Helen:
I'm going to jump in on this one. Paul makes sex a bad thing. The early
Christians hermits made sex a bad thing. The Catholic and Orthodox Chruches
made sex a bad thing with their vows of celebacy and their nuns.
The Jewish law teaches go forth and multiply which, in general, caused the
Jews to see sex in the right place as a commandment. I been told by Jewish
girl friends that the rabbis teach that sex between a husband and wife is a
commandment and a blessing and to do it on Sabbath is a double blessing. That
this doesn't sound anything like Paul, or the early Christians, has always
been a difficulty for Christians, especially since the early Christian
attitude sound so much like the Greek (Platonic, I think) thoughts on the
matter and Paul seems to have been very comfortable writing in Greek and
never uses Hebrew sources for scripture references.
You see, David, on top of much of the NT being very much more like pagan
myths than Jewish ones there is the problem that Paul give no indication of
every having read the Jewish bible in Hebrew or even of knowing Hebrew. This
is hard to believe for a man who claims to be a student of Gamaliel, the head
of the Sanhedrin (Acts 22:3). You think Paul would have had to learn how to
read and write Hebrew to study the law and would have quoted from the Hebrew
version of the Bible, not from the Septuagint. He, at least, should of had
some idea that the Septuagint reads differently from the Hebrew text.
And, now, we have apparently have him expressing pagan attitudes on sex. An
attitude the gospels with their virgin birth story and Jesus not marrying
would seem to agree with him on. Hum. Gospels that have the supposedly Jewish
Jesus cursing the Jews. Hum. Gospels, three of which don't know the Jewish
day begins at sunset. Hum. Gospels that identify the high priest as the
leader of the Sanhedrin. Hum. Gospels, three of which have various Jewish
officials (the high priest, the Sanhedrin, and the king) doing all kinds of
stuff from arresting Jesus and having trials to being involved in crucifying
him either the night of the first passover seder, apparently leaving their
own celebration to do this, or the next day. Hum.
David, I said this before the NT reads like a Greek mystery religion
invented by Greeks and followed by Greeks and given by Greeks what Greeks
thought was Jewish gloss to make more exotic. (Maybe with a root of some
small Jewish sect founded by a rabbi, who may or may not have made a
massianic claim in the Jewish sense of the term) Where do you find any
compelling evidence for any large scale genuine Jewish involvement in the
founding of this religion?
Sorry for ranting so long,
Helen Willis
hhiwater@bright.net