Comment by Karen Mercer on 2nd mo. 6, 2012 at 5:17pm

Given that the Celtic Church (among the Gaels)was and remained by it's own choice a Judaizing Church until the Synod of Whitby, and kept up many Jewish practices, are you quite certain the Galatian Church was not? Are you quite certain that someone was attempting to force alien practices on them against their will, and that these were not practices original to that church?

If so, who are these people attempting to force Jewish practices on them? They cannot be any of the mainline Jews. The Sadducees are not interested in anything beyond the Temple and it's control. The Essenes have their own closed community. The Zealots are busy killing Romans and plotting the revolution. The Pharisees might take a vague interest, but Jesus is simply one more wandering teacher to them and nowhere near as influential as Shammai or Hillel - and the Jesusalem Church just one more group among many. Excepting one brief period, Jews have never sought converts. They accept them, and Proselytes (people who worship at synagogues but remain non-Jewish) but would have no interest in forcing Jewish practices on Gentiles - in fact, they have often guarded some of them jealously as "the inheritance of Israel" and dissuaded Gentiles from keeping them. If the Galatians are not already Jews, they have no motive. The Proselytes/God-Fearers were never required to accept circumcision in Judaism, so they were never required to in the Jerusalem Church, either, thus the Jerusalem Church has no motive to force Gentiles to obey Jewish Law.

If the Galatian Church IS however already Jewish, the Jews would have a motive for keeping them so, as Jewish judgement in this life is corparate, as you point out. They are judged, rewarded and punished as a people. However, it is unclear whether the Sanhedrin or any other mainline Jewish group with any power accept the conversions done by the Jerusalem Church. The only two groups with any definite motive for insisting on Jewish practice are the Jerusalem Church and those within the Galatian Church remaining loyal to Jerusalem.

How very akward - to be accusing the remaining Disciples and their followers of base motives in seeking a "fleshly prize"and merely wishing to be free of persecution and inter-Jewish conflict. There is little evidence that there is any particualar conflict between the Jerusalem Church and other Jews....t this point in history it is the often grandiously lethal battles between Pharisees and Sadducees that are far more absorbing and neither of them seems to have paid much attention to the small Jerusalem sect. All the conflict seems to be recorded by and centred around Paul, who doesn't trouble to explain precisely who it is on the other side of it. Paul claims the Jerusalem Church supports his mission to the Gentiles....but never tells us who is it then that has a motive in trying to Judaize his Gentile churches.

It seems best to be cautious in attributing motives here. One could, after all, make an excellent case for there being a very worldly prize for Paul in all this. His is but a small voice in the Jerusalem Church, continually overshadowed by the Disciples who were with Jesus in his lifetime and knew him personally. In a breakaway Gentile Christianity that places personal mystical revelation ahead of Torah and the direct received teachings of the Disciples, Paul could become the undisputed leader of a religious empire. His gentile Faith that demands nothing that Romans find akward or disfiguring could spread throughout the Roman Empire with Paul at the head. Jesus may be King of the Jews, but Paul could be the Steward of Christ, King of all Nations. Is that not an earthly prize worth acquiring? Should we attribute to Paul only the highest of motivations and yet attribute to the Judaizers only the basest? Can they not also be motivated by sincere belief, however incorrect you today may find it?

The Coptic Church continues to practice circumcision to this day. I'm su

Comment by Irene Lape on 2nd mo. 7, 2012 at 10:45am

Karen - Very interesting and thoughtful response. I was not aware that some Christian groups kept to the message of the Judaizers, but I am really more sympathetic to Paul in his arguments, and while I do not think he ever envisioned himself as the "Steward of Christ, King of all Nations," I do see that his sense of authority in the growing church is one of the key issues for him. I would think it would be one most Quakers would identify with because he is the only APOSTLE not selected by Jesus while he was with us and not selected by the remaining disciples. He was selected and sent out to the Gentiles on the authority of Christ's Spirit.  I do not know who exactly was behind the "Judaizing" movement in the early church - certainly James (ironically Jesus' brother). But the "convincing power" of Paul's words moved most Christians to adopt his point of view and was a large factor in the explosion of interest and involvement in the Gentile communities. 

Comment by Karen Mercer on 2nd mo. 9, 2012 at 12:58pm

As he is a historical figure, I have no idea how he saw himself. I was pointing out that the style of his argument is not one I agree with because he attacks the motives of his opponents (they must be bad people out to ruin the church) rather than simply disagreeing with them and stating why. It was something C.S. Lewis went into greater depths with in his writing, the dangers of attributing motives and desiring to see other people as bad, or as worse than they are and how corrosive that can be. I was pointing out that if I were to move into that same mindset I could find cause to attribute very bad motives to Paul, rather than just sometimes disagreeing with what I think he is saying.

Authority is very much a struggle at this time, and the struggle appears to be directly between Paul and James (and the rest of the Disciples) which is very akward indeed. I'm not sure what is ironic about James being Jesus' brother though. The Disciples of his lifetime were chosen out of his family and people he met during his ministry. To aknowledge a power struggle between them and Paul and insist Paul is wholly correct and they are entirely wrong paints a very strange picture of Jesus' choice in companions. If Jesus is God and knows all, why chose a group of people who are destined to botch things up and engage Jesus' real chosen teacher to the gentiles in a power struggle that will divide the Church into factions? If Paul can be visited in a vision and given the job, can not any of the Disciples be warned in a dream to step aside for him?

It has been unfortunate that Christianity came out of a deeply divided (at the time) Judaism in which intolerance of difference led to (in Jewish opinion) a state of "sinat hinam" (reasonless hatred) which led to the destruction of the Temple. Paul's style of arguing, and many of his own words, have been prominent in doctrinal disputes ever since. Many of those led to heresy trials, the impacable divisions in Western Christianity (beginning with the Orthodox/Catholic split), the Inquisition, and so on. One can even find Paul's influence, down to the very words, used to justify the discrimination and abuse suffered by the early Quakers.You can sometimes find the words of Jesus used in all these and other disputes but it's much harder, and it's often a Jesus filtered through Paul. But I have always suspected that many of Paul's writings are not Paul or have been usefully edited after his time.

One of the hallmarks of the Celtic Church was it's ability to get along with others, which fascinates me. Its conversion of the Celtic lands is without any war (there is no Celtic Charlemange) and tolerant of all their culture that is not specifically against Christianity....ironically it is Paul's words they use to justify their tolerance; though not ironic if some of Paul's words are not his, but later additions. The bulk of the spread of the Gospel into Europe is by the Celtic Church, but again without conquest. It remained in contact with both sides (Orthodoxy and Catholicism) and chose a compromise position that alienated neither. As it never belonged to an "Empire" I trust that it's spreading of the Gospel had no political motivations and was accomplished solely due to the faith of those went out into "white martyrdom" (exile for the sake of the Gospel) as they called it. But they were mistrusted by Rome, even after she absorbed them, and even more so their remnants were mistrusted by Protestantism...who often used Paul to pronounce them heretics or pagans. It's a fascinating branch whose tolerance didn't came out of wishy-washyness (when they drew a line, they drew a line)...they seem to have really believed that was what Christianity ought to be. Sadly, not much survives of it but folk practices and oddities of the Gaelic language...in which non-Gaels are referred to as Gentlich....Gentiles. Such a very specificly Jewish term in both Irish and Scots suggests they once widely thought of t

Comment by Karen Mercer on 2nd mo. 9, 2012 at 1:13pm

Sorry, I erased my ending again....I was going to say that the existance of a large church not hostile to Judaism and using Jewish terms to describe themselves suggests an explosion of interest that pre-dates the anti-Judaizing sentiments subsequently adopted by Rome. They know of Paul and mention his teachings specifically yet are happily still keeping 7th day Sabbath and dietary laws and dating Easter by Passover up to a thousand years after Paul's ministry, and don't appear to find any contradiction in this. This is what makes me wonder whether the actual Paul has been edited and given new attributions until he meets the needs of a later Church that wishes to purge these practices entirely. Perhaps the historical Paul was not so antagonistic, but merely expressing a distaste for some intolerant faction that wished to exclude altogether those unwilling to undergo circumcision as adults (a painful and dangerous process for adults). That I can understand...better they should come and grow in faith in the ways they can. The Conservative synagogue feels the same way about driving to shul on Shabbat.

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