[Gatsky]

I would disagree with this statement. The core teachings, and canonical status of the bible, is very consistent across the major denominations. Perhaps if you could provide a more specific example it would be more enlightening as to your point.

If you are arguing that the way Christians behave today is very removed from how the original Christians behaved, well that is a different point to make, albeit much more difficult to evaluate. This is in a sense nothing new, just look at the opprobium Jesus lays down at the beginning of the book of Revelation.

[int_19h]

Yes, there is consensus among major Christian denominations today - but is it in consensus with the teachings and the attitudes of proto-Christians? When you start reading up on early Church history, it's hard not to notice just how late many of the crucial doctrines show up, and how controversial they have been at the time they were introduced.

[goatlover]

Yes, and which proto-Christians? The various so-called Gnostics (more of an umbrella term), the Ebionites, Marcionites, the Johannine community, Pualine teachings (excluding the Pastorals, probably not a bodily resurrection, and with a more platonic view of the heavens), or whatever Jesus, James and Peter actually taught, which is probably lost to history, but would have likely been a form of messainic apocalyptic Judaism.

[AnimalMuppet]

I found your second sentence very difficult to parse, so I'll ask you to clarify: Who do you think held the view that there wasn't a bodily resurrection? And, what is your basis for saying that they didn't believe in a resurrection?

[goatlover]

James Tabor's analysis of Paul's letters is that Paul thought Jesus was transformed into a spiritual being, as the first of a new kind of Adam. As such, there is no point in the body being restored to life. Paul also never mentions the empty tomb or Jesus appearing in a physical manner to anyone as found in the gospels. It's important to read Paul on his own terms, since his writings are dated a decade or two prior to gMark.

Separately, there was also Docetism, which said that Jesus didn't suffer on the cross because Jesus only appeared to have a flesh and blood body. The gospel writers may have been trying to argue against such an interpretation by having Jesus eat fish and Thomas touch his wounds, which would have been ridiculous to Paul given Tabor's interpretation (although Paul was about transformation or exchange of the body for the spiritual).

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think you can read 1 Corinthians 15 as merely teaching "transformed into a spiritual being". Paul says 1) that Jesus was raised, using that as proof that there will be a resurrection of everyone else, and 2) that the resurrection body isn't like the pre-resurrection body. It's "spiritual" in the sense that it's fit for heaven.

That does not mean that Paul is teaching "transformed into a spiritual being". "Resurrection" doesn't fit for that. That's "died, and there's an afterlife". But over and over, Paul says "resurrection" - not just that there's life after death, but that there's resurrection.

Tabor's view seems to be forcing Paul's writing into a pre-conceived position, not letting 1 Corinthians 15 speak for itself.

[goatlover]

I guess that depends on Paul’s use of the Greek word(s) we use for the English word resurrection. If the Greek literally means “raised up”, does that mean the body was reanimated, or Jesus ascended into the heavens? Paul doesn’t have any post-resurrection narratives of Jesus walking around in his reanimated body.

[tsimionescu]

> The core teachings, and canonical status of the bible, is very consistent across the major denominations.

Is it really?

Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism put great emphasis on following the teachings of the Saints and the Church, much more so than trying to understand the religion by yourself. Many strands of Protestantism are the exact opposite.

Many protestants believe that the Church should be an active part of people's lives and guide them in all decisions, while Eastern Orthodoxy believes the Chruch must limit itself to spiritual matters and mostly even avoid things like charity.

Catholics believe that much of the Bible is entirely allegorical and should be interpreted only as such (most notably, Genesis). Many American Protestant traditions believe that everything in the Bible is literally true, leading to Creationism and an opposition to the theory of evolution, and sometimes even to New Earth Creationism.

Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Calvinism, Lutheranism and others believe that the teachings of Jesus and the early Church Fathers make the Old Testament mostly obsolete (especially in regards to dietary and clothing restrictions, the Shabbat, or circumcision), while some Protestant churches hold some or all of these as still part of Christian cannon.

There are many other major differences - the effects of God's favor in this life (leading to ideas like the prosperity gospel in Protestantism), the belief in saintly miracles, the very existence of saints, faith healing, trinitarianism, filioque, fasting, the dates of Christmas and Easter and many others.

[joveian]

A couple of other major divisions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_believers