There's so many monks that believe in a 7-fold path

A bit of a rant:

I've been studying the suttas for nearly 20 years now, and nearly every Theravadin major school/sect believes that sotapanna phala (stream entry fruit) doesn't require jhana, even some self proclaimed early Buddhist schools. There's several suttas that say otherwise, the Buddha laid out the noble eightfold path, not the sevenfold path, yet many monks deny the importance of jhanas, and that they are obligatory not optional. It's quite disheartening.

I can name only four monks that actually follow the noble eightfold path, two of them explicitly secular. Buddhadasa (secular), Punnaji (secular), Thanissaro and Dhammavuddho.