Imagine you were an early convert to the Jesus movement. You're a Jew living in Jerusalem. You interact with James and Peter, you listen to their teachings. You practice the same Judaism Jesus practiced.
Let's say you convert almost immediately after the movement starts and you practice this religion for 20 years.
Suddenly a guy shows up that you've never seen before who is preaching an entirely different religion to the one that you and the disciplies of Jesus have been practicing.
This guy has a theology that rejects the Judaism that Jesus practiced, that his disciples practice and that you yourself practice.
On what basis would this person have for giving up the beliefs they've had for 20 years and adopt Paul's view?
In other words, why would you, as this person, believe Paul?
Jesus had two dads, and he turned out alright.~ Andy Gussert
“Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions…for safety on the streets…for child care, for social welfare…for rape crisis centers, women’s refuges, reforms in the law.
If someone says, “Oh, I’m not a feminist,” I ask, “Why, what’s your problem?”
I think this points to the spectrum of interpretation existing within the early Jesus Movement. James, Peter and the Jerusalem based followers were a significant kernel of the movement. But the followers in Damascus, Antioch, Alexandria and other Hellenistic locales were important centers too, with large populations. Paul emerged out of and contributed to this milieu. How closely Paul was to an Historical Jesus is hotly debated. How Christianity emerged out of this soup is shrouded in legend of Acts of the Apostles. Certainly Pauline letters the authentic ones anyway show a larger division across the spectrum than Acts, and many say Acts was crafted to reconcile this division. So as an Ebionite Jewish follower I wonder if the spectrum could stay wide enough to continue to accomodate a Jewish version of practice.
If the question is posed in such a fashion, of course the answer is 'You would reject Paul'.
However, I think that's because it's filled with question begging. The assumptions are manifold. For example, the Palestinian Judaism of the early christian movement is taken as normatively 'Jewish'. This may have not been the case. In fact, I think it would stand to reason that it was heterodox in that not only does the earliest strata of evidence we do have (e.g. creedal hymns, references firmly within the 'apocryphal' milieu) point to a minority strain of thought within Judaic tradition, but also simply that a movement that is very much like main-stream thought would seem to have very little impetus to come into being.
One thing that is a fundamental question is: did the earliest christians proclaim that Jesus was the Son of God and Lord? Paul did so repeatedly. There is a great deal we can dispute as to how Paul's writings differ from 'normative' Judaism, but the underlying assumption that the early Jesus movement was wholly normative needs to be at least questioned.
I am certainly no historian or scholar, but I recall reading that there were messianic sects within the Jewish population around the time that Jesus lived--understandable, given the Jewish concept of messiah as a human champion who would deliver them from oppression and usher in an era of peace and justice. That would explain Judas' disappointment in Jesus, if the disciples were regarding Jesus as their messiah, since he obviously did not fulfill that expected role.
I am not clear what happened with the disciples after Jesus' execution. Presumably, they were disheartened. Christian belief is that their faith was restored at his resurrection, but whether such an astounding event actually happened is entirely a matter of faith. If it didn't, then the disciples would have constituted just one more messianic cult that came and went in that era.
And then Paul came around. Nietzsche somewhat snidely commented that Jesus and Paul were two most Jewish Jews who ever lived. That is more clever than revealing, but I think his point was twofold: first, the irony that the cornerstones of Christianity were more Jewish than anything else; and second, that Paul (then Saul of Tarsus) had been obsessed with the Jewish law and despairing of ever being able to live up to it, and suddenly saw in the figure of Jesus, already dead, the escape from the impossible burden of the law. Whether he really had a conversion experience of meeting the resurrected Jesus or heard stories about a resurrection, Jesus became the means of doing away with the burden of the law (yes, I know all about Jesus' statement about fulfilling not destroying the law--we are talking here about Saul of Tarsus, not Jesus).
Christianity as a soteriologic faith is, I think, largely Paul's invention. Certainly, the Christian concept of messiah as divine savior from sin has nothing to do with the Jewish concept of messiah as human champion of the Jews. If Nietzsche's observation has any validity, then Christianity took shape under the guidance of a Jew who may have simply misunderstood the implications of the Jewish law, thinking that it had to be obeyed perfectly and totally, down to the last literal detail. But some Jewish scholars once told me that the law was never interpreted so literally, even back then (for example, there are offenses for which the penalty in the law is death, yet the death penalty was seldom applied in such cases); I don't know if that is true, nor what role the Sanhedrin actually played in the death sentence on Jesus (certainly the Romans didn't need any permission or approval to perform execution by crucifixion--they apparently did it with chilling regularity.
In any case, there can be no doubt that Paul was a tireless and talented organizer who effectively hawked his Christian doctrine to the new churches arising. As to why the tiny Christian sect of Judaism adopted this entirely different kind of religion, I can only speculate. Perhaps they were tired of waiting for a champion who didn't come in their long history of sorrow and oppression, and wanted to believe in something, anything that would convey a sense that God was real and God cared. But if pop-psych analysis is unreliable with people who are known to us personally, it is that much more unreliable with people from the other side of the world, 2000 years ago.
In short, I don't know the answer, and I don't know if anyone really knows--but it is still a great question.
I prayed for deliverance from the hard world of facts and logic to the happy land where fantasies and prejudices reign. But God spake unto me, saying, "No, keep telling the truth," and to that end afflicted me with severe Trenchant Mouth. So I'm sorry for making cutting remarks, but it's the will of God.
Imagine you were an early convert to the Jesus movement. You're a Jew living in Jerusalem. You interact with James and Peter, you listen to their teachings. You practice the same Judaism Jesus practiced.
Which is...what?
Let's say you convert almost immediately after the movement starts and you practice this religion for 20 years.
Suddenly a guy shows up that you've never seen before who is preaching an entirely different religion to the one that you and the disciplies of Jesus have been practicing.
This guy has a theology that rejects the Judaism that Jesus practiced, that his disciples practice and that you yourself practice.
On what basis would this person have for giving up the beliefs they've had for 20 years and adopt Paul's view?
Which is...what?
In other words, why would you, as this person, believe Paul?
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."
Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, for to go against conscience would be neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
If the question is posed in such a fashion, of course the answer is 'You would reject Paul'.
However, I think that's because it's filled with question begging. The assumptions are manifold. For example, the Palestinian Judaism of the early christian movement is taken as normatively 'Jewish'. This may have not been the case. In fact, I think it would stand to reason that it was heterodox in that not only does the earliest strata of evidence we do have (e.g. creedal hymns, references firmly within the 'apocryphal' milieu) point to a minority strain of thought within Judaic tradition, but also simply that a movement that is very much like main-stream thought would seem to have very little impetus to come into being.
One thing that is a fundamental question is: did the earliest christians proclaim that Jesus was the Son of God and Lord? Paul did so repeatedly. There is a great deal we can dispute as to how Paul's writings differ from 'normative' Judaism, but the underlying assumption that the early Jesus movement was wholly normative needs to be at least questioned.
Nicely said.
It certainly does.
Not the least of which is why crucify someone for "normative Judaism."
Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, for to go against conscience would be neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
Paul's gospel was not accepted. Paul was in argument with those who believed converts need first embrace judaism. The second chapter of Galatians shows Paul was at odds with Peter at Antioch. Paul accused Peter of not respecting what Paul called the "true meaning of the Gospel" like Paul knew better than Peter. He told Peter you have no right to make pagans copy Jewish ways. Paul wasn't trying to change the Jewish christians, and he wasn't making pagans into Jews. Paul's "true meaning of the Gospel" was placing belief in Jesus as what makes a man righteous. Paul argued obediance to the law does not make a man righteous but faith in Jesus does. This was the argument, Peter and the friends of James held on to obediance to the Law while Paul did not. The Jews did not accept Paul's gospel. The Jews told Paul to leave. So Paul took Jesus to the gentiles and left judaism saying the jews were living under a curse. Paul's gospel caught on among the Greeks and Romans.
I absolutely agree that our notions of what constituted normative Jewish beliefs and practices at the time have been heavily influenced by the trajectory of modern Judaism and the trajectory of Christian interpretations of the Septuagint. Apochryphal and Gnostic Judaism existed alongside the Essenes, the Pharisees (liberal and conservative schools), the Sadescees, and the institutional Temple practices. Then you have to consider the Hellenistic Jews in Alexandria, Damascus, Antioch, Athens and Rome. It was not at all an orthodoxy as is commonly imagined today.
If the question is posed in such a fashion, of course the answer is 'You would reject Paul'.
However, I think that's because it's filled with question begging. The assumptions are manifold. For example, the Palestinian Judaism of the early Christian movement is taken as normatively 'Jewish'. This may have not been the case.
I agree. One example of a divergence is the view of the unborn. Modern Jewish thought says that unborn children were always viewed as part of the mother and that this view didn’t regard abortion as anything major.
This isn’t the case in Hellenistic Judaism, which called for capital penalty for the man that caused the the accidental death of a “perfectly formed” fetus, which is a judgment based upon an LXX reading of Exodus 21:11, versus the Aramaic rendering of the same verse, which is markedly different and only subscribes a monetary punishment.
The term “Son of Man” also has different meanings, dependent upon whether or not the concept is informed by the Books of Enoch, which were held in high regard by some Jews (copies are found at Qumran) and which regard the SoM as a quasi-divine, timeless person, or if the books were disregarded by others.
Another difference lies in the acceptance or rejection of the Books of the Maccabees, which allow for prayers for the dead and how such prayers ameliorate their situation, versus Judaism informed by the Aramaic canon alone and which condemned the practice.
As you said, TFV, KW presupposes that ancient Judaism was monolithic and she also seems to presuppose that there’s been little change between modern or even medieval Judaism and its ancient counterpart. The fact of the matter is that for all we know, later Judaism might very well be composed of doctrines and teaching that were formed as a reaction against ancient Christianity.
Victim of this, victim of that, your mama’s too thin and your daddy’s too fat, get over it! - the Eagles
THe gift, as well as the problem with man, is that in their fervor for truth, they believe they have to reject one, to find truth in another. Why is it that both Peter and Paul cant both have some right, in how they saw Christs teachings? Incorporating pagan beliefs, helped those who were pagan to have some foundation on which they could eventually find CHRISTS MEANING WITHIN THEMSELVES.
Paul believing no one can get to Christ, if not through ones Jewish roots or perspectives, was also right in his understandings.
Some people may read your blog, and find something that speaks their language, while others find their language in anothers train of thought? Much like the gift of tongues, not everyone can hear the voice of God, with the same tongue.
However, both Peter and Paul were able to communicate Christs message, or this conversation would be moot!
Without the Soul of Christ alive in us...we are nothing but empty shells...
