Hate Mail - It's So Much Easier To Repeat Ignorant Nonsense Than To Do A Little Reading

Over the past ten years, any number of times, I've had to point out to blog atheists claiming that Paul's epistles, generally considered the earliest actual texts of Christianity, don't say anything about the events found in the slightly later dated Gospels is, in fact, not true.  I've found that no matter how many times you give quotations and citations, they'll just keep repeating the lie you just refuted.  I think atheism is a symptom of the general decline in literacy, not to mention scholarship, which apparently comes with a demotion of truth as true instead of just a matter of what you want to be true.

In the book The Bible Makes Sense, which I went through over a number of posts beginning in Advent and going well into the Christmas season,  Walter Brueggemann, after C. H. Dodd, gives these passages as the "primitive narrative" around which all of the Christian scriptures are understood.

 . . . here we are preaching a Messiah nailed to a cross  To the Jews this is an obstacle they cannot get over and to the Greeks it is madness, 1 Corinthians 1:23*

Unfortunately, sisters and brothers, I was unable to speak to you as spiritual people  I had to treat you as sensual people, still infants in Christ.  1 Corinthians 3:1

I handed on to you, first of all, what I myself received;  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and, in accordance with the scriptures rose on the third day;  that he was seen by Peter, then by the Twelve.  After that he was seen by more than five hundred sisters and brothers at once; most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Next he was seen by James, then by all the apostles  Last of all he was seen by me, as one yanked from the womb  1 Corinthians 15:3-8

1 Corinthians is sometimes considered, if not the first, among the first of the epistles considered to be genuinely by Paul.   In chapter 15 he unambiguously mentions The Gospel that he gave to that community, whether or not it was in the form of a written document or orally, the Gospel that he had been given, no doubt the testimony of those who had witnessed the life of and heard the teachings of Jesus.  So that line you heard about Paul not knowing the Gospel is a lie that you could know if you had bothered to read what you're making claims about.

Elsewhere in the Epistles Paul mentions other things that current, unread, online atheist lore holds he didn't know about, such as the Eucharist,

The cup of blessing which we bless - is it not a sharing of the blood of Christ?  The Bread we break - is it not a sharing of the body of Christ?  1 Corinthians 10:16

I think that the act of sharing is intrinsic to the food becoming the actual substance of Christ, the giving of actual sustenance,  that it is what makes it so.  In other places Paul draws clear implications of that when he relates it to the food given to the People in the desert in Exodus.  Which may be quasi-heretical but it's what I think right now. 

My point here is that the current pop-atheist wisdom on this stuff, and not everyone who believes that is an atheist, some are just ignorant enough to buy it without reading the actual texts.  You might not hear this on Fresh Air or whatever replaces the old-fashioned act of actually reading things to see what they say, but the texts are there.  I have come to think that way too many people have been credentialed by universities and colleges on the basis of phonied-up erudition based in often ideological tertiary and even more remote claims about things.  And even when those texts are read a lot of what is claimed about them takes the same kind of ideological claims about what they say more seriously than what the texts say.  I will say that I have never, once, encountered an online atheist commentator who doesn't distort that.  I have encountered some people who don't, even some who don't necessarily agree with them, but they are a rarity.

NOTE:  The passages are taken from the Inclusive Language edition.  One of the things I like about it is that the language is modern and clear without having the feeling of being dumbed down, though that's not true of all of the modern language editions.

* The first of these texts is especially interesting to consider in light of Paul, in a dispute with Temple authorities,  shrewdly and accurately identifying himself as not only a Jew but as a Pharisee in Acts 23:6

Now Paul was aware that some of them were Sadducees and some Pharisees. Consequently, he began his speech before the Sanhedrin this way: "I am a Pharisee, the descendant of Pharisees, I find myself on trial now because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead."

It would be useful if there was more of an explanation of how Paul, as a Jew, differentiated himself from the ones for whom it was an obstacle.   I'm unaware of any place where that is done, clearly he was making generalizations based on nationality - the churches he founded were largely comprised of Greeks and Jews -  that didn't account for specific individuals within those groups.   It's certainly a text that has had some problematic mixed meanings.

I am still convinced that Peter (considered by Catholics to be the first Pope) and likely several of the earliest Popes would have been surprised if someone told them they weren't Jews.  I would imagine that was true of the fifth Pope,  Evaristus whose parents were Jews.   James, often considered the brother of Jesus but who is certainly one of the most central of the earliest followers of Jesus certainly considered himself a Jew.  In Acts 2:44-47 it notes that the earliest Christian Church, as it would later be considered.  Certainly including Peter and James.

Those who believed lived together, shared all things in common; they would sell their property and goods, sharing the proceeds with one another as each had need  They met in the Temple and they broke bread together in their homes every day . With joyful and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning the approval of all the people. 

It's clear that these earliest Christians, the "primitive Church" that so often people have believed they were recreating in their various reforms, considered themselves to be Jews.

I don't know how any of that relates to the extinct Jewish-Christian Ebionite sect, Jews who accepted Jesus, which possibly existed into the second millenium of the common era.  Maybe some texts will be dug up someday.  There were other Jewish-Christian sects but that's the one I've read the most about.  How much the modern neo-Ebionites - who I never heard of till about an hour before I wrote this - relates to that, I don't have any idea.