Friday, May 29, 2020

Acts17apologetics validate their saint; Jesus' followers endorsed Paul?

In answer to the video "History Supports Paul’s View of Jesus, Not Muhammad’s View (PvM 10)"

Paul was rejected by the Jews, who sought to murder him. Jesus' followers resented him, but he succesfully infiltrated their ranks after he deceived them by partaking in the HB sacrificial system to prove his allegiance to Moses' law, the same law he was busy disparaging and cursing Acts21. But to the pagans to whom he focused his preaching, the reception was completely different, he told them exactly what they wanted to hear and what they were used to hear in their pagan religions.

Paul's letters were written about AD 50-60, while the Gospels were not written until 60-90 meaning Paul's theories were already established before the unknown writers of the gospels started their works and earlier christian thought was quickly branded heretical. That is why we only hear Paul's side of the story in his rants and diatribes aka "epistles". We never get Jesus' close circle's side. They are barely mentionned, despite their presence in Jerusalem during the so-called early persecution of the church followed by the scattering of the brethren. Peter's side of the argument against Paul is absent. He is disposed of after the "Council of Jerusalem" of Acts 15.

Nor do we have James' account of the whole mess when he summoned Paul three times to Jerusalem and Paul instead takes a tour of Macedonia. Besides making a ruling favorable to Paul's idea of dismissing the circumcision of the gentiles, James is quickly silenced and never heard of again. The NT tries to hide the fact that these men disagreed and competed against each other. The Pauline Church claims to have resolved the conflict, yet all we have are the words of the Pauline Church.

None of Jesus' own apostles ever affirms Paul's authority (2 Peter being pseudepigraphical). As Paul gained ascendancy and had taken over the leadership of the church, a direct attack on Paul would mean the certain condemnation of their writings and would eliminate any chance of having their (In fact Jesus' true) message included within the canon of the church. In fact, Paul never developed a kinship with the men who had been close to Jesus, such as his brother, James, or his other disciples who were now the leaders of the Jerusalem Council Acts15. Paul remained aloof from the people associated with Jesus and his teachings, in fact it is stated in the church rejected (unsurprisingly) Clementine Recognitions how Saul attempted murdering James before his "conversion". If the followers of Peter and James had been the ones to choose what to include in the NT this more dramatic picture of Paul would have appeared instead of Luke's minimization of Paul's persecution of the Christians such as holding the cloaks of those who were throwing the stones or consenting to Stephen's death.

Inevitably there would be a clash between men like James and Peter on one hand who had known Jesus and wanted to disseminate his teachings, and Paul who claimed to have met Jesus only in a vision and whose religious ideas were contrary to those of Jesus' original followers.



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