Yip. I know them well. But I also know quite a few Biblical literalists that are not KJV-only. There are plenty of fundamentalists out there that do not belong to that movement.
Good point, although the gospels (and Acts) are a lot more consistent among themselves in regards to the feel of the teachings of Jesus and not so much in line with Paul. This is what makes me think that Paul might have been the one “out there”.
To the OP, No.
And I reject the assertion that Paul is-
If anything, one can build a “salvation by works & Law” system much more from the Gospels quoting of Jesus, and a major complaint against Paul was his “salvation by Grace” doctrine was too permissive. His discussion of the “rules” and “Law” emphasized that while God’s Grace thru Faith in Christ in what saved us, we were not allowed to run wild.
Another possible response to the OP- Yeah, he made it better. I’m glad when I recommitted as an teen Gentile Christian that I didn’t have to get snipped or go to a Kosher diet.
While Paul is obviously a major influence on the road of Christianity I think hijack is quite an overstatement.
Where and how did Paul learn about Jesus and his ministry? Didn’t he seek out Jesus followers and learn from them. It seems to me that Jesus own followers were trying to figure out exactly how Jesus wanted them to teach and from there things just developed. There were disagreements about whether it should remain within the Jewish culture or not and we’d have to give Paul the credit for spreading it among the gentiles. From there it did what most teachings do when handled by humans with various motives and needs and degrees of education and intellect. It morphed as it passed from group to group, one generation to another until a few hundred years later Constantine decided to sift through the various theories and beliefs and declare something official.
Even after that beliefs continued to change and new teachings arose. The Rapture is a belief that is relatively new and I believe a literal reading of the Bible as God’s word is as well. I don’t think Paul hijacked Christianity as much as just influenced it and then mankind in general did what he usually does. Got in and mucked it up.
This is an excellent point. Paul comes across as more law-based only because he starts with the assumption that all things are permitted - and then has to keep reminding people, No that doesn’t mean you can steal. Because it isn’t loving, that’s why. No you can’t sleep in until noon every day. No, you won’t go to hell, but people will think you’re lazy and you’ll lose your job. Well maybe firing you for sleeping in isn’t very loving, but that’s beside the point. No, Jesus did NOT die on the cross so you could get more sleep! You want to sleep with WHO??? I don’t care what she dresses like, that’s just not . . . No, you can’t, and she shouldn’t either! Yes, I know what I said, but . . . Look, even the Greeks don’t do that and you know what they’re in to!
Plus, he was giving advice on real situations and reacting to real challenges to what he was saying, not just telling stories, so his language was necessarily more explicit than the parables, which (even when they wee pretty direct) were awfully easy to twist and misinterpret.
I think when you actually read Paul in context, take out the parts that he almost certainly didn’t write, and consider what he’s implicitly responding to, he is extremely progressive and more in tune with what people think of as “real” Christianity than any other part of the Bible.
I don’t think he “hijacked” it…I think he created it.
As others have said…there probably would be no “Christianity” were it not for Paul.
I’d like some examples of “His letters are packed with teachings that don’t really match Jesus’ teachings.” Like what? The tone in the Pauline and pseudo-Pauline letters is different from the tone of the Gospels, but I’d like to see examples of these contradictory teachings.
Furthermore, according to both Acts and Paul’s letters (like Galatians), Paul had contact, interaction with and the blessing of Peter and the other early church leaders (Jesus’ disciples). The Church in Jerusalem dispatched him on missionary journeys. So it’s unlikely that his theology was that different from what Jesus’ original followers understood.
I’ve heard that the gospels were in large part copied from each other, and/or from shared sources. This would take the steam out of considering them multiple sources, to be stacked against Paul-as-a-single-source.
You may be right. It is probably more a matter of tone than one of content. I am a bit rusty on my scripture. I was a catholic seminarian for almost 4 years but that was almost 10 years ago (shit, I am getting old). At the time I always found Paul to be quite odious but it may have been more a matter of his droning on and on about nothing that I found pertinent to this day and age (as opposed to the teachings of Jesus that travel quite well despite his parables being about fishing and farming which are not everyone’s daily bread today).
Still, just for the sake of not coming to you empty handed and taking the easy way out with what is an issue that has been done to death, Paul condemns homosexuality while Jesus never did.
And Paul’s epistles were letters that you can see were from one human being to other human beings trying to explain or justify matters that often cannot be justified or explained.
I regret having so much animosity toward Paul for so long. He did what he thought to be right.
I cannot make guesses about his motivation…but he seems the truest…even if the only motivation he had was to start a religion from the ground up.
He succeeded more than his wildest imagination might have lead him to expect.
He IS Christianity more than Jesus…although his focus was defintely tangental to the focus of Jesus.
But the best guess that can be made is that without Paul…there is no Christianity.
Neither one of those statements is necessarily true.
Paul seems to condemn at least some kinds of homosexuality (temple prostitution for example). Most, but certainly not all, theologians believe that he did in fact mean to include all kinds of homosexuality including the types of monogamous relationships we know today; but others insist he was only talking about certain types of predatory or abusive relationships. In any case, “Paul condemns homosexuality” is a debateable statement. (FWIW, I think he does; but it’s an open question).
To say “Jesus never did [condemn homosexuality]” may or may not be true; we don’t have a record of everything Jesus said. We don’t have any record of him saying it’s okay either. He does endorse the concept of male-female marriage when he talks about divorce, from which some infer he would have been against homosexual relationships. But he never addressed it specifically, that we know. One argument says that Jesus was not shy about confronting other Jewish taboos, so his silence on this one endorses the Jewish prohibition of homosexuality – but that’s an argument from silence.
The point is that the views of both the Gospel writers and Paul are vague enough that it can’t really be considered a contradiction.
I will give you one though: Jesus apparently endorsed marriage (the teaching above; his presence at the wedding feast of Cana) but Paul said “It is better not to marry.” But Paul didn’t prohibit marriage, it was just a practical suggestion.
In a real sense, Jesus does endorse it here:
- “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come, not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Of this much I assure you; UNTIL HEAVEN AND EARTH PASS AWAY, not the smallest letter of the law, not the smallest part of a letter shall be done away with until it all comes true.” Matthew 5:17ff*
Wherein Paul, on several occasions, gets out of trouble with the authorities by pleading that his father was a Woman named Nortius Maximus. Oh, wait . . .
I have long suspected that the early Christians had to contend with a still-flourishing sect of Johannites who could claim: “Everybody knows John baptized Jesus, so how could Jesus, not John, be the Messiah?” And that, as deliberate counter-propaganda, the writers of the Gospels put in the passage where John says to Jesus, “I have need to be baptized of you, and you come to me?”; and, “He [John] was not the light but came to bear witness to the light”; etc.
Now, if what you are saying is true, I see there might have been an additional reason for those passages: That the early Christians were trying to distance themselves from Gnostic doctrine.
But, none of this bears on the core question: Did the early Christian Church have a body of esoteric doctrine, known to the inner circle, and not published in the Bible nor preached to the laity? Is there any reason to think so?
One could also read that as by implication condemning homosexuality, which is clearly against Old Testament law.
Paul stayed with Ananias for some time previous to his conversion, as well as having acted as a lawyer prosecuting Christians before he became one himself.
But that he might not have actually known all that much about the religion is quite the point. Why else would he need to claim that Jesus directly mind-melded with him (after the resurrection) and that everything he knew supercedes anything else Jesus might have said before?
Weelll . . . I’m tempted to say that without Paul “Christianity” would have endured only as a sect within Judaism, the way it started out; but, remember, it was not Paul who started accepting Gentile converts. Peter started that. Paul only pushed harder for it, insisting that Gentile Christians need not be circumcized, keep kosher, etc. Whether that development – certainly prerequisite to Christianity becoming a widespread religion in the Roman Empire and, later, the world – would have happened without Paul is imponderable.
Mark was the first of the four canonical gospels to be written. Matthew and Luke are both, in part, based on Mark. They also share a bunch of stuff that Mark does not have, and some parts are unique. The source for the non-Mark stuff in common, Q (from Quelle, German for source- clever, no?) has a lot in common with James and Jude, two of the least read books of the New Testament, reputedly written by the Brothers of Jesus, and not much in common with Paul. James and Jude were both almost cut out of the NT, and Jude isn’t on the lectionary schedule.
I’ll have to post more when I have my copy of James Tabor’s the Jesus Dynasty at hand.
Oh, Paul the Apostle
Possessed an Epistle
So truly colossal
It made the girls whistle!
Jesus did say that none greater than John was born of woman. John and Jesus did preach for a year after Jesus’ baptism. After John’s beheading, Jesus goes into hiding for a year up in Caesarea Phillipi. So the pro-Paul writers of the Gospels did probably change that scene.