Metalogos The Gospels of Thomas & Philip & Truth

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
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