mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (01/13/87)
[This is actually a response to a posting by Eitan on talk.religion.christian. However he has said enough similar things here to supply a context. --clh] Let us start not with Jesus but with Paul. THe hellenism of his argument was something that used to be taken for granted by people who were themselves steeped in hellenistic mental disciplines. But we no longer take this for granted, and it turns out that Paul is much more coherent when you take the jewish meaning of terms rather than the greek meaning. Second, taking the letters at face value, we see Paul stressing the importance of maintaining himself as a practicing Jew, even as he is talk ing about the freedom we have from the law of Moses. But now let us move on to Jesus. If we are going to assert that Paul distorted Jesus, from whence have we a true account to base the claim upon? Scripture, as far as I know. First, we have the Pauline letters and the writings of Luke, who is clearly in Paul's party. In many respects these are theologically among the more conservative writings. Luke eliminates Jesus' straightfoward reply as it is given in Mark; Paul avoids direct reference to Jesus as God. In contrast, the Johannine gospels and letters are adamant in their insistence on the deity of Jesus, as does the Revelation. Unless you are willing to assume apriori that the Pauline party inserted the offending material in John's gospel, one is forced to conclude that faith in the deity of Jesus derives independently from non-Pauline sources. The fact that Jesus doesn't fit the expected pattern for the Messiah is hardly fuel against the Pauline claim. It just as easily indicates that the Jewish expectation was flawed. THe precise significance of the Isaian prophecies is much debated even in christianity, but the fact of a passage being written in a particular situation doesn't inhibit its ability to be meaningful in a far different way. If you take the law that Jesus hands down in the gospels, there is no denying the fact that he claimed the authority to rewrite the law. In one passage in Matthew he overturns the Kashrut laws; in another, he overturns the sabbath. In other passages he establishes rules for marriage which are stricter than those of mosaic law. When we come to the problem of what to do with the Gentiles, however, Eitan objects to something which I don't see as a problem. If we take the account in the Acts seriously, God ordains a new relationship with the gentiles which is quite different in character from that enjoyed by the jews; take at face value, I don't see how any man can object to this change in the scheme of things. Furthermore, I don't see that Jesus claimed that his message pertained only to Jews. His *ministry* was only to the Jews, but that is NOT the same thing. He indicates as much when he accedes to the pleas of the syro-phoenician woman. Much of this argument seems to fabricated without the benefit of substantive evidence outside that which we find in the NT, and that evidence comes down squarely on the side of the orthodox christian viewpoint. Let us all remember that a plausible speculation is no argument. C. Wingate