Book Review: The Fabricated Paul, by Hermann Detering

[Moogy]

Please note that I intentionally placed this post in Tea House, because I don’t want arguments. Discussion is fine, but if you have strong opinions, keep it pleasant.

I decided to read this book that was recommended by Cootie Brown aka Geezer. (I will pm him so he can participate in this thread, since he recently said he was going to stay off the agreement side of the board.) I noticed the book was FREE with my Unlimited Kindle subscription, so that was another motivating factor for me to get the book immediately.

The author spends the first third of the book making his case that the Apostle Paul did not write ANY of the New Testament books attributed to him. He admits that he is outside of mainstream historical criticism in this opinion. Most scholars think Paul wrote 7 of the books attributed to him: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Detering thinks all were written by someone else.

Mainline scholars point to the entirely different styles and wording of the other books, like the Timothy’s. They do not sound like they came from the same author.

Detering makes a decent case that (1) the issues discussed in the 7 epistles were more issues of the second century than the first, (2) the Pauline epistles were not even mentioned by other writers until the second century, which would seem strange if they were really authored by the Apostle to the Gentiles. Detering therefore speculates that some of the letters were written by Marcion or his followers, but were later revised by Catholic writers to bring the letters into agreement with orthodox church doctrine. (Marcion was the heretic who taught that there were two Gods: The God of the Old Testament who created the earth, and a higher-level God who sent Jesus. Weird, yes, but he was branded a heretic). Detering makes a reasonable case for this possibility, but he certainly does not prove it, in my view.

Then Detering spends a lot of chapters trying to convince the reader that the Apostle Paul did not really exist, or else Paul was another name for Simon Magus (the magician who tried to buy the Gift of the Spirit in Acts). This section to me seemed very speculative. The author made logical leaps. This section was also BORING for me, but I made myself plow through it.

The final sections of the book talk about what faith would mean if a person agrees that the Bible was written by people, not by God. I found this section interesting.

The book has many footnotes. Some of the references are to non-English books, so I can’t read them. it was helpful for me to read a bit on the Internet to get more background on some on the topics discussed.

Overall, this book is worth the time it took to read. I intend to read more on these topics.

[Moogy]

Now that Cootie is back, perhaps he would care to respond?

[Cootie Brown]

Now that Cootie is back, perhaps he would care to respond?

I think you are the first person on the board that has ever actually read a book I've referenced. Thank you.

I will need some time to assemble my thoughts. Detering isn't the only historical scholar that has come to this conclusion. Dr.Robert M Price has written about this too. His book is "The Amazing Colossal Apostle." His book is even more detailed.

Detering is the easier scholar to read. Price, has 2 PHD's, so he tends to write in a much higher scholarly format. And his books tend to be 500+ pages. He is nothing if not thorough and detailed. All of that makes him harder to read, but I think his books are worth the effort.

I'll put something together and post it later.

[Cootie Brown]

I have nothing to add to Moogy’s book review. I think her review is excellent. My comments, such as they are, will be focused on the back story.

There are two religious fields of study. One is apologetics and the other one is the scholarship dedicated to the historical critical perspective of religion.
1. Apologetics, from my perspective, is a field of study that is dedicated affirming people’s faith. Technically, it is about the many ways the Bible can be interpreted. IMO, it is about telling people what they want to hear, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. It is simply a scholarship designed to affirm people’s faith.

Definition of apologetics

1: systematic argumentative discourse in defense (as of a doctrine)
2: a branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity

What is Historical Criticism?

Historical criticism (also known as historicism or higher criticism) refers to the study of literary texts, particularly ancient texts and especially the Bible, in terms of their historical origins and development within those contexts. It is an umbrella term which describes the dominant method of study used by biblical scholars today. Technically, this term refers specifically to questions about the historical character of a work, but, as it is impossible to do this without studying the literary character of a work, this article will also address questions of literary criticism as they relate to historical criticism and the Bible.
Historical criticism is not criticism in the sense of disapproval or the examination of faults and mistakes, but instead is an analysis of the text in the hope of better understanding it.

What is the goal of Historical Criticism?

Historical criticism seeks greater understanding of biblical texts by analyzing the historical and social contexts in which they developed. The goal of historical criticism, traditionally, has been to try to understand the text’s meaning in its original context and to answer questions about the text, such as:

* Who wrote it?
* When was it written?
* What else what happening at the time of its writing?
* How did it come to be in the form we have it today?
* What did it mean to the people who first read or heard it?

Historical criticism has also often sought answers to the ever-elusive question of what is called “authorial intent”: What did the author intend for this text to mean in his or her time and place?

Obviously, my interest in religion and the Bible is focused on the Historical Critical Scholarship. I like to refer to this scholarship as fact checking.
I see historians being similar to CSI’s. They are seeking evidence and when they find it, they allow the evidence to determine what is most likely true.

The book Moogy reviewed is an example of a Historical Critical Scholar’s work. What does the historical evidence say or imply about the subject being investigated? Another question to ponder is how much academic freedom does the scholar actually have?

Another book I would recommend is Nailed, by David Fitzgerald. This book is dedicated to the question of whether Jesus was a real person or a literary figure.
As part of the research for this book Fitzgerald sent a survey to every school in the United States that offers religious studies. I think there are 1400 or so schools.

In rough rounded number approximately 1/3 of the schools refused to respond to his survey. Approximately 1/3 claimed their professors had unrestricted academic freedom and the remaining one third admitted their professors were required to sign a statement of faith and their teaching had to be within those guidelines. Failure to comply would be grounds for termination.

Further inquiry by Fitzgerald reviewed a number of professors had been terminated because they ventured outside the guidelines for the statement of faith. As an example, one professor was terminated for telling his students that Adam and Eve were mythical characters.

Fitzgerald also discovered. even in schools that claim their professors have complete academic freedom, that might not be true. Even in these schools there appears to be certain unwritten rules designed to protect fund raising and professional reputations.

It is widely known and accepted in academic circles that there is no historical Jesus, meaning there has not been any evidence found that confirms Jesus was a real person. He is not found anyplace other than in the Gospel story.

Scholars that take the position that Jesus was only a literary figure, and there are very few brave enough to do that, are called Mythicist. It seems there is an unwritten rule, or sometimes a written rule, that Professors cannot teach that there is no valid evidence that a man named Jesus of Nazareth actually existed in the flesh.

The reason for this appears to be financial, grant money might be withheld, as well as the individuals scholarly credentials might also be damaged. They could be labeled as extremists and kooks and that would embarrass the school.

Therefore.the scholars that are willing to risk ridicule and loss of income are few and far between. Virtually none of them work in academia as teaching professors.

Some of the brave folks that stand by their convictions and what they believe the evidence indicates include:

Detering, Robert M Price, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, Earl Doherty, Paul-Louis Couchoud, Thomas L. Brodie, and George Albert Wells among others.
Whether or not these scholars are correct in their interpretation of the evidence is up to the individual reader of their books to decide.

Even liberal apologist like Marcus Borg are willing to admit they doubt Jesus was divine or that he rose from the dead, but they still identify themselves as Christians, which I find odd. It seems it doesn’t matter if they believe he rose from the dead as long as they believe Jesus was a real person.

Although, not as popular the same question of existence applies to the Apostle Paul. Detering and Price have addressed that question in their respective books. And Moogy did an excellent review of Deterings book for the board.

[Cootie Brown]

Deterings book also alluded to Marcion and Simon Magus being the actual authors of Paul's Epistles as well as the real creators of Christianity. It is acknowledged that Christianity is a Gnostic religion and both Marcion and Magus were Gnostics. Basically, if you believe salvation is by grace through faith they you're Gnostic. If you believe salvation comes by works then you're orthodox.

So, if you're Church of Christ you are likely just really confused about how you get saved and stay that way. That may be by design. People that doubt their salvation are generally much easier to control. The c of C doesn't seem to know that Ephesians 2:8-10 exists. I knew that it existed and that is what I put my faith, hope, and trust in when I was a Christian. I referenced those verses quite a bit when I taught classes much to the chagrin of the traditionalist. They often would holler out, "Yes...but" and then reference some works based scripture. I liked to then ask, "Okay, so which scripture is true." "They both are" would be the reply. I wondered how that could be since they contradicted each other. "God understands" would often be their reply. That's great, I thought, I wish He'd tell me which one is true so I would know for certain then, but He never did. God was supposedly chatty in the OT, but not so much since then.

That is a troubling problem with the Bible. It is filled with contradictions and inconsistent teaching. We poor humans are left to try and sort out the truth.

Anyway, the point was noted that Marcion believed in two Gods. He believed the OT God was evil and could not possibly be the NT God of love and grace. He believed the NT God never identified itself but it was more powerful than the OT God and defeated that God and exiled it from earth up somewhere in the heavenly realm.

Marcion's Churches were the most popular Christian Churches in the early part of the second century and far outnumbered the orthodox Churches, at least for awhile. When the Orthodox Catholic Church excommunicated Marcion both Marcion and his churches rapidly decreased in popularity and eventually ceased to exist.

[ena]

The author spends the first third of the book making his case that the Apostle Paul did not write ANY of the New Testament books attributed to him. He admits that he is outside of mainstream historical criticism in this opinion. Most scholars think Paul wrote 7 of the books attributed to him: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Detering thinks all were written by someone else.

Mainline scholars point to the entirely different styles and wording of the other books, like the Timothy’s. They do not sound like they came from the same author.

Detering makes a decent case that (1) the issues discussed in the 7 epistles were more issues of the second century than the first, (2) the Pauline epistles were not even mentioned by other writers until the second century, which would seem strange if they were really authored by the Apostle to the Gentiles. Detering therefore speculates that some of the letters were written by Marcion or his followers, but were later revised by Catholic writers to bring the letters into agreement with orthodox church doctrine. (Marcion was the heretic who taught that there were two Gods: The God of the Old Testament who created the earth, and a higher-level God who sent Jesus. Weird, yes, but he was branded a heretic). Detering makes a reasonable case for this possibility, but he certainly does not prove it, in my view.

Then Detering spends a lot of chapters trying to convince the reader that the Apostle Paul did not really exist, or else Paul was another name for Simon Magus (the magician who tried to buy the Gift of the Spirit in Acts). This section to me seemed very speculative. The author made logical leaps. This section was also BORING for me, but I made myself plow through it.

The final sections of the book talk about what faith would mean if a person agrees that the Bible was written by people, not by God. I found this section interesting.

The book has many footnotes. Some of the references are to non-English books, so I can’t read them. it was helpful for me to read a bit on the Internet to get more background on some on the topics discussed.

Overall, this book is worth the time it took to read. I intend to read more on these topics.

There are some good things here. Paul did not meet Jesus in the flesh. He claimed to have met him in the spirit. !st Timothy, 2nd Timothy and Titus may not have been written by Paul. The reason is that over 200 words in Greek used was not used by Paul elsewhere. I got this from Bart Ehrmann who details it in Jesus Interrupted. Marcion was a early preacher who had quite a following. He did think that the Jewish God was more evil than the Christian God. His gospel was a hack job on Luke to remove any Jewish references and the letters of Paul. He did develop an early canon. The Church did not have one until the 380's. Some works around 350 CE do indicate that they had one of sorts. That were Christian's carrying KJV bibles in 1 CE is shear foolishness. A church might be lucky to have copies of the letter's of Paul. Writing book's in another's name was common. Even second Peter sound's like later thinking talks about collecting Paul's writings. Luke indicates that Peter came to an understanding about Paul after the circumcision question. I personally doubt Peter could read or write.
Paul wrote 13 books excluding Hebrews. 6 are disputed as not being Paul's. There are many books that may have been included. Many are second century and should not be included. The Bible was written by humans and not God. The evidence say that they were not told what to write. The only thing written by God was the ten commandments and that ended up broken to pieces in the dust. God wanted to be king over Israel. Israel wanted a human king and took on Saul. God responded with human agencies to do his work. Perfect no! Good enough yes! The idea of an inerrant Bible is foolish in several respects. Authorship who wrote it. Generally not known. Qualifications not known. Is the translation correct? Not necessarily. For instance Jesus spoke Aramaic. This is translated to Greek and from Greek to English. How can you know exactly what he meant? Many scholars were German in the 1800's. Most ancient documents are found in Egypt. Egypt at one time was a hot bed of Christianity. Many works are written in Coptic or Syriac. There are specialists spend their lives in a language field. Who Paul was is often questioned. I believe him as he said. He did have rather different views after conversion. He talked about things he believed. What he did was very risky. He was beheaded under Nero between 65CE and 68 CE. Peter was crucified about the same timeframe. What became the Church was organized under Constantine in the early 300's. I don't believe Peter was the first Pope because Christianity was on the run. The Church as such existed but was not formally organized.

[agricola]

It is possible that Peter/the apostles generally were at least partially literate - they could likely read some. It is possible they could not WRITE - those are actually different skills. A lot of (male) Jews would have been able to read some Hebrew and Aramaic, and possibly some Greek, maybe Latin of the type found in inscriptions.

That doesn't mean they read WELL nor does it mean they could write (again - that is a different skill). 'Scribe' was an actual occupation: you could write, and people would dictate their correspondence to you. But the recipients might (not always, but might) be able to read for themselves.

The NT does record Jesus reading from the Torah at a synagogue. SOMEBODY would have read the Hebrew every week (three times each week) in all synagogues - reading literacy was at least common enough that you could expect to find some men in every synagogue who could read Hebrew (and probably Aramaic - they used pretty much the same script).

Just like today - someone would read the Hebrew out loud, and then he (or someone) would explain what it meant to the congregation, who would have mostly been native speakers of Aramaic, which is RELATED to Hebrew but not completely intelligible. Sort of like someone reading a German text and then explaining it to a Dutch speaking audience - they would have caught SOME of the German, but not entirely.

Now we read the Hebrew, and the rabbi (usually) give a little talk on the topic of the reading - or, more usually, everybody has access to a book at their seat, which has the Hebrew reading next to (facing page usually) the English translation. So you can easily follow along. Back then, with every 'book' a scroll and every scroll an individual copy, there would likely have been only the one scroll in the synagogue, and no handy individual translations available. Instead there was a targum - nowadays a 'targum' is a translation, but in ancient times it was a PERSON who translated.

[Cootie Brown]

Bias obviously influences the way scripture is interpreted. When a believer reads scripture they are seeking to confirm what they already believe. The opposite is true for a non-believer. Therefore, both believers and non-believers will always find evidence that confirms what they already believe is true when they read scripture.

And when they find evidence that challenges their beliefs they will rationalize, or invent, a solution that will resolve their cognitive dissonance in a way that affirms their current beliefs.

A truly open mind only stays open long enough to form a conclusion based on the evidence that has been examined. Once convinced that truth has been found that mind closes and will stay closed until new evidence is found that challenges the current belief. New evidence may or may not cause a change in belief depending on how strong the current bias is.

[Cootie Brown]

After years of study and research I’m convinced the Bible is a collection of fictional stories with fictional characters. My once open mind is now firmly closed because the evidence has convinced me that I have found the truth. I now have a strong anti-religious bias.

Aside from a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, I see no possible way that my bias will ever be reversed, because it has been formed on what I believe is strong factual evidence that was convincing enough to destroy my once strong faith. It would take equally strong evidence to reverse my bias, and I don’t believe such evidence exist.

[Ivy]

My once open mind is now firmly closed because the evidence has convinced me that I have found the truth.

Oopsie!! To me that is never a good sign. The universe has all kinds of surprises up its metaphoric sleeve, Cootie. I'd hate for you to miss them because your mind is slammed shut.