The Conflict Between James the Just and Saul of Tarsus

[Immortal4life]

Recently I came across some articles talking about a very interesting issue. The issue of the disagreements and conflict between James the brother of Jesus, and Paul, about how to interpret and put into practice Jesus' teachings. Paul never met Jesus, he just claims to have seen him in a "vision" or some kind of "channeling" experience. Some believe Paul was a false teacher, or at the least, altered Jesus' teachings considerably in ways Jesus did not intend for.

BBC documentary, Dead Sea Scrolls Cover-Up, Paul the Liar vs. James the Just

 

Articles, James the Just vs. Paul-
http://paulproblem.faithweb.com/nazaranes_paul_why_conflict.htm

More answers-

And if Jesus didn't create Christianity, if a different person created it, then would Jesus have approved of what that individual was doing? Might Christianity even have been created by an enemy of Jesus? Not only might this have happened; it did happen. And the most thorough documentation of it occurs in the New Testament itself.

How did Christianity start by worshiping a Jew while it negated and claimed to replace Judaism? This question will be answered when we identify the specific event that started Christianity, which we are doing here. Paul said in Galatians 2:16 "God approves only people who possess Christ-faith, never people who obey God's commandments." That doctrine is Christianity (salvation via Christ-faith) replacing Judaism (salvation via obeying God's laws). And yet Matthew 5:17-18 quotes Jesus himself as having said, "Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses. ... As long as heaven and earth shall last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with." Jesus was teaching Judaism, but Paul - who admitted that he had never even met the living Jesus - said in Galatians 2:16-21 that the death and resurrection of Jesus meant that obeying God's commandments was no longer the way to please God.

After having applied modern courtroom analytical methods to investigate the evidence concerning the start of Christianity, I have identified the exact occasion at which Christianity (the doctrine of salvation via Christ-faith) actually started. Never before have these modern analytical methods been applied to this evidence.

I have found that in the year 49 or 50, Paul culminated a 14-year conflict he had had with Jesus' brother James, by perpetrating a coup d'etat against him and overthrowing him as the leader of the Jewish sect that Jesus had established 20 years earlier. I find that, according to Paul's own reluctantly made admission in Galatians (especially Galatians 2:12), Jesus had appointed James, not Peter, as Jesus' successor to lead Jesus' followers, and the central conflict between Paul and James concerned Judaism's signature commandment, Genesis 17:14, at which God was alleged to have said to Abraham "No uncircumcised man will be one of my people." In the broader passage there, Genesis 17:9-19, God had offered to Abraham the Jewish covenant or agreement to sign, and said that it would be everlasting or eternal, and that the way it was to be signed was by circumcision. Every one of God's men must be circumcised, and would have any male child circumcised on his 8th day. Abraham complied, and thus Judaism - obedience to God's commandments or laws - started, according to the account in Jewish Scripture (which Jesus' followers accepted).

Paul, however, was bringing Gentile men into Jesus' sect for 17 years without requiring them to be circumcised. According to Paul's account in Galatians, he first met James in the third year of his ministry, and his practice of accepting into the sect uncircumcised men was accepted both by James, and by Peter, Peter being at that time the chief person evangelizing to Gentiles. However, by the time of the 17th year of Paul's ministry, Paul had brought in such a large number of uncircumcised men, so that James called Paul back to Jerusalem to defend his practice. According to Galatians 2:10, the decision reached there was for Paul to continue what he was doing, so long as Paul continued raising funds to support the poor in Jerusalem - Jesus' disciples and their followers.

It's important to place these events in the broader context of the war that then was raging between Rome and the Jews, which was described in Josephus' works. Jews were at that time a conquered people, who had lost their independent Israel, and who were being ruled by kings appointed by Rome: the Herodian family were being imposed as their rulers. Jesus claimed to be the authentic king of the Jews, and this claim was sedition against Rome. It also threatened Roman Law, because Jesus was teaching that the Law came from God, not from Rome's Emperor or Caesar. This is why Rome had Jesus crucified, as a warning to any other Jew who might be so bold as to challenge Rome's authority to make the laws and to appoint the kings. According to Josephus (Antiquities 18:2:2), Rome also appointed the chief priest, in Jerusalem, Caiaphas. This is the actual reason why Caiaphas seized Jesus and handed him over to Rome's appointed Governor, Pontius Pilate, for trial on the charge of sedition against Rome. Caiphas was hired by Pilate, and did his bidding. Moreover, Jesus' followers were considered suspect, because they were followers of this man who had been convicted and executed for sedition by Rome. This historical background is essential to understand, in order to understand why Jesus' remaining followers, in Jerusalem, were politically vulnerable, and were very poor.

With this as background then: immediately after the council in Jerusalem, in the 17th year of Paul's ministry, James sent Peter to Paul to tell Paul the bad news that James had changed his mind and would require, after all, that Paul's men be circumcised. Paul refused to comply, and announced Christianity, the doctrine he stated in Galatians 2:16-21.

Here is why he refused: During the First Century, when there was no such thing as anesthesia, and also when neither antibiotics nor antiseptics existed, any operation, even a circumcision, was both a frightful terror and a threat of death (from infections). To impose this medical operation upon a male baby on its 8th day, as Jews routinely did in accord with Genesis 17:11, was very different from demanding that full-grown Gentile men subject themselves to this terror and possible death. That's the reason why James had, for 17 years, not demanded that Gentile members be circumcised. But now, according to both Acts and Galatians, there were so many uncircumcised men who were calling themselves followers of Jesus, so that, in Acts 21:21, and elsewhere, Jews were rioting against Paul demanding him to have his men circumcised. According to Acts 15:1, the council in Jerusalem had been called by James precisely to consider this highly contentious circumcision-issue: Genesis 17:14.

Galatians 2:12 indicates that James changed his mind soon after the council and sent Peter to tell Paul to have his men circumcised, after all; and sent a follow-up team to arrive that evening to check up on whether Peter did his job. Peter was reluctant to do it. James had selected him for this mission because Peter had been Paul's teacher 14 years earlier, and did as Paul did now: accepted uncircumcised men into the sect. (See, for example, Acts 11:2.) James chose Peter to deliver to Paul the bad news because James knew that Paul knew that, if even Peter now accepted the necessity of imposing Genesis 17:14, Paul would have no continuing support at all from Jerusalem unless Paul imposed circumcision upon his men.

Galatians 2:11-21, presents Paul publicly having stood against his own teacher, Peter, and against the other representatives sent by James, and having announced (Galatians 2:16) that God no longer required obedience to God's laws, and that from now on, mere Christ-faith is all that God requires in order to send a person to heaven instead of to hell after death. The event recounted in Galatians 2:11-21 occurred in the year 49 or 50. This was the first time that Christianity (the doctrine announced by Paul in 2:16-21) had been announced by anyone, and it shocked and dismayed both Peter and the other representatives from James.

When Paul called James' bluff on this occasion, and refused to comply, James was actually trapped: James' small and vulnerable group in Jerusalem needed the contributions and the other support to continue coming from Paul's far larger number of far-better-off followers throughout the Roman Empire. Thus, James mutely folded his cards; and, from that moment onward, Paul tacitly took over effective control of what originally had been the Jewish sect that Jesus had started and that James had inherited.

This event in the year 49 or 50, the first-ever occasion on which Christianity (the doctrine that Paul announced in Galatians 2:16-21) was announced, constituted Paul's coup d'etat against James, and the break with Judaism, the start of Christianity. Paul did it in order to save his career from collapse, to avoid having almost all of the men whom he had converted to Judaism leave him. After that occasion, Paul wrote the letters by which he is known, and he wrote these letters in such a way that he intentionally glossed over the question as to whether they still were Jews.

The authors of each of the four canonical Gospel accounts of "Jesus" (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) was actually a follower of Paul, and not at all a follower of Jesus/James. They wrote the actions and the words of "Jesus" to support Paul's agenda, including the Trinity, and the minimization of James. (Paul introduced the Trinity because he needed the Holy Ghost, Jesus' ghost, since Paul's sole authorization to preach for "Jesus" came from that ghost.) In turn, the later followers of Paul, during subsequent generations, assembled the New Testament, and wrote James out of the "historical" picture altogether. Peter was retroactively identified, by Paul's followers, to have been the leader whom Jesus had appointed; and the reason for this is that Peter had been Paul's teacher, and that the emerging Roman Catholic Church needed someone to serve as the "historical" link back to Jesus, since Paul himself had never met Jesus.

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So, the answer to the question "How did Christianity start?" is that Christianity was started by Paul in order to salvage his career, so as to prevent the loss of almost all of the men he had converted to the Jewish sect that Jesus had started. Very few men in his congregations would have stayed if told that in order to stay they must go under the knife in that era which lacked anesthesia, antibiotics, and antiseptics. The authors of the four Gospels were followers of Paul, not of James/Jesus, and placed Paul's agenda into the mouth and actions of their "Jesus."

Edited January 18, 2013 by Immortal4life

[Immortal4life]

Here is the entire BBC documentary from the OP-

[Vmarco]

Recently I came across some articles talking about a very interesting issue. The issue of the disagreements and conflict between James the brother of Jesus, and Paul, about how to interpret and put into practice Jesus' teachings. Paul never met Jesus, he just claims to have seen him in a "vision" or some kind of "channeling" experience. Some believe Paul was a false teacher, or at the least, altered Jesus' teachings considerably in ways Jesus did not intend for.

 

 

The Essenes, who were alive at the time of both Paul and James, called Paul the Sprouter of Lies, and James the Teacher of Righteousness.

 

Nevertheless, it doesn't take a Religious Scholar to see that Paul was a Sprouter of Lies. About 160 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, Thomas Jefferson said, "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."

 

The (real) Father of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine said, "All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told."

Note: Christians held so much hate for Thomas Paine, that only 4 statues exist for this person who coined the term the United States of America,...and they invented a Christian, Samual Adams to be the Father of the Revolution.

 

"Washington's sword would have been yielded in vain had it not been supported by the pen of Paine" James Monroe

Edited April 12, 2012 by Vmarco

[Immortal4life]

Thank you for all your contributions to this topic Vmarco. Very interesting stuff.