In response to the Earl Doherty interview posted here two days ago, Evan asked what evidence convinces Doherty that the Apostle Paul of Tarsus was a genuine historical figure, and in what way it is different from the evidence for the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Earl Doherty responded at some length in listing factors that need consideration. I have taken the liberty of turning his reply into a post here, with slightly modified formatting and added subheadings, to make any follow up discussion easier to access.
Earl Doherty’s response:
Boy, nothing like a simple question to start things off. To answer it would take a book in itself. It’s really a topic for a proper discussion board, which I am not too sure is what Neil envisions his blog as being, or wants it to be. So let me just itemize a few points, rather than argue them in any detail.
The documentary record in relation to a first century Christianity and authentic Paul
Acts may be thoroughly unreliable as providing an actual history of the early Christian movement, but given an authentic Paul and a first century Christianity, the documentary record and its content as a whole has always struck me as much more coherent than what I would call ultra-radical alternatives which discard Paul and essentially shove everything into the second century.
There are just too many problems created, too many jerry-built measures which have to be undertaken, to try to make those alternatives work. It’s a lot like the no-Q position, the Luke used Matthew proposal. In my estimation, the latter runs up against too many problems that have to be ‘solved’ in ways I don’t regard as legitimate that it becomes a far less acceptable and workable theory than Q. Continue reading “Sifting a historical Paul from a nonhistorical Jesus: Doherty’s position”