Originally Posted by sschlichter

Paul's conflict with the people in Jerusalem may be that they, messianists of the John the Baptist flavor do not accept the messiah of Paul. After all, Paul's gospel didn't come from them, but from direct revelation of Jesus from god (Gal. 1:11-12). Paul, who claims to have been a devout conservative Jew (1:14), had been reacting against deviation from the conservative norm. Hence messianists were targets. At some stage in his zeal he had a change of heart and received his own messianist revelation, which set him off on his own course. That led him to seek out other messianists, such as those in Jerusalem, and the persecutor became of sorts a believer of the views that he had persecuted...



is most definitely not described in the text at all. (or any NT text)

Originally Posted by sschlichter

(Acts 15:7) After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, "Brothers, you know that some time ago God chose me to preach to the Gentiles so they would hear the message of the gospel and believe.

Originally Posted by bacht

There's an echo of conflict in this passage from Acts (Paul never mentions JtB in the epistles afaik):

Now a Jew named Apol'los, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures.
He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aq'uila heard him, they took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.
And when he wished to cross to Acha'ia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully confuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

While Apol'los was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples.
And he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said, "No, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit."
And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism."
And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus."
On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

Acts 18.24-19.6

Originally Posted by spin

It always comes to people depending on disputed texts.

Paul usually refers to the third pillar as Cephas. He uses that name only through 1 Corinthians, but when we come to Galatians, while mentioning Cephas, he suddenly starts talking about Peter, and then goes back to talking about Cephas. The two verses about Peter in the works of Paul are here, 2:7-8. Otherwise we have information about Cephas. This sudden use of Peter needs explanation, especially when a text called the Epistle of the Apostles has no problem talking of both Cephas and Peter as two separate entities (EpAp. 2, "We, John, Thomas, Peter, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Nathanael, Judas Zelotes, and Cephas, write unto the churches of the east and the west....").

Gal 2:9 tells us that all the pillars were to go to the circumcised. This clashes with the claim that Peter (and no-one else) was for the circumcised (as Paul was for the uncircumcised).

Then we ask what is the use of the "on the contrary" (tounantion) which starts 2:7? How does it really attach to what came before? Brief answer it doesn't really at all.

In short we must hold Gal 2:7-8 suspect and of no argumentative weight.

When we look at the notion of who exactly these pillars are using only Paul's information, we cannot inject our biases from the gospel material. These pillars are the leaders of a religious group in Jerusalem that Paul doesn't tell us too much about, other than he was in strong disagreement with them and that he thought they didn't offer anything of value. We cannot assume with everyone else that we are dealing with apostles of Jesus. (We already see the manipulating hand of the apostolic tradition which has insinuated Peter into this text.)

Paul's conflict with the people in Jerusalem may be that they, messianists of the John the Baptist flavor do not accept the messiah of Paul. After all, Paul's gospel didn't come from them, but from direct revelation of Jesus from god (Gal. 1:11-12). Paul, who claims to have been a devout conservative Jew (1:14), had been reacting against deviation from the conservative norm. Hence messianists were targets. At some stage in his zeal he had a change of heart and received his own messianist revelation, which set him off on his own course. That led him to seek out other messianists, such as those in Jerusalem, and the persecutor became of sorts a believer of the views that he had persecuted.

We need to evaluate the texts without injecting views from others (at least until we can say that the other texts are really relevant, eg they are chronologically prior and causally related to the content we are investigating), otherwise all we are doing is reproducing conventional apologetic.

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

This is another conflict with Galatians. Unless the Cephas in Galatians and the Peter in Acts of the Apostles are two different people, the Cephas in Galatians only preached the the Jews. Paul was supposed to preach to the Gentiles.

Originally Posted by sschlichter

on the contrary, Peter is referring to his encounter with Cornelius in ACts 10. Peter and Paul both have a shared understanding that "God has shown me that I should call no person defiled or ritually unclean." (Acts 10:28)