Book of Kells, Chi Rho folio, c. 800 · public domain

Christianity

Tradition·Founded 30 CE·est. ~2.4 billion worldwide

Judaism → Christianity → 11 branches

Branch
Scripture of Christianity

The letters of Paul.

Occasional letters to specific churches with specific problems, written before anyone wrote a gospel. First Thessalonians, around 50 CE, is the oldest Christian document in existence. Seven are undisputed; the rest are argued about, and the arguments matter, because the harshest lines about women are in the disputed ones.

LanguageGreek, dictated to a scribe who occasionally signs off
Composedc. 50–65 CE — earlier than any gospel
What it holdsThirteen letters bearing his name; seven that essentially no scholar disputes
How it is usedRead second at the liturgy, before the gospel; the quarry for nearly every Christian doctrinal fight since
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Paul's letters were written before the gospels, to congregations he knew, about problems those congregations were having, and they were never intended as systematic theology. Reading them as if they were is the source of a great deal of trouble. Scholars distinguish the seven undisputed letters — Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon — from the disputed ones, and the distinction is not academic housekeeping: the sharpest restrictions on women in the New Testament sit in 1 Timothy, one of the most widely disputed, and the line telling women to be silent in 1 Corinthians 14 is regarded by many textual scholars as a later insertion, since it sits in different places in different manuscripts and contradicts what Paul says three chapters earlier about women prophesying. Meanwhile Romans 16 has Paul greeting Phoebe as a deacon and Junia as outstanding among the apostles, and the name Junia was quietly given a male ending in printed Greek editions from the sixteenth century until it was corrected in the twentieth.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The Rigveda. Vedic Religion Open the book →
The Vedas & Upanishads. Hinduism Open the book →
The Pali Canon. Buddhism Open the book →
The Agamas. Jainism Open the book →
Argument, for the sake of heaven, is sacred. Judaism · core tenet Go deeper →
The Quran is the speech of God. Islam · core tenet Go deeper →

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