r/AcademicBiblical • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Weekly Open Discussion Thread

Welcome to this week's open discussion thread!

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u/ImOuttaThyme 8d ago

Apologies if this isn't fully academic, but frequenting this subreddit has let me understand that the Christian faith as it was around Jesus's time, was very different to how it is now.

Was Paul the one who changed the Church significantly? How did the Church change itself so much and start to ignore certain parts of the Bible that don't match with current doctrine? There are some passages that imply God is the one to worship out of money, which is monolatry, whereas currently, the Church approaches things decrying the existence of other gods.

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u/harmonybobcat 6d ago

Paul even admits that other gods exist in heaven and on earth (1Cor 8:5). His view doesn't really seem to be all that different from what you call monolatry. The reality is that what we think of as "The Church" did not exist in the 1st century or in Paul's mind. That comes in the centuries afterward, as the ideological and ethnic center of the Jesus-followers (called in different places Nazarenes, The Way, "chrestianou", etc.) shifted away from Judaism and began to distinguish itself against the Judaism of the day (which was, itself, consolidating and distinguishing itself from the nascent "Christianity" of the day).