Disbelieving mel: “because the particular author(s) who manufactured the Pauline letters did not conceptualize the mortal Jesus as sage and philosopher but as actor and role-player — the actions, not the words, were ‘the gospel’”

But ultimately I’m just talking out of my ass in both cases.

“Apologist.”

The word itself practically waves a white flag.

Even “defender of the faith” suffers from the problem that the best defense is a good offense.

Apologetics—and by that I mean gathering arguments to support a priori beliefs—is a pretty crappy way to learn things. I realize that not all apologists fit this description, but it seems to fit most.

Secondly, considering that the Pauline Epistles contained in the Bible do not necessarily reflect everything that Paul wrote, it’s possible that his other writings contained such sayings and were ultimately omitted as being either redundant or not valuable commentary. You also have to consider the persecution that early Christians endured. The existent Pauline Epistles may be the “Condensed Version” because you can only hide so many incriminating texts and anything that was repetitive was excised. I’m sure we can come up with a number of different theories.

To be sure, Ockham’s Razor seems to indicate that the easiest explanation is the best explanation (which indicates that Paul took Mithraic teachings and substituted Jesus in the place of Mithras or Osiris), but I feel that the razor only applies to logic and not to history.

If anything, I see these kinds of issues as faith-affirming. If it was really was just a mishmash of syncretic teachings that became a unified whole, it seems to be guided by divine influence rather than luck.

What you see as divine influence, I perceive as the influence of our better nature. The God hypothesis seems superfluous to me. In the end, I assert that we can’t be sure, so even if there is a God, he can’t expect us to act (falsely) as if we were certain. I’m content to treat the New Testament as myth.

With that in mind, it seems that Pauline Christianity was outside the mainstream of the earliest Christianity, developed by Paul in ignorance of the Gospels. Whether that was because the stories weren’t made up yet, or that he hadn’t spent enough time in the mainstream to become familiar with them, Paul did his own thing.

The Wikipedia article on Pauline Christianity is an interesting read.

Or it could be that Paul decided to emphasize certain aspects of Christianity over other aspects. The Gospel of John fails to mention several important incidents that occur in the other three Gospels, yet it would be hard to argue that John had his own brand of Christianity that he was peddling. But it’s always interesting to see how religions develop and cohere. I see it is a divine process.

As far as divine influence versus the influence of our better nature, I’m not sure what you mean by the latter. Is that a term used in humanistic thinking? If it is, it doesn’t appear too far removed by what I mean as divine influence.

The term “divine influence” connotes supernatural intervention to me. I think of our human nature in purely naturalistic terms.