I did get the fact that he’s a southern Baptist minister correct. I did get that they prey upon the Refusniks who live in this section of Philly correct.
I did, however, misrember the founder’s name.
Why was it good for Paul to make that point, but bad for modern Christians to?
Paul was writing to “Jews for Jesus” who were having difficulty in accepting gentiles on the basis of Judaism at that time. It was difficult even for this radical Jewish sect to think that the God of Israel would extend his covenant beyond the Jews. Lets face it, Judaism even today is a fairly “racist” religion. It was a message of acceptance.
To repeat that message today, in light of the overwhelming gentile membersip in Christianity would only piss people off and could only be construed as dissing Judaism.
It was dissing Judaism back then, too, though. The only difference now is that, in the US, at least, Christians are more sensitive to the feelings of non Christians
Thanks so much Tom. This is one of the things I appreciate about the fine folks of the SDMB.
Probably because Paul didn’t have sixteen centuries of C’tian persecution against Jews to apologize for.
It’s bad when it’s predicated on fundamentally dishonest tactics, as with the Jews for Jesus. Why should we ignore their conduct and pretend that they’re anything other than deliberately mendacious?
I agree with you. I’m just saying that it was bad when Paul did it too.
:: shrug ::
Paul was a dick. If I believed in such things, I would probably conclude that Paul was Satan’s messenger in order to erase Jesus’s message and turn Christianity into a force for evil.
I don’t think Paul was all that bad. It’s the later guys writing in Paul’s name that were the dicks.
Well, it wasn’t just Paul. Christianity is based on anti-semitism…it’s based on the idea that Christianity is “real” Judaism.
Wondering what would non-Pauline Christianity be like, if it existed. IIRC, there were non-Pauline Christians at the very beginning, but somehow they disappeared?
Weren’t those the Essene Christians or something like that?
The Essenes were Jewish. The big non-Pauline Christian group was called the Ebionites, who also get called in other sources, “Judaizers”. There big belief was that Christianity was strictly for Jews, that Christians had to obey Jewish law, and that, if a non-Jew wanted to become a Christian, he would have to first convert to Judaism. So, to bring it back to the OP, they were the original “Jews for Jesus”.
The other big group of non-Pauline Christianity were the Christian Gnostics, which was a Christian version of the older Gnostic movement. Christian Gnostics tended to believe that the world was split into two, an evil physical world, and a good spiritual world. They also tended to believe that the majority of people were trapped in this evil physical world and doomed, except for a small group of “wise ones”, who understood the spiritual world, and were therefore beyond good and evil.
I don’t think there are any more Christian Gnostic groups left, although there might be a few non-Christian Gnostics. The last major Christian Gnostic groups were the Bogomils in Bulgaria and the Cathars in France, but they were both wiped out in the Middle Ages.
Jews For Jesus makes about as much sense as Christians Against Christ.
Hurm. In trying to define “Jews for Jesus” as non-Jewish, I’ve seen someone define the Sadducees as non-Jewish. That’s spooky.
And, for the sake of any serious Jew who hoped for Messiahship from Bar Kokhba or Menachem Schneerson, I feel I must point out that, “The Messiah hasn’t come yet,” is, logically, a lousy position from which to start your definition of orthodoxy, because, if he will come, then at some point it will be false. “The Messiah is not G-d, nor to be worshiped as such,” is a good delineator from Xtianity, as is, “The Messiah is expected to do something constructive for Jewry.”
“Jews for Jesus” are, from what I can tell, a Christian organization with a strong emphasis on the Jewish origins of Xtianity, & some of them are probably less Jewish in practice than others. But, in theory, from a strictly neutral perspective, I would suggest that someone could be both “Jewish” & “Christian,” if they subscribed fully to Torah (though perhaps not all the Talmud) & believed (however mistakenly, imo) in the Messiahship of that Yeshua guy.