Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Instead of dictating a change from one sameness to a new sameness, the brothers in Jerusalem freed the Gentiles (and probably the Jews) from any requirement to be "the same."
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I think you and I might continue to disagree with the interpretation of that letter. I'm just completely convinced that it was a huge mistake in the history of the Body, people playing overlord, making religious decrees. But I can agree with your above statement 100% and to the extent that someone misses that point, they must really want to miss it! Whether Jewish believers were "free" to be circumcised or REQUIRED to be circumcised is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The issue was whether the gentiles would be required to be circumcised and, to an extent at least, greater freedom was advanced, rather than restriction.
I'm in the midst of a study of "intertestamental Judaism" at the moment and I recently read that these "requirements" about fornication, idolatry and blood and strangulation were most likely the current minimal "Jewish" requirements - these were apparently so fundamental that a Jew should be martyred rather than breech them. I haven't thoroughly investigated that claim but it does make sense in context. If it is true though, it does thoroughly reinforce the fact that they were intending to impose "Judaism-lite" in the letter, a clear mistake in my view.
In any event, again, the main point of the missal was to relieve the gentiles of the circumcision requirement, which it implicitly does (not expressly, of note.) The most basic read of that is certainly
diversity of religious expression rather than
uniformity...