Um, Paul was a Jew. Maybe you were thinking about John.
Lib with all your expertise on Jesus you surely know more about Paul than that!
Now, Kniz. Reasonable men may disagree, but name one Pharisee in first century Rome who did not know Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. As to Paul, er Saul, he was:
It was John who appealed more to the Hellenists (and to me!) with his mystical and beautiful interpretations of Jesus as The Word of God.
I cannot name one Pharisee that meets your criteria, simply because I couldn’t find the names of any using Google. I also couldn’t find the educational requirement for being a Pharisee. I did find the following definition which does not sound like they were likely to require a Greek Lit. background. Paul was a Sadduce supporter or member (he cast a vote), so he would have been an enemy of the Pharisees the same as Jesus.
http://ebooks.whsmithonline.co.uk/encyclopedia/97/M0012397.htm
Here is some more info on Paul, John & Greek Logos:
**What are you saying, Lib, “Once a Jew, always a Jew”? Don’t you think Saul or Paul stopped being a Jew in belief, if not in ethnicity, upon becoming a disciple?
Kniz
Apparently, we agree on the matter of Paul and John. All that remains is to continue passing one another quietly in the night. Where we disagree is whether we will accept the rather Clintonian interpretations of Paul that your research on Google has shown you, such as Paul failing to use the word “word” even though that was what he meant. Your links are giving you mere speculation which you yourself likely could produce in equal or better quality without their aid.
According to Brittanica, “There are no reliable sources for Paul’s life outside the New Testament.” So we have to piece together what we can using reason. It is not reasonable to assert that Paul called himself the Hebrew of Hebrews for some mysterious undocumented ulterior motive. Nor is it reasonable to assume that he was an enemy of the Pharisees when, as you can see in the New Testament and in the article I linked you to — he was IN FACT a Pharisee. He was a rabbi who trained under Gamaliel I in Jerusalem.
Paul had been an enemy of the Hellenists who converted to Christianity:
Once he converted, he ministered to Romans, Greeks, Macedonians and anybody else who would listen, including Gentiles and his fellow prisoners in Caesarea. You can see from maps of his three missionary journeys that he went all over the place, from Athens to Jerusalem.
My only interest in any of this is to counter the assertion that Paul “packaged Jesus” for the rationalist Hellenist culture just because he was a Hellenist. His ministry clearly had a much broader reach. It is also misleading to refer to Jesus as an enemy of the Pharisees when, as Brittanica says, He “may now be classified as a Pharisee with strong apocalyptic inclinations; [He] proclaimed that [He] had no intention of abrogating the Torah, but of fulfilling it.” All of this is why I say that it was more likely that John, who actually used the term Logos in reference to Jesus — repeatedly — rather than Paul, who did not, and John, who was never acclaimed as endorsing persecution of Hellenist converts rather than Paul, who was, indeed left a greater influence on the Hellenists, and not because of rationalism along, but because of the marriage of rationalism and mysticism. Says Britannica:
At any rate, I care very little about any of this, and so I concede to you whatever you wish to infer about it.
LibAre you saying that it is John and not Paul that had the greatest influence on Christainity? I don’t actually agree, but like you say it is not a big deal since I have never liked Paul. However, the reason I have never liked him is that I blame him for perverting the message of Jesus. If you were to convince me that your version is right then I would have to transfer this blame to John. In either case, either or both would have failed if Constantine hadn’t decided he needed a state religion which would sanctify his right to the throne.
We all know that Saul persecuted the Christains and was present when Steven was assassinated. It was after that on the way to Damascus that he was blinded (two conflicting versions of this) and became Paul. Saul was working for the Sadduces and Paul became a Christain. The Pharisees supported Jewish Law and Paul spent a good deal of his energy to convince his followers that the Jewish Law was no longer needed, since Jesus had done away with the need of it. Of course, Jesus said that he did come to change the Law, which just goes to prove my point that Paul didn’t give a hoot about what Jesus did or said before the cross. And then there is the fact that Jesus derided the Pharisees on many occasions. I’ve got myself confused, straighten me out.
Kniz
I wouldn’t worry about it. And I wouldn’t say that either Paul or John “perverted” Jesus’ message. Each had, just as you and I have, his own interpretation based on what was meaningful to him for his own unique moral journey. Neither Paul nor John matter in that regard. Only Jesus matters, and you don’t need any intermediary between Him and Kniz.
As to the trivialities: (1) Saul didn’t “become” Paul. He had always used Saul when speaking to Jews in Hebrew, and Paul when speaking to Greeks or Romans, even before his conversion, just as a man might use John when speaking English and Jean when speaking French. (2) When a law is fulfilled, that means it has been carried out — you don’t convict a man twice for the same crime. (3) Jesus didn’t deride Pharisees; He derided hypocrites which, as it happened, included a fair number of Pharisees, but did not include, for example, Joseph of Arimathea.
Now, be thou no longer confused. Go in peace. 
You say that it doesn’t matter what John and Paul said, only what Jesus said. In the case of John that is true, but not with Paul. Paul and his epistles were already in place, when the gospels were written. I’m not sure about Matthew and Mark, but certainly Luke* was strongly influenced by Paul.
What I am getting at is although much of what was said and done by Jesus, I hold in high regards. There are things that I feel were attributed to him that were really added because of the writer’s own agenda. And by the time John was written there was no one around to know what Jesus said or did, just the word of mouth and traditions built upon by Paul and the others. So for that reason I still feel that it does matter.
*Luke was definitely Greek and his writings were definitely influenced by that fact. That is the reason Luke has the virgin birth; the Greeks were big on that kind of thing.
Kniz
Jesus is alive, not dead. He is within you, not gone. Fixate upon Him, and you will know truth when and where you see it.
I feel so lost after being gone for a few days! Sorry to back track here.
I assume you are not infering that God can be destroyed by man through sin, only God’s effect on man can be destroyed. And even then, I would say greatly diminished, not destroyed.
I understand where sin causes a seperation between man and God, but the method of forgiveness for those sins was already in place before the coming of Jesus. Repentance and reconciliation. You sin against another human, say your sorry and attempt to fix what is wrong. Same thing between humans and God. There was no need for this type of absorption of sin by Jesus. God sees the hearts of those who are truly repentant and forgives them when they ask.
I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t say some very profound things, bringing the focus of our exisistence on loving God and each other instead of simply following the law for the sake of the law. I’m saying that the need for this kind substitionary attonement as commonly understood was unnecessary within the concept of Jewish belief (please note: I am not Jewish). If you have the Jewish Messiah, than things should coincide with Jewish beliefs. Christianity as a stand alone theology is more acceptable to me than being the completion of Judaic theology. But that is difficult to do since the basis of Jesus and his Messiah-hood is based in very liberal and sometimes obscure interpretation of OT scripture.
But then again Lib, you seem to be all about uncommon understanding and interpretations
But which interpretation is the correct one? Which interpretation is the most accurate? They can’t all be right.
Probably cooling out somewhere with Elvis. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jab1 *
**
They can if no one pays attention and most people don’t want to look for answers. They want someone else to supply them and not to be confused by the facts.
I should have previewed that one. For those of you that didn’t notice the above quote was totally that of jab1
Mayor
I guess the reason my understandings are uncommon is because of my initial axioms. As I see it, God is Spirit. As such, He is not made of atoms. That is, He is not a part of the physical universe, but rather is an Agent ablatively separate from it. We, in His image, likewise are essentially Spirit. As Jesus said, flesh counts for nothing. Our essence is not flesh, not brains, but Spirit. No, that does not mean that we shouldn’t use our brains. It simply means what it says, that the essential part of us that matters in the Big Moral Play is the part that has potential for immortality.
Continuing my axioms, each of us is a “piece” of God. He “broke off parts of Himself” and gave them to us freely and willingly to do with as we please. In our own moral journeys, our will trumps His because He designed it so. He placed free moral agents into an amoral context (the universe) for us to make moral decisions, such as whether we will love Him and one another. The choices are entirely ours.
All we are God. He is Love and gives Life. Whenever we are careless stewards of the “piece” of Him that He has given us, our Sprit grows cold and loveless, and therefore dies. Life is in Love. There is no Life outside of Love.
Why did God risk this? Why did He risk having parts of Him die? By my axioms, it is because He deemed that the one thing greater than His own Love would be Love that is shared among Himself and other free moral agents. It is to provide a gestalt and magnify His own Love.
That’s how I see it anyway. In a nutshell.
Kniz
Love is the answer. He is Love. The right interpretation is simply to love. When the right answer is 5, you might write your answer any number of ways: sqt 25, sum of the first two primes, x = 20/4, etc. Likewise, love may be expressed in many ways. Every moral journey is different. Paul’s is different from John’s is different from yours is different from mine. Put God first, and all else will fall into place. Do not fixate on being right; fixate on Love.
Where does this come from, Lib?
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.
Sounds Gnostic to me, but I can’t find it. 
kniz
You’ll find it in John 20.
Before someone goes, “Aha! That’s John! What did Paul say?”, here’s what Paul said:
Gnosticism is about enlightenment through knowledge. (The Greek root itself means “knowledge”, e.g., an agnostic — a + gnostic — doesn’t know whether God exists.) The brain is flesh. With respect to spiritual matters, flesh counts for nothing. All is faith. All is trust. We all trust whatever we recognize as the trustworthy authority in whatever matter is of concern to us. It is difficult to imagine a more trustworthy Agent than God when it comes to concerns that are spiritual.
It’s the above quote that got me thinking.
We are told that God knows everything from the past to the future. He know what has, is, and will happen for all eternity.
Why then does he change the rules? Did he change his mind, and decide to do things differently? This would be done, if the old way wan’t working out, or that he came up with a better way. However, an omniscient being can never change his mind, becasue that implies that he did not know what the future was. So we have to accept that god is all knowing and indecisivive, or that he is not all-knowing and changes his own rules periodically, making it appear that he is indecisive.
Lib said:
This jibes with one of my theories about our spirit, and what heaven is.
Picture life on earth as the tiny bubbles in a glass of beer. (Or champagne or soda. Whatever works for you. If you know me at all, you know beer works for me.)
The liquid, the beer, is The Great Spirit. God. All love, knowledge and understanding. The life we are experiencing, we have been told, was sort of a way for God to experience Himself. Each of us has encapsulated within us a bit of that God-All, that Spirit. It is experienced through the film of the bubble, though, which we know as life.
When our life is over, when the tiny beer bubble pops at the surface, the Spirit returns to God, to part of All, to part of The Collective (Yeah, yeah. Make your Borg reference here.) Heaven is being a part of All, forever. It is the most intense beauty and love and wonder and wisdom, the human mind cannot comprehend one googleth of it.
I’ve offered this opinion before on these boards. Our spirits are one, but experiencing themselves in slightly different ways, through our individual “meat taxis.” Read the words of Jesus carefully in the Bible, and He seems to be saying the same thing.
This theory is kind of an intermingling of Christianity, some Eastern religion and philosophy, and a dash of Star Trek.
In this sense, Jesus’ statement, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me,” can be taken not as, “So you better change the way you live life, or you can’t get to heaven,” but instead as, “You will know full understanding and love, no matter how you try to deny it on earth. You will know My Way. You can’t not.”
If this theory is correct, that we inevitably come to total love and understanding, there are some tough issues that our minds need to grapple with on this “life on Earth” level. This would mean that Hitler rose to this level. Timothy McVeigh. Whatever atrocious person you can think of.
Perhaps “hell” is God denying the Hitlers of becoming part of Himself. They simply cease to exist at any level, for eternity, upon death. That doesn’t tend to work for me, though.
cranky:
**
I see know reason why God couldn’t set in motion a system that became our Universe, planet, and life, and then tweak it later.
I, for one, do not get particularly hung-up on whether God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Does it say he is somewhere in the Bible? Perhaps someone more studious than me can point to a passage.
That He created this amazingly complex, interconnected system is good enough evidence for me that He’s pretty good.