Jacob Have I loved and Esau have I hated: Analysis of Torah sources for Paul's epistle to the Romans

THIS is a DRAFT of a WORK IN PROGRESS

Romans 1 - "I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe: to the Jew first, and then to the Greek. The vindication of God (righteousness) is therein revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith'".

The wrath of God revealed from heaven on idolaters for the created things rather than the Creator, turning his truth into a lie, and worshiping men and beasts, and becoming darkened in their thinking and given over to unnatural desires, sexual and moral perversions, and systemic injustice.

Oneness, eternity, and incorporeality of God are self-evident from the created world which he made, so that mankind are without excuse.

These Jewish apologetics were probably the substance of his early preaching in Galatia and every other place he travelled, attracting so many converts to Judaism that his epistle of Galatians in order to stem the overflow, and to prevent recent converts or errant gentile cults from forcibly Judaizing or claiming errantly that conversion is required for salvation. (The Talmud and Mishneh Torah also forbid Judaizing) I suspect that Galatians is a Marcionite redaction of a much longer letter, but if not we must remember that Paul's oral preaching always preceded his epistles, that most of it isn't recorded, and that Romans 1 represents the thematic beginning of his entire ministry, even if the epistle is one of his later works.

Romans 2 Righteous judgement of God, The Jews and the Law. "The name of God because of you is blasphemed among the gentile nations" 2:24. "That you may be justified in your sentence and prevail in your judgments" 3:4

Romans 3-8 will be analyzed in a separate project at a later date, with the practice of tefillin considered as superior to and a possible source of analogy for Paul's hyperbolic description of "self-crucifixion" and "mortification of the flesh".

Romans 9-11 God's election of Israel, his wrath and mercy, Israel and the good news, Salvation for all. The Remnant of Israel and the Salvation of the Gentiles. The Restoration of Israel in the latter days. re-affirmation of Torah Judaism and eternal covenant, relationship of gentile God-fearers as "grafted into the olive tree of Israel", correcting the anti-Jewish teachings of Marcion and the gnostics, for "Christ is the purpose of the law" ( equivocally translated "end of the law" and deliberately misinterpreted by Christian expositors to mean "abrogation of the law"), but "Jacob have I loved, Esau I have hated", and warning gentiles "do not boast against the root, for you do not support the root, but the root supports you". Nicean Christianity has stubbornly rejected these teachings - orthodox, catholic, and protestant - falsely claiming to abrogate the Torah, supercede the Sinai covenant, and replace the Jewish people. It is ipso facto an apostasy from the apostolic doctrine, and not in fact "grafted in".

Romans 12 Paul's ideal Noahide community, "not conformed to the pattern of this world", but "transformed by the renewal of the mind" through voluntarily assimilating the "reasonable service" of a local synagogue, or an inherent Jewish community that serves as its "priests".

Romans 13 The second table of the decalogue, and requirement for courts of law

Romans 14 Prohibition on idolatry: dietary restrictions for Noahides who are christ-followers, which would enable them to have table fellowship with Jews.

Romans 15 "Whatever was written before was for our instruction (Torah), that through patience and encouragement we might have hope" ... "Christ has become a minister to the circumcision (the Jews) for the truth of God, to confirm the the promises of the patriarchs, and to the nations for hasidut/mercy to glory God, even as it has been written, 'Therefore I will confess you among the nations, and your name I will praise' and again he says, 'Rejoice, O nations, with his people'".

Analysis and Conclusion

(Christianity has utterly departed from these apostolic teachings, giving them perverse anti-Jewish interpretations at odds with the plain meaning of the texts, to promote its false, unbiblical, and immoral doctrines of the abrogation of law, the supercession of covenant, and replacement of Jews by the church, and a "trinity" in which "Christ" is idolized and simultaneously disobeyed, and effectively replaces God)

Like Joshua son of Miriam, Paul was actually practicing a form of Hasidic Judaism, and not attempting to start an alternate religion, but rather teaching the Noahide covenant to the "Hasidei meUmot Olam" - the "Pious among the nations of the world". This is why the Pharisees defended him in the Sanhedrin in Acts ___, and why early Christian patriarchs and many evangelicals and greek orthodox today hold that he relapsed into a "Jewish heresy" at the end of his life and in his pastoral epistles - they misread Paul through a Marcionite lens today, just as they did during his own life, in order to justify the alternate religion they have constructed based on a mis-appropriation of his message.