Pistolpete: If your assertions are true, why didn't the other apostles add anything to Paul when he went to Jerusalem to check if the message he had been preaching was the same as the one the other apostles were preaching?
When Paul first visits Jerusalem, three years after his sojourn in Arabia and his revelatory experience, it was not to check if the message he had been preaching was the same message the apostles were preaching, instead it was just about getting acquainted with Cephas and nothing else. The Scriptures tell us this in a very straightforward manner.
Galatians 1:18 Then three years later, I went up to Jerusalem TO BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH CEPHAS, and I stayed with him for fifteen days. But I did not see any other apostle except James, the Lord’s brother.
Meaning that Paul had ALREADY been preaching “HIS” Gospel and starting Gentile Congregations. For at least three years.
I say the word “HIS GOSPEL” because many times Paul referred to his message as “HIS GOSPEL” –and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Here are some examples;
“In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to MY GOSPEL” – Romans 2:16
Paul says “my gospel” --------is how God establishes the Romans.
Now to the one who is able to strengthen you with MY GOSPEL and the message that I PREACH ABOUT JESUS, the Messiah, by revealing the secret that was kept hidden from long ago – Romans 16:25 NIV
Resurrection was a part of Jewish prophecy, Jesus foretold his own, and Peter preached the resurrection of Christ before Paul was saved. ---------So how could Paul say this?
“Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead ACCORDING TO to MY GOSPEL” – 2 Timothy 2:8
When Paul appeared before the Jerusalem Council around 50 A.D. to defend his independent preaching among the Gentiles for the previous fourteen years, he and the Jerusalem apostles apparently reached a kind of “live and let live” Agreement to not interfere with one another’s work.
As long as Paul taught the same teaching the Apostles taught Jewish converts about Jesus. The Jerusalem leadership would never support any insistence that Paul’s converts become circumcised and convert to Judaism.
What NEVER CAME UP , and what the Jerusalem Apostles would NEVER HAVE IMAGINE, given Paul’s devotion and training in the Jewish faith, was that Paul believed that with the coming of Christ, the Torah of Moses, which he called the Old Covenant, had been superseded and was fading away, as seen in Paul’s letters to his Congregations.
This would mean that even Jews were no longer “under the Torah” or obligated to observe the laws of traditions of the ancestral faith, particularly circumcision, the Sabbath, the Jewish festivals, the dietary laws, and ritual purity.
We can be sure that Peter, James, and the Jerusalem Apostles KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THE FULL IMPLICATIONS OF PAUL’S TEACHINGS, --especially that Jews no longer follow the Jewish Torah.
The author of the book of Acts tries to present a picture of harmonious cooperation between Paul, Peter, James, and that they were all preaching the same gospel message.
But at the very end of the book of Acts, when Paul visits Jerusalem for the last time, before his imprisonment int Rome, Acts, reveals more – perhaps more than intended, and the Truth seems to come out, at least by implication, that rumors were circulating that Paul was teaching a different message than the original Apostles, specifically picked by Jesus himself.
And they had No idea to what extant Paul had deviated from the message that they preach of Jesus Christ.