The Dragon Stalks the Butterfly: The Intriguing Crisis within the NT Christian Churches of Judea revealed in the pages of Galatians, James, Jude, and (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781639453177)

Book Synopsis:

This book reveals a serious problem that occurred in the early first century Palestine Christian churches regarding the requirements that were imposed by the Jewish Christians from the district of Judea, north of Jerusalem, on the topic of salvation. These Jewish believers disagreed with Paul the Apostle, and wanted Jewish converts to Christianity to insist on circumcision and the study of the OT in order to 'earn' salvation, keeping them in line with Judaism as it was practiced by the Jews. Paul disagreed with them, and he insisted that believers did not have to do anything to 'earn' salvation, that God intended salvation to be acquired simply by accepting it by faith. Unfortunately, this problem would create a split in the church, and Jewish Christians would hold their own opinion and separate from most Gentile Christians in the future, even of most of Christianity.

Autobiography:

I discovered the highlights of this false Biblical theology developed by Jewish Christians over a fifty-year period while I was working on two graduate degrees from colleges that specializes in the history of the New Testament and the secular history of that period while I acquired a college major in New Testament Greek as well as a major in gemology, art history, and architecture during the first century AD. That work was supplemented by teaching a new class of NT Greek, exploring numerous archeological investigations within the NT period, as well as researching in major museums and major international libraries, and especially in the back rooms of the British Museum in London, England, during the summers of 1983 and 1984 while studying for my scientific book on the gemstone garnet (1986), reviewed by the major gem scholar, John Sinkankas, as excellent, who also wrote one of the books in the series (on the gemstone Beryl).