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So often we read the New Testament and fail to "think." At least that was what I did because I grew up being told that "everything" in the New Testament was from God. Well that was long ago and since then I and others who want to know the truth from antisemitic Gentile church tradition spend countless hours and years in in-depth study to recover truth long lost in hopes of drawing closer to God through repentance and obedience to His truth and not the religious doctrines which sadly today has replaced it. One area which little truth can be found is in Paul's views of authority as expressed in the New Testament as we shall now see.
Paul declared in Romans 13 that all people must submit to their rulers because "the authorities that exist have been established by God" and to rebel against authority is "to rebel against what God has instituted" (13:1-2 also Titus 3:1).
Rom 13:1-2 1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. (KJV)
We find the same though expressed in Titus 3:
1 Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, (KJV)
This bootlicking posture was reassuring and pleasing to the Romans to be sure. Paul knew that back in Judea there were Jews rebelling all the time against a power they neither believed came from God, nor had a right to be in their country. In fact the Roman Empire was faced with periodic revolts of conquered nations almost throughout its history.
With his proclamation Paul accomplished three objectives:
Paul's doctrine of obedience to rulers had one more peripheral and long-lasting effect. It kept Christians in thrall to oppressive regimes for centuries as their church leaders preached meekness and resignation to those in power who were presumably appointed by God. Alan Davies wrote, "That notion was the curse of German Christianity. It is plainly impossible to regard the Hitlers of the world as divine appointees. Nor is it possible to regard order as intrinsically more meritorious than justice....Order and justice exist in tension, and anarchy is no worse than the cannibalistic order of the totalitarian state. Auschwitz, at least, had clarified that truth" (Alan Davies, Anti-Semitism and the Christian Mind p. 185).
Ever since the time of the Judges, Jews have been regularly in the forefront of rebellion against rulers they considered tyrannical. The prophetic tradition established a precedent of opposition to oppressive rulers.
Paul's view of the sacred rights of government authorities was reflected in the ideas of his disciples about the superior role of men. The authors of Colossians, Ephesians, Titus, and 1 Peter considered the relation of wives to their husbands as comparable to the position of subjects to their rulers [just as a side note there is some question about whether Paul wrote Colossians and 2 Thessalonians. Scholars are sharply divided on this issue]. Just as Paul exhorted everyone to surrender to higher civil powers, the writer of Ephesians, who was imbued with Paul's philosophy, urged women to submit to their husbands' dominance, as follows in 5:23:
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church.
A similar admonition to women is found in Col 3:18.
Col 3:18 18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. (KJV)
1 Cor. 11:7-10 and Titus 2:5 also carry the same message of women's inferiority to men and wives' subjection to husbands. It is in 1 Peter 3:6 that the Hebrew Bible is called on to supply both proof and tradition for women's submissive role. The author of the epistle of I Peter was not Paul but had been influenced by Pauline philosophy. I find this personally ludicrous if you have studied for yourself the severe split between Peter and Paul which the Gentile Church has tried to hide for over 1900 years at present. The author of I Peter claimed that Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him her lord or master (depending on the New Testament translation). The author of I Peter's choice was a poor example of wifely subservience. It would be more fitting to cite Abraham as a model of husbandly submission to the will of his wife. When Sarah could not conceive a child, she told Abraham to take her servant, Hagar, as a concubine. It was her idea and he did her bidding. After Isaac's birth Sarah decided to send the bondswoman and her son away. Although Abraham did not want to do this, he was told by God to "hearken to her voice"--in other words, obey her. This is still the meaning of that Biblical expression in modem Hebrew. In fact, this is the only case in the Tanakh in which a spouse was ordered to obey the partner--and it was the husband who was commanded by God to obey his wife. The Hebrew word, lord, by which Sarah referred to her husband once, did not necessarily convey the meaning of master just as it does not today among Hebrew speakers.
"Adoni," my lord or sir can be, and is, used today when addressing the common person let alone a dignitary. Interestingly, in modern Hebrew, the word for husband is "baal" which has as one of its meanings, master. Obedience to a tyrant or to a husband was not part of the Hebrew Scriptural injunctions. This was yet just another departure in a long line of departures from the Law and Jewish tradition by Paul. Yet we are supposed to believe that he was a "Pharisee of Pharisees."
One more giant step away from Biblical Faith and Biblical Judaism, which Paul took is represented by his attitude toward marriage. Jewish tradition has followed the view expressed in Gen. 2:18, "It is not good that a man should be alone." The rabbis have concluded that marriage is the normal and desirable state for adults and that celibacy is contrary to nature.
In Jewish teaching, marriage is the ideal human state and is considered a basic social institution established by God at the time of creation. In The Bible The purposes of marriage in the Bible are companionship and procreation: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him... Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:18, 24); and "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth..." (Gen. 1:28). The biblical conception of marriage is essentially monogamous (Gen. 2:24), and although in biblical times polygamy was common among the upper classes (Judg. 8:30; II Sam. 5:13; I Kings 11:1–8), the many references to marriage in the Wisdom literature seem to take it for granted that a man had only one wife (Ps. 128; Prov. 12:4; 18:22; 19:14; 31:10–31 Ecclus. 25:1; 26). Marriage is the means to true companionship: "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a great good" (Prov. 18:22; cf. 12:4; 14:1; 19:14; 31:10–31); "live joyfully with thy wife whom thou lovest" (Eccles. 9:9).
In contrast, rabbinic teaching sees celibacy as unnatural. It is not he who marries who sins; the sinner is the unmarried man who "spends all his days in sinful thoughts" (Kid. 29b). Marriage is not only for companionship and procreation; it also fulfills one as a person: "He who has no wife is not a proper man" (Yev. 63a); he lives "without joy, blessing, goodness... Torah, protection... and peace" (Yev. 62b); he may not officiate as high priest on the Day of Atonement (Yoma 1:1), and probably not as sheli'ah zibbur on the High Holy Days (Isserles to Sh. Ar., OH 581:1, based on Yoma 1:1 and Yev. 37b). Sexual desire is not evil or shameful. When regulated and controlled in marriage, it serves beneficial ends: "Were it not for the yezer ha-ra ("evil inclination" here sexual urge), no man would build a house, marry a wife, or beget children" (Gen. R. 9:7). He who, by denying his legitimate instincts, fails to produce children "is as if he shed blood, diminished the Image of God, and made the Shekhinah depart from Israel" (Sh. Ar., EH 1:1, based on Yev. 63b–64a), and he will have to account for his actions in the world to come (Shab. 31a). A practical order of procedure, derived from Deuteronomy (20:5–7) states; "First build a house, then plant a vineyard, and after that marry" (Sot. 44a). As far as a girl is concerned, if her father does not find her a husband while she is young (from the age of 12), she may become unchaste and he will have transgressed the commandment in Leviticus 19:29: "Profane not thy daughter to make her a harlot" (Sanh. 76a). The positive attitude of the rabbis to marriage was maintained in post-talmudic literature and Jewish practice. Asceticism and celibacy continued to be rare.
Not only is Paul's views toward women but the deliberate renunciation of marriage as taught by Paul is all but completely alien to Judaism. Scarcely any references to celibates are to be found in the Bible or in the Talmud, and no medieval rabbi is known to have lived as a celibate (see L. Loew, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 (1890), 112; 3 (1893), 29ff.). The demands of celibacy were included neither among the acts of self-denial imposed upon the Nazirite (Num. 6:1–21), nor among the special restrictions incumbent upon the priesthood (Lev. 21:1–15). Celibacy among Jews was a strictly sectarian practice; Josephus ascribes it to some of the Essenes (Wars 2:120–21).
By contrast, Paul, supposedly a "Pharisee of Pharisees" wrote in 1 Cor. 7:1, "It is good for a man not to many." The Essenes, like Paul, in general rejected worldly pleasures, including marriage, and practiced continence (Jos., Wars, 2:120). Again for the "thinking believer" we have a clue to Paul and his connection with the apostate Essenes and their corrupt theology, but that is a study for another day. God has a different view on the matter than Paul; but that is not news to you if you have studied the "real Paul." Paul wrote this in the context that the end of the age was at hand. The Church, however, continued the idea of the virtues of celibacy by demanding it of its clergymen and women. It took fifteen centuries to alter this arrangement for the Protestant clergy. One only need study the history of the Gentile Roman Catholic church to find the incessant accounts of homosexuality among the monks and the thousands of aborted fetuses and dead babies buried under the churches from monks and nuns who tried but failed to live a life of celibacy. God never intended it to be this way; but as you are seeing man would rather create his own God and His own religion than follow the one given to him by YHWH. One only need look at the newspapers today to see the sickness of man-made religion as the pedophilia of the Roman Catholic Church and their leaders is being exposed for what it really is. Jesus said..."you know them by their fruits." One question: "When was the last time you saw a Rabbi on the front page of your paper who molested children?" It would seem that have a fear of God that we have failed to learn in the Christian Church. Maybe, just maybe, they know something we don't! It is time to listen to Jesus the Jew and other Jews like him shed their "light" upon us...the Gentile Nations of the world and realize what this New Testament really is: a antisemitic Gentile document that carries the names of Jesus' apostles in order to "sell it" to the Gentile world. Yep; we bought it...hook line and sinker.
Paul went on to explain that marriage was preferable to immorality. But this was, in Paul's theology, a concession to weakness, not a command. This is different from Judaism which views sex as satisfying, not sinful; a gift of Nature rather than a sign of imperfection. So you have a choice to make; hopefully you can begin to open your eyes to see the truth behind doctrines that go totally against Biblical revelation and faith regardless of whose name it carries in the New Testament. It is time to study the Jewish Jesus and the faith of this man and the "mind of Christ" to see just what was in it and what he believed along with what his true Jewish followers believed and taught to the Gentile world before Rome and Constantine would destroy it all and give us the replacement religion we have today. Shalom.