DCHindley

Transformed into a new creature each time: Israelites (polytheists with a national God, possibly with traditions found now in Pentateuch) <587 BCE> Judeans (monotheists, super strict monotheists after 164 BCE, now venerating Prophets and later Writings like Daniel and books idealizing the history of their judges, kings and rulers) <70 CE> Rabbinic Judaism (moralistic religion without a temple, crystallized around 200 CE with the Mishna, essentially an idealized study of what temple life should have been like, with universal lessons drawn from that idealized study) ...

According to James D Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect (1968), the Pentateuch was brought back by the returning Judean exiles, who were installed by the Persians to replace the local Babylonian appointed elite classes.

This Pentateuch was accepted more or less by the Israelite "people of the land" (those who had not been exiled but remained to tend to the land as royal tenants) both in Judah and in Samaria (the remains of the old kingdom of Israel), but more especially by those in Judea as the exiles ruled that province directly, but did not rule the province of Samaria.

Tensions arose between the political objectives of the Judaite elites and the Samaritan elites, who did not seem to see eye to eye. The Judean elites thought they were much better representatives of the old Israelite tradition, and the Samaritan elites thought the same of their traditions. They survived in a kind of symbiotic tension through the Persian and Hellenistic periods, each maintaining competing temples, until the Judean rebellion against the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes ignited super nationalism among the Judaites. The Hasmonean prince John Hyrcanus attacked Samaria and destroyed their temple in 128 BCE, and from that point on, Samaritan Israelites severed their relationship with Judaic sponsored religion and redacted their edition of the Pentateuch.

DCH

Clivedurdle

Your summary misses out the Greek Jews who attended the gymnasium, thought circumcision was barbaric, thought slavery should be abolished, some of whom became Pharisees, most of whom were written out of history but somehow managed to write the Hebrew Bible in Alexandria...

Paul is possibly a highly educated Greek diaspora Jew. Remember, theology and doctrine did not really exist then.

And there are definitely several Paul's, bit like new flavours of coca cola.

bacht

I wonder if diaspora Jews saw the Judean establishment as puritanical killjoys. Maybe they were tired of the dietary and religious restrictions, or viewed them as superstitious relics of pre-Hellenistic times. The Greeks and Romans had a superior material culture, and a pile of literature more sophisticated than the moralistic Jewish writings. When Josephus calls the Jews "a nation of priests" I wonder how many would've resented the emphasis on ritual purity and strict ethics when the gentiles seemed to have all the fun.

DCHindley

They came in all shapes and sizes, just like modern Christians, Muslims or Buddhists. Philo recalls some who thought the Law and Jewish tradition full of fables.

De confusione linguarum 1:2 2 II. Those who are discontented at the constitution under which their fathers have lived, being always eager to blame and to accuse the laws, being impious men, use these and similar instances as foundations for their impiety, saying, "Are ye even now speaking boastfully concerning your precepts, as if they contained the rules of truth itself? For, behold, the books which you call the sacred scriptures do also contain fables, at which you are accustomed to laugh, when you hear others relating to them."

Gotta go see my daughter lead cheers ...

DCH

Clivedurdle

Do we have as a base Paul a gnostic Greek diaspora Jew who might not have been a Roman citizen (is it only Acts that says that?), or only an anonymous unrelated collection of writings that were attributed to a Paul and heavily edited?

A Christian Paul seems very unlikely!

Clivedurdle

Acts is a very powerful framework into which we unconsciously fit Paul's letters. Take away that structure and what do we have?

And take away the other bit of Acts - Luke - and what is left?

show_no_mercy

Well according to some scholars, John's apocalypse was originally a Jewish apocalypse that was edited and had a whole bunch of Jesus language inserted into it. The same things apparently happened with the Ascension of Isaiah and the Didache... originally Jewish works reappropriated by Christians to create a false pre-70 CE history.

I think according to DCHindley, the same thing happened with Paul's letters. Originally unrelated to some nascent Christian gentile churches but were some sort of wholly Jewish, DSS community-like interaction with the strangers-at-the-gate: goyim who were interested in Judaism or some gentile-Jewish proselytes. These letters were hijacked by post 70 CE Christians and interpolated with a lot of Christ-language.

Clivedurdle

The Catholic Encyclopedia agrees with that!

DCHindley

I wouldn't go as far as to say they did these things to "create a false pre-70 CE history." Maybe it is more like the Mishna, which reflects the Rabbi's idealized picture of the practices and teachings of Judaism in the holy land before the final destruction.

On account of the rebellion of 66-73 CE, Judaism had changed from what it was before that destruction (no more sacrificial system or atonement for the unintentional sins of the people by the high priest on the new year) and they had developed alternative points of view to substitute for them, and these are reflected in their idealizations of how things wre "really" done in the good ol' days.

Similarly, these same events caused the Jesus movement to change from what it was in Jesus' day (full of apocalyptic anticipation of a just new kingdom of God ruling the world in place of the Romans), and in the process they asked themselves "How could God have failed to give us what he promised?"

They apparently decided that it wasn't God who got things wrong, but them. Even before the war, Jesus was thought to have been raised from the dead, a token resurrecton of all the righteous when the kingdom of God would come in power. When the Romans later utterly crushed any chance of that happening, though, they decided that Jesus' death wasn't really a failure at all, but instead was an atoning sacrifice that would replace the sacrifices in the temple and the atonement that used to be effected by the high priest each year.

The gentile wing took this even farther, creating the high Christology we see in the NT. Like the Rabbis, they saw their formation not as forced upon them by circumstances, but idealized it as part of a process that instituted a "new covenant" through Jesus' death and resurrection, and a change of guard from Jews (who got things all wrong by rebelling) to gentiles (who figured out what God "really" meant).

Hi-ho

DCH

Elena

Do we have any evidence that there was an historical Paul? Is there any evidence outside christian literature?