The basis for thinking of him as sincere and honest (both words perhaps not being the best choices, but close enough) is the absence of the argument to the contrary. The fact that a person can be a con man, does not make all men con men nor set that as the more reasonable assumption.
JAS said
The basis for thinking of him as sincere and honest (both words perhaps not being the best choices, but close enough) is the absence of the argument to the contrary. The fact that a person can be a con man, does not make all men con men nor set that as the more reasonable assumption.
And this is the problem with the question of sincerity in the first place. It’s not a matter of is he a con man or not it’s a matter of why do we give weight to this religious figures testimony.
I think it’s telling in your comments that you keep referring to the con man issue neglecting the bigger question of why should we take any historical religious figure seriously and then why specifically Paul.
The fact that people constantly debate over con man or “truther” suggest an academic muddling of the waters and it seems to miss the point.
Another good example of this is the difference between what is the most effective way to run a society predicated on the generalized exchange of comoddities vs asking why are we assuming this is the way to run the society in the first place. What’s even funnier with this example is that both topics give similar reasons.
Prior economists or theologians have accepted this, we live in a Christian society/we live in a society predicated on private property, and you need to prove that its false/prove that it’s a non effective form of organization and by these various framings totally misses the larger point.
JAS said
The basis for thinking of him as sincere and honest (both words perhaps not being the best choices, but close enough) is the absence of the argument to the contrary. The fact that a person can be a con man, does not make all men con men nor set that as the more reasonable assumption.
And it seems totally naive to me to assume an author’s representations about himself are truthful until we have evidence that he actually lied to us.
It seems to me reasonable–and perfectly normal in historiography– to take a person’s autobiography with a giant grain of salt as soon as we realize he might have had some ulterior motive.
Again, my question isn’t why people don’t think he was in fact a con man, it’s why they seem not to leave that possibility open, and instead implicitly trust what he says about himself.
Porphyry said
JAS said
The basis for thinking of him as sincere and honest (both words perhaps not being the best choices, but close enough) is the absence of the argument to the contrary. The fact that a person can be a con man, does not make all men con men nor set that as the more reasonable assumption
And it seems totally naive to me to assume an author’s representations about himself are truthful until we have evidence that he actually lied to us.
It seems to me reasonable–and perfectly normal in historiography– to take a person’s autobiography with a giant grain of salt as soon as we realize he might have had some ulterior motive.
Again, my question isn’t why people don’t think he was in fact a con man, it’s why they seem not to leave that possibility open, and instead implicitly trust what he says about himself.
You keep couching your position in that ever elusive realm of what is reasonable, and yet you also jump from minor issues (taking things with a grain of salt) to questioning someone’s entire account of himself. I wonder if you really approach everything in life this way, or it is limited to ancient history or something tinged with religious implications. You are the one who asked if Paul might be a con man, and yet now you retreat from the term even as you continue to imply the idea. Could Paul be a egotistical narcissist with any number of personal issues? In theory, yes. Could Paul be something very close to utterly sincere? Again, it is possible. Might he be sincere but misguided? Of course. If anyone could make any final judgement, it would remove the issue of doubt, which instead tends to remain except for those who have usually reached their decision by other means that rational consideration. But he is also only part of the story of the NT, although I wonder how much your interest in him is because he is the only individual who may actually be said to have written the works attributed to him. We can question many of his theological assertions without necessarily questioning his basic sincerity. Anyone you pass on the street might be a murderer, but is that the way to engage with the world?
Edit: I may be somewhat mixing responses by Porphyry and Adantell, who appear to have arrived at the same time, and adopt similar positions.
Porphyry wrote
I don’t see why speculation about motives is necessarily a non-starter, and I certainly don’t see why the historical method would require us to read these at face-value.
Well you can speculate all you want. So you speculate that Paul might have been a con man. Ok, then what? The situation remains. We have no access to Paul’s motivations. All we have is the text. This is why I say we are forced to take the text at face value. It’s all we have. Any conclusions we draw will have to be derived from an analysis of the text. When I say that Paul seems to me like a “perfectly honest religious fanatic” that is a conclusion I have drawn from reading the text. It’s not an assumption I bring to the text. Speculation is what you do after you’ve engaged the text.
Personally I’m open to any analysis. I would love someone to go through the material and demonstrate reasons that they think Paul might have been conning people. But if all you’re going to do is be satisfied with simply considering the possibility that Paul is dishonest, well do you really think no one has ever done that before?
JAS said
I wonder if you really approach everything in life this way,
Yes, I do–I never take strangers at their word if something valuable is in question, or if I do take them at their word, I do so knowing full well that I am taking a risk. I suspect you do too.
I once undertook a long distance move, and a found online a house to rent for the first month after I got to the new state. The owners were going on a long vacation to visit family for the summer and renting their home while they were gone.
The problem was that I knew there are some unscrupulous people who will rent houses that simply don’t exist. They will put up a listing for a vacation rental on craigslist, take direct electronic payment from a renter, and when the renter finally gets there, there is no rental property. The renter has no recourse, because the “landlord” was never there in the first place and probably has never even been in the country.
I didn’t think the guy I was dealing with was actually lying to me, but I also wasn’t going to blindly trust him. As long as it was possible this was a scam (I didn’t think it was, but I couldn’t be sure), I couldn’t rely on anything he said–not even the most mundane assertion–as true.
I think my caution was perfectly reasonable, and (fortunately) so did the guy I was negotiating with (so we were able to allay my concerns, and it all worked out well). We don’t expect people to take strangers at their word if anything significant is at stake. It is a false dichotomy to suggest that we must either trust people implicitly or accuse them of lying to us. It is not only possible but perfectly ordinary to insist on verifying a counterparty’s assertions as a matter of principle, and it is entirely reasonable to withhold judgement when you don’t have enough information.
Robert said
I’m more inclined to look at each individual claim and try to assess its merits. Had he previously persecuted in some sense early members of the movement? Was he a Pharisee with respect to the law? Did he genuinely believe he had received a vision and mission of great importance?
You comment was helpful, thank you.
But how do you assess the individual claims discretely, without considering his character in general, given that often all we have is his word (or Acts, which is both problematic in itself, and presumably derived in part from Paul’s own representations about himself)?
To take one of the examples you gave: Did he persecute the earliest Christians? It is certainly possible, but if it remains a live possibility that he was a con, then it also might very well have just been a story he invented to bolster his credentials. This is a tactic that con-artists regularly use; they first tell an untruth that seems harmless, the sort of thing no one would lie about (“why would any Christian want to admit to other Christians that he was once a persecutor of Christians? That is a shameful thing, and the fact he owns up to it, gives it the ring of truth”); but once the mark accepts that apparently harmless lie as a fact, the con then use it to establish something much bigger (“He went from zealous persecutor to zealous missionary; something big must explain his dramatic change of heart, so he probably did see the risen Jesus as he claims”). As long as we are unsure of his character, it would seem we must also hold his uncorroborated claims about himself as uncertain.
I see this as a very different issue, unless you are planning on entering a financial transaction with Paul. (Hint, don’t pay in bitcoins.) Is there any chance that you would accept Paul’s theological claims without questioning them? Nothing he says can really be directly verified, which is very different from the more modern examples you provide, and I do not really see any of them as being all that similar. (When I hire a service repair person to come to my house, I don’t leave money or valuables sitting out on the table, but I also do not assume that he is an axe murderer. Now, if he asks me to climb into my oven, we have a different mater altogether.) As soon as one moves from matters of history to matters of faith, a whole different set of considerations come into play, but the problem of making rational evaluations grows even more troublesome. Many people with totally different answers all think that they have arrived at them using the best evidence and reasons. One simply has to accept the limitations about such matters, or stay away from them entirely and stick with pure mathematics.
Stephen said
We have no access to Paul’s motivations. All we have is the text. This is why I say we are forced to take the text at face value. It’s all we have. Any conclusions we draw will have to be derived from an analysis of the text.
Perhaps we are using the expression “to take something at face value” differently. When I speak of taking something at face value, I mean, accepting what is says as true without question.
If I tell you, I’ve had a religious experience, God revealed to me a gospel, and if you send me a small stipend I will instruct you in this new gospel, then you have, at that point, nothing more than a text–my written representations about my personal experience–to judge. But that obviously doesn’t mean you can’t question the truthfulness of those representations; you don’t have to take my representations at face value. You might look at the text and conclude that what I’m claiming is suspicious. You might even feel safe concluding from the text that I’m lying to you.
When I say that Paul seems to me like a “perfectly honest religious fanatic” that is a conclusion I have drawn from reading the text. It’s not an assumption I bring to the text. Speculation is what you do after you’ve engaged the text.
I may have misunderstood your point. Did you not earlier say that any speculation that touches on an author’s motives is, by that fact, a non-starter? All I was trying to point out is that we do sometimes speculate on an author’s motives and honesty reliability, and that it seems you have engaged in such speculation yourself. I don’t see why considering the possibility that he was deliberately misleading people (as I have) should be out of bounds, while concluding he was an honest fanatic (as you have) should be a legitimate conclusion. Either we can speculate about his honesty or we can’t.
I agree that such speculation needs to be tested in the text–does the text furnish evidence for or against the thesis; does the text fit better with one hypothesis than it does with the other. Yes, exactly. Now, you’ve drawn from your study of the texts the conclusion that he is honest. My question is what did you find in the text that led you to that conclusion and ruled out the alternative?
But if all you’re going to do is be satisfied with simply considering the possibility that Paul is dishonest, well do you really think no one has ever done that before?
My question was simply, if we acknowledge a real possibility that he was being dishonest, why do major scholars seem to ignore that possibility, and assume that he was being honest. I know that some people have considered the possibility that he was lying, but unless that possibility has been ruled out or shown to be so remote it doesn’t merit serious consideration (in which case, again, what considerations ruled it out or rendered it so remote?) why do major scholars seem to assume he is reliable and accept his assertions uncritically?
JAS said
Is there any chance that you would accept Paul’s theological claims without questioning them?
Unquestioningly, no. I think it would be positively irrational to accept anyone’s theological claims (claims substantiated only by their claims of personal, private religious experience) without some sort of objective authentication.
As soon as one moves from matters of history to matters of faith, a whole different set of considerations come into play, but the problem of making rational evaluations grows even more troublesome. Many people with totally different answers all think that they have arrived at them using the best evidence and reasons. One simply has to accept the limitations about such matters, or stay away from them entirely and stick with pure mathematics.
I’m not sure what to make of this. Is your point that we need to just hold our nose and believe despite uncertainty? I take fideism–believing despite the lack of articulable justification–to be positively irrational. As you alluded to, lots of people use fideistic reasoning to arrive at completely different and mutually exclusive conclusions. If some line of reasoning can be used equally to arrive at either of two mutually exclusive conclusions, I take that line of reasoning as a manifestly unreasonable–it isn’t effectively discriminating between true and false.
And I don’t think history as a field is fideistic. I think we can sometime reach high levels of certainty in history (not absolute mathematical certainty, but very high confidence; and not with every historical question, but with some particular questions where we have adequate evidence to justify a conclusion). But when we do reach a high level of confidence in history, it isn’t because we ignored alternative possibilities, but because we considered those alternatives and either showed that they simply don’t fit the evidence we have or at least showed that, even if possible, they are so implausible they can be safely set aside.
Robert said
In the case of Paul’s claim to have persecuted early believers in some sense, I look at the texts where he speaks about this. In 1 Corinthians and Galatians, he is not merely making this claim, but both letters indicate that at least some of the recipients have been in contact with Paul’s rivals or opponents who are in a position to dispute any false claims. It would be stupid for Paul to make a blatantly false claim that could be checked by his recipients. Thus it is less likely that Paul is lying here. Proof? Of course not, but one indicator to he taken into account.
That is persuasive, thank you. I’ll need to think on it more, but I see the force of the argument.
Porphyry said
I’m not sure what to make of this. Is your point that we need to just hold our nose and believe despite uncertainty? . . .
My point is that there is inherently much uncertainty, with layers and layers of selection and interpretation in most of the humanities. Ancient history in general, and the Bible in particular, is not for those expecting to find certainty. The fact that many people who have made deep study look at similar material and yet reach different conclusions must be a warning of some kind. Most of those who do feel certain have merely “found” what they already were sure they would, and are really just fooling themselves. (As I have said elsewhere, that does not mean that we cannot have any degree of confidence in anything, and so we can just assert any crackpot idea as if all ideas are fungible. It does mean that certainty, especially as we get into details, is often an illusion.)
JAS said
My point is that there is inherently much uncertainty, with layers and layers of selection and interpretation in most of the humanities. Ancient history in general, and the Bible in particular, is not for those expecting to find certainty. The fact that many people who have made deep study look at similar material and yet reach different conclusions must be a warning of some kind. Most of those who do feel certain have merely “found” what they already were sure they would, and are really just fooling themselves. (As I have said elsewhere, that does not mean that we cannot have any degree of confidence in anything, and so we can just assert any crackpot idea as if all ideas are fungible. It does mean that certainty, especially as we get into details, is often an illusion.)
I don’t disagree with any of this.
Perhaps we are using the expression “to take something at face value” differently. When I speak of taking something at face value, I mean, accepting what is says as true without question.
Ok but I don’t know anyone who would do that except for fundamentalists. (Of course that’s what makes them a fundamentalist.)
Did you not earlier say that any speculation that touches on an author’s motives is, by that fact, a non-starter?
Well what I said was –
‘We have no access to the motives of these ancient writers so any hypothesis predicated on such knowledge is a non-starter.’
Meaning you shouldn’t assume a priori knowledge you can’t possibly have. Speculate all you want but make your agenda explicit and discipline your speculations in accordance with the text.
Now, you’ve drawn from your study of the texts the conclusion that he is honest. My question is what did you find in the text that led you to that conclusion and ruled out the alternative?
I happy to do so but if you are undecided wouldn’t it be better if you studied the text and came to your own conclusion? Robert raised one important consideration. Another would be Paul’s total unwillingness to ingratiate himself with his audience. He constantly pisses them off and confuses them. I would expect a con man to tell his audience what they want to hear not lay out a complex and subtle theology and then berate them for their lack of understanding.
Also, success wouldn’t seem to accomplish anything matching the effort being expended. You spend years preaching and wind up with 15 or 20 converts in one city. Then you move to another city and spend years preaching and wind up with 15 or 20 more converts. On and on for what, three decades? Only to wind up probably being executed by the Romans? Doesn’t sound like a con man. Sounds like a religious fanatic, confident in his calling.
Take Paul’s theology. This is not some glib spiel to fleece the marks. Paul has spent a long time thinking through the significance of Jesus’ death.
I’m not saying Paul was not self-aggrandizing, or that he didn’t spin his message to his own advantage, but I accept that he is telling us what he really thinks. If he’s fooling anybody it’s himself.
…why do major scholars seem to ignore that possibility, and assume that he was being honest…why do major scholars seem to assume he is reliable and accept his assertions uncritically?
What major scholars are you talking about? Who is doing this?
Stephen said
Did you not earlier say that any speculation that touches on an author’s motives is, by that fact, a non-starter?Well what I said was –
‘We have no access to the motives of these ancient writers so any hypothesis predicated on such knowledge is a non-starter.’
Meaning you shouldn’t assume a priori knowledge you can’t possibly have. Speculate all you want but make your agenda explicit and discipline your speculations in accordance with the text.
I’m not assuming a priori that he was a con, and I’m not hiding an agenda, and I’m not ignoring the texts. I simply pointed out that prima facie his being a con would seem like one obvious possibility (I mean, the suggestion is right there in the texts themselves, and we have other evidence of grifting itinerant preachers in early Christianity, so we know this was a thing not long after Paul), and I specifically asked if there were considerations that had led scholars to set that possibility aside and conclude that he wasn’t.
Here is the first line of the original post where I asked the questions:
Do any serious scholars think that Paul might have been a charlatan and con-man, and if not, why do they set aside that possibility?
And here is my clarification, from the third post:
The alternative I’d suggest [to assuming he is a reliable narrator] is reading Paul’s undisputed letters in light of the hypothesis that he was a con, who was deliberately pretending to have had revelations from the risen Christ in order to get money, and then seeing if that sort of reading works or whether there are things in the letters that just don’t fit that hypothesis.
Half of my question is whether scholars have already done that and found that it doesn’t work: are there passages in the undisputed letters that just don’t make any sense on the hypothesis that he was a con, and which have led NT scholars to the conclusion that Paul needs to be taken as sincere?
I could go on showing that I have consistently been asking the same questions throughout the thread.
I have been absolutely clear that I am not an expert and that I may be ignorant of the status of the field.
I have asked whether my impression of the status of the field is accurate.
I have asked, presuming my impression is accurate, why what seems to me one obvious possibility seems not to be entertained.
I never said that that possibility is true, only that it appears to me, on first blush, like an obvious possibility that deserves to be considered unless it can be shown sufficiently improbable.
I am frustrated by this thread because I asked two specific, tailored questions, yet I am under the distinct impression a number of contributors took those questions to assert things I simply never said. Maybe I unintentionally touched some sensitive nerve with how I put the questions, but if I did, I still don’t see how.
Now, you’ve drawn from your study of the texts the conclusion that he is honest. My question is what did you find in the text that led you to that conclusion and ruled out the alternative?
I happy to do so but if you are undecided wouldn’t it be better if you studied the text and came to your own conclusion?
They aren’t mutually exclusive. I think it not only possible, nor only likely, but quite certain that other people have noticed things in the text that I haven’t. If I were able to read the text on my own and see, entirely on my own, everything that everyone else has ever noticed in it, I’d be a world-class NT scholar. But I can’t, so I try to consider what other people have noticed and what considerations led them to the conclusions they have reached. And I don’t think I’m alone here; this is why people read books and articles on Paul–it’s also, I should have thought, one major reason people post to forums dedicated to Paul.
Robert raised one important consideration.
Yes, his answers have been consistently helpful, insightful, and responsive to the questions I asked. I thank him again for his informative and helpful replies.
Another would be Paul’s total unwillingness to ingratiate himself with his audience. He constantly pisses them off and confuses them. I would expect a con man to tell his audience what they want to hear not lay out a complex and subtle theology and then berate them for their lack of understanding.
Those are good considerations. But I’m not sure I find them conclusive.
I’m not sure a complex and difficult theology necessarily speaks against the con thesis; that depends on what the targets were primed to expect. I can think of contemporary examples of religious cons whose messages were difficult, but it was precisely the difficulty of the message that convinced their followers that they were legit. They pandered to their audience precisely by being, in one way or another, difficult. I think I’d need to know a lot more about his converts and what they expected a real divine message to look like before I could say whether the subtlety and complexity of his theology militates against the con thesis.
As to pissing off his audience, it seems like some of his most confrontational passages could be explained on the con thesis if there were some wealthy or upper-class marks who were disgusted by the conduct of their fellow converts.
And I think it goes too far to say he is unwilling to ingratiate himself with his audience: There are places where he not only expresses profound affection for them but speaks very highly of them. In fact, it is pretty routine.
Moreover as above, it could be that he was playing into their expectations or lending verisimilitude to the trick: “I speak to you harshly because I care about you and I really believe this matters.”
One major obstacle to embracing the con thesis as fact (which, I would stress again, I have not done) is that a sufficiently developed con-job is often indistinguishable from the mission of a true believer. That means in the final analysis the con thesis will be almost unfalsifiable. Almost anything the con does that seems inconsistent with his being just a self-serving con can be made consistent with the con thesis by pointing out that the con might be playing a long game and doing it to deepen the impression of authenticity.
Also, success wouldn’t seem to accomplish anything matching the effort being expended. You spend years preaching and wind up with 15 or 20 converts in one city. Then you move to another city and spend years preaching and wind up with 15 or 20 more converts. On and on for what, three decades? Only to wind up probably being executed by the Romans? Doesn’t sound like a con man. Sounds like a religious fanatic, confident in his calling.
Where are you getting that estimate of 15-20 converts per city? I’m not disputing it; I’m just curious how you came to it.
At any rate, the number of converts doesn’t matter to the con thesis. All that matters is that Paul believed he could raise a substantial sum of money from them or get some sufficient amount of other benefits–it only takes one or two wealthy converts to make it worthwhile, and Paul seems to have gotten several. And he seems to have thought he could raise a substantial sum–though quantifying that sum seems to me nearly impossible. The key economic consideration is the difference between the standard of living an itinerant preacher spreading Christianity to urban gentiles could expect and what a skilled manual laborer (like a leather worker) could expect. (And it is entirely possible that a con might have supplemented any support he got from his small flock with income from his own trade–particularly in the early years while planting his first churches–and still had a more comfortable life *even in the short term*, than if he’d just stuck to his trade full time.) It’s hard to say, but given how rough life could be for laborers in the first century, I don’t think it all that hard to believe the life of an itinerant preacher could be a tempting option.
Also, do you think Paul expected to be executed? If he did it would certainly be a serious problem for the con thesis–after all that would be just about the only thing that couldn’t be reconciled to the con thesis by just saying he was playing a long game: there is no long game if you are dead–but I’m not sure why we should say that he did expect to be executed.
Porphyry said
Again, my question isn’t why people don’t think he was in fact a con man, it’s why they seem not to leave that possibility open, and instead implicitly trust what he says about himself.
Paul writes to the Galatians 1:22-23 “And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea they only heard it said he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.“
This would be public information the Galatians could check, they have access to other Christians besides Paul. Same for the Corinthians whom he tells that he is unfit to be called apostle because he persecuted the church of God.
He is joining a faith who’s founder has been executed and who’s brother later will be too. He himself having persecuted and attempted to destroy this faith. Makes it unlikely that he’s joining purely for personal gain.
His letters aren’t simply reporting supposed revelation in the hopes that his audience will accept his claims on faith. He presents reasoned arguments and considered opinions on the controversies of his day – while what he is claiming might not be true its unlikely that he himself does not believe it.
Porphyry said
I have asked, presuming my impression is accurate, why what seems to me one obvious possibility seems not to be entertained.
I think you have already answered your own question. Paul’s writing could be an elaborate subterfuge to make money (why this would not be a con seems mysterious to me, but if you prefer to avoid the word . . . ) or it could be completely or mostly sincere. In either case, it would look exactly the same unless it was a subterfuge done badly in some way that left traces of the manipulation. Since they appear to be sincere, and I have yet to see you or anyone else propose anything more than that all too easy phantom of doubt, there seems little reason to adopt the subterfuge interpretation. And accepting his writings as sincere does not mean that one has to believe that he is correct in what he is saying.
Porphyry, wow. I wasn’t accusing you of anything. Unfortunately English is one of those languages that does not distinguish between singular or plural second person. “You” was intended for anyone reading and my comments were just general principles. See, you can’t even detect my motives. How are you, me, anyone going to detect the motives of someone living two thousand years ago?
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