Download or read book Paul s Concept of a Hebrew Deity in Relation to Jesus written by Peter Nagel and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Parting of the Gods written by David A. Brondos and published by David A. Brondos. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, a growing number of New Testament scholars have questioned traditional portrayals of the Apostle Paul as a leader of a new religious movement that set faith in Christ in opposition to the Jewish tradition. Instead, they have stressed the need to interpret Paul from within the Judaism of his day, regarding him as a faithful Jew who cherished deeply his Jewish identity and saw observance of the Mosaic law or Torah among Jewish believers in Christ as a good thing. While the present work argues strongly in favor of this latter interpretation of Paul, it also seeks to delve deeper into his thought in order to explore at length the points of continuity and convergence between Paul and the Judaism(s) of his day as well as the beliefs that distinguished him from his fellow Jews who did not share his faith in Christ. Chief among these beliefs was the conviction that the identity and will of God were now to be defined primarily on the basis of his relation to Jesus his Son, through whom he had intended from the start to accomplish his purposes for Israel and the world. Yet rather than bringing Paul to reject his Jewish heritage, this conviction led him to redefine and resignify around Christ his understanding of Judaism and the way of life prescribed in the Torah, thereby filling them with new meaning, though he also continued to value and uphold them for the same reasons he had previously. According to Paul, the purpose for which God had sent his Son and delivered him up to death was not that he might atone for sins or make it possible for God to forgive sins, as later Christian thought came to affirm, but rather that through him he might establish a new community in which Jews and non-Jews would be brought to live together as one in fellowship and solidarity. While Paul expected his fellow Jews to continue to live as Jews and members of Israel within this community, which he called the ekklēsia, his conviction that those non-Jews who lived faithfully as part of the same community yet did not submit fully to the Mosaic law were equally acceptable and righteous in God’s sight led him to oppose all attempts to impose on them the observance of that law. Such attempts implied that the members of the community who observed the law were to be regarded as more righteous or as superior in some way to those who did not and thus threatened to destroy the very fabric of the communities that Paul had worked so hard to establish. Rather than running contrary to Jewish thought, Paul’s teaching that it was a life of faith rather than the observance of works of the law per se that led people to be accepted as righteous by God would have been regarded by most Jews as being fully in accordance with traditional Jewish belief. What they would have found novel was Paul’s claim that faith in the God of Israel was now to be equated with faith in Jesus as his Son or “Christ-faith” and that through such a faith non-Jews who did not observe the law could come to be as fully acceptable to God as those Jews who did. Paul’s redefinition of God and Judaism around Jesus as God’s Son would have led many of his fellow Jews to conclude that he was proclaiming a God who was distinct from the God in whom the people of Israel had believed from time immemorial, since that God was never thought to have such a Son and much less to have intended to exalt him to his right side as Lord of all after handing him over to death on a cross. From the perspective of Paul and his fellow believers in Christ, however, the God of Israel and the God and Father of Jesus Christ were one and the same.
Download or read book Paul written by HJ Schoeps and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2022-05-26 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of the apostle to the Gentiles, combining exceptional scholarship with an unusual approach. Schoeps interprets Paul's theology in the light of his Jewish background, which coloured and conditioned his Christological teaching. Paul's conception of Jesus differs from that of the Synoptics: what and how extensive the difference is and whence it is derived are among the questions Schoeps examines. After surveying major problems in Pauline research, the Author relates the apostle to primitive Christianity, discussing his eschatology and his teachings on salvation, the law, and saving history. The final chapter shows that Paul's distinctive doctrines result from two converging factors, that Paul never saw Jesus in the flesh, and the influence of Jewish teaching. The consequence was his concern with the resurrected Saviour of the world, the pre-existent and eternal Son of God. Schoeps shows that Paul betrayed a fundamental misconception of the law and the covenantal agreement between God and his chosen people. The result is a thought-provoking, and somewhat startling, study of the first, the greatest, and the most difficult of all Christian theologians.
Download or read book The Deity of Christ written by Christopher W. Morgan and published by Theology in Community. This book was released on 2018-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multidisciplinary treatment of the doctrine of Christ's deity combines evangelical scholarship with substantial and accessible theological content. Volume 3 in the noted Theology in Community series.
Download or read book How Jesus Became God written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church. The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first. A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman reveals how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty, Creator of all things. But how did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? In a book that took eight years to research and write, Ehrman sketches Jesus’s transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him after his death—alive again—did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today. Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.
Download or read book The Mythmaker written by Hyam Maccoby and published by Barnes & Noble Publishing. This book was released on 1986 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author presents new arguments which support the view that Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity. He argues that Jesus and also his immediate disciples James and Peter were life-long adherents of Pharisaic Judaism. Paul, however, was not, as he claimed, a native-born Jew of Pharisee upbringing, but came in fact from a Gentile background. He maintains that it was Paul alone who created a new religion by his vision of Jesus as a Divine Saviour who died to save humanity. This concept, which went far beyond the messianic claims of Jesus, was an amalgamation of ideas derived from Hellenistic religion, especially from Gnosticism and the mystery cults. Paul played a devious and adventurous political game with Jesus' followers of the so-called Jerusalem Church, who eventually disowned him. The conclusions of this historical and psychological study will come as a shock to many readers, but it is nevertheless a book which cannot be ignored by anyone concerned with the foundations of our culture and society. -- Book jacket.
Download or read book Paul the Jewish Theologian written by Brad Young and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paul the Jewish Theologian" reveals Saul of Tarsus as a man who, though rejected in the synagogue, never truly left Judaism. Author Young disagrees with long held notions that Hellenism was the context which most influenced Paul's communication of the Gospel. This skewed notion has led to widely divergent interpretations of Paul's writings. Only in rightly aligning Paul as rooted in his Jewishness and training as a Pharisee can he be correctly interpreted. Young asserts that Paul's view of the Torah was always positive, and he separates Jesus' mission among the Jews from Paul's call to the Gentiles. "The Pharisee Saul of Tarsus is arguably one of the most influential religious figures in the history of Western culture. . . . Brad Young is one of the important theologians who is leading the way for Christians to explore the Jewish roots of Jesus, Paul, and Christianity. . . . Brad Young has endeavored to excavate Paul's Pharisaic roots for all to examine, while at the same time leaving the family tree firmly planted and continuing to grow." " Rabbi Dr. Burton Visotzky, Appleman Chair of Midrash and Interreligious Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York "Brad Young offers an extremely well-informed, insightful study of Paul as a Jewish theologian. . . . Among the many important qualities Brad Young gained from his years of study from Jewish scholars is a love for and an almost exclusive focus upon the text, what it actually says and does not say; and this perspective has led him to some new, important, and sometimes 'unorthodox' conclusions." " Rev. Dr. Cheryl Anne Brown, Professor/Consultant, Theological Assistance Group, European Baptist Federation
Download or read book Dynamic Oneness written by Suzanne Nicholson and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The apostle Paul affirms in several places that there is only one God. Yet in the same letters Paul also gives praise to the Lord Jesus Christ, often using language similar to his descriptions of God. How can this self-avowed Hebrew of Hebrews reconcile these ideas? This book explores the strongest one-God statements in Paul's undisputed letters and asks how Paul's Jewish monotheistic understanding informs his overall argument. These three texts - 1 Corinthians 8:6, Galatians 3:20, and Romans 3:30 - occur in very different contexts and address different issues. By looking at the historical, cultural, and grammatical contexts of these passages, as well as Paul's language about God and Christ elsewhere in these letters, Dr. Nicholson argues that Paul's understanding of the one God is not static or perfunctory; rather, it is dynamic and flexible, influencing significant aspects of Paul's Gospel message. Paul's ethics, his view of salvation history, and his soteriology are fundamentally shaped by his understanding of the one God of Israel.
Download or read book Jesus and God in Paul s Eschatology written by Larry Joseph Kreitzer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This probe into Paul's theology argues that in his eschatological thinking there is a conceptual overlap between Jesus and God. As in several pseudepigraphical texts, there is in Paul a certain identification of the roles of God and the messianic figure. Especially in Paul's doctrines of the parousia and the final judgment this overlap features the Old Testament idea of the Day of the Lord Yahweh becoming transposed into the Day of the Lord Christ. In examining Paul's teaching on the messiah and the Kingdom, Kreitzer offers a penetrating analysis of how Paul balanced theocentricity and christocentricity within his eschatology, and how the theme of Christ's subordination to God is interjected into his doctrine.
Download or read book Paul and Hellenism written by Hyam Maccoby and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeks the origins of later Christian anti-Judaism in Gnosticism and Pauline theology. Describes Gnostic anti-Judaism as directed primarily against the Jewish God and his law, rather than against the Jewish people who are their blind servants. Judaism for the Gnostics is more contemptible than dangerous, since its power is only in this world, to which the Gnostics attached no importance. Suggests that their hostility was aroused by Judaism's claim to equate its God with the higher God of Hellenistic thought. Paul took over much of the Gnostic two-power scheme, including the view of the Jews as blind servants of the Law. Argues that his own anti-Judaism did not go beyond that of the Gnostics. But in seeing the Crucifixion as central to salvation, and in singling out the Jews for a special role in salvation history, he added to the Gnostic two-power theology elements that later took shape as the Christian view of the Jews as Christ-killers and instruments of Satan.
Download or read book Paul and the Torah written by Lloyd Gaston and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-02-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the task of exegesis after Auschwitz has been to expose the anti-Judaism inherent in the Christian tradition, the founding of the Jewish state has also helped show the continuation of the covenant between God and Israel. For Lloyd Gaston the living reality of Judaism makes possible a better understanding of Paul's prophetic call as Apostle to the Gentiles. In Paul and the Torah, Gaston argues that the terms of Paul's mission must be taken seriously and that it is totally inappropriate to regard his conversion as a transition from one religion to another. Paul's congregations were not made up of Christian Jews: they were exclusively Gentile. He therefore focused on God's promises to Abraham concerning Gentiles which were fulfilled in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. The inclusion of Gentiles in the elect people of God through their incorporation into Christ thus does not mean a displacement of Israel. Nowhere does Paul speak of the rejection of Israel as God's chosen people, of the Sinai covenant as no longer in effect for Israel, or of the church as the new and true Israel. He also says nothing against the Jewish understanding of Torah as it applies to Israel when he speaks of law in reference to Gentiles. But for those outside the covenant God made with Israel, the law acted in an oppressive and condemning way, and Gentiles needed liberation from it. Paradoxically, Paul finds the gospel of this liberation to be proclaimed already in Torah in the sense of Scripture.
Download or read book Paul written by and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paul Was Not a Christian written by Pamela Eisenbaum and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pamela Eisenbaum, an expert on early Christianity, reveals the true nature of the historical Paul in Paul Was Not a Christian. She explores the idea of Paul not as the founder of a new Christian religion, but as a devout Jew who believed Jesus was the Christ who would unite Jews and Gentiles and fulfill God’s universal plan for humanity. Eisenbaum’s work in Paul Was Not a Christian will have a profound impact on the way many Christians approach evangelism and how to better follow Jesus’s—and Paul’s—teachings on how to live faithfully today.
Download or read book Messiah and Scripture written by J. Thomas Hewitt and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "J. Thomas Hewitt demonstrates how Paul's development and uses of the expression "in Christ" arise from his messianic intepretation of scriptures concerning Abraham's seed and Daniel's "son of man". This type of creative scriptural interpretation is a common trait of ancient Jewish messiah texts." --
Download or read book Paul s Gospel in an Intercultural Context written by William S. Campbell and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 1991 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new perspective on Paul and his relation to his Jewish heritage has recently emerged, particularly in the interpretation of Romans. The author, in dialogue with recent international scholarship, explores the context and theology of Paul's most influential letter. Paul's strategy, when faced with the divisions in the house-churches, is to stress the continuity between the new messianic faith and the faith of Israel. In Christ, in the renewed convenant, Israel's election is both confirmed and transformed. In view of the inalienable place of Israel, Christian identity cannot now be defined in anti-Jewish or in purely Gentile terms. Paradoxically, although Paul argues 'there is no distinction in Christ between Jew and Gentile', socially he is prepared to recognize abiding differences in life-style, and he does not advocate that Christian Jews separate from the synagogue. Paul's challenge is to accept one another as different, but as equals in Christ, until the full realization of God's purpose for Israel and the world. Paul's gospel is a gospel of hope, both for Israel and the 'nations'. He is confident that God has the power to fulfil his purposes and achieve his covenant goal for all humanity.
Download or read book Misquoting Jesus written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible. Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible. Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.
Download or read book Paul s Viewpoint on God Israel and the Gentiles in Romans 9 11 written by Xiaxia E. Xue and published by Langham Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the years Romans 9–11 has been investigated from a variety of approaches, with one of the most prominent being an intertextual reading. However, most discussions of intertextual studies on this section of Romans fail to adequately address Paul’s discourse patterns and that of his Jewish contemporaries with regard to God, Israel, and the Gentiles. Adapting Lemke’s linguistic intertextual thematic theory, this study uses a methodological control to analyze the discourse patterns in Romans 9–11. Through this analysis the author demonstrates the divergence of Paul’s viewpoints on several typical Jewish issues, which suggests that his discontinuities from his Jewish contemporaries are obvious and sometimes radical. It is apparent that Romans 9–11 not only provides a self-presentation of Paul as a Mosaic prophet figure, but overall it appears as a prophetic discourse, reinforcing the notion that Paul’s message comes from divine authority.
