Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Early Buddhist Texts seem to be those texts that are identified by the academic community of Early Buddhism scholars to likely be a from the earliest strata of Buddhist texts and/or spoke by the Buddha and his immediate disciples.
Early Buddhism seems to be the religion based upon that.
The academic discipline would be the “Early Buddhism” specialists within the field of “Buddhist Studies.”
Does this make sense?
It seems that every Buddhist sect considers all of their texts to have been spoken directly by the Buddha and thus early. However, these claims do not seem evidence-based.
I replied in this thread because this discussion seems more related to “Theravada Buddhism vs. Early Buddhism” than it does to “Theorist vs. Practitioners.”
I think you are implicitly giving both the Abhidhamma and Commentaries too much credit here.
I think that from the evidence available today, it is relatively clear that neither the Abhidhamma nor Commentaries were even in existence during the First Buddhist Council.
I agree with your concise assessment provided here.
Venerable, many of us are afraid that you may have fallen into wrong view (to some degree) on the topic of Abhidhamma and Commentaries being taught directly by the Buddha.
Isn’t there a discourse on persuading others and allowing oneself to be persuaded?
How do you think that we all, including me, should address this disagreement regarding whether the Abhidhamma and Commentaries are spoken by the Buddha, perfect, completely in accordance with Dhamma-Vinaya, etc.?
Perhaps we can try out those approaches to the degree that they are suitable in order to harmoniously arrive at a happy mutual agreement that is based on the Dhamma? What do you think?
How would you re-write those lines in a more objective, impartial, and unbiased way?
How could be written in a way that is neither biased against, nor for the Theravada sect?