I was in this position as well for a year or two. It was after I left seminary, where I realized seminary exists to create parrots of the faith, and not a place to think critically and question. My wife and I started looking into Torah observation, celebrating God's holidays (Jewish) and stopped celebrating pagan holidays (Christmas and Easter). The more I went in this direction, the more I questioned Paul's books. The more I questioned Paul's books, the more I saw inconsistencies between him and Jesus. The more I saw inconsistencies, the more I questioned his apostleship. The more I questioned his apostleship, the more I questioned those who selected his books as scripture. The more I questioned those who selected his books as scripture, the more I found evidence that Paul didn't even write some of the books attributed to him. The more I found evidence that Paul didn't even write some of the books attributed to him, the more I found evidence that the books attributed to Peter are forgeries. This led to learning that the gospels were likely written by followers of Paul. Out of the entire new testament, the only books that weren't written by followers of Paul were James and Revelation. And revelation even makes a case that Paul and his cohorts were false apostles. After realizing all this, reading Galatians now has an entirely different context for me. The church always taught that Paul is talking about some other group of people teaching a different gospel. But Galatians makes far more sense when the context that Peter (Cephas), John and James are teaching a different gospel than Paul. It's quite clear that Paul got his gospel from visions of Jesus after Jesus died. He even insinuates that God didn't share this gospel with the 12 apostles while he ministered to them for 3 and a half years because they were too stupid to understand it. So God waited until Jesus died so Jesus could show up to Paul in visions so Paul could share it with the world. What Paul taught was never taught by the 12 apostles. The verse in 2 Peter that supposedly validates what Paul taught was again a forgery written by a follower of Paul. It's written by someone who lived and/or was educated in Alexandria. It's very unlikely to be written by someone who lived in Judea like Peter. This knowledge led me to understanding that Paul's "gospel" is actually just a lot of pagan beliefs that had been around for centuries that he attributed to Jesus. Heaven, hell, salvation, afterlife, savior, redeemer, forgiveness of sin.... blah, blah, blah.... all of this can be found in pagan religions prior to Jesus even being born. As well as the holidays and traditions Christians follow. It's all just a bunch of pagan beliefs and traditions with Jesus as the centerpoint. So what's the truth about Jesus. I believe he existed. I believe he had a lot of people who believed he was the messiah (the next anointed king of Israel). I don't believe he had 12 apostles (that's a pagan story), but he did have a large following that included Peter, John and James (his brother). These people believed Jesus would end the gentile occupation (Rome) of their promised land. They believed he would reunite the lost tribes. They believed he would make Israel into a country the rest of the world would admire. This was a political movement. None of them believed he was a savior, who would die for our sins, who would redeem us to everlasting life. They wanted him to be the next king of Israel. And that's why he was killed. This political movement was upsetting Rome and it was upsetting the Jewish establishment. They both wanted him dead, so they worked together to do it. James then became the leader as royalty is passed to family. The movement rallied around James until around 70 AD when Jerusalem fell. Between Jesus death and 70 AD, this Jerusalem "church" (which again was a political movement within Israel) accepted gentiles. These gentiles however, in order to believe Jesus was the next king of Israel, would of course have to become Jewish. If they weren't Jewish, why would they care who the next king is? Problem is, these gentiles who were joining this political movement were upsetting other Jews in the political movement by not following Jewish law. James, finally decided following every Jewish law from the very first day of their conversion is a ridiculous expectation, given there are over 600 laws and they don't know them yet. So he said they can start by honoring a few easy ones, and they will learn to honor the rest by hearing the scriptures read in the synagogue over time. But rest assured, these gentile converts became Jewish, as this was a political movement about the new king of Israel.... which of course began to die off when Jerusalem fell. When Judea was lost a few decades later the movement of James, Peter, John, et al.... completely died off. After all, why have a political movement about a new king of a country that doesn't exist anymore. Which left followers of Paul to own the history of what happened. The truth is James, Peter, John at all, didn't know Paul was teaching a pagan version of Jesus to gentiles. They thought he was out recruiting gentiles to their political movement. When they heard about churches in Asia doing pagan things, they went there to correct it and return them to the Jewish Torah. THEY were the ones Paul was #####ing about in Galatians. They taught them a different gospel than Paul taught them, because Paul taught them the pagan religion that he fooled everyone into believing was given to him by Jesus and visions, and was kept from James, Peter and John, who actually knew Jesus while he was alive, because they were too stupid to understand the gospel. It was the churches in Asia that rejected Paul which Paul even admits (2 Timothy 1:15), the churches in Asia that Revelation was written too, and the church of Ephesus (in Asia) that is commended in Revelation 2:2 for testing and finding those claiming to be apostles false (Paul called many of his cohorts apostles too). Ephesus gave Paul a ton of crap during his missions (likely imprisoning him for quite a while as well). On Paul's last trip to Jerusalem, he couldn't even dock in Ephesus. He had to dock to the south, so that those in Ephesus who still followed him could safely meet with him. And to top it off, when Paul is in Jerusalem trying to convince James that the rumors about him teaching followers to not be Jewish are false, it was Asians that wouldn't let him get away with fooling James. At that point, Paul and the Jerusalem church parted ways. But again, because the Jerusalem church (a political movement) died off due to Jerusalem falling and Judea being lost, followers of Paul have taught Paul's pagan version of what happened unopposed. They wrote the gospels, which is just a ton of pagan beliefs tied to Jesus. They wrote forgeries such as both books of Peter. They even forged some books in Paul's name. Why they included James and Revelation in their chosen books of scripture is a mystery, but both are known to be the last chosen for acceptance and had the most opposition out of all the books that made it. So in the end, does this mean I believe the truth is we should all be Jewish? Not in the least. I believe there was a movement to make Jesus the next king of Israel, but that country died off. It's been gone for almost 2000 years. The new version of it is a joke. It was created by Zionists who are trying to make prophecy come true. Part of me wants to be bitter that I was raised on this bunk, because to be honest letting go of it literally had me going through the five stages of grief. And given my life, my family, my friends, et al, was a world established in, on and around Christianity, it's safe to say my world is much different now. So it would be easy to be bitter, but honestly it's quite fascinating knowing that billions of people throughout history have lived entire lives based on the teachings of Paul, who was clearly a male chauvinist bigot who condoned slavery. I'll give him a pass given those were cultural norms at the time. But humankind has had a serious delay in development due to so many people believing his writings to be the word of god.
' helplessness as they are almost dragged or forced into executing Jesus. That whole aspect bothers me and I really can't get around it. I don't even want to.
