What Paul Meant
by Garry Wills (2006)© H. J. Spencer [04Aug.2021] 6,900 words 10 pages).
ABSTRACT
This short 200-page book attempts to defend Saint Paul against his many critics, such as Jefferson, GB Shaw and Nietzsche. Historian and Christian, Garry Wills re-analyzes the few accepted books of Paul, trying to see the words of Jesus in his writings. As a Catholic, it is critical for him and his church to defend the principal contributor to the present version of Christianity. He contrasts the writings of the usual Gospel writers, who wrote many decades after the death of Jesus, with Paul's living writing soon after. Wills admits that Paul never met the live Jesus but his vision transformed Paul's life. This encounter turned this zealous Jewish-fanatical intellectual and initial persecutor of the first followers of Jesus into a believer, so that he could "proclaim him to the nations". Paul spent the rest of his life traveling tirelessly from city to city, meeting with believers and sharing the Jesus message. His letters are seen in this light, describing his story of how the new Jesus Cult tried to reconcile their Jewish faith with the promised return of the Messiah and its meaning for their lives and how women first became leaders and partners with Paul in this task. It was vital to Paul that Jesus be presented as a Jewish Messiah. Only seven of the 13 letters are reviewed here as passing the modern tests of contemporary religious scholarship. It is ironic that both Paul and all the twelve apostles failed to sell their message to the early believers, leaving it to the next generation of God-fanatics (the 'Church Fathers') to create a viable organization that could hijack the self-destructive Roman Empire and use it to make a global religion.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Garry Wills (born 1934) is an American author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the History of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General NonFiction in 1993 for his book "Lincoln at Gettysburg". Wills has written over fifty books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of History. His father, Jack Wills, was from a Protestant background but his mother was from a strong Irish Catholic family. He was reared as Catholic and grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, graduating in 1951 from Campion High School, a Jesuit institution in Wisconsin. He entered and then left the Society of Jesus, deciding he was to be more a scholar than a priest. Wills earned a B.A. degree from Saint Louis University in 1957 and an M.A. from Xavier University in 1958 (both private Jesuit universities): with both degrees in philosophy. He gained his PhD in classics (Latin and Greek) from Yale University in 1961. He taught history at Johns Hopkins University from 1962 to 1980. In 2008, he was called "perhaps the most distinguished Catholic intellectual in America over the last 50 years". Unsurprisingly, he is a self-defined political conservative.
REVIEWER'S WEBSITE
All of the reviewer's prior essays and other reviews (referenced herein) may be found, freely available at: https://jamescook.academia.edu/HerbSpencer
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 PROLOGUE
Author Wills begins this book with some of the major criticisms of St. Paul (referred to as just 'Paul' here after). He starts with the claim that Paul deserved to be called the Supreme Betrayer of Jesus, rather than Judas who only surrendered his body but Paul buried his spirit by substituting his own dark theology for the simple preacher from Galilee. Jefferson wrote (in a private letter) that he believed that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." Bernard Shaw said the same thing in the preface to his play Androcles and the Lion: "There has never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus." Shaw told a correspondent in 1928 that "it would have been better for the world if Paul had never been born". Nietzsche called Paul in his The Antichrist - the 'Bad News Bearer', a man with "a genius for hatred." Paul inspired pessimisms as influential as those of Augustine, Luther and Calvin. The letters of Paul in the New Testament of the Bible become the place to go for his attacks on women, marriage, gays and Jews - especially Jews, who have become less than happy suspecting that the deep anti-Semitism of Christianity comes in large part from Paul. Some Jews have said: "Jesus yes; Paul never."
1.2 NEW TESTAMENT
The New Testament is the second division of the canonical Christian Bible. It discusses the teaching and person of Jesus, in the first four apostolic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); as well as the major events in first-century Christianity. These include the Acts of the Apostles (Early Days plus Paul's travels). The complete collection of the 13 letters of Paul consist of almost half of the 27 accepted books in the New Testament. These are followed by the seven Catholic epistles (James, Peter (2), John (3) and Jude). The final entry is the controversial Book of Revelations. This small collection was first formally canonized during the Church Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) in North Africa. Only a bunch of bookish intellectuals would dare establish a global religion on this this thin gruel of ancient texts with minimal providence to original witnesses.
2 PAUL and JESUS
There is minimal evidence for the existence of Jesus himself and even knowledge about Paul is thin. He is believed to have been born (about 5 AD) and raised in Tarsus (South-West Turkey). He was a selfeducated Jewish scholar (Pharisee) who was quite fanatical about his Jewishness. So much so, that he went to Syria to persecute the new cult of the False-Messiah but suffered a traumatic, psychic experience on the road from Damascus to Jerusalem when he was blinded for three days. He only visited Judea (three years later) and only stayed for two weeks. Indeed, the great modern scholar of the New Testament, Rudolf Bultmann wrote in 1955 that: "the teaching of the historical Jesus plays no role, or practically none, in Paul. In fact, his letters barely show any traces of the influence of the Palestinian tradition concerning the history and preaching of Jesus."
2.1 PAUL'S RIVALRY WITH THE 12 APOSTLES
As Wills writes: "With no credentials for knowing Jesus outside his own private revelations, Paul dared to disagree with and criticize the original Twelve; especially Peter (their leader) and James (the brother of Jesus, who presided over the gathering of New Brothers in Jerusalem). He called both Peter and James hypocrites as they did not share his vision. As Paul was always at odds with those who had known Jesus first hand, it is no surprise that he was not welcome in Jerusalem, so that with the demise of the Twelve (perhaps in the abortive Jewish rebellion in 70 AD) Paul effectively became the only founder of historical Christianity.
2.2 OVERVIEW OF PAUL'S LETTERS
2.2.1 AUTHENTICITY
Wills tells us that six of the letters have been rejected by modern biblical scholarship. Many of the others are called composites, as they are made up of several letters (or parts) that contradict one another or even themselves (two in Corinthians II, perhaps six in Corinthians I, seven in Romans). Thus, the seven truly authentic letters may be made up of a dozen or more fragments authored by Paul. There were probably later letters suppressed or destroyed because they were an embarrassment to the later gatherings; hence the blackout on Paul's later days and death.
2.2.2 PROBLEMS
Scholars now view Paul's letters as being responses to local crises; he is always thinking under pressure; in the heat of immediate controversy. He is not just a mystic and theologian but a street-fighter, often harried. He sometimes appears to be too pragmatic, claiming that he is: "Too all people I am all things, so I may in all ways rescue some." He comes across as a Pyramid-Scheming hustler building his growing base.
2.2.3 THE GOSPELS
Unlike the simplistic historical view of the four gospels held by many up to the 19th century, they are now seen as sophisticated theological constructs, none written by their putative authors, all drawing on second-, third- or fourth-hand accounts — and all written from 25 to 50 years after Paul's letters. In fact, only Paul's letters can be authenticated to a specific author; even these were written about twenty years after the death of Jesus; the other letters were written a further 20 or 50 years after his. Indeed, all of these writings are imaginary - not historical, even Luke's writings appear to not know of the existence of Paul's letters. Wills is very skeptical about the knowledge or accuracy of any of Luke's writings, as Luke is writing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. With Luke and his contemporaries, there is the beginning of a separate church with a primitive structure, in which various communities are becoming connected in a more systematic way.
2.2.4 PAUL'S THEOLOGY
Wills claims that Paul never thinks of himself as a convert to some new religion; he preaches the Jewish God, Yahweh and the Jewish Messiah (Jesus). He preaches in synagogues, so when he brings others to believe in Jesus, he teaches them from the Jewish holy writings, which were the only 'Bible' of his day.
2.2.5 PAUL'S REVELATION
Garry Wills simply accepts Paul's claims of his encounter with Jesus while on the Road to Damascus, where he claims direct equivalence with all other claims of the resurrection because this event had been foretold in the Jewish sacred writings. He presents no evidence of this experience: just that Paul's was as not quite as direct as to James and all the other personal witnesses, just "heard a voice" in his head. [Reviewer's Comment: Luckily, for Paul there were no psychiatrists around to send him to an institution.] Like too many mathematicians, Paul exaggerates from a simple insight into a global theory: as he expects what he imagined happened to Jesus in his vision to occur to other believers after they die. Paul was just exhibiting a Death-Wish, as Wills describes: "Paul is attributing his own yearning to be freed into the higher state where Jesus has led the way." This fitted with Paul's comments to the Corinthian spiritualists who had boasted of their own ecstatic states as a warrant for their aberrations. In a footnote, Wills says that Paul would never have been able to recognize Jesus (as he had never met him); "the risen body is a mystery not so easily explained but Jesus surely knew how to make himself known".
As a true Pharisee, Paul's basic revelation of faith was always that Jesus died for our sins and rose again, in accord with the sacred writings of the Jewish writings {1 Cor 15:3-4}. As Wills summarizes: This was his center of salvation history, for the Jews and for the world. It is what he preaches. Without it, he would have nothing to say and the gatherings would have nothing to bring them into existence. He quotes first Corinthians again: "As death came through one man, so resurrection come through one man {1 Cor 15:1221}; [with Wills failing himself to see the illogicality: because the Son of God has immortality does NOT imply that this extends to all of mankind.]
Author Wills gives little credibility to Luke's words about Paul, as in the Acts of the Apostles. Indeed, he views his story as "so sensational that there is little wonder that it eclipsed Paul's own words. He sees this as Luke's Hellenistic novel - with its wandering preachers, miracles, sea adventures and long rhetorical speeches. He calls Luke a theological artist, creating for a purpose: presenting doctrine as narrative. He then offers eight detailed critical analyses of the Luke story of Paul's revelation. He concludes that Luke's fiction has replaced a far more interesting fact [why a fact, and not another opinion?].
2.3 THE DIASPORA
Wills accepts that Paul is not overly concerned with the real events in the life of Jesus. However, this seems to have disturbed Luke, who in the Acts of the Apostles tries to establish as many ties between Paul and Jerusalem as possible. In the first century, historian Wills claims there were about 6 million Jews in all of the Diaspora (the spreading of the Jews across the Roman Empire), making up more than 10% of most major cities in the Roman Empire — 180,000 in Alexandria alone and 50,000 in Rome. Matthew claims {Mt 23:15} that the Pharisees were active missionaries. This 'scattering' reflected the large number of early Brothers (new followers of Jesus) in Syria and Cilicia, centered in Damascus and Antioch.
Wills expends many pages quoting Matthew to reinforce Paul, in particular that "the essence of the Law is love, as repeated by Jesus" {Mt 22:37-40}. He is very complementary about Paul's summary about love in the famous passage quoted from first Corinthians {1 Cor 13:1-13}: "Love is patient, is kind. It does not envy others or boast of itself. It is not swollen with self. It is not wayward or grasping. It does not flare with anger, nor harbor a grudge. It takes no joy in evil but delights in truth. It keeps all confidences, all trust, all hope, all endurance. ... For the present then, three thing matter — believing, hoping and loving. But supreme is love.".
2.4 PAUL ON THE ROAD
Wills opens his third chapter with an explicit admiration of Paul's traveling tenacity: admiring his estimated 10,000 miles he walked on the critical, new Roman roads built to move the imperial army around. Wills then corrects the impression that Paul spent his life 'walking'; he claims that he spent many months with each community. He says that Paul began in the already established 'Gatherings' (of Brothers) at Damascus and Antioch. Luke tells that Paul was a tent maker that would have damaged his hands so that his letters were all dictated to scribes. It is probable that when Paul arrived in a new town on his tour that he would preach at the local synagogue, and only when driven out by the less-convinced orthodox majority would he turn to the fewer non-Jews. Many of these are referred to as 'God-fearing': non-Jews, fascinated by the reputation of the Jewish religion, so welcomed in synagogues, where they could study, pray and contribute money and advice, without being (yet) circumcised. He quotes a fellow scholar that Judaism, by the third century, may well have been a more popular religion amongst the pagans; and therefore a more powerful rival to Christianity in the race for the soul of the Roman world. If Paul based his own mission on appeals to this body of Gentiles, his constant use of Jewish scripture in addressing them makes sense. They were interested in Moses before he offered them Jesus. This also helps explain Jewish hostility to Paul - he was drawing people away from the orthodox Jews that could be important to their position in the Empire.
3 PAUL and PETER
Paul repeatedly makes it clear that he had the prickliest of relationships with the Brothers in Jerusalem. Wills calculates that he only went there three times, each time reluctantly or with trepidation. In contrast, Luke (in the Acts) has Paul making six trips there, including an early one to study with the Jewish sage, Gamaliel. Luke is writing after the leader of the Brothers in Jerusalem, James the brother of Jesus had been killed, before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, in 70 AD.
Though Luke devotes more of his narrative to Paul, since the Diaspora gatherings were the more successful ones, he gives Peter the leading role in almost every respect. Luke gives Peter the key role of founder of the Christian church when Peter made the long first statement of the revelations to the nations on the occasion of the Pentecost in Jerusalem. Paul says that at his confrontation with Peter and James in Jerusalem, he himself was given a mission to the nations; but Luke says that Peter was the first to be sent to the Gentiles. Luke describes the delegates from Jerusalem all going to Antioch to agree that all Gentile Brothers be circumcised. Paul was requested by the locals to defend their practice of non-circumcision. James then agrees that circumcision is too high a barrier for many non-Jews to cross. They should limit the rules for them to four essentials: refrain from idol worship, from sexual license, and eating animals that have been strangled or bled to death (Kosher). Author Wills condemns Luke for not only invoking the structures of his own day but helping to advocate and create them. Indeed, Wills relates how most of Luke's account (written 30 years later) is contradicted by Paul's own words. When Peter and Paul were both in Antioch, Peter received a warning from James in Jerusalem telling him that he should not be eating nonKosher meals with the Gentile Brothers. When Peter complied, Paul became furious as he saw the Lord's Meal as the symbol of unity for all the Brothers: Jew or Gentile. Wills believes that Paul was not narrating chronologically in Galatians but was reinforcing his own position with the Galatians later.
4 PAUL AND WOMEN
4.1 MARRIAGE and MISOGYNY
Both Paul's Judaism and the monkish leadership of the early church have led to a diminished role for all women in Christianity that is still evident in the excessive masculinity of the present Catholic Church; Wills devotes a chapter to salvaging Paul's misogynist reputation. Paul often addressed his letters to husband and wife team of missionaries, such as Andronicus and Junia, Aquila and Prisca, Philogus and Julia, Nereus and Olympas, indicating that these paired-sex evangelical teams were common. Willis identifies the anti-female movement peaking in the Middle Ages (before the ninth century) when the councils of (all male) bishops decided that a woman apostle was unthinkable as this offended the male monopoly of church offices and honors that had exploded by that time. Although Wills quotes some further positive greetings to women, Paul intervenes in a Corinthian dispute on head-coverings but here his social conservatism returns when he uses an old theological view that man can go uncovered as he is the direct image of God, while woman is the image of God's image (man) - created after him and meant to be his helpmate {1 Cor 11:7-9}. Wills recognizes that the old sexist views are reversing the new egalitarianism of its earliest beginnings; a patriarchy is being re-imposed. Indeed, in his first letter to Timothy {1 Tim 2:11-12} he is especially blunt in telling women to shut up: "A woman must be an entirely submissive learner. I forbid women to teach or to take the lead over her husband — she should hold her peace." Wills adds that some may suspect Paul of misogyny since he is opposed to marriage; he writes that he would prefer that the unmarried remain that way "as I am", saying that married people are busied with concern for each other, which can drain away concern for the Lord {1 Cor 7:32-34}. Paul had to be careful here as Peter and the brothers of Jesus traveled about with their wives {1 Cor 9:5}. Wills claims that Paul is being merely eschatological: a distraction from his general social passivity: "As a person was, when called by God, so let him continue." Similarly, he is against political agitation or reform. Indeed, he recalls Paul saying that there is one condition, where he thinks marriage is preferable - if one is so enflamed by passion that it becomes a distraction from the work of revelation; then: "Better to marry than to stay enflamed." [Obviously, Paul had long forgotten the physical basis of sexual love.] Since history is ending [Oops!!] the raising of children is no longer a rationale for marriage. In spite of these mixed messages, Wills still retains his faith in Paul's anti-misogyny.
4.2 PAUL and THE TROUBLES
Six of Paul's seven recognizably authentic documents were addressed to gatherings with specific troubles.
4.2.1 THESSALONIANS
As one Pauline expert has said: "Paul is too often distracted into damage control." His first letter to his team in Thessalonica (the capital of Macedonia) admits he was forced to leave quickly by his Jewish enemies. Paul here seems to hint at a fear that the leaders of the community are now setting themselves apart from the working class or the poorer Brothers. This letter is where the 'End Times' is first mentioned in the New Testament. Here Paul is addressing a growing existential anxiety: some are concerned about dying before the Lord's return. The fact of a debate is diminishing the credibility of the principal message of eternal life {1 Thess 4:15}.
4.2.2 GALATIANS
Paul's most polemical letter is to the Galatians; it tries to resolve the deeply dividing issue of circumcision. He fails to take his own advice about spreading peace. He writhes with anxiety, as if he is in renewed birthpangs for his children {Gal 4:19}. He is wounded and he means to wound others - even telling them to castrate themselves; if they feel so strongly about it, then they should cut off, not only the foreskin but the whole member {Gal 5:12}. [Once again, Paul's tribal ethnicity rears its ugly head: if he were sincere about the equality of men and women, why is he making such a fuss of only a visible male commitment?].
4.2.3
PHILIPPIANS
Phillipi, in Northern Greece, was the first European town Paul reached. He views it in a positive light and says he is happy that the revelation is still being spread despite his imprisonment, though he regrets that some use that fact to cause division - presumably with the Jews, who are blamed for turning him over to the Romans but he is concerned that the 'circumcisionists' are at work among them - the "dogs" as he calls them.
4.2.4 PHILEMON
This was a personal letter to help one man who had held a gathering of Brothers at his home {Phlm 2}. One of Philemon's slaves has done something wrong and has gone to Paul to act as an intercessor with his owner. Paul asks Philemon for special favors for this slave but not freedom as Wills tells us that slaves made up a large fraction (one third, perhaps) of the urban population at that time and Paul was wise enough to avoid raising that huge distraction to his mission. There is a hint of financial transgressions as Paul offers to repay the wronged owner.
4.2.5 CORINTHIANS
Of all the gatherings Paul addressed, those in Corinth were the most unmanageable; his dealings with them were "sticky, thorny and cantankerous". He stayed with them on three or more occasions, sent personal assistants to them in his absence, received their delegations and wrote them at least five letters or more; these have come down to us as two agglutinated letters. Factions were always spawning in Corinth. There were problems of doctrine, discipline and vision; problems of class, of gender, of personalities. The main problem in Corinth seems to have been a form of 'super-spirituality': some people became puffed up and "airy", saying their newest gurus (claiming to represent Peter) are higher minded than Paul {1 Cor 1:12}, that their own gifts of prophecy and speaking in tongues bring them closer to the Spirit than ordinary folk and they even know of a better form of baptism. These "slick operators" are modishly 'daring'; as their women are prophesying without head-dress. Paul tells these high-flyers to defer to "the weak" and not to form a special group to eat better things at the Lord's Meal, since that destroys the whole point of the union of the Messiah being realized in their eating together. In fact, he criticizes one of their key important ideas: "Everything is permitted (to the higher spirits)." This 'Grappling with the Corinthians' was for him a harrowing struggle, even in its jumbled records.
The letter to the Romans is the only one, extant and authentic, that is addressed to a place he had never seen, to gatherings that were formed before he even became a Brother; it is also his longest and most theologically ambitious. However, he had received reports of ways in which the roman gatherings were troubled. This gave him an opportunity to address the Jerusalem Brothers without direct confrontation. Wills views this letter as one Paul took great pains over; its rhetoric is highly wrought, its argument dense and ingenious. It is an intense engagement with his Jewish past and his offended brethren in Jerusalem. The trouble in Rome was a revival of his problems in Antioch: the Jewish food laws. In Rome, it is the Gentile Brothers who now have the upper hand and are intimidating the Jewish Brothers. Here, Wills reminds his readers of recent Roman history going back to the Emperor in 49 AD, who solved a local problem by expelling all of the Jews (whether 'Chrestus' Brothers or not). The Jews had worked out a viable modus vivendi with the Roman authorities but the new cult of believers (the Brothers) disturbed this delicate situation, dividing Jewish family members by their departures from the Law. These important Gentile friends and patrons were a source of protection, of political and financial support for the always endangered Jewish minorities. So, the orthodox Jews had distanced the Brothers as not authentic but only a 'new' variant and disruptive. When in 55 BC Claudius died, they were all able to return but some of the more discreet Brothers had stayed behind without ongoing harassment from the synagogues. The newly returning Jewish Brothers would now be the outsiders in their own surroundings. Those who had kept their ties to the Jewish Law would find little sympathy for their ways in gatherings that had lived with only minimal connections to the Jewish origins of Jesus.
Paul's letter is an impassioned assertion that those Jewish connections can never be severed. Paul's main task is to tell the Gentile Brothers that God's promise to the Jewish people is not broken - it cannot be done. He devotes most of the first 13 chapters to this thesis. Only in the next two chapters does he get around to the observation of food codes in Rome. If the Brothers must recognize God's unbreakable commitment to the whole Jewish people, how much more must they see the reason for Brothers to honor their ties to the people God first chose. Indeed , he was hoping for Kosher observance but did not insist on it: "Why use food to block God's own project? Nothing is unclean of itself."
5 PAUL AND THE JEWS
5.1 ANTI-SEMITISM?
Wills begins his seventh chapter with the reminder of the calumny that Paul is a father of Christian antiSemitism. So, did he ever call the Jews Jesus-killers? No: he explicitly denies it {1 Cor 2:8}: "They were ruled by the Romans, who killed Jesus." The accusation in First Thessalonians is viewed as a later addition to deflect blame away from Rome. Next; did Paul ever say that the Jews were cursed by God? Here, Wills presents two contradictory writings. In {Rom 11:1}: "I tell you that God has never repudiated his own people." But in {Gal 3:10} he writes: "Those who act under the Law are under a curse." Paul never presents Jesus as the God of the Greeks (the Wisdom of Plato) as Luke does once. Indeed, he proclaims that the Gentile Brothers are 'the seed of Abraham' {Rom 15:9-12} [a distorted, metaphorical view of biology?]. Paul's harshest words about his fellow Jews are about his fellow Brother Jews, the ones who would later be called Christians: the ones he calls "hypocrites" (including Peter and James and Barnabas). This makes Paul, in Wills' eyes, an anti Jewish-Christian polemicist rather than an anti-Semite, since Paul is seen by Wills as the ultra-Semite: "For Jewishness, I outstripped many contemporaries of my own lineage, extreme in my jealous preservation of the Patriarch's traditions." {Gal 1:14}. He goes on: "I could prefer to be outcast from Messiah myself if it would help my brothers, the forebears of my flesh, who are the Israelites. Theirs is the sonship and the splendor and the covenants and the gift of Law, and the rites and the promises. From them are the patriarchs and from them, by fleshly descent, is the Messiah, the god above all, may he ever be praised. Amen" {Rom 9:3-5}. He never boasts of being a Roman citizen, as done by Luke.
5.2 GOD'S LAW
In Romans, Paul refers to two kinds of Law: the Jewish Law of Moses and the Gentile's Natural Law, where men have perceived God's unseen attributes; knowable by his deeds (power and creation) and awareness of conscious and justice. However, most Gentiles are, as a whole, proud of their philosophy: fools and sinners {Rom 1:22}. Even when presented with the Mosaic Law, most Jews reject it because of their rebellious nature. To shame the Jews, God has called in the Gentiles to share the blessings promised to Jews. He is using the Gentiles, as he used Pharaoh, to correct the Jews. Paul did not think in terms of individual souls damned but of the rescue (or 'Salvation') of whole peoples - indeed of the whole cosmos (contrary to all Christian theology or even Darwinian Evolution). Unlike the later Greek-based excessive individualism of salvation of the unique person by an Act of Faith, Paul was recommending widespread social change centered on love of God and one's neighbor. Paul saw God acting "wholesale", not retail.
5.3 ANACHRONISMS
As Wills explains; the confusion here is language and history. In Paul's time there was no explicit Christianity - only some Gentiles who were interested in Jesus as the prophesied Messiah, there was no Christian organization or even a New Testament. There was no Christ or even "Jesus Lord"; there was only the words Khristios (or Kyrios) that like Messiah meaning "Anointed" in the theological sense. For Paul, this meant he always thought of Jesus as fulfilling Jewish Law and prophecy. There was also no 'Gospel' (as in the four famous, later ones) but the word only meant "favorable announcement" (of Jesus).
Indeed, the term Christian was an expression of abuse invented by Pliny the Younger or Tacitus or Lucian; like the other condemnatory labels: Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, etc. The word used by the Believers in referring to themselves was the Greek word Adelphoi (or Brothers) [but excluding Sisters? who Paul addressed by the feminine form Adelphe]. Again, as there was no formal organization, when the Brothers got together in someone's house it was referred to as a Gathering.
6 PAUL AND JERUSALEM
Wills concludes with a little appreciated story of money. He retells of Paul's huge scheme to get his remote groups to make regular donations to his Jerusalem-Brothers. [Here we see the ongoing problem of funding any voluntary scheme that has no regular access to cash: neither taxation or exchange of commercial values.] Paul has decided that the large number of "Needy" in the struggling Jerusalem-Gathering need help so he invents his scheme that is referred to often in his letters. He saw this as large as the immense Temple tax payments that poured into Jerusalem annually from the millions of Diaspora Jews. Paul tried to foster a competition in giving between the various groups that he wrote to.
Amongst Pauline scholars there has been much speculation about this scheme. What was Paul's real motivation? Was he trying to show the James Gang in Jerusalem that he was so successful? Was he trying to get into the inner group of new Brothers that operated out of Jerusalem, as his relations with them were always strained (in spite of Luke's efforts to disguise this fact). There has been speculation that James and crew were having trouble maintaining their identity against the many Jews who did not accept Jesus (a hostility that would soon claim the life of James himself). Indeed, to have Paul's largely Gentile contingent of uncircumcised Brothers bringing large resources to James could make his position even more untenable. A program of this kind was bound to become a provocation. Perhaps, Paul's mission had become a symbolic act, like the symbolic acts of the biblical prophets, who had often intended to disturb the security of Israel. None the less, Paul had his concerns: his physical safety from the "unpersuaded" and his spiritual acceptance by the Jerusalem Brothers. He was particularly nervous as James was working with all of the blood brothers of Jesus (Joseph, Judas and Simon {Mk 6:3}); all of whom had been at odds with Jesus during his lifetime (and none had been chosen as his inner team of Apostles for his mission). One of the great mysteries is what happened to all this cash. As Wills says, if Luke knew what happened, then he is not going to tell.
Much of the dispute over Luke's account of Paul has to do with his placement of the Jerusalem conference in the chronology of Paul's mission, which Luke has been the sole guide. There has been for a long time a tendency to save as much as possible of Luke's account as he was thought to provide the only fixed date in the whole story. One scholar has suggested that by dating the trip to Corinth after the Jerusalem encounter, as late as 52 AD, Luke was able to suggest that Paul's preceding work was a kind of apprenticeship under Barnabas, so that Paul's launch out into the fully Gentile world of Europe was done at James' earlier encouragement. The critical date was Paul's appearance before Gallio in 51-52. As another commentator added, the scholars really wanted this to have happened due to the many demonstrable inaccuracies of the Acts. Others see this as more of Luke's theological program as part of a likely Lukan parable rather than Pauline history. A Lukan metaphor for the proper attitude of Rome toward Christianity in general and to Paul in particular.
7 PAUL AND ROME
After Paul writes his letter to the Romans we find no more authenticated information from or about him. It all comes down to the Acts written by Luke, especially for his trip to Jerusalem and his putative final journey toward execution in Rome. Wills claims that the key to the Jerusalem events, as presented by Luke, is Paul's Roman citizenship. The Jews try to kill him but he asserts his right as a Roman citizen to be tried in Rome. Paul however never calls himself a Roman citizen. He does say that he was flogged three times by Roman officials as well as five times being whipped by Jews. Wills quotes Cicero that it was forbidden to flog a Roman citizen. Wills writes further that all of Luke's handling of Roman officials is suspect; Luke is as easy on Roman authorities as he is harsh on Jewish ones. He has an almost snobbish interest in officials and wealthy people (who are kind to those 'on the Path'), reflecting the need of Luke's churches to cultivate good relations with the Empire.
Luke sends Paul off toward Rome, after having spend two years in prison in Caesarea and three months on Malta after a shipwreck. When Paul finally reaches Rome, he is put under house arrest. Tradition (but not Luke) says that Paul and Peter (plus many Brothers) were killed by Nero as scapegoats for the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. The tradition has Paul beheaded and Peter crucified, as Paul could not be crucified as a Roman citizen. It is not surprising that Luke does not want to tell this story, as Nero was destroying one of Luke's principal theses, that Christians were a peace-loving people who won the respect of the Roman authorities. In recounting this story, Tacitus says that the vast majority of the victims by their own informants. Apparently, the two major factions - the Jewish and Gentile Brothers had become even more hostile to one another, as confirmed in a letter from Clement in the nineties AD Wills concludes this horrible story with the remark that Peter and Paul died as comrades: killed by the Romans, like Jesus.
8 REVIEW CONCLUSIONS
Wills' own life illustrates the power of religion: his Catholic mother insisted his first formal schooling was by the Jesuits [see my Jesuits essay], as she suspected that once they had their hands on him for a few years, he would be theirs for ever after. [She was a right, he remained committed to the Catholic Church but his intellectual strength prevented him from being a simple, dogmatic 'Echo Chamber'.] After reading this, I should perhaps revise my essay's filename from Paulism to Lukism. I had originally blamed Paul for the reinvention of the Jesus message but Wills shows that much more of the New Testament is due to Luke, who was setting up the post-Paul version of his new religion for him and his fellow Greek intellectuals.
8.1 BOOK STRENGTHS
The historian Wills presents a convincing portrait of Paul as a new "Regional Vice-President" wrestling with the cantankerous crew of new recruits that have to be continually kept in line. This book presents a believable view of the first promoter of the Jewish Messiah. However, it is more obvious that Christianity was constructed by a few Greek-educated intellectuals, like Luke and then the later Church Fathers. These were men like Wills, who are obsessed with their own idea of God (amateur theologians, who wish to justify their own beliefs by appealing to scraps of historical writings). Luke is presented here as a sharp 'operator' on the make to build a new organization. Wills continually pours scorn on this central narrator.
8.2 BOOK WEAKNESSES
Too many of Paul's authentic letters that have been preserved, to prove the historicity of his preaching are really administrative trivia: sorting out organizational problems in a growing movement. The Pauline experts are digging in the dust to add some limited credibility. Trying to make a coherent theology here is not worth the effort. Historian Wills is cursed with his academic training; he is also obsessed with documentation, even though none of the seven letters he studies here have much coherence or credibility. This attempt to justify the inclusion of the Stone-Age writings of a small Middle-Eastern tribe (the Old Testament) into the Message of Love from a true mystic (Jesus), described in a handful of anachronistic scribblings by a handful of fanatical theologians (also called the New Testament) fails to explain why this bunch of True Believers were able to position themselves to take over the world after they had hijacked the Roman Empire. Then again, the troubles Paul found in Rome plus the devastation of the failed Jewish Revolt, explain why Christianity was constructed by the non-Jews over the next 300 years. However, I cannot forgive them for constructing such a fearful theology that incorporated the Stone-Age views of the world that have been preserved in the Old Age Testament. An age of primitive killers competing for land.
8.3 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
This book adds little to the knowledge of Christianity and seems really targeted towards other academic scholars. It was obvious that the biggest attraction of Early Christianity was the promise of individual everlasting life to the new followers of the Jesus Messiah. Indeed, for many of the early converts that this was the beginning of the 'End Times'; so better get on board quickly, as most believed Jesus was going to return in their own life-times. [Oops! We are all still waiting for the imminent return of Jesus.]
Historical studies over such a great span of time (two millennia) are difficult at best; no wonder these theological archeologists scrabble over isolated fragments of ancient parchment. The many fragments from Paul do not justify the effort to collate them into a scholastic thesis. Then again, the power of words has been demonstrated in all the Old World religions to convince the naive (and even a few educated people still) in the magic of the Long-Dead still talking to us telling us the messages of the old visionaries. How could Paul, so soaked in a Stone-Age tribal view based on blood: both male descent and sacrifice, be the founder of a Religion of Love: IMPOSSIBLE !!
Sadly, the few modern Christian saints, like Dr. Krister Stendahl are making slow progress updating the really valid core message of LOVE to the world. Few are listening, so that progress to the unification of humanity, in a commonwealth of co-operation is far too slow to block the threat of global destruction from this bizarre species of greedy killers and despoilers.