The controversy was over accepting them without their following the Jewish dietary laws, and being circumcised.  And it was, you should recall, a very devout Jew who won the argument for that not to be a requirement.  How did he win that argument?  Probably because people remembered Jesus hadn’t actually been such a stickler for the rules.  Too many stories of his being attacked by his fellow Jews for this to be a later invention.  And FYI, Israel was never 100% Jewish.  Jesus would have met Non-Jews all the time, and Samaritans were, again, not considered Jewish, and they were quite numerous there.   

I agree Jesus was an apocalypticist, have been arguing that very point with tompicard of late, so not sure what you’re talking about there.  I have written more times than I can count that Jesus considered himself a Jew to the very end, and was not trying to found a new religion.  You just seem to think that means he believed only Jews could be saved.  Again, take that up with Bart, who says otherwise.  

He doesn’t think everyone needs to repent.  If you lived a good life, you’ll be in the Kingdom.  For a Jew to tell other Jews to repent their sinful ways and return to the covenant with God, is a theme one finds over and over in the OT.  But Jesus expanded on that theme, by saying it wasn’t all about being Jewish.  He wanted Jews to understand that simply saying the words, making the sacrifices, and reading the texts was not sufficient.  And that someone who did none of these things might well be higher in God’s estimation than themselves.  This is an ancient theme in the history of all religons–those who are all about procedure, protocol–and those who are more about what they believe lies beneath those things–faith. 

Your argument is based on you wanting to believe Jesus was a narrow-minded religious fanatic, which renders it worthless.  Again, take it up with Bart.  You’re really arguing with him here.  Which is your right.  I do not think Jesus devote equal time to Jews and gentiles, but he believes many gentiles would be in the Kingdom (without converting), and many Jewish Apocalypticists would not (because they thought they had a free pass).  

Stephen said

You are right of course.  I was picking a fight with godspell.  His attitudinizing offends my sensibilities.  I hereby withdraw to repent in sackcloth and ashes.  (And maybe start a new thread.  heh heh heh)  

Two questions:

1)This was humor, right?

2)You have sensibilities to offend?  Who knew?

🙂

I see it as a perfectly natural difference of opinion.  But it was never a schism (of which Christianity has had untold numbers of since then).  

Originally, what we call early Christianity was just a sect within Judaism.  Jesus had, after all, been himself a devout Jew–but also a Jew who who was highly unconventional in his approach to the Jewish Laws.  

Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them?

That’s from Mark, which certainly had a Jewish readership, as well as gentile.  And there are far too many stories and sayings like this to be a later invention.  Jesus was not enamored of the legalism of some Jews, the obsession with rules, codes.  He thought (this is true to this day, and of many Christians) that some people acted as if following the rules was all there was to being a good person.  He wasn’t trying to get rid of the Jewish Law, but he did want people to stop acting as if that was sufficient.  So being a natural-born contrarian, he emphasized this disagreement in his disputes with the Jewish authorities, because he felt this legalism was getting in the way of true spiritualism.  Was holding people back, and putting unfair burdens on the poor, who often had no choice but to break the Law, just to survive.  

And there have always been Jews like this, who still consider themselves justified in the eyes of God, because they follow the true spirit of the Law, not the letter.

“Nobody will tell me that I am not Jewish because I put in my mouth once in a while, when my tongue is dry, a piece of ham. But they will tell me, and I will believe them, if I forget the Law. This means to do what is right, to be honest, to be good. . . . For everybody should be the best, not only for you or me. We ain’t animals. This is why we need the Law. This is what a Jew believes.”

Morris Buber, the storekeeper in Malamud’s The Assistant, would have understood Jesus, known he was simply trying to be a better Jew, and encouraging others to do the same–but part of that was understanding that Non-Jews were God’s children as well, that treating them otherwise (even if sorely provoked) was not right.  For everybody should be the best means everybody.  

Paul, I think, simply found that he had a knack for converting people, but knew he could never convert many Jews–and after all, they were already in what he considered to be his own religion–they simply refused to add a belief in Jesus to that.  He probably felt he was bringing the best of Judaism–the teachings of Jesus–to a larger audience, who could mainly never accept the strictures of the Jewish Dietary Laws (and you know, adult circumcision is a deal-breaker for lots of guys).  

Disagreements within Judaism were as commonplace then as now–Peter and James would have had their qualms about some of Paul’s ideas (having known Jesus as a man, not a vision, I don’t think either of them believed he’d been a pre-existent supernatural being).  They might have worried about the long-term consequences of bringing gentiles into the fold.  But why did they tolerate it?  Because they knew Jesus would have agreed with it.  Everyone not against us is for us.  Jesus was not about keeping people out, but bringing them in.  However you can.  Jesus didn’t care about a strict interpretation of Jewish Law.  Jesus wanted all to have life, and have it more abundantly.  And there was no long-term, because the Kingdom was coming.  It was their duty to save as many as they could from Gehenna.

So with misgivings, they went along with Paul’s agenda.  There was so much opposition to their work, from Jews and gentiles alike, they could hardly reject such a capable new recruit–all the more since he’d been a persecutor of Christians.  The Zeal of the Convert, then as now, was a powerful argument.  And such converts are often given a lot of leeway, because of the symbolic victory of their conversion.  

I do not believe Paul was out there purely on his own authority.  He met with Peter and James, conveyed this meeting to his converts as evidence that he was not some dissident, but rather part of a unified (if very scattered) church.  And if you think there has ever been a new religion that didn’t start with differing people putting their differences aside, I think you need to look closer.  If we’re being honest, a religion is just people with differing beliefs pretending to all believe the same thing, in the same way–when no two people have ever done that.  

I can appreciate your perspective as well, but I don’t see any basis at all for your saying Jesus believed there would be a wait list for The Kingdom of Heaven.  It’s very prestigious and all, but hardly an Ivy League school.  😉

(I got wait-listed for Columbia, and then accepted, but my folks didn’t have that kind of money and there were three siblings coming up fast behind me, so I went with a less expensive college that I got a small scholarship at.  I only mention this to show my grades and test scores were good enough to get accepted there.  Vanity of vanities…..)  

Jesus may have had different ideas at different times about how the Kingdom would come.  Wouldn’t that be perfectly natural?  He didn’t get a detailed memo about it.  He had visions, probably.  Visions are notoriously hard to interpret.  He was constantly meeting new people, having conversations, arguments–developing his ideas as he went.  He would have been in very forgiving moods at some times, very angry at others, because of all the opposition he met with, and because of all the injustice he saw around him, how the goats kept giving the sheep a hard time.  

There’s plenty of indication that he believed the Kingdom (and the final judgment) would come very suddenly–that it might happen at any time.  Once it came, repentence would be too late, because obviously then it would be motivated by fear, not good will.  You know this is true.  

I think he would have wanted to believe everybody could be saved, would start to behave well for the sake of behaving well–but he didn’t think it was very likely that would happen.  

And it wasn’t, was it?  Still isn’t.