Toto

You haven't answered my question. Chapter and verse?

Paul only knows Jews and gentiles. He doesn't know anything about Christians. He is the apostle to the gentiles, although he claims Jewish heritage.

Nope. The Christians did not define the heretics as a separate ethnos. That would have recognized their separate existence and perhaps legitimated it, but they were treated as Christians who had gone wrong and who needed to be corrected.

The gentiles are just all those who are not Jews. Similarly, the Greeks defined those who were not Greek as "barbarians." You could identify a number of sub-groups - Samaritans, Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians. . . but what would your point be?

You've got nothing here, Pete. No point, no logic.

mountainman

Paul mentions the christian apostles:
James, Peter, John,Barnabas in
his letters.

What do you mean Paul knows nothing about christians?
Did he not claim to write letters to various "christian churches"?

I do not read Paul or his letters and see Paul as the only
christian on the planet at that time. Paul and the apostles
had obviously made converts: there were christians in
Paul's wake ....


I like the final disclaimer from Paul.

Toto

Does he call them Christians? Give the verse.

Where do you get that?

Romans:
7To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:

1 Cor:
To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:

To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia

etc

mountainman

Galatians 2:9
James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.

The they, the we, James, Peter, John, and Barnabas - who are these people if they are not christians with their own ministries, flocks and collection boxes?

Toto

At this point, most commentators think that the Jerusalem church represented by James, Peter, and John is a Jewish group, or "Jewish Christians." If you accept what Paul says in that letter, they followed the Jewish law.

Barnabas was Paul's friend.

gentleexit

I think the use of the terms morphs with time as the nature and standing of Christianity changed.

The council of Elvira distinguishes Gentiles/Jews/Heretics/Catholics and the early canons seem to put Gentiles apart from the other three, that the other three are somehow of one "believer" group. You find pre-Niceans writing "against the Hellenes", and there Greeks is a general term for traditional believers. When Eusebius writes of Christians as a separate tribe (presumably from Jews), it was probably a reflection of a true splitting from Judaism, a move that would later lump in Jew and Gentile.

There was a distinction early on, no longer relevant to Eusebius. Greek-speaking, Diaspora Jews, those who stuck with the Septuagint and many of whom probably became Christian and the traditionalists who would revive Hebrew. How was this distinction labeled? When Paul talks of gentiles, does he mean out and out Hellenes (the ones who rejected him in Athens etc) or does he mean diaporans and their fellow travelers, "light-weight" Jews? After all, Jewish "nationalism" was anti-Greek from the time of the maccabees. Surely preaching in Greek vs using aramaic etc. was an issue and the distinction was labeled? I still find it hard to believe that the apostles and their master even knew Greek.

Toto

I doubt that Paul ever went to Athens, and I consider Acts to be theological fiction. Paul makes no such distinction. He talks about Jews and gentiles.

gentleexit

I'm not getting into a real Paul or an extended Paul. As a text, when "he" distinguishes "gentiles", who is "he" talking about?

mountainman

Saint Barnabas, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Saint John and the rest of the commonly termed christian apostles, who were supposedly the apostles of the Chief Christian Christ Jesus, if my memory serves me clearly, are regularly cited as "christians".

The NT narrative has this core group going out into the world and converting the "heathen"/"gentiles" (and sometimes "jews") to the very pure and esoterically perfect "early christian religion". The author(s) of the NT narrative are presenting the emergence of christianity as a nation ---- wholly and spiritually distinct ---- from the nation of the Hebrews and Gentiles.

The new testament is the story not of the jews or the gentiles. It is supposed to be the (greek) story of the legendary "nation of christians". The gentiles and the jews are presented as "christianity's religious other". Christianity is being defined externally in the world of antiquity by the NT author(s) as being not gentile and not jewish. It was literally a new and strange religion, contrasted by its difference from the gentiles and jews, as appears to be constantly asserted by the NT canon.

Toto

But not in the letters of Paul.

Please actually cite the text. That may be the impression you have, but you need to validate it against what the text actually says.

Paul seems to be preaching a universal faith. Gal 3:26 You are all children of God by believing in Christ Jesus. 27 All of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ as if he were your clothes. 28 There is no Jew or Greek. There is no slave or free person. There is no male or female. Because you belong to Christ Jesus, you are all one.

Where does it say anything like this in the NT canon???

I think that the religion in the NT canon is presented as essentially (sort of) Jewish, but accepting of gentiles (and Samaritans and others.) Christians did not define themselves as not-Jewish or not-pagan. They defined themselves by what they did believe.