exegetical consideration of the first remark immediately above could conclude validly that the cited remark demonstrates a racist perspective on the part of the speaker.

I will continue with this point in another posting, hopefully sometime later today.

 

[steve_bank]

Mr Marvin is using the old tactic of arguing semantics to avoid the fundamental question, which is Greek philosophical influence on Paul's thinking. It was a major dominate culture of the day.

I was not a conservative, but in the 70s I watched Bill Buckley's PBS show Firing Line. I leaned from it.

When Buckley was loosing an argument with a guest opponent he would resort to criticizing grammar and word usage.

Like Buckley Marvin uses affectation to try to establish intellectual superiority and authority. Cheap posturing and theatrics.

It is not working Marvin. It is a basic question. Paul like all religious and political leaders and prophets across time and culture claims divine inspiration.

Trump does it.

What I say is not my will, 'it is the will of (fill in the god)'.

My view has always been Paul took the Jewish out of Jesus. Politesse did say in the time it was referred to as Paualism.

Today Christianity should be more aptly called Paulism. The only words directly attributed to Jesus are a few unconnected sound bits in the gospels.

If you go by the gospels Jesus never rejected Judaism, invoked Jewish prophets, and reinforced Mosaic Law IOW Leviticus.

As I see it if you want to follow Jesus live like an observant Jew, keep kosher.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

In order to investigate the understanding, the subjectivity of the speaker, it is necessary to go beyond the words used. It is necessary to go beyond the expressions used to begin to get a sense of the concepts at work as well as the process and extent or depth of the speaker's subjective conceptualizing.

Take, for example, the following:

Jews were and are very parochial.

I speak from experience

A purely exegetical consideration of the first remark immediately above could conclude validly that the cited remark demonstrates a racist perspective on the part of the speaker.

(It would be still more valid to describe the remark as prejudiced rather than racist, but we can arrive at prejudiced even by starting with racist on the way to realizing that prejudiced in this context and racist share an identical flaw.)

Historically, an expression of the sort in the first remark immediately above is associated with racism across varying degrees. That racism is at least a prejudice that typically arises from a manner of thinking both shaped and limited by being conducted extensively and predominantly (if not exclusively) in terms of distinct categories.

The most common feature of racist thinking is its disinterest in individuals such that characteristics attributed (on the basis of personal interpreted experience or inter-subjective agreement, for example) to a group, category, or collection of individuals is presumed to be applicable without bothering to imagine a need to confirm applicability to each individual within that group, that category.

Subsequent exclusion by the category-thinker of any individual(s) identified as part of the group is not regarded by the category-thinker as sufficient to invalidate the categorical prejudice. Of course, the category-thinker does not recognize the thinking to be based on a prejudice, which is to say a pre-judgment. Rather than considering the prejudice as a premise that is merely possible, that thinker imagines the prejudice premise as an already well-founded conclusion.

The persistence of such a prejudice is illustrated by the experience of Sheila Kuehl:

Kuehl was elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. … “My Democratic colleagues were enormously welcoming. … The Republicans were pretty horrible about LGBT stuff. They all virtually said stuff like, 'Well, they're all spawn of the devil, oh, but not you, Sheila.'”

The categorical statement “Jews were and are very parochial” is not necessarily intended as definitive despite the manner of expression. Consequently, that statement is not necessarily anti-semitic or anti-Jew despite the fact that such a manner of expression is common to the sort of condition variously referred to as racism or some sort of “-phobia” (even though phobia is often a dubious descriptor – unless that attributed fear is supposed to relate to an inability or failure to love the other, but more on that will be taken up below).

The understanding or meaning behind the statement “Jews were and are very parochial” could have been “Some Jews were and some are very parochial.” This alternative interpretation is able to be conceived – imagined - entirely conceptually and without need of expression analysis either in terms of only the words alone or in terms of historical usage.

Another “plain meaning” problem is to be found with the following:

The next set of edicts will be designed to separate the mega-rich who must be coddled, from the merely rich, who are greedy Jewish scumbags who need to be divested of their wealth.

It would be valid to conclude that those words, in and of themselves, constitute a racist remark. However, it is actually a subtly humorous way of poking fun at the intellectual (if not the ethics) decrepitude of certain non-Jews. Humor presents its own interpretation problems. The alternative way of approaching the cited remark could be in terms of whether the author was serious about the Jewish attribution, but, even though the problem for the plain meaning notion is clear, for the purposes of this discussion, it can be stipulated that there is little to no humor intended in scriptural texts. And, yet, the need for thinking in terms of alternatives persists.

Understanding the statement “Jews were and are very parochial” as prejudiced or racist could have been proclaimed the plain meaning given the employed words in and of themselves, but the doing so would be done only with a disinterest in the actual characteristics of the person and the conceptualizing process (not to mention the expressive abilities) of the speaker.

Even if not consciously intended as a ruse, the fact of the matter is that the use of the phrase plain meaning is utterly unnecessary. It can be more precisely expressed as the claim that there is no other possible meaning intended or understanding to be had behind the words used. Expression in this fashion puts forth the very invitation to challenge – an invitation which the too facile plain meaning proclamation withholds via denial of recognition of other possibilities.

It has not been demonstrated that there is no possible meaning to Paul's not of human origin claim other than the one which holds that Paul contributed nothing to the expression of the gospel (the good news) which he preached.

In response to the fact of it being pointed out that it has most definitely not been demonstrated that Paul's not of human origin claim can only mean that Paul contributed nothing to the expression(s) he used, there could be the laughable fallback response: Paul has the burden of proof to show that he actually was divinely inspired.

Other than the reasons already previously put forth about the supposed burden of proof and the previously discussed fact that the good news Paul preaches is itself independent of and extends beyond the expression which followed from an alleged inspiration (divine or not), there is this: Proving inspiration is akin to proving love. Subjective experience is not proved. If what matters - if what is important – about an experience is discernible, the importance is made manifest in terms of what follows from the supposed, imagined, or alleged experience, and that is the case even if there ever is actual divine inspiration.

If a recipient develops an understanding of a message, the development of that understanding occurs independent of the inspiration for the message presented.

The origin of this discussion thread is based on a most uninformed and unimaginative notion about alleged divine inspiration, and that uninformed notion is in no way bolstered by what the most common attempts at scriptural text exegesis have to offer.

All understanding is subjective. All understanding is personal. Accordingly, as noted previously, what is important about understanding is what follows from it. As a term in itself, the word understanding can seem to impart a sense that what is understood is a fully determinate matter, but there are many matters for which understanding is as yet and always indeterminate and, thereby, providing for the possibility of a further developed understanding.

Whether divinely inspired or not, and as was previously explained, Paul's understanding and expression of that understanding is not insisted upon as needing no furthered understanding, no furthered development.

In the essay, For a Place in the Bible, Levinas says, “It might also be asked whether the old … text, which employs a vocabulary from a very early spiritual climate, is capable of expressing what we mean … 'today.' … Is it not perhaps the case that the ideas of a thought worthy of the name rise above their own history, royally indifferent even to their historians? There are perhaps more constants through time than one is led to believe by the differences of language … a medium marvelously well-suited to permanent interrogation, through which various eras can communicate.”

Then again, communication is unlikely to occur to the extent that there is disinterestedness with regards to the subjectivity of the other person. This is obvious, and this obviousness explains why exegetical interpretation in terms of some text and without consideration in terms of alternative possibilities is not particularly well-suited in itself for understanding the understanding of an other person.

In the pursuit for an understanding about the understanding of an other person, text exegesis can be useful; it can be informative, but necessary to developing an understanding about the understanding of an other person is imagination, most typically in the form of alternative interpretations, even – or especially – if alternative interpretations (possibilities) must be held and pursued concurrently.

In general, humans fear the indeterminate. Out of that fear, they are quick to take as granted - and insist that there is - an allegedly objective foundation that provides actual stability despite the apparent indeterminateness with which reality as experienced seems imbued.

In Raging Fire of Love, Kelly James Clark says that “fear and love are opposites.” Given love as an inherently indeterminate matter, and given the common human fear of the indeterminate, it becomes apparent why so many humans eschew the risk of love for the neighbor, the stranger – preferring the feeling of safety found afforded by the intersubjective frankly herd-mentality already available at hand.

Rather than being bothered with the effort - but especially the risk – that is necessary for the pursuit to understand the understanding had by an other person, the risk-averse, which is to say those disinterested in the other person(s), find their own satisfaction in genuflecting to the intersubjective agreement dubbed “objective” so as to make it seem that there is little or no need for consideration regarding the subjectivity of any individual person(s). How very convenient, because that way the disinterested do not even have to take account of their own subjectivities.

They thereby cheapen life as well make life less interesting. They are as they are for so long as they wish to be as they are. Should it be otherwise? Could it be otherwise? Does it even matter?

 

[steve_bank]

A lot of hot air and no substance on the topic.

 

[Elixir]

I hate words like “exegesis”.
There’s nothing special about the explanation of a religious text that requires its own special term.
There’s so much of that crap and it always strikes me as half obscurant and half pretentious. I don’t even like people named Herman, let alone “hermeneutical”.
But a lot of people seem to think that shit makes them sound smart.
This is not about Mike Pearl, just a general complaint.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

There’s nothing special about the explanation of a religious text that requires its own special term.

I agree completely. And I am going to use that as license for speaking about explanations undertaken in the hope of understanding instead of speaking in terms of exegesis.

However, I did know one guy named Herman whom I liked.

 

[Politesse]

Imagine being proud of sounding dumb!

 

[NoHolyCows]

With that remark, it becomes difficult to distinguish NHC non-sense from deception.

Did anyone here accuse Paul of plagiarism? Yes, someone did.

So there we have not just evidence but actual proof that someone accused Paul of plagiarism.

But there is more!

And that usage was contemporary. Obviously. Ah, but was that contemporary usage “in the modern sense of copying whole texts without attribution”?

Once the NHC mis-characterization of plagiarism as a matter of “whole texts” being copied without attribution is rightly put aside (since the threshold for plagiarism“in the modern sense” does not require “whole texts”), then,contrary to the non-sense put forth yet again by NHC, it turns out that the original statement which NHC erroneously imagined to have successfully contradicted was, in fact, absolutely correct: “this discussion thread originates with the notion which claimed that Paul plagiarized other human authors, a claim which later was expressed alternatively as Paul having been influenced by other humans”.

Mis-direction, mis-characterization, and what sure looks like an outright case of deception typifies what has come to be expected from NHC.

That apparent deception was convenient, because it allowed NHC to avoid the illogic which asserted human influence as sufficient for disproving even the possibility of divine inspiration.

Okay, so NHC does not yet argue well, and that necessitates considering whether what looks like deception actually is an instance of intentional deceit.

After all, what can appear to be mere deceit could actually instead be the result of intellectual limitations or laziness.

On the other hand, what appears as laziness or the current limitations of an intellect might actually be a well enough formed devotion to disinterest in the subjectivities of other persons. But that devotion would not explain the NHC plagiarism deception.

Oh well, whether as limitedness or as laziness or as devoted disinterest in others, whatever it is, it is most detectable as an inability or unwillingness to bother with the burden of possibilities. Logic as well as truth suffer greatly as a consequence. For example, there is the non-sense which bursts forth in the following, notable, and stunning NHC incoherence:

You’re right that other commenters used the word “plagiarism.” I did not. My point was (and is) independent of that claim: whether or not someone alleges plagiarism has no bearing on the separate question I raised—there is no verifiable, independent evidence that Paul’s gospel was of non-human origin.

Agreed: someone else did. That does not make the plagiarism claim true, and it does not touch my argument. My case does not rely on the word “plagiarism” at all.

Plagiarism—modern or ancient—doesn’t require copying “whole texts,” it requires demonstrable, substantial, unattributed borrowing. The verifiable data are straightforward: in Paul’s own letters the only clear line lifted from a Greek playwright is “Bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33), a proverb from Menander. It’s a single gnomic line, not a passage, and proverbial borrowing without attribution was a standard rhetorical move in antiquity. The other famous pagan quotations on Paul’s lips—“for we are indeed his offspring” and related lines—occur in Acts 17 (Luke’s narration), drawing on Aratus/Cleanthes; they are not from Paul’s letters. Claims of “practically ad verbum” copying of Greek philosophers in the undisputed Pauline epistles have not been demonstrated.

I’ll be precise. I never argued that plagiarism requires copying “whole texts,” and I’m not defending that straw man. I’m saying the plagiarism allegation is irrelevant to my position and, as applied to Paul’s letters, unsupported beyond a single proverb and standard rhetorical commonplaces. More importantly, “influence” and “intertext” are not in dispute; they are visible everywhere—Hebrew Scripture, Greco-Roman diatribe style, household codes. That pervasive human influence undercuts the claim “not of human origin”; it does not need the word “plagiarism” to make the point.

You’ve offered labels, not evidence. I have corrected the scope of my claim, distinguished my view from others’, and grounded my argument in verifiable facts about the texts. That is the opposite of misdirection.

I have never argued that human influence disproves the possibility of divine inspiration. Possibility is trivial; anything not logically impossible is “possible.” My claim is evidential: once we account for human composition and transmission, there remains no independent warrant to accept “not of human origin.” Absence of evidence is not proof of impossibility; it is decisive against acceptance.

Ad hominem speculation about my motives does nothing to rescue an evidentially unsupported claim. Address the manuscripts, sources, and historical context.

Insults noted and set aside. The record stands: I have separated my claims from others’, conceded where your meta-point about another commenter is correct, and returned to the primary question of evidence.

There is no “plagiarism deception” from me to explain. You quoted other users; I acknowledged it. My critique has never hinged on that term.

List the specific “incoherence” with the exact quotation and I will address it line by line. Until then, here is the immovable core: the undisputed Pauline letters display ordinary human authorship; the textual tradition shows ordinary human transmission; and there is no independent attestation that elevates Paul’s claim from private conviction to established fact. Calling my position “deception” doesn’t change any of that.

Huh?!?!?! That is some fantastically bizarre non-sense.

If Paul was divinely inspired to preach (whatever was) his gospel, the gospel he preached, the good news he wished to share, then we should have manuscripts preserving words intact?!?!?!

Huh?! There is no way to even begin to make sense of that notion. Not that it really matters argument-wise, because there is still the previously noted (and ignored) fact that “such a notion as that is not even close to being sound. But, it is not even valid. And that is at the very least because it utterly lacks the characterization of 'divinely inspired' which would be needed to achieve simple validity.”

At least the following is less painfully incoherent.

There’s nothing bizarre about expecting extraordinary claims to leave extraordinary, checkable footprints. “Not of human origin” isn’t poetry; it’s a causal assertion. If you assert a non-human source for a text, historians look for empirical signatures that set it apart from ordinary literature—unusually early and stable textual preservation, multiple independent attestations of the founding revelation, or verifiable predictive content. When those signatures are absent and the record looks exactly like normal human authorship and transmission, the rational verdict is human origin.

“Intact manuscripts” was one concrete way such a claim could cash out, not a logical entailment. The point is operational: if a message truly bypassed human origin—or was uniquely safeguarded by a superhuman source—then at least one measurable anomaly should show up. Instead we see precisely what we see with other ancient authors: no autographs, earliest substantial papyri appearing generations after composition, routine scribal corrections and marginal notes, and thousands of minor variants accumulating across manuscript families. That profile matches human copying perfectly and requires no appeal to non-human causation. If you think divine inspiration leaves no detectable trace in composition or transmission, you’ve made the claim unfalsifiable—and therefore unusable in historical analysis.

Here is the requested characterization, stated so it can be tested. If “divinely inspired” means the origin lies outside ordinary human cognition, then at least one of the following should be evidenced: contemporaneous, independent eyewitness attestation of the revelation; verifiable predictions recorded before fulfillment; an unusually early and textually stable manuscript line relative to comparable works; or other reproducible markers that cannot be plausibly generated by known human literary and scribal processes. Paul’s letters meet none of these. There are no co-witnesses to his Damascus vision, no independent public documentation of it, no autographs, no uniquely stable early text, and a transmission history indistinguishable from standard human copying and editing. That isn’t a metaphysical claim about what a god could do; it’s a historical judgment about what the evidence does and does not show.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

There are problems aplenty with the remark cited immediately above (including the part the ellipsis leaves out), but, since the focus is now being set upon exegetical techniques in general (which are really techniques for arriving at an understanding), the vast bulk of the problems with the above cited remark will be ignored here. Instead, the focus commences with the notion of a “plain meaning”.

Whatever is a plain meaning, it is necessarily not an uninterpreted meaning. The phrase refers to an understanding which itself is an interpretation.

If the meaning is the understanding of the speaker, then the meaning is the product of the speaker's interpretation of factors that contribute to and are incorporated within the speaker's formulated (i.e., authored) understanding as well as the expression of that understanding (whether the understanding is expressed to the speaker's own self or to others).

Meaning as understanding is subjective and necessarily so.

Does understanding ever differ from expression? Of course it does.

The fact that understanding can differ from expression helps to explain why an understanding can be expressed variously without necessarily altering the understanding. The expression of an understanding can often be revised without the substance of the understanding itself being modified (thereby indicating a desirable trans-contextual or a trans-perspectival quality to the understanding).

Understanding is subjective, and expression represents an attempt to reify or make of the understanding an object for consideration (even if that attempt is by means of analogy or metaphor so as to possibly overcome language/expression limitations).

Meaning can also be understood as the understanding devised by the expression recipient. That meaning is also subjective and interpreted (and, of course and at the very least, internally expressed by the recipient).

With meaning as understanding, is the alleged plain meaning that of the speaker or the communication recipient?

It actually does not matter, because, in both cases, the fact of interpretation leaves the purpose of the phrase plain meaning as proclaiming an allegedly sole legitimate interpretation, as if the alleged plain meaning interpretation is the only possibility left after extensive (if not all possible) scrutiny.

But here is a problem. For a communication recipient to claim to have discerned a plain meaning (by whatever means) is for the recipient to claim in effect to have read the mind of the communicating person, the speaker.

However, in order to achieve what amounts to an in effect mind-reading means that alternative interpretations have to have been taken into account, and this means that reinterpretation in terms of alternative understandings are absolutely necessary if the solely actual (or plain) intended meaning is to be achieved by a communication recipient.

A claim of having attained a plain meaning - the one and only possible correct understanding - without having demonstrated the impossibility of alternative understandings signifies a ruse.

Do alternative or reinterpreted understandings or meanings ever “undercut” other understandings? Are alternative or reinterpreted understandings ever incompatible with other understandings had from or with the same expression?

Certainly.

Comparing “variant readings [or expressions, and], trac[ing] a term's usage across contempora[neous]literature” can well be useful for situating an expression within an historical frame or even within a more particular context, but, such analysis is apart from any considerations into the subjectivity, the understanding of the speaker, and such analysis can be conducted without interest in the thinking of the expressing speaker since the framing rather than the meaning/understanding is the interest/goal.

All the same, any exegesis conducted with disinterestedness in the subjectivity/understanding of the speaker can never itself determine the meaning, the understanding of the speaker. Sometimes exegesis with context considerations can provide insight for motives which themselves might help explain why a speaker produced a particular expression for the particular context. However, that still leaves the deeper speaker subjectivity beyond reach of the exegesis.

In order to investigate the understanding, the subjectivity of the speaker, it is necessary to go beyond the words used. It is necessary to go beyond the expressions used to begin to get a sense of the concepts at work as well as the process and extent or depth of the speaker's subjective conceptualizing.

Take, for example, the following:

“Plain meaning” in textual analysis is not mind-reading; it is the best-supported communicative content recoverable from public evidence—grammar, lexicon, genre, and historical context. In Galatians 1:11–12 Paul contrasts a human source with revelation, which in the Greek is the straightforward opposition between “according to man” and “through revelation of Jesus Christ.” That is the plain sense: Paul is asserting a non-human origin for his message. Recognizing that claim does not require access to his private psychology; it follows from the sentence structure and the rhetorical contrast encoded in the text.

Agreed—and interpretation is constrained. Because Koine Greek has describable syntax and words have attested ranges of meaning in first-century usage, not all interpretations are equally plausible. Good exegesis is interpretation disciplined by publicly checkable constraints. That’s precisely why independent scholars repeatedly converge on the same core reading of Galatians 1:11–12.

Communication works because speakers encode their intended content in publicly shared linguistic conventions. Historical exegesis does not chase unverifiable inner states; it recovers the communicative content the author put into the world using those conventions. For Paul’s claim, the communicative content is explicit: he denies a human source and affirms revelation. That can be established from the text without access to his private mental narrative.

Private understanding can differ from expression, but historical inquiry is about the expressed artifact. The letters we possess are what we can test. On that evidence, Paul makes a positive claim about origin; when we check transmission and context, we find only ordinary human processes at work. The subjective residue beyond the text is methodologically irrelevant because it cannot be examined.

Sometimes restatement preserves substance, but in the New Testament corpus we don’t merely see stylistic variance; we see substantive development across communities and decades—different Christological emphases, divergent eschatological timetables, and evolving church practices. That pattern is a textbook signature of human tradition adapting over time, not an invariant deposit of non-human speech.

Exactly—once expression becomes an object, it can be analyzed by methods that do not depend on anyone’s private subjectivity. Philology, literary form criticism, and textual criticism operate on those public objects and consistently yield the same proposition from Galatians 1: Paul claims a revealed, non-human source. That is the only part relevant to historical evaluation.

Readers can always misunderstand, which is why disciplined methods exist. The goal isn’t to sanctify any reader’s impression but to recover the most probable communicative content using shared evidence. That is how “plain meaning” functions in serious scholarship: not as “the only imaginable reading,” but as the most warranted reading given the data.

For historical texts, we seek the author’s communicative content as encoded and the audience-accessible meaning in that context. Those two coincide when the language is clear and the rhetoric explicit—as it is in Paul’s human-origin-versus-revelation contrast.

No credible exegete claims “only possible.” The claim is “best supported.” Multiple possibilities are considered, then ranked by fit with grammar, usage, genre, and historical setting. On that scoring, “Paul is asserting revelation, not human derivation” is the highest-ranked reading of Galatians 1:11–12. That is enough for evaluation.

False. We are reading sentences, not minds. When a text says “not according to man… but through revelation,” no telepathy is needed to grasp the proposition asserted. Authorial psychology may be opaque; the assertion isn’t.

Alternatives are considered—and eliminated when they violate grammar, ignore parallels, or contradict context. That is precisely what exegesis does. After that process, the core content of Paul’s claim remains stable across competent readers.

No one must prove the impossibility of every alternative; we must show why the best-supported reading outcompetes rivals. That burden is met when independent analysts, using the same evidence, converge on the same proposition. That is exactly what happens with Paul’s claim in Galatians 1.

Yes—and when alternatives are incompatible, evidence adjudicates. Proposals that redefine Paul’s words so they no longer assert non-human origin fail against his explicit contrast. They undercut themselves, not the text.

Situating an expression historically is exactly how we determine what the words meant to competent speakers then. That method does not require access to Paul’s inner life; it requires access to his language and milieu. That is sufficient to identify what he claimed, even if we cannot map every motive behind the claim.

Deeper subjectivity is beyond reach for any ancient author, and that is irrelevant to the historical question at hand. We can and do determine the proposition asserted without reconstructing a personality profile. For evaluating “not of human origin,” we only need the proposition and the external evidence bearing on it. That evidence shows wholly human composition and transmission.

Going “beyond the words” without data is speculation. Responsible method stops where the evidence ends. The evidence we do have—language, rhetoric, manuscript history—grounds one secure conclusion: Paul made a claim of revelation; the surviving record provides no independent confirmation for that claim and exhibits only human processes.

A competent analysis would not rip a single sentence from its discourse setting and declare the psychology of the speaker proven. It would note that “Jews were and are very parochial” is a sweeping essentialist generalization about an ethnic-religious group and therefore, standing alone, a prejudicial claim; it would then test that assessment against the broader context to see whether it is mitigated, reinforced, or contradicted. That example actually supports my point: good exegesis relies on public evidence and contextual controls, not guesses about inner states. Applied to Paul, those controls fix what he asserts in Galatians 1 while leaving his private subjectivity unknowable—and unnecessary to the conclusion that his non-human-origin claim rests on faith, not verifiable history.

NHC

 

[DBT]

Be it called plagerism or influence, if Paul got his thoughts and ideas from Greek philosophy ( without acknowledgement) his claim that what he taught was "not the work of man" is false. Both cannot be true.

 

[Politesse]

Be it called plagerism or influence, if Paul got his thoughts and ideas from Greek philosophy ( without acknowledgement) his claim that what he taught was "not the work of man" is false. Both cannot be true.

Why do you insist on over-intrepeting that phrase to refer to every word of Paul's written works? I know why evangelicals do, but why do you? Do you think that is a reasonable interpretation? If so, why didn't Paul say as much, rather than making the much more specific claim that his gospel - literally "his message" - was not the work of man?

 

[DBT]

Be it called plagerism or influence, if Paul got his thoughts and ideas from Greek philosophy ( without acknowledgement) his claim that what he taught was "not the work of man" is false. Both cannot be true.

Why do you insist on over-intrepeting that phrase to refer to every word of Paul's written works? I know why evangelicals do, but why do you? Do you think that is a reasonable interpretation? If so, why didn't Paul say as much, rather than making the much more specific claim that his gospel - literally "his message" - was not the work of man?

I'm referring to his teachings, which he said, and claimed, was not the work of man.

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” 1 Corinthians 11:23

Galatians : 11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

[Politesse]

Be it called plagerism or influence, if Paul got his thoughts and ideas from Greek philosophy ( without acknowledgement) his claim that what he taught was "not the work of man" is false. Both cannot be true.

Why do you insist on over-intrepeting that phrase to refer to every word of Paul's written works? I know why evangelicals do, but why do you? Do you think that is a reasonable interpretation? If so, why didn't Paul say as much, rather than making the much more specific claim that his gospel - literally "his message" - was not the work of man?

I'm referring to his teachings, which he said, and claimed, was not the work of man.

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” 1 Corinthians 11:23

Galatians : 11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Obviously I know that, I just quoted it myself in the post you're replying to. He said that his gospel - not "his teachings", but specifically his announcement, his important message - is not of human origin. You wish to interpret "the gospel" as meaning everything that Paul wrote, including the passages you claim he plagiarized. But that isn't a reasonable way to interpret "the gospel".

If I told you that I had some "good news" to report from the front in Ukraine, would you assume I meant that everything I have ever written in my entire life came from Ukrainian authors? Or would you, much more reaosnably, assume that I was about to a deliver a specific message that was from Ukraine?

 

[steve_bank]

The Apostle Paul was both a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was born in Tarsus, a Roman city, and his family held Roman citizenship. At the same time, Paul was a devout Jew, raised within the Jewish faith and educated in the traditions of the Pharisees.

It makes sense that Paul wouldl have his thinking influenced by Greek and Roman culture.

He made Jesus attractive to Romans.

It is admittedly an AI summary, but it pints to the importance of context for Paul in the time. Who was his target audience?

Yes, some Roman Jews were involved in the Jewish-Roman wars, particularly during the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE). While the primary conflict took place in Judea, the broader Roman Empire, including Rome itself, had Jewish populations. Some Roman Jews likely supported the Jewish rebels, while others remained loyal to Rome.

While the Apostle Paul had a complex relationship with Rome, he ultimately aimed to preach the gospel there and was imprisoned there, suggesting a nuanced view rather than simple support. He wrote to the Roman church, expressing his desire to visit and strengthen them, and he was eventually brought to Rome as a prisoner, where he continued to preach. This indicates engagement with Rome, but not necessarily unquestioning support

Paul's arrests by Roman authorities were primarily due to accusations of inciting unrest and violating religious customs, stemming from his preaching of the Christian gospel, which often clashed with established Jewish practices and Roman social norms. Specifically, he was accused of "stirring up trouble" and "advocating customs that are not lawful

Paul took the Jewish out of Jesus and pissed of his fellow Jews.

I'd say Christianity as it was passed down has little to do with a Jewish prophet. Christianity as a continuation of a Jewish Jesus is a myth.

I am sure there are books on it, I'd read if my eeys were better.

Note that the dominate sect became The Roman Catholic Church, not a Jewish sect. The rituals and theology had nohting to do with Jews.

I read a book on Aquinas The Dumb Ox.

Thomas Aquinas extensively utilized Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle's works, to develop his theological and philosophical system. He synthesized Aristotelian thought with Christian doctrine, emphasizing the compatibility of faith and reason

I read a 18th century book Guide For The Perplexed by Maimonides a Jewish rabbi and philosopher.

Moses Maimonides, a prominent medieval Jewish philosopher, was deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, particularly the works of Aristotle. He integrated Aristotelian logic and philosophical concepts into his own Jewish theological and philosophical framework, notably in his Guide for the Perplexed. Maimonides saw logic as a crucial tool for understanding God and the natural world, and he used Aristotelian principles to reconcile faith and reason.

Greek philosophy[shy and culture has always been a strong influence.

 

[DBT]

Be it called plagerism or influence, if Paul got his thoughts and ideas from Greek philosophy ( without acknowledgement) his claim that what he taught was "not the work of man" is false. Both cannot be true.

Why do you insist on over-intrepeting that phrase to refer to every word of Paul's written works? I know why evangelicals do, but why do you? Do you think that is a reasonable interpretation? If so, why didn't Paul say as much, rather than making the much more specific claim that his gospel - literally "his message" - was not the work of man?

I'm referring to his teachings, which he said, and claimed, was not the work of man.

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” 1 Corinthians 11:23

Galatians : 11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

This is not about everything about Paul or what he may have said, generally speaking. The issue of authorship is specifically about what he preached and taught, which he claimed did not come from man, but God. From revelation, not philosophy. from Jesus, not Plato or Socrates.

There lies the problem, a contradiction between what he taught, which was clearly taken from Greek philosophy and his claim that what he taught did not come from man.

Greek philosophy is the work of man. The philosophers did not claim that their work was inspired by the God of the Torah.

 

[Politesse]

This is not about everything about Paul or what he may have said, generally speaking.

Then what you need to show is that the substance of Paul's teachings -not a phrase here and there, but the core ideas he considers his "gospel" - are lifted from Greek sources. You have not demonstrated anything of the sort, only that Paul used some common quotations in his public letters.