This is my challenge to the Roman Catholic Church’s claim as the only Church / religion that can declare a direct relationship with Jesus through Peter and therefore the Church Jesus founded and therefore the only “way” to salvation as Pope Benedict has recently reiterated.
My premise is that Jesus remained a devout Jew till his death and that his so called apostles or followers remained the same. The Christian religion is a creation of St. Paul who was never an apostle, never met Jesus and really did not know much concerning what Jesus was about or what he taught.
In fact, Paul and the followers of Jesus were at odds which means Paul and Peter were on opposite sides and not part of the same religion. Since the Roman Catholic Church is based on Pauline Christianity but uses Peter as the link to Jesus to support its legitimacy, I suggest that the Church does not have a valid basis to support any of its claims.
The critical time period in this whole matter is the time after the death of Jesus. The Gospels, written from legendary accounts and hearsay type of information many years after the crucifixion and were meant as works of theology, cannot be trusted as history.
A very important book on the subject which I read in 1987 is: THE MYTHMAKER: PAUL AND THE INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY by Hyam Maccoby, New York, Harper & Row.
Another very important (fat) book on the subject is: JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS by Robert Eisenman (1997) that I received as a present from my wife in 2001 and took the whole year to read it (1074 pages) of small print.
Historians have put together an account of what happened after the crucifixion from a variety of sources. They agree that the followers of Jesus which, I have to believe, included the apostles, stayed together as a group and were called either by the Hebrew name of EBIONITES which meant the “poor ones” or they were termed the NAZARENES after Jesus of Nazareth. I call them the original JEWISH CHRISTIANS.
This group remained as devout, practicing Jews except for the fact that they believed Jesus to be a messiah, a human of human birth that was given prophetic power by god and upon his return, will rule and judge for a thousand years and make the world right. They considered Jesus as a successor to the kings of Israel David and Solomon.
I suppose you could call the Ebionites a messianic sect within Judaism clinging to the teachings and hope of Jesus of Nazareth and waiting for him to appear.
We do not have any surviving written works of the group but we know of them and about them from the books of early Christian fathers (historians) who knew of the group in some detail and quoted from their writings.
James the Just, brother of Jesus became the leader of the group after the crucifixion and remained so until his untimely death (thrown to his death down temple steps) by a rival for a Jewish leadership position in 62 C.E.
For reference Jesus died ~ 30 C.E. Paul’s Letters started ~ 50 C.E., Mark, the first Gospel is dated ~70C.E., Mathew and Luke to 85 C.E. and the last Gospel; John, to 95 - 120 C.E.
To get a better dateline perspective I transpose the years into modern times so as to get a better understanding of the time intervals we are talking about.
Keeping the time intervals the same, I imagine that Jesus died in 1930 and that the first bits of information about him started coming out in 1950s in the form of letters by Paul some 20 years after the fact. Please remember that Paul said very little about Jesus per se but mostly about his (Paul’s) new theology / religion.
The first comprehensive account considered as “scripture” was written in 1970 (Mark), two more in 1985 and the last in 1995. Just imagine someone in 1995 trying to write a story about something that happened in 1930 and before and relying on only oral accounts or by now, legends that have been passed down for generations. No newspaper archives to check, no nothing to check!
Don’t forget that the Gospels were written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic and so did his followers. You see why I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of the Gospels?
Many of my Christian friends think the Gospels were written by actual Apostles (they were anonymous) given names just to make them easy to distinguish from one another plus historians agree that Jesus and his apostles were most probably illiterate.
These friends also believe that the Gospels were written from eyewitness accounts. I think you can see by the dating and the language difference that that belief is really a stretch.
We do know that Paul interacted with the Jerusalem Church as the Ebionites / Nazarenes were known. We also know that Paul and members of this Jerusalem Church, namely James the leader of the Church and Peter one of the main apostles had some very serious disagreements. In fact these disagreements were deal breakers; unfixable and therefore Paul and the Apostles went their separate ways.
We know this from the New Testament book “Acts of the Apostles” and Paul’s own letters. The fact that these disagreements are reported in the New Testament lends credence to their historicity because scholars maintain that if “embarrassing” items are reported then they probably did occur since logically, why would the writers include something negative about themselves if it wasn’t true.
I will present more evidence of Paul’s break with the followers of Jesus in my next blog but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter and in fact all of Christianity cannot claim Jesus as their founder since Paul only “usurped” Jesus for his own use and is solely responsible for the advent and spread of “his” religion.
More to come…
My premise is that Jesus remained a devout Jew till his death and that his so called apostles or followers remained the same. The Christian religion is a creation of St. Paul who was never an apostle, never met Jesus and really did not know much concerning what Jesus was about or what he taught.
In fact, Paul and the followers of Jesus were at odds which means Paul and Peter were on opposite sides and not part of the same religion. Since the Roman Catholic Church is based on Pauline Christianity but uses Peter as the link to Jesus to support its legitimacy, I suggest that the Church does not have a valid basis to support any of its claims.
The critical time period in this whole matter is the time after the death of Jesus. The Gospels, written from legendary accounts and hearsay type of information many years after the crucifixion and were meant as works of theology, cannot be trusted as history.
A very important book on the subject which I read in 1987 is: THE MYTHMAKER: PAUL AND THE INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY by Hyam Maccoby, New York, Harper & Row.
Another very important (fat) book on the subject is: JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS by Robert Eisenman (1997) that I received as a present from my wife in 2001 and took the whole year to read it (1074 pages) of small print.
Historians have put together an account of what happened after the crucifixion from a variety of sources. They agree that the followers of Jesus which, I have to believe, included the apostles, stayed together as a group and were called either by the Hebrew name of EBIONITES which meant the “poor ones” or they were termed the NAZARENES after Jesus of Nazareth. I call them the original JEWISH CHRISTIANS.
This group remained as devout, practicing Jews except for the fact that they believed Jesus to be a messiah, a human of human birth that was given prophetic power by god and upon his return, will rule and judge for a thousand years and make the world right. They considered Jesus as a successor to the kings of Israel David and Solomon.
I suppose you could call the Ebionites a messianic sect within Judaism clinging to the teachings and hope of Jesus of Nazareth and waiting for him to appear.
We do not have any surviving written works of the group but we know of them and about them from the books of early Christian fathers (historians) who knew of the group in some detail and quoted from their writings.
James the Just, brother of Jesus became the leader of the group after the crucifixion and remained so until his untimely death (thrown to his death down temple steps) by a rival for a Jewish leadership position in 62 C.E.
For reference Jesus died ~ 30 C.E. Paul’s Letters started ~ 50 C.E., Mark, the first Gospel is dated ~70C.E., Mathew and Luke to 85 C.E. and the last Gospel; John, to 95 - 120 C.E.
To get a better dateline perspective I transpose the years into modern times so as to get a better understanding of the time intervals we are talking about.
Keeping the time intervals the same, I imagine that Jesus died in 1930 and that the first bits of information about him started coming out in 1950s in the form of letters by Paul some 20 years after the fact. Please remember that Paul said very little about Jesus per se but mostly about his (Paul’s) new theology / religion.
The first comprehensive account considered as “scripture” was written in 1970 (Mark), two more in 1985 and the last in 1995. Just imagine someone in 1995 trying to write a story about something that happened in 1930 and before and relying on only oral accounts or by now, legends that have been passed down for generations. No newspaper archives to check, no nothing to check!
Don’t forget that the Gospels were written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic and so did his followers. You see why I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of the Gospels?
Many of my Christian friends think the Gospels were written by actual Apostles (they were anonymous) given names just to make them easy to distinguish from one another plus historians agree that Jesus and his apostles were most probably illiterate.
These friends also believe that the Gospels were written from eyewitness accounts. I think you can see by the dating and the language difference that that belief is really a stretch.
We do know that Paul interacted with the Jerusalem Church as the Ebionites / Nazarenes were known. We also know that Paul and members of this Jerusalem Church, namely James the leader of the Church and Peter one of the main apostles had some very serious disagreements. In fact these disagreements were deal breakers; unfixable and therefore Paul and the Apostles went their separate ways.
We know this from the New Testament book “Acts of the Apostles” and Paul’s own letters. The fact that these disagreements are reported in the New Testament lends credence to their historicity because scholars maintain that if “embarrassing” items are reported then they probably did occur since logically, why would the writers include something negative about themselves if it wasn’t true.
I will present more evidence of Paul’s break with the followers of Jesus in my next blog but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter and in fact all of Christianity cannot claim Jesus as their founder since Paul only “usurped” Jesus for his own use and is solely responsible for the advent and spread of “his” religion.
More to come…
No comments:
Post a Comment