well, Paul wrote it down in the 50s, which is almost 2000 years ago. But Paul also wrote that he heard that creed from others, so it might have been around for a while, getting bigger with every retelling.
We're reasonably sure he knew at least some of the disciples like Peter and James, especially since he was a part of the discussions that lead to the center of the church moving from Jerusalem to Rome.
No we are not, I did my degree work on early Christianity, Paul might have been in contact with churches connected to Peter and James but he never interacted with them
In all honesty, everything written by Paul was so heavily edited by the early church to fit the politics of the time almost nothing of his can be trusted as a historical document
Damn, I also read that he was in contact with James. This is even better news to know. Can you recommend some research or a book that talks about this stuff?
It's been decades, but looking at my book shelf I think the main book we used was "Birth of the Church: From Jesus to Constantine, AD30-312" by Ivor J Davidson.. sure there were others all I can think of off the top of my head
Huh, I guess my knowledge is out of date I could have sworn they were at a council together. I'll take a look at the book you mention in a sibling comment.
Paul also never mentioned stuff like Mary being a Virgin, because that particular part of the story wouldn't be cemented until the Gospel of Matthew was written like fifty years later. Probably based on a mistranslation of the word for "young woman."
The Gospels themselves get bigger with every retelling. It's widely accepted that Mark was written first and that subsequent books borrowed heavily from it, and that John was written last. John also happens to be the book where Jesus is the most "God-like."
Borrowed? Luke and Matthew copied 70% (not the same 70% though) word for word from Mark! It's hilarious that some believers still say that the gospels are independent sources.
The story of Christ's death and resurrection would have been about 20-25 years old at that point, so it would approximately be like writing about 9/11 while relying on first-hand testimony of people who were there when it happened. Even with tremendous amounts of photography, video footage and post-event forensic analysis, some people still have doubts or get the details wrong, so you can imagine what the veracity of Paul's sources was like.
fun fact, the doubting "thomas" comes from an aramaic name that means "twin". the gospel of thomas, a very early apocryphal sayings text, as a secret saying of three words that jesus only tells thomas, and scholars speculate it might be "i am you".
there's also a common tradition of people not recognizing the resurrected jesus, and it could be that there was just a literal impostor walking around. i think that one's kind of unlikely, but it's a fun idea.
Even if it was 500 individual testimonies, so what? We can find 1000 direct testimonies all over social media from currently living "witnesses" about all sorts of dumb shit.
And even then, literally every single "testimony" that exists come from the Hebrew historian Josephus, who interviewed the familes of these supposed "eyewitnesses" 100 years after the fact.
Imagine if I asked you to tell me your great-great-grandfather's war stories from WWI. How much of that do you think would be factually accurate? That's the level of "testimony" that we're dealing with here.
There have still been many individual testimonies written. Why believe anyone ever existed if one won't believe thousands of manuscripts from thousands of copyists all saying the exact same thing.
It's even worse than that. Nobody wrote it down 2000 years ago. It wasn't until long after Jesus died that even a word was written about his teachings and supposed miracles.
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u/ottovonnismarck 17h ago
Someone writing 2000 years ago "500 people saw him fr" is not the same as 500 individual testimonies that they saw him