Thanks for the conversation, but I can't really keep this going because of the format of HN. Feel free to PM me on reddit though (same username). I will leave you with this:
> I'm not sure where you get that the church == Paul
I meant more like, Paul is responsible for the shift from the Jewish bearing to the Gentile one. He preached to the Gentiles and made the religion palatable for them. He got into huge fights with the other Church founders about this, and was treated very harshly by the Jewish authorities who would beat him and kick him out of their towns.
Here is an excerpt from the well regarded 'The Rise of Christianity' by WHC Freund[0] (page 110):
"By 64, however, the new religious movement had taken root.
Without detracting from the work of Peter, John, and the other disciples in
the decade following the crucifixion, the credit belongs to Paul. Jesus was
indeed the very ground of his being, but Paul had never experienced Jesus’
ministry, and his interpretation of it gave Jesus’ message a new and unex¬
pected dimension. He transformed the proclamation of God’s kingdom to
“the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24) into a world move¬
ment. Despite all handicaps, Paul judged precisely the prevailing mood of
very many fellow Dispersion Jews. The Galatians, as we have seen, re¬
ceived him with rapture (Gal. 4:14). On the mainland of Europe the Chris¬
tians of Philippi were devoted to him. He offered a religion which, though
basically Jewish, was stripped of the encumbrances of the Mosaic Law and
its Pharisaic interpretations, a religion that had sufficient in common with
Stoic ethics and the worship of the mystery cults to attract adherents on the
outer fringes of the synagogue and even beyond. The ideal of a community
in which there was neither bond nor free, Jew nor Greek, but which was
united through love in a Savior (cf. Gal. 5:6), and freed thereby from the
Law, the power of fate, and the malevolent astral lords of time, could also
become the ideal of many of the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world.
The Savior whom Paul preached was not a savior god of current pagan
myth but a historical figure invested with deity."
> I'm not sure where you get that the church == Paul
I meant more like, Paul is responsible for the shift from the Jewish bearing to the Gentile one. He preached to the Gentiles and made the religion palatable for them. He got into huge fights with the other Church founders about this, and was treated very harshly by the Jewish authorities who would beat him and kick him out of their towns.
Here is an excerpt from the well regarded 'The Rise of Christianity' by WHC Freund[0] (page 110):
"By 64, however, the new religious movement had taken root. Without detracting from the work of Peter, John, and the other disciples in the decade following the crucifixion, the credit belongs to Paul. Jesus was indeed the very ground of his being, but Paul had never experienced Jesus’ ministry, and his interpretation of it gave Jesus’ message a new and unex¬ pected dimension. He transformed the proclamation of God’s kingdom to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24) into a world move¬ ment. Despite all handicaps, Paul judged precisely the prevailing mood of very many fellow Dispersion Jews. The Galatians, as we have seen, re¬ ceived him with rapture (Gal. 4:14). On the mainland of Europe the Chris¬ tians of Philippi were devoted to him. He offered a religion which, though basically Jewish, was stripped of the encumbrances of the Mosaic Law and its Pharisaic interpretations, a religion that had sufficient in common with Stoic ethics and the worship of the mystery cults to attract adherents on the outer fringes of the synagogue and even beyond. The ideal of a community in which there was neither bond nor free, Jew nor Greek, but which was united through love in a Savior (cf. Gal. 5:6), and freed thereby from the Law, the power of fate, and the malevolent astral lords of time, could also become the ideal of many of the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world. The Savior whom Paul preached was not a savior god of current pagan myth but a historical figure invested with deity."
* https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=743C87B7EF43F2FBA7F3EC6...