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1. The legitimate evidence any so called ' holy book ' is the words of a god given to man, remains a constant zero!
2. A trinitarian) The late Dr. W R Matthews, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, wrote:
"It must be admitted by everyone who has the rudiments of an historical sense that the doctrine of the Trinity, as a doctrine, formed no part of the original message. St Paul knew it not, and would have been unable to understand the meaning of the terms used in the theological formula on which the Church ultimately agreed". (27)
Or more recently:
"In order to understand the doctrine of the Trinity it is necessary to understand that the doctrine is a development, and why it developed. ... It is a waste of time to attempt to read Trinitarian doctrine directly off the pages of the New Testament". (28)
27. "God in Christian Thought and Experience", p.180
28. A & R Hanson: "Reasonable Belief, A survey of the Christian Faith, p.171-173,1980
&
Was Jesus God to Paul and other early Christians? No. Paul must be understood within his Jewish contexts. (p. 160)
In no way is Paul, still a good Jew (although a Christian one), assuming that Jesus was somehow a divine god second only to YHWH. Yes, Jesus was exalted and had the title “Lord” conferred on him by God. But Jesus was a man who, in Jewish context, had become the Messiah. He was still distinct and inferior to YHWH. When John wrote his almost-Gnostic Gospel almost a half-century later, his use of the “Word” as a pre-existent form is used within Jewish context as well—the same context he used for words like glory, spirit, divine wisdom, and others. “When Paul and John spoke about Jesus as though he had some kind of pre-existent life, they were not suggesting that he was a second divine ‘person’ in the later Trinitarian sense. They were indicating that Jesus had transcended temporal and individual modes of existence. Because the ‘power’ and ‘wisdom’ that he represented were activities that derived from God, he had in some way expressed ‘what there was from the beginning.’”35
The Jews were absolute monotheists. So was Paul. The Jewish Messiah is not a divine figure. The Messiah would be an ordinary human being that would do privileged “God-things.” The Son of God was a simple way to express the closeness of the Messiah’s actions to the will and power of God. Only the gods of the pagans had “sons” or offspring. “It should be noted that Paul never called Jesus ‘God.’ He called him the ‘Son of God’ in its Jewish sense. He certainly did not believe that Jesus had been the incarnation of God himself; he had simply possessed God’s ‘powers’ and ‘spirit,’ which manifested God’s activity on earth and were not to be identified with the inaccessible divine essence.”36
Also it needs to be kept in mind, although I mentioned it earlier, Jesus never claimed that his divine powers were his alone or special to him. On many occasions he promised his followers that if they had faith they could exercise these same powers. “By faith, of course, he did not mean adopting the correct theology but cultivating an inner attitude of surrender and openness to God.”37 . . . . (p. 161)
35 Armstrong, History of God, p. 89.
36 Armstrong, History of God, p. 83.
37 Armstrong, History of God, p. 82.
. . . . That’s why Jesus could say repeatedly, “Greater things than I do will you do.” (p. 162) - (Composer adds: John 14:12 KJV)
(Source: How the Bible became the Bible by Donald L. O'Dell - ISBN 0-7414-2993-4 Published by INFINITY Publishing.com)
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