frankq Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 Anyone up on Paul and Peter and James? At one point I'm reading that Paul chided the other two for not eating with gentiles in Antioch and at another point they were agreeing with him about admitting Jews into the community without the need to follow the Mosaic Law. I assume one incident was the outcome of another. Like most here I'm a glorious pagan and my years of Methodist sunday school never made any impact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q Valerius Scerio Posted July 3, 2006 Report Share Posted July 3, 2006 Minor correction - Paul, Cephas, and James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ursus Posted July 3, 2006 Report Share Posted July 3, 2006 Like most here I'm a glorious pagan and my years of Methodist sunday school never made any impact. I believe a recent poll concluded that the majority of site members were Christian of some stripe or another, followed by Agnostics and then Pagans. The Pagans may seem a majority only because they tend to be active and out spoken. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil25 Posted July 3, 2006 Report Share Posted July 3, 2006 Wasn't "Cephas" just Peter's name in another language (aramaic?)? My own view is that Acts is somewhat unreliable on the precise "politics" of the early Church - or should one say the details of the schism with Judaism, which is probably more what it was. Paul's known letters are often at odds with or imply different interpretations of events, and, as I understand it, current scholarly thought suggests that "Luke" (the author of Acts) may not have had access to much Pauline material. For myself, I think that there were probably several strands within the early Christian movement. I am attracted to the "Holy Blood Holy Grail" view that James and Jesus' fasmily may have been drawn principally to his Messiahship and possible blood claim to the Jewish throne as a descendent of David. Peter and the original apostles, on the other hand, may have promoted Jesus' own message (which they had received at first hand) and teaching, initially mainly to the Jews or Jewish leaning gentiles. Paul, saw wider possibilities and began to broaden and make more metaphysical (more akin to the mystery religeons?) the teachings of Jesus. He had not known Jesus at first hand - however one interprets the Dmascus experience - and shows no indication of awareness of much of the detail of Jesus' own teachings and mission. We may now be unable to recover some of the detail of their discussions. I could, for instance, understand positions that had agreement on the need to widen the appeal of the gospel on one hand, being countered by a requirement to uphold certain standards on the other. A modern argument might contrast an agreement that extreme and difficult requirements for membership (circumcision for instance) be done away with, while a proposal that "easier" requirements (dietary undertakings etc) be upheld. That might be commonsense. But with surviving records being so scanty, how could we ever tell? Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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