Changes

===Pauline Epistles===

===Pauline Epistles===

A collection of letters written by Saint Paul also discuss Jesus.  Paul was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus until after the resurrection, but, besides whatever knowledge the Lord gave to him in his glorified state, Paul also knew Jesus’ disciples, especially Saint Peter.  Paul’s letters are pastoral writings meant to address the needs of particular Christian communities, and as such they are not aimed at providing biographical narratives of Jesus’ life.  Nonetheless, they do mention Jesus, especially his death and resurrection, but also the Last Supper, and they quote Jesus or reference his teachings.  At times Paul qualified his own teachings by stating, “I say, not the Lord”, indicating that he knew Jesus’ teachings.

A collection of letters written by Saint Paul also discuss Jesus.  Paul was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus until after the resurrection, but was a contemporary of the life of Jesus, and besides whatever knowledge the Lord gave to him in his glorified state, Paul also knew Jesus’ disciples, especially Saint Peter.  Paul’s letters are pastoral writings meant to address the needs of particular Christian communities, and as such they are not aimed at providing biographical narratives of Jesus’ life.  Nonetheless, they do mention Jesus, especially his death and resurrection, but also the Last Supper, and they quote Jesus or reference his teachings.  At times Paul qualified his own teachings by stating, “I say, not the Lord”, indicating that he knew Jesus’ teachings.

 

Some mythicists have proposed that Paul refers to Jesus as a celestial, rather than earthly being, which is another concept that is universally rejected by modern historians. Nevertheless, such a hypothesis can be discarded, because all of the information given to us from Paul about Jesus during His earthly ministry refer to specific, earthly events, that are unknown in ancient Judaic literature to have any precedence in celestial or supernatural regions. For example, we are told by Paul that Jesus was born of a women on Earth under the law which only applies to humans (Galatians 4:4), he tells us that Jesus was killed by crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:23), that He was executed by earthly rulers (1 Corinthians 2:8), that He was buried (1 Corinthians 15:4). Paul also quotes Messianic prophecies he believes apply to Jesus (e.g. Romans 10:16-Isaiah 53:1, Romans 15:21-Isaiah 52:15), and the Jewish belief in the Messiah was in a specifically earthly being, not celestial by any concept or exaggeration. All of these, and many other aspects that Paul applies to Jesus are only known in context of earthly humans and events, and therefore applying some sort of celestial belief to the Pauline epistles is entirely unwarranted and without any validation.

=== Ancient Creeds ===

=== Ancient Creeds ===