Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "What Did Marcion Believe?" video.

  1. There's a book by Pamela Eisenbaum that deals with this: _Paul Was Not A Christian_. She's a New Testament scholar, employed in a Christian theology school, and a practising orthodox Jew. I think it was actually Peter who had the vision you're thinking of (Acts 10:9-16), and from Acts and the authentic Pauline letters, it looks as though Peter wasn't settled about how far Gentiles had to follow the Law. The guts of Eisenbaum's book, as I take it (and only on one reading) is that none of the first followers of Jesus was rejecting the Law, still less God as seen in the Hebrew bible (they were, after all, Jews, and didn't proclaim themselves as having stopped being Jews); the question was how far Gentiles had to follow Jewish practice to be accepted as followers of Jesus. In the end, it got to be decided that keeping kosher (for instance) was a part of Jewish identity and the specific covenant, but not necessary for following YHWH through Jesus.
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