“The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity”
by Hyam Maccoby
1 Paul was never a Pharisee rabbi…
2 Jesus and his immediate followers were Pharisees.
3 The first followers of Jesus, under James and Peter, founded the Jerusalem Church after Jesus’s death.
4 Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity
5 A source of information about Paul that has never been taken seriously enough is a group called the Ebionites.
6 The Ebionites were stigmatized by the Church as heretics
“Justify your existence, obey God.”
Obeying or rejecting God without personal experience is100% fanatics.
The Ebionites are interesting.
I have several pages on them in my recent book ‘Exploring Early Christian and Gnostic Texts’:
http://stores.lulu.com/sahajhist
Several of the Ebionites pages are available in the preview. Do have a look!
You have best regards from Boitcho from Macedonia.