09-24-2003, 08:02 AM
Quote:Personally, I'm still investigating whether I think Paul wrote 1 Timothy or not. It's vocabulary and concerns are those of later Christianity, an institutional structure that just did not exist in Paul's day.
I disagree. I also don't think you know Orthodox Judaism well enough to make that determination, or you wouldn't be taking these positions on women in the first place.
Quote:Do you think I should be drawn and quartered? Am I heretical because I don't accept the NT canon blindly as 'the word of Elohim'? The Church of the East has a different canon than the west. Is one heretical?
As far as your belief is concerned, if you call the NT canon 'the word of Elohim', then at least your position concerning women is consitent with your belief, and I respect that.
No, Rob, I don't think you should be drawn and quartered. But, when it comes to female ordination, you will find a complete lack of acceptance of it in 1st century Judaism, or any traditional continuity of it by any Judaic/Christian community down to this day. That is a position of exterme weakeness, especially in light of Paul's very Jewish concerns in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, "So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter." Now trying to determine what group has the purest Oral Torah is quite a task. As for myself, I've decided that the Church of the East is the purest stream of Christianity, but I recognise that theoretically it is possible that I could be wrong. And I also disagree with the CoE on some things, but not without a strong basis for that from somewhere else, for instance 1st century Judaism.
Shlama w'burkate, Craig