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3. For Paul, Jesus was going to come back from heaven and bring in God's kingdom here on Earth, and people would be raised from the dead for glorious eternity. Resurrection Chapel mural at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The Case for Christ: A Journalists Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus., a motion picture adaptation of The Case for Christ. But other than that, no. These continue to be two of the common explanations today. There Paul stayed for the next half-dozen years or so, until Barnabas in the early 40s invited him to help lead the church in Antioch, Syria. This was the old view that the reason God's people suffer is because they've done something wrong and he wants them to repent. Some scholars today suggest Pauls thorn was his audience, the troublesome Corinthian church itself. The Case for Christ: What's the evidence for the resurrection? Twice Paul dropped out of New Testament history. 7. Not Much. The Apostle Paul and His Times: Christian History Timeline, Answers to some of the most puzzling questions about the Apostle Paul. Jesus vs. Paul | Christianity Today 1:3). Non-citizens often faced the lingering death of crucifixion. And I think that, you know, psychologically, that was very bad. #trinity #christian #worship #praise #church #trinity #mission #prayer #jesus #music #hymns He just wanted to know that there was some one called Jesus Christ and that he was crucified. Some of them point out that Paul used the same Greek word when writing about the unspecified illness that kept him in Galatia. Jesus He is a consulting editor for Christian History. It comes - Gnosticism, in some ways, comes out of Greek thinking. Or it's because of, you know, one social ill or another that God is punishing. Later Christian tradition favours the view that he was executed there (1 Clement 5:17), perhaps as part of the executions of Christians ordered by the Roman emperor Nero following the great fire in the city in 64 ce. Strobel, however, was unable to refute these claims to his satisfaction, and he then converted to Christianity as well. The Lords Supper Is a Multiethnic Love Feast, Nondenominational Churches Are Growing and Multiplying in DC. His trade, tent making, which he continued to practice after his conversion to Christianity, helps to explain important aspects of his apostleship. These various accounts and references are remarkably consistent and early. Primary Sources - Paul's Letter To The Galatians | From Jesus To Christ One is they based their predictions on the Book of Revelation. In the process, Paul and the other authors of New Testament letters were enabled by the Holy Spirit to express, in their own inspired words, practical counsel needed by the growing international body we know as the church. But it's not what you believe. By Jewish standards, this lack of direct mention is unusual. And so I don't try to talk people out of their view of heaven, but I think, actually, it's better off, you know, not living for what's going to happen after you die; it's better off living for what you can do now. EHRMAN: I do in some ways. Yet apologists like Gary Habermas, I argue, are just as anti-supernaturalist when it comes to miraculous claims outside of the beginnings of Christianity, such as those involving later Catholic saints or miracles from non-Christian religious traditions. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The passage above does not contain the word Jesus, but many other Pauline verses combine Jesus and Christ.. Yeah, of course. When God creates Adam, he creates him out of earth, and then he breathes life into him. GROSS: Are there things in the Hebrew Bible that still support the idea of heaven and hell as people came to understand it, things that you can extract from the Old Testament that might not literally mention heaven and hell but still support the vision that emerged of it? Hardcover, 304 pages. As a busy mom, I had to find new spiritual disciplines to connect with God. Some have suggested that it is a reference to the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1), when the Holy Spirit gave the Christian community in Jerusalem a supernatural ability to speak in languages that were unknown to them. Gaye Strathearn In Corinth, in the early fifties of the first century A.D., Paul faced opponents within the Church who felt that the way to understand God and the vicissitudes of mortality was through the use of philosophy or, as Paul puts it, the "enticing words of man's wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:4). Famously converted on the road to Damascus, he travelled tens of thousands. And so in some of his later letters, he ponders the possibility of death, and he wonders, well, what happens to me, then? Paul was compelled to struggle, therefore, to establish his own worth and authority. He's a distinguished professor of religious studies at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the author of many books about early Christianity. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. However, only seven of these are accepted as being entirely authentic: Letter of Paul to the Romans, both Letters of Paul to the Corinthians, Letter of Paul to the Galatians, Letter of Paul to the Philippians, First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, and Letter of Paul to Philemon. The people, in the Book of Revelation, human beings who aren't on the side of God, are actually destroyed. A view from the Middle Ages said Paul couldnt get sex off his mind. In Romans 15:1617 Paul seems to interpret the offering of the Gentiles symbolically, suggesting that it is the prophesied Gentile pilgrimage to the Temple of Jerusalem, with their wealth in their hands (e.g., Isaiah 60:16). What were the explanations in the Hebrew Bible for plagues? The return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead, St. Pauls Contributions to the New Testament, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle, World History Encyclopedia - Paul the Apostle, EWTN - Saint Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, JewishEncyclopedia.com - Saul of Tarsus (known as Paul, the Apostle of the Heathen), Saint Paul the Apostle - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Paul - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians. And she holds a kind of seance. Although none of the Old Testament passages directly focused on resurrection, they alluded to conquering death and Adam's becoming the first living soul. 11:236). Most scholars today take literally Pauls reference to the flesh. They see the thorn as a physical problem. There are a range of explanations for this phenomenon, running the gamut from the physical and emotional exhaustion caused by the death of a loved one all the way to the belief that some aspects of human personality are capable of surviving bodily death. It is quite dangerous to refuse the findings of science because of your personal beliefs. What Paul did during these missing years is uncertain. The chief persecutors of the Christian movement in Jerusalem were the high priest and his associates, who were Sadducees (if they belonged to one of the parties), and Acts depicts the leading Pharisee, Gamaliel, as defending the Christians (Acts 5:34). Answer (1 of 11): It's difficult to say. All rights reserved. Although Paul made only one direct quote of Jesus (1Corinthians11:24-25), and even though John also may have repeated Jesus words only once in his three letters (1 John 3:23), everything they wrote expressed the attitudes, mission, and principles of the Son of God. Paul wanted Jews who believed in Jesus to keep the Torah and remain faithful to their traditions. Ralph P. Martin argues that Philippians 2 may be . GROSS: We have to take a short break here. In the movie, Strobel crisscrosses the country, interviewing scholars and other professionals about the historicity of Jesus resurrection. GROSS: Why don't we take a short break here? And so he talked about living in the last days because he assumed that everybody else now was going to be raised to follow suit. The Bible does talk about this place Sheol, especially in poetry, especially in Psalms. 7:8). We aren't using our cars. GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. The . He was betrayed: "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed" (1 Cor. Perhaps he figured his readers knew. And we all just hope that it doesn't lead to even further disaster. Your breath doesn't go anywhere. Subscribers receive full access to the archives. We're recording this on Thursday. In a word study of Pauls statement, scholars point out that every time the New Testament uses angel/messenger, torment, and take it away, the words refer to people. It would be the resurrection of the nation. In other words, the sightings of the risen Jesus are not nearly as unique as Strobel would suggest. GROSS: Thank you. Either we live on and we see those we knew before and those we didn't know before, and we spend all of our time being with them, which for him was absolute paradise because Socrates liked nothing better than conversing with people, and so now he could converse with Homer and with all the greats of the Greek past. 4:67). His birthplace, Tarsus, was a major city in eastern Cilicia, a region that had been made part of the Roman province of Syria by the time of Pauls adulthood. Paul understands that the suffering he endures serves as a way to be like Christ, as well as it being for Christ's sake. Its from the only physical description of Paul, in an early Christian document, the Acts of Paul. Lets sift Pauls writings for information about Jesus. What Did Paul Want To Know About Jesus? - Answering Christianity Fewer than 10 papyrus manuscripts from the second century exist, and many of these are very fragmentary. That also is the view of Paul, that people would be destroyed if - when Jesus returns. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor. And then we'll talk about the history of ideas of heaven and hell. Probably not. Several of its arguments, however, are not directly relevant to this issue. EHRMAN: I would say not so much. Many of the other scholars he interviews in his book have similar affiliations. What Did Paul Believe About Judaism? And that's how you start getting the development of the idea of hell, that it's a place where souls go to be punished in - as the opposite of the people who go to heaven to be rewarded. none of his disciples had any inkling at all that he was God. If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One? This is FRESH AIR. Many things influence how someone views the evidence including, for instance, whether he or she has an anti-supernatural bias.. Justification by faith is a whole-Bible doctrine. He asked that his followers eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of him (1 Cor. If we havent heard anyone raise this challenge before, it might surprise us to know that Paul was not the only one who did not quote Jesus as much as we might expect.