Discussion on Paul and Early Christianity

The, the Paul thing is very interesting 'cause the more I

read,

uh, about the Bible and the construction of it, the more i-it

just gives you pause. Like, Paul was really kind of the creator-

Mm-hmm

... of Christianity because he never met

Jesus.

So Jesus-

Hmm

... never spoke to him, and Jesus never wrote anything down.

And so when Paul has this vision when he's on the

road to Damascus, and he has this, whatever it is, some spiritual

encounter that he says he met Jesus.

Mm-hmm.

Like, y- we're taking ... The, the entire religion is based on this guy

saying that, "I think He said all these things," 20

years

after He said them-

Yeah

... when no one wrote it down, and, "I never met Him."

Yeah.

So it's really Paul.

Y- yes and n-... Um, it, it, it was two people.

It was Jesus, and there was Paul. Yes, Paul was the great

organizer. Jesus, of those various other rival

messiahs, um, Jesus had some advantages with his

message. It was a universal message.

It was not directed just to the Romans.

It was not directed just to men. It was, it was aimed at,

aimed at, um, um, everybody. Um, so

of the candidate messiahs then, um, Jesus had a particularly good

message. Um, but it took an au-- A good message isn't

enough. It took Saint Paul as, as the o- organizer.

You... But it's fascinating that Paul never met Him-

Right

... and that Jesus never wrote anything down.

So when Paul's talking about this, this is literally just from verbal history-

Right

... which is really strange. An oral history that it

takes 20 years before this guy says, "This is what

Jesus said," and then we all go on that.

Right. The, the.. What's thought to be the first of the

Gospels,

um, um, Gospel according to Mark-

Mark

... um, is estimated to have been written down

something

like 20 years after the death of Jesus.

Yeah.

S- so we, we have, have no

f- first-person accounts of, of Jesus.

Well, it'd be really nice if he wrote things down.

Um, it would've made things more certain.

In, in the case, in the case of Mo- Muhammad, um, it was two

centuries before things got written down.

Wow.

So w- we know even less about Muhammad than-

That's crazy

... than we do about Je- Jesus. Or a difference also between

Muhammad and Jesus is that Jesus we know was at the right

place and right time. The Western Roman Empire we know

was at the peak of its

power. Why on earth did Saudi Arabia produce

a world religion then? Um, was it that,

as with Genghis Khan in Mongolia, uh, was it that,

uh, at the time of Muhammad's birth, was Saudi Arabia undergoing

a particularly wet time which meant lots of people,

which meant lots of harm?

W- we don't have the weather information

about Arabia, so we

don't know why. We don't know whether.

W- we infer that probably, um, Muhammad was at the right place and right

time, but we can't nail it down the way we can

with Genghis Khan and the way we can

with Jesus.