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From Bill Restemeyer and the Internet Infidels for The Freethought Web. |
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Did Jesus Christ Really Live? |
by Marshall J. Gauvin |
Page 11
| Paul's Epistles prove that he knew nothing about
his life, his works, or his teachings. In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word
about Christ's virgin birth. The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvellous manner
in which Jesus is said to have come into the world.
Jesus is supposed to have preached a famous sermon on a mountain; Christ delivered a prayer now recited by the Christian world; Christ taught in parables: Paul is utterly unacquainted with any of these. Is this not astonishing? |
But
for the purpose of my argument, I am going to admit that Paul really
lived; that he was a zealous apostle; and that all the Epistles are from his pen. There
are thirteen of these Epistles. Some of them are lengthy; and they are acknowledged to be
the oldest Christian writings. They were written long before the Gospels. If Paul really
wrote them, they were written by a man who lived in Jerusalem when Christ is supposed to
have been teaching there. Now, if the facts of the life of Christ were known in the first
century of Christianity, Paul was one of the men who should have known them fully. Yet
Paul acknowledges that he never saw Jesus; and his Epistles prove that he knew nothing
about his life, his works, or his teachings. In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word about Christ's virgin birth. The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvellous manner in which Jesus is said to have come into the world. For this silence, there can be only one honest explanation -- the story of the virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. A large portion of the Gospels is devoted to accounts of the miracles Christ is said to have wrought. But you will look in vain through the thirteen Epistles of Paul for the slightest hint that Christ ever performed any miracles. Is it conceivable that Paul was acquainted with the miracles of Christ -- that he knew that Christ had cleansed the leprous, cast out devils that could talk, restored sight to the blind and speech to the dumb, and even raised the dead -- is it conceivable that Paul was aware of these wonderful things and yet failed to write a single line about them? Again, the only solution is that the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus had not yet been invented when Paul's Epistles were written. Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching of Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels preached a famous sermon on a mountain: Paul knows nothing of it. Christ delivered a prayer now recited by the Christian world: Paul never heard of it. Christ taught in parables: Paul is utterly unacquainted with any of them. Is not this astonishing? Paul, the greatest writer of early Christianity, the man who did more than any other to establish the Christian religion in the world -- that is, if the Epistles may be trusted -- is absolutely ignorant of the teaching of Christ. In all of his thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus.
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