So you all did take this discussion where it better fits in.
Now, if many Pharisees and priests believed the gospel and became Chfristians, according to Luke, then why should it seem unlikely that a Saul of Tarsus should have a similiar experience?
The New Testament highlights Paul's persecution and conversion. I don't believe that his experience should have been the one and only such one.
In Acts 15 among the apostles and elders in Jerusalem there were former Pharisees who have also converted to the Christian faith. Do the objectors want to suggest that these coversions also were historically unlikely?
And certain men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers , Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. (Acts 15:1)
But certain men from the sect of the Pharisees who had believed rose up from among them, saying, It is necessary to circumcise them and to charge them to keep the law of Moses. (v.5)
Here we have
"men of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed". That is had believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God of course.
My point here is that Saul of Tarsus was just one example out of many, of a career Pharisee who had been persuaded of the gospel of Jesus and converted.
Now there seems to be considerable skepticism about Paul's persecution of Christians before he coverted. The objectors suggest that customs and norms should have not permitted such and such to have happened.
Out of all the Pharisees who converted to become Christians do you think none of them could have previously had a nasty attitude towards the Christians? Some of these same people were people who participated in the crucifixion of Jesus according to Acts.
The imagination can speculate anything. Other than a blanket suspicion that everything the evangelists wrote was fabricated what solid proof is offered that Saul of Tarsus could not have persecuted Christians?
I am told that Rome would have never permitted this to happen.
Supposing for a moment that one super power have in principle some probition of such persecution, to what degree could it micro manage events from happening somewhere in its realm?
There are laws against many thing occuring in the US. Let's take entering the country illegally just as an example. Will historians of some future time look skeptically on a supposed problem of illegal immigration as certainly an unlikely event to have happened in 21rst century America because of certain laws?
So we have Luke telling us Saul acted in such a way. And we have Paul recounting that he acted such a way. In addition to this we have Jesus Himself predicting that the disciples should expect such persecution from the Jewish religious establishment.
I remember that somewhere Jesus said that the disciples would be cast out of the synogogues. That was a kind of persecution of Jews who decided that Jesus was really the Messiah. Am I to believe that the Roman soldiers were there to micro manage Jewish Christians from being excluded from worshipping any longer in the synogogues?
Other than
"Well, he probably never said that. We don't trust ANYTHING attributed as a quotation of Jesus. " what proof is there that this never happened? And if they could be dispised enough to merit expulsion why not some fanatical zealots like Saul, going further to not allowing them to worship in their own houses?
Doesn't seem terrifically unlikely to me.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2
