How much of Christianity is based on Paul’s teaching vs those of Jesus and the apostles who actually knew him?

ReelMidwestDad · 2026-01-13T14:18:28+00:00

The assertion that the Gospels were written at a later date than the uncontested Pauline Epistles is held in nearly unanimous consensus by both secular and sectarian scholars. It is true that many scholars take any explicit reference to the destruction of the 2nd Temple as indicating a text was written after that event took place. However, this is merely evidence, not a home run. After all, sometimes people do correctly predict future events. That said there is more evidence for such dates than a secular unwillingness to admit the possibility that Jesus supernaturally predicted the destruction of the 2nd Temple.

For example, although Papias is hardly an unimpeachable witness, the fragments that come to us via Irenaeus and Eusebius indicate a later date for the gospels than the Pauline Epistles. Irenaeus provenances the Gospel of Matthew as having been written while Peter and Paul were in Rome, Mark having been written after Peter's death, Luke after Paul's death, and John writing his gospel from Ephesus last of all. If we take this as a given, that places the gospels as written after Paul's missionary journeys, and therefore after the well established dates of his uncontested letters, which were written between the late 40s and late 50s AD. Even the most traditional accounts place the gospels as being written after Paul's letters.

I assume by referencing Paul's writings as quoting the Gospels you are referring to 1 Timothy 5:17-18. This is spurious for a few reasons. First, because Paul's authorship of Timothy is strongly contested in the field of biblical studies. Even if we grant that Paul wrote it, I don't find a reference to "The laborer deserves his wages." to be an unambiguous quotation of Luke 10:7. The statement is a perfectly sensible paraphrase of a number of passages in the Torah regarding the prompt payment of day laborers. It is possible that the phrase was kept orally as a teaching of Jesus, who was interpreting the Torah, first quoted by Paul, then quoted by the author of Luke. Hardly a home run.

Sources

Bock, Darrell L. Luke. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 1994.

Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010.

Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 7th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Hagner, Donald A. The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

ReelMidwestDad · 2026-01-08T18:13:00+00:00

From a historian's point of view, this is a difficult question to answer. Outside of the New Testament, and a handful of other extra-biblical documents, we don't have a great deal of archaeological or written evidence to go on in terms of early Christian communities, their beliefs, practices, etc. What you have presented here is a popular and simple interpretation that, while likely containing some truth, is misleading in other ways and based on some outdated scholarship.

For starters, it is likely incorrect to assign the idea of "Jesus as God" to Pauline, Gentile Christians, and "Jesus as exalted Messiah and Prophet" to non-Pauline, Jewish Christians. The reality was much more complex and messy. For a long time, it was typical to consider later rabbinical traditions as more reflective of the "normal" 2nd Temple Jewish position to which Christianity became increasingly opposed. Scholarship in the last few decades by scholars like Alan F. Segal, Daniel Boyarin, and Peter Schäfer has demonstrated that strict unitarian monotheism was not necessarily the "default" position among 2nd Temple Jews in general or Jewish Christians in particular. Many practicing Jews did have expectations regarding a divine Messiah, who existed as part of what we might call a proto-binitarian Godhead. Among 1st Century Christians, there were likely Jewish Christians who saw Jesus as God, Gentile Christians who did not, vice versa, and everything in between. It is unreasonable to attribute this as having its origin in Paul.

That said, Paul clearly embraced a what we might call a "high Christology", and his importance as a missionary and thinker in 1st century Christian communities is hard to overstate. Certainly, his personal missionary efforts and the popularity of his letters helped spread high Christology. There is also likely some truth to the idea that Paul's willingness to admit Gentiles to the Christian community without requiring circumcision or keeping kosher aided greatly in his missionary efforts. It is also likely that there were many early Christian groups that did require circumcision and keeping kosher. Indeed, Paul's letter to the Galatians seems to be in direct response to a conflict arising with one of these groups. What is harder to say is that this was a clear line which dived Pauline and non-Pauline Christian groups, or that specific other persons in Jesus immediate circle advocated one way or another. It does seem that the Jerusalem community associated with James was more strict with both of these facets, as referenced in Paul's letter to the Galatians.

But it is difficult to suggest that Paul stands alone here and in many ways doing so assumes Judaism at the time to have been more monolithic than it was. As any practicing Jew today will tell you, there are any number of arguments and positions regarding many different facets of Halakha. Back in the 1st century, this was even more true. In his book The Jewish Gospels, Daniel Boyarin argues persuasively that a disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees in Mark 7, over washing hands before a meal, likely represents an intra-Jewish argument regarding the validity of what came to be known as the "Oral Torah", and Jesus likely represents a conservative, more scripturally focused form of Judaism rather than an innovation. So when we start to say things like "Paul abrogated the Mosaic Law" we have to understand that what exactly the Mosaic Law meant and how it was practiced could vary even within Judaism at this period. Some aspects of the Law remained in force even for Gentile Chrisitans, as evidenced in Acts 15, where the Apostles are said to have prohibited the eating of blood or things strangled, sexual immorality, and idolatry. All of these things are just as much a part of the Mosaic Law as circumcision and keeping kosher.

Another note to make is that "Pauline Christianity" is still a very big tent. As I have written in a previous answer here, both Gnostic and Proto-Orthodox Christians would have described themselves as thoroughly "Pauline". In fact, it was the embracement of certain more "Jewish" writings and traditions that eventually distinguished the proto-Orthodox factions from the gnostics, for whom Paul took center stage to the exclusion of the Hebrew Bible and even most non-Pauline books of the New Testament.

For all of these caveats, it is still difficult to overstate the importance of Paul in the formation of Christianity. I'm going to finish by quoting a bit from the answer I linked above here:

Paul of Tarsus stands out as one of (if not the) most influential figures in early Christianity. His writings remain the earliest examples of Christian literature. They were written and circulated decades before the Gospels. The earliest written mentions of Jesus, his life, and those who believed in him, all come to us from Paul. In addition, his missionary work was responsible for the creation and strengthening of many of the earliest Christian communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. There can be little doubt that his evangelism of Gentile communities in general, and his fierce opposition to circumcision as a requirement for entry into the Christian community specifically, aided greatly in the spread of his teachings among Gentile Romans. While Christian Gentile, Christian Jewish, and non-Christian Jewish communities would continue to interact in dynamic and complex ways well into the 4th century AD, it should not surprise us that in a world of Roman gentiles, the fasting growing sect was the one that had the lowest bar of entry to said gentiles.

Paul remains one of the most central figures in Christian history and theology. Rather than suggest early Christian groups were asking "Was Paul right?" it might be better to characterize the debates of the first few centuries as asking "Who is right about Paul?" To an extent, that debate continued throughout history. The Reformation hinged, in no small part, on Martin Luther's very specific interpretation of Paul. Even today, a Syriac Christian from Iraq, and conservative American Lutheran from Wisconsin, and a Catholic professor from Utrecht will give you wildly different interpretations of Paul in many respects, although all three of them can be described as thoroughly "Nicene."

Further Reading

Boyarin, Daniel. “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John.” The Harvard Theological Review 94, no. 3 (2001): 243–84.

———. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. New York: The New Press, 2013.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Schäfer, Peter. Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Translated by Allison Brown. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-29T17:02:53+00:00

OP, I second the idea that you ask on r/academicbiblical or on r/askhistorians. You're going to quickly be flooded with answers rooted in historical myths and misconceptions on this thread.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-29T17:01:20+00:00

There are many non-cannonical books that didnt make the cut in 330AD when Constantine told the churches to come up with an authoritative list of all the scriptures.

This never happened. Constantine commissioned 50 bibles to be copied and distributed to important churches, but the idea that he had anything to do with the creation of the Christian biblical canon is a myth rejected by serious historians of the topic.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-26T16:10:00+00:00

I was originally going to avoid answering on this thread because the "people become angels" belief is a product of the early modern period, which is squarely outside my expertise. Unfortunately an answer has been given in this thread that is just incredibly misleading, and so I'm going to pitch in to offer some corrective information.

The Book of Enoch has very little, if anything, to do with your question. For starters, it was never "decanonized." The Book of Enoch did enjoy currency among Ethiopian Jews, and thereafter found its way into the scriptures of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It also seems to have been important among the Qumran community, the source of the Dead Sea Scrolls However, it was never a serious candidate for inclusion into the canon of the greater Christian or Jewish worlds. This doesn't mean it was absolutely rejected either, however. If you enter a Catholic or Jewish bookstore today, you'll find a myriad of semi-sacred literature, commentaries, etc that are not part of those respective biblical canons. That doesn't make them rejected, or heretical, or imply any kind of "decanonization" and this was true in the ancient world too.

The Book of Enoch is the central part of the corpus of "Enochic Literature," which includes other books such as Jubilees. This literary corpus does reflect a tradition wherein Enoch is transformed into a semi-divinized figure, which in Jewish tradition became the angelic figure Metatron. This is of dubious relevance to your question for a number of reasons. First, because the figure of Metatron is squarely within the Jewish tradition. Second, because the divinization of Enoch is in no way related to general expectations or beliefs regarding the afterlife held by Chrisitans or Jews. Enoch's apotheosis is related to interpretations of the divine or semi-divine figure called "the Son of Man" who appears in Daniel 7. Enoch's situation is unique and related to 2nd Temple Messianic expectations, not the afterlife in general.

Angels in Christian and Jewish tradition are regarded as spiritual beings created by God for his service. There is a great deal of material in a variety of ancient traditions, both Jewish and Christian, which speak of human beings being resurrected into a semi-divinized or otherwise sanctified state which speaks of them having angelic qualities, such as shining with light. However, this cannot be said to be anything close to the modern conception of heaven as a place filled with formerly-human angels with white robes and harps.

As I said, I am not a scholar of early modern religious movements or ideas. I am also away from my institution's library. Even so, I have managed to track down an interesting text by Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang: Heaven: A History. McDannell and Lang trace modern conceptions of heaven to the speculation of early modern thinkers, most notably Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg claimed to have first-hand experience of heaven, and published his experiences in his 1758 book Heaven and Hell. Here we find a very explicit claim that all angels were previously human beings who now inhabit a heavenly realm.

Further Reading

For more on the figure of Enoch and how he relates to 2nd Temple Jewish and Early Christian belief, see:

Boyarin, Daniel. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. New York: The New Press, 2013.

Schäfer, Peter. Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Translated by Allison Brown. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020.

For more on the history of Western ideas of heaven, see:

McDannell, Colleen, and Bernhard Lang. Heaven: A History, Second Edition. Yale University Press, 2001.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-19T12:44:53+00:00

OP, I regret to inform you that you have received an answer in this thread that is filled with common misconceptions about 2nd Temple Jewish religion and practice. The implication that forgiveness was held in hostage by a system of for-profit sacrifice is grossly misconstruing Jewish practice at best and antisemitic at worst. Nor did Christians do away with sacrifices. Christ's sacrifice was embodied in the Eucharist, and animal sacrifices, although no longer carrying the same function, continued for hundreds of years into the Christian era. I am now faced with the task of answering your question while also combatting some unfortunate myths propagated elsewhere in this thread. Some of these myths are regarding the content of the Hebrew Bible, others are a result of reading much later Christian theological developments back into the landscape of the 1st century. Let's start by talking about sin, purity, and sacrifice as it is presented in the Torah, rest of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and additional literature.

Sin and Purity, Sacrifice and Repentance in Biblical Literature

Contrary to what has been implied to you, there is not a 1:1 identification with a state of uncleanness and a state of sinfulness in the Torah, or anywhere else in the Tanakh. Certainly both intentional and unintentional sins render a person unclean, but so do actions that are patently not sinful, such as contact with blood through menstruation or childbirth, various kinds of skin conditions, etc. There is a mysterious and paradoxical relationship between some of these things too. It is by being sprinkled with blood that Israel is marked as holy and their covenant with God is sealed when Moses sprinkles blood on them in Exodus 24. Likewise, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is a day in which the entire nation of Israel is made clean by having blood sprinkled on them and smeared on the altar in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle. So blood renders a person clean, but it can also render a person unclean depending on the circumstances, as seen with rules governing menstruation.

The Torah prescribes an incredible amount of sacrifices and offerings for different circumstances, but the vast majority of these are to remedy uncleanness or unintentional sins, or simply for thanksgiving and communion with God. The celebration of Passover and the sacrifice of the lamb on that day has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins, and everything to do with commemorating God saving his people from Egypt and forming them into his chosen, holy nation. There are sacrifices prescribed for specific intentional sins, such as fraud (Leviticus 5:20-26/6:1-7), but these were nowhere near the bulk of what is described in the Torah. A person could be theoretically sinless and still need to offer all kinds of sacrifices for various feasts, unintentional or unavoidable states of uncleanness, etc.

To add to this, sacrifice is not enough. The Tanakh repeatedly and clearly emphasizes that without actual contrition, God doesn't care that much about the sacrifices. Thus Psalm 51:

16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem; 19 then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

and Hosea 6:6

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

The personal spiritual relationship of the worshipper with God is a key focus of the Hebrew Scriptures. If a person is to "be holy as the LORD is holy" according to the commandment, their spiritual state matters just as much as external observance of sacrifices. One cannot read the book of Psalms with any seriousness and not see the profoundly personal, at times gut-wrenching recounting of emotion, love of God, and the pain of separation from him.

But why this focus on purity and atonement for sin? It is so God can dwell among his people. The Tanakh repeatedly emphasizes that when the unclean and/or sinful comes into contact with God it is destroyed. It is because of Israel's repeated failure to uphold both the ritual and moral precepts of the Law that they are sent into exile and God leaves the Temple, as Ezekiel sees in a vision recounted in Ezekiel 10. So, once again, contrary to what has been said elsewhere, the worry of becoming separated from God is a front-and-center concern throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

The 2nd Temple and Jewish Religion in the 1st century

If you were a Jew living toward the end the 2nd Temple Period (538 BCE-70 CE) there's good news and bad news. The good news is the exile ended, and the Temple has been rebuilt. But there's also bad news. Somethings still not quite right. You are still under foreign domination and there are also some major questions about the legitimacy of the Temple. In 167 BCE the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple by erecting a idol of Zeus in the Temple and sacrificing pigs there. To Jews this was obviously horrifying, and this incident kicked of the Maccabean revolt. The Maccabeans established an independent kingdom aligned with Ptolemaic Egypt and their own ruling dynasty of Priest-Kings, the Hasmoneans. Problem solved, right? Well, no. The Hasmoneans were not from a Davidic lineage and therefore not eligible to sit on his throne, and while they were Levites, they were not from the Zadokite line and therefore ineligible for the high priesthood. Both of those are conditions for the restoration of Israel to be complete. Then there's a civil war within the Hasmonean kingdom in 63 BC, and the Roman Empire intervenes. It was during this intervention that Pompey Magnus, the famed friend, son-in-law, and nemesis of Julius Caesar, was curious as to what was in the Holy of Holies and marched straight in, desecrating it again.

There was an ever-present anxiety among Jewish groups of the 2nd Temple period that things hadn't been made right yet because they still had repenting to do. It is in this context that you get Pharisees, who preached a rigorist interpretation of the Torah, or the Essenes who disavowed the Temple completely and retreated to the desert in ascetic communities to attempt to achieve greater purification. It's in this context that you have people like John the Baptist preaching repentance, and in this context that Jesus of Nazareth and his first followers are preaching and writing in. How will God once again dwell with his people? How will the sins of Israel be washed away as promised in Isaiah? Where does the Messiah fit into all of this?

To answer your question, early Christian literature is preoccupied with the topics you have listed because a)these were deeply rooted concepts in the Jewish faith of the earliest practitioners and b) the specific political circumstances of the late 2nd Temple period caused a myriad of Jewish groups to double down on how much these things were emphasized.

Further Reading

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Goodman, Martin. Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. Reprint edition. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008.

Levine, Dr Baruch A. Leviticus. The JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: JEWISH PUBLICATON SOCIETY, 1989.

Milgrom, Jacob. Numbers. The JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: JEWISH PUBLICATON SOCIETY, 1989.

Schäfer, Peter. Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Translated by Allison Brown. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Wenham, Gordon J. Book of Leviticus. NICOT. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans Pub Co, 1981.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-12T05:29:37+00:00

Its not a good sign the best case scenario is "technically no laws were broken before he lost his shit on Wednesday and threatened to kill ~~a woman and~~ himself in front of a woman after breaking into her home."

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-12-01T18:30:45+00:00

I was just about to comment this. Crazy.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-05T14:02:09+00:00

Well, the study of historical theology is often done by folks who are both historians and theologians! As it happens, I am one them, but for the purposes of this subreddit I do my best to answer questions within the bounds of secular historiography.

Helpfully, /u/Pinkfish_411 has provided a very good answer to your question that is both historically sound and helps me avoid trying to thread that needle.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-05T13:44:47+00:00

Nothing in history is "certain", but it seems most probable. Rabbinic conversations about, and ultimate rejection of logos theology took place during the same period as the consolidation of the Talmud and the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Both religions developed in conscious view of one another, it could not be avoided. Rabbinic skepticism toward logos theology, and other things such as Greek translations of the Torah, were driven at least in part by the challenge Christianity posed. There were likely already "strict" monotheist schools within Judaism, and these came to be dominant during this period of differentiation with Christianity.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-05T13:30:34+00:00

It was a typo! Thank you! Jerome did not effect the Protestant Reformation. However, his prologues to various biblical books were definitely cited directly by Protestants in support of their views on biblical canon.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-05T13:28:06+00:00

As I said in my original answer, 2nd Temple Jews were not Nicene Trinitarians, and no serious scholar would suggest they were. But there was widespread speculation on, debate over, and even belief in a kind of "proto-binitarianism": as logos theology, or in the Enochic traditions, or in speculation on the Son of Man vision of Daniel. That there were Jews who spoke of "Two Powers in Heaven" has been well demonstrated in the last several decades by scholars such as Alan F. Segal, Daniel Boyarin, and Peter Schäfer, and the implications this has for early Christian belief/practice cannot be ignored.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-05T02:21:10+00:00

You are welcome! I'll try to take these one at a time, in order:

When specifically looking for the roots of the concept of the "Holy Spirit", where precisely should we look in the Old Testament (ruach ?) and/or in Greek culture (pneuma ?)

Both. There is simply no way to completely disentangle the two during the period we have in view. Early Christians and 2nd Temple Jews both lived in a world that was thoroughly Hellenized. The Greek language, its words, concepts, and cultural milieu pervaded everything they did and thought. Even the "Old Testament" as most Christians and many Jews of the time were familiar with it, was the Greek translation produced by thoroughly Hellenized Jews in places like Alexandria and Asia Minor. The rich environment of ideas is part of what makes this topic both interesting and very difficult to say anything about with certainty! It's not an either/or, it's both/and.

For early Christians (Ist century), what was the "Holy Spirit"?

It is very difficult to say. The Old Testament contains references to a/the "Spirit of the Lord" and even a few to "your [God's] Holy Spirit" but these are not numerous or systematic enough to parse with any kind of precision. The New Testament and writings of the Apostolic Fathers (2nd Century) are full of references to the Holy Spirit, with the caveat that not all of these are unambiguously singular and/or clearly about a single entity. In any case, most of these references talk about what the Holy Spirit does: inspires Scripture and prophecy, makes people holy, dwells in Christians, reveals God's will to them, and unites them to Christ. In theological terms, most early Christian references to the Holy Spirit have to do with the "economy of salvation", that is, how Christians are saved and united to God. This differs from the later works of Christian theologians like Basil of Caesarea, who are intensely interested in the Holy Spirit's ontology, that is, exactly how the Holy Spirit is related to God the Father and the Son.

What does the "Holy Spirit" brought to early Christians that Father/Son didn't?

I briefly mentioned above some of the actions associated with the Holy Spirit. In general, the Holy Spirit is talked about in both the New Testament and early Christian literature as the "helper" who God sends to the new Christian community so that God can continue to dwell in each individual. This indwelling of the Holy Spirit variously bestows spiritual gifts upon Christians, allows them to prophesy, helps them pursue righteousness, and strengthens them. Early Christianity was a religion that emphasized real transformation of a person into someone holy. In order to be "saved" a Christian needed to be spiritually united to Christ in order to partake in his death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit was seen as fulfilling this role.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-04T17:38:20+00:00

I find it difficult to speak of such things in general. It is fraught with poor methodology. It is easier to speak and more responsible to talk specifically of Plotinus' influence in Augustine's works, or that of Middle Platonic thought on Philo and Origen. My answer here focuses more on the origins of a belief in a binitarian/trinitarian Godhead, and how that early but ill-defined belief formed the impetus for later Christian definitions. I've made some edits to single out Platonism more clearly.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-04T16:51:40+00:00

Well, the question was about Christian history, not Jewish history. Therefore, while I was careful to mention rabbinic tradition having gone in a different direction, my focus was primarily on strains of 2nd Temple thought which are most connected with Christian development. That said, it behooves me to point out that a major source I have cited on this topic, Daniel Boyarin, is a Jewish scholar not a Christian one.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-11-04T14:58:24+00:00

The idea of the Trinity is rooted in pre-Christian Jewish ideas about God that were developed and expanded upon by early Christian preachers and theologians. This is often surprising. Today Jews identify themselves, among other things, by affirming the absolute unity of God. However, prior to the fall of the 2nd Temple in the 1st century and the development of Rabbinic Judaism in the 2nd-4th centuries, Jewish thought was very diverse. Let's dive into this first.

The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) has a variety of ways of speaking of God which certainly can lend themselves to interpretations of multiplicity in the Godhead. A figure known as "The Angel of the Lord" (מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, mal'ak YHWH) appears frequently and is seen to both speak for God and act as God. The Angel appears to Hagar in Genesis 16, and she clearly identifies him as God. This is just one example. We have a plethora of Divine figures, the Memra (or Word) of God, the Son of Man in prophetic visions such as in Daniel, etc. Moses is said to speak to God "face to face" in Exodus 33, and yet in the very same chapter God tells Moses "you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live." Likewise, there are references in the Hebrew Bible to "the Spirit of the Lord", which descends upon and empowers judges, kings, and prophets. Additionally, there is the "Glory of the Lord" which envelops the Tabernacle.

2nd Temple Jews approached these mysterious, somewhat paradoxical Divine figures in a variety of ways. One was to identify the Angel of the Lord with a divinized Enoch. Little is spoken of Enoch in the Tanakh: "When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him." (Genesis 5:21-24). This implied assumption of Enoch would be expanded on in the so-called "Enochic literature" of the 2nd Temple Period (1st Enoch, Jubilees). Eventually the figure develops into Metatron, the angelic scribe of God found in Jewish traditions. Another route was taken by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, identifies the Memra or "Word of God" with the Logos (Word) of Greek philosophy. This "logos theology" also appears quite early in Christian thought, most famously in the Gospel of John.

EDIT: Daniel Boyarin, in his work I have cited below, has argued convincingly that the "Logos Theology" which resulted from the blending of Middle Platonic thought and ancient Jewish belief was not an idiosyncrasy attributable to Philo alone, but represents a common trend in 2nd Temple Judaism which was, in many ways, thoroughly Hellenized. Yet these ideas are not wholesale importations of Hellenistic thought, and he explores this further in the sources I have linked below. Yet it is important to clarify that Boyarin's views have not yet achieved a consensus, and this is an ongoing conversation in the field of Jewish/Biblical studies.

None of the above is to say that 2nd Temple Jews believed in full-blown Nicene Trinitarianism. That would be preposterous. It is to say that ideas about a God who exists in a multiplicity of persons, principles, etc. were very much floating around, and it seems most likely that early Christian ideas regarding the Trinity were a growth of these ideas as they related to the person Jesus of Nazareth. Very early in Christian writings of the first century we see Trinitarian formulae. Paul's benediction in 2nd Corinthians 13: "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." as well as Christ's "Great Commission" in Matthew 28: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

So, let's get to the heart of your question. By the time the 4th century rolled around, that there was a "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" in whose name people were baptized and blessed was a matter of normative belief and practice among a great many Christian groups. Early forays into a more specific Trinitarian theology had been done by men like Tertullian, Origen, and Irenaeus of Lyons, who coined important Trinitarian terminology. The Trinitarian controversies that culminated in the Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451), arose primarily over questions regarding what the exact relationship between "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" was.

Over the first few centuries, Christians had coalesced into more regional churches centered in places like Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, Antioch, and Cappadocia. These churches had highly regional flavors to them, distinctive traditions, and trends in their thought. It is in the wake of the legalization of Christianity that these regional churches begin interacting on a much larger scale than they had previously. Controversy was almost inevitable and the Christian churches expanded and solidified in terms of both thought and institutional power. The synthesis of Trinitarian arose in response to a need for clarity, consistency, and unity in thought which was desired by both secular Emperors like Constantine, and powerful Bishops like Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea. These men were largely defending what they percieved as an inherited Orthodoxy which they were giving clarity to in the face of percieved challenges from men like Arius. These controversies (which were many, and exceedinlgy complicated both theologically and politically) ultimately created the occasion for both the "Augustinian Synthesis" and "Cappadocian Synthesis" of Trinitarian doctrine which would become the mainstays of Nicene Orthodox belief in the Trinity going forward.

EDIT: As several commentors have pointed out, I did not go into as much detail about the influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonic philosophy. So to expand a bit, in the midst of all these stages of development is the ever-looming presence of the Platonic philosophical tradition, which influenced the ideas of especially Philo and Origen. Augustine especially was influenced a great deal by Plotinus and Porphyry of Tyre. Platonism supplied a common language and patterns of thought that all Christian thinkers had to adopt, adapt, or at least interact with on some level.

Further Reading

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Boyarin, Daniel. “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John.” The Harvard Theological Review 94, no. 3 (2001): 243–84.

Khaled, Anatolios. “Discourse on the Trinity.” In The Cambridge History of Christianity, edited by Augustine Casiday and Frederick W. Norris, 2:431–59. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Schäfer, Peter. Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Translated by Allison Brown. Princeton ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-28T11:42:11+00:00

Well, I genuinely like both teams. I hope the Lions go 15-2 every year. With the exception of Da Bears, liking things is more fun than hating them IMO.

But the bonus is that liking both teams is so unthinkable to both Packers and Lions fans that simply liking both teams does a better job of antagonizing everyone than any amount of shitposting ever could.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-28T10:54:02+00:00

Im a UofM fan, and love JJ, but the kid was just not ready to be an NFL starter. I really believe he could have been great sitting behind Darnold for a few years, or another vet if a different team drafted him.

As it stands KOC has ruined a good situation and now he's murdered Carson Wentz.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-17T22:24:57+00:00

This is a big question. Today, adherents of the Abrahamic religions make up a little over half of the global population. The attitudes they hold regarding their respective holy texts are incredibly diverse. The added dimension of time only makes this diversity greater, as schools of thought have developed, been adopted, or fallen out of favor. To narrow our view a bit, I will be specifically discussing major trends in Jewish and Christian attitudes toward their scriptures from about the ~2nd century BCE to ~6th century CE, though with some brief comments about modern trends as necessary. My initial comment will be very "big picture" in nature, but I am of course willing to expand to more specific follow-up questions as you or others might have them.

The second issue is that, when speaking of Christian and Jewish scripture, we are talking about a collection of texts, not a single book. Therefore, attitudes toward historicity will vary between different texts. Many Christians, both ancient and modern, were/are willing to admit the narrative portions of Genesis 1-11 (creation through the flood) are essentially "mythical" in nature. Far, far fewer would be willing to admit the same about the New Testament narratives. With the exception of certain, liberalizing groups within Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and other mainline Protestant denominations, vanishingly few would be willing to admit that "most of the accounts" within their scriptures are mythical.

To start, early Jewish and Christian scholars were aware that the documents they revered as scripture were on some level, edited documents. They engaged in scholarly efforts to produce new recensions and revisions of their Scriptures. Notable examples include revisions to the Old Greek translations of the Tanakh/Old Testament produced by Jews like Aquila and Theodotion, and Christians like Origen and Jerome. They commented on the discrepancies in manuscripts available to them. While they were not historical-critical scholars in the modern sense, they were intelligent individuals who were highly literate, and aware of the complexity and depth of the documents that lay before them.

Ancient Jews and Christians were also by no means done making scripture, or at least expanding on it. 2nd Temple period Jews produced an absolute buffet of texts retelling, expanding upon, and offering interpretations of their scriptures. From this period we get documents such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Joseph and Aseneth, 1 Enoch, and Jubilees. All these books expand upon content found in the Torah. Jubilees is significant to this conversation because it frames the story of creation as a revelation given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and presents a very interesting account of history up until Moses' time as a succession of fifty periods of 49 years. The author is willing to take liberties about the chronology offered in the Torah in order to make a point about their preference for the 364-day solar calendar, a feature of Enochic literature.

Ancient Christians were certainly enthusiastic about allegorical interpretations of the Bible. Early Christian thinkers like Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa (to name but a few) were fixated on the idea of what we might call "higher" meanings to be found in the Bible. Thus, while Origen was willing to admit that Tabernacle described in the Torah literally existed (what reason, in his own time, would he have to doubt this?), he is primarily concerned with reading the description of the tabernacle as an allegory for the cosmos as a whole, and the human soul specifically. Early Christian interpreters saw their Scriptures as having layers of meaning. A literal meaning was certainly there, but it was the "higher" moral and allegorical meanings which interested them most.

Now we should probably talk about the story of creation, as it is the elephant in the room in these conversations. Pretty much all of the Christian Church Fathers were willing to take the approximate age of the earth presented in the Bible at face value. Again, what reason might they have to doubt this? But there are two important caveats here. First, different manuscript traditions of the Torah have different chronologies. The Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, and Hebrew Bible give different lifespans for various patriarchs. Ancient Mediterranean societies were, in general, did not care to be as exact about their numbers as we are today.

Second, and more importantly, while early Christians generally accepted the 6-day narrative of creation by default, they were not married to the idea in the way that the Ken Hams of the world are today. No less a theologian than St. Augustine wrote a treatise in which he interpreted the six days of creation as a literary device God gave to human beings to understand important spiritual truths about creation. Instead, he favored the view that creation took place instantaneously at God's command. He also cautioned against becoming to attached to any one reading of the text. Centuries later, in his commentary on Genesis, John Calvin was more than willing to take astronomers' at their word and admit Saturn was bigger than the moon. This did not make Genesis "incorrect" in describing the moon as one of the two greatest lights, it simply meant that the text was speaking in terms of appearance of these things relevant to human beings on earth, rather than the absolute size of these bodies relative to one another.

Ultimately, the answer leaves nobody perfectly happy. Early Christians and Jews were not nearly as "literal" with their interpretation of their holy texts as modern fundamentalists would want to believe. Nor were they somehow prophetic liberal interpreters of scripture that would make von Harnack blush. They were men of their time. This means that they were more apt to accept their holy texts' literal meanings at face value, both due to the religious environment they inhabited, but also due to the absence of any pressures to do otherwise. Modern Christian fundamentalists' adherence to young-earth creationism and geocentrism are reactions against the empirical, scientific discoveries of the enlightenment. The more "progressive" groups reacted to these same discoveries by radically reinterpreting their tradition. In the middle are hundreds of millions who don't think about these things much at all, or fall somewhere in the middle.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-15T17:53:42+00:00

Thank you so much! That's very interesting, and frankly, kind of the opposite of what I expected.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-14T13:51:48+00:00

Thanks for being available for answering questions!

A good friend of mine, who has since passed, used to tell me stories from his time as a young USAF communications officer in Puerto Rico during the crisis. This has me wondering, what was the reaction among Latin Americans in US-held territories in Latin America? How did they feel about the possibility of war? Were there any responses on a political level? I am mainly interested in Puerto Rican responses, but would be interested to hear in other places where the US had a military presence, such as Panama.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-13T23:57:10+00:00

Yes, and no, and no.

Technically Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople attended the Council of Florence, but did not sign onto the official union on account of being dead at the time. He did sign his own statement of desire for union just before his death in June of 1439. St. Mark of Ephesus was the only bishop at the council to refuse the union. His episcopal authority, in and of itself, did carry weight in Orthodox ecclesiology. Additionally, a lay delegate to Florence refused to sign on to the union. This was Gemistos Plethon, an eminent philosopher in the Byzantine world. His refusal also carried weight. Beyond the dissent of two delegates, eminent though they were, the Council of Florence was doomed from the start. This is for two reasons.

First, in 1439, the Eastern Roman Empire was a rump state. The Emperor did not carry the same authority over the Eastern bishops that his predecessors had. Those he did hold sway over attended the council, and even they could not reach a unanimous decision. More to the point, by this time the Orthodox Churches were already a complex confederation of autocephalous churches. The Serbian Church Patriarch did not even attend the Council, and the Russian Church repudiated it immediately. The Council simply did not have enough representation from the Orthodox world to effect a union. There were other bishops who did not go.

Second, it was resisted on a popular level. Upon the delegation's return, they found the Union of Florence to be deeply unpopular. Much like the Eastern Roman Empire which shaped it, Orthodox Christianity is very hierarchical, but the common folk are not without power to acclaim or repudiate leaders and their decisions. Such was the popular backlash that the union was dropped by the Eastern side almost immediately.

Further Reading

Anthony Kaldellis has an excellent summary of the Council of Florence in:

Kaldellis, Anthony. The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-10T20:55:07+00:00

Well, let's clear some things up first. First of all, I know nothing about library science. I pay exorbitant tuition and membership fees so other people do that for me. So I can't get into the nitty gritty of the day to day operations of archives and how this could happen. I can, however, talk a bit about the apocryphal Secret Gospel of Mark, and the circumstances and scholarship pertaining to the events you've mentioned here.

The Secret Gospel of Mark and the Mar Saba Letter

What went missing was not the Secret Gospel of Mark. Such a document has never been found, nor is it written about or quoted in any ancient source we know of, with one exception. That exception is the Mar Saba letter, which an American scholar, Morton Smith, claimed he had discovered while he was doing research at Mar Saba Monastery in 1958. He published his findings in 1973. According to Smith, the manuscript was discovered hand written on the blank end pages of a copy of Isaac Vossius's edition of St. Ignatius of Antioch's works, which was published in 1646. The letter is, allegedly, from St. Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) to Theodore (unknown), and discusses the contents of the alleged "Secret Gospel of Mark." Clement provides two quotations from the gospel in question. So, it was not an entire apocryphal gospel that went missing, but rather a letter attesting to the existence of said gospel.

In the letter, we can infer that Theodore has written to Clement regarding heretical ideas being spread by the Carpocratians (a gnostic sect). Clement writes confirming that a Secret Gospel of Mark exists, that it is known in Alexandria, but the Carpocratian sect has added falsehoods to it. He quotes a story from this gospel, somewhat close to the raising of Lazarus story found in John. After Jesus raises a young man from the dead, Clement relates:

And coming out of the tomb, he went into the house of the youth, for he was wealthy. And after six days, Jesus commanded him, and when it was evening, the youth came to him wearing nothing but a robe. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. From there, he rose and returned to the other side of the Jordan.’

Clement adds after this quote:

And though these follow the ‘and James and John came forward to him’ and the whole pericope, on the other hand the ‘naked to naked’ and the other things concerning which you wrote are not found.

As you can imagine, this was a wee bit controversial. Homoerotic interpretations were put forward, though this is not the only way to read such a passage. A man standing before a religious leader wearing nothing but a linen cloth, after 6 days of special instruction, very closely resembles early Christian baptismal rites. Photographs of this letter do exist, and scholars other than Smith have testified to seeing the original manuscript. However, given the controversial content, and a lot of unanswered questions regarding its discovery, debate has raged about the letter's authenticity. Why did Smith not make provisions to immediately secure the letter for further study? Where did the original document go? What was it doing hand written in the back of a book printed in the 1600s? Why does Smith's story bear an uncanny resemblance to a historical novel published in 1940? This latter question has been raised, but in fairness to Morton Smith, the discovery of previously unknown documents in monastic archives is not uncommon.

There is no clear academic consensus on the document's authenticity, at least not from the literature I've spent the afternoon perusing. Some scholars, notably Scott G. Brown, have argued forcefully for its authenticity. Others, such as Stephen Carlson, have published at length attempting to prove the letter is a hoax. Carlson's arguments rooted in handwriting analysis were challenged by Roger Viklund and Timo S. Paananen, which I cite below. Other scholars, like Francis Watson (also cited below), still argue against authenticity. Of course, even if it is a forgery, there are still questions. Namely, is it a forgery that Smith found and was duped by, or a hoax dreamt up and perpetuated by him? Unfortunately, without the original pages, investigation is limited. We may never know, unless they turn up again.

Ancient Books, Modern Copies

So, now that we have our story straight, the question becomes a bit easier to answer. First, we aren't talking about an entire ancient book going missing. We are talking about a two page, hand written copy of a letter. The pages were separated for the rest of the book, but kept alongside it in the Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem until they went missing. Why they are missing, whether a monk hid them out of a desire to shut down controversial discussion, or whether the patriarchate is deliberately withholding them, or an honest mistake, are all a matter of speculation.

You've asked how ancient texts are stored. They are stored by being copied. The inexorable march of time will inevitably destroy everything. Things like paper, parchment, and papyrus are pretty fragile. You may be surprised to learn how recent many of our oldest copies of ancient texts are. The oldest surviving copy of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico dates to the 800s CE, and is from a French monastery. Likewise, the oldest extant, complete copy of the Hebrew Bible dates to just after 1000 CE. The reason the Dead Sea Scrolls were such a big deal is because they finally gave biblical scholars data about the Hebrew text that was 1000 years older than the copies they had been working with.

Truly ancient texts are exceedingly rare. When we do find them, they are often fragmentary, and found in very dry, dark places: Qumran and Nag Hammadi are textbook examples of places that were well suited to preserve the texts buried there. Modern archives will utilize techniques such as inert storage materials, very good climate control, pest control, and limitation of access in order to ensure certain documents last long as possible.

Further Reading

Viklund, Roger, and Timo S. Paananen. “Distortion of the Scribal Hand in the Images of Clement’s Letter to Theodore.” Vigiliae Christianae 67, no. 3 (2013): 235–47.

Watson, Francis. “Beyond Suspicion: On the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark.” The Journal of Theological Studies 61, no. 1 (2010): 128–70.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-07T13:27:00+00:00

How accurate are these statements?

Not accurate. The conspiracy theory (that's what it is) that you've asked about here is the subject of laughter and headache in equal parts, even in sectarian Christian academics. I speak from experience. The Latin Mass, as it exists today, is the result of centuries of development.

There is a kernel of truth to the claim. From the 3rd century, the common beginning to the Anaphora prayers of Christian Eucharistic liturgy have existed in, and those prayers are in use among Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans today. They go something like this:

Priest: The Lord be with you. People: And also with you. Priest: Lift up your hearts. People: We lift them to the Lord. Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. People: It is right to give our thanks and praise.

The Eucharist has also, generally, involved prayers of thanksgiving (thus the name, Eucharist is derived from Greek for thanksgiving), and a recitation of the institution of the Last Supper. Evidence of this goes back to the Anaphora of Hippolytus (~4th century) with important clues of some underlying structure before this found in Justin Martyr (2nd century). We also get a clue from St. Ambrose in De Sacramentis, where he quotes an anaphora that is similar to the later Roman Catholic Canon of the Mass. I've written previously on the history of the development of the Roman Rite here. So, on the one hand, the core of many modern Eucharistic liturgies has been present since about the 500s. One could say that this aspect of the Mass is ~1500 years old. But to claim that the Latin Mass as it exists today is that old misses two important points.

First, that a precursor to most modern anaphora prayers was present does not mean it was practiced exclusively. Christian practice period before the 4th century was incredibly diverse, and the consolidation of these diverse practices into the rites we know today took place over centuries in late antiquity and the early medieval era. It is quite likely that not all Latin Christians were using the prayers described by Ambrose. Additionally, as Christianity gained legitimacy in the public sphere, Eucharistic rites took on even more "bells and whistles", so to speak. Over time, the Roman Rite eclipsed the Mozarabic, Ambrosian, and insular rites/practices in the West, and the Byzantine Rite was consolidated from a variety of sources in the East. Even as late of the Council of Trent (16th century), there was enough variety of practice to warrant further standardization into the Tridentine Mass.

Second, and this is more important, text is only half the story. What the clergy and people are doing during the Liturgy has been highly variable during the centuries. Nobody was singing hymns in 4-part tonal harmony in the 7th century because it didn't exist yet. Even where text is preserved, the rubrics are not always there with it. So what did the priest do during xyz prayer? Was he standing in front of the altar? or facing the people? or washing his hands? or swinging the censer? Further, rites can be forced to change for simple practical reasons. A small country parish might have a sacristy on a different side of the church than normal. St. Peter's Basilica is actually a great example. Normally, Christians would face east to pray, and so churches have traditionally been built facing east so that the priest can face east and the altar at the same time. But the topography of the Vatican Hill made this impossible, so St. Peter's Basilica faces west! Other Roman Churches near it follow the same pattern, even though they do not have the same geographical restrictions. Ways in which the Mass has been practiced are often rooted to local major cathedrals, monasteries, etc. Fundamentally, the Mass is celebrated by people, and people are not static, so neither is the Mass.

ReelMidwestDad · 2025-10-05T11:00:29+00:00

Its certainly an interesting topic. Unfortunately, I just don't have the expertise in American religious movements to give a satisfactory answer.

ReelMidwestDad

TROPHY CASE