Pauligirl wrote:
Not really. James and the other apostles were not friends of Paul.
When Jesus came, many Jews wondered if he was the reincarnation of one of the prophets. Some wondered the same thing about John the Baptist. Jesus affirmed to His disciples that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah the Prophet.
It's not that Paul and the other apostles weren't friends. He did get into a big argument with Peter, but he was the one who went to Jerusalem as per Acts in order to get orders from them. From there on he was going to preach to "Asia," or present-day Asia-minor, but the Holy Spirit in Acts tells him to go and preach to Greece and Macedonia. As for Jesus, he didn't affirm that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of anything, but that he is the prophet who is greater than him, and the greatest one until then.
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The beginning of Christianity stands two figures: Jesus and Paul. Jesus is regarded by Christians as the founder of their religion, in that the events of his life comprise the foundation story of Christianity; but Paul is regarded as the great interpreter of Jesus' mission, who explained, in a way that Jesus himself never did, how Jesus' life and death fitted into a cosmic scheme of salvation, stretching from the creation of Adam to the end of time. The doctrines of Christianity come mostly from the teaching of Paul, who claimed to be a Pharisee who rejected his Judaism and converted to his vision of Christ, thereby writing or influencing most the books chosen for the New Testament. There was in fact three main early churches, those of Paul, those of the Gnostics, and the Jewish-Christians sometimes called Ebionites. (Meaning "poor men?")
If you really believe that the Gnostics were an early church, I'd say to recheck your sources. The earliest gnosticism of any kind is early 2nd century. As for the Ebionites, they weren't really Christians since they rejected the Godhood of Jesus, but were more of a sect of early Christianity who emerged in the late 1st century. Paul was most definitely a Pharisee. He was a hellenistic jew born in Tarsus, and his intimate knowledge of the Sadducees and Pharisees shows that he must have had a high religious rank, such as when he causes a controversy over the final resurrection of all bodies amongst them.
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Jesus' actual apostles in the gospels are often portrayed as doubters and even stupid, never quite understanding what Jesus is saying. Their importance in the origins of Christianity, are at best marginalized. For example, we find immediately after Jesus' death that the leader of the Jerusalem Church is Jesus' brother James. (Acts) In the Gospels this James has almost nothing to do with Jesus' mission only given a brief mention as one of the brothers of Jesus, who allegedly opposed Jesus during his lifetime and regarded him as a nutcase. But Acts (supposed to be a historical narrative written by Luke) tells us after Jesus' death James, a brother who had been hostile to Jesus in his lifetime, suddenly became the revered leader of His Church. Like so much else, this isn't explained. Let us remember that according to scholars all the gospels were written after Paul's writings, there are no originals.
You make the illogical conclusion that James' lack of belief prior to Jesus' death is equivalent to hostility. Even if it were, which is nowhere to be found to be the case, hostility can be overcome by the extraordinary. With respect to the Bible, all of the apostles except John ran away after Christ was crucified. After that however, pretty much all of them became founders of a church in a different country (Peter-Ethiopia, Thaddaeus-Armenia, Thomas-India, etc). If you are to say that this was because they weren't hostile to Jesus before, then you have to explain why it's impossible for a change of heart the kind Paul had for James to have had.
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In fact James is a subject, some Protestants in particular, wish would just go away. The most likely explanation is that the near erasure of Jesus' brother James (and his other brothers) from any significant role in the gospel story is part of the downplaying of the early leaders who had been in close contact with Jesus whom regarded with great suspicion and dismay the Christological theories of Paul. Paul flaunted his brand new visions in interpretation of the Jesus whom he had never met in the flesh. The church fathers wanted the Jesus of Paul, a neoplatonic savior-god that offered salvation at no effort other than faith and through the church. They didn't want the Jesus of James, a Jew that wouldn't let them escape the Law, which held one directly responsible for their actions. James and the other apostles were in fact bitter enemies of Paul.
What exactly were James and the rest of Jesus' brothers leaders of? Pharisees? Saducees? Their doctrines were well known and are even mentioned throughout the New Testament (Acts 23:8, etc). From Jesus' discourse on hypocrisy it's evident what the Pharisees did that wasn't in agreement with Jesus. Please provide your evidence for James being a "Jew that wouldn't let them escape the Law." Pretty much all of the apostles upheld the law, and evidence of this is recorded in Acts, as well as Paul's responses in Timothy.
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Jesus and his immediate followers were Pharisees who like the Zoroastrians (Persians) believed in the resurrection of the dead. (The Sadducees rejected this and were at odds with the Pharisees.) Jesus was a rabbi who probably had no intention of founding a new religion. He regarded himself as the Messiah in the normal Jewish sense of the term, i.e. a human leader who would restore the Jewish monarchy and inaugurate an era of peace, justice and prosperity (known as "the kingdom of God") for the whole world. Jesus believed himself to be the figure prophesied in the Hebrew Bible who would do all these things. He was not a militarist and did not build up an army to fight the Romans, since he believed that God would perform a great miracle to break the power of Rome. This miracle would take place on the Mount of Olives, as prophesied in the book of Zechariah. Note that Pharisee Judaism is the one that survives today.
The Pharisees were Jesus' immediate followers? There is historical evidence that they existed much earlier than Jesus, and furthermore Jesus' teachings are incompatible with their practices. Your assertion that Jesus didn't want to start a new religion is inconsistent with the Great Commission found in the end of Matthew, Luke and John. He certainly regarded Himself as the Messiah as per Isaiah's requirements, and is evident of His reference to Himself as the Lamb that He associated Himself with Daniel's sacrifice for the atonement of sin (Daniel 9:27). Where exactly does Zachariah prophecize that the Messiah's preaching on the Mount of Olives would bring about a miracle to destroy Rome's grip on Judaea? The Pharisees of Jesus' day are not to be confused with Hasidism, which arose in 18th century Europe.
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The first followers of Jesus, under James and Peter, founded the Jerusalem Church after Jesus' death. They were called the Nazarenes, and in all their beliefs they were indistinguishable from the Pharisees, except that they believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus was still the promised Messiah. They believed Jesus had been brought back to life after his death on the cross, and would soon come back to complete his mission of overthrowing the Romans and setting up the Messianic kingdom. The Nazarenes did not believe that Jesus had abrogated the Jewish religion, or Torah. Having known Jesus personally, they were aware that he had observed the Jewish religious law all his life and had never rebelled against it. His Sabbath cures were not against Pharisee law. The Nazarenes were themselves very observant of Jewish religious law. They practiced circumcision, did not eat the forbidden foods and showed great respect to the Temple.
Once again, the New Testament is a serious discrepancy between the Pharisaic practices. The ideology may have been similar due to the common source - the Old Testament, but you cannot attempt to reconcile the two, especially with the historical problems the two had. On the contrary, they charged Jesus with breaking the Sabbath by picking seeds on Saturday. There certainly may have been Pharisaic converts to Christianity (Nicodemus, Acts 15:5), but to claim that the Pharisees were the Christians is ridiculous.
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The Nazarenes did not regard themselves as belonging to a new religion; their religion was Judaism. They set up synagogues of their own, but they also attended non-Nazarene synagogues on occasion, and performed the same kind of worship in their own synagogues as was practiced by all observant Jews. The Nazarenes became suspicious of Paul when they heard that he was preaching that Jesus was the founder of a new religion and that he had abrogated the Torah. After an attempt to reach an understanding with Paul, the Nazarenes (i.e. the Jerusalem Church under James and Peter) broke irrevocably with Paul and disowned him. Indeed, when Paul visited Jerusalem, Jews attacked and try to kill him. Paul is saved only by invoking his Roman citizenship, a citizenship that Jews fiercely hated in those days. Because Paul appeals to Rome, Paul is then taken to there where he undergoes a trial for his life.
You have no evidence for these assertions. Firstly, why would they set up their own synagogues if they considered themselves to be part of traditional Judaism? When and where do they become "suspicious" of Paul? Paul did not appeal to his citizenship in Jerusalem because he escaped and if he had been caught it was unlikely that any roman citizenship would have saved him there. He was released from prison due to his Roman citizenship in Philippi. The Christian Church never disowned Paul. They simply disagreed regarding the Mosaic Law.
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Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, central myth was that of an atoning death of a Divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam.
It would be nice if you had something to support this assertion other than empty theories regarding James and a mystical disconnection between Paul and the church.
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A source of information about Paul that has never been taken seriously enough is a group called the Ebionites. Their writings were suppressed by the Orthodox Church, but some of their views and traditions were preserved in the writings of their opponents, particularly in the huge "Treatise on Heresies" by Epiphanius. From this it appears that the Ebionites had a very different account to give of Paul's background and early life from that found in the New Testament and fostered by Paul himself. The Ebionites testified that Paul had no Pharisaic background or training; he was the son of Gentiles, converted to Judaism in Tarsus, came to Jerusalem when an adult, and attached himself to the High Priest as a henchman. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he broke with the High Priest and sought fame by founding a new religion. These accounts, while not reliable in all its details may be substantially correct. It makes far more sense of all the puzzling and contradictory features of the story of Paul than the account of the official documents of the Orthodox Church.
The Ebionites emerged as a Christian sect in the late 1st century (
Ebionites). Their writings are about as valid and reliable as the Nag Hammadi by the 4th century Gnostics. We have 7, possibly 8 if you count Colossians, undisputed epistles by Paul from which you can gather that he never departed from the teaching to uphold the Law. He simply gave a description of how to do this and that it was not in the traditional sense.
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The Ebionites were stigmatized by the Orthodox Church as heretics who failed to understand that Jesus was a Divine person and asserted instead that he was a human being who came to inaugurate a new earthly age, as prophesied by the Jewish prophets of the Bible. Moreover, the Ebionites refused to accept the Orthodox Church doctrine derived from Paul, that Jesus abolished or abrogated the Jewish law. Instead, the Ebionites observed the law and regarded themselves as Jews. The Ebionites were not heretics, as the Church asserted, nor "re-Judaizers," as modern scholars call them, but the authentic successors of the immediate disciples and followers of Jesus, whose views and doctrines they faithfully transmitted, believing correctly that they were derived from Jesus himself. They were the same group that had earlier been called the Nazarenes, who were led by James and Peter, who had known Jesus during his lifetime, and were in a far better position to know his aims than Paul, who met Jesus only in dreams and visions. Thus the opinion held by the Ebionites about Paul is of extraordinary interest and deserves respectful consideration, instead of dismissal as 'scurrilous' propaganda -- the reaction of Christian scholars from ancient to modern times.
The church never pertained that Jesus abolished the law. The Ebionites' heresy was that they maintained that salvation was obtained through faith as well as works, contrary to what Jesus himself said, and the gospels (John 3:16). You have no evidence regarding 1)any "Nazarene" group and 2) their connection to the Ebionites or the early church for that matter.
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The Ebionites and the existence of the Jewish Church itself still haunt the churches of Paul (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox) to this day. The Ebionites and others were declared heretics only on the basis of the "say-so" of the church and its self-chosen counsels. God decides, not the churches.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/paul/je.htm
Even though it's on an atheist site, it's still interesting reading
Hyam Maccoby (1924-2004) was a British scholar, dramatist, and Orthodox Jew specializing in the study of the Jewish and Christian religious tradition. In retirement he moved to Leeds, where he held an academic position at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds. Maccoby was widely known for his theories of the historical Jesus and the historical origins of Christianity
The Problem of Paul
excerpt from: The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity
by Hyam Maccoby
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby2.htm
Various muslims have thrown this one in my face. Most notably, the alleged problem seems to be that Paul has written about half of the New Testament. It is, however, interesting to ask why anybody else should have written as much as he has when he had visited many more places than the rest of the apostles.
