Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Michael Abernathy" <mabernathy AT isot.com>]

Thank you for responding. This will my last post on this subject. It has no 
relevance to Biblical Hebrew and you have not shown enough knowledge of the 
New Testament to make your comments relevant to that study.  
"Even if Jesus existed. . . "  Ok, there have been some scholars in the past 
who denied the existence of Jesus.  But you are considerably out of date if 
you think the historicity of the person of Jesus is in serious question.  
Historians like Michael Grant might not accept the gospels in their entirety 
as history but I believe this quote from Grant is relevant, "But above all, 
if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as 
we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we 
can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a 
mass of pagan personages whose reality is never questioned." (Jesus: An 
Historian's Review of the Gospels pp. 199-200).
"Paul was a proselyte at max. . ."  Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea 
Scrolls, many scholars were convinced that Paul's Christianity came from 
Greek Philosophy and religion.  This was largely because Paul used certain 
words and phrases like "mystery," and "knowledge " in ways that scholars 
associated with the mystery religions.  Both were found in the Habbakuk 
Commentary and the Manual of Discipline. Other phrases which were associated 
with Hellenistic Christianity like "Son of God" were also found in the Dead 
Sea Scrolls. 
I don't doubt that there are those  who would continue to argue your version 
of how the Christian faith came into existence. However, there are an 
increasing number of scholars both Christian and Jewish who have concluded 
that both Paul and Jesus were firmly within the realm of first century 
Judaism.  See for example  Schalom Ben-Chorim.
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy 


>>This was discussed millions of times. Even if any Jesus existed, he did not
start a sect. His teaching in the gospels is fully within the Torah. Paul
was a proselyte at the max, and started Christianity by involving gentiles.
By the same token, you cannot call, say, pupils of Gamliel I members of
Gamliel' sect.<<