
More info for you on Paul
It comes from the [link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/|Jews for Jesus] web site.
[link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/evidence/paul.htm|[link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/evidence/paul.htm|http://www.jewsforj...nce/paul.htm]] some evidence on Paul. Also [link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/objections/paul.htm|[link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/objections/paul.htm|http://www.jewsforj...ons/paul.htm]] some objections. I hope that it helps clear things up. Nobody has to read it if they do not want to.
[link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/qa/pauldeceive.htm|[link|http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/qa/pauldeceive.htm|http://www.jewsforj...ldeceive.htm]]:
The New Testament passage in question that supposedly reveals
Paul as a deceiver is First Corinthians 9:20-22:
To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those
under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself
am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those
not having the law I became like one not having the law (though
I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as
to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to
win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by
all possible means I might save some.
Far from being deceptive, Paul, when he wrote the passage
from First Corinthians, was drawing on Jewish communications
methods of his day. Like other Jewish leaders, Paul was simply
being a good teacher and communicator. What Paul sets forth in
First Corinthians is not a principle of deceit and expediency,
but a principle of communication such as was taught and practiced
by Hillel and others. Craig Keener, Professor
of New Testament, Hood Theological Seminary, places First Corinthians
9:20-22 firmly within a Jewish context.
Some Jewish teachers, like Hillel, were similarly accommodationists,
to win as many as possible to the truth.
--The IVP Bible Background Commentary (Downers
Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 472.
Similarly, David Daube, a Jewish Professor
of Law at University of California, Berkeley, wrote at length
about Paul's principles as found in First Corinthians 9:20-22.
The following is taken from a much longer chapter, "Missionary
Maxims in Paul," which is found in Daube's book The New
Testament and Rabbinic Judaism:
[This idea is] taken over by Paul from Jewish teaching on
the subject: the idea that you must adopt the customs and mood
of the person you wish to win over....
First, for the idea of accommodation. Let us start from a
passage in I Corinthians [Daube quotes First Corinthians 9:20-22].
This attitude had formed part of Jewish missionary practice
long before Paul. Two Talmudic illustrations of Hillel's work
are relevant: he accepted into the fold a gentile who refused
to acknowledge the oral Law, and he accepted another who refused
to acknowledge any Law beyond the most fundamental ethical principle
[b. Shabbat 31a and Avot de-Rabbi Nathan 15]...At the decisive
moment of conversion, he fell in with the notions of the applicant
and declared himself satisfied with recognition of the written
Law or a single, basic moral precept....
Hillel, we might put it, was made all things to all men, that
he might by all means save some.
[Hillel had a saying] which may chiefly contemplate relations
to outsiders [Tosefta Berachot 2.24]: "Do not appear naked,
do not appear dressed, do not appear laughing, do not appear
weeping -- as it is said, A time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing [Ecclesiastes
3:4f.]....
In the treatises Derekh Eretz Rabba and Derekh Eretz Zuta,
we meet with descendants of Hillel's maxim. The former contains
this paragraph: "A man should not be joyful among the weeping,
nor weep among the joyful, nor wake among the sleeping, nor sleep
among the waking, nor stand among the sitting, nor sit among
the standing--the principle of the matter is, A man should not
make different his mind from that of his fellows and the sons
of men." The passage from Derekh Eretz Zuta is substantially
the same, with two exceptions: there is a further pair of warnings,
"nor should he read Scripture among those reading Mishnah,
nor Mishnah among those reading Scripture," while the summing
up runs, "A man should not differ from the usage of the
creatures."
These paragraphs are evidence that Hillel's idea was taken
up by others and lived on....