Chuck Gould wrote:
On Feb 25, 4:36�am, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:28:57 -0500, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
"Reggie is Here wrote:

Actually Catholics were Jews for about the first 150 yrs after Christ's
death. �They separated from the Jews over details, one being if converts
had to be circumcised. So really the first Christians (or as they
preferred to call themselves "The Way") were Jews.
Um...don't think so.

While they shared some similarties, the differences included the
establishment of a Holy Trinity, baptism, belief in Christ as spirtual
savior and formal establishment of Christ as a diety.

While Christ was looked upon as a Rebbe by followers and outsiders,
there was a distinct break between Jewish tradition and Christian
tradition which came very quickly after Christ's death - like within
months, not years.

The break was fairly clean which allowed for the rapid expansion of
Christianity which didn't suffer an internal schism until the middle
of the 4th century with the rise of Arianism.

You present a very unified portrait of early Christianity, beginning
"months" after the ressurection that may not be as accurate as it
sounds on the surface. James, the brother of Jesus,
was the leader of a very active sect of Jews following Jesus right up
until his own death roughly 30 years after the execution of Jesus.
James was thrown off the wall of the temple by Jewish officials who
thought that Jesus was a heretic and those who promoted or followed
his teachings were heretics as well. (Shortly thereafter, the Jews
revolted against Rome and the temple was destroyed).

If you read the book of Acts or the letters of Paul to the various
gatherings of Christians throughout the Mediterranean basin, there are
constant inferences to ideological and theological disagreements among
the early Christians. Even so, in some of his letters Paul speaks
favorably of James and his followers.

Your remarks appear to imply an orderly transition to the orthodox
church hammered together by compromise at coucils like the one held in
Nicea. Hundreds of years AD Christians were still debating the
Trinity. There are large groups of people to this day who accept Jesus
as savior and follow his teachings but who do not believe in the
traditional concept of Trinity. (Exhibit A: The Unitarian Church)

Many of the earliest Christians were gnostics; believers that the
message of Jesus was that man was/is essentially a spiritual being
with the ability to choose to live in the (spiritual) "Kingdom of
God".
While the Jews were looking for a Messiah to end the oppression by
their enemies, they got a Messiah who taught them how to triumph
spiritually, rather than militarily, and to "love your
enemies" (thereby eliminating one of the fundamental requirements for
somebody to even be an enemy in the first place).

It's regrettable that Christian churches don't teach Kabbalah.
Appreciating the connections between the spiritual tools of Kabbalah
and some of the events recorded in the scriptures allows a dynamic
expansion of the appreciation for the ministry and message of Jesus.

Orthodox Christians then, and to this day, accuse gnostics of
"claiming secret knowledge" instead of following the four canonized
gospels. I'm sure a good many of the gnostics would reply that there
is nothing "secret" about it; the message of Jesus is really only
obscure to some who refuse to consider it outside of the orthodox,
autocratic heirarchy of the organized church. My advice would be:
always be wary of anybody who tells you, "You don't have the authority
or capacity to understand the message, so hire me to understand it and
interpret it for you." Woa, talk about a slippery slope........

Chuck, keep your day job, you have no future as a theologian.