The Great Divide

[Doug Millison]

At 2:19 PM 7/13/97, jporter wrote:
>Although pork is okay
>for these Christians, the cultural heritage upon which their beliefs are
>based said it was forbidden. Somewhere, somehow, a line dividing sacred
>from profane was crossed, and like most such crossings required a
>sacrifice, which then became ritualized.


A recent book by Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Robert Eisenman, "James the
Brother of Jesus", takes a detailed look at the relevant texts to argue his
point, that the apostle Paul drastically re-interpreted the beliefs and
re-wrote the texts of the early Jewish "Christian" community that
surrounded James, thereby easing dietary restrictions and other Jewish law
that might hinder Paul's spread of Christianity among Greeks and Romans.
It's a fascinating example of close linguistic, textual, and
historiographic analysis. Among other things, Eisenman says, Paul ditched
the need for circumcision, which, Eisenman argues, had been, in the
Jamesian view, a requirement--I can see how that might be a barrier for
adult male conversion; Eisenman says that Paul also eased certain views on
sexual immorality to accommodate the marriage practices of local rulers.
Eisenman puts the blame for Jesus crucifixion -- which he accepts as a
historical event -- squarely on the Romans, for political reasons,
eviscerating any support, in Scripture at least, for Jewish guilt.


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com