03-05-2018, 03:54 AM
I ain't even gonna try to compete with you two eggheads but, when I read the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus spends a lot of time taking out the trash and pointing the people he's talking to back to Moses and Noah. He quotes a heap of Deuteronomy. In the rest of NT the warnings against allowing pagan and Jewish practices, the judaizers, you refer to Ed, into the Church is, I believe a catch all term (judaizers).
It is well known that throughout the ancient world, peoples tended towards henotheism, while at the same time allowing other deities to be worshiped. Any new mystical revelation was absorbed by these varies religions creating a situation where cross "pollination" would occur and was perfectly acceptable. Many paths same destination is not at all new. The Torah stands out as the one text which forbad such things and insisted on one way to God. While the exile did result in the first setting of the Hebrew canon, in the realm of ideas they were contaminated and ripe for Hellenization, as you point out. Jesus preached primarily to the Jews, reawakening the hearts of his disciples with His personification of the Law in Himself. They, when sent out to spread the Gospel to non Jews, who were conditioned to integrate new with old, the first thing after awakening their hearts was to deprogram all the junk. This is very much akin to what we as heart led believers face Now!
It is well known that throughout the ancient world, peoples tended towards henotheism, while at the same time allowing other deities to be worshiped. Any new mystical revelation was absorbed by these varies religions creating a situation where cross "pollination" would occur and was perfectly acceptable. Many paths same destination is not at all new. The Torah stands out as the one text which forbad such things and insisted on one way to God. While the exile did result in the first setting of the Hebrew canon, in the realm of ideas they were contaminated and ripe for Hellenization, as you point out. Jesus preached primarily to the Jews, reawakening the hearts of his disciples with His personification of the Law in Himself. They, when sent out to spread the Gospel to non Jews, who were conditioned to integrate new with old, the first thing after awakening their hearts was to deprogram all the junk. This is very much akin to what we as heart led believers face Now!