semiopen

Wonder why the quote is "the priest" instead of "a priest."

andrewcriddle

Another option is that Paul is deliberately and knowingly associating Christ (at least the glorified Christ) with Yahweh, eg regarding Christ as bearing the divine name.

This would have some similarities to Jewish traditions about Metatron

Andrew Criddle

arnoldo

I dunno, maybe it was a high priest? Anyway the Ebionites seemed to not only deny Paul as authentic but the majority of NT writings according to the following non-academic source;

show_no_mercy

Well, yeah. That's why I called them "very Jewish"

jakejonesiv

Hi Sheshbazzar,

You make an excellent point.

Paul said the Ten Commnadements were the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones. 2 Cor. 3:7. I doubt that any Jew could have written this.

According to "Paul," the Jewish law is the enemy because it is the inferior ordination of angels (Gal. 3:19; Col 2:18), the elemental powers of this world (Gal. 4:3,Col. 2:8,20). The "Law of commandments" (Eph. 2:15) was "the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us" Col 2:14. Thus the Law stood against and was hostile to man. The Law is described here as a bond, a bill of debt, for which payment is due to the minions of creation. Christ nailed the law to the cross (Col. 2:14) and thereby disarmed the Archons and Exousia of this world, and triumphed over them (Col. 2:15).

To find the origin of Pauline Christianity, we must look to groups that had an antipathy to Jewish law. Maybe the Samarians.

Best,
Jake

show_no_mercy

Luke is the only gospel with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is supposedly the most Pauline gospel. On the other hand, Matthew explicitly tells his disciples never to preach in any of the towns of the Samaritans or the nations (10:5-6) and that he only came to the lost sheep of Israel.

John also has "many Samaritans" believing in his messiahship (4:39-42), yet the Jews are clueless.

arnoldo

If anything this accusation that the Ebionites had against Paul;

. . is extra biblical evidence that Paul was in Jerusalem before the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. The accusation of Paul being greek is as false as the claim that Jesus was a Samaritan.

show_no_mercy

The only reason that we think Paul was Jewish was because he says so in his letters. We have one line of evidence that he possibly lied about being a Pharisee since he didn't know Hebrew, and another assertion by the Ebionites (via Epiphanius) that he was a Greek. Their assertion makes sense of Paul's disdain for the Law.

John has Jesus not even being a Jew (he existed before Adam), let alone a Samaritan. Nevertheless, why would Samaritans expect a Jewish messiah (John 4)? They would expect a Samartian messiah. John chapter 4 is contradictory.

andrewcriddle

The text may be corrupt here. In his critical edition Holl corrects to read Andrew Criddle

badger3k

This could make sense if we look at the Qumran writings (if they were ebionites, as many, IIRC, say) - we have James as a high priest. It would give a bit of weight to his disdain for the Jerusalem community. Maybe his trip to meet with James, etc, was to settle his child support bill. :Cheeky:

(actually, something like that is plausible, but I have no idea if there is any support for that idle speculation)