Pulling The Thread Podcast: Tracing Jesus Before Christianity Emerged, Jesus the Jew within Judaism! · Jeramiah Giehl

A Provocative Discussion On Christian Origins with Dr Robert Price Exploring Christianities Inception: Episode 10

·1 hr 30 min·5 clips

"My guess is the historical Paul was Simon Magus."

Paul is the starting point. The host asks Dr. Robert Price to place him within early Jewish thought, with Enochian literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Gospel of John on the table. Price says the Enochian world is interesting, but Paul in the epistles is harder to fit there: he does not speak of the Son of Man, and he does not use the same metaphors or animal symbols. He does note some interest in angels and the broader Second Temple landscape. James comes into view, and then first Peter and second Peter, which Price treats as later, pseudonymous texts that push back against Pauline influence and even lean into pro-Paulinism. The biography gets tested next. The host raises the three years in the wilderness, Gamaliel, and the sense that the Paul story may have layers drawn from different sources. Price points to possible echoes for the conversion story in Second Maccabees and the Bacchae, and notes that part of Paul's travel narrative has been compared with Apollonius of Tyana, who goes to the same string of cities in the same order. He also mentions the speculation that Paul might somehow be a short form or version of Apollonius, though he says he has never been able to nail that down. The host also raises Marcion and whether the first copies of Paul's letters may have come through his orbit. By the end, Price says Bauer's paradigm still feels alive because the documents look less like one clean origin story and more like a chain of competing claims, counterclaims, and later repairs. The discussion stays skeptical, but it keeps its feet on the ground by separating what can be argued from what can only be guessed.

As heard by us

A text-driven look at Christian origins that treats several claims as possibilities rather than conclusions.

This conversation follows Christian origins through a fairly loose but steady set of exchanges, with Dr. Robert Price moving between Paul, James, Peter, and Marcion while the thread keeps circling back to the Jewish and early Christian texts behind them.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want Paul's origins examined carefully, with uncertainty left on the table.

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