HiSkiguy,

Quote Originally Posted by skiguy View Post
Don't know all that much about "original" OT translations, but Paul's letters are considered by many of the original church to be the "first" NT. (he wrote them long before the Catholic empire started and before churches became, to their detriment, large organizations)
It depends on which of Paul's letters you are considering. Galatians was probably written around 52 or so, and most scholars would agree that at least 3, and maybe 5, of Paul's letters weren't written by him. It's also important to note that Jesus didn't write anything, so everything in the NT was written after his death. The general division is into Gospels, Letters and Other, crossed by which "Church" or lineage wrote them (e.g. Paul's stuff, which also includes the Gospel of John and the three Johanine Letters, the Lukan series, etc.).

As far as the "original" church is concerned, and by that I mean the Church in Jerusalem pre-Jewish Revolt, Paul was an interloper and upstart who had no "right" to preach what he did. Nowadays, many people do consider Paul to be a founder of the Church, but that certainly wasn't the attitude of most Christians in the first couple of centuries.