Corpus-Paul

[Frank Glenn <fcg AT cvpc.edu.ph>]

At 10:02 AM 4/1/99 -0700, Jake wrote:
(snip)
>Though NOT a Swedenborgian
>follower, I have read some of his works, and know some of his followers as
>family friends, and was very much surprised to learn that they do not accept
>ANY of the writings of Paul, deleting all of his letters from their
>otherwise complete Holy Bible.  Is this list open to discuss comments
>critical of Saul's conversion, and opting for the view that he may instead
>have been a "plant" by his teacher Rabban Gamaliel The Great Omer to turn
>the new movement in a different direction?

        Well, that might push a good bit further than any available evidence.
>Isn't it a bit peculiar that the
>most rabid anti-christian of his time [Saul of Tarsus] is credited by Karen
>Armstrong in her book "In Search of God" as being the REAL founder of what
>we today call Christianity?  And if nothing else, will this list support the
>theory that Paul did indeed teach a DIFFERENT GOSPEL from that taught by
>Jesus and His personally trained apostles?

        Now *this* is a very good question worthy of pursuit!
Conventionally put, "Was the Gospel *of* Jesus supplanted by Paul's Gospel
*about* Jesus?"
        If the Jesus Seminar has taught us nothing else, identifying (much
less interpreting) the Gospel *of* Jesus is possible but difficult from such
sources as Q, Thomas, and the Synoptics.  The Gospel *about* Jesus is pushed
very hard by Paul and many other Early Church sources (cf. the "Apostles
Creed", "IXTHUS", etc.)

>I look forward to an educational experience, and not a confrontational one.
>Help me understand why Jesus in Matthew 10 specifically charged his apostles
>to "go ONLY to the Jews, and NOT go to any Gentiles" in their spreading the
>Good News of The Kingdom, and yet Paul ignored those instructions.

        Mt. 10 should be paired with Mt. 15:21-28 where Jesus admits he was
wrong.  Matthew springs all kinds of surprises when you go looking for
parallel pericopes and structures.

>I'm a student, searching only for the truth, with no pre-set position or
>doctrine to defend.
>Jacob "Jake" Scot, in rembrance of the Jacobite
Rising in Scotland, my ancestral home

Frank (for "candid, straightforward, honest" in remembrance of my Celtic
ancestry)