General Introduction
This is the third in my series of ‘reaction articles’ to the recent set of lectures given on 27-28 May 2023, by Dr Bart Ehrman, on the topic of ‘Jesus & Paul: The Great Divide’ (you can read my very first article in this series by clicking here, and the second here). In Dr Ehrman’s lectures, my overall view is that he successfully managed to contrast Jesus’s teachings and beliefs with those of Paul of Tarsus – and when viewed side by side, the differences are very stark.
This article you are reading now will be about two lectures combined: the fourth lecture, which was entitled, ‘Who was Jesus according to Paul?’ and the seventh lecture, ‘What did Paul know about Jesus?’
Before we start, I have to say from the outset that I am no expert on Paul. Even when I was a Christian, I found his theology convoluted and confusing.
I remember every Sunday at Mass, there was the gospel reading and then the reading from the letters of Paul. I would always listen with captive interest to the teachings of Yeshua, but when it came to listening to what Paul taught, my mind just glazed over, as if the priest were reading an amalgam of a manual on quantum physics and a laundry list.
Paul’s words just never made any logical sense to me; I could never explain – even to myself – the underlying reasoning behind any of it, without having to rely on what people like Dr Ehrman and other reputable theologians have said. For this reason, I am going to have to rely more heavily on what Dr Ehrman himself said during his lectures.
We know that the earliest Jewish followers of Yeshua opposed Paul, and that they rejected his teachings. We know beyond question or a doubt, because ironically we have early Christian writings to thank for recording their opposition. The first time I learned of this fact, the very first thing that came to mind was, ‘Oh, thank God!’ At last, I had a legitimate reason not to have to stomach the teachings of someone I had found so confusing and uncomfortable my whole life.
“Only Paul could provide a non-Jewish, non-Torah way for Gentiles to follow Jesus”
The main argument for having no other alternative but to accept Paul, was that he alone was able to answer the question, ‘Do you have to become Jewish to follow the teachings of Jesus?’ Also, that ‘he alone brought a way of salvation to Gentiles’. In order to think this way, you have to hold firm to the belief that the first Jewish followers of Jesus were a bunch of uncompromising, intransigent and angry religious fundamentalists – that for some reason, the earliest Jewish Followers of the Way were trying to deny Gentiles salvation, by insisting that, in order to follow Jesus, Gentiles had to follow Torah and be circumcised (in reality they just wouldn’t have said that; only in order to be defined as Jewish, do you have to follow Torah and be circumcised).
In those days, there were Godfearers who were accepted as part of the broader ‘Assembly of Israel‘. Male Godfearers were not circumcised, but they followed Torah. Then there were Noachides; male Noachides were neither circumcised, nor did they follow Torah, but they still worshipped the God of Israel. The universalism in the Book of Isaiah paved the way for an understanding of the concept of ‘Yahwism among the Nations‘ – or at least, ethical monotheism among the Nations.
Modern Talmidaism holds the same religious beliefs as the first Jewish followers of Yeshua, along with the same cultural mindset and awareness. We therefore accept the ancient, 1st century views that many Jews had towards non-Jewish religions (that God accepted that Gentiles would have their own religions, Dt 4:19). We accept the validity of Noachides – they don’t follow Torah, their men are not circumcised, but they worship YHVH. Those Noachides who are pro-Talmidi follow the ethical teachings of Yeshua as well; I don’t doubt that the same situation would eventually have come to exist at some point during the time of James.
So no, Paul wasn’t the only person in history who could have ever provided an answer to the question, ‘Do you have to become Jewish to follow the teachings of Jesus?’ I am convinced that if we modern Talmidis could have come up with the same solution today (as we have), then eventually ancient Followers of the Way could have come up with it at some point in their history too (the debate in Jerusalem likely highlighted the idea of Noachides for the James community; James made his ruling in the dispute with Paul on the basis of a basic set of Noachide laws).
Let me put this into perspective with an allegory:
A crowd of Gentile Galatians gather in front of a synagogue. Two of them step forward to the front door, and find it is locked. The first one bangs on the door angrily and shouts, “How dare these Jews bar the way to the kingdom of God from us! Don’t they know that salvation is open to Jew and Greek! You see what these law-obsessed Jews are doing?” His friend, a Noachide, and uncomfortable at the first one’s hysterical ravings, retreats to stand well back. However, the rest of the crowd nod their heads in rectitudinous agreement with the anger of the first one.
After a while of more angry banging and ranting, the door opens. From inside, the second Galatian – the Noachide – appears at the door. The first one says, “How did you get in? The door was barred against us!” The Noachide says, “I used the side entrance – believe me, it wasn’t barred at all!”
Which New Testament Writings did Dr Ehrman base his Views of Paul on?
Modern NT scholarship generally concludes that, of all the books in the New Testament that claim to have been written by Paul, only seven were actually written by him. These are: Galatians, Romans, 1Corinthians, 2Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and 1Thessalonians. I myself don’t know why these letters were accepted and the six others rejected, but it might be worth reading the Wikipedia articles on each if you want to know more (the links I’ve provided are all to the Wikipedia articles on each epistle).
The letters which scholars agree were not written by Paul are: Ephesians, Colossians, 2Thessalonians, 1Timothy, 2Timothy and Titus. The Epistle to the Hebrews itself does not claim to have been written by any particular person – some say that it was written by Aquila and Priscilla of Rome. If you want a longer explanation of which letters are generally agreed not to have been written by Paul, have a read of the book ‘Forged’, by Dr Ehrman.
We also cannot use the Book of Acts to prove anything, because it wasn’t written by Paul himself. There are also details in Acts which are self-contradictory (such as his conversion account in Acts 9:1-31, 20:26, 22:4-21, 26:9-23). Besides, many scholars are of the opinion that Acts is probably pro-Paul propaganda (so the statement in Acts 22:3 that he was brought up in Jerusalem and taught by Gamaliel is probably not true; Paul doesn’t make this claim in his letters). In Acts, Paul is deliberately given an elevated stature, and virtually presented as a kind of ‘second Christ’ or at least, a messiah-like figure.
Dr Ehrman says that, “Acts does get a number of broad issues correct about Paul, but in the details, it’s not trustworthy at all. When you read what the author of Acts says about Paul, about what he did and what he preached, and compare that with what Paul himself says when he talks about the same thing, and you compare the two, Acts will often have a very different portrayal of Paul than Paul himself.”
Who was Paul according to Paul?
If we want to understand Paul’s theology, Dr Ehrman says that we first need to know what Paul’s background was. What we know about Paul mostly comes from Galatians 1 and Philippians 3. According to what he himself wrote,
– he was raised Jewish
– he was a Pharisee
– he was zealous for the Torah
– he had apocalyptic views (i.e. he truly believed the world was coming to an end)
– he persecuted the Jewish followers of Jesus
– he underwent a ‘conversion experience’
I personally would have to add the caveat that, just because Paul said these things of himself, it doesn’t mean that they were true. The fact that something is written in an ancient document, doesn’t make it true. People lie.
As I have said in earlier articles in this series, I very much doubt that Yeshua was an apocalyptic teacher. However, beyond all measure of any kind of doubt, I’m certain that Paul was an apocalyptic preacher, and believed with every fibre of his being that the world was soon coming to an end. He was convinced that the end of the world, and a universal resurrection were coming soon, within his own lifetime. To ensure you would be included in the resurrection of the saved, you needed to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ.
Paul’s personal background
Dr Ehrman says that Paul was raised outside of the Land of Israel, in Cilicia. From the style of the 7 authentic letters, we can conclude definitively that his Greek is extremely good – he is without doubt a native Greek-speaker, and also must have received a very good standard of education in Greek. Dr Ehrman says that Paul is aware of, and uses, modes of Greek thought and Greek rhetorical practices. However, Paul shows no evidence at all of being fluent in Hebrew or Aramaic, or even of knowing them.
Most educated Jews in the bigger towns and cities in the Holy Land would have been able to speak Greek as a second language. James was, by tradition, brought up in the Temple, receiving a good education, and so could read and write Greek (as the Letter of James attests). A lot of ordinary Jewish people might have been able to speak basic conversational Greek to be able to communicate with the Romans, and with the Gentiles who lived in the cities all along the coast. So Paul could have gotten by in Judea only knowing how to speak Greek – when he spoke to James and Peter, he would have spoken Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew.
Personally, I would add that he would need to have had a good fluency in Hebrew, if he genuinely had been a Pharisee. All Paul’s quotations of the Hebrew Bible are tellingly from the Greek Septuagint alone, and not in any kind of stilted Hebraic Greek (a Pharisee would have translated a passage directly from the Hebrew into Greek himself, in order to ensure he got just the right nuance required for what he was teaching; this is what I do myself when using quotes from Torah in English).
If you want a book which explains in detail why Paul was not a Pharisee, I would highly recommend, ‘The Mythmaker – Paul and the Invention of Christianity’, by Hyam Maccoby. It is the best and most scholarly writing on the matter. In chapter 6, ‘Was Paul a Pharisee?’, Maccoby writes that, according to the ancient Ebionite community, Paul had come from a Cilician family which had converted to Judaism while he was still a child. He learned his Judaism while being raised in Cilicia.
Maccoby also points out the incongruity of Paul as a Pharisee taking orders from the Sadducean High Priest, to go out and arrest the Jewish followers of Jesus. This would be like staunch Protestants such as Billy Graham or Ian Paisley taking orders from the Pope! In order to fulfil this task, it is more likely that Saul of Tarsus was a member of the High Priest’s Temple police; in such a role, he would have had the authority to arrest Jewish citizens in Jerusalem.
Maccoby explains how, as a member of the Temple police, he would also have had more opportunities to be influenced by the fringe beliefs of apocalyptic preachers, who would come to the Temple at festival times and preach their fiery messages. Paul is also insistent on the need for blood-sacrifices to atone for sin, (‘without blood there is no forgiveness of sin’), which is a distinctively Sadducean teaching, not a Pharisaic one.
There has also been some recent claims that Paul was related to King Herod, on the basis that he is comfortable moving about in the midst of Roman society and with high-class Romans. You can read articles supporting this by Dr Taylor Marshall and Robert Eisenman. I guess it’s possible. It could equally have been that this social proficiency could just as easily have come from him originally being a Roman citizen, who was brought up in a fully Romanised province like Cilicia. Either way, he was socially closer to the aristocratic Sadducees than he was to the Pharisees.
In chapter 7 of his book, Maccoby also points out the weaknesses behind claiming that Paul was a Pharisee. A non-Jew who was not familiar with the nuances and intricacies of Pharisaic teaching, could easily be fooled into thinking that Paul was undoubtedly a Pharisee. However, someone from a rabbinic Jewish background would easily be able to see the flaws in this argument. Maccoby writes (p.68),
“Some passages in Paul’s Epistles have been thought to be typically Pharisaic, simply because their argument has a legalistic air. When these passages are critically examined, however, the superficiality of the legal colouring soon appears, and it is apparent that the use of illustrations from law is merely a vague, rhetorical device, without any real legal precision, such as is found in Pharisaic writings, even when the legal style is used for homiletic biblical exegesis.”
Maccoby then goes on to examine Roman 7:1-6, and concludes that, “the passage is remarkably muddle-headed. Paul is trying to compare the abrogation of the Torah and the advent of the New Covenant of Christianity, with a second marriage contracted by a widow. But he is unable to keep clear in his mind who it is that corresponds to the wife and who to the husband – or even who is supposed to have died, the husband or the wife.”
No wonder Paul’s logic always threw me into a state of befuddlement!
For a staunch Messianic, Paul never mentions the Davidic Covenant
In Dr Ehrman’s lectures, for all his talk of Jesus claiming to be the messiah, there was strangely no mention of the Davidic Covenant by Dr Ehrman – this is the covenant that establishes what an anointed king is and is not supposed to do. Nor does Paul ever make any reference to this covenant either. Paul only references ‘the New Covenant’ and the Covenant made at Sinai (Gal 4:24). The Abrahamic Covenant between God and Israel is referenced in Galatians chapter 3, and also at Eph 2:12 (but this is a disputed epistle). There is a link to the Covenant with Abraham made in the Epistle to the Hebrews too (chapter 8), but it wasn’t written by Paul either.
The New Covenant is based on Jer 31:31-34. However, if you read this passage carefully (the very first verse, no less), you will see that this ‘new covenant’ is with “the people of Israel and the people of Judah”, i.e. not with Gentile Christians. Therefore Paul has to create a whole new theology whereby Gentile Christians are grafted onto the Covenant with Israel (Rom 11:11-24), so that Christians effectively become the new Israel. The passage in Jeremiah is actually referring to a ‘renewed’ covenant, and then only between God and Israel.
The Abrahamic Covenant with Israel has no relevance to Gentiles. The Covenant with Abraham is specifically about circumcision, which gives his descendants through Isaac the eternal right specifically to the Land of Canaan (Gen 17:8, Gen 17:21). This covenant, which Paul was so keen for his Gentile Christians to be a part of, has absolutely no relevance to non-Jews whatsoever (the earlier ‘Avramic Covenant‘, Gen 15:18-21, which also gives Avram’s Arab descendants, through Ishmael and Keturah, the land between the Gully of Egypt and the Euphrates, is technically not part of the details of the later Abrahamic Covenant of Circumcision – one of the four covenants which are specifically with Israel).
However, there is indeed a Covenant between God and all non-Jews, just not the ones that Paul keeps going on about. There are three covenants that are relevant to non-Jews: the Universal Covenant (which covers the unwritten and unspoken rules that govern the human conscience), the Adamic Covenant (which covers the human stewardship of Nature), and the Noachide Covenant (which has particular relevance to those Gentiles who wish to follow the ethics of the God of Israel – and the ethics of Jesus – but do not wish to observe Torah).
Interestingly, Paul does not have any knowledge of these covenants, particularly the latter two, which he should have done if he had belonged to the sect of the Pharisees (who, after all, were the ones who put together the ‘Seven Laws of Noah’ in the first place). Nor does he ever mention the Davidic Covenant, the one that establishes the messianic line of David. Neither Jewish nor Christian messianics ever look at the wording of the Davidic Covenant.
The Davidic Covenant (the full text of which you can read here), stipulates that as long as the kings of Israel remain faithful to God and God’s ways, then Israel will be safe. But if the kings begin to stray from God’s ways, then things will start to go wrong for both the king and the country, which will suffer misfortune. Nowhere in the Davidic Covenant does it ever say that the messiah is just one person, or that the messiah will live forever, or that he will be perfect, or that he will be a sacrifice for sin. Most importantly, when one messiah dies, another will lawfully take his place (Ps 132:11-12). This covenant is made with the natural, human descendants of David, in order to keep them in line, and ensure that they don’t become either tyrants or pagans, or both.
The Innovations of Paul
Dr Ehrman defined the messiah as, ‘a figure of grandeur and power, who would destroy the enemies of God, and rule over the people of God in a sovereign Jewish state’. This is indeed the traditional rabbinic view of what a messiah is and does. However, because Jesus died, Paul and his followers had to completely redefine what a messiah is: someone whose death would conquer sin and death itself, and obtain salvation and everlasting life for those who believed in his death and resurrection. This is something completely new that Paul invented himself.
Dr Ehrman said that Paul taught that Gentiles, who don’t keep the Law, are saved through faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus. However, it has to be pointed out here that Jews have never believed that not keeping Torah would deny Gentiles salvation. The fact of God’s three covenants with Gentiles, proves that salvation is open to Gentiles as well as Jews.
Dr Ehrman points out that Paul believed that salvation for Gentiles was possible outside of the Law; he says that this was the important innovation of Paul.
However, again, I would have to point out that Jews believe this as well (both ancient and modern) – it’s not a new or revolutionary concept; the prophet Isaiah is one of the earliest universalists.
Did Paul believe that Jesus was God?
Dr Ehrman says that Paul believed that Jesus was an incarnation of God (a divine being who became human):
“Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Phil 2:6-10).
As an aside, this poem has similarities to Isaiah 45:22-24, which says that it is only to the Name of Yahveh that every knee shall bow:
Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I alone am God, and there is no other. By Myself I have sworn; My mouth has uttered, in all integrity, a proclamation that will not be revoked: ‘Before Me every knee will bow; by Me every tongue will swear.’ They will say of Me, ‘In YHVH alone are found deliverance and strength.’
Some Christians now say that the Resurrection revoked Jesus’s Message and transformed it into Paul’s Message
In order to reconcile who Jesus was and what he taught, with what Paul said Jesus was, there is a growing minority of Christians who say that the reason there is a difference between Paul and Jesus, is that Jesus’s death changed the message itself, altering it from what he taught in life. The fact of Jesus’s death and resurrection changed everything.
However, wouldn’t that mean that, everything Jesus taught when he was alive – being contrary to what Paul taught – is now irrelevant? Why even bother to have the gospels in that case? Why did God even bother to give Yeshua prophetic words to speak, if they were ultimately going to be revoked and changed? Surely if God, who knows all things, were always aware of the manner in which Jesus was going to die, surely God would have given Jesus a prophetic message which was fully concomitant with the manner of his death!
Such people argue that the message itself changed with the resurrection of Jesus; that it proved he was the messiah, a divine being, and that he had to die to save humanity from our sins. They claim that this is even what his apostles realised at Pentecost – that Jesus could only have resurrected if he were messiah and God at the same time. His resurrection, and everything that Paul taught, automatically overrides the prophetic message that Jesus himself taught in life.
This is what a pagan Gentile, familiar with the dying and resurrecting gods of their ancestors, would naturally think about the resurrection (that it proved Jesus’s divinity). A Jewish Follower of Yeshua on the other hand, who also believed that Yeshua had been resurrected from the dead and taken alive into heaven, would have simply thought that Yeshua’s resurrection was an act of God, vindicating the prophethood, the ministry and the teachings of Yeshua – the teachings which, ultimately, had come from God, because Yeshua had been a prophet of God. After all, Elijah and Enoch – neither of whom were divine beings – were also taken alive into heaven, just like Yeshua was. Resurrection does not prove divinity to someone brought up in Jewish ways of thinking. Nor would it automatically prove messiahship. The first thing that the resurrection would imply to a 1st century, non-rabbinic Jew would be, ‘This proves that Yeshua was a true prophet – God has vindicated his ministry!’
What part of his gospel did Paul get from the Apostles?
Paul is proud to claim that he learned nothing from the apostles, and received none of his gospel from them. Paul didn’t go to check any of his beliefs or facts with the apostles of Yeshua. He considered his own knowledge of Yeshua to be superior to those who knew him when he was alive (cf 2Cor 5:16 – “Even if you were once familiar with Christ while he was alive, that is not how we know him any longer”.)
Christian theology all begins with Paul, not Yeshua’s apostles. Paul’s gospel has its sole origin in him, not the apostles. In Galatians, Paul proudly said,
“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preach is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by a revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Gal 1:11-12) “My immediate response was not to consult any human being; I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was.” (Gal 1:16b-17a). “I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.” (Gal 1:22)
For anyone who thinks that Paul learned the message of the gospel from the apostles and mingled with them, confirming and validating all his beliefs with them, please read carefully Paul’s own words which I have put in bold letters.
Everything that Paul taught – his entire gospel, theology and beliefs – is derived from his one, single vision that he had during his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, from nowhere and through no one else. He then might have spent his years between conversion and ministry refining and perfecting his beliefs, but ultimately, they were all based on his initial conversion experience.
Before his ministry, he spent 3 years in Arabia and Damascus (Gal 1:17). He then stayed in Jerusalem two weeks, and met no one but Peter and James (Gal 1:18-19). He then went to Syria briefly before returning back home to Cilicia, where he spent about 11 years (Gal 2:1 – the ‘fourteen years’ mentioned in Galatians is from the time of his conversion until his return from Cilicia to Jerusalem). Paul’s ministry did not begin until about the year 48CE.
During those 11 years in Cilicia, he ruminated long and hard over his conversion experience, honing and developing his theology. By the end of the 14 years, he had managed to reconcile how a man put to death on a Roman cross could be the messiah and saviour of all humankind: God must have planned it all from the beginning, and that by believing in the death and resurrection of Christ, anyone could be saved – belief alone brought salvation. And so the complicated, theological intricacies of Christianity began, not in Jerusalem or even in Judea, but in Cilicia.
What did Paul know about Jesus?
What follows from this point on, is taken from lecture 7 in Dr Ehrman’s series of 8 lectures.
At the beginning of the lecture, Dr Ehrman made a poignant statement: “What did Paul actually know about Jesus? . . . . Well, there isn’t much evidence that Paul knew much of anything at all about the historical Jesus!” Paul never once references any of the content we find in the gospels.
What Paul knew about Jesus can be written on the back of a postcard, and summed up in the following nine points (even if we included the six disputed letters, it wouldn’t make much difference):
1. that Jesus was Jewish (Gal 4:4)
2. that he had brothers / cousins, one of whom was called James (1Cor 9:5, Gal 1:19)
3. that he had 12 apostles (1Cor 15:5)
4. that he ministered among Jews (Rom 15:8)
5. that he was ‘handed over’ (1Cor 11:23)
6. that he predicted his death (1Cor 11:23-25)
7. that he taught against divorce (1Cor 7:10, cf. Mk 10:11-12)
8. that he taught that ministers should be paid (1Cor 9:14, cf. Lk 10:7)
9. that he was crucified (references too frequent to mention)
What Paul doesn’t mention
There are a number of notable things that Paul doesn’t ever mention. He doesn’t mention Jesus’s mother’s name, or anything about a virgin birth. Paul says, ‘Christ was born of a woman’ (Gal 4:4). This was a poetic way of saying, ‘Christ had a normal human birth’.
You can compare this phrase with how Job (Job 14:1-2) says, “Mortals, born of a woman, are few of days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.” Similarly, Mt 11:11 says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” This is a way of saying, “Of all human beings ever born….”
So the implication with how Paul phrases it, suggests that Paul is not aware of the virgin birth. He seems to imply that although Jesus had a normal, human birth, he was also a divine being who came down from heaven (see earlier statement on Jesus’s equality with God, Phil 2:6-10).
Paul also doesn’t say anything about Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Interestingly, the Gospel of John also seems to be completely unaware of the assertion in Matthew and Luke that Jesus was born in Bethlehem:
On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.” Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others asked, “But how can the Messiah come from Galilee? Because does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants, even from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” (Jn 7:40-42)
Furthermore, the above quote from John’s gospel suggests that John thought that Jesus was not of Davidic descent.
There is no mention of any sisters, only brothers – and that these brothers took their wives along with them during their ministries. In 1Cor 9:5, Paul writes that, “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Peter?”
Of these brothers, there is only mention of James, whom Paul had met, but Paul didn’t have a very high opinion of him (Gal 2:6). In the Clementine Literature (in ‘Ascents of James’, chapter 70), it says that, before Paul was converted, and while he was still a captain in the Temple guard, there was an episode where Saul tried to kill James by throwing him down the steps to the Huldah tunnels (which were the exit tunnels from the Temple Mount). Later in Jerusalem, when he went to discuss the matter of Jews eating with Gentiles, and met with James, Peter and John, Paul got angry with James and tried to attack him, but was stopped by Peter (‘Clementine Recognitions’, Book 2, chs 48-49).
What Paul says about Jesus’s Ministry to Jews
Paul says that Jesus was born under the Law (Gal 4:4), and was a ‘servant to the circumcised’. He also claims that Jesus was from the line of David (Rom 1:3). Dr Ehrman says that, “In antiquity, Jews did not keep their genealogies” – a point which I found notable. I think he meant that people did not keep their exact lineages, how precisely they were related to whom, and so on. The implication is that the detailed descent from David to Jesus in Matthew and Luke would not have been possible to put together. As far as I know, people were only aware of their immediate clan affiliation, and their immediate relatives, much as most of us today only really know our immediate extended family.
From what little Paul says of Jesus’s ministry, he tacitly acknowledges that Jesus ministered only to Jews. This ties in with Yeshua’s explicit command to his apostles, not to go anywhere among the Gentiles or Samaritans, only to the lost sheep of Israel’ (Mt 10:5-6).
Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances
Paul says that Jesus appeared to ‘the Twelve’ (1Cor 15:5). He uses the same word ὤφθη (ophthe) to describe the appearance to the apostles, as he does to describe the conversion appearance to himself. This is not definitive proof of post-resurrection appearances, only that they all had some kind of vision of Jesus.
Jesus being ‘handed over’ – was Paul aware of the story about Judas?
In 1Cor 11:23, Paul writes, “on the night he was betrayed…..” This is how the phrase is normally translated. Dr Ehrman examines this word that is normally translated as, ‘betrayed’. He says that the Greek verb, παραδίδωμι paradidomi, can simply mean ‘to hand over’, because it is used of objects as well, like you would ‘hand over’ a book or a scroll.
The verb can also be used for oneself, as when you hand yourself over to someone. In Gal 2:20, the same verb is used thus: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and handed himself over for me.” Or Rom 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but handed himself over for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
Dr Ehrman says that 1Cor 11:23 should instead read, “on the night he was handed over,” which probably means, ‘when he was handed over to death’, or ‘handed over to his fate’. Paul doesn’t seem to be even implicitly aware of any betrayal story by Judas Iscariot.
Normally, the Gospel of John doesn’t agree with most details in the 3 Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke). However, the details of the final week in Yeshua’s life, have remarkable similarities across all four gospel versions. This suggests that the details of the last week of Yeshua’s life were so well known, that even the author of John’s gospel couldn’t change them. We can be certain therefore, that the betrayal by Judas was an established, widely known detail of the story. However, Paul makes no mention of it.
The Last Supper and the Invention of the Eucharist
Hyam Maccoby (chapter 11 of The Mythmaker), makes the convincing argument that the story of the ‘Last Supper’ – particularly of the Eucharist, when Jesus supposedly said that the bread symbolised his body, and the wine symbolised his blood – was an invention of Paul. In 1Cor 11:23, Paul explicitly says, “For the tradition I received from the Lord, and handed onto you, is that on the night he was handed over, the Lord Jesus took some bread etc etc”.
Paul did not say that he learned of the story of the Last Supper from any Jewish Follower of Yeshua, or even from anyone who was present at the meal; he openly admits that he got the story directly from ‘the Lord’, presumably as a vision. According to Paul’s own words, the story of the eucharist has its sole origin in a vision Paul had. This makes it certain, to my mind, that the ritual of the bread and wine, the body and blood, were never words spoken by Yeshua, or actions performed by Yeshua.
The Eucharist is symbolic cannibalism, and Jews would baulk at cannibalism, even if it were meant to be symbolic. The meal is, however, very similar to the ritual meals of Mediterranean Mystery religions, and would not have felt strange to Christians who had been former pagans.
The story of the eucharist in Lk 22:19-20 is virtually identical to 1Cor 11:23-25. It seems that the Corinthians were lacking in any kind of solemnity when it came to observing fellowship together, so Maccoby theorises that Paul made the story up, in order to get the Corinthians to behave at fellowship meals.
What does Paul know about the teachings of Jesus?
Paul rarely mentions anything remotely like what Jesus taught.
He tells Christians to love their neighbour (loving your neighbour fulfils the whole of the Law, Gal 5:14), but then every Jewish teacher taught this, since it is the second most important commandment in Judaism.
Paul mentions paying taxes (Rom 13:6-7), but he doesn’t imply that he got the teaching from Jesus.
The only 2 things where he says that Jesus said such and such, were in his teaching about divorce, and about paying ministers.
Where divorce is concerned, Paul forbids divorce altogether (1Cor 7:11-13). However, the teaching of Yeshua about divorce is about a very specific example – where a husband divorces his wife in order to marry a woman he is lusting after. The implication is that a man who divorces for this reason is still committing adultery, even though he is legally divorced from his first wife. Paul’s teaching on divorce and Yeshua’s teaching on divorce are not the same thing.
Paul also says that Jesus taught that all ministers should be paid a wage:
“Don’t you know that those who serve in the Temple get their food from the Temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded me that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.” (1Cor 9:13-14). Note the words in bold. Did Paul get this from a vision too, like the account of the eucharist?
Jesus said, “Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for ‘the worker deserves his wages’. Do not move around from house to house”. (Lk 10:7) This is the only teaching that is more or less the same between Paul and Jesus. Just this one thing. Out of everything that Yeshua taught.
An apostle is someone who repeats the exact message of his master verbatim, adding nothing, and taking nothing away. Does this one teaching make Paul an apostle? I personally don’t think so.
All the notable things that Paul doesn’t ever mention
There are a number of very notable things that Paul never mentions:
— the virgin birth
— Jesus’s baptism
— any exorcisms performed by Jesus
— his healing miracles
— raising anyone from the dead
— any other kind of miracle
— Jesus’s preaching about a coming kingdom of God
— any of his parables, speeches, sermon on the Mount etc
— disputes with Pharisees, or even the topics of those disputes
— no mention about what Jesus said about himself
— Jesus’s final journey to Jerusalem
— the final night in Gethsemane
— the arrest of Jesus
— either one of the two trials of Jesus
— being flogged by the Romans
Why doesn’t Paul mention any details about Jesus’s life? The only two details that matter to Paul are that Jesus was crucified, and that Jesus was resurrected – that’s all. For Paul, the entire point of Jesus’s life was his death – that’s it. Nothing else.
The suspicious Gap in the Details
So, did Paul think that Jesus’s life didn’t matter? Why didn’t Paul talk about what Jesus said and did?
During the period of Paul’s ministry (48-65CE), there doesn’t seem to be any interest in knowing about Jesus’s life, words or works. However, after Paul’s death, the gospel writers suddenly come along to fill in all the details. Was Jesus’s life just never discussed among early Gentile Christians? Ever?
There had to be a reason for the lack of detail circulating during Paul’s ministry, and for the sheer proliferation of detail after Paul died. Is it possible that Paul forbade details about Jesus’s life being made widely known? Was Paul so completely dismissive of Jesus’s life, and so completely focussed on his death, that his followers felt too uncomfortable whenever Paul was present, to try and find out about Jesus’s life?
My own thoughts on this, are that it is possible that Gentile Pagans could have been chiding Gentile Christians for not knowing anything about Jesus’s life, and at some point, the simple fact of this lack of knowledge would have reached beyond a joke. It’s also possible that Pagan Gentiles were saying things like, ‘Well, the Jewish Followers of your Jesus are saying completely different things about him!’ At this point, maybe Gentile Christians just had to put together something, simply in order to counter the Jewish stories circulating about Yeshua. And they came up with their own stories about Jesus – fantastical stories of miracles and healings, which were stories required for someone they were told was a god in human form. Remember, it’s pointless claiming that they got their stories directly from the apostles, because Paul was proud to say that he got nothing from the apostles.
Was Jesus’s life so completely irrelevant to Paul?
Dr Ehrman asks the questions, “Did Paul think Jesus’ life didn’t matter? Why didn’t Paul ever talk about what Jesus said and did?”
Dr Ehrman went on to say that some people say that:
— Paul might have assumed people knew the stories of Jesus’s life (but then, why didn’t Paul even allude to any story? He never alluded to even one single story, only the one about the Eucharist, of which he was the likely author)
— Did Paul consider Jesus’s life so completely irrelevant, to the point that he didn’t even mention his teachings or values? Was that why he didn’t ever mention Jesus’s life or teachings?
— Did Paul simply not have any occasion to mention anything (but then, surely he would have had Gentile followers who would have been extremely curious about why Paul was not mentioning absolutely anything at all – it’s only human nature)
— Did Paul in fact not know anything about Jesus, neither his teachings or actions? (He never even mentions any miracles which, you would have thought, would have helped Paul in his missionising activities – especially among pagan cultures, which automatically viewed miracles as proof of truth)
Paul discusses topics where it would have been enormously useful for him to quote anything Jesus said, but he didn’t. For example, in his command to Roman Christians to pay their taxes, it would have been an ideal opportunity to mention the episode when Jesus spoke about taxes, but he doesn’t.
When he was persecuting Jewish Followers of the Way, surely he might have known something about what Jesus’s Jewish followers were saying about him? Unless, of course, what they were saying about him was nothing like what Paul was later claiming about him.
In 1Cor 2:2, Paul says, “I know nothing among you, except Christ crucified”. Maybe Paul really didn’t know anything at all about Jesus’s life. Maybe the vision he had on the road to Damascus convinced him that he didn’t need to know anything.
Or maybe – and I’m just throwing out possibilities here – was it the case that he knew a few things about Jesus’s life, but he never mentioned them because they would contradict what Paul himself was teaching?
Paul’s reliance on being the victim of persecution by Jews around the Roman Empire
In the Book of Acts, and in some of his letters, Paul plays the victim of harassment and hounding by Jews in various Gentile cities he visits. The picture Paul paints is that the local Jewish people are trying to suppress the truth about the risen Christ. I personally think this portrayal of victimhood is used as his own propaganda, so that his Gentile Christian followers would never want to listen to a single word that any Jewish follower of Yeshua might say to counter Paul’s teachings.
If Paul was saying that Jesus Christ’s resurrection proved that he was more than a human being, and was in fact a divine being who was incarnated in human flesh to die for the sins of humanity, then just consider this: if what he said was all a lie, something he himself made up from visions he had, and the Jewish followers of Yeshua were simply trying to object to the untruths Paul was determined to proliferate, then wouldn’t their objections to Paul make more sense? If Paul was misrepresenting our prophet and teacher, what might they have done to show their opposition and their objections to Paul?
Summary
Paul never mentions anything about Yeshua’s life, ministry, teachings or deeds. Maybe Paul didn’t consider them relevant to his own gospel, or maybe he just didn’t know anything about Yeshua, except that he was crucified and resurrected.
Perhaps the most emotional statement in Paullist belief is that ’Christ died to save me’. It brings many to tears, it brings a lump to the throat. And, yes, having someone give their life for you – under any circumstances – is the most supreme sacrifice that any human being can give. That is the reason why this belief was chosen as the central belief in Christianity – because of its natural, emotional pull on the human heart.
Now, Evangelicals constantly justify there beliefs to people like us by saying things like, “Anything is possible for our God! Our God can do anything!” So my angle is this: If your god can do absolutely anything, why would he invent a theological system or even a universe, which requires the blood-sacrifice of his son? Why would any parent put their child to death? Would you? Look in your children’s eyes, and tell me, are you willing to kill your children, even to save the whole of humanity? No? Then why would God! Paul’s god is a psychopath! Our real, living God would find another way, because anything really is possible for our God.
The final two reaction articles
My penultimate ‘reaction article’ will focus on Dr Ehrman’s fifth lecture, ‘The Gospel of Paul’, and his sixth lecture, ‘Paul as a Teacher of Morals’. I hope to have this ready for you in a couple of weeks (by 22nd Sept 2023, barring any internet problems). This will leave the 8th lecture, ‘Did Paul and Jesus have the same religion?’ to be completed by 6th Oct 2023.