I will voice a few of my objections.
Again, probably not one person. Also its not Paul who wrecks things but people who wreck things, because the church grows large and influential and is torn apart by political wrangling. Someone writes by Paul's hand a warning not to be followers of particular teachers, but the churches do not listen. (1 Cor 3:4) Hence they fall into the same fault of the Ebionites, that of being caught up in particular doctrines and followers of particular teachers. No longer is there one teacher, one father. They lose the elasticity needed for a catholic union, and we see infighting very early on in the churches. The Ebionites could have done nothing to help. Blaming Paul is misdirection, and what is the next? What follows is ignoring the real problems that the churches face and then letting them continue to burn.
What does a Bahai really know about Paul? A Bahai seems forced to compromise with Islam. I can imagine the mental torture required, and it does not provide a clear path for understanding Paul who is trying to build a catholic church and to avoid elevating particular teachers and speakers.
Paul "Cannot himself have heard at all..." sounds very presumptuous, and I think it is presumptuous as well as incorrect. Surely Paul would have at least asked around, but this paragraph presumes him to be an innocuous baby. Also I found that throughout the OP does not show any cognizance of the writing tradition: there is more than one person writing Paul's writings most likely. It embraces the relatively unknown Ebionites and upholds them as shining stars, the Ebionites who became forgotten and ceased to function, perhaps because they were ineffective. I'd say they were. They are like a dead language. Its easy to put them onto a pedestal, since they can no longer do anything wrong or anything at all.Paul, who had never seen Jesus, showed great reserve towards the Palestinian traditions regarding Jesus’ life. (230) The historical Jesus and his earthly life are without significance for Paul. In all his epistles the name ‘Jesus’ occurs only 15 times, the title ‘Christ’ 378 times. In Jesus’s actual teaching he shows extraordinarily little interest. It is disputed whether in all his epistles he makes two, three or four references to sayings by Jesus. (231) It is not Jesus’ teaching, which he cannot himself have heard at all (short of hearing it in a vision), that is central to his own mission, but the person of the Redeemer and His death on the Cross.
Paul, however, did not pass on the revealed doctrine reflected in the glass of the intellectual categories of his time, as is often asserted; he transformed the ‘Faith of Jesus’ into ‘Faith in Jesus.’ He it was who gave baptism a mysterious significance, ‘so as to connect his mission with the experience of initiates in Hellenic mystery cults’, (232) he turned the last supper into a sacramental union with the Lord of those celebrating it; (233) he was responsible for the sacramentalization of the Christian religion, and took the phrase ‘Son of God’--- in the Jewish religion merely a title for the Messiah --- to be an ontological reality. The idea of the Son of God, come down from heaven to earth, hitherto inconceivable to Jewish thought, (234) was taken from Paul from the ancient religious syncretism of Asia Minor, to fit in with the need at the time for a general savior. It is generally accepted by critical scholarship that the godparents were the triad from the cult of Isia (Isis, Osiris and Horus) and also Attis, Adonis and Hercules. Jesus, who never claimed religious worship for himself was not worshipped in the original community, is for Paul the pre-existent risen Christ.
Again, probably not one person. Also its not Paul who wrecks things but people who wreck things, because the church grows large and influential and is torn apart by political wrangling. Someone writes by Paul's hand a warning not to be followers of particular teachers, but the churches do not listen. (1 Cor 3:4) Hence they fall into the same fault of the Ebionites, that of being caught up in particular doctrines and followers of particular teachers. No longer is there one teacher, one father. They lose the elasticity needed for a catholic union, and we see infighting very early on in the churches. The Ebionites could have done nothing to help. Blaming Paul is misdirection, and what is the next? What follows is ignoring the real problems that the churches face and then letting them continue to burn.
What does a Bahai really know about Paul? A Bahai seems forced to compromise with Islam. I can imagine the mental torture required, and it does not provide a clear path for understanding Paul who is trying to build a catholic church and to avoid elevating particular teachers and speakers.
Paul's letters are all we have, and they show some variation on the subject of the Law. He also recognizes several kinds of Law: the law of sin, Moses law, laws for gentiles. The question is which law he denies has the power of salvation, but he recognizes that Moses laws are powerful for Jews. Perhaps this is a question best answered by catholics and not by Bahai's.The most essential and effective alteration of Jesus’s message carried out by Paul was in denying the Law’s power of salvation and replacing the idea of the Covenant,
There are some assumptions in the above, and blame is getting dumped onto a straw figure of Paul. The problem with this is that it avoids assigning responsibility where it is due: on the people. They messed up, even with the Holy Spirit's guidance. They failed to remain brothers and allowed Paul's dream to be damaged. Paul actually expects something like this to happen, however and says so. He also expects that despite this Christ will triumph. Christianity has not conquered the world, either. That is ridiculous. The world is not Christian nor has it ever been.This was the ‘Fall’ of Christianity: that Paul with his ‘Gospel’, which became the core of Christian dogma formation, conquered the world, (237) while the historic basis of Christianity was declared a heresy, the preservers of the original branded as ‘Ebionites.’
They weren't just 'Conservatives'. They were against the concept of a catholic faith. They absolutely did not believe the time had come. If it were up to them we might all be barbarians today, because they would have snuffed out the catholic movement. They would not let the little children come to Jesus.As Schoeps puts it, the heresy-hunters ‘accused the Ebionites of a lapse or relapse into Judaism, whereas they were really only the Conservatives who could not go along with the Pauline-cum-Hellenistic elaborations’.
Praise be to the Ebionites who are actually good Muslims! This sounds like a bad attempt to prop up Islam and so to prop up Baha'i religion indirectly. Here is how I think of the Ebionites: Ebionites were brittle, picky, unaccepting. They were all the things that were wrong with the council of Nicea, just hundreds of years ahead of time. Hence they ceased to function early. The church today still is trying to make a go of it and trying to be accepting, but that is the long road. There is a long road ahead to catholicism which may still be achievable but not without some changes. Even so, I don't think Islam is the end of that road. Islam is very factional and will always be so I think. Its just so unchangeable that it seems doomed, but Baha'i are forced to cling to it and to confess it and to apologize for it.It is worthy of note that there were striking similarities between this Christianity and Islam.
Syncretism is present in the gospels and sourced in Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah and others, but it is convenient for the OP to argue it is Paul's invention. What Paul believes is that there is no longer a Canaanite, so when he reads Zechariah 14:20 it means to him something other than it means to a Muslim. A Muslim believes everyone must submit. The two are orthogonal opposed. The Baha'i seems forced to hammer against Paul and beautify the Ebionites, who were nevertheless not catholic at all.The syncretism which started in Paul’s doctrine
Oh, yes. This is because of the sudden translation of the Bible into common languages and the rise of churches formed with no understanding of the ancient cultures. I think, however, that modern archeology is making a huge difference and will continue to do so. Perhaps the churches can be softened and learn to give up the self destructive tendency to idolize leaders. Perhaps things can change for the better, and maybe catholicism is going to revive soon.I think Paul is thoroughly misunderstood by Protestants, who yank him out of the cultural context of the time.
That seems debatable, because he does not allow his disciples to say that to anyone. He says it to a Samaritan women in a passage that is considered to be a late addition (per Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus), but he does not say to people "I am the messiah." I think it would be idolatrous for any man to say it. What was king Cyrus if not idolatrous, yet he was a messiah.As to Jesus' claims, if you believe the Gospels are accurate, Jesus encouraged the disciple's belief that he was the messiah.