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Paul financially supported himself as a tentmaker (See Acts 18:3 - “There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with h

Paul financially supported himself as a tentmaker (See Acts 18:3 - “There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.”) There are also other mentions he was a tentmaker.

Mistletoe 1y ago
Interesting. I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole and seen Thomas Jefferson call Paul the first corrupter of Jesus’ teachings and I’m seeing everything in a brand new way. It makes a lot of sense.
- bambax 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ab5tract 1y ago
    That feels like a real stretch considering that Paul is responsible for starting the branch of Christianity that would eventually outlaw any “non-canonical” books about Jesus. Said books would never even have existed if it was true that Paul invented the character of Jesus whole cloth.
    - bambax 1y ago
      The erradication of non-canonical books came way later. There was no such thing at first (during at least the first two centuries following Paul's life).
      - balamatom 1y ago
        Does remind of an intellectual property crackdown some. "Only we get to tell this story"
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - photios 1y ago
    That's doubtful. To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels. In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      He would have written a self-help book for wannabe cult starters titled 'How to get your first 12 customers'. What is interesting about this project is that it cleanly splits off the real and verifiable components from the fantastic bits.
      - doodlebugging 1y ago
        From the map dialog for Lystra, visited on his first and second journeys: ** >Second Journey Verses (Acts16:1-5): >Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. ** I guess you need to have rules if you're gonna let people play the disciple game. Rule #1 - Get circumsized. This rule may be most effective at limiting disciple group size since any uncommitted wannabees would take a hard pass. I'm left wondering whether this could be the origin of "just the tip", or tipping culture? Luckily for Timothy, Paul was a tent-maker or leather-worker, depending on which translation you favor, so he likely had some really sharp tools and would be able to make short work of this little project. Timothy probably didn't find much delight in pitching tents for a while though. Pretty funny trying to imagine walking around preaching for converts after this operation and wondering whether they had a cone or something like your cat gets at the vet to shield the parts from scratchy robes while walking. Probably lots of talking to God on those journeys.
  - fjfaase 1y ago
    According to the 'Acts of the Apostles', Paul (then still called Saul) was actively prosecuting the followers of Jesus, which by many were considered to be a Jewish sect, like there were more of such sects. It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.
  - krapp 1y ago
    Doubtful. As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.
- parodysbird 1y ago
  It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students. It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.
    - parodysbird 1y ago
      I chose the words carefully for that reason. The prophet of the nascent religion was a human being who was born, lived and died as a human being. Paul did not encounter this man. In his story, he encounters a divine being, and receives a private revelation (gospel) and mission that is distinct from the revelation and mission that the prophet in question gave as a human to his chosen students (apostles). Paul is, in this terminology, also a prophet. He explicitly says the revelation he tells is not of human origin, and so not passed down to him through e.g. the ministry of one of the students (apostles) of the prophet in question. It strikes me as unusual to have so much of the theology coming from someone who simply claims private revelation but is not the prophet in question and when the prophet explicitly chose disciples and set a ministry for them.
      - noshitsherlock 1y ago
        Not sure why you refer to the person who visited Paul on the Damascus Road with the term “divine being“ when this divine being as you put it specifically identifies himself as Jesus Christ, whom Paul was persecuting. And there’s further dialogue where Jesus communicates additional information to Paul as to the things he must suffer for Christ’s sake. He should also point out that Paul went over Peter and many of the other disciples to accepting him and his recount of the Damascus Road experience, despite the fact that he persecuted the church and was sending people to jail just prior to this encounte. I would take Paul at his word as faithfully recounted by Luke more than I would take your words as once so far removed, and obviously skeptical of the scriptures themselves. The entire New Testament and Christ life focuses on faith, which is supported by actual historical miracles and healings not to mention in Christ resurrection itself. That’s the whole issue, faith and belief versus skepticism and unbelief. It’s the grand drama that’s the whole point of both Old Testament and New Testament, that sprouts in the garden of Eden, where the serpent casted out on God‘s veracity when describing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. of course there will be people like you that argue on the side of skepticism and unbelief and that’s been true throughout history so nothing new here
- photios 1y ago
  TIL Jefferson published his own "version" of the New Testament. [1] > Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations. Walking in Arius' footsteps ... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thomas_jefferson_famously_authored_a_version_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thoma...
- krapp 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - beardyw 1y ago
    There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about. Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
    - krapp 1y ago
      Fair enough, but they were included and they were attributed to Paul. The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. You can put quotes around Paul's name in this context but the effect is still the same.
      - Jedd 1y ago
        > The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources - and were written 40-100 years after the events they claim to detail.
        Amezarak 1y ago
        We don’t know that for sure, and the author of John does clearly identify himself in-text.. Everyone also agrees Luke-Acts is written by the same person, and that Acts shifts to a first-person perspective during the account of Paul’s journeys. It’s not currently in fashion to think they were written by their the people they are named after, but it’s not implausible; the strongest argument for later dating of the gospels is simply that they all are perceived to clearly prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem, which did occur circa 70AD. But there’s no particular reason, even from a secular perspective, to assume this wasn’t just a reasonable guess about the future given past history and the contemporary political environment. Also, it seems relevant that our earliest sources given them those credits.
tetris11 1y ago
> tentmaking For anyone wondering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking > ... in which missionaries support themselves by working full-time in the marketplace with their skills and education, instead of receiving financial support from a Church.
- chad_oliver 1y ago
  Just to be clear, Paul literally made tents. The meaning of "tentmaking" that you quote came later by analogy with Paul.
  - jibal 1y ago
    And you know this how? https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios "some translate more generally: leather worker"
  - tetris11 1y ago
    I guess I'm just wondering where the profession disappeared in the general sense of surnames. You've got Smith, Tailor, Fletcher, etc. I feel like if tent-making was such a prevalent profession, there'd be name derivatives from it
    - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
      Professional surnames tend to reflect trades that were common when surnames were introduced to a culture. In English, that means ~1066. In Turkey, that means 1934. For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of tentmakers that established family names in England during the Norman Conquest. Not so in other places, though: The Arabic surnames Kheyyam/Khayam/Khayami are all derived from the word for tent maker, Plachta is Polish, but more closely aligns with canvas-maker, mostly sails. And then theres Zeltman, which is German for tent man (which is ambiguous between "man who sells tents" and "man who lives in a tent")
      - 1y ago
skeezyboy 1y ago
i often wonder this. how wasnt he robbed along the way? how didnt he starve to death. unless he was the calvin klein of tents, surely youd be working all day every day making tents just to survive, leaving no time for your spiritual whitecastle.
- artificialLimbs 1y ago
  It only takes believing in 1 miracle to be able to believe in any of them. It only takes witnessing one miracle to witness many.
- swader999 1y ago
  In addition to his wages, he had many patrons, church funding, 'stayed with friends', and was transported for 'free' as a Roman prisoner.
  - skeezyboy 1y ago
    so hes either walking around with wads of cash or hes got a lot of friends along the way, but he did something like 10k miles, hed need a lot of friends. And also whats stopping a bandit taking all the cash?
- takinola 1y ago
  I am pretty sure he talks about being robbed and also having times of starvation in one of his letters. I'm guessing his travels weren't very comfortable.

Mistletoe 1y ago

Interesting. I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole and seen Thomas Jefferson call Paul the first corrupter of Jesus’ teachings and I’m seeing everything in a brand new way. It makes a lot of sense.

bambax 1y ago
[flagged]
- ab5tract 1y ago
  That feels like a real stretch considering that Paul is responsible for starting the branch of Christianity that would eventually outlaw any “non-canonical” books about Jesus. Said books would never even have existed if it was true that Paul invented the character of Jesus whole cloth.
  - bambax 1y ago
    The erradication of non-canonical books came way later. There was no such thing at first (during at least the first two centuries following Paul's life).
    - balamatom 1y ago
      Does remind of an intellectual property crackdown some. "Only we get to tell this story"
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- photios 1y ago
  That's doubtful. To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels. In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    He would have written a self-help book for wannabe cult starters titled 'How to get your first 12 customers'. What is interesting about this project is that it cleanly splits off the real and verifiable components from the fantastic bits.
    - doodlebugging 1y ago
      From the map dialog for Lystra, visited on his first and second journeys: ** >Second Journey Verses (Acts16:1-5): >Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. ** I guess you need to have rules if you're gonna let people play the disciple game. Rule #1 - Get circumsized. This rule may be most effective at limiting disciple group size since any uncommitted wannabees would take a hard pass. I'm left wondering whether this could be the origin of "just the tip", or tipping culture? Luckily for Timothy, Paul was a tent-maker or leather-worker, depending on which translation you favor, so he likely had some really sharp tools and would be able to make short work of this little project. Timothy probably didn't find much delight in pitching tents for a while though. Pretty funny trying to imagine walking around preaching for converts after this operation and wondering whether they had a cone or something like your cat gets at the vet to shield the parts from scratchy robes while walking. Probably lots of talking to God on those journeys.
- fjfaase 1y ago
  According to the 'Acts of the Apostles', Paul (then still called Saul) was actively prosecuting the followers of Jesus, which by many were considered to be a Jewish sect, like there were more of such sects. It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.
- krapp 1y ago
  Doubtful. As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.
parodysbird 1y ago
It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students. It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.
  - parodysbird 1y ago
    I chose the words carefully for that reason. The prophet of the nascent religion was a human being who was born, lived and died as a human being. Paul did not encounter this man. In his story, he encounters a divine being, and receives a private revelation (gospel) and mission that is distinct from the revelation and mission that the prophet in question gave as a human to his chosen students (apostles). Paul is, in this terminology, also a prophet. He explicitly says the revelation he tells is not of human origin, and so not passed down to him through e.g. the ministry of one of the students (apostles) of the prophet in question. It strikes me as unusual to have so much of the theology coming from someone who simply claims private revelation but is not the prophet in question and when the prophet explicitly chose disciples and set a ministry for them.
    - noshitsherlock 1y ago
      Not sure why you refer to the person who visited Paul on the Damascus Road with the term “divine being“ when this divine being as you put it specifically identifies himself as Jesus Christ, whom Paul was persecuting. And there’s further dialogue where Jesus communicates additional information to Paul as to the things he must suffer for Christ’s sake. He should also point out that Paul went over Peter and many of the other disciples to accepting him and his recount of the Damascus Road experience, despite the fact that he persecuted the church and was sending people to jail just prior to this encounte. I would take Paul at his word as faithfully recounted by Luke more than I would take your words as once so far removed, and obviously skeptical of the scriptures themselves. The entire New Testament and Christ life focuses on faith, which is supported by actual historical miracles and healings not to mention in Christ resurrection itself. That’s the whole issue, faith and belief versus skepticism and unbelief. It’s the grand drama that’s the whole point of both Old Testament and New Testament, that sprouts in the garden of Eden, where the serpent casted out on God‘s veracity when describing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. of course there will be people like you that argue on the side of skepticism and unbelief and that’s been true throughout history so nothing new here
photios 1y ago
TIL Jefferson published his own "version" of the New Testament. [1] > Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations. Walking in Arius' footsteps ... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thomas_jefferson_famously_authored_a_version_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thoma...
krapp 1y ago
[flagged]
- beardyw 1y ago
  There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about. Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
  - krapp 1y ago
    Fair enough, but they were included and they were attributed to Paul. The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. You can put quotes around Paul's name in this context but the effect is still the same.
    - Jedd 1y ago
      > The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources - and were written 40-100 years after the events they claim to detail.
      - Amezarak 1y ago
        We don’t know that for sure, and the author of John does clearly identify himself in-text.. Everyone also agrees Luke-Acts is written by the same person, and that Acts shifts to a first-person perspective during the account of Paul’s journeys. It’s not currently in fashion to think they were written by their the people they are named after, but it’s not implausible; the strongest argument for later dating of the gospels is simply that they all are perceived to clearly prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem, which did occur circa 70AD. But there’s no particular reason, even from a secular perspective, to assume this wasn’t just a reasonable guess about the future given past history and the contemporary political environment. Also, it seems relevant that our earliest sources given them those credits.

tetris11 1y ago

> tentmaking For anyone wondering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking > ... in which missionaries support themselves by working full-time in the marketplace with their skills and education, instead of receiving financial support from a Church.

chad_oliver 1y ago
Just to be clear, Paul literally made tents. The meaning of "tentmaking" that you quote came later by analogy with Paul.
- jibal 1y ago
  And you know this how? https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios "some translate more generally: leather worker"
- tetris11 1y ago
  I guess I'm just wondering where the profession disappeared in the general sense of surnames. You've got Smith, Tailor, Fletcher, etc. I feel like if tent-making was such a prevalent profession, there'd be name derivatives from it
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    Professional surnames tend to reflect trades that were common when surnames were introduced to a culture. In English, that means ~1066. In Turkey, that means 1934. For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of tentmakers that established family names in England during the Norman Conquest. Not so in other places, though: The Arabic surnames Kheyyam/Khayam/Khayami are all derived from the word for tent maker, Plachta is Polish, but more closely aligns with canvas-maker, mostly sails. And then theres Zeltman, which is German for tent man (which is ambiguous between "man who sells tents" and "man who lives in a tent")
    - 1y ago

skeezyboy 1y ago

i often wonder this. how wasnt he robbed along the way? how didnt he starve to death. unless he was the calvin klein of tents, surely youd be working all day every day making tents just to survive, leaving no time for your spiritual whitecastle.

artificialLimbs 1y ago
It only takes believing in 1 miracle to be able to believe in any of them. It only takes witnessing one miracle to witness many.
swader999 1y ago
In addition to his wages, he had many patrons, church funding, 'stayed with friends', and was transported for 'free' as a Roman prisoner.
- skeezyboy 1y ago
  so hes either walking around with wads of cash or hes got a lot of friends along the way, but he did something like 10k miles, hed need a lot of friends. And also whats stopping a bandit taking all the cash?
takinola 1y ago
I am pretty sure he talks about being robbed and also having times of starvation in one of his letters. I'm guessing his travels weren't very comfortable.