What irony that the founder of Christianity wasn’t a part of the IN group!
What a paradox, maybe even an oxymoron as I search for an adequate description, of how it came about that and esoteric, mystical, and Hellenistic Jew would have so much influence on what Christianity would start out with. Even more bizarre is the fact the Paul never knew Jesus- never even saw him other than in a vision.
Hey, I’ve done that myself!
Why was it that the brother of Jesus, James the Just, and the so-called first Pope (Peter) could barely keep together the church at Jerusalem, after the death of Jesus, while Paul spread the GOOD NEWS throughout the land? Christians were first so-labeled at Antioch, not Jerusalem. Have you ever wondered why that was?
The natural-historical life of Jesus was of no importance to Paul!
When one finds it written that Paul speaks of ”this Jesus we have seen”, he’s not talking of a man of the flesh, as MSR (main stream religion) so interprets it. And when we read of Paul writing to the various churches in Asia Minor, he not writing to churches (if we can even call them such) built on a Christianity such as the Gospels present.
Listen, there were NO GOSPELS when Paul was writing these so-called letters or epistles.
So, who were these people in these groups that we today think of as churches (there were no church buildings)? The answer is that they were followers of a spiritual, mystic, esoteric philosophy that they had grown up in comprehended. Paul the Jew, was now more Paul the Hellenistic Roman who was pointing people to a religion more like the earlier Mystery religions.
Paul had alienated his earlier Jewish roots!
Peter and James, who were trying to build on who they saw Jesus was (in the flesh), were intent on extending the Jewish mantle and the return of Jesus would accomplish that; therefore, when Paul returned to Jerusalem he found himself an OUTSIDER looking in and a prisoner looking out. As you know Paul was sent to Rome to die with the hope that his ideas would die with him
It didn’t happen- as we all know!
However, what we do know is that over the next 300years, Christianity would become something unlike what Paul and Jesus were modeling. And so it is still today. Christianity has become ChristianISM (as I wrote yesterday) looking to the EXTERNALS to build a faith when Jesus had said that the Kingdom of God is WITHIN (Luke 17:21),and Paul had affirmed such.
Are you OUTSIDE (living) and looking in when you’re welcome to COME ON IN and live the abundantly life (John 10)?
Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but my recently released work of historical fiction, “A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the apostle,” explores these same issues in depth. For more info, click on my name.