Gospels of Thomas and Philip and Truth - Syriac Christian Church

William D. Davies, ‘Paul and Jewish Christianity’, in J. Daniélou (ed.), Théologie
du Judéo-Chriantianisme (1958); ‘The Apostolic Age and the Life of Paul’, Peake's
Commentary on the Bible (1962): Jewish-Christians [opposing Paul] ... must have
been a very strong, widespread element in the earliest days of the Church.... They
took for granted that the gospel was continuous with Judaism.... According to some
scholars, they must have been so strong that right up to the fall of Jerusalem in AD
70 they were the dominant element in the Christian movement. || Of the history of
the Church at Jerusalem between AD 44 and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 we know
very little.... Attempts at ... minimizing the gulf between Gentile and Jerusalem
Christianity break down on the opposition which the Pauline mission so often
encountered from Jewish Christians.... Acts has so elevated Paul that others who
labored have been dwarfed, and any assessment of the rise of Gentile Christianity
must allow for the possible distortion introduced by this concentration of Acts on
Paul.... The Epistles and Acts reveal that Paul came to regard himself ... as the [one
and only] Apostle to the Gentiles.
Lawrence Durrell, Clea (1960): For a brief moment [freedom] looked possible,
but St Paul restored ... the iron handcuffs.
Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960); ‘The Crisis of
Tradition in Jewish Messianism’ (1968): Paul read the Old Testament ‘against the
grain’. The incredible violence with which he did so, shows ... how incompatible his
experience was with the meaning of the old books.... The result was the paradox
that never ceases to amaze us when we read the Pauline Epistles: on the one hand,
the Old Testament is preserved; on the other, its original meaning is completely set
aside. || The religious strategy of Paul ... [is] downright antinomian.
Hans Joachim Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of
Jewish Religious History (English translation 1961): [Drawing a] stark contrast
between the religion of the law and the religion of grace,... Paul had lost all
understanding of the character of the Hebraic berith [covenant] as a partnership
involving mutual obligations, [and thus] he failed to grasp the inner meaning of the
Mosaic law.
Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History (1962): If Paul had lived today, he might
have ended up on a psychiatrist's couch. Throughout his life he was overwhelmed
with an all-pervasive sense of guilt which pursued him with relentless fury.... The
custom had been for non-Jewish converts to become Jews first, then be admitted
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