I walked in late so missed the setup. He didn't pick up where we left off, with Hebrews. He was talking about the Ebionites.

We had read a blurb by James Tabor from ten years ago on the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. Reading it as homework, I didn't pick up on their attitude towards Paul, put forth in Tabor's concluding paragraph:

How the earliest group(s) viewed Paul is unclear.

By some reports he was tolerated or accepted as one who could go to the Gentiles with a version of the Nazarene message (Acts 15, 21).

Others apparently believed he was an apostate from the Torah and founder of a new religion—Christianity."

For his part, Jim ran with that last line and brought in Hyam Maccoby's book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity which I ordered from Amazon. Apparently there's a guy posting his reactions to Maccoby's book on YouTube. (Oh, I have that exact same poster of Jerusalem!)

And it isn't Jim. At least I don't think it is. Could be Jim's brother ... his younger brother. Hope he's reading! :-)

So, Maccoby reads Paul and concludes that Paul isn't a Jew. Isn't it telling that Marcion, who rejected the Hebrew Bible and most of the New Testament, accepted Paul's letters?

Jim makes too much out of the suggestive rivalry between the Jerusalem church and Paul's ministry. We all know that winners get to write the history. I have Ehrman's book Lost Christianities around here somewhere - somewhat fitting if that book should become "lost," eh? So, I might better track that down and see what he says. But, heck, what's the point? I think Nicaea got it right.

Anyway, in closing, Jim said that if we were still believers in Jesus after everything he'd told us that evening, then, please, have a wonderful Christmas. Yes, indeed.