aa5874

But, once it was claimed that Paul now preached the faith he once persecuted , then it should very basic to know what he persecuted by examining the faith of Paul as found in the Pauline Epistles.

The faith of Paul is recorded in the Pauline Epistles and Acts of the Apostles.

Paul's faith is now similar to the faith of Stephen who was stoned to death.

There is no ambiguity at all.

In effect, Paul persecuted people for blasphemy including those who claimed that Jesus truly rose from the dead, Paul now preaches that Jesus was a God/man who was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven and sits on the right of God.

Paul persecuted people for claiming they were not the apostles of man, nor by men, Paul now preached the very same thing.

Paul's faith was recorded, so based on the writings, we know, or have an idea, who he might have persecuted.

spamandham

...Jews promoting disdain of Jewish customs. That's what Jewish leadership would have found threatening.

Solo

I don't buy this argument, Don. "We preach Christ crucified" is Paul preaching Christ crucified and it is evidently not what the Jerusalem missions stressed about Jesus (Gal 6:12-14). Paul asserts that his faith i.e. Jesus = Christ is the faith of the Holy Spirit, i.e. the true faith, but the fight in Galatia shows there existed a deep chasm, between him and the Jerusalem missions, and it was not the gulf about whether to circumcise or not. That seems like a Trivial Pursuit of the Sunday School scholars. Rather, Paul accuses Cephas of not being straightforward about the truth of the gospel (Paul's gospel of course !). Paul says (Gal 2:15-16) : We ourselves (i.e. the Christ party), who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified. This is the crux of Paul's theology. You cannot justify your Jesus (if it is to be the universal Jesus Christ) by the law, because he was justly condemned and crucified by the law, the very law that you now foist on your converts (and mine) and the law that you do not keep (and Jesus was made to break for our sake). They are the sin that Jesus was sent to cancel.

So, Paul masterfully draws two sets of parallels for the foolish Galatians. There is the gospel of the crucified Christ which preaches justification by faith in Jesus who was made a curse under the law, a faith which commands his flock to live in the spirit of holiness. Then there is the Cephas mission and those like him, who are Jews and compel their converts (to Jesus, but a Jesus of a different spirit) to live as Jews outwardly, preaching salvation through law which they they themselves do not keep (as Jesus was made to do in passion for our sake, 2 Cor 5:21).

So, if the Jacobite church did not believe Jesus crucified and resurrected what did they believe in ?

The best I can garner from the scattered remains of the pre-messianic Jesus of the Nazarenes in the NT, is that they believed that Jesus was a law-abiding Jewish prophet of the last days, killed lawlessly, who was then linked in a midrash connecting him by name to Zech 3. vision. He was asserted to have been rehabilitated in heaven and made a high priest to minister to the coming of the Messiah. He ascended to God, and functioned as a heavenly intercessor/mediator. He was not thought of as God's son in the Pauline fashion, i.e. a pre-existent divine being. He was not thought of as resurrected. The Nazarenes used that term only in the fashion of the apocalyptic sectarians of Qumran, for spiritual awakening, (likely in connection with baptismal rites to achieve the same) not eschatological physicial transformation.

As for the Davidic descent to which Paul apparently subscribes in Rom 1:3, I believe it is maifestly an insert to harmonize Paul with the later Jewish Christian genealogies of the historical Jesus that satisfied the classic expectation of Messiah's Davidic line. The notion clashes violently with Paul's pre-existent divinity discerned by the spirit, and the universality of Christ as humble earthly servant ( 1Cr 1:27-31). It is directly argued against by Jesus of Mark in 12:35-37. Mark, IMHO was a Pauline Christian.

Jiri

GakuseiDon

I think Paul gives a hint in Gal 1:12-14, which spamandham gives above: Paul "was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers". So it was something to do with the law.

Probably that Paul and the others were trying to tell them that Christianity had the true info about Judaism.

GakuseiDon

True, I'm not sure. I'm just going by what Paul appears to be saying.

That, and what Paul appears to be saying.

GakuseiDon

I just can't see it, I'm afraid, based on the sequence of events in Gal 1. God reveals Jesus in Paul, that Paul can preach him among the Gentiles (Gal 1:16) and it seems that after that that the churches in Judea heard about Paul, and how Paul was now preaching the faith he had tried to destroy (Gal 1:23).

spin

When taken out of context of course from two separate sources in two different letters, one as an opinion by people who'd never met Paul, the other from the horse's mouth.

It may be like taking the opinion of a pagan who knew Marcion before his new religion saying that Marcion had become a christian. Marcion might have been happy enough.


spin

Solo

The conjecture is not based on Galatians, but other texts, notably Hebrews. Hebrews 3:1 :

I was long stuck on that verse, which had no cross-reference but then Loomis pointed out that it transparently points to the vision of Zechariah (3:1-10):

I long suspected that Jesus of the Jerusalem congreation of James was not seen as Messiah (kindly ignore the title in Heb 3:1 as a later synthesis) , i.e. that the appellation was Paul's idea expressly to thwart the messianic propaganda of James' missions. Paul did not believe in the messianic kingdom on earth as they did (1 Cr 15:50). But Paul became himself an apocalyptic interpreter of the signs of the end times and hit on an idea how to disarm the messianic fervour: Simply place a crown of thorns on the proclaimer and make him the Proclaimed of the spiritual kingdom. It is he who speaks to Paul from his heavenly abode.

Now the link of Heb 3:1 to Zech 3 is very revealing.

The Jesus of Zechariah is :

1) falsely accused by Satan, and

2) in filthy garments when entering heaven;

3) rehabilitated by the Lord, and ordained as high priest;

4) to judge Israel;

5) to oversee and patronize in heaven the coming of Messiah;


This is very different scenario from Paul who believed :

1) Christ was pre-existent;

2) Jesus was righteously executed under the law,

3) but was saved by his faith;

4) Jesus is the Messiah;

5) He will judge all, and

6) will save his faithful.

7) The Nazarene missionaries are unrepentant sinners.

My reading of the historical scenario would they go something like this: a Galilean preacher by the name of Yeshua, enters Jerusalem with a small entourage to proclaim the kingdom. He creates a disturbance in the Temple where he is arrested by the Temple guard. He defies the Sanhendrin when questioned, and is handed over to the Gentiles who crucify him as a seditionist. The iniquity of the priests outrages the Jacobite messianists in Jerusalem. They connect the executed Yeshua to the Yeshua of Zechariah in a midrash. James is persuaded to adopt Jesus' disciples as his church stands for the Jerusalem in the vision (3:2, cf. Mt 23:37 may be an echo of this and lament James. The stoning of Stephen in the Acts looks like a fiction designed to obliterate the memory of James). He sends the pillars (the James among the pillars I believe is James the Zebedee) and perhaps few others to spread the word in the diaspora. Their message reaches Paul who is outraged because he believes:

1) there is no Davidic messiah coming any time soon; it's childish nonsense of people closed off from the real world;

2) Jesus was a fool and blasphemer, righteously executed under the law;

3) the Nazarene missionaries are faithless sinners.

IOW, Paul did not change his worldly view of Jesus but replaced it with his spiritual vision. He remained fundamentally hostile to the Nazarene missions, though he respected James the Just and evidently tried to win him over (by sending him money).

Jiri