John2 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:24 am Rev. 2:14 and 2:20:
Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.
John of Patmos
Revelation 2:14
Did John of Patmos cast Paul in the role of Balaam?Balaam the Seducer of Jews and an Early Christian Polemic
Jewish Apocalyptic Believes in the 1st Cent. C.E.
True, he was a first-century Jew who believed that God had just recently sent into the world the messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who was then killed and resurrected, and would return soon to culminate history and transform the world into a new reality. Nevertheless, in terms of his belief that the world was on the brink of a dramatic transformation, John was hardly unique among Jews.
http://thetorah.com/balaam-the-seducer- ... n-polemic/Who Were John’s “Balaam and Jezebel”?
Who constituted these threatening foreign elements? Almost certainly they are Gentiles in the Jesus movement who had been swayed by the teachings of the apostle Paul. A half century earlier, in the 50s, Paul had preached about the risen Jesus in the cities of the Aegean, but his understanding of the implication of the resurrection on Jewish law
differed markedly from John’s.
Whereas John believed that the resurrection of Jesus and his imminent return meant that Jews (and Gentile proselytes) should cling with ever more zeal to Jewish observance, Paul argued that many aspects of Jewish law had become obsolete. Paul weighed in specifically on the issue of meat sacrificed to idols in a letter to the Corinthians, concluding that consumption of such meats is permissible.[19]
Edited to add quote