Eldership

[YP0534]

Originally Posted by Peter Debelak

So, the seeming prescriptions concerning "elders" in the NT are set against:

1) The Jewish tradition (i.e. it would be odd to me that, in a context where prior Jewish traditions were challenging the gospel at many points, a pre-existing practice of the Jewish tradition would be perpetuated by Paul without commentary if it were meant as a prescription)

Many of the traditional teachings I have received uplift Paul as a purely New Covenant teacher whose writings testify of his utter rejection of all things Jewish and whose occasional lapses into undeniable Jewish practice are excused as necessary "expediencies" but not a model for Christian practice.

It may be the case that we are so accustomed to viewing in paticular the Pauline epistles from a fundamentally anti-Jewish perspective that we are nearly unable to recognize that the apostle to the Gentiles was in fact himself a faithful Jew.

And my hypothesis is that, to the extent that Paul himself may have been a common practitioner of prior Jewish traditions, it is entirely possible that many went completely unexamined during his lifetime and were in fact transferred by his efforts into the practices of the Christian assemblies.

Simply because he boldly insisted that some aspects of Jewish practice were not to be superimposed upon the Gentile converts, with his carrying out Jerusalem's intention by means of his distributing the "decrees" of headquarters, he demonstrates that he was not opposed to at least presenting some aspects of Jewish dietary observances as a new set of ordinances to the Gentiles. And he himself circumcised Timothy for fear of the Jews according to this same passage in Acts 16.

I think perhaps he became later far more clear about the need to reject all of that stuff and not just the parts of it inconsistent with Gentile preference. But it seems that we must admit that his discussions and practice about New Testament "offices" originated in synagogue practice. To the extent that his earlier writings reveal a stronger Jewish character which may even be inconsistent with the functioning of the members of the Body, I think it behooves us to examine what the practices of "offices" looked like in later times under his guidance.

And THEN I'd be willing to discuss John's disciple, Ignatius.

Of course, this requires much more of an effort at reconstructing the New Testament chronology than most have generally seemed interested to pursue. That's kind of where I am right now. I intend to finish with Still's book, review again the Pauline epistles in accordance with a timeline placing 1 Timothy early rather than post-mortem, and see what if anything might be yielded through a proper chronological sequencing of the books. Keeping in mind of course that it may not be possible to make a conclusive statement about the sequence. But that fact that I've seen at least a couple of places now that put 1 Timothy early while the vast majority of modern scholarship insists that it must be post-mortem really raises a red flag about the general world teaching about such matters.

I've found that minority voices often have something important to say.

And I've also found that the enemy goes to great lengths to conceal the most important things, which are usually lying right there on the surface all along once the veil is removed...