Why Paul's Churches Won 

I really enjoy your lectures. I am not a Christian, in fact I am not a believer on any deity but I really enjoy your lectures and how you answer complex questions. Congratulations!!

I wish the TV evangelists would listen to this .....and realize how wrong it is to beg for airplane money while wearing a 5k dollar suit..

John: It would be interesting to hear a discussion of what may have occurred in Jerusalem when James the Just led the movement. How his perspective changed, how others in his group viewed him as time passed, and how situations changed upon his death. A lot to get into there.Thanks for your time creating these wonderful and enriching learning experiences. Your teaching is something to behold, along with putting my learning curve into hyperdrive.

Paul converting Judaism-curious Gentiles strikes me as similar to how various "gurus" will sell Eastern religion to curious Westerners today, often diluting or reframing the cultural context to better appeal to their cultural sensitivities.

This is excellent I cannot believe how much I learned in such a short time. Quite the eye opener for me. Thanks so much.

I chuckled with Paul finishing his story of the meeting with Peter with the ancient equivalent of "and then everyone clapped" lol

My favorite channel on youtube- big thanks to everyone involved! Keep up the good work :)

Sorry for the nitpicking but it's distracting me from your otherwise very interesting presentation: "We" is NOT the 2d person. It is the First Person Plural. The 2d person is "You" (both in singular and plural).

How can one trust Saul? A former critic of Christianity who later asserts himself the leader and rule maker? Sounds like the perfect infiltration.

That "Timeline of Paul's Ministry" adds a lot, Thanks to John and Centre Place Team!

Great presentation and very informative - please keep them coming 😊

Like many others, was looking forward to this presentation. Great job, and thanks!

I believe in the 1st century there were two main sects 1. Yeshua apostolic church 2. Pauline church The yeshuan church did not live long enough because they were eventually overshadowed by the the Pauline and Roman church, the closest to this sect are the Muslims and other non trinitarian middle eastern sects. The Pauline Christianity is solely responsible for the recklessness in the lives of believer's who look to forsake the law, thus the pervasion and unrighteousness in the church. It gave rise to high level of immorality and unguided living. The Pauline church later became mainstream Christianity, instead of the righteous/law/faith base church of James and Peter founded in jerusalem. Jesus specifically appointed Peter to head his church not Paul. Early Jewish Christianity is clearly Peter based or based of faith and Torah.

Soooooo excited when these come out! Love you guys! Thanks John and everyone who makes these so great!

I am falling in love with this channel. And this is by far the most entertaining and information packed lecture I’ve seen here. The wealth of knowledge contained in this RU-vid channel is astonishing. Thank you so much for your work.

1:12:00 Paul says: "Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me." This is not "Conclusive proof of a New Testament woman apostle". He merely says that the couple is well-known among the apostles. Meaning the apostles know about the couple. Even if you don't agree with this interpretation, at least it's a VALID interpretation. It's not conclusive proof that Andronicus and Junia were apostles. The whole presentation is filled with things like this, taking a small passage and making a big conclusion about early Christianity from it.

I really enjoy your lectures!

There are people in Britton who say that Paul's accusers never showed up to his trail in Rome so he was released and he went on to Spain and Britton. They say he lived there for a couple of years then when back to Spain. There's a lot of early Christian history in Britton that we know little about.

So good channel❤

You'd think people would take the word of people who actually knew Jesus, like his own brother and right hand man (basically) Peter, instead of some random convert who never knew Jesus ...

How many Jews in their right mind would believe a "risen Jesus" entered Paul's essence and told him the Torah had become irrelevant because the End Times had begun? Not many. Now, how many non-Jews would be willing to entertain the possibility that a "risen Jesus" entered Paul's essence and told him the Torah had become irrelevant because the End Times had begun? Some. They had no particular reason to reject the idea out-of-hand.

This is a great lecture. Great context for understanding mythicist debates too - since Paul had such an influence despite never meeting an actual Jesus, it could appear as if no such person existed from a certain perspective, but not so if we take the Jerusalem church into account. Incredible though if the Jerusalem church plotted Paul's downfall... but eye opening that they apparently had such a deep disagreement about adherence to law.

Very interesting & thought-provoking. And in a way, it's like Time-Travel !

Thank you. Always worth listening to; I always learn interesting stuff from these lectures.

Great lecture John, the first 100 years of the church are so shrouded in mystery and drama, it’s fascinating to study. I didn’t get to ask this during the live chat, but what are your thoughts on the Pseudo-Clementines literature in relation to the schism between the Pauline and Jacobite branches? Modern day Ebionites and Nazarenes try to claim that they actually go back to Peter, but I haven’t read them myself yet. My understanding is that scholars say they were written in the 4th century. I’d love to hear a lecture by you on the Pseudo-Clementine literature like you did with Pseudo-Dionysus.

Wow, thank you so much! It was excellent!

It's no mystery to me. You can follow Paul that says you don't have to follow the Jewish laws or you can have a very painful procedure made on the most sensitive part of your body that is circumcision. As an adult male which one will you choose.?

Thanks!

Yeah Pauline' churches. That actually answers all open questions. Fuck, he was the one and only founder of "Christianity", and the massive set of lies involved. And nearly everyone fell for it.

You are incredible! I can listen all day.. I have learned so much from your videos..thank you!

I wonder what really happens in the brain with these Eureka / Damaskus moments. One is contemplating a problem that resists solving, and suddenly one makes a leap to a solution that gets around whatever was in the way. And the larger the problem seemed to be, the greater the feeling of release probably is. It’s like gaining a new perspective, from which the original roadblock now seems meaningless. The question is: what in the original gospel made Saul go after the followers of Jesus? And what jump occurred in his thinking? You see, the problem is: If you have a single wrong axiom in your thinking, you can deduce anything. Garbage in, garbage out. If you start false, you can prove everything / get to any conclusion you like, which makes the whole endeavor of getting to conclusions / Eureka moments useless. Paul was certainly wrong about the end of the world; from a secular individual perspective he is also wrong about death not being the end. What then would it even mean to be right about Jesus being Christ as predicted in the scriptures - which tbh is also wrong, as the gospels are constructed as types from the anti-types of the OT. (And it can’t be otherwise, when most of the predictions are retrodictions, as literary criticism teaches.) ((Die Propheten waren keine Vorhersager, sondern Hervorsager. (Gruß an Dr. Böttcher, falls er das liest.)) So: rationally I don’t share any of the assumptions. Why am I even watching these lectures? Ethical law ideally is about how to live a life well lived. A conduct of life that makes it conducive to the continuation of life and civilization in general (“playing the long game”): So to not (only) gather capital in your own bank / grain in your own barn, but gather “Treasures in Heaven” = do good, give back to the community. Maybe also help stabilize the institutions that adjudicate the law sensibly, give the law democratically, execute the law without bias, teach the law in its original spirit. - Or transform or replace the old institutions with new ones that do these things. The message of the NT still is: Turn your life around from taking to giving, get a view for the needs of others. - Jesus approach is reverse psychology: the best way to teach people to see the need of others, and to give freely, is to confront them with intentionally poor disciples, who on the one hand serve as extreme examples, as they have given everything away themselves out of their free will, but also must inevitably be seen by the host as a good opportunity for a practical first step of true cathartical change in their life by literally practicing giving, or at least as an opportunity for virtue signaling, as practically they only are required to show a minimal amount of hospitality anyway. The burning of the books in every revolution is first about the burning of the debt records, and only second about establishing a new ideology and destroying the old values and hierarchies. Think that the Year of Jubilee in the OT even allowed keeping the structure and values of society as a whole intact, by only getting rid of the excesses. How would preparing for the end of the age look like? How long can you survive the Zombie Apocalypse? You have food for a year in your bunker? So what? - You need intact communities, because in the end, everybody has to start over from pretty much nothing again, and this works only by working together again on a basis of free will (and pure need), as all the larger social structures will probably collapse. So we are back to family and friends and local communities, where everyone knows everyone else. So it will all be about your skills (and your tools), your general wisdom and problem solving capabilities, your health and mainly your relationships and ability to integrate and communicate. - But that is what it should have been all along from the beginning. - Why don’t we have that now / before? What do we have in its place? Accumulated wealth and societal structures that keep the incentives and penalties in a way to support the perpetuation of structures of privilege. But the original reason for accumulating wealth and creating hierarchical structures of power, was to ward off greater crises in the first place, or be prepared to mitigate them when they happen. The problem is: in times when there is no crisis, those structures and potentials and fortunes become self-serving. And then when the crisis happens, but they fail to react and the potentials and fortunes and powers are not getting used to mitigate the damage, they lose their legitimacy. Then the powers and the wealth need to be transferred and transformed to new institutions and actors that are willing to do what is necessary. Conclusion? The natural growth of Christianity might have been a failing of the existing elites in times of crisis. Out of the crisis did grow grand new institutions later on. Feels like we are in the nth cycle. The Elites are failing us again. Rahm Emmanuel said during the banking crisis in 2008 “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”, but the crisis was not used to mitigate the damage, but to consolidate wealth and power even more in the wrong hands. Crisis calls for a new Reformation of structures, or for cutting them down and growing them back from grassroots. Phoenix reborn from its ashes. Great potentials for the mitigation of our modern day crisis remain unused, as our elites fail us again. This destroys the legitimacy of their power and wealth and privilege. Good times for religion, I guess.

This was the most informative video I’ve watched by far!

Wow! Almost 10K views in less than 24 hours - congrats on the growing ministry, @CentrePlace. Just as Paul opened Jewish tradition to those who could not adhere to the letter of judaic law - I hope that you are opening Christian tradition to many who can't hold unquestioning belief in things that don't fit with modern knowledge.

As far as writing goes of the Jerusalem church, the one letter of Paul to the Corinthians says that the community had received a letter from some of the followers of the Jerusalem Church. As Paul's take became dominant, might any letters or works in opposition to Paul were suppressed and destroyed and seen as heresy?

Thanks been waiting for this one

I find James' writings to be the most logical and swalloable truths of the new testament. Works always makes more sense than just Faith. Works proves what you believe. Faith is just hope that isn't really acted upon.

Love your presentations and all of the work you study in-depth.

Thanks

The books were written in the language applicable to the people it was written for There is an historical record you can find in quite a few books on the subject. I have read quite a few. So I am very familiar with the theories and historical records the narrator refers too.

Sound is not good you must turn it up to max and still don’t hear unless it’s a few inches away

Good presentation, many truths to it in terms of historical context, many non christian can come to the same faith by hearing this divine works of God.

It was an even better meeting .

So was Jesus wrong when he stated that Peter would be the rock upon which his church would be built, or were his followers just disregarding Jesus's words.

You are impressive in your tackling this historically. Shows great strength. Last, a good discussion might be about what were exactly those laws the Jewish Christians had to adhere to? Were they the over 600 ones Jews now follow? And if relaxed rules were allowed for gentile Christians, which ones might they have been? I have to say, your lectures make me wonder where you and your church stands on all of this spiritually. Was Jesus God for your group? Maybe only a blessed man? Where do you stand on the faith only, and faith and good works divide? You've piqued my interest. But you stear clear of these in your lectures. Commendable, but leaves me curious.

They made this gentleman say "Bloated Warlock" and "Cheddar Baby" 😅.

See you next Tuesday for another Hamercopia of Knowledge

Excellent presentation. Thank you John

Very interesting how the faith alone vs faith + works debate is still going on today

Where do you get all this "quoted" information from???

Fantastic lecture!! Good work.🎉

A lot of Christians don't think Paul belongs in the Church.

Thanks! Incredible content

stood condemned = caught red handed in hypocrisy. Sounds soooo familiar.

Both "I" and "we" are first person; they are first person singular and plural respectively. Modern English doesn't differentiate between plural and singular with the second person (archaic singular: thou). Third person: he, she, it (singular) and they (plural).

Paul is basically responsible for creating Christianity, it wasn't just him obviously, but he basically founded the religion and he never even met Jesus in the flesh!

This should be good and should include a bit about why Jews don't believe a word Paul comes out with...

I've been thoroughly enjoying these lectures. Thank you for making scholarly content free and available to all!

When it comes to Apostles and Prophets… I’ve often wondered how parishioners of evangelical mega-churches can sit in those pews, week after week, listening to those preachers claiming powers of prophecy, while they also insist that Jesus commands said parishioners to empty their pockets, to pay for the preachers’s fourth luxury jet. How do they square that?🤔

If you think "St. Paul's churches won," or that he led a significantly different movement than the rest of earliest Christianity, then you are confused about Christian origins. This probably comes from looking at early Christianity through the lens of a modern European, particularly Protestant, bias.

Paul of Tarsus is argualy the most influential historical figure in Western thought.

Then you for the deep dive on Paul, his letters speak to me most. His story and his dreading of the word is one of the best histories to me!!

Either Paul had sacred favor as he claimed, to dominate Christendom, or he was the first false prophet to deceive the many.

“We” indicates that separation is an illusion

The greatest tension regarding the “law” was that between the law of God, the Torah, and the “oral law” of the Pharisees.

Most people ignore what Jesus had to say on this matter. John 11:25-26 New King James Version 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Why would anyone chose a different salvation than what Jesus offers here? Let me put it bluntly, who is going to offer you a better deal? You can have the resurrection and the life that He's offering you. Perhaps you would rather rise up with the "dead in Christ?" If you don't believe in Jesus, you will have to die. When you arise in the last day resurrection, it will be to face the white throne judgement. In between your death and resurrection, you missed the opportunity to meet Jesus in Paradise and also the opportunity to be born on the new 1000 year earth. Jesus will judge you fairly according to every jot and every title of the law because He won't break his covenant. Now that you’re resurrected with the “dead in Christ” it's a hard path that you’ve chosen to follow. Now your salvation depends on how well you followed the law and kept its commandments. Wouldn't it have been better to keep His covenant because of your belief in Him and to never die? Since you chose not to believe in Him, now your best hope is that He will allow you to die.

Excellent video. I first saw you on Gospel Tangents a few years ago. The development of Joseph Smith Jr.'s teachings is one of the other lectures by you that I've seen previously. I'm glad I found your RU-vid channel. The lectures on your website match many of my interests. A former Christian, now a 12er Shi'ite Muslim, I have a big interest in history, as well as comparative religion. So, I will be watching many more of your videos.

I am enchanted with Centre Place. "We" is First Person PLURAL form of the pronoun "I". "You" is the Second Person. You have accurately identified a personal pronoun in the Third Person (Subject case: he, she, it, they Object case: him, her, it, them. As I have learned so much from you: Personal pronouns have four attributes: person, gender, number, case. They overlap.

The 2nd Person is when you address people directly: "'You' are walking in the desert...and 'you' are thirsty."

Is it possible that Paul was setup when he returned to Jerusalem?

I really enjoy your video's. If possible, please do not speed up or slow down your content. Trying to correct the play speed is always the first thing I do before watching. Thanks!

I don't think Paul ever thought that his ministry could it had been superseded by Peter's. Otherwise, he wouldn't had written to his assistant Timothy stating that he has fought a good fight and had finished the race when his mission was culminating (2 Tim 4:7). He further wrote that "a crown of righteousness was waiting for him". That is a thought of knowing that his work was a great climax and successful at best. The conflict that arose between the two was relating to issues of jews laws and customs which was not the gospel the Lord revealed to Paul for the gentiles.

Paul had the Gnostics on side, for one. He also travelled a lot, founding churches.

I find your lectures very transparent...i.e. I think you are like many of us...and would like to just be AWARE OF THE STRONGEST EVIDENCE....not the BIBLE-ONLY evidence...I have come to almost not be able to listen to a FULL APOLOGIST PODCAST...just due to the obvious BIAS THAT EXIST...So I do not really care if someone call themselves...Christian or Agnostic or Atheist or dog watcher...(which by the way I love dogs more than fundamentalist apologists these days) ... I only want the best SCHOLORLY CONSENSUS , including non-fundamentalist Christian scholars, if they can be found......... so keep up good work....

Thank you

I've wanted to know for a long time how a man who never met Yashua, changed his teachings and was able to convince influential people that he was telling the truth...wild stuff😮

I am confused: wasn't Barnaby Peter's father-in-law?

Thanks for your informative lecture. I learned a lot.

I thought Gospel was a military term used to spread word that victory had been achieved in war. And the Gospels were a victory for new life over eternal damnation.

whilst making a "point" that the writer of Acts switches from third person to "second" (by saying "we" instead of "they") haven't you erred since "we" is not second person but First Person plural? second person pronouns are "thou", singular, and "you", singular or plural.

3rd person: she, he, they. 1st person: I, we. 2nd person: thou, you

Christianity didn't "Come later" as the Way is mentioned along with Christianity in Acts, the King even mentioned Christianity in court with Paul saying that Paul "Almost convinced him of Christianity" which was My Gospel according to Paul.

How likely is it that the Jewish followers of Yeshu did not think he was a messiah due to his lowly birth and that they brought in Yeshu's brother James after Yeshu's death in order to establish a family-based lineage of leadership to help the group survive after the attack by the Roman soldiers ?

Very good video! I live in Yellowknife

Please use context to determine when law is referring to the oral traditions, the ceremonial laws the Ten Commandments or all of Torah.

Great work!

Is this some guy standing in a room with a backdrop?

Reading the New Testament we see that Paul was in union with Jesus' disciples. It describes one disagreement but also that they solved it. Peter also explicitly showed allegence with Paul in one of his letters.

great overview

i agree Paul was influential in the founding of the Christian church but not Jesus who remained a jewish street preacher his whole life...amen

Paul came into conflict with the 12, as well as with the words of Jesus himself, too many times to believe he was anything other than a false apostle. I believe the light that he encountered on the Damascus road was not Jesus, but Satan counterfeiting as Jesus. Satan appears as an angel of light, which would explain the blinding light that Paul experienced. Satan couldn't bring down Christianity from the outside, so he needed an infilitrator to take it down from within, and Paul became his tool. The words of Jesus, and the 12, should always have precedent over everything else. Anything that conflicts, is false. Paul sought a letter of commission, from Peter, to show to the Gentiles to establish his credibility as an apostle, but Peter refused. Why would Peter refuse to grant Paul a letter of commission, if he believed Paul was for real? He didn't grant him the letter, because he had doubts, so we should also have doubts.

Pinehurst NC

Sorry for nitpicking. But "he, she, it" (singular) and "they" (plural) is 3rd person. "you" ("thou", singular) and "you" (plural) is 2nd person. And "I" (singular) and "we" (plural) is 1st person. However, thank you very much for an, again, very informative lecture!

26:12 nice map

1:48:19 That's one way to put it.

This is a nice talk however I think the real reason Paul's church is one is that the Romans destroyed the church in Jerusalem when they leveled Jerusalem and basically left those other churches as the default Church

Genuinely great lectures. Concerning James, the term "brother" is multivalent, right? It can refer to cousins and close companions. Your thoughts, brother?

What about the other saviour God stories that are identical to the Jesus Christ story?

Why did Paul immediately go to Arabia after his conversion? And why stay there for three years?

I want to tell you the fascinating story about when the Trinity verse was added to the Bible. This is a well-documented fact, detailed in "Whose Word Is It?: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why" by Professor Bart Ehrman, an expert in biblical textual criticism. In the 16th century, Erasmus, a Dutch scholar, produced the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament. The New Testament was originally written in Greek, but had been translated into Latin over the centuries. Erasmus aimed to create a critical scholarly edition based on Greek texts, relying mainly on late medieval manuscripts from the 12th century. Erasmus’s edition of the Greek New Testament was later used by the translators of the King James Bible and other versions until the end of the 19th century. However, the Greek manuscripts Erasmus used were not of high quality and were produced about eleven hundred years after the originals. For example, his main manuscript for the gospels included the story of the woman taken in adultery and the last verses of Mark, which were not part of the original gospels. One key passage missing from Erasmus’s manuscripts was 1 John 5:7-8, known as the Johannine Comma, which explicitly supports the doctrine of the Trinity. This passage is found in Latin Vulgate manuscripts but not in the majority of Greek manuscripts. The King James Version includes this verse: "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." Bart Ehrman notes, "The Greek manuscripts that Erasmus used were not of the best quality... produced some eleven hundred years after the originals." Erasmus did not find this verse in any Greek manuscripts he consulted, so he omitted it from his first edition. This omission outraged theologians of his time, who accused him of tampering with the text. Erasmus reportedly agreed to include the verse in future editions if a Greek manuscript containing it could be produced. Consequently, a Greek manuscript was created in the 16th century, likely by translating the Latin text into Greek. Despite his reservations, Erasmus included the verse in subsequent editions. These editions formed the basis for the King James Bible and other translations for centuries. The phrase "Textus Receptus" refers to this widely accepted form of the Greek text, despite its reliance on inferior manuscripts. Modern textual scholars now insist on using older and better manuscripts to base the Greek New Testament on scientific principles. The Textus Receptus, though still revered by some fundamentalists, is based on late medieval manuscripts, whereas earlier manuscripts, such as the Codex Sinaiticus, do not contain the Johannine Comma or other later additions. Ehrman explains, "This passage... states the doctrine directly and succinctly," but it "was not in Erasmus's primary manuscript or in any of the others that he consulted." This realization challenges the solid basis for the Trinity doctrine in the Bible, making it difficult for some Christians to accept.

Paul was a heavily melanated person as were most of the people of that time period and era.