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Who Lies Sleeping?

Saul (Paul) and the Hellenist Faction 1

Epistles
Acts of the Apostles

Abstract

The main sources of information about Paul are his epistles and the Acts of the Apostles. The epistles naturally are partially autobiographical and show him in the best light, and the Acts of the Apostles is partisan. Paul apparently spent three years as a novice Essene, but failed the novitiate because he lacked Essene humility. But, having evaded Harith’s soldiers, Paul returned to Jerusalem knowing a great deal more about Essene philosophy, and the basis of Jesus’s teaching, than did the apostles, who were not trained Essenes but converted Jews. In 15 days there, he saw only two apostles, James and Peter, implying that the Nazarenes were hard to find and not at all prominent. The church at Antioch had no trouble in supporting the church in Jerusalem, suggesting that membership of the Jerusalem church was small. Paul left and did not return for another 14 years. The true apostles wanted nothing to do with him.

Epistles

No doubt there were several strands, such as Gnosticism, to the ultimate success of Christianity as a world religion but one of them recognized by the Christian churches was the evangelist, Paul.

The main sources of information about Paul are his epistles and the New Testament book, attributed to Luke, the Acts of the Apostles. The epistles naturally are partially autobiographical and liable to show him in the best light, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles, which was written later than the epistles, was partisan—he was a fervent supporter of Paul. In reading these sources, we therefore have to guard against the bias for Paul there naturally is within them.

Paul’s epistles are the earliest extant Christian texts that were written. The earliest known complete copies of the gospels are fourth-century or later, and in some respects vary from the texts from which our bibles were translated. Many errors crept into the manuscripts, and some deliberate falsifications were made. The early “Fathers of the Church” relied more on tradition than upon written books.

The methods by which the approximate date of the writing of an ancient book may be determined may roughly be divided into two classes—examining external evidence, and examining internal evidence. The former is obtained from references to a text in other books, or from traces of its influence upon other authors. The latter is obtained from passages in it to events whose dates are known.

The latest date a book can have been written is before the earliest external date, and the earliest date it can have been written is after the latest internal date. If a book were referred to by Clement of Rome, it must have been written before 95 AD, when Clement of Rome died, and if the book itself mentioned the siege of Jerusalem, it must have been written after 70 AD, when Jerusalem was captured. The book must therefore have been written between 70 and 95 AD, if these dates are not later insertions into an earlier book.

A scholar familiar with the literature of the day can judge, from the vocabulary, the phraseology, and even the grammar used in a book, whether it has been edited, and hints at institutions or theology that did not exist until after the date of an author’s death tell their own tale.

Twenty-one epistles are in the New Testament, fourteen attributed to S Paul. One of these fourteen, Hebrews, is not a Pauline writing, and all the others have at various times been rejected by critics as spurious. Some commentators place all the epistles in the second century, and if that is correct, none of the epistles were written by Paul.

Nowadays, Romans, both Corinthians, and Galatians are considered the genuine work of Paul, and certainly first and probably second Thessalonians are also thought to be his. Opinions are divided on Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. All are doubtful. The rest of “Paul’s” epistles are thought spurious—later works called pseudepigraphs. In those days, pseudepigraphic authorship was not considered forgery. Works were written by Hermes, by Thoth, by Isis. Old Testament books were written by Moses, even one describing his own death. Christian authors too would adopt a well known pseudonym for their writings to attract attention, and affix to them a preface with the name of an apostle. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,” “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,” are doubtful, and even early were criticized as additions, or pseudonyms of the real authors. Even the genuine epistles have been in places interpolated by copyists, but to what degree is uncertain.

If the Pauline epistles were written between the years 50 and 60 AD, as is the traditional theory, they precede any of the gospels, and were addressed to people who had never read the gospel story at all. They are addressed to gentiles or Hellenized Jews in the Roman empire, and not to pious Palestinian Jews, who doubtless already knew the facts of the life of Jesus. Yet, we find in them little or nothing about the life or sayings of Jesus, though the Old Testament is freely quoted. Their authors are ignorant of the acts or sayings of Jesus, save for a few episodes connected with the passion and resurrection. If Paul’s teaching was founded upon the life and sayings of Jesus, how is it that he never quotes his Master? This omission can most simply be explained if he knew no sayings to quote, and his Christianity was not based upon the Jesus of the gospels.

Even when details of Jesus are given, or any words quoted, many scholars suspect them of being interpolations by late editors. Thus, the passage where Paul is made to claim that he had been given by Jesus a description of the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23f), is thought suspect because, on the only occasion upon which Jesus spoke to by him, in the account of his vision of Jesus at his conversion, any such description is not mentioned. The passage is, moreover, a paraphrase of a description in a work admittedly later than Paul’s day, and is introduced into the middle of an exhortation which subsequently continues as if no interruption had occurred.

To support arguments on doctrines and ethical teaching, any author of such letters would naturally quote the words of Jesus himself, if he knew them. It is never done. The earliest Christian writings we have, Paul’s letters, alone would leave us in almost total ignorance of the story told in the gospels. The miracles, the birth narratives, the sayings of Jesus, would have been lost to Christianity though a few and brief references to the death and resurrection of Christ were preserved. The life and character of Jesus would have been lost and only a little about early Christian and ethical ideals would remain.

Jesus commanded his disciples to kill the Paschal Lamb, so, the author of the epistles would have quoted this in discussing whether it was lawful to eat meat, if he had known it. Discussing whether it is right or wrong to drink wine, the author might have quoted the marriage in Cana of Galilee, or the words of Jesus saying that he had come eating and drinking, and was therefore called a winebibber, or Jesus drinking wine at the Last Supper.

Paul declares his doctrine is not that taught by Jesus in the flesh, but that revealed to him by Jesus in a vision after his death.

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Galatians 1:11-12

After saying this, Paul relates the story of his conversion, differing fundamentally from Acts 9:1-9. Paul, writing to the Romans, never refers to the practice or to the preaching of Jesus, but “on his own” recommends his readers to abstain from wine, and the author of 1 Timothy, without any reference to the acts or teaching of Jesus, recommends Timothy to drink a little wine only because of his infirmities. Throughout the epistles this neglect to quote Jesus is marked. If authority is needed, an Old Testament citation is quoted, not any saying of Jesus. There seems little doubt that Paul considers himself the founder of this new philosophy, based on a code of ethics which he considers his own gospel. He preaches a doctrine about a spiritual being known as Christ who had previously inspired the man Jesus, and not a doctrine about a divinely born Jesus who worked miracles.

Paul sought to prove from the scriptures that his death and resurrection were necessary, but nothing more about a historical Jesus. When Paul wishes to convince his hearers that Jesus was Christ, he uses quotations from the prophets, which his hearers, as Jews, should believe “must needs have been fulfilled”, but offers little about Jesus’s life. On the basis of their own scriptures, even if they were not well remembered by Hellenized Jews, Paul’s hearers could confirm Jesus as Christ when he seemed to fulfil them as prophecy.

Indeed, the gospel Jesus seems often explicitly to repudiate those theological claims which Paul advances on behalf of Christ. Paul knows next to nothing of the Jesus whose followers he persecuted so ruthlessly before he himself began to preach a new religion—that he was the long-expected Christ, that he had risen from the dead, had spoken to Paul, and then had disappeared again, since we hear no more about him.

If Paul did know the gospel story before he had persecuted the Nazarenes, it had not convinced him until the day when he had his vision or saw the risen Jesus. The greatest apostle of Jesus was not convinced by the gospel story but only by a direct vision! If he had not heard of it, he declares himself to be a bigot, harming people for reasons he did not know or understand, and a fraud, because it is impossible to teach what you do not understand. Paul was either an opportunist, seeing a chance to gain money from the gullible, or he was a Roman agent, assigned to weaken or sever the links between Hellenized diaspora Jews and the Zealots in Palestine by a divide-and-rule policy. Since Roman officials were often expected to pay themselves out of their assignments, both these alternatives could have been true.

Paul’s letters were written about 30 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, yet already they speak of serious disagreements between himself and the apostles in Jerusalem. As the true successors to the Nazarenes, it was the Ebionites not Paul who transmitted the pure teaching of Jesus, for their founders, Peter and James, had known Jesus in life. Also by 30 years after the crucifixion, the Pauline gentile churches of Italy, Greece and Asia Minor and the Gnostic churches of Libya and Egypt had split from the Nazarene church in Jerusalem. The latter, led by James the Just, remained under the authority of the Sanhedrin and followed Judaic conventions.

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles has many faults. It is a sorry mixture of several sources, compiled selectively and heavily edited. The sequence of events in it is confused. It is not historical. It was written in Greek for a Greek audience offering the Pauline view of the origin of Christianity. The only independent source we have about Paul is an extract from the writings of the Ebionites which gives quite a different picture. No unexpurgated memoirs have survived of the men who actually knew Barabbas. The Christianity which came down to us is Paul’s version—the version of a man who knew nothing about the life or work of Barabbas, had never met him and was not interested in him except as a divine sacrifice.

Acts but not Paul says he was born in Tarsus in Cilicia, Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Paul does not tell us his birthplace in his epistles but he does claim he was an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew and a Pharisee. Paul wanted to be thought of as a full Jew (in Acts, a Hebrew) not a Hellenized one (in Acts, a Greek).

Paul seems desperate to be seen as an orthodox Jew of a respected party, for despite the impression given in the New Testament, the Pharisees were seen throughout the Roman and the Parthian Empires as a serious and respectable religious group. Yet, material relating to Paul seems uniformly anti-Pharisee. Thus, he says he was flogged five times by ”the Jews”, New Testament code for the Pharisees.

Why then did he claim to be a Pharisee? Biblical scholar, Hyam Maccoby, argues (MAC-MPIC) that by so doing he strengthened his argument that Pauline Christianity was the successor to the Jewish religion. Paul, the devout Jew, who persecuted the original followers of Barabbas, the Nazarenes, by the grace of God was converted and then saw in the new religion the successor to Judaism. There must be something in a religion that means more to a devoutly orthodox Jew than his own!

Acts says he left Tarsus to go to Israel to study with the leading Pharisee, Gamaliel. Paul however does not make this claim himself, and it is likely to be false, because the starting place for a student of Gamaliel was a profound knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures and, though Paul is well versed in the scriptures, most scholars cannot see sufficient depth in Paul’s writings for him to have been taught in the best school.

Acts claims that Paul was born a Roman citizen—his father must have been a Roman. Yet Acts also clearly implies that Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin (Acts 26:10 “My vote was cast against them,” suggesting that he had a vote in the Sanhedrin). Both statements could not be true. Acts and Paul’s own letters show that he was willing to distort the truth (“be all things to all men”). A blunt person would say he was a liar—he would say whatever was expedient.

Paul began his career as Saul (Paul’s name before his conversion—probably “Solon” because he was born in a Greek city), a brownshirt beating up Jesus’s followers. Saul’s family had had to flee from Gischala in Galilee, a breeding ground for revolutionaries, during some messianic disturbances—quite probably those involving Barabbas. Thereafter, he disliked messianic movements, whence his persecution of the Nazarenes. Temple thugs, apparently led by Saul were employed by the Sadducees to make havoc of the church, to arrest Nazarenes and to cast them into jail.

Saul was the ”young man” in the Acts of the Apostles who looked after the coats of the persecutors of the Nazarenes who were stoning the martyr, Stephen. But, though Saul was supposed to have been the leader, Luke says he merely watched the coats of Stephen’s killers. The Sanhedrin, normally a tolerant and civilized body in spite of the New Testament picture, seems unlikely to have commissioned such action. They had no power over the temple guard, whose direct authority was the Sadducee priesthood, effectively agents of the Romans who saw the community of Nazarenes as revolutionaries.

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Last uploaded: 24 April, 2008.