Ya I got a little over the top there I guess. It is just that the posture that I grew up with (from the society), the one that demands that all things are literal, all statements by apostles and bible writers and such, must harmonize....this is so untrue, and unnecessary. The apostles were human, after all; they did have spirit, yes, but they made egregious errors. This does not detract from belief and faith; it really adds to it when we can look back and see the influences in the early congregation and UNDERSTAND them. Christianity survived perhaps at times in spite of the apostles.
When the book of Acts is read and reread without trying to make it fit an agenda, it is easy to see the great influence that the Jews had on the early believers. They had to really struggle, including Paul, to shed the internal and external influences of the Jewish system.
And Paul, God bless him, was part of the problem and the solution, as I see it. He wrote and spoke and campaigned for the great Christian freedom to worship without the influence of the religious leaders, as Jesus did, but as Acts 20 shows, was unable to completely stand up to them for fear of his life. Why not just talk about it?? Instead, last year the WT lesson said that Paul did nothing wrong here because it was still God's arrangement!!! This is crazy making theology. Paul succumbed to pressure, plain and simple. He was human. It enhances the theological discussion to discuss his human response rather than otherwise.
And Paul, in my view, carried forward his Pharisaical desire for order (control?) by setting up congregation arrangements similar to the Jewish system. I don't recall Jesus instituting any such arrangement. Did Jesus intend it? Did he tell Paul to do it? Hard to say. On top of this arrangement by Paul, today are piled on to the rank and file at least the equivalent of the 600 laws that the jews coped with, some of them at least as non-sensical as that of the law. (Unclean due to monthly cycles?? Wet dreams?? Are these not natural human conditions?) Compare these to rules (oops, sorry, guidelines and principles) about dress, who carries microphones and arcane, stupid rules about conditions where divorce can be allowed with remarriage.
I know I have said this before but I believe it: If the society acknowledged the undue influence of the jewish Jerusalem elders in the matter of the young men's vows, and Paul's caving in, then it would raise all manner of inconvenient questions about the legitimacy of their statement about blood back in Acts 15. It is easy to see that the real issue was of slowly withdrawing from the old beliefs, including blood.