Bradley,
I don't really see Paul as being the "I'm going to rescue people from the Mosaic Law" figure that he would like to have thought. Paul was a strange dude, imho, and held many contradictory views.
You are right, I'm sure. I was just looking at this from a slightly different perspective, and I didn't mean to take the fun away from it. It's very clever and funny; it's just that it also struck me that the definitions tended to emphasize a hackneyed criticism. I'll explain myself, at the risk of ruining all the fun.
He seems to have outwardly preached that "Christ is the end of the Law" yet STILL carried on Jewish practice, circumcised Timothy and created a lot of rules that Jesus never came close to. I think he wanted to both seperate the Jesus movement from Judaism and, yet, keep core elements of it in tact. He seemed to have a love/hate relationship with Judaism that seeps into his rules and teachings.
Everything you said here is right, imo, but my comments are directed at the original post. "Anti-Semitic" was too strong a choice of words. I just meant that there is a tendency to dismiss the Jewish religion as completely negative and stifling but because I felt it was based on misunderstood evidence -- it therefore reflects a prejudice.
no matter what calamities befell them as victims of Babylon and Egypt and no matter what calamities they wantonly inflicted on other races and religions, they should strive to increase in number, power and extent.
I think the author, by moving out of the past tense might be displaying that that he or she is rightfully angry that the continued influence of the Bible on the Jews is that it still justifies calamities that they still wontonly inflict on other races and religions, especially in modern-day Palestine. There may be a hint that goes beyond righteous anger reflected in "that...they should strive to increase in number, power and extent." It's a common complaint in true 20th century anti-Semitic rhetoric that it's an awful religion, but it's doubly awful that Jews increase in power everywhere they go. That possible strata of thought was not necessarily the theme up to this point, but the fact that it was tied strongly into the next section made me wonder:
...the narrow and proscriptive uncharity of the Jews...to reverse the generosity of Christ's Christianity ... into the stifling folds of Jewish law and custom.
The more common 19th century anti-Semitic rhetoric was typically about "uncharity and stinginess," a little different than 20th century complaints about Jewish "number, power and extent." Almost those exact words were still reflected in the Oxford English Dictionary and even in Judge Rutherford's rhetoric concerning Jews well into the twentieth century.
I thought it was a bit prejudicial sounding because it seemed based on an accusation that Paul's goal was to wrestle Christianity back from hopeful charity to stifling uncharity. It's true that Paul's created a religion with some of these elements, and that could at least partially be "blamed" on his own Jewish background, but that is not what he wrestled with. His WRESTLING was to make it less Jewish, less burdensome. His fight in Acts 15 was with a "governing body" that wanted Paul's Gentile converts to get circumcised, to avoid not just obvious illegalities and immoralities but also Jewish proscriptions against blood and things sacrificed to idols. Paul successfully fought them on circumcision, but couldn't get it through the GB's head that no other burden should be added to them. Paul, on his own, very clearly told the Corinthians to ignore the GB burden about "things sacrificed to idols", that it was only weak Christians who wanted to follow such things. Paul cursed (damned) that GB attitude in Galatians 1 and 2, and explained how the fruits of true religion were automatic and didn't require law at all in chapters 4 and 5. Even his vow and the circumcision of Timothy wasn't done because he wanted it, but because he knew the GB would let him get killed by Jewish and/or Jewish/Christian zealots if he didn't appease their spiritual "weakness" with these external signs.
Because the writer obviously missed the point about Paul's wrestling, it spoiled the theme for me, and told me that it was at least partially based on prejudices, or at the very least was just being funny but with a measure of insensitivity.
Gamaliel
(Formatting issues, hope this font isn't too big.)
