As noted in a prior post, the faith once delivered was challenged and challenged again until in many respects it bore little resemblance to the continuity of faith that the Messiah taught in the 30s CE. As the apostles themselves warned, the magnification over millennia of revealed biblical truth slowly eroded.
From the end of the first century and on, small groups of disciples held to the biblical truths they understood, including observing a seventh day Sabbath and other biblical tenets that reflected the life, teachings and example of Jesus Christ. But as the faith once delivered plunged into the world of Hellenism and the spiritual politics of men—especially following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE—things began to change.
The teachings of the Apostle Paul—a man who by his own accounts was born, lived, and died a Jew (read that again for emphasis)—were summarily mangled into a contrary position.
Why is this important? If one controls the language, one controls the narrative. Here’s a startling consideration: to truly understand what the Bible—and Paul—teaches, one must consider that the origins of the words “Christian,” “Christianity,” and the “church” from a historical perspective represent potential definitions that are—in the words of scholar Anders Runesson—“inadequate, anachronistic, and misleading.”
Is that true? What happened? And what do more contemporary scholars say today of this shift?