| I could go on. The point is this ... Paul and Luke wrote the majority of the New Testament. But their authority is circular. Jesus never taught Paul. Jesus' teachings were for Jews and he told them to follow the law. Paul said seemingly the opposite. Paul got his religion from his own visions. Paul argued with the very people Jesus did set up to run the Church. And from his letters, he doesn't seem to have related what they explicitly said, invoking all their authority. Luke somehow records that. Today, after the Council of Niceae by Constantine 3 centuries after the events, nearly all Christian denominations follow Pauline doctrine. But where is his authority from? How is he any different from, say, Mohammad? From all the Christian apologists I have talked to, they point to one verse and one verse only: Second Peter 15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, 16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things. Therein are some things hard to understand, which those who are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. But most scholars consider Second Peter not to have been even written by Peter https://bible.org/article/authorship-second-peter Harris says, “virtually none believe that 2 Peter was written by Jesus’ chief disciple.”2 And Brevard S. Childs, an excellent rhetorical critic, shows his assumption when he says, “even among scholars who recognize the non-Petrine authorship there remains the sharpest possible disagreement on a theological assessment.”3 So what are we left with? One dubious link to Paul, from Jesus and his followers, in the entire Bible. And yet most people follow Paul. Thomas Jefferson: I separate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former, & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. Anyway... that's my conclusion after studying the matter in as much depth as I could find, and talking to Christian apologists. |
All religions based on books have discrepancies within themselves that allow people to pick whatever they want and adapt it to their personal wants and actions.
Some flavours want people to interpret the scriptures themselves, while other flavours only allow some specific scholars to interpret it and you must follow blindly.
By design, religions have a de facto tendency to control people's behaviours and beliefs and fill the gaps wherever they are.
Cultural contexts shifts can't be addressed quickly as their traditions are rooted in centuries of small interpretations that can't be undone.
I guess that's why so many people have a tendency to leave religion, just by seeing how much of the past can they carry before it starts weighing them down more than it lifts them up.
For the bible, the simple definition of righteous needs interpretation :
James 2:24 : You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
Ephesians 2:8-9 : For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.
Everything surrounding Paul could be described as the first interpretation and it's often easier to follow an existing idea than make your own.