Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, November 30, 1998

Saul and Barnabas in Antioch

The association in Acts of the admission of gentiles with Barnabas (Acts 11:22) and Saul (Acts 11:25) implies that these two were closely involved with the acceptance of uncircumcized gentiles right from the beginning, and the mysterious people from Cyprus and Cyrene were introduced because Paul was supposed to be an orthodox Nazarene whom the Hellenists wanted to kill. This he could hardly be, if he had started to recruit gentiles uncircumcized.

Saul had gone to Tarsus, which was less than 100 miles from Antioch by sea in the same corner of the Mediterranean. Saul might easily have stopped off at Antioch on his way to Tarsus and realized his true vocation. He enthusiastically told his stories about a new dying and resurrected god like Attis and Adonis with whom the gentiles were familiar and found they were gladly received.

These gods were called “Lord” and it is possible that this is where Jesus’s title “Lord” stems from, for it is hard to believe that Jews, perhaps even Hellenised ones, would give a name of God to a man however distinguished he might have been. Certainly no Essene or Nazarene of the Jerusalem church led by James could have called Jesus “Lord” because they expressly “called no man Lord but God”. By calling Jesus “Lord ”the gentiles were deifying him.

In Galatians 2:1, Paul says he was in Syria and Cilicia 14 years. Now Tarsus is the main town of Cilicia, and Antioch is the main town of coastal Syria. Part of the 14 years must have been in Antioch, and the association of Paul with the first point of growth of gentile Christianity cannot be coincidental. Paul not Jesus was the founder of Christianity.

Agabus, who came from Jerusalem to Antioch, in Acts 11:27, prophesies a famine but it is a spurious prophecy. Luke shows the gentile churches sending relief to the Jerusalem Church in the famine, which must be that of 46-48 AD, giving us a date for the time when the church of Antioch supported the church of Jerusalem. Luke is writing decades later and can easily claim that the famine was prophesied. The Western Text has here the first “we” passage, apparently implying that Luke was present with Paul. Since the Western Text is manifestly “improved”, it is reasonable to judge this a pious addition meant to confirm the prophecy.

Later Paul is shown carrying large sums of money for “the Poor” in Jerusalem, and also turns out to be very rich himself.

The “elders” of Acts 11:30 must mean the leaders of the Nazarene church. Later, the church is led by James the brother of Jesus, even though Luke has given the impression all along that Peter was the leader. Peter was never the leader and Luke has been hyping up his role because James was thoroughly orthodox and consistently opposed the baptizing of gentiles without circumcision. Clergymen like to argue that Peter had given up the leadership to pursue his true calling, evangelizing among the gentiles. But, if this is true, it is amazing that Luke does not tell us, especially since he earlier explained the replacement of Judas though it had no real bearing on the story. The truth is that James was always the successor of Jesus.

Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers.

Acts 13:1

For Christians, from the Acts of the Apostles, the earliest bogus sign of the Holy Ghost was an ability to prophesy, and Christians gullibly accept that in those holy days it was quite natural for Christian converts to be prophets. So, we find at the church of Antioch, there were “prophets and teachers”. The rational person seeks a rational explanation. The Essenes had righteous teachers whom they called “mebaqqers” and considered themselves prophets. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul even lists these as ranks in the church below apostles—prophets above teachers, and it looks assured that the rank of mebaqqer in the Essene hierarchy who guided initiates corresponded with the rank of bishop in the hierarchy of the Christians. Few shepherds tell their gullible sheep these things. They prefer them to think in terms of the supernatural.

Antioch, being easily accessible from Mesopotamia where Essenism apparently started—and continued independent of Palestinian developments until modern times as the Qaraites—will have had an Essene population subject to the Damascus Rule. Some of these will have succoured the fleeing Nazarenes and might have been persuaded into Christianity.

Interestingly, the word “Cyrene”, which appears in the gospels as the surname of that Simon who carried the cross, appears again here. It popularly means someone from Libya in north Africa but could be a Greek rendering of an Aramaic word—perhaps “qara” from which the word “Qaraite” might have derived.

And Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.

Acts 13:2

Revealingly, among the Nazarenes at Antioch appears a Herodian, one Manaen (Menahem?) who was apparently brought up as a royal prince as a companion of Herod, the tetrarch, presumably Antipas. The scriptural king Menahem was, interestingly, an idolator.

Several Septuagint expressions are used by the editor here in Acts 13:1-3 to give a bogus scriptural authority to the ordination of Barnabas and Saul as apostles. From now on, in Acts, Saul is an apostle, but Saul himself (Gal 1:1) does not ascribe his apostleship to this occasion.

Saul and Barnabas leave Antioch via its port, Seleucia, Antioch being somewhat further up the river Orantes. At Salamis (Acts 13:5) the missionaries are preaching to Jews only, implying that, in the original work, Luke had not yet related the conversion of gentiles when he wrote this.

Next is the curious story (Acts 13:6-12) about the conversion of a Roman governor (though not a pro-Consul) which required the miraculous refutation of a wise man (not a sorcerer), Elymas, who was by a remarkable coincidence called Barjesus, son of Jesus, and was for the readers of Acts, a false prophet and a Jew. It seems he was a Nazarene, a follower of Jesus (son of Jesus) in the tradition of the Jerusalem church and therefore an opponent of Paul. Evidently the Roman governor was a godfearer or was, at least, leaning towards Judaism under the influence of Barjesus, his Essene or Nazarene mentor. Elymas is propbably a Greek rendering of a pejorative which in Hebrew means “Tempter of God”.

Paul makes the wise man blind, a miracle in reverse. For Paul, the man was metaphorically blind anyway, in Nazarene terms, being an opponent of the Hellenistic faction of the Nazarene movement, the Christians. The story makes the metaphorical blindness real. Elymas would have required the Roman to undergo circumcision to join the Jewish faith, but Paul will have told him it was not necessary, and therefore easily won him over after, presumably, Elymas had put in all the hard work. The truth, which some travellers would have known, had to be subtly disguised by the Christian bishops without grossly changing the essence of the story.

Paul at Lystra is Mistaken for Mercury

When Paul and his company left Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John (Mark) returned to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13). Luke composes a long speech for Paul which echoes Stephen’s in reviewing Jewish history. In Acts 13:23, Paul says Jesus was of the seed of David, a belief which accompanied the acceptance of the messiahship of Jesus, but which was untrue according to the words of Jesus himself as recorded in Mark. Jesus seemed to believe that messiahship was a responsibility given by God to a man “in the mould of David”, not of his seed. However, the general belief that David would return, or one of his descendants would be the messiah, prevailed.

Both Peter and Paul are keen to show that the messiah could not have been David returning because he was dead and buried and corrupted but Jesus, the seed of David according to them, had arisen because he was incorruptible. Luke seems to be using Mark’s gospel but changing its intent, apparently believing he is correcting it.

The speech is in a synagogue, but gentile godfearers are present because, at Acts 13:16 and Acts 13:26, Paul addresses both groups, “Brethren, children of the stock of Abraham and those among you who fear God”, addressing adults as children as Jesus frequently did because it was used commonly to mean God’s children, Abraham’s children, and so on when referring to the Jews, but “sons” would have been more correct.

Luke makes Paul blame the whole of the population of Jerusalem in Acts 13:27 for condemning Jesus and demanding his death, a plain lie even on the evidence of the gospels. Jesus broke the Roman law and was punished under Roman law.

Note that Luke does not put anything into Paul’s speech about the empty tomb, but only the appearances, as proof of resurrection. The appearance to Paul which is recorded in 1 Cor 15:8 is not mentioned here though, three times in Acts, Luke relates Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, an event which Paul himself seems to know nothing about. It was made up later to boost Paul.

God’s promise (Acts 13:33) was made to “the children” meaning the children of Israel, but Luke realised it omitted gentiles, so altered it to “their” or “our children” making it into nonsense. God made no promise to “our children” and the “children” of the fathers were Jews not gentiles.

Paul’s quotation from Habakkuk (Acts 13:41) is interpreted in the Habakkuk Pesher of Qumran. It means that the Liar and his fellow traitors did not believe the words of the Righteous One, that traitors to the law and the New Covenant defiled God’s Holy name, that traitors to the last days who were violent men and breakers of the covenant did not believe the prophecies of the Righteous One whom God had given the ability to interpret the prophets, thereby showing what would happen to His people. Whether Paul knew of the pesher we cannot be sure but, if his three years in Arabia were spent as an Essene novice, he must have done. If so, he was quoting Habakkuk with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

In Acts 13:42-52, the message is contradictory, as it often is. Many of the people in the synagogues, whether men of Israel or proselytes, follow Paul (Acts 13:43). Yet Paul is suddenly addressing a multitude and “the Jews” are jealous, speaking against Paul and getting them evicted (Acts 13:44). Then the evangelists are so unsuccessful (Acts 13:51) that they “shook off the dust of their feet”. The truth must have been that they were generally unsuccessful recruiting in synagogues and the initial success recorded is merely a puff for the Pauline churches—it is fiction.

In Iconium (Acts 14:1-10), Paul and Barnabas enter another synagogue and persuade many Jews and Greeks to join their new religion. Presumably, the Greeks are again godfearers and synagogues, at that time, had many godfearers attached to them, easy prey to Paul and his followers who told them the laws of Moses had been repealed for gentiles. It is hardly surprising that those presiding at synagogues should be getting annoyed, losing supporters whom they felt might convert and losing them to these travelling preachers who they saw as apostates.

Again they are evicted, apparently because the gentile population was aroused by the Jews. But can anyone believe that the Jews in these gentile cities were so influential that the mass of the Greek citizenry were bothered about what they thought about a pair of Syrian evangelists. A different story comes from the non-canonical books. Gentiles were angered because these preachers were persuading impressionable young people, presumably initially among the godfearers, that they should remain chaste and celibate. Consequently young women were calling off their engagements, and their fiancés and parents were getting incensed.

The story is told in The Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla, the virgin, is captivated by Paul’s sermons on chastity, and indeed the men of the city of Icomium are concerned that many women listen to his message—paraphrased as:

There is for you a resurrection in no other way, unless you remain chaste, and pullute not the flesh, but keep it chaste,

and they fear they will have no wives. It is interesting that the premise is that Paul apparently considered chastity an absolute virtue, though even in this work he seems to make a narrow allowance for marriage. The implication is that it is a poor second, if it is not an insertion. Paul seems to be arguing for chastity as the perfect state as the Essenes apparently believed. The citizens have the entirely sensible view that:

The resurrection of which this man speaks has taken place, because it has already taken place in the children which we have. We rose again when we came to the knowledge of the true God.

Thecla, enamoured of Paul’s teaching, was condemned to be burnt but a miraculous hailstorm saves her. Later, she is also saved from arenas of wild beasts. Released, she dressed as a man to follow Paul and lived in a cave for 72 years effecting cures. Eventually, driven out by jealous physicians, she went seeking Paul to Rome but he was dead. She died too and was buried only two or three stadia from Paul.

Incidentally, in the same work is a description of Paul which is not physically flattering, so possibly true. It describes him as:

A man small in size, bald-headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace, for sometimes he seemed like a man, and sometimes he had the countenance of an angel.

In The Acts of Peter and Paul, he is also described as bald-headed, and another bald man is mistaken for him and killed.

At Lystra, Paul is shown performing a Christ-like miracle, making a lame man walk, as Peter did—harmonisation, now between the two main apostles as well as with Jesus.

In an interesting revelation, Paul is called Mercury and Barnabas Jupiter (Acts 14:12). Acts does not explain why Barnabas should have seemed to the Greeks the more important of the two, though it implies, of course, that he was, and suggests that Acts is not being quite honest in depicting Paul as the senior person. Luke explains that Paul was seen as Mercury because he was the chief speaker, Mercury being Jupiter’s messenger. In Galatians 4:14, Paul admits that the Galatians welcomed him as the “messenger of the gods”.

If this is true, the citizens of Lystra were being sarcastic. Mercury was always depicted as a good looking young man. Paul was never good looking and by now he was certainly over thirty and probably looked older. More important is that Mercury was the god of lies and thieves! The apparent compliment must surely have been the Greek crowd’s jeering reference to what they thought of these travelling preachers, and might even have been a direct reference to Paul’s admitted deceitfulness.

Ignoring these implications, Luke tells us that the crowd want to sacrifice to them as gods, rather like the heroes of Kipling’s tale, The Man Who Would Be King, but, unlike Kipling’s heroes, they refuse to accept deification. Nevertheless, the Jews of Antioch and Lystra arrive, declare Paul a fraud and persuade the citizens of Lystra to stone him almost to death outside the city walls. They had clearly come to their own conclusions without any advice.

These sudden reversals simply do not ring true for anyone except a Christian, and even for Christians not from any assessment of the situation critically but because they accept this Munchausen fantasy as God’s word. That Paul and his companions converted some godfearers seems credible and probable, but in so doing they offended Jews of the law and many Greeks too who thought their message of chastity uncivil. So they repeatedly got thrown out.

At Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint elders in every church. Possibly elders were also called “fathers” and junior members “sons”, usage which continues in the church until today, but which possibly originated as Essene ranks. The heroes then return to Antioch where, some scholars believe Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians, the churches which he had just founded.

Paul Summoned to Jerusalem, and James’s Judgement

Christian commentators have to admit that there are “historical problems” in Acts 15:1-3. Luke confesses that Paul was defying the Jerusalem church in baptizing gentiles who had not been circumcised as Jews. These gentiles must have been uncircumcised since otherwise there could have been no problem, but who were the Judaizers from Jerusalem and what right had they to deny the baptism of uncircumcised gentiles when the conversion of Cornelius without circumcision had already legitimized it? This proves that the conversion of Cornelius was interpolated.

And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.

The question of who the “certain men” from Jerusalem are is not answered but, to have any authority, they must have been Nazarenes and must have spoken for James the Just and the appointed apostles of Jesus. They tell the Christians of Antioch that gentiles could not be saved without baptism and they could not be baptized unless they had been circumcised as Jews.

The forty years of the cosmic battle of Good and Evil had not yet been completed. The Nazarenes were still expecting the coming of the kingdom of God on earth just as Jesus had promised. But only circumcised Jews could be accepted for repentance and baptism. Righteous gentiles could only later be called.

It is impossible to believe that anyone other than illegally baptized gentiles would have contradicted the officers of the Jerusalem church, but, whoever they were, they were led by Paul and Barnabas and the dissension between them and the visitors was severe. The Greek of Acts 15:2 implies strife and disunity. It is also impossible to believe that Paul and his converts would have bothered what the Jerusalem church dictated if they had been the majority in Antioch.

They determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

Paul could hardly have expected a good reception in Jerusalem and he must only have gone there because he had no option. Effectively, he was taken back to Jerusalem as a prisoner. In Acts 15:2, it was not merely “determined” or “appointed” that they should return but “ordered”. In Acts 15:3, they were “brought by the church” to Jerusalem, suggesting the journey was not voluntary. The Western Text supports the impression that the evangelists were ordered to go. Honest translators would use the correct translation of the Greek—they were “escorted” as if by a guard. The supposed joy brought to the Phœnicians was a puff to disguise the truth.

Christians suppose that James became the head of the church in Jerusalem because the appointed apostles had been obliged to flee when James of Zebedee had been killed in the reign of Agrippa. However, here they are all gathered together in Jerusalem only a few years later with no hint of persecution. James was probably always the successor to Jesus.

At Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas explain themselves but who should oppose them but “Pharisees who believed”. Does Luke mean converted Pharisees or is he using Pharisees as a pejorative term?—hypocrites!

If they actually were converted Pharisees, were they members of the Jerusalem church as well as Pharisees? It seems likely that the meaning is that these were not literally Pharisees but simply those who still upheld the law in the Jerusalem church—people like James the Just—and that the term “Pharisee” is used here as a term of abuse.

Whatever they were, Peter stands up and defends Paul, according to Luke, speaking in mock-biblical language. Then James stands to make his speech of judgement, speaking in Aramaic as one might expect but hinted at by Luke giving Peter his Aramaic name Cephas. James’s biblical quotations are not from the Hebrew bible but seemingly from the Septuagint or possibly versions like some of those at Qumran which were used as sources for the Septuagint.

The judgement of James is bizarre because it seems to have nothing particularly to do with the complaint—it says nothing about circumcision. Indeed, it is made to seem as though James concedes the point, provided that a few lesser requirements of the Mosaic law dealing with food taboos and table fellowship between Jews and gentile converts are honoured by the gentiles.

In view of the fact that Paul is again castigated by the church and made to undergo a ritual cleansing later in the story, it is impossible not to conclude that Luke or an editor has disguised the truth here. James did not merely uphold the law in respect of some food taboos but he upheld it fully, every jot and tittle, including the need for circumcision as a sign of acceptance into the Jewish religion. The Jerusalem church was adamantly Jewish still.

The letter of judgement from the apostles and the elder brethren—again implying that elders, which might equate with fathers, was an Essene rank (at Acts 20:17,28 they are also overseers or bishops, proving that it is a translation of the Essene word “mebaqqer”)—refers to men who had “subverted their souls” with no “commandment” to do so from Jerusalem. For some curious reason, Christians can only see these words as referring to the Judaizers of Acts 15:1 when those men were messengers from the Jerusalem church. In logic, the “subverters of souls” could only have been Paul and Barnabas, the ones who had just been hauled before the Jerusalem officials, yet the letter is made to praise them and to confirm the instruction of Paul except for a few taboos.

Reliable men, Judas and Silas, described (Acts 15:32) as prophets, an Essene description of themselves, are appointed to accompany Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch with the judgement, the implication being that it would not otherwise be honestly delivered by the two heroes, yet if Paul’s instruction had all but been confirmed, why were these reliable men needed to ensure that the judgement was delivered? This is tortuous and impossible to understand because editors have tried to reverse the decision of James.

Note that one of the companions, Judas, is surnamed Barsabbas, a possible disguise for Barabbas, suggesting that Barabbas was an Essene title. If so Judas Barsabbas might have been a successor to Jesus in the Essene movement—a Nasi, perhaps James’s designated successor.

On their return, Luke tells us the brethren of Antioch rejoice to hear the judgement of Judas and Silas and then send the two back to Jerusalem while Paul and Barnabas continue their work. Paul and Barnabas then fall out—extremely bitterly in the Greek—over John Mark, the supposed author of Mark’s gospel who Paul rejects for reasons we are not told but must, in the circumstances, be because John Mark wanted to uphold the decision of the church whereas Paul intended to disregard it.

So Paul goes off to Cilicia with Silas, a curiosity because Silas was introduced as one of the envoys of the Jerusalem church who had apparently returned. In fact, Silas is not a Jewish name, it is short for Silvanus and so he is called by Paul in his letters. There is no doubt therefore that Silas was not an envoy of the Jerusalem church. Why should two envoys have been necessary? If Silas returned from Jerusalem with the party, it seems likely that he had travelled there with them. Otherwise he has been falsely named by Luke or an editor as the equal of Judas Barsabbas to legitimize his work by making it seem as though Paul did much of his work accompanied by an envoy of the Jerusalem church.

In his epistles, Paul never alludes to James’s favourable decision although he raises the question of circumcision in Galatians in relation to Titus and apparently got agreement from Peter, James and John. Later, however, James seems to change his mind and consequently Peter and Barnabas do too. This is confirmation that Paul and Barnabas fell out over this issue, though in Acts it is told only in relation to John Mark whereas in Galatians the truth is more transparent. All of these problems seem to stem from the desire of Luke to reverse the decision of James, and to make Paul seem acceptable to the Jerusalem church.

Why then does Luke mention the quarrel between Barnabas and Paul? He could have omitted it and left the two parting company for apparently practical reasons. The answer, as it often is, is that the quarrel must have been well known or even legendary among the early gentile Christians and could not therefore be ignored. Luke had to explain it away as nothing to do with the law of Moses. Having sent back the envoys, Paul wants to ignore the ruling but Mark and Barnabas vehemently oppose him. Paul needs a new companion and chooses Silas who Luke then pretends was one of the envoys.

Acts and Galatians are incompatible regarding Paul’s visits to Jerusalem. There are three in Acts up to this time but only two in Galatians because the famine visit (Acts 11:30) is omitted. We can discount the original visit to Jerusalem shortly after his conversion. So the visit in Galatians with Barnabas and Titus when circumcision arose must have been this one described in Acts 15. In Galatians, as in Acts, Peter, James and John accept Paul’s gentile mission. Peter’s speech in Acts 15 must have been unacceptable to James, disparaging the law as a yoke and it assumes that the story of Cornelius was well known and had been God’s permission to baptize gentiles.

In James’s speech, we get a quotation from Amos 9:11-12 which proves to be highly significant in this context and in linking the Jerusalem church with the Essenes. Christians see in the reference to the “tabernacle of David ”being built again (Acts 15:16) either a metaphor for the building of the Christian, universal kingdom of God or the resurrection of the body of Christ. In fact, the Damascus Document explains it precisely and the Essene interpretations fits perfectly here. Toward the end of column 7 of the Damascus Document is the self-same quotation from Amos 9:11:

The books of the law are the tabernacle of the king. As God said: I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen.

Curiously this seems to match the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the scriptures, rather than the Hebrew version, but we now realize that scriptural texts were not as standardized in Second Temple times as they became under the Masoretes. The Septuagint, which used to be considered a sloppy work, is now appreciated as containing translations of alternative texts, some of which have turned up in the caves of Qumran.

So for James to quote “I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen”, is to assert that the law must be upheld. James is stating unequivocally that it is wrong to admit gentiles into the church contrary to the law. They had to accept the law fully to seek God’s kingdom, not the exact opposite. It is beyond a coincidence that this pesher reading in the scrolls is so apt.

There is no mistaking it and, indeed, in the original is a reference to “remnant of Edom” which is interpreted here in typical Essene fashion as “remnant of men”, in which Edom is read as Adam, an obvious allusion to the Elect who regarded themselves as God’s remnant. The scriptural reading echoes the eschatological belief of the Essenes that the Jews would dispossess Edom, meaning the gentiles. Acts 15:21 confirms James’s interpretation:

For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.

James points out that there were Jews everywhere who obeyed the law and who could hardly have taken kindly to the church simply cancelling it. Christians like to read Acts 15:19:

Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God,

as meaning that gentiles would not be troubled with the need for circumcision when it plainly means that they should not be troubled with any doubt of its necessity. Those who had turned to God would not be troubled by circumcision as a requirement. Those who had been baptized by Paul illegally could not turn to God until they had accepted the requirements of God’s own law.

The Christian interpretation that James was simply holding up token laws of table fellowship is confounded by one of the laws he upheld being that of abstention from fornication, a strange requirement for table fellowship.

But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

Curiously some scholars say that the Christian love feasts did indeed degenerate into orgies and that was one of the reasons the Greeks and Romans tried to suppress them. If this had happened at such an early date in the history of Christianity, it is impossible to believe that James would have been so liberal as simply to offer a few rules about it. He would have wanted to disassociate the church from such behaviour.

In 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, Paul confesses that some Christians had not been properly instructed, believing that abrogation of the law meant abrogation of any civil law including the laws of the empire. This must have been true or Paul would not have reported it. It was another reason why the Roman authorities distrusted Christians. Since it is far from impossible that Paul was an agent provocateur for the Romans, these are telling facts.

Paul circumcises Timothy (Acts 16:3), surely more proof of James’s real decision and proof too that that Paul dared not do otherwise, either because he felt under scrutiny or because Timothy’s mother was a Nazarene (though his father was a Greek). In Acts 16:4, the decrees of James were delivered so it would have been sufficient for Paul, who must have had copies, merely to produce them to show that circumcision was not necessary, if Luke has told the truth. Again, the only conclusion is that the decrees said the opposite of Luke’s pretence—the decrees of James said that the law had to be obeyed fully. Circumcision was therefore still necessary. Paul is shown as acting in full harmony with the Jerusalem church even though Luke has just spent some time showing that the law and therefore circumcision is not obligatory for gentiles.

The explanation given by Luke is that everyone knew that Timothy’s father was a Greek, whereas the sensible argument was that his mother was a Jew and wanted him treated accordingly. But that too offers problems because Timothy was not a baby. Why then had he not already been circumcised? Possibly the mother was a proselyte and the father a godfearer, but then it is hard to understand why Paul did not spare Timothy from the danger and discomfort of an adult circumcision when he had James’s authority to do so in his scrip. The meaning of the explanation that Timothy’s father was a Greek must be that Paul was indeed under scrutiny, Timothy was the first son of a gentile requiring circumcision and everyone was watching carefully to see that he did it and did not try to exempt Timothy because his father was a gentile.

Again the question arises, “Why mention it?” And again the answer is that it was well known that Timothy had been circumcised because it had effectively been a test case, but Luke tries to make out that Paul had been liberal about it for incoherent reasons. Some Christians claim that Paul’s circumcision of Timothy proves his innocence of the charges later placed before him of flouting the law of Moses, but Paul’s flouting was obviously commonplace and one apparent acceptance of the law can hardly prove his previous innocence or his innocence in general.

Acts 16:14-15 is an illustration of the success had by the first evangelists in converting godfearers. Lydia was a woman who “worshipped god”, implying that she was not a Jew but a godfearer. Her name is either a mistake or it was her nickname because Luke explains that she came from the town of Thyatira which was in the province of Lydia. Women, who had no frightful operation of circumcision to undergo, were much more ready to associate with the Jewish religion than men and they provided ripe fruit for the Christian evangelists. Note that Paul uses the Nazarene method of baptism here, continuing the custom of John the Baptist and, we infer, Jesus. There is no laying on of hands.

The girl with the spirit of divination was the equivalent of the modern day fortune teller or astrologer. She was evidently being used by her masters (Acts 16:16,19) to tell the fortunes of the crowds gathering around the missionaries. In the second century AD, the Delphic Oracle enjoyed a revival, though it had never entirely gone out of fashion just like astrology today, and there were possibly the beginnings of a new fad for divination at this time. The word for “spirit of divination” in Greek is “python”, a reference to the dragon killed by Apollo when he took the oracle from Mother Earth. It seems the evangelists saw her off probably with chastisement, thus annoying her masters and inviting their retribution. Note that the girl is made to speak of the “way of salvation”.

There follows a fantasy meant to parallel the incident concerning Peter in Acts 12 concerning a miraculous escape from prison, with a hint of the messianic meal which became the Eucharist;

And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.

Acts 16:34

Note that, in 1 Thessalonians 2:2, there is no mention of this absurdly contrived miracle. Then we get back to the fact of the narrative. The evangelists had simply been held in the jail overnight, possibly as a punishment but equally possibly to protect them from the mob which dragged them to the magistrates in Acts 16:19,22.

According to the previous fiction, the heroes are already free but the sense here is that they are still jailed. Paul is indignant that they have been publicly flogged though they are Roman citizens, proving that the flogging could not have been official, if indeed there had been one. They must have been beaten by the mob. The truth is clear enough. They were saved from the mob by the magistrates, and told to clear off the next day. Incidentally, this proves that Silas was not the emissary from Jerusalem. Here he is a Roman citizen, and we can be sure the Jerusalem church would not have tolerated that.

Paul was eager to use his status as a Roman citizen elsewhere in Acts so why did he not declare it here? Christians fatuously say it was so that he could allow God to save him with a miracle, convert the jailer and humiliate the magistrates, conveniently ignoring Jesus’s dictum, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God”. Plainly it is utter nonsense and the reason why the magistrates locked them up to preserve them from the mob then sent them on their way was because Paul and Silas had in truth played the citizenship card.

Paul in Thessalonica, Corinth and Ephesus

The troubles of Acts 17:1-9 in Thessalonica are caused by jealous Jews, but by the angry locals in 1 Thessalonians 2:14. In Acts 17:6, the expression “these that have turned the world upside down”, is typically New Testament Greek—rendered in translation so as to mitigate its real meaning. The noun from which we get the verb translated “turned upside down” is translated in other, less contentious contexts, as “a rising up”, a “revolt” or a “sedition” (Acts 21:38). It is even used of the resurrection of Jesus, making us suspect that “resurrection” might have been Nazarene code for “insurrection”. The verb itself is known only in the bible, yet despite the obvious derivation from the corresponding noun it is watered down to “stir up”, “disturb” or “unsettle”.

It is evident here that the citizens had heard of the Nazarene revolt and are saying “the revolutionaries from Palestine have come here”. Our deduction is confirmed in the next verse where they say “these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus”. The Thessalonians had obviously heard of the Nazarene revolt and the claims of Jesus, king of the Jews. Jason, of whom we know nothing, is blamed for harbouring the preachers. Jason, like Jesus, is a Greek equivalent to, or form of, the name Joshua, and it quite possibly denoted him as a leading local Essene.

In Acts 17:10-15, a great deal seems to have been abridged. The success at Beroea is, as usual, followed by anger and Paul has to leave. The brethren escort him, not to the Aegean only a few miles away, but to the Adriatic because a long journey is implied. Paul also claims later to have been to Illyricum (Rom 15:19) and this is the only time we know of when he might have gone there. From there he sails south to Athens where he recalls the companions he left behind. It looks for all the world like an escape, taking the longer route across the peninsula to fool the pursuers and to get as far away as possible.

Luke gives Paul a speech in Athens, a historic but not a great commercial city at that time. Paul himself refers to it in 1 Corinthians 1:17, 2:1, expressing regret that he had made a speech in the Greek style. So Luke’s speech is composed in the Greek style with classical poetical allusions and no mention of Jesus except at the very end, but otherwise of basic Essenic content.

Paul arrives in Corinth and meets a proselyte called Aquila, a “Jew, a man of Pontus by race”, who had just arrived from Italy, exiled by Claudius after the messianic unrest over a man called “Chrestus”. The trouble might have arisen among Jews because the Nazarenes were claiming that Jesus was the messiah. Orthodox Jews, like Joseph Caiaphas of the gospels, thought it invited retribution from the Romans to talk of Jewish kings. Consequently, the retribution came and Jews were expelled from Rome after the Bar Kosiba uprising. But here we are in 50 AD. Aquila and Priscilla are Roman not Jewish names adding to the view that they were Jewish proselytes. It seems they were already converts to the Nazarene cause.

Paul has his customary initial success in the synagogue followed by rejection and in a fit of pique he resolves never to preach again to Jews. Paul is sheltered in the house of a man called Titus Justus. Justus is often an Essene title because they considered themselves the Righteous Ones, but Titus is a Roman name and he seems to be a godfearer being described as a “man who worshipped God”. Some manuscripts, however, omit the name and some call him Titius not Titus. If this Titus is the same as the one who wrote the epistle, possibly the surname which he earned through righteousness was being applied unchronologically here.

Despite Paul’s outburst, the president of the synagogue is converted and Paul remains in Corinth for 18 months. The long period of stable teaching is justified in Acts by a spurious vision of “the Lord”, presumably Jesus rather than God whose title “the Lord” had always until then been.

In Acts 18:12, Gallio is mentioned, apparently as a new Proconsul, dating the event quite precisely to 52 AD. The purpose of Acts 18:12-17 is to paint the Jews as the natural opponents of the Christians, and to make the Romans the Christians’ allies. The New Testament books consistently show the Christians and the Roman authorities as united against the machinations of the Jews. So Gallio is not concerned by Jewish complaints against the Christians.

Having been vindicated by Gallio because they had no case to answer, “they all” got hold of the president of the synagogue, who had presumably brought the complaint to Gallio, and beat him up. Who are “they all?” Not the Romans. The pagan Greek mob? Why should they bother about a Jewish quibble? The only admissible sense is that “they all” are the Christians and some manuscripts make it plainer that Greek Christian converts are meant. And Gallio did not even bother about that.

Acts 18:18 to 18:23 are so condensed they are little more than notes and hint that the author of Acts never properly finished the work himself. Without specifically mentioning Jerusalem (though some manuscripts do) they imply that Paul goes to the church in Jerusalem. Nothing of the visit is related and yet Paul is depicted as a Nazarite, having a vow. However, it could have been Aquila who had the vow.

The mention of Apollos is instructive. He was a Jew though his name is Greek and the explanation is that he was from Alexandria, the Greek metropolis in Egypt, which had a large Jewish population throughout this time. Apollos is described as being “mighty in the scriptures”, “learned” and instructed in the “way of the Lord”. This leads the reader to believe he was already a Christian but he was not. He spoke of the things concerning Jesus knowing only the baptism of John.

What does this mean? How did the baptism of Jesus differ from the baptism of John? Since it evidently did, how could such a learned man know about Jesus, but know only the baptism of John? The only explanation is that the man did not know the Jesus of the gospels but only what was expected of the messiah who was expected according to John. Apollos was a Nazarene, but did not know that for some people the messiah had come in the person of the Jesus of the gospels. It seems Apollos was being a cosmopolitan John the Baptist, still explaining that the messiah was due soon. Christians have continued to believe this for 2000 years but for them it is a second coming, not the original one as John the Baptist preached and evidently so too did Apollos. Apollos derives from the Greek name Apollo, the sun god, perhaps an apt name for an Essene or Essene convert since they greeted the rising sun with hymns and prayers.

Priscilla and Aquila instruct Apollos correctly. The purpose of the story is that there were many people influenced by John the Baptist still. Not all Nazarenes had rushed to believe the failed revolutionary, Jesus, was the messiah. Some rejected the claims of Jesus’s followers preferring to believe, even after the death of John, that the messiah was still to come. Luke hopes with this story to persuade them that they should be accepting the baptism of Jesus.

There is, though, another reason for Luke’s adding this passage—to boost his hero, Paul. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that as the Corinthian church grew, some members believed that Apollos was its founder. Luke relates this story to prove that Apollos was not even a proper Christian when he first met Paul after the church in Corinth had been founded. Since Apollos was introduced to Christianity by Priscilla and there is at least a suggestion that she had been converted by Paul, Apollos becomes a third generation Christian after Paul. Either the incident was included because the dispute in Corinth still raged or because the belief that Apollos had founded the Corinthian church had already become legendary and had to be squashed.

One might be inclined to believe now that churches existed in Greece and Asia based on the teachings of the Essenes, in short “the baptism of John”. They were Nazarene churches but not Christian ones. Luke, in Acts, is effectively laying claim for them for his hero. This is the implication of Acts 19:1-7.

Apollos might well have founded the church of Corinth—as a Nazarene church baptizing for repentance in expectation of the coming kingdom. The quarrel within the Corinthian church arose because Paul re-baptized them as Christians placing the emphasis, not on repentance in expectation of the messiah but on faith in Jesus, the messiah who had already come. Luke is trying to refute the allegation that must have been circulating that Paul had claimed an already formed Nazarene church by rebaptizing the members. Why otherwise should he need to explain that Paul had rebaptized only 12 men, or rather “disciples”, a word Luke always uses for Nazarenes—followers of John? He says “only 12” proving he is being apologetic. He says at Ephesus, not at Corinth, and he says after Apollos had gone to Corinth himself.

All of it is meant to defend Paul against charges which we no longer specifically know. The insinuation is that he sought out Nazarene churches which had almost everything in common with the Christians, and had easy pickings persuading them that they should simply be baptized anew into belief in the risen messiah rather than the one who had not yet come. Christian myth required Paul to struggle endlessly for his conversions, suffering oppression by the Jews, just like Jesus, but persevering until he won out. In fact, he was often poaching the recruits of the Nazarene followers of John or some other Essene and plainly would have made himself unpopular with their leaders.

Acts 19:4 makes it clear that by this stage Paul had made the baptism of repentance of John the Baptist, the Nazarenes and the Essenes into a baptism of faith in Jesus. In Acts 20:21, we get both formulae for baptism, repentance and faith, but repentance was to God and the faith was in Jesus. Here we find an emphasis on the new Christian practice to supplement baptism—the laying on of hands (Acts 19:6), the beginning of the ordination of priests and the apostolic succession. Paul however was not present at Pentecost and so the Holy Ghost must have allocated him his dispensation of Holy Spirit separately.

Luke might even be apologising for a more serious misdemeanour by Paul. Paul is arguing, in 1 Corinthians 1:13-16, against those who were asking, “Were you baptized in the name of Paul?”. Here is an allegation that Paul was baptizing in his own name, or to accept Luke’s explanation (Acts 19:13-16), in the names of Jesus and Paul. Luke’s excuse is that the story arose from others who had exorcised demons in the name of Jesus and Paul.

Now the story of the “vagabond” Jews who were exorcists is an obvious reference to other Essenes and possibly other Christians but, just as the genuine Christians of Jerusalem were unpopular to Paul, they were of a different and disliked faction. The exorcists were Saeva, a chief priest, and his seven sons. Now he was obviously not a priest of the Jerusalem temple. Was he then an Essene priest—a Zadokite? His name, though slightly distorted is, in Hebrew, Seven and he had the seven sons, though six of them disappear in Acts 19:16. Seven was (from Persian religion) the sacred number of perfection of the Essenes, so there is some suggestion that they were indeed Essenes. These men were probably rivals to Paul.

Note that in Mark, Jesus himself did not object to a stranger exorcising in his name, but here demons take no notice and ravage the presumptuous exorcists. If the name “Jesus”, a Greek name, was recognised by a Palestinian demon, why was it not recognised by a Greek one?

The whole episode shows that the Ephesians were gullible. They were impressed by charlatans and magicians. This characteristic explains the success enjoyed by Paul in his 2-3 years spent in Ephesus.

However Ephesus was the holy city of the great goddess Diana, and craftsmen whose living was to make silver images of the goddess feared that the new fad might lose them their living. Luke depicts Paul wanting to debate with the angry crowd but being restrained by disciples and friends, some of them the “chief officers of Asia!” It is common in the stories of Paul that he turns out to have friends in high places, despite all the scourgings and stonings he is said to have endured.

This riot is quelled by a diplomatic town clerk. It occurred in the theatre, a large building, where official meetings were held. The meeting will have been called to discuss the matter officially and became heated.

In Acts 20, Paul is not concerned to get to Jerusalem for the Passover but for Pentecost. In fact, it was Pentecost and not the Passover that seems to have been the main feast of the Essenes. It was the feast of the Renewal of the Covenant. The Elders of the church of Ephesus are called (Acts 20:17), in Paul’s parting speech, bishops (Acts 20:28), in Greek “episcopoi”, which translates the Essene senior rank of mebaqqer or overseer. These men were not senior priests as bishops became but overseers or administrators. In the scrolls, mebaqqers were the honourable leaders and teachers of the village Essenes, though “The Mebaqqer” was the practical leader of the order.

Before the Jerusalem Church

The fellowship of which Paul and co were members was much bigger than the author of Acts is letting on. In Acts 21, we find that there are disciples at Ptolemais and at Tyre but there has been no mention of the founding of churches there because these congregations of Nazarenes already existed. They were Essenes.

Paul relates his successes in proselytising (Acts 21:19) but the Jerusalem church is not fooled. He might have collected money for the movement, but money was not their main interest—they were the Poor Ones—and they knew he had been admitting gentiles without their being obliged to accept the law. The whole of this part of Acts would be senseless if the Jerusalem church had really allowed Paul to accept uncircumcised converts.

Acts seeks to present the Jerusalem church led by James the Just as deceitful, telling Paul one thing when they meant another. But by his own admission this was Paul’s own characteristic. The leaders of the Jerusalem church want Paul to prove his good faith and that the accusations of his detractors are false. The charge was that Paul taught against the law:

Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law, and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.

Acts 21:21

This is the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the law, and this place.

Acts 21:27

Christians tell us that the Jerusalem church told Paul it was all right to convert gentiles without them having to accept every jot of the law. They must have told everyone else the law was an absolute requirement. When one man pleads that everyone is wrong except him one begins to suspect insanity or duplicity. Paul was not insane. The only credible inference is that Paul had flouted the instructions of the church leadership. They must have known that by asking Paul to undergo a solemn purification he would be hoist on his own petard—and so he was.

In Acts 20:21, thousands of Nazarenes (“Jews that believed”) were “zealous for the law”. In Josephus, Jews who were zealous for the law were freedom fighters against the Romans in the Jewish War. They were the Zealots.

The crowd recognize Paul, and are outraged that he should have been so openly hypocritical and in the temple too. He is saved by Roman soldiers and taken into the Antonia Tower. As he is being escorted into the fortress, he surprises the Roman captain by speaking to him in Greek. Here we get an incident so bizarre that critics consider it must be true. The Roman immediately thinks Paul is a Jewish rebel called the “Egyptian!” Josephus mentions the Egyptian and this is thought by some to show that Luke or his editor had read Josephus, but it could be an independent reference.

Why should an Egyptian speak Greek, you might ask, but the great cities of Egypt at that time were all Greek speaking cities, having been set up by Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies. The spread of English around the world under British colonialism was a similar phenomenon. The rebellion of “the Egyptian” must have been quite similar to that of Jesus himself. He led 4000 guerillas from the wilderness in an attack on Jerusalem. The Greek translated in Acts as “assassins” really means “knifemen” but might also be derived from a Semitic word meaning “deliverer” or “saviour”.

Curious that the number was 4000, the number at Jesus’s mass feedings and the number of Essenes according to the classical writers.

Like Jesus, the Egyptian led his followers to the Mount of Olives, expecting God to break down the walls of Jerusalem just as he had for Joshua at Jericho. It is hard to believe that this almost unknown man did not have the same idea as Jesus—that God would bring in his kingdom when Jerusalem had been recaptured. Is it a coincidence that Egypt might have been a name for the Essene headquarters at Qumran, so that the Essenes could justifiably have been called Egyptians?

No Christian seems to wonder why the Jews would be led by an Egyptian. In fact, they would only be led by a Jew. They hated being ruled by the Romans and even hated Herod the Great, an Idumaean proselyte, who actually benefited the people by putting a depressed country back to work with his large projects. The Egyptian must have been a Jew and Paul’s reply in Acts 21:39 is not, “I am not an Egyptian but a Jew”, but, “I am not a Jew from Egypt but a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia”. Since, according to Matthew, Jesus came from Egypt where his family had taken refuge from Herod the Great, he too could have been called an Egyptian!

It is far from impossible that the Egyptian actually was Jesus! Luke has introduced this reference to him out of historical sequence to obfuscate the true nature of Jesus and his Nazarenes. Paul might in reality have been accused by the Roman of being a follower of the Egyptian, meaning Jesus, and Paul sought to deny it by saying he came from Tarsus, no mean city, implying that in comparison he thought the Egyptian cities were mean, and he would not be likely to be following any Egyptian.

Luke wants to disguise all this to pretend Jesus was never an anti-Roman rebel and that anyone who thought he was must have mistaken him for this other man. Even Paul was mistaken for him. The deception is phony because, though the main cities of Egypt were Greek speaking, so was most of the eastern Mediterranean and, not only should the captain have not been surprised to hear Greek, but there is no reason why he should have therefore thought the speaker was an African. Indeed, in the Greek the artifiality is even greater because the Roman captain is not merely surprised but incredulous. He is made to say to Paul something more like, “You mean to tell me you aren’t the Egyptian”! Luke is hamming up the part.

But, if Jesus was the Egyptian, what of the references to the Egyptian in Josephus? They might have been deliberately misplaced by Christian editors when they got control of the publication of books in the fourth century to disassociate Jesus from the rebellion.

In Josephus’s book, the Jewish War, the Egyptian has 30,000 men and a major battle is needed to overthrow him. In his other book, Antiquities of the Jews, the Jerusalem garrison launch forth in a sudden sally killing 400 rebels and capturing 200. These curiously incompatible accounts could both be true if our thesis is true that this is the rebellion of Jesus described in The Hidden Jesus. Jesus fought two battles within a few days. One he won and one he lost. The first battle was won by Jesus and the Nazarenes supported by large numbers of pilgrims whence the 30,000 men, the second was won by the Romans when they sent for reinforcements. The 400 dead rebels would have been beheaded and their skulls piled up as a warning at Golgotha. The 200 would have been crucified with Jesus. Josephus might be explaining to us that the widows in Acts might have numbered up to 600!

It is inconceivable that the captain would have allowed Paul to address the mob, especially if the circumstances really were that a seditionist had just been fomenting dissent and he suspected his captive of being the same man. The Roman did not hold the Empire together for 500 years by pussy-footing. Paul would have been frog-marched straight into the tower for questioning.

The speech is false. Though it begins like Stephen’s speech it is primarily another account of the conversion of Luke’s hero, one of three in the same book. It has no purpose and makes no sense. Such insertions usually disguise something, but here it is hard to know what, unless it is that Paul was at this point revealed as a Roman agent. After Paul revealed that he was born a Roman (Acts 22:28), he must have explained to the governor what he had been doing, but the explanation could not be given by Luke. Instead Luke gave the story of the conversion. This would have been at Acts 22:28, but possibly an editor thought it more dramatic to move it forward so that it is an address to the mob rather than a few officials.

The Ananias (Acts 22:12) Paul mentions in his speech is a “devout man according to the law”, a formula which I suspect denotes an Essene. In Acts 22:14, we get the “Just One”, an Essene honorific title. Note also that in Acts 22:16, baptism is the baptism of John—for the remission of sins in preparation for the coming of God’s kingdom—not the baptism of faith in Jesus. Christians like to think it is indeed the baptism of Jesus because it ends with “calling on his name”. But it means calling on God, not Jesus. The author of Acts seems to leave it deliberately ambiguous here but historically, since Paul introduced the idea of Jesus as a demi-god, he could not have been baptized using the prescription he formulated.

Before the Sanhedrin

Why does the tribune behave (Acts 22:30) as if he were the Procurator, forcing the Sanhedrin to convene and releasing Paul from his bonds to appear before them in his defence. Why would he risk another riot allowing Paul to appear unguarded before the Sanhedrin? Another riot breaks out.

Paul’s speech before the Sanhedrin is almost classic Greek, betraying no signs of Aramaic. It is a free composition. Christian commentators, doubtless obsessed that the New Testament is God’s word, find it inadmissable that Luke made anything up, anything, that is, that was knowingly false. This is religious gullibility. Even if Luke was the original author and was above reproach, his editors were not, and certainly his subject, Paul, was not.

At this point we find that parts must have been written after the Jewish War. Thus, Paul says that Ananias would be smitten by God (Acts 23:3) showing that the author knew that he had been killed by the zealots.

Considering that Paul is being held for causing disturbances of the peace in causing two riots and has lately been almost whipped and mistaken for a bandit, it is remarkable that he has free access to his friends and is able to command a centurion, in Acts 23:17, as if he were a servant:

Paul called one of the centurions unto him, and said, Bring this young man unto the chief captain, for he hath a certain thing to tell him.

To be able to command a centurion thus suggests he is in a favoured position. His authority could only have rested on the authority of the tribune, so the centurion must have considered him at least of the same rank. A centurion was, so to speak, the sergeant-major of the Roman army but he was more a major than a sergeant. Perhaps it is no coincidence that one of Paul’s family, a nephew, is acting as a spy against the Jews. The Acts of Paul suggest throughout that he was a high ranking double agent.

Paul is given a huge escort, equal to a full cohort of men, 400 infantry and 70 cavalry. Christian commentators pretend that this is not unusual in the situation of insurrection and riots, but that is manifestly silly. Paul was not, on the face of it, a VIP, and in such unstable circumstances it could equally be argued that it was unlikely that the governor had forces to spare to escort an unknown Romanized Jew to safety. The explanation is that Paul must have been a VIP!

The tribune’s letter (Acts 23:26-30) has a ring of truth in that it tries to get kudos for the author as the saviour of an important spy, though the transcription given in Acts and probably the original letter for that matter could hardly be explicit about the reason why Paul was so valuable. It finds Paul innocent of any charges as usual. The letter was for the procurator Felix, and one might wonder how Luke knew what was in it. Presumably Paul, who turned out to be great friends with the Roman governor, had read it and told Luke. It seems Paul was the only channel for Luke to discover the contents of the letter and it proves that he was hand-in-glove with the top-most colonial officials of that part of the Empire.

Before the Romans

Paul, in Acts 24:23, is granted favourable status by Felix and is held for two years, supposedly in captivity, but probably in protective custody. Acts tries to explain the favourable treatment of Paul by showing Felix’s wife, a Jew, as being influential, but also that the governor hoped for a bribe. This might seem surprising since Romans are usually shown in a good light, but bribes were part of Roman life, just as they are today in the east, and indeed, just as they increasingly are here, and would not have been a surprise.

Luke will have mentioned the bribe because puzzled critics had suggested bribery was the reason for Paul’s good fortune. Luke implies that Paul’s two years of captivity preclude the possibility. Felix must have had reason to think that Paul had money if he really hoped for a bribe yet the only money Paul could have had was the money collected for the Ebionim. To relieve the sense of collusion, Paul is delivered by Felix into the hands of Festus in chains. It would have been unlikely even if Paul had been a real prisoner.

There is an interesting proof of the favour with which Paul was treated. In the speech by the rhetor, the Roman advocate for the Jews, in Acts 24:6-7, some authorities add, after “we seized him:”

…and we would have judged him according to our law but the chief captain, Lysias, came and, with great violence, took him out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come before you.

Though this does not appear in manuscripts considered to be the best, it is unlikely to be an invention. Romans are shown using seemingly unwarranted violence against Jews going about their own business. It is not favourable to the Romans, as Luke usually is, but is just what is to be expected of the Roman colonial administration, and it too strongly suggests that the Romans had a vested interest in Paul’s welfare, even to the point of risking a flashpoint incident in an unstable period. In seven more years, the Jewish war broke out in earnest, though it had effectively already started.

Christian commentators reject the passage, at best including it as a footnote. They argue that the advocate would not have criticised the captain in front of the procurator. Felix was, like most of the Procurators, a hard man, the flattery at the start of the rhetor’s speech being simply a formality. He kept the cap on the uprising for several years with severe measures, but such tactics simply aggravate the source of the dissent and build up steam.

Nevertheless, there is no reason to think that in that climate the rhetor’s remarks would have been construed as critical. Brutal suppression was the norm. The rhetor could freely raise the matter precisely because it was what Felix had ordered—suppress dissent. The Jews had asked the rhetor to make their point which was that there was no dissent in this instance. They were merely doing what they were allowed to do by the Romans—protect their own customs. In Acts, Paul was accused of polluting the temple by taking gentiles into the proscribed courts, a religious crime punishable by death, as the Romans had recognized—even if the perpetrator was a Roman citizen! The violent attack was therefore unjust in this case and the explanation of it was that Paul’s friends had alerted the tribune.

The advocate for the Jews describes Paul as a “ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, who moreover…” implying that being a Nazarene should have been sufficient of a crime for the Procurator. If Jesus was falsely betrayed by the Jews and falsely murdered by the Romans, why are his followers thirty years later still considered criminals? The crime was serious, which Christians cannot admit and it was a crime which was still relevant in the atmosphere of unrest which still persisted. Jesus was a rebel.

Paul’s defence is that of an Essene. He explains the meaning of the Nazarene sect, the followers of “the Way”, but naturally says nothing about their revolutionary intentions. Followers of “the Way” serve God believing in the law and the prophets, and the resurrection of the just and the unjust. Felix says he has accurate knowledge about “the Way” but defers judgement until Lysias arrives. Apparently he never does, so Paul is still under arrest in the palace two years later. What Felix means when he says he has accurate knowledge about “the Way” is uncertain but it probably means the knowledge which the Roman master spy, Paul, has already given him.

Jews Plot to Kill Paul and he appears before Agrippa

It defies all credibility to believe that the Jewish Sanhedrin should have been plotting (Acts 25:3) to murder a Roman, even, or especially, in a period of national turmoil. Many of the Sanhedrin were Roman collaborators, and even those who were not were not so stupid that they thought the Romans, who as the suppressed sentence discussed above in Acts shows were brutal, would not savage the land. Soon the war was to break out in earnest, but the first victims were the collaborators themselves. We are expected to believe that the Jewish leaders would precipitate the war by assassinating a man who was not only a Roman but was favoured by the Roman elite, and must by now have been known to all to have been a provocateur.

If anyone plotted to kill Paul, it could not have been the members of the Jewish Parliament but the members of the Jerusalem church, not only pious Jews but jealous for the law, as Acts has told us. No doubt the Sanhedrin had been incensed that the Roman governor had effectively flouted the law by saving Paul from trial when he had been accused of polluting the temple, but to imagine they would take the law into their own hands is asking too much.

Now, Paul is depicted as appearing before Agrippa, an unlikely scenario except as a charade because Paul had already appealed to Caesar and Festus had agreed to it (Acts 25:11-12). The only point of it is to fulfil prophecy—that Christians would have to appear before rulers and kings. In fact, Caesar was a king and it is strange perhaps that the trial before Caesar is not the end of the story.

Christians believe that Paul was martyred by Nero because it became de rigeur for the apostles to be martyred. But if the martyrdom was the result of the trial then Paul, who was never found guilty of any crime by any Roman, would have had his record spoiled and Roman administrators who always are shown as kind, contrary to the facts, would have been shown as the monsters they often were. That might be so, but Nero was quickly recognized as a monster and the Christian martyrdom of the apostle to the gentiles under a man who came to be seen as the anti-Christ would have ended the story nicely.

The more likely explanation is that Paul never came to trial because the appeal to Caesar was a ploy to get Paul back to Rome without antagonising the Jews even more. An appeal to Caesar was the privilege of a Roman citizen, but involved high costs and expenses. Only a rich man could afford it, so the appeal of Paul implies either that he was rich or the appeal was an administrative cover. If the appeal was genuine then Paul was a rich man, otherwise he was under state protection. As Acts says, Festus or Felix could have acquitted Paul, but the Jews would have been in a real revolt that the colonial administration had flouted its own law relating to respect for the temple. By claiming Paul had referred the case to Caesar he could be shipped off with everyone believing he still had to be tried. In fact, he was pensioned off to Spain, according to Christian tradition, at the opposite end of the world from his main exploits.

So, the appearance before Agrippa was quite specious. Paul defends himself before a king and Luke has the chance to give the third version of the conversion of his hero. In Acts 26:2 and 6, we are given the impression of a court hearing but, if it ever happened at all, it was merely an evening’s entertainment for the potentate with Paul acting as Munchausen again.

Paul is economical with the truth immediately, saying he had always lived in Judaea and Jerusalem when Luke himself tells us three times that he was born in Tarsus. Apparently he came to Palestine as a young man, or so the Ebionites say, probably about the time of the activity of Jesus. He says he was always a Pharisee. It might seem churlish to question this but much in his life is better explained if he had been trained as an Essene. He uses characteristically Essene words, spent a mysterious three years in Arabia which can best be accounted for if he had been an Essene novice in that time and he ends up a Christian having many similar views.

Thus, in this speech he uses the characteristic word “saints” meaning those who were perfectly holy. In Acts 26:18, we get vivid Essene phraseology, “open their eyes”, “darkness to light”, to receive a remission of sins and an inheritance, meaning originally the kingdom of God—the land of Israel. In Acts 26:20, the message is that of John the Baptist—to repent—and that of James—to do works worthy of repentance. In Acts 26:23, he states that Jesus is the first of the resurrection of the dead, the first to be resurrected in the general resurrection that will introduce the dead righteous into the kingdom of God. Christians claim this is a Pauline teaching because it appears in Colossians 1:18 but since it is surely the reason why the disappearance of the body of Jesus impressed his original followers, it precedes Paul.

The Nazarenes could have been a loose sect under the wing of the Essenes of those who were zealous for the law and had undergone baptism in readiness for the kingdom to come. Possibly they were allowed to follow their individual sectarian preferences while united under the sacraments of baptism and repentance.

In Acts 26:10, Paul pretends, or Luke does, that Paul sat on the Great Sanhedrin, “I cast my vote against him”. It seems quite incredible that a junior Pharisee should have had a seat on the Great Council of 70 of the Jewish great and good. Paul is both boasting and trying to impress with the magnitude of his own conversion. Nevertheless, it is possible that Paul had a vote on the Sanhedrin as a Sadducee. The evidence suggests he had a role as a secret policeman and might have been head of the Temple Guard, conceivably giving him a vote even as quite a young man in those turbulent times. In Acts 26:20, Paul braggs that he has preached all over Judaea, but there is no other evidence that he did, and it seems unlikely that the appointed apostles would have allowed it. They sent him abroad to be shot of him.

The apparent accusation of madness by Festus (Acts 26:24) is obviously the playful banter of people who knew each other well. Paul suggests that Agrippa is aware of hidden things (Acts 26:26), a crucial expression of the Essenes and one which translates into “Nazarene”. Then he adds (Acts 26:27-28): “I know thou believest”, apparently referring to the law and the prophets but an expression always used of Christians, those who believe in Jesus. Paul seems to think Agrippa is a Christian and allows Agrippa subtly to admit it, which he might do, saying literally: “you take a very short time to make me a Christian”. Elsewhere Herodians did adopt Christianity and in Acts 24:24 is a clear suggestion that Drusilla did. She was a member of the Herodian family being the daughter of Herod Agrippa I and the sister of Agrippa and Bernice.

Paul at Rome

On his journey to Rome, ostensibly to be tried by Caesar, Paul’s ship meets a raging storm at sea. Christians always say the storm is so vividly described it must be a real experience. There seems little doubt of this. Whoever wrote of the experience had surely had the experience, but was it this one? It does not really matter, but the reason why it is put here might not be because it actually happened at this time but because survival of a shipwreck in Roman superstition was considered a sign from the gods of innocence. So, a shipwreck there might have been, but Luke puts it precisely here as a way of asserting Paul’s innocence. The implication is now lost but it would have been clear when the book was written.

In the account, we get a revealing detail. Paul was to be escorted (Acts 27:1) by a centurion of the “Augustan Band”. Now in the first century, a Roman military unit called the Cohors Augusta I was in Syria. This might have been the centurion’s unit, but the “Augustan Band” could also mean the “Frumentarii”, the special troops of the emperor, a sort of SIS, all of whom had the rank of centurion. Of the functions they served, one was as secret police and another was spying!

The soldier seems to be of inferior rank to Paul, taking orders from him in the storm, and otherwise seems to be acting more as a minder than as a warder. This does not prove that Paul was a Roman spy but it tops the strange set of circumstances that point in that direction. Paul has a charmed life, he causes troubles among Jews everywhere and is always saved by Romans, he has a secret Roman citizenship, he is always treated respectfully by senior Roman officials as if he is a VIP, he is allowed to opt for a trial before Caesar in Rome instead of being tried as he should have been by the Sanhedrin for a religious crime, he is escorted by a centurion of the Roman MI6, probably his own unit!

On the journey back, Paul is effectively a free man, able to visit his friends (Acts 27:3). Later he has enough authority to argue with the captain of the vessel (Acts 27:9-10). Paul seems to take command in the midst of the storm and advises the centurion (Acts 27:31), and the centurion takes pains to save Paul’s life (Acts 27:43).

In Acts 28:14, Paul is free to do as he likes. In Acts 28:16, he is not jailed but is “guarded ”by a soldier. Again, the guard is not a warder but a protector. The Western Text adds that the prisoners were handed to the Stratopedarch, the Princeps Peregrinorum, head of the Frumentarii. It seems Paul has to be de-briefed by the equivalent of M.

Paul finishes up in Rome teaching as a free man.

The Jews of Rome (Acts 28:22) recognize the sect of Christians as unpopular everywhere yet wanted to know from Paul all about it. This has to be baloney because they could have learnt all they wanted from the Roman Christians many of whom had, apparently, walked forty miles to meet Paul. The meaning is either that the sect of Christians, the Nazarenes, was unpopular everywhere among the Romans, because it was still known as a revolutionary group, or that the faithful Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem Church in Rome considered the Hellenized branch favoured by Paul as unpopular.

The Jerusalem Church seems to have sent people after Paul constantly to keep an eye on him and to keep his activities within bounds. They failed. But one theory of Christian scholars to explain how Peter came to be in Rome as well as Paul, and some anomalies in the records of the first bishops of Rome, was that there were two autonomous churches in Rome. A Jewish Christian Church recognized the seniority of the Jerusalem Church and Paul’s Church of Hellenized Jews and gentiles that denied the authority of Jerusalem.

On this hypothesis, Peter followed Paul to Rome to preach that Christianity remained Jewish, in contradiction to Paul. If Paul was an agent provocateur, in Rome he was under the protection of the Praetorian Guard. The outbreak of the Jewish War was a failure of Paul’s strategy of syncretism to weaken Jewish expectations, but he must by then have been pensioned off. A mystery man called Saul was brought in to help negotiate with the Jews, and this man conceivably was Paul, brought out of retirement because of his great knowledge of Jewish matters, but it is a moot point. If, as Christians maintain, he was beheaded, it must have been because he was mistrusted as a failure, and was treated by the Romans as a double agent.

Acts ends interestingly with the very quotation from Isaiah 6:9-10 that justified the use of code by the Essenes and Nazarenes. It is taken to refer to those who will not hear, the infidels and the unbelieving Jews of God’s chosen people but, to those who know a little about the Essenes, it almost taunts the reader, saying:

You don’t understand, either.

Paul and Seneca

Roman policy was to unite the peoples of the empire under a common culture, and S Paul was active in this policy:

There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

Romans 10:12

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all.

Colossians 3:11

Paul, while calling himself a Jew by birth and a Christian by faith, did not hesitate to call himself a Roman whenever he had dealings with the authorities.

Each nation had its own favoured gods and different people favoured different sects and cults, yet to be a Roman was to transcend all of this. Roman syncretism wanted to get rid of these divisions and the worst culprits were the Jews whose faith in the One True God was exclusively theirs and they were identified by their distinguishing mark of circumcision.

In Rome, Stoicism was the philosophy of the ruling classes, whose tradition values of doing the right thing it suited. The Christians of the second century had a high opinion of the Stoics. Justin spoke of Musonius Rufus as being unwittingly a Christian martyr, and Tertullian considered Seneca as “often ours”. Justin pointed out in his Apologia that Stoicism and Christianity agree closely on moral questions. Romans 13 emphasises the similarity between the Stoic and the Christian attitude to the state and all it stood for.

There is a fourth century tradition that Paul and Seneca were friends and correspondents. Seneca and Paul both used the unusual Hebraic word “caro” meaning “flesh”. Paul appeared before Seneca’s brother Gallio, Proconsul of Achaia in 51 AD, in Corinth and Gallio dismissed the case against him. Seneca was also a friend of Burrus, the Praetorian Prefect during Paul’s imprisonment who also treated Paul leniently. Paul was allowed to preach the gospel while still in prison. Now Seneca and Burrus were not just common citizens of Rome, that Paul might have met casually. They were or became the rulers of Rome when Nero was a boy. Nero’s mother Agrippina, employed Seneca as Nero’s tutor and for several years he effectively ruled the empire alongside Burrus. If Paul was pardoned, as seems probable, Burrus arranged it. Seneca could have met Paul through either of these two common agents. Indeed, the friendship could have preceded the known history of Paul.

It is hard to see Paul as anything other than a well connected Roman agent provocateur—what in Persian times would have been called a prophet—a propagandist for the imperialists.

From Stephen Ballard

It has been a long time since I sent you anything, but I thought you might be interested in this. It was a chain of emails to some friends. It was a one sided conversation on my part explaining my rationalistic interpretation of scripture based on the historical approach advocated by S G F Brandon, Maccoby, Eisenman, Goulder, G A Wells, and others (including you :). You are welcome to use if you choose. All are my own ideas, if in fact one could ever really make such a claim given the above list of scholars among others. I only note that Ms Organ—that I am aware of—has mentioned the scenario of Paul being modeled on Jesus, but I only ran across that link recently sometime after I had come to the reverse conclusion.

It is a long story, one brought on by noticing that Paul is rejected by the “Jews” in the Temple court with exactly the same words that Jesus is rejected before Pilate. There are several coincidences in the New Testament that lead one to think that Saint Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem has overlaid the original story of the trial of Jesus in the Gentile Gospels. Indeed, when one looks at the coincidences, and the number of these, it seems almost certain that, not knowing about the details of Jesus’ own trial, the Gentile Church substituted the outline of Paul’s own trial and imprisonment.

Of course, one might claim that St Paul is simply following in Jesus’ footsteps. But one might also postulate that Paul’s own Gnostic vision of a pacifist Christ Jesus has overlaid the original Jewish Jesus in the Gentile Gospels.

It was Paul’s Gnostic Christ, whose kingdom was not of this world, that the Jews rejected, just like they rejected St Paul. The Jews clamored for the release of the real Jesus bar Abbas whose kingdom is of this world, but rejected Paul’s otherworldly Christ Jesus. Hyam Maccoby makes a similar point concerning Paul and the Egyptian assassin (Acts 21:38). Maccoby notes it is strange the Roman officer would have thought that Paul was the Egyptian insurrectionist who led the 4000 assassins into the wilderness, since the multitude would probably have been calling for his release. Instead the multitude was shouting to the Roman officer “Away with him!”, just like they did for the Gentile Pauline version of Jesus.

1. Like Jesus, Saint Paul is to go to Jerusalem one last time, knowing it may be his last, because of the “plotting” of the “Jews”.

And when he had spent three months there, and a plot was laid against him by the Jews .....sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more.

Act 20:3

2. The exact same words are used by the multitude to the Roman authorities concerning both Jesus and Paul:

But they cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him

John 19:15

For the multitude of the people followed after, crying, Away with him!

Act 21:36

And they gave him audience unto this word [Gentiles], and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.

Act 22:22

3. With both Paul and Jesus there is some confusion on the part of the Roman authorities between the “righteous” Christian and a notorious insurrectionist.

And they had then a notable prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?

Mat 27:16

Then are you not that Egyptian who before these days caused a riot, and led four thousand men of the assassins out into the desert?

Act 21:38

For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes

Act 24:5

4. The idea that Jesus was delivered “for envy” does not make sense. It is more likely Jesus was delivered for being a danger to the state and claiming to be Messiah. However, St. Paul was delivered for “envy” because his religious doctrine concerning the Gentiles was contrary to that of the “Jews”.

For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.

Mar 15:10

5. St Paul is brought to trial before the Sanhedrin and struck on the mouth like Jesus. And like Jesus, Paul is rebuked for his contempt of the High Priest.

And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so?

Joh 18:22

And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him [Paul] on the mouth. Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.... And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God’s high priest?

Act 23:2

6. Paul is brought to trial before both the Roman Procurator and king Herod Agrippa like Jesus, but has not been judged “worthy of death”

No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done by him.

Luk 23:15

And Festus said, King Agrippa, and all men which are here present with us, ye see this man, about whom all the multitude of the Jews have dealt with me, both at Jerusalem, and also here, crying that he ought not to live any longer. But I found that he had committed nothing worthy of death

Act 25:24

7. Pilate’s wringing his hands over Jesus which in fact is really Felix’s hand wringing over Paul.

The real Jesus, Jesus bar Abbas, would certainly have been quickly found guilty. There would have been no hesitation or hand-wringing on the part of Pilate. We know from Josephus that Pilate was a brutal but efficient Roman governor, and would not be concerned about executing a Jewish political prisoner as a warning to other would be trouble makers. But the procurator Felix would indeed have hesitated and was much concerned when faced with Jews clamoring that he execute a fellow Roman citizen Paul. In fact this is something that he couldn’t do. In addition, all the evidence seemed to indicate that Paul was innocent, at least of any political offense, and therefore not worthy of any crime deserving death, unlike Jesus bar Abbas who had claimed to be the Messiah, the king of the Jews. This shows the Roman tolerance, or at least indifference, to Paul’s so called religious offenses.

This man [Paul] was taken of the Jews, and should have been killed of them: then came I with an army, and rescued him, having understood that he was a Roman. And when I would have known the cause wherefore they accused him, I brought him forth into their council: Whom I then perceived to be accused of questions of their law [Religious Law or Torah], but to have nothing laid to his charge worthy of death or of bonds [according to Roman law].

Act 23:27

8. The procurator Festus offers to return Paul to the Jewish authorities to be judged according to their own religious law, forcing Paul to appeal to Caesar as a Roman citizen. This is very similar to the what Pilate is reported to have said concerning the Pauline Christ:

Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death

Joh 18:31

It is unlikely that Pilate would have released a political prisoner Jesus bar Abbas to the Jewish authorities, because as they themselves said, they did not have the power to put a prisoner to death. But Festus could bring Paul before the Jewish authorities concerning matters of their own religion.

Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation of such things as I supposed: But had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive. And because I doubted of such manner of questions, I asked him whether he would go to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these matters. But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Caesar.

Act 25:18

Paul had every reason to believe that he would be killed before being brought before the Sanhedrin to stand trial. This is one reason he appealed to Caesar as a Roman citizen.

And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. And they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy. And they came to the chief priests and elders, and said, We have bound ourselves under a great curse, that we will eat nothing until we have slain Paul.

Act 23:12

These 40 sound like the Zealots, since paid officers of the High Priest certainly would not go to this extreme. Notice the word “certain” Jews. As scholars [Robert Eisenman] point out, when this word “certain” is used, it usually means certain Jewish Christians. Here the Zealots, in these late times, are shown to have significant influence in Jerusalem, even so far as working with the high priest himself against their common nuisance Paul.

Paul did in fact go to Rome. It appears that Paul may have been acquitted or at least confined to house arrest. At any rate, some say he was executed during Nero’s persecution of Christians after the great fire in 64AD.

Google Book Reference

Luke models Paul on Jesus,especially in his arrest and trial. Like Jesus, Paul has to suffer, experience hostility from his own people who seek to kill him, is arrested and brought to trial before the Jewish and Roman authorities.

Apparently I am not the only one to have noticed this. However, this lady has it just the reverse of what I think. The Gnostic Christ Jesus (whose kingdom is not of this world) was modeled on Saint Paul (within whom Christ dwelt) by the Gentile Church and Luke, and not vice versa. The reason Ms Organ has it reversed is notice how Paul points out in Galatians that “he is the apostle to the Gentiles”, and that Peter was the apostle to the “circumcision”, the Jews.

Paul and his arrest and trial would have been well known to John Mark and the Gentiles at Rome, since Paul would not have tired of telling it during his house arrest at Rome. However, if the Letters of the New Testament are any witness, then about all that was known of Jesus among the Gentiles prior to John Mark and the Gospel of Mark was that Jesus was crucified, and that he had risen from the dead and would come again. The Letters of the New Testament do not even know (or at least mention) that Jesus came from Galilee, or that he was crucified by Pilate (if one discounts the very late and almost certainly non-Pauline letter of Timothy).

The Gospels (written later than the Letters) seem to know somewhat more about the historical Jesus, for example that he came from Galilee, but the Gospels seem to know little about the arrest and trial of Jesus, and instead substitute the trial of St. Paul. In addition, the Gospels seem to be intent on “harmonizing” the Gnostic pacifist Gentile Gospel of Saint Paul with the Zealot Gospel of Jesus and Qumran. There would be numerous points of agreement between Saint Paul’s Gospel and the Nazarene Zealot Qumran Gospel, since Paul was also a Zealot. But there would have been significant differences as well since Paul was the “apostle [or Zealot] to the Gentiles” who believed that the Gentiles were equal in to the Jews in the eyes of God because of faith in Jesus. Notice these words are put in the mouth of Peter by Luke to harmonize Paul’s teaching with the “pillars” of the Jewish Church, but they are Paul’s teaching and NOT Peter’s.

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as ye all are this day

Act 22:3

Paul is specific in

....but contrariwise, when they saw that I had been intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the gospel of the circumcision...

Gal 2:7

But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

Gal 2:11

But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees [probably meaning extremist Pharisees or Zealots] which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter. And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.

Act 15:5

In Acts 15:5, it seems Luke is intent on harmonizing the teaching of the Jerusalem Church with Paul’s teaching of “faith” by putting Paul’s words into Peter’s mouth. And it seems that Peter may initially been prepared to accept some Gentile accomodations, but “those from James” quickly put an end to that.

Another point of contact.

Here it is sufficient to point out that the mechanics of the treachery (Judas kiss) are far from clear. Why did Jesus need to be identified by Judas? Surely Jesus was well known after preaching in the Temple before enthusiastic crowds. What exactly did Judas’ treachery consist of? Was it his identification of Jesus, or that he led the arresting crowd to Jesus’ hiding place? .... it may be remarked that the confusion and clumsiness of the story adds to the impression of an ad hoc improvisation.

Hyam Maccoby, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil, 1992, pg. 37

Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia [Asia Minor]; And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ

Gal 1:21

Act 21:27 And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia [Minor], when they saw him in the temple, stirred up the crowd, and laid hands on him, Crying out, Men of Israel, help: This is the man, that teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place.

To the Jews of Judea, Paul was “unknown by face”. But the Jews [Judas] of Asia, who did know his face, betrayed him, and Paul was arrested by the Romans even as the Sicariots laid hands on him. Paul was not in any body’s good graces in Jerusalem. To the Zealots and the Sicariots, he was an apostate, and to the Temple police and Romans he was a nuisance and a ringleader (financier) of that same zealot sect of the Nazarenes.

And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many tens of thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealots of the Torah: And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. What is it therefore? the multitude [or crowd] must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come.

Act 21:20

Here the “pillars of the Church”, James and Peter and John are portrayed by Luke (who is always eager to show Paul on reasonably good terms with the Jerusalem church leaders so as legitimatize Paul’s mission to the Gentiles) as being solicitous for Paul’s safety. If so, they certainly didn’t come to this rescue did they?

Barne’s Commentary on Act 21:22

What is it therefore? - What is to be done? What is it proper to do to avoid the effects of the evil report which has been circulated? What they deemed it proper to do is suggested in the following verses.

The multitude - The multitude of Jews.

Must needs come together - There will be inevitably a tumultuous assemblage. It will be impossible to prevent that. The reasons were, because the minds of the Jews were exceedingly agitated that one of their own countrymen had, as they understood, been advising apostasy from the religion of their fathers; because this had been extensively done in many parts of the world, and with great success; and because Paul, having, as they believed, himself apostatized from the national religion, had become very conspicuous, and his very presence in Jerusalem, as in other places, would be likely to excite a tumult.

To the Zealots and the Sicariots, he was an apostate, and to the Temple police and Romans he was a nuisance and a ringleader (financier) of that same zealot sect of the Nazarenes.

The Temple Police and Jewish authorities may have been aware that Paul was a financier and ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. However, at this time, the Roman authorities would have been uncertain, since Paul was a Roman citizen and this complaint by the “Jews” seemed simply a matter of religious differences.

However, after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, perhaps a more detailed inquiry was made into this “Christian” sect and into Paul’s background by the civil authorities under Nero, at Rome, where Paul was still under house arrest. Of course, after the fire, there were numerous crucifixions of “Christians”, guilty or not, since at that point Nero would have become aware that these so-called Jewish Christians were in fact the Jewish Zealots who had started the fire.

3. (63) Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure...

Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3

5. (81) There was a man who was a Jew, but had been driven away from his own country by an accusation laid against him for transgressing their laws, and by the fear he was under of punishment for the same; but in all respects a wicked man. He, then living at Rome, professed to instruct men in the wisdom of the laws of Moses. (82) He procured also three other men, entirely of the same character with himself, to be his partners. These men persuaded Fulvia, a woman of great dignity, and one that had embraced the Jewish religion, to send purple and gold to the temple at Jerusalem; and when they had gotten them, they employed them for their own uses, and spent the money themselves, on which account it was that they at first required it of her. (83) Whereupon Tiberius, who had been informed of the thing by Saturninus, the husband of Fulvia, who desired inquiry might be made about it, ordered all the Jews to be banished out of Rome; (84) at which time the consuls listed four thousand men out of them, and sent them to the island Sardinia; but punished a greater number of them, who were unwilling to become soldiers, on account of keeping the laws of their forefathers. Thus were these Jews banished out of the city by the wickedness of four men.

(66) There was at Rome a woman whose name was Paulina; one who, on account of the dignity of her ancestors, and by the regular conduct of a virtuous life, had a great reputation; she was also very rich; and although she was of a beautiful countenance, and in that flower of her age wherein women are the most gay, yet did she lead a life of great modesty. She was married to Saturninus,

http://www.theistic-evolution.com/josephus.html

So, an inter-textual reading of the Gospels, the Epistles, and Josephus does result in some clarification. But not exactly what Atwill (Caesar’s Messiah) had in mind.

He [Paul(ina) apparently], then living at Rome, professed to instruct men in the wisdom of the laws of Moses.

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man.....a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.....

That these passages should appear side by side in Josephus, especially that they should appear (on the surface) so unrelated to the disturbances in Judea lead one to think that the author had something else in mind.........

With all these coincidences there can be little doubt that Mark saw his friend Paul betrayed by the Jews into the hands of the Romans, most probably Nero, who then crucified him.

Does this mean there was no Jesus at all? Not necessarily. But the story of the arrest and trial of Jesus in the Gospels is so heavily overlaid with Paul’s own fate that one must wonder. But Mark is quite clear that the Jews rejected and betrayed Paul’s Gnostic Jesus into the hands of the Romans in favor or their own Jesus bar Abbas.

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