The

Mythmaker

Paul and the Invention

of 6 h ristian! oN

3698 =

Hyam Macco by
 The
Mythmaker
ho was the founder of
Christianity? The answer seems
obvious—Jesus Christ. Yet for the
Talmudic scholar Hyam Maccoby, this
answer is wrong. In The Mythmaker—a
work of revolutionary import to New
Testament scholarship—Maccoby con-
tends that Jesus was no more the founder
of Christianity than the historical Hamlet
was the author of Hamlet. Rather,
Christianity was the invention of St.
Paul, who used elements of Judaism,
Gnosticism, and pagan mystery cults as
his materials, fusing them around the
story of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Throughout The Mythmaker, Maccoby
wages warfare on time-honored beliefs
about the origins of Christianity. He
holds that Jesus—in the Gospels a fierce
opponent of the Pharisees—was himself
a Pharisee; that the self-proclaimed
Pharisee Paul never was one; that Jesus’
disciples never had any thought of
founding a new church; that they never
embraced such ideas as Jesus’ divinity
and the Eucharist, which were brainchil-
dren of Paul; and that the heretical

(continued on back flap)

 x
.7

et
 The
Mythmaker
Paul and the Invention
of Christianity
 d\the Insention
of Christianity

NEW YORK
Copyright © 1986 by Hyam Maccoby
This edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.,
by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco,
a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.
1998 Barnes & Noble Books
ISBN 0-76070-787-1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Ma34 857.

BVG
For Cynthia
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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix
Preface xl

PART I: SAUL

1 The Problem of Paul 3

2 The Standpoint of this Book 14
3 The Pharisees 19
Was Jesus a Pharisee?
4 29
5Why Was Jesus Crucified? 45
6 Was Paul a Pharisee? 50
+ Alleged Rabbinical Style in Paul’s Epistles 62
8 Paul and Stephen 72

PART II: PAUL

g The Road to Damascus 85

10 Damascus and After 100
11 Paul and the Eucharist 110
12 The ‘Jerusalem Church’ 119
13 The Split 139
14 The Trial of Paul 156
15 The Evidence of the Ebioni tes 172
16 The Mythmaker 184

Note on Method 206

Notes 212
Bibliography 222
Index 229
Index of Quotations 235
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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank Dr Francis T. Glasson, with whom I have

discussed various issues relevant to this book over a considerable «
period. His remarks were most thought-provoking, even when I did not
agree with them.
I should like to thank also Professor E. P. Sanders for his generous
and stimulating comments. I am also most grateful to Professor A. R.
C. Leaney, Professor P. R. Ackroyd, Canon J. W. Packer and Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks for their encouragement of the rabbinical aspects of my
work.
Special thanks are due to Mr Jack Eisner for the generosity and
warmth of his support.
I have been greatly heartened by the deep understanding of the
origins of the Jewish-Christian conflict shown by Professor Roy
Eckhart and Dr Robert Everett, and by their courageous support.
t
I am most grateful to Professor Yehuda Bauer for his encouragemen
Centre for the Study of
of my work, and to the International
Jerusa lem, for support ing
Antisemitism, at the Hebrew University of
its continuance with a grant.
the Leo
I should like to thank also my colleagues and students at
p in
Baeck College for their unfailing encouragement and companionshi
scholarly enquiry.
ing
The poet Samuel Menashe has been an indefatigable and inspir
expres s here my deep gratit ude to
friend and adviser, and I am glad to
him.
Cynthia, whose
My chief thanks, however, must go to my dear wife,
page of this book,
keen criticism and advice has contributed to every
etion possible.
and whose constant, loving support has made its compl
H.M.

ix
ern
 PREFACE

Asa Talmudic scholar, I have found that knowledge of the Talmud and
other rabbinical works has opened up the meaning of many puzzling:
passages in the New Testament. In my earlier book on Jesus, Revolution
in Judaea, | showed how, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks and acts
as a Pharisee, though the Gospel editors have attempted to conceal this
by representing him as opposing Pharisaism even when his sayings
were most in accordance with Pharisee teaching. In the present book, I
have used the rabbinical evidence to establish an opposite contention:
that Paul, whom the New Testament wishes to portray as having been a
trained Pharisee, never was one. The consequences of this for the
understanding of early Christianity are immense.
In addition to the rabbinical writings, I have made great use of the
ancient historians, especially Josephus, Epiphanius and Eusebius.
Their statements must be weighed in relation to their particular
interests and bias; but when such bias has been identified and
discounted, there remains a residue of valuable information. Exactly
the same applies to the New Testament itself. Its information is often
distorted by the bias of the author or editor, but a knowledge of the
nature of this bias makes possible the emergence of the true shape of
events.
For an explanation of my stance in relation to the various schools of
New Testament interpretation of modern times, the reader is referred
to the Note on Method, p. 206.
In using the Epistles as evidence of Paul’s life, views and ‘myth-
ology’, I have confined myself to those Epistles which are accepted by
the great majority of New Testament scholars as the genuine work of
Paul. Disputed Epistles, such as Colossians, however pertinent to my
argument, have been ignored.
When quoting from the New Testament, I have usually used the
New English. Bible version, but, from time to time, I have used the

xi
 PREFACE

Authorized Version or the Revised Version, when I thought them

preferable in faithfulness to the original. While the New English Bible is
in general more intelligible to modern readers than the older versions,
its concern for modern English idiom sometimes obscures important
features of the original Greek; and its readiness to paraphrase
sometimes allows the translator’s presuppositions to colour his trans-
lation. I have pointed out several examples of this in the text.
In considering the background of Paul, I have returned to one of the
earliest accounts of Paul in existence, that given by the Ebionites, as
reported by Epiphanius. This account has been neglected by scholars
for quite inadequate and tendentious reasons. Robert Graves and
Joshua Podro in The Nazarene Gospel Restored did take the Ebionite
account seriously; but, though they made some cogent remarks about
it, their treatment of the matter was brief. I hope that the present book
will do more to alter the prevailing dismissive attitude towards the
evidence of this fascinating and important ancient community.

xii
PART I

SAUL
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 CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

At the beginning of Christianity stand two figures: Jesus and Paul.’

Jesus is regarded by Christians as the founder of their religion, in that
the events of his life comprise the foundation story of Christianity; but
Paul is regarded as the great interpreter of Jesus’ mission, who
explained, in a way that Jesus himself never did, how Jesus’ life and
death fitted into a cosmic scheme of salvation, stretching from the
creation of Adam to the end of time.
How should we understand the relationship between Jesus and Paul?
We shall be approaching this question not from the standpoint of faith,
but from that of historians, who regard the Gospels and the rest of the
New Testament as an important source of evidence requiring careful
sifting and criticism, since their authors were propagating religious
beliefs rather than conveying dispassionate historical information. We
shall also be taking into account all relevant evidence from other
sources, such as Josephus, the Talmud, the Church historians and the
Gnostic writings.
What would Jesus himself have thought of Paul? We must remember
that Jesus never knew Paul; the two men never once met. The disciples
who knew Jesus best, such as Peter, James and John, have left no
writings behind them explaining how Jesus seemed to them or what
they considered his mission to have been. Did they agree with the
interpretations disseminated by Paul in his fluent, articulate writings?
Or did they perhaps think that this newcomer to the scene, spinning
complicated theories about the place of Jesus in the scheme of things,
was getting everything wrong? Paul claimed that his interpretations
were not just his own invention, but had come to him by personal
inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the
resurrected Jesus, even though he had never met him during his
lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained through visions and

3
 THE MYTHMAKER

transports, was actually superior to acquaintance with Jesus during his

lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes.
We know about Paul not only from his own letters but also from the
book of Acts, which gives a full account of his life. Paul, in fact, is the
hero of Acts, which was written by an admirer and follower of his,
namely, Luke, who was also the author of the Gospel of that name.
From Acts, it would appear that there was some friction between Paul
and the leaders of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, the surviving companions of
Jesus; but this friction was resolved, and they all became the best of
friends, with common aims and purposes. From certain of Paul’s
letters, particularly Galatians, it seems that the friction was more
serious than in the picture given in Acts, which thus appears to be
partly a propaganda exercise, intended to portray unity in the early
Church. The question recurs: what would Jesus have thought of Paul,
and what did the Apostles think of him?
We should remember that the New Testament, as we have it, is much
more dominated by Paul than appears at first sight. As we read it, we
come across the Four Gospels, of which Jesus is the hero, and do not
encounter Paul as a character until we embark on the post-Jesus
narrative of Acts. Then we finally come into contact with Paul himself,
in his letters. But this impression is misleading, for the earliest writings
in the New Testament are actually Paul’s letters, which were written
about AD 50-60, while the Gospels were not written until the period ab
70-110. This means that the theories of Paul were already before the
writers of the Gospels and coloured their interpretations of Jesus’
activities. Paul is, in a sense, present from the very first word of the New
Testament. This is, of course, not the whole story, for the Gospels are
based on traditions and even written sources which go back to a time
before the impact of Paul, and these early traditions and sources are not
entirely obliterated in the final version and give valuable indications of
what the story was like before Paulinist editors pulled it into final
shape. However, the dominant outlook and shaping perspective of the
Gospels is that of Paul, for the simple reason that it was the Paulinist
view of what Jesus’ sojourn on Earth had been about that was
triumphant in the Church as it developed in history. Rival interpret-
ations, which at one time had been orthodox, opposed to Paul’s very
individual views, now became heretical and were crowded out of the
final version of the writings adopted by the Pauline Church as the
inspired canon of the New Testament.
This explains the puzzling and ambiguous role given in the Gospels
to the companions of Jesus, the twelve disciples. They are shadowy

4
 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

figures, who are allowed little personality, except of a schematic kind.

They are also portrayed as stupid; they never quite understand what
Jesus is up to. Their importance in the origins of Christianity is played
down in a remarkable way. For example, we find immediately after
Jesus’ death that the leader of the Jerusalem Church is Jesus’ brother
James. Yet in the Gospels, this James does not appear at all as having
anything to do with Jesus’ mission and story. Instead, he is given a brief
mention as one of the brothers of Jesus who allegedly opposed Jesus
during his lifetime and regarded him as mad. How it came about that a
brother who had been hostile to Jesus in his lifetime suddenly became
the revered leader of the Church immediately after Jesus’ death is not
explained, though one would have thought that some explanation was
called for. Later Church legends, of course, filled the gap with stories of «
the miraculous conversion of James after the death of Jesus and his
development into a saint. But the most likely explanation is, as will be
argued later, that the erasure of Jesus’ brother James (and his other
brothers) from any significant role in the Gospel story is part of the
denigration of the early leaders who had been in close contact with
Jesus and regarded with great suspicion and dismay the Christological
theories of the upstart Paul, flaunting his brand new visions in
interpretation of the Jesus whom he had never met in the flesh.
Who, then, was Paul? Here we would seem to have a good deal of
information; but on closer examination, it will turn out to be full of
problems. We have the information given by Paul about himself in his
letters, which are far from impersonal and often take an autobio-
graphical turn. Also we have the information given in Acts, in which
Paul plays the chiefrole. But the information given by any person about
himself always has to be treated with a certain reserve, since everyone
has strong motives for putting himselfin the best possible light. And the
information given about Paul in Acts also requires close scrutiny, since
this work was written by someone committed to the Pauline cause.
Have we any other sources for Paul’s biography? As a matter of fact, we
which it
have, though they are scattered in various unexpected places,
the
will be our task to explore: in a fortuitously preserved extract from
e for
otherwise lost writings of the Ebionites, a sect of great importanc
orthodox
our quest; in a disguised attack on Paul included in a text of
Arabic manuscrip t, in which a text of the
Christian authority; and in an
of Paul, has been preserved by
early Jewish Christians, the opponents
an unlikely chain of circumstances.
s and well-
Let us first survey the evidence found in the more obviou
called ‘Saul’,
known sources. It appears from Acts that Paul was at first

5
 THE MYTHMAKER

and that his birthplace was Tarsus, a city in Asia Minor (Acts 9: 11,
and 21: 39, and 22: 3). Strangely enough, however, Paul himself, in his
letters, never mentions that he came from Tarsus, even when he is at his
most autobiographical. Instead, he gives the following information
about his origins: ‘I am an Israelite myself, of the stock of Abraham, of
the tribe of Benjamin’ (Romans 11: 2); and ‘.. . circumcised on my
eighth day, Israelite by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born
and bred; in my attitude to the law, a Pharisee. . . .’ (Philippians 3: 5).
It seems that Paul was not anxious to impart to the recipients of his
letters that he came from somewhere so remote as Tarsus from
Jerusalem, the powerhouse of Pharisaism. The impression he wished to
give, of coming from an unimpeachable Pharisaic background, would
have been much impaired by the admission that he in fact came from
Tarsus, where there were few, if any, Pharisee teachers and a Pharisee
training would have been hard to come by.
We encounter, then, right at the start of our enquiry into Paul’s
background, the question: was Paul really from a genuine Pharisaic
family, as he says to his correspondents, or was this just something that
he said to increase his status in their eyes? The fact that this question
is hardly ever asked shows how strong the influence of traditional
religious attitudes still is in Pauline studies. Scholars feel that, however
objective their enquiry is supposed to be, they must always preserve an
attitude of deep reverence towards Paul, and never say anything to
suggest that he may have bent the truth at times, though the evidence is
strong enough in various parts of his life-story that he was not above
deception when he felt it warranted by circumstances.
It should be noted (in advance ofa full discussion of the subject) that
modern scholarship has shown that, at this time, the Pharisees were
held in high repute throughout the Roman and Parthian empires as a
dedicated group who upheld religious ideals in the face of tyranny,
supported leniency and mercy in the application of laws, and
championed the rights of the poor against the oppression of the rich.
The undeserved reputation for hypocrisy which is attached to the name
‘Pharisee’ in medieval and modern times is due to the campaign against
the Pharisees in the Gospels — a campaign dictated by politico-religious
considerations at the time when the Gospels were given their final
editing, about forty to eighty years after the death of Jesus. Paul’s desire
to be thought of as a person of Pharisee upbringing should thus be
understood in the light of the actual reputation of the Pharisees in
Paul’s lifetime; Paul was claiming a high honour, which would much
enhance his status in the eyes of his correspondents.

6
 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

Before looking further into Paul’s claim to have come from a Pharisee
background, let us continue our survey of what we are told about Paul’s
career in the more accessible sources. The young Saul, we are told, left
Tarsus and came to the Land of Israel, where he studied in the Pharisee
academy of Gamaliel (Acts 22: 3). We know from other sources about
Gamaliel, who is a highly respected figure in the rabbinical writings
such as the Mishnah, and was given the title ‘Rabban’, as the leading
sage of his day. That he was the leader of the whole Pharisee party is
attested also by the New Testament itself, for he plays a prominent role
in one scene in the book of Acts (chapter 5) —a role that, as we shall see
later, is hard to reconcile with the general picture of the Pharisees given
in the Gospels.
Yet Paul himself, in his letters, never mentions that he was a pupil of «
Gamaliel, even when he is most concerned to stress his qualifications as
a Pharisee. Here again, then, the question has to be put: was Paul ever
really a pupil of Gamaliel or was this claim made by Luke as an
embellishment to his narrative? As we shall see later, there are certain
considerations which make it most unlikely, quite apart from Paul’s
significant omission to say anything about the matter, that Paul was
ever a pupil of Gamaliel’s.
We are also told of the young Saul that he was implicated, to some
extent, in the death of the martyr Stephen. The people who gave false
evidence against Stephen, we are told, and who also took the leading
part in the stoning of their innocent victim, ‘laid their coats at the feet of
a young man named Saul’. The death of Stephen is described, and it is
added, ‘And Saul was among those who approved of his murder’ (Acts
8: 1). How much truth is there in this detail? Is it to be regarded as
historical fact or as dramatic embellishment, emphasizing the contrast
between Paul before and after conversion? The death of Stephen is itself
an episode that requires searching analysis, since it is full of problems
and contradictions. Until we have a better idea of why and by whom
we can
Stephen was killed and what were the views for which he died,
as a subject for
only note the alleged implication of Saul in the matter
alleged
further investigation. For the moment, we also note that the
to
implication of Saul heightens the impression that adherence
of Jesus.
Pharisaism would mean violent hostility to the followers
Saul in Acts is that he was ‘harrying
The next thing we are told about
men and women,
the Church; he entered house after house, seizing
at this point
and sending them to prison’ (Acts 8: 3). We are not told
carryi ng out this
by what authority or on whose orders he was
dual action on
persecution. It was clearly not a matter of merely indivi

7
 THE MYTHMAKER

his part, for sending people to prison can only be done by some kind of
official. Saul must have been acting on behalf of some authority, and
who this authority was can be gleaned from later incidents in which
Saul was acting on behalf of theHigh Priest. Anyone with knowledge of
the religious and political scene at this time in Judaea feels the presence
of an important problem here: the High Priest was not a Pharisee, but a
Sadducee, and the Sadducees were bitterly opposed to the Pharisees.
How is it that Saul, allegedly an enthusiastic Pharisee (‘a Pharisee of
the Pharisees’), is acting hand in glove with the High Priest? The picture
we are given in our New Testament sources of Saul, in the days before
his conversion to Jesus, is contradictory and suspect.
The next we hear of Saul (chapter g) is that he ‘was still breathing
murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord. He went to the
High Priest and applied for letters to the synagogues at Damascus
authorizing him to arrest anyone he found, men or women, who
followed the new way, and bring them to Jerusalem.’ This incident is
full of mystery. If Saul had his hands so full in ‘harrying the church’ in
Judaea, why did he suddenly have the idea of going off to Damascus to
harry the Church there? What was the special urgency of a visit to
Damascus? Further, what kind ofjurisdiction did the Jewish High
Priest have over the non-Jewish city of Damascus that would enable
him to authorize arrests and extraditions in that city? There is,
moreover, something very puzzling about the way in which Saul’s
relation to the High Priest is described: as if he is a private citizen who
wishes to make citizen’s arrests according to some plan of his own, and
approaches the High Priest for the requisite authority. Surely there
must have been some much more definite official connection between
the High Priest and Saul, not merely that the High Priest was called
upon to underwrite Saul’s project. It seems more likely that the plan
was the High Priest’s and not Saul’s, and that Saul was acting as agent
or emissary of the High Priest. The whole incident needs to be
considered in the light of probabilities and current conditions.
The book of Acts then continues with the account of Saul’s
conversion on the road to Damascus through a vision of Jesus and the
succeeding events of his life as a follower of Jesus. The pre-Christian
period of Saul’s life, however, does receive further mention later in the
book of Acts, both in chapter 22 and chapter 26, where some interesting
details are added, and also some further puzzles.
In chapter 22, Saul (now called Paul), is shown giving his own
account of his early life in a speech to the people after the Roman
commandant had questioned him. Paul speaks as follows:

8
 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

I am atrue-born Jew, a native of Tarsus in Cilicia. I was brought up in this

city, and as a pupil of Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in every point of
our ancestral law. I have always been ardent in God’s service, as you all are
today. And so I began to persecute this movement to the death, arresting its
followers, men and women alike, and putting them in chains. For this I have
as witnesses the High Priest and the whole Council of Elders. I was given
letters from them to our fellow-Jews at Damascus, and had started out to
bring the Christians there to Jerusalem as prisoners for punishment; and
this is what happened. ...
Paul then goes on to describe his vision of Jesus on the road to
Damascus. Previously he had described himself to the commandant as
‘a Jew, ‘aTarsian from Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city’.
It is fromthis passage that we learn of Paul’s native city, Tarsus, and ,
of his alleged studies under Gamaliel. Note that he says that, though
born in Tarsus, he was ‘brought up in this city’ (i.e. Jerusalem) which
suggests that he spent his childhood in Jerusalem. Does this mean that
his parents moved from Tarsus to Jerusalem? Or that the child was sent
to Jerusalem on his own, which seems unlikely? If Paul spent only a few
childhood years in Tarsus, he would hardly describe himself proudly as
‘a citizen of no mean city’ (Tarsus). Jews who had spent most of their
lives in Jerusalem would be much more prone to describe themselves as
citizens of Jerusalem. The likelihood is that Paul moved to Jerusalem
when he was already a grown man, and he left his parents behind in
Tarsus, which seems all the more probable in that they receive no
mention in any account of Paul’s experiences in Jerusalem. As for
Paul’s alleged period of studies under Gamaliel, this would have had to
be in adulthood, for Gamaliel was a teacher of advanced studies, not a
teacher of children. He would accept as a pupil only someone well
grounded and regarded as suitable for the rabbinate. The question,
then, is where and how Paul received this thorough grounding, if at all.
As pointed out above and argued fully below, there are strong reasons
to think that Paul never was a pupil of Gamaliel.
that
An important question that also arises in this chapter of Acts is
in chapter 16. Paul
of Paul’s Roman citizenship. This is mentioned first
mean that his
claims to have been born a Roman citizen, which would
ed
father was a Roman citizen. There are many problems to be discuss
on Paul’s
in this connection, and some of these questions impinge
claim to have had a Pharisaic backgr ound.
r 26 of
A further account of Paul’s pre-Christian life is found in chapte
Agripp a. Paul says:
Acts, in a speech addressed by Paul to King
among my people
My life from my youth up, the life I led from the beginning

9
 THE MYTHMAKER

and in Jerusalem, is familiar to all Jews. Indeed they have known me long
enough and could testify, if they only would, that I belonged to the strictest
group in our religion: I lived as a Pharisee. And it is for a hope kindled by
God’s promise to our forefathers that I stand in the dock today. Our twelve
tribes hope to sec the fulfilment of that promise. . . . Imyself once thought it
my duty to work actively against the name ofJesus of Nazareth; and I did so
in Jerusalem. It was I who imprisoned many of God’s people by authority
obtained from the chief priests; and when they were condemned to death,
my vote was cast against them. In all the synagogues I tried by repeated
punishment to make them renounce their faith; indeed my fury rose to such
a pitch that I extended my persecution to foreign cities. On one such
occasion I was travelling to Damascus with authority and commission from
the chief priests... .

Again the account continues with the vision on the road to Damascus.
This speech, of course, cannot be regarded as the authentic words
addressed by Paul to King Agrippa, but rather as a rhetorical speech
composed by Luke, the author of Acts, in the style of ancient historians.
Thus the claim made in the speech that Paul’s career as a Pharisee of
high standing was known to ‘all Jews’ cannot be taken at face value. It
is interesting that Paul is represented as saying that he ‘cast his vote’
against the followers of Jesus, thus helping to condemn them to death.
This can only refer to the voting of the Sanhedrin or Council of Elders,
which was convened to try capital cases; so what Luke is claiming here
for his hero Paul is that he was at one time a member of the Sanhedrin.
This is highly unlikely, for Paul would surely have made this claim in
his letters, when writing about his credentials as a Pharisee, if it had
been true. There is, however, some confusion both in this account and
in the accounts quoted above about whether the Sanhedrin, as well as
the High Priest or ‘chief priests’, was involved in the persecution of the
followers of Jesus. Sometimes the High Priest alone is mentioned,
sometimes the Sanhedrin is coupled with him, as if the two are
inseparable. But we see on two occasions cited in Acts that the High
Priest was outvoted by the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin; on both
occasions, the Pharisees were opposing an attempt to persecute the
followers of Jesus; so the representation of High Priest and Sanhedrin
as having identical aims is one of the suspect features of these accounts.
It will be seen from the above collation of passages in the book of Acts
concerning Paul’s background and early life, together with Paul’s own
references to his background in his letters, that the same strong picture
emerges: that Paul was at first a highly trained Pharisee rabbi, learned
in all the intricacies of the rabbinical commentaries on scripture and

10
 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

legal traditions (afterwards collected in the rabbinical compilations,

the Talmud and Midrash). As a Pharisee, Paul was strongly opposed to
the new sect which followed Jesus and which believed that he had been
resurrected after his crucifixion. So opposed was Paul to this sect that
he took violent action against it, dragging its adherents to prison.
Though this strong picture has emerged, some doubts have also
arisen, which, so far, have only been lightly sketched in: how is it, for
example, that Paul claims to have voted against Christians on trial for
their lives before the Sanhedrin, when in fact, in the graphically
described trial of Peter before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5), the Pharisees, led
by Gamaliel, voted for the release of Peter? What kind of Pharisee was
Paul, if he took an attitude towards the early Christians which, on the
evidence of the same book of Acts, was untypical of the Pharisees? And ‘
how is it that this book of Acts is so inconsistent within itself that it
describes Paul as violently opposed to Christianity because of his deep
attachment to Pharisaism, and yet also describes the Pharisees as being
friendly towards the early Christians, standing up for them and saving
their lives?
It has been pointed out by many scholars that the book of Acts, on
the whole, contains a surprising amount of evidence favourable to the
Pharisees, showing them to have been tolerant and merciful. Some
scholars have even argued that the book of Acts is a pro-Pharisee work;
but this can hardly be maintained. For, outweighing all the evidence
favourable to the Pharisees is the material relating to Paul, which is, in
all its aspects, unfavourable to the Pharisees; not only is Paul himself
portrayed as being a virulent persecutor when he was a Pharisee, but Paul
declares that he himself was punished by flogging five times (1
Corinthians 11: 24) by the ‘Jews’ (usually taken to mean the Pharisees).
So no one really comes away from reading Acts with any good
impression of the Pharisees, but rather with the negative impressions
derived from the Gospels reinforced.
Why, therefore, is Paul always so concerned to stress that he came
from a Pharisee background? A great many motives can be discerned,
the
but there is one that needs to be singled out here: the desire to stress
alleged continuity between Judaism and Pauline Christia nity. Paul
mistakenly
wishes to say that whereas, when he was a Pharisee, he
true
regarded the early Christians as heretics who had departed from
opposite view, that
Judaism, after his conversion he took the
as a Pharisee , he
Christianity was the true Judaism. All his training
leads to
wishes to say — all his study of scripture and tradition — really
the Old
the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah prophesied in

1]
 THE MYTHMAKER

Testament. So when Paul declares his Pharisee past, he is not merely

proclaiming his own sins — ‘See how I have changed, from being a
Pharisee persecutor to being a devoted follower of Jesus!’ — he is also
proclaiming his credentials — ‘If someone as learned as I can believe
that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Torah, who is there fearless enough
to disagree?’ 2
On the face of it, Paul’s doctrine of Jesus is a daring departure from
Judaism. Paul was advocating a doctrine that seemed to have far more
in common with pagan myths than with Judaism: that Jesus was a
divine-human person who had descended to Earth from the heavens
and experienced death for the express purpose of saving mankind. The
very fact that the Jews found this doctrine new and shocking shows that
it plays no role in the Jewish scripture, at least not in any way easily
discernible. Yet Paul was not content to say. that his doctrine was new;
on the contrary, he wished to say that every line of the Jewish scripture
was a foreshadowing of the Jesus-event as he understood it, and that
those who understood the scripture in any other way were failing in
comprehension of what Judaism had always been about. So his
insistence on his Pharisaic upbringing was part of his insistence on
continuity.
There were those who accepted Paul’s doctrine, but did regard it as a
radical new departure, with nothing in the Jewish scriptures fore-
shadowing it. The best known figure of this kind was Marcion, who
lived about a hundred years after Paul, and regarded Paul as his chief
inspiration. Yet Marcion refused to see anything Jewish in Paul’s
doctrine, but regarded it as a new revelation. He regarded the Jewish
scriptures as the work of the Devil and he excluded the Old Testament
from his version of the Bible.
Paul himself rejected this view. Though he regarded much of the Old
Testament as obsolete, superseded by the advent of Jesus, he still
regarded it as the Word of God, prophesying the new Christian Church
and giving it authority. So his picture of himself as a Pharisee
symbolizes the continuity between the old dispensation and the new: a
figure who comprised in his own person the turning-point at which
Judaism was transformed into Christianity.
Throughout the Christian centuries, there have been Christian
scholars who have seen Paul’s claim to a Pharisee background in this
light. In the medieval Disputations convened by Christians to convert
Jews, arguments were put forward purporting to show that not only the
Jewish scriptures but even the rabbinical writings, the Talmud and the
Midrash, supported the claims of Christianity that Jesus was the

12
 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL

Messiah, that he was divine and that he had to suffer death for
mankind.' Though Paul was not often mentioned in these Dis-
putations, the project was one of which he would have approved. In
modern times, scholars have laboured to argue that Paul’s doctrines
about the Messiah and divine suffering are continuous with Judaism as
it appears in the Bible, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and in the
rabbinical writings (the best-known effort of this nature is Paul and
Rabbinic Judaism, by W. D. Davies).
So Paul’s claim to expert Pharisee learning is relevant to a very
important and central issue — whether Christianity, in the form given
to it by Paul, is really continuous with Judaism or whether it is a new
doctrine, having no roots in Judaism, but deriving, in so far as it has an
historical background, from pagan myths of dying and resurrected «
gods and Gnostic myths of heaven-descended redeemers. Did Paul
truly stand in the Jewish tradition, or was he a person of basically
Hellenistic religious type, but seeking to give a colouring of Judaism to
a salvation cult that was really opposed to everything that Judaism
stood for?

13
 CHAPTER 2

THE STANDPOINT OF
THIS BOOK

As against the conventional picture of Paul, outlined in the last chapter,

the present book has an entirely different and unfamiliar view to put
forward. This view of Paul is not only unfamiliar in itself, but it also
involves many unfamiliar standpoints about other issues which are
relevant and indeed essential to a correct assessment of Paul; for
example:
Who and what were the Pharisees? What were their religious and
political views as opposed to those of the Sadducees and other
religious and political groups of the time? What was their attitude to
Jesus? What was their attitude towards the early Jerusalem Church?
Who and what was Jesus? Did he really see himself as a saviour who
had descended from heaven in order to suffer crucifixion? Or did he
have entirely different aims, more in accordance with the Jewish
thoughts and hopes of his time? Was the historical Jesus quite a
different person from the Jesus of Paul’s ideology, based on Paul’s
visions and trances?
Who and what were the early Church ofJerusalem, the first followers
of Jesus? Have their views been correctly represented by the later
Church? Did James and Peter, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church,
agree with Paul’s views (as orthodox Christianity claims) or did they
oppose him bitterly, regarding him as a heretic and a betrayer of the
aims of Jesus?
Who and what were the Ebionites, whose opinions and writings were
suppressed by the orthodox Church? Why did they denounce Paul?
Why did they combine belief in Jesus with the practice of Judaism?

14
 THE STANDPOINT OF THIS BOOK

Why did they believe in Jesus as Messiah, but not as God? Were they
a later ‘Judaizing’ group, or were they, as they claimed to be, the
remnants of the authentic followers of Jesus, the church of James and
Peter?
The arguments in this book will inevitably become complicated,
since every issue is bound up with every other. It is impossible to
answer any of the above questions without bringing all the other
questions into consideration. It is, therefore, convenient at this point
to give an outline of the standpoint to which all the arguments of this
book converge. This is not an attempt to pre-judge the issue. The
following summary of the findings of this book may seem dogmatic at
this stage, but it is intended merely as a guide to the ramifications of the |
ensuing arguments and a bird’s eye view of the book, and as such will |
stand or fall with the cogency of the arguments themselves. The
following, then, are the propositions argued in the present book:
1 Paul was never a Pharisee rabbi, but was an adventurer of
undistinguished background. He was attached to the Sadducees, as a
police officer under the authority of the High Priest, before his
conversion to belief in Jesus. His mastery of the kind of learning
associated with the Pharisees was not great. He deliberately mis-
represented his own biography in order to increase the effectiveness of
his missionary activities.
2 Jesus and his immediate followers were Pharisees. Jesus had no
intention of founding a new religion. He regarded himself as the
Messiah in the normal Jewish sense of the term, i.e. a human leader
who would restore the Jewish monarchy, drive out the Roman
invaders, set up an independent Jewish state, and inaugurate an era of
peace, justice and prosperity (known as ‘the kingdom of God’) for the
whole world. Jesus believed himself to be the figure prophesied in the
Hebrew Bible who would do all these things. He was not a militarist
and did not build up an army to fight the Romans, since he believed
that God would perform a great miracle to break the power of Rome.
This miracle would take place on the Mount of Olives, as prophesied in
mission
the book of Zechariah. When this miracle did not occur, his
had failed. He had no intention of being crucified in order to save
mankind from eternal damnation by his sacrifice. He never regarded
himself as a divine being, and would have regarded such an idea as
Ten
pagan and idolatrous, an infringement of the first of the
Commandments.
d the
3 The first followers of Jesus, under James and Peter, founde

15
 THE MYTHMAKER

Jerusalem Church after Jesus’s death. They were called the Nazarenes,
and in all their beliefs they were indistinguishable from the Pharisees,
except that they believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus
was still the promised Messiah. They did not believe that Jesus was a
divine person, but that, by a miracle from God, he had been brought
back to life after his death on the cross, and would soon come back to
complete his mission of overthrowing the Romans and setting up the
Messianic kingdom. The Nazarenes did not believe that Jesus had
abrogated the Jewish religion, or Torah. Having known Jesus
personally, they were aware that he had observed the Jewish religious
law all his life and had never rebelled against it. His sabbath cures were
not against Pharisee law. The Nazarenes were themselves very
observant ofJewish religious law. They practised circumcision, did not
eat the forbidden foods and showed great respect to the Temple. The
Nazarenes did not regard themselves as belonging to a new religion;
their religion was Judaism. They set up synagogues of their own, but
they also attended non-Nazarene synagogues on occasion, and per-
formed the same kind of worship in their own synagogues as was
practised by all observant Jews. The Nazarenes became suspicious of
Paul when they heard that he was preaching that Jesus was the founder
of a new religion and that he had abrogated the Torah. After an attempt
to reach an understanding with Paul, the Nazarenes (i.e. theJerusalem
Church under James and Peter) broke irrevocably with Paul and
disowned him.
4 Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion
which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene
variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as
having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new
religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this
sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the
only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic
sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and
concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of
Attis. The combination of these elements with features derived from
Judaism, particularly the incorporation of the Jewish scriptures, re-
interpreted to provide a background of sacred history for the new myth,
was unique; and Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam. Jesus
himself had no idea of it, and would have been amazed and shocked at
the role assigned to him by Paul as a suffering deity. Nor did Paul have
any predecessors among the Nazarenes, though later mythography
tried to assign this role to Stephen, and modern scholars have

16
 THE STANDPOINT OF THIS BOOK

discovered equally mythical predecessors for Paul in a group called the

‘Hellenists’. Paul, as the personal begetter of the Christian myth, has
never been given sufficient credit for his originality. The reverence paid
through the centuries to the great Saint Paul has quite obscured the
more colourful features of his personality. Like many evangelical
leaders, he was a compound of sincerity and charlatanry. Evangelical
leaders of his kind were common at this time in the Greco-Roman world
(e.g. Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana).
5 A source of information about Paul that has never been taken
seriously enough is a group called the Ebionites. Their writings were
suppressed by the Church, but some of their views and traditions were
preserved in the writings of their opponents, particularly in the huge
treatise on Heresies by Epiphanius. From this it appears that the .
Ebionites had a very different account to give of Paul’s background and
early life from that found in the New Testament and fostered by Paul
himself. The Ebionites testified that Paul had no Pharisaic background
or training; he was the son of Gentiles, converted to Judaism, in Tarsus,
came to Jerusalem when an adult, and attached himself to the High
Priest as a henchman. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he
broke with the High Priest and sought fame by founding a new religion.
This account, while not reliable in all its details, is substantially
correct. It makes far more sense of all the puzzling and contradictory
features of the story of Paul than the account of the official documents of
the Church.
6 The Ebionites were stigmatized by the Church as heretics who
failed to understand that Jesus was a divine person and asserted instead
that he was a human being who came to inaugurate a new earthly age,
as prophesied by the Jewish prophets of the Bible. Moreover, the
Ebionites refused to accept the Church doctrine, derived from Paul,
that Jesus abolished or abrogated the Torah, the Jewish law. Instead,
the Ebionites observed the Jewish law and regarded themselves as
nor ‘re-
Jews. The Ebionites were not heretics, as the Church asserted,
but the authenti c successo rs
Judaizers’, as modern scholars call them,
and
of the immediate disciples and followers of Jesus, whose views
that they were
doctrines they faithfully transmitted, believing correctly
earlier
derived from Jesus himself. They were the same group that had
who had
been called the Nazarenes, who were led by James and Peter,
to
known Jesus during his lifetime, and were in a far better position
and visions.
know his aims than Paul, who met Jesus only in dreams
inary
Thus the opinion held by the Ebionites about Paul is of extraord
instead of dismissa l as
interest and deserves respectful consideration,
17
 THE MYTHMAKER

‘scurrilous’ propaganda — the reaction of Christian scholars from

ancient to modern times.
The above conspectus brings into sharper relief our question, was
Paul a Pharisee? It will be seen that this is not merely a matter of
biography or idle curiosity. It is bound up with the whole question of
the origins of Christianity. A tremendous amount depends on this
question, for, if Paul was not a Pharisee rooted in Jewish learning and
tradition, but instead a Hellenistic adventurer whose acquaintance
with Judaism was recent and shallow, the construction of myth and
theology which he elaborated in his letters becomes a very different
thing. Instead of searching through his system for signs of continuity
with Judaism, we shall be able to recognize it for what it is — a brilliant
concoction of Hellenism, superficially connecting itself with the Jewish
scriptures and tradition, by which it seeks to give itself a history and an
air of authority.
Christian attitudes towards the Pharisees and thus towards the
picture of Paul as a Pharisee have always been strikingly ambivalent.
In the Gospels, the Pharisees are attacked as hypocrites and would-be
murderers: yet the Gospels also convey an impression of the Pharisees
as figures of immense authority and dignity. This ambivalence reflects
the attitude of Christianity to Judaism itself; on the one hand, an
allegedly outdated ritualism, but on the other, a panorama of awesome
history, a source of authority and blessing, so that at all costs the
Church must display itself as the new Israel, the true Judaism. Thus
Paul, as Pharisee, is the subject of alternating attitudes. In the
nineteenth century, when Jesus was regarded (by Renan, for example)
as a Romantic liberal, rebelling against the authoritarianism of
Pharisaic Judaism, Paul was deprecated as a typical Pharisee,
enveloping the sweet simplicity of Jesus in clouds of theology and
difficult formulations. In the twentieth century, when the concern is
more to discover the essential Jewishness of Christianity, the Pharisee
aspect of Paul is used to connect Pauline doctrines with the rabbinical
writings — again Paul is regarded as never losing his essential
Pharisaism, but this is now viewed as good, and as a means of rescuing
Christianity from isolation from Judaism. To be Jewish and yet not to
be Jewish, this is the essential dilemma of Christianity, and the figure of
Paul, abjuring his alleged Pharisaism as a hindrance to salvation and
yet somehow clinging to it as a guarantee of authority, is symbolic.

18
 CHAPTER 3

THE PHARISEES

If we are to answer the question of whether or not Paul was a Pharisee,

or even to understand the significance of his claim to have been one, it is
necessary to have a fuller account of who the Pharisees were and what
they stood for. Here we must not rely on the Gospel picture of the
Pharisees, which is strongly hostile. The Gospels portray the Pharisees
as the chief opponents of Jesus, criticizing him for curing people on the
sabbath, and even plotting to kill him because of these cures. The
Gospels also represent Jesus as criticizing the Pharisees most strongly,
calling them hypocrites and oppressors. Because of this Gospel picture,
the word ‘Pharisee’ has come to be synonymous with ‘hypocrite’ in the
Western mind, and the defects attributed to the Pharisees — self-
righteousness, meanness, authoritarian severity and exclusiveness —
have contributed to the anti-Semitic stereotype and have been assigned
to Jews generally.'
In recent years, many Christian scholars have come to realize that
this Gospel picture of the Pharisees is propaganda, not fact.2 Our main
source of authentic information about the Pharisees is their own
voluminous literature, including prayers, hymns, books of wisdom, law
books, sermons, commentaries on the Bible, mystical treatises, books of
history and many other genres. Far from being arid ritualists, they were
one of the most creative groups in history.
Moreover, the Pharisees, far from being rigid and inflexible in
applying religious laws, were noted (as the first-century historian
in the Pharisee law
Josephus points out’, and as is amply confirmed
and
books) for the leniency of their legal rulings, and for the humanity
Bible to
flexibility with which they sought to adapt the law of the
changing conditions and improved moral conceptions. They were able
word
to do this because, though they regarded the Bible as the inspired
t view of the interpret ation of the Bible.
of God, they did not take a literalis

19
 THE MYTHMAKER

Their word for religious teaching was Torah, and they believed that as
well as the Written Torah, there was also an Oral Torah, which took
the Written Torah as its base and expanded it by way of definition,
commentary, questioning and exegesis, so that it became a living
reality. Some of the Oral Law, they believed, was just as old as the
Written Law, having been given to Moses by God; but this ancient
origin was claimed only for certain basic elements of the Oral Law.
Most of it had arisen in the course of time in response to new historical
conditions; for example, it was not claimed that the prayers of the
liturgy, such as the Eighteen Benedictions, were composed by Moses or
by any of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible; it was acknowledged that
these prayers were composed by leading Pharisees, who from time to
time added or subtracted from these prayers; or even to the calendar of
feasts or fasts, as seemed appropriate.
Since the Pharisees acknowledged a human element in religious
teaching — an element for which no divine inspiration could be claimed
— they acknowledged also the right to disagreement or difference of
opinion. Thus the Pharisees’ writings are remarkable for the variety of
differing opinions that they record: the Mishnah and the Talmud are
largely records of these disagreements on every legal topic under the
sun. To take a subject at random, we see at the beginning of Tractate
Sanhedrin (which discusses the structure of the legal system itself):

Cases concerning offences punishable by scourging are decided by a

tribunal of three. In the name of Rabbi Ishmael they said: By twenty-three.
The intercalating of the month and the intercalating of the year are decided
upon by a tribunal of three. So Rabbi Meir. But Rabban Simeon ben
Gamaliel says: The matter is begun by three, discussed by five, and decided
upon by seven; but if it is decided upon by three the intercalation is valid.

The personages involved in this exchange of views belong to about a

hundred years after the time of Jesus, but their movement was
continuous with that of the Pharisees of Jesus’ and Paul’s time. One of
the personages mentioned was a direct descendant of the Gamaliel who
figures in the New Testament book of Acts as the leader of the Pharisees
in the time of Paul.
The Pharisees argued amongst themselves not only about matters of
religious law but also about matters of theology. However, it was in
matters of law that they felt that some decision had to be reached and,
since they had no method for deciding such matters other than by
discussion and debate, the decisions were made by a majority vote.
Once a majority decision had been reached,the dissenting rabbis were

20
 THE PHARISEES

required to toe the line and accept the result of the vote, not because
they were regarded as refuted, but because of the principle of the rule of
law, which was conceived in exactly the same terms as in parliamentary
democracies today, where the opposition party may argue as strongly
as it likes before a vote is taken and talk just as strongly about the
unwisdom of the decision after the vote, but must still accept the
decision as the law of the land until it has an opportunity to reverse the
decision by another majority vote. Among the Pharisees, a majority
vote was regarded with such seriousness that there was a legend
amongst them that God had once attempted to intervene to reverse one
of these majority decisions (by telling them through a ‘voice from
Heaven’ that the minority opinion was correct), but had been told that
He was out of order, since He Himself had given the sages the power of -
decision by vote, and He Himself had said in his Torah that ‘it [the
Torah] is not in Heaven’ (Deuteronomy 30: 12), by which the sages
understood that the Torah was to be applied and administered by the
processes of human intellect, not by miracles or divine intervention.
God’s reaction to this, the legend continues, was to laugh, and say, ‘My
children have defeated me!’*
Thus the assemblies of the sages (as the Pharisee leaders were called
before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in ap 70, after which
they became known as ‘rabbis’) made decisions, but did not invest
these decisions with divine authority. The opinions of dissenting
minorities were carefully recorded and included in the records such as
the Mishnah, so that (as the Mishnah itself explains in Eduyot 1: 5) it
may become the basis of new decision in the future, if required (just as
today the opinions of dissenting judges are recorded in the High Court
and are cited as support ifan attempt is made at a later date to bring in
a new ruling).
Thus the Pharisees avoided the option, open to all religions based on
a scripture believed to be divinely inspired, of adding the infallibility of
the Church to the infallibility of scripture. Instead they developed the
concept of a scriptural canon which was the centre of human attention
and was constantly being scrutinized in the light of the human intellect;
and, even more important, they had the idea that God Himself wished
by
this process of human reasoning to go on without interruption
mind to
Himself, and that He approved the struggles of the human
of
interpret His design for the universe, even if these efforts were not free
is the reward.” ” Thus the Pharisee s were
error: ‘According to the effort
without
able to disagree with each other without quarrelling and
of opinion was itself an
persecution of dissenting views; for difference

21
 THE MYTHMAKER

essential ingredient of their concept of the religious life, rather than a

danger to it. They did, however, occasionally resort to disciplinary
measures against rabbis (such as the great Rabbi Eliezer), not because
of their dissentient views, but because of their refusal to accept a
majority vote that had gone against them.
It was only in the sphere of religious law, though, that such
disciplinary measures (consisting essentially of social ostracism of the
offender for a period) were taken. In the sphere of theology, where there
was no urgent need for a practical decision, no such measures were
taken. A wide variety of views was tolerated by the sages and their
successors, the rabbis, without any accusations of heresy. Thus, in the
matter of the belief in the coming of the Messiah, or the definition of the
nature of his reign, it was possible for a respected rabbi to take the view
that there would be no personal Messiah in the future at all, since all the
biblical Messianic prophecies had been fulfilled in the person of
Hezekiah. This was an unusual, even eccentric, view, but the rabbi in
question® was not regarded as in any way a heretic. This contrasts
strongly with the heresy hunts and bitter factionalism of Christianity,
which burnt people at the stake for having unusual views about the
nature of Christ (a name that is only the Greek form of the Hebrew
word Messiah). The Pharisees distinguished between what they called
halakhah (‘going’) and aggadah (‘telling’), and whilst they demanded
conformity, after full discussion, in halakhah, they allowed full scope to
individual styles of thought in aggadah, which they regarded as poetry
rather than as theology.
Though not addicted to heresy hunting, the Pharisees did regard
certain groups as heretical, largely because these groups did not accept
the concept of the Oral Law. The most powerful group regarded as
heretical by the Pharisees was that of the Sadducees, of whom frequent
mention is made in the Gospels, where they are described as opponents
of the Pharisees, without any clear exposition of the point of conflict
involved. The relation between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is of
the utmost importance in understanding both Jesus and Paul, and the
times in which they lived.
The essential point at issue between the Pharisees and the Sadducees
was the validity of the Oral Law, but this point was far from academic,
for it led to enormous differences of outlook on social and political
questions, as well as in the practice of religion. Rejecting the Oral Law,
the Sadducees saw no need for a class of interpreters, sages or rabbis
engaged in expounding the scriptures in accordance with new ideas
and circumstances. The difference between the Sadducees and the

22
 THE PHARISEES

Pharisees is thus brought out clearly in the type of religious leader

which they respectively revered. The Sadducees turned for leadership
to the priests and especially the High Priest, while the Pharisees were
led by very different personalities, whose character was determined by
the demands of the Oral Law. The priests were a hereditary caste,
descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses. They had a special
function to perform in the service of the Temple, and were supported by
the tithes levied from the whole population, though not compulsorily.
To look to the priesthood for leadership was thus to put the Temple
into the centre of one’s religious life. Three institutions thus comprised
the focus of Sadducee religion: the Bible, the Temple and the
priesthood.
For the Pharisees, on the other hand, the priests and the Temple had
only a secondary importance. They regarded the priests not as leaders
or spiritual guides, but merely as ceremonial functionaries, who had
the job of keeping the Temple sacrifices going and administering the
maintenance of the Temple generally. Even the High Priest was
regarded as a mere functionary and had no authority to pronounce on
matters of religion. It was a Pharisee saying that ‘a learned bastard
takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest’’, and most High Priests
were in fact regarded by the Pharisees as ignorant.
Instead of the priests, the Pharisees looked for guidance to their own
leaders, the hakhamim (sages), who were not a hereditary class but
came from every level of society, including the poorest. The hakhamim or
rabbis were really lay leaders, who achieved their authority by their
ability to master the extensive materials that comprised a Pharisee’s
education. This included not only the whole Hebrew Bible, which was
regarded as merely the first step in education, but also the whole
superstructure of law, history, science and homiletic exegesis (midrash)
which had accumulated in the Pharisee academies. A Pharisee leader
had to be both an expert lawyer and an inspiring preacher, for the Bible
a
itself contains both the outline of an entire legal constitution and
conspectus of history with a theory of the spiritual mission of the Jewish
Pharisee
people and its place in God’s purposes for humanity. Thus a
case involving
sage might one day be acting as a judge in a complicated
might be preaching in the
the laws of damages, and the next day he
using for his
synagogue about God’s love for the repentant sinner,
also moving,
sermon not only instances drawn from the Bible but
the Pharisee
simple parables drawn from his own imagination or from
the sages did not
stock of homiletic material. In performing these tasks,
the general pattern
at this stage of history become a professional class;

23
 THE MYTHMAKER

was that each sage had his own profession by which he made his living,
some of these professions being humble in status, and he gave his
services to the community without pay or, at the most, with compen-
sation for the hours lost from his own profession.
In consequence of the shift of authority from the priests to the sages,
the place of the Temple itself was different in the world of the Pharisees
from that which it occupied for the Sadducees. The Temple was not a
place of study, but of ceremonial and sacrifice, and, while the Pharisees
acknowledged the importance of animal and vegetable sacrifices (since
the Bible had instituted them), they did not consider these ceremonies
as central to their religious life, which focused rather on the acquisition
of knowledge about how people should live together in society, and on
the carrying into practice the principles of justice and love. The
institution in which this process of communal education was pursued
was not the Temple, but the synagogue. The Pharisees were the
creators of congregationalism: the fostering of the local religious
community.
This decentralization and diffusion of religion into manifold local
centres was typical of Pharisaism, and this meant that the common
people regarded the priesthood in Jerusalem as rather remote and
unreal figures compared with their local sage, to whom they could come
with their problems and who gave them regular instruction in the
synagogue. He came from their own ranks, and claimed no aristocratic
superiority over them; nor did he claim any magical or mystical
authority, but only a wider range of learning, which he encouraged
them to acquire, since learning was regarded as the duty of every Jew
and as the basis of all useful and virtuous living. Thus the Pharisees
were not only the founders of congregationalism, but also the founders
of the idea and practice of universal education, though here they
claimed to be merely fulfilling the injunctions of the Bible itself, which
stresses the duty of education in many passages.®
In combating the authority of the priesthood, the Pharisees did not
regard themselves as innovators or revolutionaries, but rather as the
upholders of authentic Judaism. In the Bible the chief teaching role in
religion is given not to the priests, but to the prophets, who had no
hereditary claims and might come from any section of the people.
Moses, the founder of Israelite religion, did not make himself High
Priest, but gave this role to his brother Aaron, a relative nonentity. The
rabbis thus regarded themselves as the heirs of the prophets and
especially of Moses, and as having the teaching role that had always
been carefully distinguished, in Jewish practice and religion, from the

24
 THE PHARISEES

sacerdotal role. The rabbis did not, however, claim to have prophetic
gifts themselves; they thought that prophecy had ceased with the last of
the biblical prophets, and would only be renewed in the Messianic age.
Their task, as they conceived it, was to interpret the inspired words of
scripture by a corporate effort, not unlike that of modern science, in
which each rabbi contributed his own stock of thoughts and interpret-
ations to a common pool. Consequently they developed methods of
logical analysis and argument by analogy which produced in the
Talmud one of the greatest achievements of the human intellect,
discussing with the greatest intelligence and professional ability
matters of morality, business ethics and legal administration in a
manner far in advance of their age.
The Sadducees, on the other hand, regarded themselves as defending
the status quo against the innovations of the Pharisees. The Bible, the
priesthood and the Temple were the institutions which they honoured:
the Bible needed no complicated apparatus of interpretation, the
priesthood needed no officious class of lay scholars to supplement it,
and the Temple provided all the atonement required without a
proliferation of synagogues for prayer, study and preaching. Many
modern scholars have taken the Sadducees as the representatives of
ancient Judaism, standing out against Pharisee innovation; but this
picture has serious defects. The Sadducees were indeed defending the
status quo, but it was a status quo of fairly recent duration, dating from the
third century Bc, when Judaea was ruled by the Ptolemaic Greeks of
Egypt. Under this regime, the High Priest was given central status and
of
power by the Greek overlords, successors in the region to the power
Alexander the Great. The High Priesthood in this era was made the
of
instrument of foreign rule, a role which it was to retain into the era
the Romans. When the Pharisees arose as a distinctive movement,
around the period (c. 160 Bc) of Jewish rebellion against foreign rule
to
(which had meanwhile passed from the Ptolemaic Greeks of Egypt
opposed to the priesthood not
the Seleucid Greeks of Syria), they were
to free the
only for religious, but also for political reasons. They wished
in order to return
Jews from the stranglehold of the priesthood not only
to return
to the old prophetic ideal of lay leadership, but also in order
ceremonial
the priesthood to its proper biblical role as a*guild of
officials, rather than a centre of political power.
hood
The political opposition of the Pharisees to the High Priest
Jews over their foreign Greek
continued even after the victory of the
power over their
rulers; for the Hasmonean dynasty, which then took
hood, thus
fellow Jews, combined the monarchy with the High Priest

25
 THE MYTHMAKER

increasing further the political power of the High Priesthood. The

Pharisees bitterly opposed this constitutional development, and
consequently suffered persecution from the Hasmonean kings. The
record of the Pharisees as opponents of power is utterly unknown to
those who base their ideas of the Pharisees on the biased and
inadequate picture of them given in the Gospels. Far from being
oppressors, the Pharisees were continually the party of opposition. A
far better picture of them, from the political standpoint, can be gained
from the writings of Josephus, who in fact opposed them as trouble-
makers and thorns in the flesh of the political authorities.
It should be noted that, though the religious position of the
Sadducees gave the highest role of authority to the priests, it would not
be true to say that the priesthood on the whole supported the Sadducee
standpoint. Most of the rank-and-file priests were Pharisees and were
thus opponents, both politically and religiously, of the High Priest.
Like the majority of the Jewish people, these ordinary priests accepted
the Pharisee leaders, the sages, as their spiritual guides, and did not
presume to offer themselves as rival authorities merely on account of
their Aaronic descent. They accepted that, as priests, they were merely
Temple officials and not religious teachers; some of them even entered
the Pharisee academies and trained to be sages themselves — for no one
was debarred from becoming a sage, not even a priest.
Among the priests, it was chiefly a few families of great wealth and
political influence with the reigning power who were Sadducees. The
Sadducee party, indeed, formed a small minority among the Jewish
people, comprising wealthy landowners as well as wealthy priests.
People such as these were the natural allies of whatever authority
happened to be in power, whether Ptolemaic Greeks, Seleucid Greeks,
Hasmoneans, Herodians or Romans. The Sadducees were thus cut off
from the sources of popular unrest. The Temple, as the visible centre of
Judaism, could be taken over by any ruling power and provided with a
regime of collaborators. But the real centres of Jewish religious
authority, the synagogues in which the Pharisee leaders presided, were
too humble and too decentralized to be taken over, even if the Roman
authorities had known that this was where the road to control of the
Jews lay. In the time of Jesus and Paul, the occupying power was the
Romans, who actually appointed the High Priests, just as Herod had
done before them. They imagined that by appointing some subservient
quisling to the post of High Priest, they had assumed control of the
Jewish religion, little realizing that Judaism was a religion in which the
apparent spiritual head, the High Priest, was in reality oflittle account,

26
 THE PHARISEES

being personally despised by the majority of the Jews, and even in his
official capacity regarded as having no real authority.
It is impossible to understand the events ofthe time of Jesus and Paul
without a clear understanding of the equivocal role and position of the
High Priest in Jewish society — on the one hand, a figure of gorgeous
pomp leading the splendid ceremonial of the Temple and, on the other,
a person of no authority. The ordinary reader of the Gospels assumes,
naturally enough, that the High Priest was a figure corresponding, in
the Jewish religion, to the Pope in the Catholic Church or the
Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England. This mistake
arises from the fact that in the Christian religion the ceremonial role has
always been combined with the teaching role: the Christian priest
performs the mass and also teaches the people through sermons and:
lessons. Christians are thus unfamiliar with the fact that in Judaism
these two roles have always been distinct: the man who performs the
sacrifices does not pronounce on theology or religious law, or adopt the
role of inspirer or prophet. The Jewish division of roles has been of
inestimable benefit to the survival of the Jewish religion, for it has
meant that the corruption or destruction of the apparent centres of the
religion has had little effect on its continuance. The High Priesthood
frequently became hopelessly corrupt, but as long as there were
movements like Pharisaism to revive the sources of authority among
the laity, the religion was not seriously affected. Even the destruction of
the Temple, which in the eyes of non-Jewish observers spelled the death
of Judaism, had no such result, since the vitality of the religion did not
depend on the Temple worship or on its practitioners.
The corruption of the High Priesthood in the time of Jesus and Paul
is also attested by the literature of the Dead Sea sect or Essenes. This
sect, however, was very different from the Pharisees in their reaction to
their perception of corruption in the Temple and the High Priesthood.
od
The Pharisees were able to co-operate with the High Priestho
precisely because they did not regard it as importan t. Since, to them,
the High Priest was a ceremonial functionary, not a figure of spiritual
as a
power, it did not matter to them how inadequate he might be
person, as long as he performed his ceremonial duties with a modicum
ed by
of efficiency. Thus they saw to it that the High Priest was supervis
his
Pharisees in the performance of his duties, both to guard against
against any attempt on his part
ignorance of the law and also to guard
service;
to introduce Sadducee practices into the order of the Temple
were satisfied , for the
once these precautions had been taken, they
or theoretic al
Temple service would be valid whatever the moral
Jay]
 THE MYTHMAKER

shortcomings of the officiator. (In practice, the High Priest almost

always submitted to this Pharisee supervision, because of the pressure
of public opinion.
'°)
The Dead Sea Scroll sect, however, took the office of the High Priest
far more seriously than this and consequently, when they became
convinced that the High Priesthood had become hopelessly corrupt,
they withdrew from Jewish society altogether and formed a monastic
community, dreaming and praying for the Last Days, when a pure
Temple service would be restored. The Dead Sea Scroll sect actually
had a far higher estimation of the role of the Temple and the priesthood
than did the Pharisees, and recent scholarship’! indicates that they
were probably a breakaway branch of the Sadducees (they called
themselves the ‘sons of Zadok’). They represent the religious ideals of
the Sadducee sect before it became politicized and corrupt — a sect
which genuinely believed in the central importance of Bible, Temple
and priesthood, and opposed the lay movement of the Pharisees.
When we read in the New Testament of incidents in which the High
Priest figures, either in relation to Jesus or in relation to Paul, we have
to rid ourselves of preconceptions about the role of the High Priest and
try to understand the issues in the light of the historical facts. In
particular, a flood of light can be thrown on the New Testament story
by bearing in mind the deep antagonism between the Pharisee
movement and the High Priest of that period, not only a Sadducee, but
an appointee of the Romans and a quisling collaborator with Roman
power.

28
 CHAPTER 4

WAS JESUS A
PHARISEE?

In the light of the previous chapter, it may well be asked, ‘if the
Pharisees were indeed such an enlightened, progressive movement,
why did Jesus criticize them so severely?’ The answer has already been
in
suggested: that Jesus did not in historical fact criticize the Pharisees
the way represented in the Gospels; he was indeed himself a Pharisee.
is the
The whole picture of Jesus at loggerheads with the Pharisees
death, when the Christia n
creation of a period some time after Jesus’
of its claim to have
Church was in conflict with the Pharisees because
or
superseded Judaism. The Gospels are a product of this later period;
deriving from an
rather, the Gospels consist of materials, some of them
it is
earlier period, which were edited in an anti-Pharisee sense. Thus
es,
possible to refute the anti-Pharisee picture in the Gospels themselv
retain many details from the earlier
which even after their re-editing
the Pharisees
accounts which show that Jesus was not in conflict with
and was a Pharisee himself.
can be plainly
The process of re-editing is not just a hypothesis; it
which the various
seen within the Gospels by comparing the way in
four Gospels,
Gospels treat the same incident. The fact that there are
the original story
instead of just one, makes the task of reconstructing
results of modern
much easier, especially when one bears in mind the
ls were written.
scholarship, which have shown in what order the Gospe
rship Mark is the earliest
According to the most firmly based schola
ring the version of
Gospel, so we can often be enlightened just by compa
Mark with that of any later Gospel.
Mark an account of
To give just one preliminary example, we find in
er’ (a term used as an
a conversation between Jesus and a certain ‘lawy
29
 THE MYTHMAKER

alternative to ‘Pharisee’ both in the Gospels and in later Christian

literature):
Then one of the lawyers, who had been listening to these discussions and
had noted how well he answered, came forward and asked him, ‘Which
commandment is first ofall?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is ““Hear O Israel:
the Lord our God is the only Lord; love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
The second is this: “‘Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other
commandment greater than these.’ The lawyer said to him, ‘Well said,
Master. You are right in saying that God is one and beside him there is no
other. And to love him with all your heart, all your understanding, and all
your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself— that is far more than
any burnt offerings or sacrifices. When Jesus saw how sensibly he
answered, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mark
12: 28-34)
The version of this story found in the later Gospel, Matthew, is as
follows:
Hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees met together;
and one of their number tested him with this question: ‘Master, which is the
greatest commandment in the Law?’ He answered, ‘ “Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.” That is the
greatest commandment. It comes first. The second is like it: “Love your
neighbour as yourself.’ Everything in the Law and the prophets hangs on
these two commandments.’ (Matthew 22: 34-40)
In this second version of the story, the friendliness of the exchange
has been obliterated. The Pharisee questioner is not motivated by
admiration, as in the first version (‘noted how well he answered’), but
merely wishes to ‘test’ Jesus, i.e. try to catch him out. In the first
version, the Pharisee questioner is given a lengthy reply to Jesus,
praising him and adding a remark of his own about the superiority of
love to sacrifices, and to this Jesus replies with courteous respect,
saying that his questioner is ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. All this
is omitted in the second version, which is just one more story about an
envious Pharisee being silenced by the superior wisdom of Jesus.
It should be noted, too, that Jesus’ singling out of these two verses
from the Hebrew Bible (one from Deuteronomy and the other from
Leviticus) as the greatest of the commandments was not an original
idea of his own, but an established part of Pharisee thinking. The
central feature of the liturgy created by the Pharisees (and still used by
Jews today) is what is called the shema, which is the very passage from
Deuteronomy cited by Jesus: ‘Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is the

30
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

only Lord; love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your strength.’ This injunction was regarded by the
Pharisees as so important that they declared that merely to recite these
verses twice a day was sufficient to discharge the basic duty of prayer.!
Interestingly, too, in view of Jesus’ final comment to the ‘lawyer’, the
rabbis regarded these verses as having a strong connection with the
‘kingdom of God’ (a phrase not coined by Jesus, but part of Pharisaic
phraseology). They declared that to recite these verses comprised ‘the
acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of God’. It should be noted that
in Pharisaic thinking, ‘the kingdom of God’ had two meanings: it meant
the present kingdom or reign of God, or it could mean the future reign of
God over the whole world in the Messianic age. It is possible to discern
in Jesus’ frequent use of the same expression the same twofold
meaning: sometimes he means a future state of affairs which he has
come to prophesy (e.g. ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is near’), and
sometimes he is referring to the present kingship of God, which every
mortal is obliged to acknowledge (e.g. ‘The kingdom of God is among
you’). In the present passage, it seems to be the second meaning that is
paramount.
The other verse quoted by Jesus from Leviticus, “Love your
neighbour as yourself,’ was also regarded by the Pharisees as of central
importance, and was treated by the two greatest figures of Pharisaism,
Hillel? and Rabbi Akiba,’ as the great principle of Judaism on which
everything else depended. This did not mean, of course, that the rest of
the law was to be ignored or swept away, just because this was the most
important principle of it; on the.contrary, the law was regarded as the
working out and practical implementation of the principle of love of
neighbour, giving guidance about how love of neighbour could be
expressed in the complexities of daily life; a principle without such
elaboration would be as much use as the axioms of Euclid without the
propositions. Later Christian writers, misunderstanding this point,
thought that, when Jesus singled out love of God and love of neighbour,
he was thereby dismissing the rest of the Torah. There is no reason
in
whatever to think that this was Jesus’ meaning, especially as he was
lawyer (at least in the earlier
such cordial agreement with the Pharisee
and more authentic account of Mark).
the
The apparently disparaging remark of the ‘lawyer’ about
mean that he
sacrifices should also not be misunderstood. He did not
should be
thought that sacrifices or the Temple worship in general
of the Hebre w prophe ts should be borne
abolished, only that the words
the sacrifi ces as a magica l means of
in mind, warning against regarding

ot
 THE MYTHMAKER

producing atonement, rather than as symbols of true repentance and

reconciliation with God. The most awesome day of the Jewish year was
the Day of Atonement, when sacrifices were offered in the Temple and
the scapegoat was sent into the wilderness; yet it was Pharisee doctrine
that none of these awe-inspiring ceremonies had any effect unless true
repentance had occurred and restitution had been made for any harm
done to one’s fellow man. So the Pharisee was not opposing the offering
of sacrifices (which were prescribed in holy writ), but putting them into
their proper place, just as the Pharisees in general supported the
Temple worship and the priesthood in their duties, but strongly
opposed any tendency to regard all this as the be all and end all of
Jewish religion, as the Sadducees tended to do. Here again, there is no
reason whatever to suppose that Jesus’ attitude towards the Temple
worship was any different.
The analysis of this incident about Jesus and the ‘lawyer’ thus shows
two things: that there was no disagreement between Jesus and the
Pharisees, and that there is a process of editing going on in the Gospels
to make it appear that there was. For the later Gospel version turns an
amicable conversation into a hostile confrontation. This does not mean
that we may turn to the Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel, for an
unbiased picture of the Pharisees; on the contrary, the Gospel of Mark
is full of bias against the Pharisees, but, as the earliest Gospel, it has not
carried through the process of anti-Pharisee re-editing with quite such
thoroughness as the succeeding Gospels, so that more of the original
story is still apparent.
Here we hit upon an important principle of interpretation of the
Gospels: when we come across a passage that goes against the grain of
the narrative, we may be confident that this is part of the original,
authentic narrative that has survived the operations of the censor.
Since the general trend is anti-Pharisee, so that the narrative becomes
more and more anti-Pharisee as it is successively re-edited, any
passages friendly to the Pharisees cannot be late additions to the text
(for the motivation of the editor is to cut out such passages, not to add to
them); instead they must be survivals that have escaped the eye of the
editor. This does not mean that a later Gospel must always, and in
relation to every incident, be more thoroughly edited and less authentic
than an earlier Gospel, for the various Gospels are not presenting the
same material taken from only one source. Each Gospel contains
material for which it is not indebted to a previous Gospel and which it is
handling as a first-time editor; these different sources of material have
been labelled by modern scholars with capital letters such as Q, L, etc.

32
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

Consequently, when such an independent source is in question, a later

Gospel may retain authentic early material not contained in an earlier
Gospel. Any scientific study of the Gospels must always bear the above
considerations in mind. It follows that, when we speak of a later Gospel
taking the bias or tendency further, we mean that this occurs when both
Gospels are handling material taken from the same source. This is the
case in the example given above, where it is clear that the report of the
incident ofJesus and the ‘lawyer’ occurs first in Mark, and when it later
occurs in Matthew, it is an adapted version produced by the author of
Matthew on the basis of the report in Mark, which the author of
Matthew had before him when he wrote his Gospel.
This is, of course, only a preliminary example. Now follows a more
extended argument to show that Jesus was no antagonist of Pharisaism,
but was himself a Pharisee. This argument is not a digression from the
subject of Paul, the main concern of this book, for the question of
whether Jesus was a Pharisee is most relevant to the question of
whether Paul was a Pharisee. For the picture in the Gospels of Jesus
being hounded by the Pharisees is what gives credence to the later
picture, in Acts, of Paul (or rather Saul) the Pharisee hounding the
successors of Jesus, the ‘Jerusalem Church’. If Jesus was never
hounded by the Pharisees and was himselfa Pharisee, it becomes all the
more incredible that Paul, when he hounded the ‘Jerusalem Church’,
was actually a Pharisee. The lenient and tolerant attitude of Gamaliel,
the leader of the Pharisees in Paul’s time, towards the ‘Jerusalem
Church’ then becomes intelligible as merely a continuation of the
friendliness of the Pharisees towards Jesus himself. The contention of
this book is that Jesus, usually represented as anything but a Pharisee,
was one, while Paul, always represented as a Pharisee in his un-
regenerate days, never was. In the course of the argument, it will
become plain why this strange reversal of the facts was brought about
by the New Testament writers.
An important ground of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees,
the
according to the Gospels, was Jesus’ insistence on healing on
Pharisee law. The Gospels allege
sabbath, which was allegedly against
,
that the Pharisees not only criticized Jesus for healing on the sabbath
reason (Mark 3: 6;
but schemed to bring about his death for this
ts which
Matthew 12: 14). Jesus is also credited with certain argumen
for
he put to the Pharisees to defend his practice of sabbath healing:
why
example, that since circumcision was permitted on the sabbath,
fact that,
should healing be forbidden (John 7: 23)? It is an amazing
to find out what the Pharisee s
when we consult the Pharisee law books

33
 THE MYTHMAKER

actually taught about healing on the sabbath, we find that they did not
forbid it, and they even used the very same arguments that Jesus used
to show that it was permitted. Moreover, Jesus’ celebrated saying, “The
sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath,’ which has been
hailed so many times as an epoch-making new insight proclaimed by
Jesus, is found almost word for word in a Pharisee source, where it is
used to support the Pharisee doctrine that the saving of life has
precedence over the law of the sabbath. So it seems that whoever it was
that Jesus was arguing against when he defended his sabbath healing, it
cannot have been the Pharisees.
An indication of who these opponents really were can be found in one
of the sabbath stories. Here it is stated that, in anger at Jesus’ sabbath
healing, the Pharisees ‘began plotting against him with the partisans of
Herod to see how they could make away with him’ (Mark 3: 6). The
partisans of Herod (i.e. Herod Antipas, ruler, by Roman appointment,
of Galilee) were the most Hellenized of all the Jews and the most
politicized, in the sense that their motivation was not in the least
religious, but was actuated only by considerations of power. An
alliance between the Pharisees (who were the centre of opposition to the
Roman occupation) and the Herodians is quite impossible. But an
alliance between the Herodians and the Sadducees was not only
possible but actual. The Sadducees, as explained above, though
ostensibly a religious party, were so concerned to preserve the status quo
that they had become henchmen of Rome, their leader, the High Priest,
being a Roman appointee, entrusted with the task of serving the
interests of the occupation. It seems most probable, then, that, by an
editorial intervention, the name ‘Pharisees’ was substituted here for the
original ‘Sadducees’, and this is probably the case, too, in the other
stories in which Jesus is inexplicably arguing a Pharisee viewpoint
about the sabbath against the Pharisees. The Sadducees, we know, had
a stricter viewpoint about the sabbath than the Pharisees, and (though
this cannot be documented, since no Sadducee documents have
survived) it may well be that, unlike the Pharisees, they forbade healing
on the sabbath. This, at any rate, is a hypothesis that makes sense,
whereas the stories as they stand, with Pharisees wishing to kill Jesus
for preaching Pharisee doctrine, make no sense.
Since Jesus certainly came into conflict with the High Priest of his
day, who was a Sadducee, it would be quite natural for stories to be
preserved in which Jesus figures as an opponent of Sadducee religious
doctrines, even though, as we shall see, the chief point of conflict
between Jesus and the Sadducees was political rather than religious. In

34
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

the Pharisee literature many stories are found about Pharisee teachers
who engaged in argument with Sadducees. A frequent topic of these
debates. was the question of the resurrection of the dead, in which the
Pharisees believed, and the Sadducees disbelieved. As it happens, such
a story has been preserved in the Gospels about Jesus (Mark 12: 18-27
and parallels). The answers given to the Sadducees by Jesus are typical
of those given by Pharisees in their debates. Even among non-Jews it
was too well known that the Pharisees believed in resurrection for these
stories to be re-edited as confrontations between Jesus and the
Pharisees, so they were left unaltered — interesting evidence of the
status of Jesus as a Pharisee, though, of course, the Gospels represent
Jesus as arguing, not as a Pharisee, but simply as one whose views
happened for once to coincide with those of the Pharisees.
What was the motive for the re-editing of stories about conflict
between Jesus and the Sadducees so that he was portrayed as in conflict
with the Pharisees instead? The reason is simple. The Pharisees were
known to be the chief religious authorities of the Jews, not the
Sadducees. In fact, at the time that the Gospels were edited, the
Sadducees had lost any small religious importance that they had once
had, and the Pharisees were the sole repository of religious authority.
As we shall see shortly in more detail, it was of the utmost importance to
the Gospel editors to represent Jesus as having been a rebel against
Jewish religion, not against the Roman occupation. The wholesale re-
editing of the material in order to give a picture of conflict between
Jesus and the Pharisees was thus essential. Also, since it was known
that the Sadducees were collaborators with Rome, any substantial
picture of opposition by Jesus to the Sadducees, even on purely
religious grounds, would have given an impression of Jesus as an
opponent of Rome — just the impression that the Gospel editors wished
to avoid.
That there was in reality no conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees
is shown by certain telltale features which have been allowed to remain
in the narrative. An important example is: ‘At that time a number of
Pharisees came to him and said, ‘“‘You should leave this place and go on
your way; Herod is out to kill you” ’ (Luke 13: 31). This passage has
puzzled all the commentators. Why should the Pharisees, who, in
death
previous stories, have been represented as longing for Jesus’
warning
because of his sabbath healings, come forward to give him a
‘ntended to save his life? Some pious Christian commentators, anxious
an
to preserve the picture of malevolent Pharisees, have concocted
s were playing a double game:
elaborate scenario in which the Pharisee

35
 THE MYTHMAKER

knowing that there was more danger for Jesus in Jerusalem than in
Galilee, they gave Jesus a spurious warning about Herod in order to
induce him to flee to his death in Jerusalem. Apart from the fact that
this is mere fantasy, it is hardly likely that, if the Pharisees had
previously shown themselves to be Jesus’ deadly enemies, they could
expect Jesus to accept a message from them as actuated by the
friendliest of motives.
This story indeed is valuable evidence of friendly relations between
Jesus and the Pharisees; to give such a warning, the Pharisees must
have regarded Jesus as one of their own. The very fact that this story is
so inconsistent with the general picture of Jesus’ relations with the
Pharisees in the Gospels guarantees its historical truth; such a story
could not have been added at a late stage in the editing of the material,
but must be a survival from an early stage which by some oversight was
not edited out.
An important indication that the stories about Pharisee opposition to
Jesus on the question of sabbath healing are not to be taken at face
value is the fact that there is no mention of this charge at Jesus’ trial. If
Jesus, as the Gospels represent, actually incurred a capital charge in
Pharisee eyes because of his sabbath activities, why was this not
brought against him at a time when he was on trial for his life? Why, in
fact, is there no mention of any charges brought specifically by the
Pharisees at Jesus’ trial? As we shall see in the next chapter, Jesus’ trial
was not on religious charges at all, but on political charges, though the
Gospels, pursuing their general aim of depoliticizing Jesus’ aims, try to
give the political charges a religious flavour. Yet, if the trial really had
been a religious one, who better than the Pharisees, the alleged bitter
religious enemies of Jesus, to play the most prominent part in the
proceedings? The question really ought to be shifted to the opposite
extreme and put in this form: why was it that the Pharisees did not
defend Jesus at his trial, in the same way that Gamaliel, the leader of the
Pharisees, defended Jesus’ disciple Peter when the latter was put on
trial before the religious Sanhedrin? The answer is that the Pharisees
were not even present at Jesus’ trial, which was not before the religious
Sanhedrin, but before the political tribunal in which the High Priest, as
representative and henchman of the Romans, presided over a court of
his own minions.
If the matter of sabbath healing cannot be substantiated as a ground
of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, what about the other
features of Jesus’ teaching which the Gospels represent as revolu-
tionary and offensive to the Jewish religious authorities of the time?

36
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

What about Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah? Was not this blasphemous
in the eyes of the Pharisees? What about Jesus’ threat to destroy the
Temple -an allegation brought against him at his trial? What about his
aspiration to reform or even abrogate the law of Moses? The answer is
that none of these matters constituted any threat to the religious view of
the Pharisees, and on examination we shall find that on all these
matters Jesus’ view was pure Pharisaism and one that confirms that he
was himself a member of the Pharisee movement.
Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah was not in any way blasphemous in
the eyes of the Pharisees or, indeed, of any other Jews, for the title
‘Messiah’ carried no connotation of deity or divinity. The word
‘Messiah’ simply means ‘anointed one’, and it is a title of kingship;
every Jewish king of the Davidic dynasty had this title. To claim to be
the Messiah meant simply to claim the throne of Israel, and while this
was a reckless and foolhardy thing to do when the Romans had
abolished the Jewish monarchy, it did not constitute any offence in
Jewish law. On the contrary, the Jews all lived in hope of the coming of
the Messiah, who would rescue them from the sufferings of foreign
occupation and restore to them their national independence. Anyone
who claimed to be the promised Messiah (prophesied by the prophets
of the Hebrew Bible) who would restore the beloved dynasty of David
would be sure of a sympathetic following. Jesus was by no means the
only person during this period to make a Messianic claim, and not one
of these claimants was accused of blasphemy. These Messianic
claimants were not all of the same type: some were warriors, like Bar
Kokhba or Judas of Galilee, while some were non-militarist enthusi-
asts, like Theudas or ‘the Egyptian’ (both mentioned in the New
Testament as well as in Josephus *), who gathered a crowd of believers
and waited confidently for a miracle by which the Romans would be
overthrown. Jesus was of the latter type, as I have argued in full
elsewhere; like ‘the Egyptian’, he expected the great miracle to take
place on the Mount of Olives, as prophesied by Zechariah.’ Some
Messiahs had the limited aim of merely liberating the Jews from Rome,
the
while others, of whom Jesus was one, expected this liberation to be
when, in
precursor ofan era of peace and liberation for the whole world,
plough-
the words of the prophets, the swords would be beaten into
none of these
shares, and the wolf would lie down with the lamb. But
were an
aspirations had any tinge of blasphemy; on the contrary, they
the logical
integral part of Judaism, in which the Messianic hope was
day extend
outcome of belief in the One God, whose reign would one
over all humanity.

3h
 THE MYTHMAKER

In later Christianity, however, after the death of Jesus, the Greek

translation of the Hebrew word Messiah (i.e. ‘Christ’) had come to
mean a deity or divine being. Consequently, Christians reading this
meaning back into Jesus’ lifetime, found it easy to believe that Jesus’
claim to Messiahship would have shocked his fellow Jews and made
him subject to a charge of blasphemy. The Gospels, indeed, credit
Jesus with a concept of his own Messiahship that was different from
that of his fellow Jews; but even if this were the case, since he used the
word ‘Messiah’ about himself, his fellow Jews would have no reason to
believe that he meant anything abnormal by it, especially as, according
to the Gospels, he was so reticent about the alleged special meaning
that he attached to this word that even his own disciples did not
understand his meaning. Consequently, no charge of blasphemy could
arise from a concept that was never divulged. In historical scholarship,
however, the idea of an undivulged Messianic concept (‘the Messianic
secret’) is merely an attempt by later Christians to attribute to Jesus an
idea that in reality did not arise until after his death.
It is interesting, again, that in the Synoptic Gospels it is never the
Pharisees who accuse Jesus of blasphemy on Messianic grounds, but
only the High Priest. This indicates that the charge against Jesus for
claiming to be the Messiah was not a religious charge at all, but a
political one. It was no infringement of Pharisee law to claim to be the
Messiah, but since ‘Messiah’ means ‘king’, and since the Romans had
abolished the Jewish monarchy, anyone who claimed to be the Messiah
was acting subversively towards the Roman occupation, and, as the
Roman-appointed quisling whose task was to guard against anti-
Roman activities, the High Priest would be bound to take an interest in
any Messianic claimants with a view to handing them over to the
Romans for punishment. The Gospels, however, in pursuance of
their policy of representing Jesus as a rebel against Jewish religion,
depict the High Priest as concerned about blasphemy rather than
rebellion.
Similarly, the charge against Jesus that he threatened to destroy the
Temple and rebuild it was brought against him only at his trial, and the
Pharisees are not associated with this charge. This is indeed a political,
not a religious charge, for the Temple built by Herod was not expected
by the Pharisees to last into the Messianic age. Jesus very probably did
declare his intention of destroying the Temple and rebuilding it, for this
is just what anyone seriously claiming to be the Messiah would do. The
Pharisees had no superstitious veneration for the Temple, and would
not be horrified at the idea that Jesus intended to build a new one, like

38
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

his ancestor Solomon. The only people who would be seriously upset by
such an intention would be the High Priest and his entourage, who
could expect to see themselves swept away by the projected Messianic
regime. Indeed, at the time of the Jewish War in Ap 66, the first thing
that the rebels against Rome did was to dismiss the High Priest and
appoint a new one from a family uncontaminated by collaboration with
Rome. Yet again, this charge is represented in the Gospels as a religious
charge of blasphemy instead of as a political charge of rebellion against
the status quo, in which the High Priest and the Temple were
instruments of Rome.
As for the alleged reforms of Judaism which Jesus is represented as
advocating, none of these, on examination, proves to be in breach of
Pharisee ideas. Thus we are told that Jesus opposed the concept of ‘an
eye for an eye’, found in the legal code of the Hebrew Bible, substituting
the law of love for the law of revenge. This is a travesty of the situation
in Pharisaism. The Pharisees did not regard the expression ‘an eye for
an eye’ as a literal legal prescription. They poured scorn on such an
idea as quaint and uncivilized (asking, for example, ‘What happens ifa
one-eyed man knocks out someone’s eye?’). They regarded the
expression ‘an eye for an eye’ as meaning that in principle any injury
perpetrated against one’s fellow man should be compensated for in
accordance with the seriousness of the injury. Indeed, the legal code of
the Hebrew Bible itself provides for such compensation, when it states
that loss of employment and doctor’s bills must be paid for by the
person responsible for an injury (Exodus 21: 19). So clearly the
Pharisees were not putting any strained interpretation on the Hebrew
Bible when they understood the expression ‘an eye for an eye’ to refer to
monetary compensation rather than savage retribution. As for Jesus’
further recommendation that one should not seek compensation if
injured, but should offer the other cheek, he certainly did not extend
this idea to freedom from any obligation to compensate for injuries that
one may have committed. As a counsel of perfection® (not as a practical
law), the idea of refusing to receive compensation was an option in
Pharisaic thought too; but this did not mean that injuries could be
committed with impunity without any remedy in law; on the contrary,
the very person who was ready to waive his own legal right to
compensation would be the first to uphold the right of others, especially
of
if he himself had injured them. This is an area in which confusion
a definition of the
thought is rife, and Jesus is credited with upholding
a society in
‘law of love’ which is mere nonsense, and would result in
which oppression and violence would reign unchecked. The Pharisees

39
 THE MYTHMAKER

too believed in the ‘law of love’, as is shown by their doctrine that love of
God and love of fellow man are the basic principles of the Torah; but
love of one’s fellow man is shown more by a determination to secure his
rights than by a blanket abolition of all rights. There is no reason to
suppose that Jesus held such a foolish doctrine, or that his views were
different from those of other Pharisees.
As for Jesus’ individual ‘reforms’ of Jewish laws, these were non-
existent. We find in Mark 7: 19 an expression which has been
translated to mean that Jesus ‘declared all foods clean’, but this
translation has been much disputed, and many scholars regard the
phrase as an editorial addition anyway. In another passage, we find
Jesus explicitly endorsing the Jewish laws of purity, when he tells the
leper he has cured, ‘Go and show yourself to the priest, and make the
offering laid down by Moses for your cleansing’ (Mark 1: 43).
True, we find Jesus speaking in the tone of a reformer in the Sermon
on the Mount, when he says, ‘You have learned that our forefathers
were told. ... But what I tell you is this.’ Here he seems to assume a
tone of authority and an independence of previous teaching which
would justify the description of a ‘reformer’. However, since the whole
episode of the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew’s invention (the
sayings being found scattered over various episodes in the other
Gospels, except in Luke, where the sermon is transferred to a plain and
the grandiose note of authority is missing), the simplest explanation is
that the reformer’s tone has been imported into the story by later
Christian editors, to whom the idea that Jesus taught with the same
kind of authority as other Pharisee teachers was unpalatable.
An interesting episode that seems to support the picture of Jesus as a
ruthless reformer of the Torah and as unconcerned with the observance
of its laws is the corn-plucking incident, which first occurs in Mark 2:
One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and his disciples as they
went, began to pluck ears of corn. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are
they doing what is forbidden on the sabbath?’ He answered, ‘Have you
never read what David did when he and his men were hungry and had
nothing to eat? He went into the House ofGod, in the time of Abiathar the
High Priest, and ate the consecrated loaves, though no one but a priest is
allowed to eat them, and even gave them to his men.’
He also said to them, ‘The sabbath is made for the sake of man and not
man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of Man is sovereign even over the
sabbath.’
This incident cannot be explained as having been originally an
altercation with the Sadducees, for the Pharisees did indeed forbid the

40
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

plucking of corn on the sabbath, together with all other forms of

agricultural labour. So Jesus, by allowing his disciples to pluck ears of
corn on the sabbath, was flouting a clear Pharisee law, or so it appears.
An indication that all is not as it appears, however, is Jesus’ saying at
the end: ‘The sabbath is made for the sake of man and not man for the
sabbath.’ This, as previously mentioned, is a Pharisee maxim’, and it
gives the key to the whole incident. For the Pharisees used this maxim
to show that in circumstances of danger to human life the sabbath laws could
be, and had to be, ignored. In the story as it stands, there was no danger
to human life to excuse the disciples from ignoring the sabbath law; but,
as we examine the story further, we find more and more indications that
the circumstances did indeed involve extreme danger.
Jesus in his explanation to the Pharisees cites, in true Pharisee °
fashion, an episode from scripture as the ground of his attitude to the
corn-plucking. This is the case of David and his violation of the sanctity
of the shewbread; and this case is explained in the Pharisee literature®
(with good support from the actual text) as having been one of extreme
danger to life, since David and his men were dying of starvation in their
flight from King Saul. That is why, in Pharisee theory, David and his
men were justified in eating the holy shewbread, though in circum-
stances where there was no danger to human life this was regarded as
a heinous sin. Since the case of David was one of extreme emergency,
it would seem to be an absurd instance for Jesus to give unless the
circumstances of himself and his disciples were equally desperate at the
time of the corn-plucking incident. If, as the narrative seems to
indicate, they were engaged merely in a leisurely stroll through the
cornfields on the sabbath, and the disciples idly plucked and munched
the corn for want of anything better to do, the David incident would
have been quite irrelevant (apart from having nothing to do with the
sabbath). If we restore the element of emergency to the narrative,
however, it suddenly makes perfect sense.
Jesus and his followers, in flight from Herod Antipas and the
Romans, at the last extremity of exhaustion and hunger arrive at a
cornfield. It is the sabbath day, but Jesus, judging the situation to be,
like the case of David, an emergency in which all ritual observances,
whether of the sabbath or the Temple, are abrogated by Pharisee law,
allows his disciples to satisfy their hunger by plucking corn. Later,
when questioned about the incident by some Pharisee friends, he
explains how he came to rule that the sabbath law should be broken.
This explanation also throws light on another puzzling point. To
pluck ears of corn from a field was not only a breach of the sabbath law,

4]
 THE MYTHMAKER

but also a breach of the law against theft. Some Christian scholars have
tried to cover this point by referring to the law in Deuteronomy 23: 25-
6: ‘When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then
thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand.’ This, however, as the
Pharisee literature shows (e.g. Mishnah Bava Metzia 7: 2) applies only
to workmen who are working in a field for the owner; life would soon
become impossible for farmers if every casual passer-by were allowed to
take his fill of corn. But in cases of danger to life, the laws of theft were
regarded as null and void — in fact, Pharisee law regards it as a duty to
steal in order to save life.® Jesus, therefore, was quite entitled, in
Pharisee thinking, to disregard the law of theft as well as the law of the
sabbath in such circumstances.
Why then, was the element of emergency removed from the story as
we have it in the Gospels, thus reducing the whole episode to nonsense?
The answer is: for the same reason that the element of emergency has
been removed from the whole of the Gospels, which portray Judaea and
Galilee as peaceful areas under benign Roman rule, instead of what
they were in historical reality at this time, areas of bitter unrest and
constant rebellion against the savage oppression of the Romans and the
depredations of the tax-farmers (or publicans). If the sense of
emergency had been retained in the story, not only would it have to be
revealed that Jesus was not flouting Pharisee law but also that he was a
hunted man, wanted by Herod and the Romans, and in rebellion
against them.
Thus the corn-plucking incident, so far from telling against the view
that Jesus was a Pharisee, cannot be understood except on the
hypothesis that Jesus was one. His use of biblical precedent and of a
Pharisee maxim in order to establish that exceptional circumstances
warranted a breach of the law are entirely in accordance with Pharisee
practice and principles, and do not justify an interpretation in terms of
rebellion against the law. Jesus’ final remark, ‘. . . therefore the Son of
Man is sovereign even over the sabbath,’ is generally held to mean that
Jesus was declaring his lofty independence from Jewish law and his
right to abrogate its provisions at will. This, however, is not necessarily
the meaning of the sentence. The expression ‘son of man’ in Aramaic
simply means ‘man’ or ‘human being’. The meaning could therefore
be, ‘Human beings are more important than the sabbath,’ a sentiment
with which all Pharisees would agree. Many of the puzzling ‘Son of
Man’ sayings in the New Testament can be explained on similar lines,
though a residue remains in which Jesus uses the expression ‘Son of
Man’ as a title expressive of his own role. As a title, it by no means

42
 WAS JESUS A PHARISEE?

implies divine status, but rather prophetic status; it is used throughout

the book of Ezekiel in this sense.
The alleged conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees on the question
of his association with ‘sinners and publicans’ also requires some
comment. The mistake usually made is to think that these people were
not really sinners in any serious sense, but were merely lacking in
respectability or apt to neglect the laws of ritual purity. In fact, neither
respectability nor ritual purity were the issues; the ‘publicans’ were
gangsters, torturers and murderers who assisted the Roman tax-
farmers in extorting goods and money from their fellow Jews to the
point where many committed suicide or became outlaws rather than
face penury or slavery. Jesus, however, fully confident in his nationwide
campaign of ‘repentance’, preparatory to a Messianic miracle of |
national redemption from Rome, approached these desperate sinners
not because he loved their company, but in the hope of converting them
from their evil ways. Those ‘publicans’ or tax-gatherers who were
touched by Jesus’ appeal did not remain publicans. An example is
Zacchaeus (Luke 19), who renounced his whole way of life and
undertook to restore all the loot he had gathered and also give half his
possessions to charity. This is just the mode of restitution prescribed for
repentant tax-gatherers in the Pharisee work the Tosefta. Some
scholars have alleged that the Pharisees held out no hope of repentance
to tax-gatherers. This is not true, but they certainly regarded
repentance and restitution as very difficult for them.'° It may be that,
in this instance, there was a genuine point of disagreement between
Jesus and the other Pharisees, Jesus being confident of converting the
tax-gatherers, while other Pharisee teachers thought that association
with gangsters would be more likely to affect the would-be converter for
the worse than the gangsters for the better.
It should be remembered that Jesus would have been a most unusual
Pharisee if he had never disagreed with other Pharisees. As explained
earlier, amicable disagreement was an essential ingredient in Phari-
saism, and the Pharisee literature is full of disagreements between the
various sages of the movement. In some cases, the New Testament has
created conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, not by altering
‘Sadducees’ to ‘Pharisees’ or by removing some essential element from
the story, but simply by turning what was originally a friendly
argument into a hostile confrontation.
Thus in various ways, Jesus has been isolated in the Gospels from the
movement to which he belonged, the Pharisees. Yet, despite every
e
effort to turn him into an isolated figure, his identity as a Pharise

43
 THE MYTHMAKER

remains indelibly stamped on him by his style of preaching. His use of

parables (often thought by people unfamiliar with Pharisee literature
to be a mark of his uniqueness) was typical of Pharisee preaching; and
even his quaint expressions such as ‘a camel going through the eye of a
needle’, or ‘take the beam out of your own eye’ are Pharisee locutions
found in the Talmud. This is true, of course, only of the Jesus found in
the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Mark, Matthew and Luke). In the Fourth
Gospel, that of John, Jesus has become unrecognizable. He uses no
parables, nor any idiosyncratic rabbinical expressions; instead he
spouts grandiose Hellenistic mysticism and proclaims himself a divine
personage. Here the authentic Jesus has been lost in the post-Jesus
myth. It is not here that we find the genuine Jesus, rooted in the Jewish
religion of his time, and pursuing aims that were intelligible to his
fellow Jews.

44
 CHAPTER 5

WHY WAS JESUS

CRUCIFIED?

If Jesus was a Pharisee, made no claim that was blasphemous, and

never attempted to abolish the sabbath or any other accepted Jewish
religious institution, why was he crucified? This question has proved
most puzzling and embarrassing to Christian scholars who have
acquired enough knowledge of Pharisaism to realize that the tradi-
tional story of conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities will
not do. Some have tried to find a solution in the divisions which existed
within the Pharisee party, for example, between the House of Hillel and
the House of Shammai. According to this view, Jesus was a Pharisee,
but fell foul of the stricter wing of the Pharisees, the Shammaiites. But
the arguments and disagreements that took place between these
Pharisee factions were carried on at an amicable level and were decided
by majority vote, which sometimes went in favour of the Hillelites and
sometimes in favour of the Shammaiites. It is unthinkable that the
Shammaiites would attempt to bring about the death of a prominent
Hillelite. Moreover, it does not even appear that Jesus did belong to the
Hillelite or more liberal wing of the Pharisees, for his strict view on
divorce seems much more in accordance with the views of the House of
Shammai.
Another view is that Jesus belonged to a section of the Pharisees
called the Hasidim, who practised a supererogatory code of conduct
Hanina
and were known as healers and wonder-workers; men such as
and Abba Hilkiah. Asa ‘charis matic’
ben Dosa, Honi the Circle-maker
ic’
Pharisee, it is suggested, Jesus may have fallen foul of the ‘legalist
that there was any
Pharisees.’ Again, there is no reason to believe
s; on the
serious conflict between ‘charismatic’ and ‘legalistic’ Pharisee
the highest
contrary the evidence suggests that they held each other in

45
 THE MYTHMAKER

regard. Jesus may well have belonged to the Hasidim, who, indeed, of
all the Pharisees show the strongest similarity in type to Jesus, but this
would only have made him more respected by the main body of the
Pharisees.
Other scholars have made desperate attempts to find some point on
which Jesus’ views might have roused the ire of the Pharisees: one
scholar has even suggested that the root of the trouble was that Jesus
preached in the open air.” Such far-fetched suggestions show how
difficult it is to find any plausible reason why Jesus should have
offended the Pharisees by his teaching.
It is important for the argument of this book that we should have a
clear idea of why Jesus died in historical fact, for Paul, our main theme,
made the crucifixion ofJesus into the centre‘of his thinking. Paul’s view
of Jesus has coloured the story told in the Gospels and has thus
influenced the imagination of all Western civilization. To search for the
historical facts of Jesus’ death is thus to uncover the real world in which
Paul’s thinking had its origin and to explain the motivation of Paul in
transforming a historical event into a cosmic myth. Blaming the
Pharisees or Jewish religion generally for Jesus’ death was one of the
by-products of this transformation of a man into a myth. The picture of
the early Paul (or Saul) as a persecuting Pharisee has powerfully
reinforced this aspect of the matter.
Jesus was a man who was born into Jewish society in Galilee; he was
not a divine being who descended from outer space in order to suffer
death on behalf of mankind. If we want to know why Jesus was killed,
we have to ask why a Jew from Galilee in those times might meet his end
on a Roman cross.
Many Jews from Galilee died in the same way during this period.
Judas of Galilee was a Jewish patriot who led an armed rebellion
against the Romans. Many hundreds of his supporters were crucified
by the Romans. At one time, while Jesus was a boy, four thousand Jews
were crucified by the Romans for an insurrection against Roman taxes.
Crucifixion was the cruel form of execution which the Romans used for
rebels against their rule. Galilee was always a centre of rebellion’,
partly because it was not under direct Roman rule and, therefore, like
Vichy France during the last World War, gave some scope for the
organization of resistance.
The presumption is, therefore, that Jesus the Galilean who died on
the cross did so for the same reason as the others: because he was a
threat to the Roman occupation. The Gospels indeed tell us that this
was the charge made against him. The actual charge, according to

46
 WHY WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED?

Luke was as follows: ‘We found this fellow perverting the nation, and,
forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himselfis Christ a
King’ (Luke 23: 2). On his cross, the charge for which he was executed
was affixed, according to Roman usage: it was that he had claimed to be
‘King of the Jews’, a capital offence at a time when the Romans had
abolished the Jewish monarchy. To ‘pervert the nation’ meant to
disturb them from their allegiance to Rome. The use of the term
‘Christ’ (or ‘Messiah’) here in its original political sense is interesting,
for it shows that despite Christian editing of the Gospels, which ensured
that the term was de-politicized in almost every instance, editorial
vigilance could occasionally slip.
But the Gospels put all their energy into saying that, though Jesus
was executed on a political charge, this was a false charge. The real
reason why Jesus was brought to his death, the Gospels allege, was not
political but religious. The political charge, they say, was pursued with
vigour; John even has the Jews saying to Pilate, ‘If you let this man go,
you are no friend to Caesar; any man who claims to be a king is defying
Caesar’ (John 19: 12). But the Gospels allege that there was really no
substance in it, for Jesus had no political aims whatever, was indeed a
pacifist, had no desire to end Roman rule, and, when he claimed to be
‘King of the Jews’, did so in some innocuous spiritual sense that did not
in any way conflict with the Roman occupation.
According to this account, Jesus was framed; he was innocent of the
political charges for which he was executed. But also, it should be
noticed, the Romans in this account were innocent of his death. They
were tricked, bamboozled and blackmailed into executing Jesus. The
scene in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judaea, washes
his hands, saying, ‘My hands are clean of this man’s blood,’ symbolizes
the innocence of Rome (Matthew 27: 24). The full blame for the death
of Jesus is thus laid on the Jews, who are even made to accept the blame
in the same scene with the words, ‘His blood be on us and on our
children.’ The transfer of guilt from the Romans to the Jews could not
be more graphically performed.
Everything depends, then, on whether the picture of Jesus as a rebel
against Jewish religion can be substantiated. Only if it can be plausibly
shown that Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah was blasphemous in Jewish
law, or that his sabbath healing was offensive to the Pharisees, or his
the
threat to destroy the Temple was shocking to them can we say that
of posing a
charge on which Jesus was executed — the political charge
threat to the Roman occupation — was incorrect, the real reason being
to make
the hostility of the Jewish religious authorities, who sought

47
 THE MYTHMAKER

away with him by falsely denouncing him to the Roman Governor as a

political troublemaker. If none of the religious charges can be
substantiated, then the Jewish religious authorities had no reason to
hand him over to the Romans. The only charge remaining is the
ostensible charge itself, that of political subversion, and this must be
the real reason for Jesus’ death.
In fact, as we have seen in the last chapter, the desperate attempts of
the Gospels to show that Jesus was in some way a rebel against Jewish
religion are utterly implausible in the light of any genuine under-
standing of Jewish religion at the time. Only one of the Gospels, that of
John, portrays Jesus as expressing ideas that would indeed have
shocked the Jewish religious authorities and Jews generally — but
John’s is the latest and least authentic of the Gospels, and lacks all the
Jewish flavouring found in the other Gospels authenticating their
picture of Jesus as a Jewish teacher. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is
indeed portrayed as shocking the Pharisees, but only with ideas and
expressions that would not in fact have been shocking to them, and
which they would have heartily approved. Jesus’ genuine opinions and
teaching have still been preserved in these earlier Gospels; it is only
their impact that has been falsified.
We are left then with the political charge of rebellion against Rome.
Here we must make the all-important distinction between the
Pharisees and the High Priest. The High Priest would indeed have been
alarmed and hostile to Jesus, because of his claim to Messiahship and
his threat to the Temple, for the High Priest was appointed by the
Romans to look after their interests. Claiming to be the Messiah meant
claiming to be King of the Jews. If it had meant that Jesus regarded
himself as God, the High Priest would have regarded Jesus as merely a
harmless lunatic; but it meant something much more urgent and
practical than that — it signalled revolt. Jesus’ threat to the Temple was
not subversive of Jewish religion, but it was a real threat to the quisling
regime of the High Priest.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, would have had no objection on
political grounds to Jesus’ claim to Messiahship. The Pharisees were
the party of resistance against Rome. It was from their ranks that the
Zealots came, the brave guerrilla fighters who looked to Judas of
Galilee as their leader. Most of the Pharisees took a more moderate
view, thinking that the rule of the Romans was probably destined to
stay for quite a long time, but they continued to hope for liberation and
therefore regarded any Messianic attempt with sympathy. Their
attitude is perfectly summed up in the speech of Gamaliel (Acts 5):

48
 WHY WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED?

‘_.. if this idea of theirs or its execution is of human origin, it will

collapse; but if it is from God, you will never be able to put them down,
and you risk finding yourselves at war with God.’ This wait-and-see
policy in relation to every Messianic attempt was cautious and sensible,
but at root sympathetic, for the Pharisees were the party of patriotism
and would have liked nothing better than to see a successful Messianic
movement, as is shown by their support for Bar Kokhba a hundred
years later.
The reason for Jesus’ crucifixion, then, was simply that he was a
rebel against Rome. He was not framed on a political charge by the
Jews; rather it was the Jews who were framed by the Gospels, whose
concern was to shift the blame for the crucifixion from the Romans (and
their Jewish henchmen, the High Priest and his entourage) to the Jews
and their religion.
This does not mean, of course, that Jesus was a secular political
rebel, like Che Guevara in modern times. Such a conception of politics
is quite anachronistic. Jesus’ main concern was religion, not politics.
He preached as a rabbi, proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God like a
prophet, and eventually announced himself King in the religious
tradition of David, Solomon and Hezekiah. In Judaism, it is impossible
to separate religion and politics, because in Judaism the main concern
is with this world, rather than the next. As the Psalmist says, ‘The
heavens are for the Lord, and the earth for the children of men,’ which
means that it is the task of humanity to make the world a better place —
to make it full of justice, love, mercy and peace — not to escape from it
of
into a ‘better world’ beyond the skies. Jesus followed the tradition
Moses, who was both a prophet and a liberator; but Jesus came into
conflict with an inexorable empire that crushed him.

49
 CHAPTER 6

WAS PAUL A
PHARISEE?

It was Paul who detached Jesus from his mission of liberation and
turned him into an otherworldly figure whose mission had no relevance
to politics or to the sufferings of his fellow Jews under the Romans. This
transformation had the effect of making the Jews, instead of the
Romans, responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. Because Jesus had been
raised above politics, the Jews became the victims in a real political as
well as religious sense, when they became the pariahs of Christendom,
deprived of political and economic rights and subject to constant
persecution.
Who, then, was Paul? What kind of man was he who could so change
the meaning of Jesus’ life and death that it became the basis of a new
religion in whose central myth the Jews were the villains, instead of the
heroes, of sacred history? Jesus had preached the coming of the
Kingdom of God and had envisaged himself as the King of Israel in a
world of international peace, in which the Roman Empire and other
military empires had disappeared. He had never declared himself to be
a divine figure or claimed that his death would atone for the sins of
mankind; his failure to overcome the Romans by a great miracle from
God was the end of all his hopes, as his despairing cry on the cross
shows. Jesus’ scenario of the future contained the Jews as the people of
God, restored to independence in their Holy Land, and acting as a
nation of priests for the whole world in the Kingdom of God. Paul’s new
scenario, in which the Jews no longer had a great role to play, and had
indeed sunk to the role of the enemies of God, would have filled Jesus
with horror and dismay. He would not have understood the new
meaning attached by Paul to the title ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’, by which it
became a divine title instead of the time-honoured designation of

50
 WAS PAUL A PHARISEE?

Jewish royalty.
Jesus, a Pharisee, would never have understood or accepted this new
conception, which he would have regarded as blasphemous and
idolatrous, and as contradicting the Jewish historical role as the
opponents of god-kings and vicarious atonement by human sacrifice.
Yet Paul, for whom Jesus was both a god-king and a human sacrifice,
claimed to have been educated and trained as a Pharisee. We must now
enter fully into the question of whether this claim was true or false.
The depiction of the Pharisees in the book of Acts shows the same
contradictory pattern that we find in the Gospels, the only difference
being that the contradictions have become even more blatant. On the
one hand, the picture of persecuting Pharisees is continued through the
character of Paul himself: just as the Pharisees are portrayed in the -
Gospels as persecuting Jesus, so Paul in his early days of alleged
Pharisaism is shown persecuting the followers of Jesus. On the other
hand, there are at the same time many indications in the text that the
Pharisees were not opposed to the early Nazarenes, but, on the contrary,
regarded them with sympathy. Indeed, Luke, the author of Acts,
hardly bothers to continue the anti-Pharisee devices which he used in
his Gospel and almost carelessly, as it seems, retains pro-Pharisee
features in his narrative, relying on his portrayal of Paul to provide the
anti-Pharisee note which is essential for his main drift.
A demonstration of the fundamental accord between the early
followers of Jesus and the Pharisees will cast the gravest doubt on the
contention of Acts that Paul was a Pharisee. A very important episode
in this regard is that in which Gamaliel defends Peter and the other
apostles. This has already been referred to several times, but now
requires detailed analysis, as it is recounted in chapter 5 of Acts.
Peter has been warned by the High Priest not to preach about Jesus,
but he and the other apostles continue their preaching. This moves the
High Priest to action: “Then the High Priest and his colleagues, the
Sadducean party as it then was, were goaded into action by jealousy.
They proceeded to arrest the apostles, and put them into official
custody.’ Unlike the Gospels, the book of Acts does not disguise the fact
that the High Priest was a Sadducee and was thus opposed by the
Pharisees; it is here stated quite explicitly that it was the Sadducee
party which brought about the arrest of the apostles. The Apostles are
brought before the Sanhedrin, described as ‘the full senate of the
Israelite nation’, and accused of continuing to preach despite having
been ordered to desist. Peter, on behalf of the apostles, replies, “We
must obey God rather than men.’ The story continues:

51
 THE MYTHMAKER

This touched them on the raw, and they wanted to put them to death. Buta
member of the Council rose to his feet, a Pharisee called Gamaliel, a teacher
of the law held in high regard by all the people. He moved that the men be
put outside for a while. Then he said, ‘Men ofIsrael, be cautious in deciding
what to do with these men. Some time ago Theudas came forward, claiming
to be somebody, and a number ofmen, about four hundred, joined him. But
he was killed and his whole following was broken up and disappeared. After
him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census; he induced some
people to revolt under his leadership, but he too perished and his whole
following was scattered. And so now: keep clear of these men, I tell you;
leave them alone. For if this idea of theirs or its execution is of human origin,
it will collapse; but ifit is from God, you will never be able to put them down,
and you risk finding yourselves at war with God.’ They took his advice.
They sent for the apostles and had them flogged; then they ordered them to
give up speaking in the name ofJesus, and discharged them. So the apostles
went out from the Council rejoicing that they had been found worthy to
suffer indignity for the sake of the Name.
The historical importance of this passage has not been adequately
appreciated by scholars. It contradicts completely some of the leading
assumptions of the Gospels and indeed of Acts. On the principle
explained above, that passages which go against the grain of the
narrative should be given particular attention, we should regard this
passage as giving us a valuable glimpse into the real historical situation
of the time.
The first point to notice is that Gamaliel does not in any way condemn
the apostles as heretics or rebels against the Jewish religion. He regards
them instead as members ofa Messianic movement directed against Rome.
The proof of this is the comparison he makes between them and other
movements of the time. He mentions two such movements, that of
Theudas and that of Judas of Galilee, and as it happens we have
information about both these movements in the historical writings of
Josephus, written about aD go and based on sources contemporary
with the events (the date of the composition of the book of Acts is also
about AD go). Josephus confirms that both the movements mentioned
were Messianic movements directed against Rome; neither of them was
in any way directed against the Jewish religion. Theudas was a prophet
figure who had no military organization but relied on a miracle from
God to overthrow the Romans, in accordance with biblical prophecy.
Of course, there is no reason to suppose that the words in which the
author of Acts reports Gamaliel’s speech are exactly those which
Gamaliel used before the Sanhedrin. But the substance of Gamaliel’s
remarks fits in so well with the actual historical conditions of the time

2
 WAS PAUL A PHARISEE?

that, unlike some of the other speeches given to various characters in

the book of Acts, it has the ring of authenticity. This is not affected by
the fact that some details are distorted; for example, the actual name
‘Theudas’ cannot be correct, for Theudas belonged to a period too late
for this speech, since his insurrection took place in about AD 45. The
author of Acts evidently substituted the name ‘“Theudas’ for the
original name in his source, which was that of some figure who had
sunk into obscurity, but who was of the same Messianic type as
Theudas, whose name would still be familiar to readers.
Judas of Galilee, on the other hand, belongs to the right period since
his activities took place during the collection of taxes and the census of
Quirinius in ap 6. As the founder of the great Zealot movement which
remained in existence long after the death of Judas, his name was still
familiar to the readers of Acts and so was allowed to stand unchanged.
Judas, unlike Theudas, was a militarist who engaged in armed guerilla
activity. He was in no way a rebel against Jewish religion, but on the
contrary was a Pharisee rabbi.
Gamaliel put the Jesus movement into the same category as these
two movements. The analogy between Theudas (or the proto-Theudas
in the original source) and Jesus is closer than the analogy between
Jesus and Judas of Galilee, for Jesus never engaged in organized
military activity, but, like Theudas, relied on a miracle from God.
When the climactic moment of Jesus’ revolt took place, he asked his
disciples whether they had swords and, when told that they had only
two between them, he said, ‘That will be enough’ (Luke 22: 38). This
incident, preserved by only one evangelist, shows that Jesus was no
pacifist, but thought that a token show of fight on his part would be
enough and God would do the rest. Here he followed the biblical
example of Gideon. But this unmilitaristic stance of Jesus did not make
him any less of an opponent to the Romans, who took Theudas
seriously enough to kill him.’
If Jesus, as the Gospels represent, had actually been a rebel against
the Jewish religion, declaring the Torah abrogated and himself able to
cancel its provisions at will, why did Gamaliel the Pharisee, leader of a
religious party whose loyalty to the Torah was renowned, have nothing
to say about this when giving his opinion about what should be done to
Jesus’ immediate followers? If the Pharisees had really been Jesus’
deadly enemies during his lifetime, why should their leader suddenly
the
forget all about this shortly after Jesus’ death and give his support to
very men with whom Jesus had consorted , including Peter, his right-
hand man? If Jesus’ apostles broke the sabbath and ignored other

53
 THE MYTHMAKER

Jewish laws, as conventional Christian belief requires them to have

done in continuance of the attitudes of Jesus himself, why does
Gamaliel the Pharisee say that their movement may be ‘from God’?
Finally, if this is the lenient attitude of the leader of the Pharisees
(however inexplicable by conventional Christian theory), why does
Paul, the alleged Pharisee, have an entirely different attitude, breath-
ing fire and thunder against the followers of Jesus and hauling them off
to the prison from which Gamaliel wanted them released?
Christian writers of the Church certainly found difficulty with these
questions, and their answer was that Gamaliel was not a typical
Pharisee, but was in fact a secret sympathizer with Christianity, i.e.
with the Christianity of the Church, which they thought identical with
that of the apostles. For anyone who knows the Pharisee records of
Gamaliel, this solution is ridiculous, but it is somewhat anticipated by
the failure of the narrative in Acts to make clear just how important a
Pharisee Gamaliel was. It calls him ‘a Pharisee called Gamaliel, a
teacher of the law held in high regard by all the people’, but it does not
make clear that he was the Pharisee leader of his generation, a vital link
in the chain of Jewish tradition, one of the veritable Fathers of Judaism.
To say that he was a secret Christian, in the sense meant, is like saying
that Saint Thomas Aquinas was a secret Hindu. Of course, Gamaliel
undoubtedly was a sympathizer with the followers of Jesus, as the
present passage shows, in the sense that he saw no harm in them and
thought they might possibly turn out to be ‘from God’; but he would not
have had such sympathy if they had had the views ascribed to them and
to Jesus by later Christian belief.
It is noteworthy, too, that Gamaliel is described as ‘held in high
regard by all the people’. This is a rare indication in the New
Testament of the status of the Pharisees among the Jewish people. In
the Gospels we are never allowed to understand this, but are shown the
Pharisees as proud oppressors, laying grievous burdens on the people,
making an ostentatious show of piety, but actually hypocrites. One
would never guess from all this that the Pharisees were the party of the
people, whose customs and traditions they guarded from Sadducee
attack, and whom the people loved as their natural protectors from
corrupt High Priests and Kings.
A more modern solution to the problems of the Gamaliel passage is to
have recourse once more to the divisions among the Pharisees.
According to this theory, Gamaliel belonged to the lenient Hillelite
wing of the Pharisees, while Paul represented the more fanatical and
rigorous Shammaiite wing.’ This explains why. two Pharisees could

54
 WAS PAUL A PHARISEE?

adopt such different attitudes to the followers of Jesus. This, however,

explains nothing. It is true that Gamaliel was a Hillelite, for he was a
descendant of Hillel himself. But there is no point of disagreement
between the Hillelites and the Shammaiites that could make them
adopt such different standpoints towards the early followers of Jesus.
The whole argument is predicated on the view that the Nazarenes were
in some way heretical in their doctrines or practices, but, in fact, they
were not: they were orthodox Jews in their whole way of life, including
the practice of circumcision and the observance of dietary laws, the
sabbath and festivals, and of the Temple cult. The only thing that
differentiated them from ordinary Pharisaic Jews was their belief in
Jesus as Messiah, and since this did not include any beliefin Jesus as a
divine figure, this doctrine was well within the threshold of tolerance of
other Jews, many of whom had similar Messianic beliefs about other
figures such as Judas of Galilee or Theudas. There was thus no reason
for any Pharisee, whether Hillelite or Shammaiite, to adopt an attitude
of angry intolerance towards the followers of Jesus.
If anything, the Shammaiites would have had more sympathy with
the early followers of Jesus than the Hillelites, for the Shammaiites were
inclined to take a more activist line against the Roman occupation than
the Hillelites. Thus any Messianic movement raising hopes of quick
release from subjection to Rome would have received a warmer
response from them than from the cautious Hillelites. Further, as
already mentioned, there is some reason to believe that Jesus himself
was a Shammaiite. This not to say that the Hillelites were resigned to
collaboration with Rome and had lost all hope of Jewish independence
in the foreseeable future. The speech of Gamaliel shows the contrary,
for it is clear that this is an activist political speech, saying in effect,
‘Nothing would please me better than the success of the hopes of the
followers of Jesus, though in view of past failures of such groups, I must
adopt a wait-and-see attitude.’ This was indeed exactly the attitude of
the moderate Pharisees, who continued to believe fervently in the
coming of the Messiah and looked with hope, tempered by many
previous disappointments, towards any Messianic claimant. Thus
to
even the moderate Pharisees could switch from political passivity
and
activism quite easily, as happened during the Bar Kokhba revolt,
the Pharisee party was the continual centre of anti-Roman ferment.
with the
The political character of Gamaliel’s speech contrasts strongly
of relations between the Jesus
usual slant of New Testament accounts
try to present the issues as
movement and the Pharisees, which
religious only.

55
 THE MYTHMAKER

It may be asked why Luke, the author of Acts, preserved this

revealing incident, which contradicts so much of the trend of present-
ation in the Gospels, including Luke’s own. The answer seems to be
that Luke had more of a historian’s approach than the other Gospel-
writers and often seems to be working from written sources of an
archival character, which he likes to transmit with almost pedantic
thoroughness. Thus, in his Gospel, he gives us the indictment of Jesus
at the time when he was handed over to the Romans in a form that has
the stamp of authenticity and was no doubt taken from some official
source (‘We found this man subverting our nation, opposing the
payment of taxes to Caesar, and claiming to be Messiah, a king’). This
tendency to quote his source verbatim sometimes lets in a breeze of
political reality, which Luke then tries to counteract by various devices,
not always very successfully. Thus, in the present passage, he attempts
to divest the Apostles’ trial before the Sanhedrin of political flavour by
the speech he puts into Peter’s mouth when he was questioned before
the trial began: ‘We must obey God rather than men. The God of our
fathers raised up Jesus whom you had done to death by hanging him on
a gibbet. He it is whom God has exalted with his own right hand as
leader and saviour, to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins.
And we are witnesses to all this, and so is the Holy Spirit given by God
to those who are obedient to him.’ This speech is addressed to the High
Priest, which makes the accusation ‘whom you had done to death’ not
inappropriate; but the representation of Jesus as having a mission of
forgiveness only, not as a liberator from Rome, makes the Jesus
movement (or Nazarenes) into quite a different kind of party from that
implied by Gamaliel in his subsequent speech. The term ‘saviour’ is
indeed used, not in the Jewish sense of ‘liberator’, but in the later
Christian sense of ‘saviour from damnation’. Thus this speech is
calculated to counteract the impression given in the subsequent
Sanhedrin scene, though at the cost of consistency, for if the views of
Peter and the Apostles had really been of this kind, Gamaliel would not
have defended them at all. Luke made a much more plausible job of
counteracting the indictment against Jesus which he quoted in his
Gospel.
More effective, however, is another device which is used in the
presentation of the Gamaliel episode: the depiction of Gamaliel as a
lone voice and as unrepresentative of the Pharisees. This is done not
only by hiding the fact that Gamaliel was the leader of the Pharisee
party, but also by concealing the fact that the release of the apostles
took place by a majority vote. Instead, it is simply said that Gamaliel

56
 WAS PAUL A PHARISEE?

managed to persuade the assembly to his point of view, which makes it

appear that by a feat of eloquence he managed to induce the Sanhedrin
to perform a unique act of clemency. This leaves Gamaliel as a solitary
figure able to perform a near miracle of persuasion on one occasion, but
by no means typical of the Pharisees in general, and this is how
Christian writers have always understood the matter. Further, the
clemency of the Sanhedrin is distorted by the assertion that the
Apostles were flogged before being released, which hardly seems
consistent with the advice of Gamaliel that the Council has accepted.
In historical fact, Gamaliel, as leader of the Pharisees, would have
carried with him all the Pharisee members of the Sanhedrin, but not the
Sadducee members led by the High Priest. This was, therefore, a case of
the Sadducees and the High Priest being outvoted by the Pharisees,
evidence of important points that can be supported from other sources:
that the High Priest frequently did not have his own way in the
Sanhedrin, where the Pharisees had a majority, and that the views of
the High Priest and those of the Pharisees should not be equated, as
they still are by too many scholars.
Gamaliel, represented as a lone figure with an unusual attitude of
friendliness towards the Nazarenes, thus takes his place alongside other
figures of the same kind: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who
appear in the Gospels. Both of these men are described as Pharisees and
members of the Sanhedrin; they took a sympathetic interest in Jesus’
movement without joining it, and took pains to see that Jesus was given
a decent burial after his crucifixion. While these figures are, in fact,
strong evidence that there was no conflict between Jesus and the
Pharisees, with whom he had personal links, the impression is given
that they were uncharacteristic of the Pharisees, and so the hostile
picture of the Pharisees in general is preserved. Yet ifJesus had in fact
been a blasphemer, self-idolater and opponent of the Torah, no
Pharisee at all would have been sympathetic to him or his followers. On
the
the other hand, if he was not, there is no reason to suppose that
friendly attitude of Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and Gamaliel
was not shared by the Pharisees as a whole.
Paul —
So, in the book of Acts, we have two figures — Gamaliel and
e
both of whom are supposed to be Pharisees, but who are at opposit
evidence to be
poles. In Gamaliel, we have the continuation of all the
was a
found in the Gospels (though not on the surface) that Jesus
by the
Pharisee and his movement was regarded sympathetically
the main anti-
Pharisees. In Paul (Saul) we have the representative of
tion
Pharisee trend in the Gospels, so essential to the Gospels’ explana
57
 THE MYTHMAKER

of Jesus’ death; he is the raving, violent Pharisee who is outraged by

Jesus’ message and wishes to bring destruction to his movement.
Gamaliel is an authentic, historical character, whose attitudes can be
understood perfectly in the light of knowledge of the period: but Saul is
a mere caricature, a bogeyman-Pharisee whose motivations cannot be
understood at all. At least, they cannot be understood if Saul really was
a Pharisee; but they can be understood very well if he was not one. And
here we must examine Paul’s relationship with the High Priest, for this
is the best clue we have to the truth.
The High Priest, as we have seen (and as the New Testament bears
witness), was the leader of the Sadducees and, as such, was in continual
conflict with the Pharisees, not only on religious matters but also on the
political question of how far to collaborate with the Roman occupation,
where the main difference between them was that the Sadducees were
willing to co-operate actively with the Romans, even if this meant
handing over troublemakers to them for execution. As an appointee of
the Romans, the High Priest was not just a ceremonial official with
jurisdiction over the Temple; he was, in effect, a chief of police with his
own armed force, his own police tribunal which was concerned with
political offences®, and his own penal system, including prisons and
arrangements for flogging offenders. In the case of capital offences,
however, such as serious insurrection against the power of Rome, he
would hand over the offender to the occupying Roman power rather
than attempt to impose sentence himself. The situation can best be
understood by comparison with occupied France during the Second
World War.
It is thus incredible that a prominent Pharisee, or indeed any
Pharisee, would enter into close association with the High Priest, as
Saul is reported to have done, for the purpose of dragging off to the
High Priest’s prisons persons who had offended in the High Priest’s
eyes. This was police work, for the High Priest was no grand inquisitor,
concerned with pursuing heresy (indeed, as a Sadducee, he was
regarded by the majority of the Jewish nation as a heretic himself, and
would have been the first to suffer if there had been an Inquisition
among the Jews). The only reason why the High Priest could use force
at all is that he had been provided with the means by the Romans for
their own purposes; and, though the High Priests were not above using
the machinery for their own benefit (the sources attest that they used
police officers to collect the priestly tithes by force, though they were
supposed to be voluntary), their main concern was to produce results
required by their Roman masters.

58
 WAS PAUL A PHARISEE?

Thus, if Jesus’ movement had been a heretical one, espousing

theological doctrines that contradicted the traditional tenets of
Judaism, the High Priest would have been entirely unconcerned, being
no theologian. If the movement had been opposed to the Pharisees in
matters of religion, the High Priest would even have been pleased, for
that was his position also. (As a matter of fact, the Gospels, in their
anxiety to put heretical doctrines into Jesus’ mouth, occasionally give
him things to say that are Sadducean in character’, and have evidently
been taken from Sadducean polemics against the Pharisees, on the
principle that any stick is good enough to beat a dog with.) The only
circumstances under which the High Priest would employ his police
force to arrest and imprison people would be if they had shown
themselves in some way to be a political threat to the Roman regime. If
Saul was employed by the High Priest to arrest people and imprison
them, it can only mean one thing: that Saul was a member of the High
Priest’s police force and his job was to arrest anyone who constituted a
threat to the occupation. The last person who would be employed by
the High Priest in such a capacity would be a Pharisee: ergo, Saul was
not a Pharisee.
This conclusion is so inescapable that even scholars who never
envisage the possibility that Paul was not a Pharisee make admissions
that bring them very near to it. Thus, Johannes Munck in his book on
the Acts of the Apostles® says that, in view of the evidence that the
Pharisees were friendly to the Nazarenes, it must be concluded that
Saul was the only Pharisee who joined forces with the High Priest to
persecute the movement: “The only Pharisee in the service of the chief
priests was Paul, who had left Gamaliel and become an ardent
persecutor of the Christians before an even more radical switch made
him an apostle of Jesus.’ The argument has here turned full circle.
Instead of Gamaliel, as traditional Christian interpretation has it,
being the only Pharisee to support Jesus’ movement (despite one
triumph of persuasion which was not repeated), now we have Paul as
the isolated Pharisee — though in traditional Christian interpretation
Saul was only following a typical Pharisee pattern when he persecuted
the Nazarenes. To be forced to turn the story on its head like this just
as it
shows that there is something radically wrong with the story
stands; and to substitute one improbability for another — a uniquely
persecuting Saul for a uniquely tolerant Gamaliel — is no solution. The
Pharisee,
only solution that makes perfect sense is that Saul was not a
same reason that the High
but persecuted the Christians for exactly the
opposed to Roman
Priest persecuted them — because they were
50
 THE MYTHMAKER

domination of the Holy Land. Otherwise, what possible motive could a

Pharisee have to persecute a group of people whom the entire body of
Pharisees, headed by their revered leader, regarded as pious Jews,
whose belief in Jesus as Messiah might possibly be vindicated by time?
What kind of Jew, then, might have taken up this political police
work in the service of the High Priest? The police force of the High
Priest was no doubt a motley crew, consisting partly of junior priests
with an allegiance to the Sadducee party or belonging to those few
families from whom the High Priest was traditionally selected,
combined with foreign mercenaries of various kinds, including Jews or
even non-Jews, who were relatively indifferent to Jewish patriotism and
were prepared to endure the unpopularity which was the inevitable lot
of those wielding power in the interests of a hated military occupation.
Here we may turn, not for the last time, to the account of Saul’s
origins which was given by the Ebionites, the community of Jewish
Christians, who regarded him as the perverter of Jesus’ message and as
the founder of a new religion which Jesus himself would have rejected.
According to the Ebionites, Saul was not a Pharisee and not even a Jew
by birth. His parents in Tarsus were Gentiles, and he himself had
become a convert and had thereupon journeyed to the Holy Land,
where he found employment in the service of the High Priest. This is a
very different story from that found in the New Testament, which has
Saul as a prominent Pharisee, not so much entering the service of the
High Priest as deigning to enter into an alliance with him. The account
given by the Ebionites has always been rejected contemptuously both
by Christian writers and by modern scholars as mere scurrilous
polemics, intended to denigrate Paul, and based on nothing but spite
and hostility. But the Ebionites deserve more consideration than this.
As we shall see when we come to examine the character and history of
the Ebionite movement, it could claim the possession of authoritative
traditions (see chapter 15).
The arguments advanced in the present chapter should induce us to
abandon the traditional contempt for the Ebionite account of Saul’s
origins and give it serious consideration. That Saul was a Pharisee is
rendered most unlikely both by his persecution of the Nazarenes and by
his association with the High Priest. But a person of foreign, non-
Jewish extraction is just the kind of person that could be expected to
enter the service of the High Priest and engage in police activities which
a native-born Jew, resentful of Roman hegemony and of the Sadducean
quisling regime, would regard with hostility and scorn. It would be
natural for Paul, writing to communities for whom he was an inspired

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figure, to attribute to himself a more glamorous origin than was in fact

the case and to explain his phase of serving in the High Priest’s police
force as actuated by religious zeal rather than by humdrum motives of
earning a living by whatever unsavoury means were open to an
immigrant. The communities to whom Paul was writing were unaware
of the politico-religious situation in Judaea, and might well think that
the Pharisees and the early followers of Jesus were at odds, and so not
find it implausible that Paul’s early opposition to the movement was
actuated by Pharisaism. This explanation, first advanced by Paul
himselfin his letters (in which he did not even reveal that he was born in
Tarsus, but carefully fostered the impression, without actually saying
so, that he was a native-born Judaean) was afterwards incorporated by
Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.
But how can we even consider such a theory, when so many scholars
have found incontrovertible evidence, as they think, of Paul’s training
as a Pharisee in his own writings? The style of argument and thought in
the Epistles of Paul, we have been repeatedly told, is rabbinical; Paul,
though putting forward views and arguments which ‘go far beyond’
rabbinical thinking, uses rabbinical logic and methods of biblical
exegesis in such a way that his education as a Pharisee is manifest.
Beloved as this view is of scholars, it is entirely wrong, being based on
ignorance or misunderstanding of rabbinical exegesis and logic. It will
be necessary, therefore, to prove this point, before going on to deal with
other objections to the view that the Ebionite account of Paul is nearer
to the truth than the New Testament account.

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 CHAPTER 7

ALLEGED RABBINICAL
STYLE IN PAUL’S
EPISTLES

The leading ideas of Paul’s Epistles are far removed from Pharisaic
Judaism, as will be argued in detail later. Here it is only necessary to
mention that Paul’s elevation of Jesus to divine status was, for the
Pharisees and for other Jews too, a reversion to paganism. Judaism had
steadfastly refused to attribute divine status even to its greatest
prophet, Moses, whose human failings are emphasized in scripture.
Judaism had encountered a succession of human-divine figures
throughout its history, from the deified Pharaohs of Egypt to the deified
emperors of Greece and Rome, and had always found such worship to
be associated with oppression and slavery. The Jews regarded their
own anointed kings as mere human beings, whose actions were closely
scrutinized and, if need be, criticized; so that the elevation of a Messiah
(‘anointed one’) to divine status aroused in them not only their scorn of
idolatry, but also deep political feelings of outrage at the usurpation ofa
position of power beyond the normal processes of criticism and
constitutional opposition. While the Jews looked forward to the coming
of the Messiah, they did not think that he would be a divine figure and
thus beyond criticism; on the contrary, the Messiah would be
accompanied by a prophet, who, like Elijah, would not hesitate to
reprimand the anointed king ifhe failed in his duties or if he ignored the
words of Deuteronomy ‘that his heart be not lifted up above his
brethren’ (Deuteronomy 17: 20).
Paul’s use of the term ‘Christ’ (the Greek term for the Hebrew
‘Messiah’) as a divine title has thus no precedent in Judaism, and
would be felt by any Jew to be a complete departure from Jewish

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thinking about the Messiah. Further, the idea of ‘being in Christ’,

which occurs frequently in Paul’s letters, is entirely without parallel in
Jewish literature, whether of the Pharisees or of any other sects. It
means a kind of unity with, or sinking of the individuality into, the
divine personality of Jesus, and a sharing of his experience of
crucifixion and resurrection. Apart from the implied elevation of Jesus
to divine status, this concept involves a relationship to the Divine that is
alien to Judaism, in which the autonomy of the individual human
personality is respected and guaranteed. The idea of ‘being in Christ’,
however, can be paralleled without difficulty in the mystery cults.
Even more shocking to Jewish religious susceptibilities is Paul’s use
of the term ‘Lord’ (Greek, kurios) as a title of the deified Jesus. This is
the term used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the
Septuagint, to translate the tetragrammaton or holy name of God
Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. To apply the name kurios or
Lord in its divine sense! to a human being who had recently lived and
died on Earth would have seemed to any Pharisee or other Jew sheer
blasphemy. However, to the recipients of Paul’s letters, the use of the
term ‘Lord’ for Jesus would not have seemed shocking at all, for this
was the regular term for the deities of the mystery cults, those salvation
gods with whom the devotees united their souls in communal dying and
resurrection.
The religious outlook of Paul’s letters was thus shocking to Jews, but
familiar to non-Jewish members of the Hellenistic culture. Paul,
though, must have known that, in applying such ideas to a person who
had lived in a Jewish context, he was doing something new and
shocking — indeed he explicitly says that he is aware of this.? This has
not prevented some scholars from trying to solve the problem of Paul’s
adoption of utterly unJewish ideas by seeking a continuity between
Judaism and Paul’s ideas. We shall be considering such attempts later
in this book. Even those scholars, however, who have admitted an
unbridgeable gulf between Paul’s ideas and Judaism have insisted,
nevertheless, that Paul began his religious life as a Pharisee. They are
then faced with the problem of how Paul, a trained and convinced
Pharisee, was able to make such an extraordinary transition to ideas so
far removed from Pharisaism. The solution is found in the nature of
Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus: this was no gradual
development, but a shattering revelation in which all previous ideas
find
and doctrines were swept away; consequently, there is no need to
continuity between Paul’s christology and his previous religious
standpoint, which stood at an opposite pole.

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Yet even this approach has to acknowledge that Paul, after his
conversion, was still the same person as he was before and was not able
to obliterate all traces of his upbringing and education. It is accordingly
regarded as axiomatic that Paul’s writings will show strong traces of
this education: that Paul, though thinking quite differently from when
he was a Pharisee, would have continued to use techniques of
expression and argument characteristic of Pharisaism, and could not
have done otherwise, any more than a person can obliterate his own
fingerprints. Paul’s letters, then, it is asserted, show unPharisaic ideas
expressed in a Pharisaic style, a confirmation of the New Testament
account of Paul’s early life.
Though many authors confidently assert that Paul’s Epistles are full
of Pharisaic expressions and arguments, few authors have made a
serious attempt to substantiate this by giving examples. When they do
(e.g. Schoeps or Klausner) it is quite startling to see how unconvincing
they are. In fact, it may safely be said that if people had not already
been convinced that Paul was a Pharisee (because of his own claim, and
that made for him in Acts), no one would have thought of calling him a
Pharisee or a person of ‘rabbinic’ cast of mind simply from a study of
the Epistles. Instead, he would have been regarded as a Hellenistic
writer, deeply imbued with the Greek translation of the Bible, like
Philo, but not familiar with the characteristic approach of the Pharisee
rabbis.°
If we free ourselves from the assumption that Paul was a Pharisee,
then we are not compelled to identify the style of Paul’s Epistles with
that of Pharisaism, and can allot them their due place in Hellenistic
literature. The attempts by scholars, both Christian and Jewish, to find
Pharisaic fingerprints in the Epistles can be dismissed as one of the
vagaries of scholarship, which will always make the attempt to find ina
text what is believed, for extraneous reasons, to be there, whether the
text itself gives support to the enterprise or not.
Let us then examine some of the examples usually given, by those
who bother to give examples at all, to show how Pharisaic Paul’s mind
was. We may begin with an example of exegetical logic that is
fundamental to Pharisaic thought.
One of the most important tools of Pharisaic reasoning was what was
known as the gal va-homer argument. This is known in Western culture
as the argument a fortiori, but it plays a far less important role in
Western thinking, based on the logic of Aristotle, than it does in the
thinking of the Pharisees and the Talmud. The gal va-homer (literally,
‘light and heavy’) goes like this: if something is known about one thing

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which has a certain quality in a relatively ‘light’ form, then it must be

true ‘all the more so’ of some other thing that has the same quality ina
relatively ‘heavy’ form. A typical example is found in the Bible: where
the Lord says to Moses, after Miriam has offended by her criticisms and
has been punished with leprosy, and Moses prays that she may be
healed: ‘Ifher father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed
seven days? Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after
that let her be received in again’ (Numbers 12: 14). This example is
actually cited in the rabbinical writings as a paradigm for a reason that
will prove important in our argument about Paul. The argument may
be paraphrased as follows: if offending a father (a relatively light thing)
is punished with banishment for seven days, offending God (a relatively
heavy thing) should all the more receive such a punishment (and °
therefore Miriam should not be forgiven immediately). To give a more
easily comprehensible example from modern life: if a person should not
drive a car after drinking a given quantity of beer, then all the more
should he not drive after drinking the same quantity of whiskey.
Now Paul, in his Epistles, is quite fond of using the a fortiort
argument, and this has been regarded as incontrovertible proof of his
Pharisee training, which gave him a taste for arguing in this way even
when he was arguing for a doctrine of which the Pharisees would have
disapproved strongly. Examples of Paul’s use of the gal va-homer are the
following:

For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the
death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved
by his life. (Romans 5: 10)
For if by the wrongdoing of that one man death established its reign,
through a single sinner, much more shall those who receive in far greater
measure God’s grace, and his gift of righteousness, live and reign through
the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5: 17)
will
For if their rejection has meant the reconciliation of the world, what
their acceptance mean? Nothing less than life from the dead! (Romans 11:
15) grafted
For if you were cut from your native wild olive and against all nature
will they, the natural olive
into the cultivated olive, how much more readily
(Romans 11: 24)
branches, be grafted into their native stock!

invalid
Out of these four gal va-homer arguments in Romans, three are
is a basic princip le of
arguments by the canons of Pharisee logic, for it
cannot validly
that logic that in a gal va-homer argument, the conclusion
as the
go beyond what is contained in the premise. (This is known

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 THE MYTHMAKER

principle of dayo.*) To explain this principle, we may return to our first

example, the biblical argument used about Miriam. It would be
invalid, in Pharisee logic, to argue as follows: if offending a father
deserves seven days’ banishment, then offending God deserves fourteen
days’ banishment. Such an argument has no precision about it, for how
do we know how much to add to the data given in the premise in order
to arrive at the conclusion? The only precise form of the argument is
this: if offending a father deserves seven days’ banishment, then all the
more so does offending God deserve seven days’ banishment. This is
the form of the argument actually found in the Bible, as the Pharisees
pointed out to support their analysis.
In the four arguments quoted from Romans above, only the fourth
one conforms to the correct pattern of a gal va-homer argument, the
others going far beyond the conclusion warranted by their premise.
One must conclude that Paul had no idea of the conditions of validity of
this type of argument; one correct argument out of four shows only a
random success.
The gal va-homer argument is a form of analogy, and in Greek logic the
analogy was never regarded as capable of logical form or precision.
Consequently, Greek logic confined itself to what would nowadays be
called ‘set theory’ and thereby developed the formalization of the
syllogism. This is useful in science, where the concern is with
classification, but not in human relationships, where the form of
reasoning usually employed is analogy. The Pharisees, with their keen
concern for the network of human relationships known as ‘law’, felt the
need for a logic of analogy, and thus developed a legal logic based on a
formalization of the a fortiori argument. The principle of dayo is the basic
means by which formal precision was achieved, but this enabled them
to go further, and consider what types of formal objection might be
offered to a gal va-homer argument, and how such objections might be
answered. This powerful instrument of legal logic is only now being
appreciated by legal theorists and logicians in the Western world.
Hellenistic writers, on the other hand, often used afortiori reasoning,
but only in a loose, rhetorical way, without regard for precision or
formal validity. This is just the way that Paul uses such arguments, and
this stamps him as someone who has never received a Pharisee’s
training. A trained Pharisee could never forget his education to such an
extent as to produce woolly, imprecise reasoning in a field where the
Pharisees prided themselves on their precision — any more than a Greek
logician, however far he strayed from the academy, would be found
perpetrating an invalid syllogism. Paul’s use of a fortiori arguments has

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often been cited to show that he was a Pharisee by education, but in fact
this attempted proof rebounds on itself. Nothing could display more
clearly Paul’s lack of Pharisee scholarship than his use of the a fortiort
argument, which he employs in a rhetorical style that can be paralleled
from the popular Stoic preachers of the Hellenistic world, but not from
the rabbis.
Let us turn now to Paul’s use of alleged midrash or biblical exegesis to
reinforce his arguments. An example often cited to show Paul’s
rabbinical style is the following: ‘Christ bought us freedom from the
curse of the law by becoming for our sake an accursed thing; for
Scripture says, “‘A curse is on everyone who is hanged on a gibbet”’ ’
(Galatians 3: 13). Here Paul adduces a verse from Deuteronomy in
order to explain how great the sacrifice of Jesus was: he voluntarily took
upon himself a curse by the manner of his death so that mankind would
be freed from the curse of sin.
It has been assumed by most scholars that Paul’s interpretation of
the verse in Deuteronomy (i.e. that anyone hanged on a gibbet is under
a curse) was part of contemporary Pharisee exegesis of that verse, and
that consequently Paul took his basis for argument from the Pharisee
stock, though he developed it in his own way. This, however, is an
error. The idea that anyone hanged on a gibbet is under a curse was
entirely alien to Pharisee thought, and the Pharisee teachers did not
interpret the verse in Deuteronomy in this way. Many highly respected
members of the Pharisee movement were crucified by the Romans, just
like Jesus, and, far from being regarded as under a curse because of the
manner of their death, they were regarded as martyrs. The idea that an
innocent man would incur a curse from God just because he had been
unfortunate enough to die an agonizing death on the cross was never
part of Pharisee thinking, and only a deep contempt for the Judaism of
the Pharisees has led so many scholars to assume that it was. The
Pharisees never thought that God was either stupid or unjust, and he
would have to be both to put a curse on an innocent victim.
Even if the hanged person was guilty of a capital crime, he was not
regarded as being under a curse, but, on the contrary, as having
expiated his crime by undergoing execution.” The verse in question
(Deuteronomy 21: 23) was interpreted by the rabbis as follows: an
executed criminal’s corpse was to be suspended on a pole for a short
period, but the corpse must then be taken down and not left to hang
overnight, for to do this would incur a curse from God; in other words,
the curse was placed not on the executed person, but on the people
responsible for subjecting the corpse to indignity. One interpretation

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 THE MYTHMAKER

was: it is cursing God, or blasphemy, to allow the corpse of an executed

criminal to hang, for the human body was made in the image of God.®
The New English Bible translates the verse, ‘When a man is convicted
of a capital offence and is put to death, you shall hang him on a gibbet;
but his body shall not remain on the gibbet overnight; you shall bury it
on the same day, for a hanged man is offensive in the sight of God.’ This
is in accordance with the Pharisee interpretation of the passage, which
was a correct reflection of the meaning of the original Hebrew.
Paul’s interpretation was thus not taken from any Pharisee source,
but was his own personal reaction to the rather ambiguous translation
given in the Greek Septuagint. Far from providing an example of
Pharisee midrash, Paul shows himself in this passage in Galatians to be
far removed from the spirit of the midrashic interpretations. Vague
concepts, such as being under a posthumous curse because of the
baleful magical effect of the manner of one’s death, belong to paganism,
not to Judaism, much less Pharisaic Judaism, which regarded the
manner of one’s life as the decisive means of obtaining the favour or
incurring the displeasure of God, not the manner of one’s death,
especially when the latter was not under one’s control. As for the idea
that Jesus removed a curse from other people by taking a curse-upon
himself, this too is alien to Jewish thinking, but this, of course, belongs
to Paul’s central theology, not to his style of argument, and will be
discussed in a later chapter.
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 the Pharisaic writings even when
the legal style is used for homiletic biblical exegesis. An example from
Romans is the following:

You cannot be unaware, my friends — I am speaking to those who have some

knowledge of law — that a person is subject to the law so long as he is alive,
and no longer. For example, a married woman is by law bound to her
husband while he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the
obligations of the marriage-law. If, therefore, in her husband’s lifetime she
consorts with another man, she will incur the charge of adultery; but if her
husband dies she is free of the law, and she does not commit adultery by
consorting with another man. So you, my friends, have died to the law by
becoming identified with the body of Christ, and accordingly you have
found another husband in him who rose from the dead, so that we may bear

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 ALLEGED RABBINICAL STYLE IN PAUL’S EPISTLES

fruit for God. While we lived on the level of our lower nature, the sinful
passions evoked by the law worked in our bodies, to bear fruit for death. But
now, having died to that which held us bound, we are discharged from the
law, to serve God in a new way, the way of the spirit, in contrast to the old
way, the way of a written code. (Romans 7: 1-6)
The above 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. It seems that the
correspondence intended is the following: the wife is the Church; the
former husband is the Torah, and the new husband is Christ. Paul tells
us that a wife is released by the death of her husband to marry a new
husband; this should read, therefore, in the comparison, that the
Church was freed, by the death of the Torah, to marry Christ. Instead,
it is the wife-Church that dies (‘you, my friends, have died to the law by
becoming identified with the body of Christ’) and there is even some’
play with the idea that the new husband, Christ, has died. The only
term in the comparison that is not mentioned as having died is the
Torah; yet this is the only thing that would make the comparison valid.
On the other hand, there is also present in the passage an entirely
different idea: that a person becomes free of legal obligations after his or
her own death. This indeed seems to be the theme first announced: ‘that
a person is subject to the law so long as he is alive, and no longer.’ The
theme of the widow being free to marry after the death of her first
husband is quite incompatible with this; yet Paul confuses the two
themes throughout — so much so that at one point he even seems to be
talking about a widow and a husband who are free to marry each other
and have acceptable children because both widow and new husband are
dead. Confusion cannot be worse confounded than this.
Thus what we have here is a case of someone trying to construct a
legal analogy and failing miserably because of his inability to think in
the logical manner one expects of a legal expert. The passage thus does
not prove that Paul had Pharisee training — just the contrary. What we
can say, however, is that Paul is here ¢rying to sound like a trained
Pharisee. He announces in a somewhat portentous way that what he is
going to say will be understood only by those who ‘have some
knowledge of law’, and he is clearly intending to display legal expertise.
It is only natural that Paul, having claimed so often to have been
trained as a Pharisee, should occasionally attempt to play the part,

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 THE MYTHMAKER

especially when speaking or writing for people who would not be able to
detect any shortcomings in his performance. In the event, he has
produced a ludicrous travesty of Pharisee thinking. In the whole of
Pharisee literature, there is nothing to parallel such an exhibition of
lame reasoning.’ :
What Paul is saying, in a general way, is that death dissolves legal
ties. Therefore, the death of Jesus and the symbolic death of members of
the Church by identifying themselves with Jesus’ sacrifice all contri-
bute to a loosening of ties with the old covenant. This general theme is
clear enough; it is only when Paul tries to work out a kind of legal
conceit or parable, based on the law of marriage and remarriage, that
he ties himself in knots. Thus he loses cogency just where a Pharisee
training, if he had ever had one, would have asserted itself; once more,
he is shown to have the rhetorical style of the Hellenistic preachers of
popular Stoicism, not the terse logic of the rabbis.®
This brings us back to the most obvious thing about Paul’s writings,
from a stylistic viewpoint, that they are written in Greek. Obvious as it
is, this fact often seems to be ignored by those labouring to prove that
Paul wrote and thought like a rabbi. Paul’s Greek is that of one who is a
native speaker of the language. It is not, of course, classical Greek or
even literary Greek, but the living spoken language (known as koine) of
the time, in both vocabulary and rhythm. He is so naturally at home in
the Hellenistic world that he even quotes Menander’ at one point and a
contemporary tragic poet at another.'° No such writing exists from the
pen of any rabbi of the Pharisee movement, so if Paul was a Pharisee, he
was unique in this regard.
The question arises whether Paul even had sufficient grasp of the
Hebrew language to have engaged in studies at a Pharisee academy.
We know that he could speak Aramaic (Acts 21: 40), but this did not
require any study on his part, for that language was spoken as the
common vernacular in his home city of Tarsus, where Greek was the
language of commerce and government. But Hebrew is a different
matter. This was the language of scholarship, both in its classical form
as found in the Hebrew Bible and in its neo-Hebrew form as found in
the Mishnah. The study of the Bible in the original Hebrew was the
basis for all Pharisee studies. A knowledge of the Hebrew of the Bible
was relatively rare in Paul’s time, as is shown by the existence of the
Targum, the translation of the Bible into Aramaic that was made for
the benefit of the ordinary Jews who could not understand the Bible in
Hebrew.
The indications from Paul’s writings are that he knew very little

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Hebrew. His quotations from the Bible (which number about 160) are
from the Greek translation, the Septuagint, not from the original
Hebrew. This is shown by the fact that wherever the text of the Hebrew
Bible differs from that of the Greek, Paul always quotes the text found
in the Greek, not that found in the Hebrew. For example, there is the
famous quotation (1 Corinthians 15: 55), ‘O death, where is thy victory?
O death where is thy sting?’ This comes from the Septuagint of Hosea
13: 14, but the Hebrew text has a different reading: ‘Oh for your
plagues, O death! Oh for your sting, O grave!’ It is most unlikely that
any Pharisee would adopt a policy of quoting from the Septuagint
rather than from the Hebrew Bible, which was regarded as the only
truly canonical version by the Pharisee movement.'!
Thus there is nothing in Paul’s writings to prove that he was a
Pharisee, and much to prove that he was not. Great play has been made
with certain references to legendary material in Paul’s letters; it is
claimed that this must have come from a Pharisaic source, but in fact
this material was widely known throughout the Jewish world including
the Greek-speaking Jewish areas of the Diaspora, and proves nothing.
For example, Paul refers at one point to a legend about the miraculous
well that followed the Israelites in their wanderings in the wilderness (1
Corinthians 10: 4). But this legend was by no means confined to the
Pharisaic movement, being found in the compilation known as Biblical
Antiquities (or Pseudo-Philo) which is extant now only in a Latin
translation, but is known to have existed in a Greek version in the first
century.'? Paul could quite easily have come across this legend in a
Greek book or even more probably from common conversation with the
unlearned, just as a child today may be acquainted with one of Aesop’s
fables without having studied the Greek classics.
We must conclude, therefore, that the allegedly profound Pharisaic
style and atmosphere of Paul’s writings is itself a legend.

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 CHAPTER 8

PAUL AND STEPHEN

The New Testament’s portrayal of Paul as having had a thorough

Pharisaic training before his conversion to Jesus is central to the New
Testament picture of how Christianity began, for two main reasons: the
portrayal of Paul as a persecuting Pharisee reinforces the picture of
persecuting Pharisees in the Gospels; and the authority of Paul as the
great interpreter of Jesus’ role is much strengthened by the belief that
he was an expert in traditional Jewish religion, who was able to see the
continuity between the new covenant and the old, and to guarantee, by
his own bridging of the gap, that his interpretation of Jesus provides the
true fulfilment of Old Testament religion. If it were proved that Paul
was, in fact, never a Pharisee at all, a great mainstay of the traditional
view of Christian origins would be knocked away. We would have to
think of Paul much more in the role ofan innovator, who created a myth
about Jesus that had no roots either in Judaism or the actual historical
circumstances of Jesus’ life and teachings.
We have reason to believe that Paul was not in fact a Pharisee: that
his persecuting role in relation to Jesus’ followers contradicts evidence
that the Pharisees did not persecute that movement at all; that the
continuation of the picture of persecuting Pharisees from the Gospels is
built on sand, for the evidence in the Gospels and from other sources is
that Jesus was himself a Pharisee and was never persecuted by the
Pharisees; and that the alleged evidence in Paul’s writings that he hada
Pharisee training is mere self-deception on the part of scholars who
have persuaded themselves into finding what they were looking for. In
addition, the historical evidence from the book of Acts that when Paul
persecuted Jesus’ followers he was acting on behalf of the High Priest,
who was a Sadducee and an opponent of the Pharisees, shows once
more that Paul was not a Pharisee.
We have also seen (though this has still to be proved in more detail in

2
 PAUL AND STEPHEN

later chapters) that Jesus’ movement, as it was before the advent of

Paul, did not hold any doctrine that would have brought upon itself any
persecution from the guardians of Jewish religion, the Pharisees. For
Jesus himself had merely claimed to be the Messiah, and this claim was
not in any way blasphemous; and his followers, after his death, had
merely continued to believe in his Messiahship in the same way (having
come to believe that he had been brought back to life by a miracle), but
without regarding him as a deity.
The only Christian doctrines that would have been regarded as
blasphemous by the Pharisees were those introduced by Paul some
time after his conversion. Before the conversion of Paul, therefore, there
can have been no clash between the Nazarenes and the Pharisees on
religious grounds; though there may well have been conflict between
the Nazarenes and the High Priest on political grounds, since the High
Priest, the quisling guardian of Roman interests, would certainly have
regarded with suspicion a movement which still declared Jesus, a
crucified rebel, as their leader.
There is one episode recorded in the book of Acts, however, that
seems to challenge all the conclusions summarized above. This is the
story of the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. For here we
have the story of a member of Jesus’ movement who was put to death on
religious grounds, before the conversion of Paul. Moreover, Stephen is
represented as putting forward views that were strongly opposed to
those of the Pharisees and have much in common with the views held by
Paul after his conversion. The case of Stephen has thus been strongly
urged by all those concerned to argue that Paul was not the originator
of Christianity as we know it; that the deification of Jesus and the
abrogation of the Torah were doctrines held by the Jesus movement
before Paul came on the scene, and, indeed, that the case of Stephen
shows that, despite all contrary arguments, these heretical doctrines go
back to Jesus himself, Stephen being the link that connects Jesus to
Paul. Moreover, the personal involvement of Paul in the execution of
Stephen allegedly proves that Paul’s opposition to Jesus’ followers was
a
on religious grounds, and reinforces the traditional view of Paul as
persecuting Pharisee.
A careful examination of the Stephen episode, however, reveals
the
many unhistorical features, and shows how it has been built up by
ng a link between
author of Acts precisely for the purpose of providi
Paul and Jesus.
the
The story given in Acts is that Stephen was denounced to
ssfully
Sanhedrin by a group of Jews who had been arguing unsucce

73
 THE MYTHMAKER

with him. The charge against him was that he had made ‘blasphemous
statements against Moses and against God’. We-are then told: “They
produced false witnesses who said, ‘““This man is for ever saying things
against this holy place and against the Law. For we have heard him say
that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and alter the customs
handed down to us by Moses.” ’ Stephen is then allowed a statement,
and makes a long one which is a recapitulation of Jewish history. This
speech seems mostly innocuous, giving an account with which all Jews
would agree. (Even his remark that though Solomon built a house for
God, ‘the Most High does not live in houses made by men’, is perfectly
orthodox, since it is just what Solomon himself said at the inauguration
of the Temple, 1 Kings 8: 27.) At the end of his speech, however,
Stephen launches into a diatribe against the Jewish people and their
history, going far beyond the kind of self-criticism which Jews were in
the habit of making. This diatribe amounts to a repudiation of the Jews
as incorrigible enemies of God: ‘How stubborn you are, heathen still at
heart and deaf to the truth! You always fight against the Holy Spirit.
Like fathers, like sons. Was there ever a prophet whom your father did
not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the
Righteous One; and now you have betrayed him and murdered him,
you who received the Law as God’s angels gave it to you, and yet have
not kept it.’
This speech, the account proceeds, infuriated his hearers. It has little
bearing, however, on the charges outlined before, that Stephen had
spoken against Moses, against the Temple and against the law. Nor
does the ensuing episode in which Stephen has a vision of Jesus, whom
he calls ‘the Son of Man’, standing at the right hand of God. This, it is
alleged, was regarded as blasphemy by Stephen’s hearers, who
immediately rushed him out to be stoned, oblivious of the fact that the
‘blasphemy’ of seeing Jesus as the Son of Man at the right hand of God
was not what he had been brought to trial for. Yet the ‘witnesses’ who
had testified (‘falsely’, it is said, though apparently the author of Acts
thinks that Stephen would have been right in saying such things) that
Stephen spoke against Moses, the Temple and the law, change their
role with great versatility and act as chief participants in the stoning of
Stephen for quite a different charge, that of regarding Jesus as the ‘Son
of Man’.
This extraordinarily muddled account cannot be regarded as
providing us with a reliable historical record of the death of Stephen or
of his views. The Sanhedrin was a dignified body that had rules of
procedure, and did not act like a lynch mob. It would not suddenly

74
 PAUL AND STEPHEN

switch the charges against a defendant, or drag him out for execution
without even pronouncing sentence or formulating what he had been
found guilty of.
There is, however, one way in which we can throw some light on the
events leading to Stephen’s death, and that is by noting the numerous
similarities between the trial and execution of Stephen, as described in
Acts, and the trial and execution of Jesus, as described in the Gospels.
Such a comparison brings out numerous points of similarity between
the two ‘trials’, even including similarities of illogicality and muddle.
So great is the general similarity that we must conclude that the ‘trial’
of Stephen is simply a double or repetition of the ‘trial’ of Jesus, and its
puzzling features can be explained by reference to the fuller accounts of
the earlier ‘trial’; the motives for the invention of fictitious aspects are —
the same in both.

1 Stephen is accused of speaking against the Temple: *. . . we have

heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place. . . .’ The
same charge was made against Jesus: ‘Some stood up and gave false
evidence against him to this effect: ‘‘We heard him say, ‘I will pull
down this temple, made with human hands, and in three days I will
build another, not made with hands’ ”’’ (Mark 14: 59).
As argued earlier (page 48), to declare an intention to pull down the
Temple and rebuild it was regarded as natural and in character for
someone claiming to be the Messiah. There was no blasphemy in
making such a Messianic claim, for, in Jewish eyes, the Messiah was
not a divine figure, but simply a human king, a descendant of King
David, who would one day drive out the foreign invaders and restore
the political independence of the Jewish people; though some thought
that this deliverance would coincide with the era of world peace
prophesied by Isaiah and other prophets. The Messiah would
naturally build a new Temple, for the present Temple, built by the
wicked King Herod, was not expected to last into Messianic times. For
the majority of Jews, therefore, Jesus’ promise to build a new Temple
brought not outrage or shock, but hope; perhaps this man was indeed
the promised Messiah, since he dared to talk in this vein.' The people
who would have been annoyed, however, at Jesus’ declaration were the
reigning Temple hierarchy, who were collaborators with Rome, owed
their appointments to the Roman occupying forces, and had under-
taken to help stamp out Messianic movements which might threaten
pull
the Roman occupation of Judaea. Jesus’ declaration that he would
to Rome and to
down and rebuild the Temple was part of his challenge

13
 THE MYTHMAKER

its priestly henchmen. Only the High Priest and his entourage would
feel threatened by it. (The rank-and-file priests, despite their daily
participation in the Temple rites, would not feel threatened, because
they would expect to continue their role in the rebuilt Temple.) So
this charge against Jesus was not a religious but a political charge — one
which would stir the High Priest into action, but would not concern the
Pharisees or any religious Jews who were not committed to collaborate
with Rome.
Stephen is represented as repeating this threat of Jesus: *. . . we have
heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place... .’ Itisa
mistake to think that Stephen is here prophesying the destruction of the
Temple by the Romans in ap 70. Christians, indeed, have always
regarded this destruction as a punishment for the alleged Jewish
betrayal of Jesus, and Stephen’s words here have been misread as
confirmation of this. But if this were so, Stephen would not have said
that Jesus would destroy the Temple, but that God would destroy it as a
punishment for the death of Jesus. The parallel between Stephen’s
words and the actual threat uttered by Jesus during his lifetime is the
clue to Stephen’s meaning. Stephen believed that Jesus’ absence from
the scene was only temporary. Soon he would come back and resume
his mission, which was to drive out the Romans and assume his position
as God’s anointed, on the throne of David and Solomon. Stephen, by
repeating in his preaching the threat that had cost Jesus his life, was
renewing Jesus’ challenge to the Roman occupation and to its
supporters, the High Priest and his entourage.
2 The strange switch by which the original charge is forgotten and-a
new ad hoc charge substituted is exactly similar in the trial of Jesus and
in that of Stephen. In Jesus’ trial, we have the following:
Then the High Priest stood up in his place and questioned Jesus: ‘Have you
no answer to the charges that these witnesses bring against you?’ But he
kept silence: he made no reply. Again the High Priest questioned him: ‘Are
you the Messiah, the Son ofthe Blessed One?’ Jesus said, ‘I am; and you will
see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming with the
clouds of heaven.’ Then the High Priest tore his robes and said, ‘Need we
call further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What is your
opinion?’ Their judgment was unanimous: that he was guilty and should be
put to death. (Mark 14: 60-64)
In Stephen’s trial, after the initial charge and Stephen’s long,
irrelevant reply, we find this:
But Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, and gazing intently up to heaven,

76
 PAUL AND STEPHEN

saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. ‘Look,’ he
said, ‘there is a rift in the sky; I can see the Son of Man standing at God’s
right hand!’ At this they gave a great shout and stopped their ears. Then
they made one rush at him and, flinging him out of the city, set about
stoning him.
The pattern of both trials, then, is that the defendant is charged with
the offence of speaking against the Temple, but this charge is forgotten
when the defendant bursts out during the trial with what is regarded as
a blasphemous statement. Formal procedures are then thrown to the
winds and the defendant is found guilty of an alleged crime committed
during the trial itself, and different from the crime for which he was
brought to trial in the first instance. This travesty of legal procedure in
a body like the Sanhedrin, famous for the dignity and formality of its
legal procedures, is clearly fictional. This conclusion is reinforced by
the consideration that the alleged blasphemy is not blasphemy in
Jewish law at all. To claim to be the Messiah was simply to claim the
throne of David, and involved no claim to be God. The title ‘Son of
God’ also involved no blasphemy, as every Jew claimed to be a son of
God when he prayed daily to God as ‘Father’. The Davidic King,
however, had a particular claim to this title, since God had made a
special promise to regard Solomon and his successors as his ‘sons’ (11
Samuel 7: 14): ‘I will be his father, and he shall be my son. Ifhe commit
iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of
the children of men.’ Note that, so far from the title ‘Son of God’
bringing with it divine status, it made the Jewish king especially liable
to divine punishment if he sinned. To claim to be ‘the Son of Man’ was
also not blasphemy, since this was also a title of the Messiah (derived
from Daniel 7: 13) and did not imply divinity. Neither ‘coming with the
clouds of heaven’ nor ‘sitting at the right hand of God’ constituted
blasphemy, since both these epithets were applied to the Messiah by
Jewish tradition without entailing any doctrine of the Messiah’s
divinity (the midrash says that the Messiah will sit on God’s right hand
and Abraham on His left).
Moreover, the accounts of the trials of Jesus and Stephen before the
of
Sanhedrin are quite inconsistent with the account given of the trial
defende d by
Peter before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5), in which Peter was
an attitude of tolerance was shown towards the
Gamaliel, and
Gamaliel
Messianic claims of Jesus and other Messianic claimants.
Pharise e, being their chief represe nt-
was by no means an untypical
the alleged trials of Jesus and
ative. Where, then, was Gamaliel at
the trial
Stephen? Why should those ‘trials’ have been so different from

iM
 THE MYTHMAKER

of Peter that unanimous hostility and intolerance was shown towards

Jesus’ Messianic claims, and Stephen’s trial degenerated into a
lynching? The trial of Peter is perfectly credible in the light of what we
know of the Pharisees and of their thinking on the subject of Messianic
movements, while the ‘trials’ of Jesus and of Stephen are incredible,
because they depend on a definition of the terms ‘Messiah’, ‘Son of
God’ and ‘Son of Man’ that did not exist in the Jewish religion of the
time, but did exist in the later doctrines of the Christian Church, when
all three expressions had been given a connotation of divinity.
We must conclude, therefore, that the trials of Jesus and of Stephen
have been falsified in exactly the same way: namely, an originally
political charge has been worked over in order to represent it as a
religious charge of blasphemy. The facts in the case of Stephen appear
to be that he roused the anger of the High Priest’s entourage by
outspoken declarations of the approaching fall of the Temple and its
establishment, on the return ofJesus and his defeat of the Romans and
their hangers-on. Since Stephen represented a threat to the quisling
power of the High Priest, he was assassinated without a trial by
henchmen of the High Priest; unlike Jesus, he was not handed over to
the Romans for punishment. Stephen was thus the first martyr of the
‘Church’ in Jerusalem; but when the Pauline Christian Church took
over the leading role, its Gentile leaders faced the same difficulties with
Stephen as those which had led them to depoliticize the condemnation
of Jesus and to remodel it as a trial for heresy and blasphemy. They
could not demote Stephen from his honoured role as first martyr, but
they changed the reasons for his martyrdom in order to disguise his
anti-Roman motivation and make him into a victim of Jewish religious
intolerance instead.
Stephen, therefore, cannot be regarded as a precursor of Paul in
regarding Jesus as a divine figure with the authority to abolish the
Torah. The Gospels and the book of Acts are concerned to argue that
Paul was preceded in his doctrines by Stephen and indeed by Jesus
himself; but close scrutiny shows that this is an illusion, and that Paul’s
doctrines were a new departure, radically different from the claims and
teachings of Jesus and the ‘Jerusalem Church’. We can now return to
the consideration of Paul, with a full consciousness of the startling
originality of his interpretation of the life and death of Jesus.
In the light of the above interpretation of the standpoint of Stephen,
we may discern the probable meaning of the puzzling beginning of Acts
8, following immediately on the death of Stephen: ‘This was the
beginning of a time of violent persecution for the church in Jerusalem;

78
 PAUL AND STEPHEN

and all except the apostles were scattered over the country districts of
Judaea and Samaria.’ It is, of course, extremely puzzling that the body
of Jesus’ followers were persecuted and ejected from Jerusalem, yet
their leaders were allowed to remain. One would have thought that the
leaders, in such a persecution, would have been the first to be ejected.
This verse, therefore, has been taken to provide evidence that the
‘Jerusalem Church’, at this time, contained two factions, the
‘Judaizers’ and the ‘Hellenists’.? The ‘Judaizers’, on this theory, were
led by James and Peter, who had turned away from the radical,
heretical views of Jesus and had returned to allegiance to the Torah and
traditional Judaism. The ‘Hellenists’, on the other hand, continued to
hold the anti-Torah views which had brought Jesus to his death, and
their leader was Stephen, who had thus incurred the wrath of strict
adherents to Judaism. After Stephen’s death, his followers of the
‘Hellenistic’ party suffered a persecution which forced them out of
Jerusalem, but the ‘Judaizers’ who followed James and Peter were
unaffected by this persecution.
The existence of such a party of ‘Hellenists’ depends entirely on this
one verse, taken together with the earlier verses describing the
complaint of the ‘Hellenists’ about the distribution to widows. The
word ‘Hellenists’, however, does not connote any kind of unJewish
religious faction, but refers only to the language primarily spoken by the
members of the group. Jews who spoke Greek were not necessarily any
less loyal to the Torah than Jews who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, as the
same chapter in Acts testifies, when it singles out the members of
Greek-speaking synagogues as allegedly adopting a bigoted attitude
towards Stephen. There is no real reason to suppose, therefore, that
there was any ‘Hellenistic’ free-thinking group among the ‘Jerusalem
Church’, beloved as this fiction is to commentators.
The real explanation of the immunity of the Apostles (and,
presumably, their closest followers) from the persecution is probably
this. Stephen was the leader of the activist section of the ‘Jerusalem
Church’, which believed in continuing anti-Roman propaganda and
Messianic activity even in the absence of Jesus. The Apostles, however,
of
took a more quietist view: Jesus, they believed, was on the point
in hope and
returning, but in the meantime they would wait quietly
his
refrain from any political activity until they could engage in it by
personal direction. Consequently, when the activist members were
of
ejected by the pro-Roman High Priest’s party after the assassination
Nazaren es was left alone. It should
Stephen, the quietist section of the
of
be noted that belief in Jesus could actually lead to the cessation

79
 THE MYTHMAKER

Messianic activity; for example, the Jewish Christians withheld their

support from the Messianic revolt of Bar Kokhba’, not because they
were pacifists, but because Bar Kokhba was not Jesus and was,
therefore, in their eyes the wrong Messiah.
We may now turn to consideration of the part played by Paul
personally in the persecution of Stephen. We are told:
The witnesses laid their coats at the feet of ayoung man named Saul. So they
stoned Stephen, and as they did so, he called out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees and cried aloud, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin
against them,’ and with that he died. And Saul was among those who
approved of his murder. (Acts 7: 59-60)

Some scholars have thought that this passage smacks too much of
literary artifice to be regarded as historically true. It introduces the
character of Saul, later to prove the hero of the whole book of Acts, in a
dramatic way, underlining the contrast between his personality before
his conversion and after it. Though Paul, in his Epistles, expresses
contrition for his earlier role as a persecutor of Jesus’ movement, he
never mentions that he had anything to do with the death of Stephen; in
fact, he never mentions Stephen at all. It may be argued that the author
of Acts, having given the death of Stephen such a prominent place as
the first Christian martyr, could not resist the theatrical touch of
introducing Saul into the scenario at this point. For if indeed Saul
played a subordinate role in the Stephen affair in the manner described
and if Paul himself never referred to the matter, it would be hard to see
how the author of Acts could have obtained information about Saul’s
participation, and it would seem more likely that he invented it as a
graphic addition to the story.
On the other hand, there is an aspect of the matter that has been
overlooked. This is that Saul is in some ways excused for his role in the
Stephen affair. It is said that he was only a ‘youth’ at the time (the
Greek word neanias means an adolescent youth, and is somewhat
inadequately rendered by the New English Bible translation ‘young
man’). This means that his responsibility is lessened; and _ this
impression is reinforced by the way in which he is given no active role in
the execution of Stephen. He does not throw any stones, but only looks
after the coats of those who do. His participation is confined to
‘approving’ the killing of Stephen. It seems that the author of Acts
cannot bear the idea that Saul might have had active responsibility for
bloodshed and thus makes him more a passive spectator than a
wholehearted participant.

80
 PAUL AND STEPHEN

This suggests that the somewhat unreal air of the story of Saul’s
participation arises from a watering down process, rather than from
pure invention by the author ofActs. By turning Saul into a ‘youth’ and
by making him the person at whose feet the witnesses laid their cloaks,
the narrator has made the presence of Saul seem peripheral and almost
accidental — a kind of symbolic coincidence, fraught with ironic
meaning in view of Saul’s future. But according to the Ebionite
account, Paul did not come to Judaea from Tarsus until he was a grown
man. This is also partly confirmed by the narrative of Acts, which,
without any apparent interval, presents us with Saul ‘harrying the
church’ and ‘seizing men and women, and sending them to prison’,
hardly the activities of a tender youth. So the likelihood is that Saul,
being already a full member of the High Priest’s police force, played a
prominent part in the Stephen affair, not the peripheral role given him
by the author of Acts. The death of Stephen, as argued above, was not a
judicial sentence, but an assassination carried out by the henchmen of
the High Priest, a police force consisting of heterogeneous elements
and not characterized by any elevated ideology or nice scruples. It is
not surprising that, later in his life, Paul, having transformed his
persecution of the Nazarenes into an ideological affair motivated by
Pharisaic zeal, suppressed the worst aspect of this phase of his career,
his prominent role in the elimination of Stephen as a dangerous anti-
Roman agitator.
It is worthy of note too that the persecutors of Stephen are never
called Pharisees in the narrative of Acts; nor is Saul himself at this stage
of the story identified as a Pharisee. It is only in the light of the later
identification of Saul as a Pharisee that generations of readers have
assumed that Saul’s participation in the murder of Stephen and his
harrying of the Nazarenes arose from Pharisaic zeal. The author of
Acts is evidently working, in the early chapters of his story, from
sources that have not yet identified Saul as a Pharisee; though Paul’s
own assertions to this effect in his letters have coloured the later
chapters of Acts.
We have arrived, then, ata picture ofSaul that is quite different from
the fire-breathing Pharisee fanatic of tradition. How, then, did Saul,
the police mercenary in the service of the Sadducean High Priest, a man
of doubtful antecedents and few ideals, come to be converted to Jesus’
movement, engage in controversy with its leading figures, and
eventually transform it into a new religion which Jesus himself would
have regarded with consternation?

81
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PART II

PAUL
 CHAPTER 9

THE ROAD TO
DAMASCUS

We are now in a position to consider the meaning of the great event

which was the beginning of the Christian religion: the conversion of
Paul on the road to Damascus. It was through this event that Jesus’
movement changed from being a variety of Judaism into a new religion
with a theology and myth distinct from those of Judaism. This outcome
was not immediate, even in the mind of Paul himself. But it was the
Damascus event that provided the germ of all the later developments.
Paul (at this stage, still called Saul) was on his way to Damascus on a
mission described as follows: ‘He went to the High Priest and applied
for letters to the synagogues at Damascus authorizing him to arrest
anyone he found, men or women, who followed the new way, and bring
them to Jerusalem’ (Acts g: 2). This account presents several
problems. The High Priest had no authority over synagogues as such,
for his jurisdiction in Jewish law extended only over the Temple in
Jerusalem. The synagogues, which were set up for prayer and study
wherever there was a population of Jews, both inside and outside the
Holy Land, did not form part of the Temple organization, but were
under lay supervision and authority, as they are to this day. The priests
or kohanim (the descendants of Aaron) were given certain honours in
the synagogue service, such as being called up first to the reading of the
law and pronouncing the priest’s blessing on festival days, but they had
no role of leadership in the synagogue community. The lay administ-
rators of the synagogue were elected by its members, and the spiritual
guidance of the community was in the hands of a rabbi, at this time not
a paid office. The High Priest, therefore, had no right to send his officers
into the synagogues to arrest people whose activities he disapproved of.
Nevertheless, within Judaea the High Priest was able to do this, not

85
 THE MYTHMAKER

by religious right, but simply by virtue of the power assigned to him by

the Roman occupying forces. It was as chief of police, not as a figure of
religious standing, that the High Priest was able to send officers such as
Saul into synagogues to arrest members of Jesus’ movement and haul
them off to prison. As we have seen, he did this, not because he
disapproved of their theology, but because he regarded them as a
menace to the Roman occupation.
Outside Judaea, however, the High Priest had no such police
authority, and it is therefore difficult to understand how any ‘letters’ he
might give to Saul ‘authorizing him to arrest’ followers of Jesus would
have any validity. The difficulty is all the greater in that Damascus at
this time was not even under Roman rule, having been ceded by
Caligula (ap 37). It belonged to the independent Arab kingdom of
Nabataea, under the rule of King Aretas 1v (9g Bc—AD 40). This King,
who was jealous of his independence, would hardly take kindly to the
entry into his territory of an emissary of the Roman-ruled area of
Judaea for the purpose of arresting and dragging away citizens or even
aliens who were under his protection.
It seems, then, that the details of Saul’s allotted task in Damascus
need to be amended. It cannot be that he had letters from the High
Priest authorizing him to arrest indiscriminately members of Jesus’
movement in Damascus. On the contrary, it was precisely in order to
escape from the jurisdiction of the High Priest and of the Romans that
Jesus’ followers had left Judaea and gone to Damascus. Saul must have
been on a clandestine mission to kidnap certain leading Nazarenes and
bring them back to Judaea for imprisonment or for handing over to the
Roman authorities. As we have seen, one wing of Jesus’ movement, of
which Stephen had been a leader, was adopting an activist line against
the Roman occupation, and had been forced into exile (while the
quietist wing, which was waiting for the triumphant return of Jesus
himself, was allowed to remain unmolested). No doubt some activists
still remained in Judaea underground, and were receiving help and
advice from their comrades in Damascus, who were proving a thorn in
the flesh of the High Priest. Saul, the trusted police officer of the High
Priest, was therefore sent with a band of mercenaries to put an end to
this menace by illegally entering Damascus and carrying off the
ringleaders of subversion.
An echo of this has survived in later Christian literature. In the
pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (i. 70 ff.), a work known to contain
some material taken from Jewish Christian literature, we are told that
when Saul travelled to Damascus it was with the intention of arresting

86
 THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

no other than Peter, who had fled there after a persecution involving the
near-murder of James. While this account cannot be reconciled with
the statement of Acts that the leading apostles were not being molested
at this time, it may well be a garbled version of genuine historical fact,
which was that leading members of Stephen’s faction were in
Damascus, and Saul was in pursuit of them.
An interesting confirmation of this version of events can be found in
Paul’s own writings. In 1 Corinthians 11: 32-3, he writes: ‘When I was
in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under
observation so as to have me arrested; and I was let down in a basket,
through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.’ This refers
to the period after Paul had entered Damascus, having been struck
blind by his vision of Jesus, cured by Ananias and become a public
advocate of Jesus. But the account of the same event in Acts presents a
surprising contrast:
But Saul grew more and more forceful, and silenced the Jews of Damascus
with his cogent proofs that Jesus was the Messiah. As the days mounted up,
the Jews hatched a plot against his life; but their plans became known to
Saul. They kept watch on the city gates day and night so that they might
murder him; but his converts took him one night and let him down by the
wall, lowering him in a basket. (Acts 9: 22-5)

Paul’s version is, of course, much closer to the actual events (Paul
was writing his letters from about AD 55 to about aD 60, while Acts was
not written until about AD go). And Paul tells us that the reason why he
had to steal secretly away from Damascus was that the police chief of
King Aretas was seeking to arrest him. In Acts, however, it is said that
Paul’s life was threatened by the Jewish residents of Damascus, who
objected to Paul’s advocacy of the Messiahship ofJesus. This is a most
instructive contrast. It is a perfect example of how the shift, found
throughout the Gospels and Acts, from a political to a religious account
of events results in vilification of the Jews as the villains of the story.
If it was the ‘commissioner of King Aretas’ who was seeking to arrest
Paul, and not the Jews, Paul must have been thought guilty of some
political offence. Some scholars have tried to argue that the commis-
sioner was acting on behalf of the Jews; but there-was no reason for the
Nabataean chief of police to concern himself with religious disputes
among the Jewish residents of Damascus. Much more likely is that he
had discovered that Paul was himself a police agent of the High Priest of
Jerusalem and that he was in Damascus on a mission that constituted
an infringement of Nabataean sovereignty. The situation must have

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been quite a common one in Damascus, which was a refuge for political
dissidents fleeing areas under Roman authority. The fact that Paul had
given up the mission on which he had been sent would not have been
believed by the commissioner, who would regard Paul’s conversion
merely as a front for an undercover agent. The commissioner would
therefore have acted promptly on information received about Paul’s
status, and Paul had to beat a hasty retreat from Damascus to avoid
arrest.
The Jews of Damascus would not have had anything against Paul
just because he had been converted to the belief that Jesus was the
Messiah. Paul, at this early period of his conversion, had not yet
formulated his new and heretical views about the divine status of Jesus
and the abrogation of the Torah, so he would be regarded as simply
another follower of Jesus; and the Nazarenes in Damascus would be
regarded with sympathy by all Jews as a patriotic party working for the
liberation of the Jewish homeland. There would be no Jews in
Damascus who would sympathize with the collaborationist views of the
High Priest, for there would be no pro-Roman party among Jews living
in a city that had been removed from Roman rule.
The book of Acts, however, having transformed Saul from a police
agent into a fanatical Pharisee, has to represent his mission to
Damascus as religious, not political, and consequently, when Saul
becomes converted to Jesus’ movement, the Jews of Damascus become
the cruel, intolerant Pharisees who oppose him, just as in the Gospels
the Pharisees are set up as the opponents of Jesus. The clear evidence of
tampering with the facts, shown by the changing of the story from
Paul’s account of what happened to that given in Acts, should alert us
to a similar process wherever the Jews are portrayed as persecutors.
We may now return to the experience of Paul near Damascus that
changed his life and that of the Western world. There are three
accounts ofthis event in the book ofActs (in chapters 9, 22 and 26), and
there are some curious inconsistencies between the three accounts; also
there is a fourth account in the first chapter of Galatians, written by
Paul himself, that raises problems ofits own. We may begin with the
first account (Acts g: 1-31):
While he was still on the road and nearing Damascus, suddenly a light
flashed from the sky all around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice
saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Tell me, Lord,’ he said,
‘who you are.’ The voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do.’
Meanwhile the men who were travelling with him stood speechless; they

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heard the voice and could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but when
he opened his eyes he could not see; so they led him by the hand and brought
him into Damascus. He was blind for three days, and took no food or drink.
According to this account, Saul’s vision is characterized by (a) its
suddenness; (b) the presence of a great light; (c) the hearing of a voice
declaring itself to be that of Jesus; (d) an instruction to go into the city
for further information; and (e) the onset of temporary blindness.
Several of the details are contradicted in the other accounts: thus, in
chapter 22, we are told that the men with Saul did not hear the voice,
though they saw the light; and in chapter 26, we are told that Jesus
made a much longer speech, telling Saul that he was appointing him on
a mission to the Gentiles.
According to the account quoted above, Jesus gave no details of the
mission he had in mind for Saul, but told him that he would be further
informed in Damascus, where he was indeed visited by Ananias, who
cured his blindness, converted him to Jesus’ movement by baptism and
also (presumably, though this is not said explicitly) informed him of his
mission to the Gentiles. Ananias in chapter g is a Christian, but in
chapter 22 he is a pious Jewish observer of the law, and it is not
explained why as such and being ‘well spoken of by all the Jews of that
place’ he then urges Saul to be baptized. (If Ananias can combine being
a follower of Jesus with Jewish piety and friendliness with all the other
Jews, why does Saul’s conversion to Christianity bring upon him the
enmity of the Jews of Damascus?)
Despite the above inconsistencies in the narrative, which are
somewhat surprising in the course of a single book by a single author, it
is possible to piece together an intelligible account of Saul’s experience.
He had a sudden overwhelming attack, in which he saw a flashing light
and fell to the ground and heard a voice which convinced him of the
presence of Jesus. He did not, apparently, see the face and form of
Jesus, but only the bright light. When the experience was over, he got
up from the ground and found that he was blind. The content of the
experience was vague: he did not yet know how it was to affect his future
life, but only that the Jesus whose followers he had been persecuting
had appeared to him in supernatural guise and reproached him, and
that this meant that he, Saul, had been chosen for a great role.
Some commentators have tried to assign a physical cause to Saul’s
experience, such as epilepsy. Such explanations really explain nothing.
Much more to the point is to investigate the psychological conditions
for such a sudden conversion experience, and here the work of William
James and other investigators is of value. They have shown that the

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background to such an experience is the ‘divided self’. It is when a

sensitive person is struggling, against great difficulties, to achieve
psychical unity that there may occur a unification experience of
startling suddenness, after which the individual is able to embark on a
new life with purpose and energy.
Paul’s own statement of his spiritual dilemma is one of the classic
portrayals of psychological conflict:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am not: I am unspiritual, the
purchased slave of sin. I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine,
for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. But if what I do is
against my will, it means that I agree with the law and hold it to be
admirable. But as things are, it is no longer I who perform the action, but sin
that lodges in me. For I know that nothing good lodges in me — in my
unspiritual nature, I mean — for though the will to do good is there, the deed
is not. The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong
which is against my will; and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no
longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me.
I discover this principle, then: that when I want to do the right, only the
wrong is within my reach. In my inmost selfIdelight in the law of God, but I
perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against
the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law
that is in my members, the law of sin. Miserable creature that I am, who is
there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death? God alone, through
Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God! In a word, then, I myself, subject
to God’s law as a rational being, am yet, in my unspiritual nature, a slave to
the law of sin.
The conclusion of the matter is this: there is no condemnation for those
who are united with Christ Jesus, because in Christ Jesus the life-giving law
of the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death. What the law
could never do, because our lower nature robbed it of all potency, God has
done: by sending his own Son... . (Romans 7: 14-8: 1)
Many Christian commentators, especially of the German school,
have asserted that the religious dilemma outlined here by Paul is
typical of Pharisaism, and thus reveals him as the archetypal Pharisee
before his conversion. For, according to these commentators, the
Pharisees were guilt-ridden, under the burden of the Torah, with its
many complicated laws and were obsessed with the fear that they
might have failed to observe the law in its entirety. Paul thus
(according to this theory) saw Jesus as the solution to his anxiety-
ridden state as a Pharisee: instead of having to strive with nagging
consciousness of failure to fulfil a law which human nature was too
degraded to obey, he could now rely, not on his own puny efforts, but on

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the initiative of God, who had sent His Son to take away the moral
burden from mankind. Actually (though some of the writers of this
school have failed to recognize this), there is no criticism of the Torah
itself, or even of the rabbinical additions to it, in this passage: Paul is
saying that the demands of the Torah are just, but that human nature is
unable to comply with those demands because of the weakness of the
flesh; and therefore, the Torah is no help to mankind in its moral
dilemma, since it only serves to make clear its moral inadequacy, for
which only the grace of God can compensate.
More recent scholarship, however, has completely refuted the view
of a gloomy, guilt-ridden Pharisaism, constantly in fear of damnation
for having omitted the observance of some petty law. For there is no
such sense of inevitable human failure to live up to the demands of the
law; and on the other hand, in Pharisaism, there is the constant
possibility of repentance and forgiveness, if any sin or error is
committed. The emphasis, in Pharisaism, is just the opposite of that
found in the above passage of Paul: that the demands of the law are
reasonable and not beyond the power of human nature to fulfil; and this
is merely the continuation of the emphasis of the Hebrew Bible itself,
which says:
For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for
thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: “Who
shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that
we may doit?’ . . . But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in
thy heart, that thou mayest do it. (Deuteronomy 30: 11-14)

If, however, human nature being admittedly frail, temptation is too

strong and a sin is committed, Pharisaism stresses the availability of
God’s forgiveness through repentance and reparation; so that there is
no sense of unbearable strain because every commandment has to be
perfectly obeyed, as appears to be the case with Paul, both here and
(more explicitly) in Galatians 3: 10-12. On the contrary, Pharisaism
everywhere stresses the concept that the Torah may be fulfilled on
various levels, according to the state of spiritual advancement of the
individual: thus there are the minimum requirements for ordinary
people, but also the ‘measure of saintliness’ (middat hasidim) for those
who wish to acquire supererogatory virtue, though no one is blamed for
not proceeding to such a level — and may even be blamed for seeking it
prematurely.
Further, the psychological dualism found in Paul’s statement is most
uncharacteristic of Pharisaism. The dichotomy, in Paul’s thinking,

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between the flesh and the spirit, in which evils proceed from the flesh,
which can be redeemed only by an inpouring of spirit from above,
reflects a view of human nature that issued in the Christian doctrine of
original sin. This doctrine is radically opposed to the Pharisaic concept
of the essential unity of human nature. In Pharisaic thinking, there is
indeed a conflict in the human psyche between two formations or
inclinations, the ‘good inclination’ (yetzer ha-tov) and the ‘evil
inclination’ (yetzer ha-r’a); but neither of these inclinations is identified
with the flesh or body and both of them are regarded as equally human.
In this struggle between good and evil tendencies, the human being is
regarded as having the initiative in his own hands, and not to require
supernatural help. The instruction to be found in the Torah, however,
is regarded as the greatest aid towards the victory of the good
inclination; but, again, this instruction can be gained only by initiative
on the part of the human being, who has to set himself to the task of
studying the Torah and applying it to his life. The very effort involved
in this essential process of education and study is regarded as
efficacious against the power of the evil inclination. Thus, the
application of energy and effort to the moral life is of the essence of
Pharisaism, and nothing could be more alien to it than a moral despair
which declares that human effort is useless and the only remedy lies in
the grace exercised by God. Yet this moral despair is precisely the
attitude powerfully described in Paul’s account of his own dilemma.
Furthermore, in Pharisaic thinking, the moral struggle is directed
not so much to the obliteration of the evil inclination as to its
sublimation and redirection. It is recognized that the selfish energies of
the evil inclination are essential to the vitality of the psyche and of the
community, so that we find such expressions as the following (Midrash
Rabbah on Ecclesiastes 3: 11):

Nehemiah, the son of Rabbi Samuel ben Nahman, said: ‘And bchold, it was
very good’ (Genesis 1: 31) — this alludes to the creation of man and the Good
Inclination, but the addition of the word ‘very’ alludes to the Evil
Inclination. Is, then, the Evil Inclination ‘very good’? It is in truth to teach
you that were it not for the Evil Inclination, nobody would build a house,
marry and beget children, and thus Solomon says, “That it is a man’s rivalry
with his neighbour’ (Ecclesiastes 4: 4).

In other words, the impulse of aggression and rivalry provides the

psychic energy for all action, and though the good inclination is
engaged in building up a spirit of co-operation, it cannot do so by
suppressing the selfish instincts but only by making use of them.

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Thus the Pharisaic psychology of morality by no means sinks into an

easy optimism about human nature, but declares morality to be a
continual struggle; yet its theory not only unifies the psyche by giving it
power over all its own processes, but also declares that the psyche
becomes more and more unified as it progresses in the moral struggle.
At the opposite pole to this is Paul’s picture of the moral struggle, in
which he portrays the psyche as hopelessly divided and unable to.
progress without direct supernatural intervention. There is thus no
confirmation to be found in this passage of Paul’s alleged Pharisaism;
on the contrary, he seems, on this evidence, to have been in a spiritual
situation entirely different from that of Pharisaism before his con-
version to Jesus. If Paul was a Pharisee, he was a unique one. This is a
result which we have reached in other contexts too — for example, in the:
context of Paul’s alliance with the High Priest. When Paul repeatedly
comes to appear so untypical as to be unique, it seems a more plausible
hypothesis that he was not a Pharisee at all.
But if we look for a parallel to Paul’s analysis of the human condition
among the philosophies and creeds of the ancient world, it is not hard to
find. In style, terminology and content, Paul’s declaration can be
paralleled in the writings of the Gnostics. This will be shown more fully
in a later chapter, but at present it is relevant to point out that Paul’s
psychological dualism, here expressed, is clearly grounded in a
metaphysical dualism. Paul is saying that there are two laws in the
world: the law of the spirit (pneuma) and the law of the flesh (sarx). If
there are two independent and conflicting laws (or systems of
organization) in the universe, it is clearly implied that there are two
opposing forces, that of the spirit and that of the flesh. This is the
doctrine characteristic of Gnosticism. It is also a doctrine to which the
Pharisaic rabbis were utterly opposed, as the form of idolatry (or denial
of the unity of God) that was endemic in their era. Thus Paul’s espousal
of this philosophy shows him to be not only unPharisaic, but unJewish,
for not only Pharisaism but every variety of Judaism opposed it.
Some recent writers! have proposed a different interpretation of the
passage under discussion. Aware of the fact that a knowledge of
Pharisaism does not bear out the German interpretation of the passage
(as a diagnosis of the spiritual dilemma of the typical Pharisee), they
argue that Paul is here not discussing his own spiritual situation (before
conversion to Jesus) at all. Being a Pharisee (as they assume) he could
not possibly be starting from such a dilemma, since Pharisees were too
confident in the efficacy of their covenant with God, and grateful for the
instruction given to them in the Torah, to find themselves in such an

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impasse. Moreover, as a Pharisee, Paul would surely be aware of the

availability of God’s forgiveness for any sins committed, through
repentance and reparation; yet Paul makes no reference to this as a
factor in the situation. Therefore, these writers urge (Stendhal, Gager,
Gaston), what Paul is writing about here is the spiritual situation of a
Gentile, who is aware of the saving grace of the Torah, but feels himself
excluded from it. As Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul had special sympathy
for Gentiles who had been awakened to a sense of guilt by acquaintance
with the Jewish Torah, but had no means of appeasing this guilt; it was
for them, and not for the Jews, that Jesus Christ had come to Earth and
suffered, and it was through him that Gentiles could attain the same
state of grace that, for Jews, could be attained through the Torah.
Thus, according to this interpretation, Paul was not abrogating the
Torah at all, but simply providing an alternative mode of salvation for
Gentiles; the idea that salvation through Jesus Christ implied the
abrogation of the Torah even for Jews was a later unfortunate
aberration, caused by a misreading of Paul’s writings.
The writers of this school all seem entirely unaware that Judaism
already provided a way of salvation for Gentiles, and that therefore no
Pharisee (as Paul is assumed to be in this argument) would feel pity for
the exclusion of the Gentiles from salvation. There were two methods of
salvation for Gentiles in Pharisee thinking: either by full conversion to
Judaism, in which case the convert would become a full Jew and
participate in the covenant with Israel; or by adherence to the Noahide
Laws (see page 142) which constituted a covenant and a Torah for
Gentiles as revealed by God to Noah, the patriarch of the Gentiles.”
In any case, this whole interpretation is a most unnatural reading of
the passage in question, which has always been held, with great literary
and psychological justification, to be a moving expression of Paul’s own
personal dilemma. The idea that when Paul says ‘I’ in this passage he is
merely putting himself sympathetically into the place of the Gentiles is
most unconvincing to anyone who reads with an ear for the resonances
of the passage. It is true that Paul is not referring only to himself; he is
universalizing his own situation, and giving a representation of the
universal human plight, as he sees it, but with the special depth of
feeling of one who has felt this plight in his own soul and for whom the
normal distractions of life have proved ineffectual.
But the new reading of the passage has at least the merit that it
directs our attention to the undoubted fact that it is an expression of the
plight of the Gentiles in the face of a Torah which they despair of
mastering. This indeed is a most valuable insight; but it needs to be

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supplemented by the further insight that Paul identifies himself so

completely with the situation he describes that he cannot be regarded
as a Pharisee empathizing with the Gentiles, but instead must be
recognized as a Gentile himself, i.e. as a Gentile convert to Judaism
who has failed in his quest and has entered into a state of despair from
which only some psychological revolution can rescue him. The passage
mirrors so perfectly the spiritual situation of one who has tried and
failed to become a Jew that it can only be regarded as evidence (taken
together with the other evidence presented in this book) that this was
indeed Paul’s situation. This throws light on those passages in Paul’s
letters in which Paul actually speaks of himself.as a Gentile by the use of
‘we’ to comprehend both himself and the Gentiles. These passages have
proved somewhat puzzling to commentators, who, however, have:
found the ready explanation that Paul’s sympathy with the Gentiles
has made him regard himself as one of them, despite his Pharisaic
upbringing. (An example is Galatians 3: 14: ‘... that in Christ the
blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.’) A better explanation,
in the light of the evidence presented in this book, is that Paul here, in
the heat of his emotion, has forgotten his persona as Pharisee, and has
lapsed into his real identity and motivation.
We may now turn back to Paul’s revelation outside Damascus. The
psychological conditions for such an experience are extreme turmoil of
mind, induced by a sense of spiritual failure or disaster. Such a
condition is likely to arise in a person who is torn between two different
cultures, to one of which he is emotionally tied, while his ambitions and
highest aspirations are centred on the other. This is the situation of a
convert; and Paul’s Damascus experience becomes psychologically and
sociologically understandable as soon as we think of him as a recent
convert to Judaism, instead of as a Pharisee. There is thus the strongest
similarity between Paul’s mental condition and that of his greatest
follower in the later Church, Saint Augustine, who also struggled
painfully against a pagan background and found his rest, after a mental
explosion, in the same kind of synthesis, and in a sense of deep affinity
with the ideas of Paul.
If we follow, then, the Ebionite account of Paul as a convert to
Judaism, we may trace the biographical events that led to the road to
Damascus.
On becoming converted to Judaism, he adopted the Hebrew name
Saul, which was the name of the ill-fated King of Israel who came from
the tribe of Benjamin. It was probably for this reason that Paul later

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invented for himself a genealogical descent from the tribe of Benjamin

(Romans 11: 1; Philippians 3: 5). As it happens, it was impossible for
any Jew at this time to describe himself truthfully as of the tribe of
Benjamin. While it is true that part ofthe tribe of Benjamin survived in
Palestine after the deportation of the Ten Tribes by Shalmaneser of
Assyria, the Benjaminites later intermarried with the tribe of Judah to
such an extent that they lost their separate identity and all became
Judahites or Jews. Only the Levites, the priestly tribe, and that section
of the Levites called the kohanim or priests (the descendants of Aaron)
retained their identity because they needed to do so for cultic reasons.
All other Jews were simply known as Israelites for cultic purposes (e.g.
for entry into the various areas of the Temple, consumption or non-
consumption of the ¢erumah or priestly food), and no distinction was
made for any religious purpose between Judahites or Benjaminites, so
that there was no motive for preserving the distinction. Consequently,
when Paul described himself.as ‘of the tribe of Benjamin’, this was sheer
bluff, though the recipients of his letters, being Gentile converts to
Christianity, were in no position to know this.°
What was Saul’s name before he became converted to Judaism? It
was probably some Greek name, such as Solon, that sounded
something like Saul, or at least had the same initial letter. His originai
Gentile name was certainly not Paul, for this name was adopted by him
for the first time later in his career as a Christian.*
According to the Ebionites, Saul’s parents were Gentiles who had
not been converted to Judaism; Saul himself, then, was the first of his
family to be converted. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that Saul’s
parents were semi-converts of the type known as ‘God-fearers’; i.e
Gentiles who were attracted to Judaism and believed in its main tenets,
but did not wish to take the drastic step of full conversion to Judaism,
which involved circumcision, in the case of males, and adoption of
Jewish nationality. ‘God-fearers’ were given a respected status in
Pharisaic theory, and were regarded as having attained salvation even
without conversion to full Judaism, since such full conversion was
regarded as more a matter of vocation than of necessity. But it was quite
a common pattern for the child of ‘God-fearing’ parents to proceed to
full conversion, and it may well be that Saul was conforming to this
pattern. Even as the son of ‘God-fearing’ parents, however, Saul would
have been exposed in his early childhood to pagan influences far more
than a fully Jewish boy. In Tarsus, his education would have been with
pagan children, and his imagination would have been impressed by the
beautiful pagan ceremonies of mourning and joy associated with the

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death and resurrection of certain pagan gods worshipped in Tarsus.

In Acts 23, we find mention of Paul’s ‘sister’s son’ who lived in
Jerusalem and acted as Paul’s messenger to the Roman commandant.
This has been taken to be confirmation of Paul’s claim in his letters that
his family were native-born inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we thus often
find in the writings of scholars references to ‘Paul’s married sister, who
lived in Jerusalem’. However, the fact that Paul had a nephew in
Jerusalem does not prove that his sister and her husband lived there
too. It is more likely that Paul’s nephew, following his example, had left
Tarsus and had come to Jerusalem, either as a convert or as a ‘God-
fearer’. As a matter of fact, if Paul did have a whole constellation of
relatives in Jerusalem, it is surprising that none of them is mentioned,
apart from his nephew, as taking any interest, positive or negative, in
his career.
What was the status of Paul’s parents? It is often thought that they
must have been wealthy, but this is not necessarily the case. Paul was
an artisan by trade, and this is hardly consistent with being the son of
wealthy parents. Paul’s trade has been traditionally identified as that of
a tent-maker; but more accurate scholarship has shown that the Greek
word involved really means ‘leather-worker’.° It has been asserted that
Paul’s engagement in this rather humble trade is not inconsistent with
wealthy parenthood, since it was the practice of Pharisee rabbis to
engage in such trades in order to preserve their independence and avoid
making their living out of their knowledge of the Torah. Since Paul, on
the argument of this book, was not at any time a Pharisee rabbi, the
point is irrelevant; and, in any case, those Pharisee rabbis who had
large independent incomes did not engage in such trades. The
rabbinical injunction sometimes adduced that a father should ‘teach
his son a trade’ is also not relevant, since this again applied only to
those who could not provide their sons with an independent income.
On the other hand, there is evidence, taken to be incontrovertible,
that Paul’s father was a wealthy man: this is that he was both a Roman
citizen and a citizen of Tarsus. Undoubtedly, Paul is represented as
claiming that not only he, but his father too, were Roman citizens (Acts
22: 28). But we shall find reason later to show that this was not the case;
the mistake is probably that of Luke, the author of Acts. Paul acquired
his Roman citizenship, not by birth, but by special circumstances when
he was an adult (see page 161). As for Paul’s claim to be a citizen of
Tarsus, this is not very definite. He says at one point, ‘I am a Jew, a
Tarsian from Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.’ At another point, he
merely calls himself‘anative of Tarsus in Cilicia’. It may be that he was

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speaking loosely (or represented as speaking loosely) when he called

himself a ‘citizen of no mean city’, meaning by ‘citizen’ merely ‘city-
dweller’ rather than in the technical sense of one who was formally a
citizen. If, in fact, Paul was a full citizen of Tarsus, this would certainly
mean that his father was one before him; and this would argue a certain
degree of wealth, since full citizenship was granted only to people of
some wealth and prominence. It would also, incidentally, make it
unlikely that Paul’s father was a Jew, since membership in the citizen
body of a Greek polis involved membership of a native phyla or tribe and
participation in pagan worship.
We conclude then that Paul’s father was possibly a Tarsian citizen,
though not a Roman citizen, and that, even if moderately well off, he
was not wealthy enough to provide his son with an independent
income. The young Saul, therefore, knew that he had to make his way
by his own skill and wits.
Even though Saul, after his conversion to Judaism and emigration
from Tarsus to Judaea, never actually became a Pharisee rabbi, the
mere fact that he felt a strong urge in later life to represent himself as
having been one must be significant. It means that at some point in his
life this had been his dream. If his parents were indeed ‘God-fearers’,
they must have told him in his youth about the famous Pharisees of
Judaea, who occupied the apex of Jewish religious learning and piety,
and were almost legendary figures to the Jews and ‘God-fearers’ of the
Diaspora. The young Saul would have heard the names of the greatest
Pharisee leaders, Hillel, Shammai and Gamaliel. Perhaps even in
Tarsus, he may have seen one or two of the noted Pharisee figures of his
day, for many of the sages were travellers, who briefly visited Jewish
communities in both the Roman and Parthian Empires, in order to
preach and deliver messages from the central authorities of Pharisaism
in Jerusalem. The young Saul, planning to be a full convert, would be
impelled by his naturally ambitious nature to see himself as no ordinary
convert, but as progressing so well in his studies and piety as to become
a great Pharisee leader himself. This was not unheard of, for some
converts to Judaism had indeed reached such eminence: there was, for
example, Onkelos the Proselyte, whose translation of the Pentateuch
into Aramaic became a standard work in the Pharisaic movement. It
was even taught among the Pharisees that one of the biblical prophets,
Obadiah, was a proselyte, for which reason the name Obadiah was
often adopted by proselytes to replace their pagan names.
Unfortunately, young Saul’s dream was doomed to disappointment.
The fact that we find him, some time after his ,arrival in Judaea,

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employed as a police official in the pay of the Sadducean High Priest

shows that his plans had gone awry. We may surmise that he made an
abortive attempt to rise in the Pharisee movement; that he enrolled
with some Pharisee teacher for a while (though not with Rabban
Gamaliel, who accepted only advanced students), but proved a failure.
His Epistles show him to be eloquent and imaginative, but lacking in
logical ability; and this would have been an insurmountable obstacle in
a Pharisee academy. Moreover, his educational base was too feeble; he
had too much to learn to be able to shine and, being a person of soaring
ambition (as his subsequent career shows), he would not be able to
endure mediocrity. He broke off his studies and in desperation took
whatever job he could obtain. Instead of his dream of respected status
as a rabbi, the reality was ignominy as a member of the High Priest’s
band of armed thugs.

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 CHAPTER 10

DAMASCUS AND AFTER

We have seen, then, in Saul’s background and present circumstances

all the ingredients for extreme mental turmoil and near breakdown.
Not only is his mind torn between the pagan background of Tarsus and
the Judaic religious outlook, but his personal ambitions have been
cruelly frustrated and he is suffering from a shock to his self-esteem. In
his vivid imagination, the sacred history of the Hebrew Bible (in its
Greek translation, the Septuagint) with its heroes and prophets jostles
with memories of the sacred processions of the mystery god Baal-
Taraz, the dying and resurrected deity who gave Tarsus its name. The
prestige of Pharisaic Judaism, which excited his aspirations, has
proved so elusive and disappointing that his mind searches for some
way ofescape from the demands of Judaism; and the consolations ofthe
mystery religion of his youthful environment with its colourful and
moving ceremonies of mourning and rejoicing beckon to him with a
promise of relief from his misery, but, at the same time, arouse in him
the fear of'apostasy, regression and the abandonment of his hopes.
In such circumstances of conflict and disappointment, many indi-
viduals would have suffered mental collapse. Some individuals,
however, of great gifts and psychical resources can meet the situation
by a sudden psychological leap, an overwhelming synthesis or multiple
insight that unites all the disparate elements of conflict into a single
solution. Such a solution is apt to take the form ofa vision, welling from
the unconscious mind without apparent ratiocination or conscious
effort, and so having for the person involved a supernatural quality.
Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus, shattering and painful as it
was, solved all his conflicts and raised him from the abyss ofself-hatred
and failure. By it, he was able to reconcile all the conflicting needs ofhis
complex nature. The panorama ofJewish sacred history was combined
with the individual salvation and consolation of pagan mystery

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religion; the divide in his own soul was answered by a divide in the
universe, similar to that found in the dualism of Gnosticism; and,
finally, from the personal point of view, his desire for a surpassing role
for himself was satisfied in a way far beyond his previous ambitions.
Saul had just been taking part in the sordid persecution of Jesus’
followers by the politically motivated High Priest. He had now been
give a task of surreptitious violence; to kidnap certain persons from
Damascus and convey them to the High Priest’s custody for con-
demnation as plotters of sedition against the Roman occupation of
Judaea. The fact that he had been entrusted with this mission, and
made the leader of the band of kidnappers, shows that Saul was
regarded with some favour by the High Priest. Yet Saul must have
regarded his promotion in the secret police with a mixture of feelings: °
how different from the kind of promotion he had pictured for himself
when he came to Judaea as a hopeful convert.
This conflict of feelings was exacerbated by the nature of the
movement which he had been deputed to investigate and persecute.
For at the centre of the beliefs of this movement was a figure who had
died and had been resurrected. When Saul, in the course of his duties of
arrest and interrogation, probed into the belief of Jesus’ followers in the
resurrection of Jesus, he must have felt a shock of recognition from his
pagan background. Here again, where he least expected it, was the
figure who had moved him as a child, despite the warnings of his ‘God-
fearing’ parents: the dying and resurrected deity, who was always the
same under all his names and guises, whether Attis, Adonis, Osiris or
Baal-Taraz. Bound up with the worship of this ubiquitous deity was a
deeply emotional experience: that of dying and being reborn together
with the deity, as his agon was enacted in dramatic and ecstatic
ceremonies.
Because of his pagan background, Saul would have read into the
story of the death and resurrection of Jesus meanings which were in fact
absent from the minds of the Nazarenes themselves, for these followers
of Jesus were people of Pharisee background on the whole and indeed
still regarded themselves as Pharisees, and, therefore, as utterly
opposed to pagan schemes of salvation based on dying and resurrected
deities. Their belief in the resurrection of Jesus was conceived within
the patterns of Jewish thought; that is to say, they thought of it as a
miracle wrought by God, but did not think of Jesus himself as anything
other than human. No doubt they read some sacrificial meanings into
the event, for the idea of vicarious suffering by saints on behalf of a
sinful community was not alien to Judaism, being found in the Bible in

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the story of Moses, for example, or in the figure of the suffering servant
of Isaiah. But the idea of the sacrifice of a deity was utterly alien to every
variety of Judaism. Jesus, to his early followers, was not a deity, but a
Messiah: i.e. a human king of the House of David, whose mission was to
liberate Israel from foreign rule and the world from the sway of military
empires. That instead of succeeding in this he had met with crucifixion
was interpreted by them to mean that the sins of Israel had not been
sufficiently expiated by the campaign of repentance which Jesus had
conducted among ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, and that
therefore Jesus himself had had to fill up the measure of expiation by
undergoing a cruel death, preparatory to his miraculous resurrection as
a triumphant conqueror. But his return to Earth as a resurrected figure
would not change his status as a human king, any more than the
resurrection of Lazarus raised the latter above human status.
To Saul, however, the idea of Jesus as a sacrificial figure would have
had resonances that were quite different. The personal and individual
significance of the death of the god in the mystery cults would have been
aroused in him, especially in his highly individualized plight; whereas,
for the Nazarenes in general, the significance of the death and resur
rection of Jesus was more of communal than individual or personal
significance, presaging the coming of the restoration of the Jewish
commonwealth and the universal Messianic age on Earth. The mystery
cults had arisen in a Greco-Roman environment in which national
loyalties had been crushed by the vast machine of a bureaucratic
empire; consequently, detribalized individuals had sought individual
salvation in them, hoping for an individual immortality by dying and
rising with the deity. Among the Jews, this disintegration of community
feeling had not occurred; to them, salvation still meant the salvation of
the community and of all mankind in an earthly kingdom of God, not
an escape into an otherworldly disembodied state.
While persecuting Jesus’ followers, Saul would have become aware
of Jesus as a figure that seemed strangely familiar to him, answering a
need in his soul suppressed since his childhood by the rationality and
conscious verities of Judaism. In particular, his strong imagination
would have been captured by the picture of Jesus dying on the cross.
For this picture would have reminded him irresistibly of the ikons he
had seen in Cilicia of the god Attis in his various guises — the hanged
god, whose dripping, flayed body fertilized the fields and whose
mysteries renewed the souls of his frenzied devotees. It is significant
that, in later times, the imagination of Paul played round the
Deuteronomic passage discusséd above about the curse (as Paul

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understood it) adhering to the body of the hanged one.

At this time, however, these thoughts had not yet broken into full
consciousness. Saul was attempting to live an unspiritual life, that of a
secular police officer, his hopes of attaining spiritual stature in the
Pharisaic movement having been disappointed. But the disquiet of his
soul could not be stilled; and when his distress erupted into a
psychological seizure on the road to Damascus, the centre of the
disturbance was occupied by the figure which had been forming in his
unconscious mind — that of the Hanged God, the focus of both guilt and
hope. By identifying this figure with Jesus, whose followers he had been
persecuting, Saul made sense out of the meaninglessness into which his
life had degenerated. For instead of being merely a hireling of the
quisling High Priest, harrying people for pay, he now saw himself asa °
historically significant person — he who had persecuted the dying and
resurrected god and who, by his very guilt, could switch to the
antithetical role of the god’s chief acolyte. This sudden change from
utter sinfulness to utter release and sinlessness became the motif of the
new religion which he began to develop from the vision which had
marked him out from all mankind.
We may now turn to an examination of the account which Paul
himself gives of the crisis of his life, his vision of Jesus and the mission
resulting from it:
You have heard what my manner of life was when I was still a practising
Jew: how savagely I persecuted the church of God, and tried to destroy it;
and how in the practice of our national religion I was outstripping many of
myJewish contemporaries in my boundless devotion to the traditions of my
ancestors. But then in his good pleasure God, who had set me apart from
birth and called me through his grace, chose to reveal his Son to me and
through me, in order that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles. When
that happened, without consulting any human being, without going up to
Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me, I went off at once to
Arabia, and afterwards returned to Damascus. (Galatians 1: 10-17)
Paul introduces this account in the following way: ‘I must make it clear
to you, my friends, that the gospel you heard me preach is no human
invention. I did not take it over from any man; no man taught it me; I
received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.’ It is clear from this that
it is wrong to talk about the experience of Paul on the road to Damascus
as a ‘conversion’, as is usually done. The use of this term presupposes
something that ought not to be presupposed: that Christianity already
existed before Paul had this experience, and that therefore all that was
required was that Paul should be ‘converted’ to this already existing

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religion. The correct designation of Paul’s experience is the word he

uses himself: ‘revelation’. In fact, Christianity, as a religion separate
from Judaism, stems from this event. Paul’s vision of Jesus was the
epiphany or divine appearance which initiated Christianity, just as the
appearance of God in the burning bush initiated Judaism. Just as
Moses was marked out by the revelation of the burning bush as the
founding prophet of Judaism, so Paul by his Damascus vision became
the founding prophet of Christianity.
Paul, throughout his Epistles, insists on referring to ‘my gospel’ or, as
here, ‘the gospel announced by me’ (translated above, in the New
English Bible translation as ‘the gospel you heard me preach’, which is
inexact and misleading, in that it makes Paul sound more modest than
he was). Paul is thus claiming a direct line to Jesus — not only because of
his Damascus revelation, but also because of other revelations
subsequent to it. Paul is claiming a much higher authority than that of
the Jerusalem apostles, Peter, James and John; for their claim derived
from acquaintance with the earthly Jesus, while Paul’s claim derived
from acquaintance with the heavenly Jesus, now divorced from all
weakness of the flesh and assuming the omniscience of a transcendent
deity.
The leaders of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ (as will be argued in full in a
later chapter) did not regard themselves as the founders of a new
religion. They regarded themselves as Jews, who were differentiated
from their fellow Jews only by their belief in Jesus as Messiah. They
confidently believed that when the resurrected Jesus returned to Earth,
which they expected to happen very soon, God would perform through
his agency such astounding miracles — the defeat of the Romans by
supernatural means and their expulsion from the Holy Land — that all
Jews would accept him as the Messiah, and would be united under his
royal rule in a theocracy governed by the prescriptions of the Torah of
Moses, as interpreted by the Oral Law, administered by the Pharisee
masters. They did not envisage any split between Jesus’ movement and
the main body of Jewish believers. They themselves observed the
Jewish laws and prayed in the same words as their fellow Jews, with the
addition of certain prayers (such as the Lord’s Prayer) which were
added to the normal services in the way that special groups among the
Jews (for example, the Hasidim) have always done without any sense of
schism. The Jerusalem Jesus movement did not observe the special
service known as the Eucharist, Communion or Mass that marked off
Christianity as a separate religion eventually (see next chapter).
Paul was the very first to envisage Christianity as a new religion,

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different from Judaism. In order to do this, he asserted his own claim to

special authority through his series of visions of the heavenly Jesus
Christ (as he called him, for the first time using ‘Christ’ as a divine
title), beginning with his Damascus vision. In the passage quoted
above, it will be seen how he insists on his independence of the
Jerusalem authorities. He says that, after his Damascus revelation,
‘without consulting any human being, without going up to Jerusalem to
see those who were apostles before me, I went off at once to Arabia, and
afterwards returned to Damascus.’ By this statement Paul is rejecting
the idea that he was a convert to Christianity. A convert is a person who
humbly approaches the authorities of the religion which he wishes to
join and submits himself for instruction. Paul denies such a description
of his entry altogether: he does not seek instruction either in Damascus °
or in Jerusalem; instead he goes off ‘to Arabia’. The impression
conveyed by the latter information is to reinforce the analogy between
Paul and Moses. Just as Moses, on receiving the tablets of the law,
stayed in the Arabian wilderness for forty days and forty nights
(Exodus 34: 28), so Paul retired to the desert to assimilate and meditate
on the new revelation before returning to impart it to mankind.
Of course, the story told in the Acts of the Apostles is very different.
Here we are told that Paul did indeed seek instruction, first in
Damascus and then in Jerusalem. In Damascus he is cured of his
blindness (which Paul himself, in Galatians, does not mention) by
Ananias, who then instructs him in his mission; and then Paul, after
escaping from Damascus, goes immediately to Jerusalem, where he is
introduced by Barnabas to the Apostles, and where he adopts an active
but subordinate role in Jesus’ movement. The picture given in Acts is
thus indeed that ofa convert, not of the founder ofa new religion, but
we have to consider the purpose and standpoint of the book of Acts, in
order to understand the startling difference between its account and
that of Paul himself in Galatians. The book of Acts, we must remind
ourselves, was written about forty years after Paul’s letter to the
Galatians, and a great deal had happened to Jesus’ movement in that
time. It had turned into the Christian Church, which had adopted the
ideas of Paul, but was concerned to derive these ideas from Jesus
himself and therefore to deny Paul originality. Moreover, the Christian
Church had adopted an account of the early Nazarenes in which there
had been no rift between Paul and the Jerusalem Apostles: the myth
now was that all the Apostles, including Peter and James, had believed,
like Paul, in the divine Jesus and in his role as a divine sacrifice for the
sins of mankind — in other words, in the mystery religion doctrine for

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which, in historical fact, Paul alone had been responsible. In order to

preserve the doctrine of the essential unity of the early Church (and
thus its unbroken continuity with Jesus himself, which would have
been seriously jeopardized by any acknowledgement of Paul’s original-
ity and his break with the Jerusalem Apostles, who provided the real
link with the historical Jesus), Paul had to be represented as just one of
the Apostles, indeed the latest and least authoritative of them, who had
learnt his Christianity from James and Peter, even though he was given
a special role as ‘apostle to the Gentiles’. The book of Acts and indeed
the Gospels themselves were composed (or rather edited from previous
materials) in order to consolidate this myth of the unity of the early
Church and to derive from Jesus himself the ideas of the later Church,
which in fact were based on those of Paul. The utter originality of Paul
and his status as the founder of Christianity have thus been obscured;
even though Paul is the hero and central character of the book of Acts,
his real status and role in the foundation of Christianity are played
down and transformed in that work. The rift between Paul and the
Jerusalem Apostles is indeed not entirely absent from Acts: it has been
edited and disguised, but it is still there, as we shall see later. But the
main aim is to achieve an appearance of continuity.
If, however, we read Paul’s own account of his revelation at
Damascus without any presuppositions in our minds derived from the
much later account in Acts, we can begin to appreciate what enormous
claims Paul was making. We have already seen one instance in which
the New English Bible translation has played down Paul’s claims, but
in another phrase, this translation plays them down even more. For
where the New English Bible has ‘God . . . chose to reveal his Son to me
and through me’ (Galatians 1: 16), what the Greek actually says is
*,.. to reveal his Son in me’, as the Revised Version says. Paul is
saying, quite straightforwardly, that he is himself the incarnation of the
Son of God. He is thus claiming to have even higher status in his new
religion than was claimed for Moses in Judaism. It may be replied that
Paul is here only claiming for himself what, in his view, is possible for
every Christian: an identification and merging with the personality of
Jesus as divine saviour; Christ, it may be said, is ‘in’ every Christian,
Just as every Christian is ‘in’ Christ. Even so, Paul is claiming to be the
first person in whom this miraculous merging has taken piace. His
‘revelation’ is thus more even than a revelation: it is a transformation
and a deification of Paul himself as the supreme manifestation of the
phenomenon of impregnation by God. Other Christians may be able to
partake of this state, having been shown the way by Paul, just as other

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Buddhists may find Nirvana, having been shown the way by the
Buddha; but Paul, like Buddha, remains pre-eminent and quasi-
divine.
Further confirmation of Paul’s sense of his own uniqueness can be
found in his letters. Thus, he claims that he has supreme mystical
experience, quite apart from his Damascus revelation: that he was
‘caught up into the third heaven’, and that he was ‘caught up into
paradise and heard words so secret that human lips may not repeat
them’ (11 Corinthians 12: 2-3). Even more important for an under-
standing of Paul’s view of his own status is his claim to have special
marks or stigmata on his body, showing the depth of his self-
identification with the sufferings of Jesus on the cross (see Galatians 6:
17). This phenomenon became common among ecstatic Christians in ‘
the Middle Ages, starting with Saint Francis, and has been much
studied by psychologists. In the early Church, however, only Paul is
known to have experienced such a physical manifestation. There are
remarkable parallels, however, in other forms of ancient mystery
religion. The devotees of Attis, for example, at the height of their
ecstasy, castrated themselves in order to experience the same agon as
their god, and so sink their individuality in his and become ‘in’ him.
Thus the stigmata of Paul, whether self-inflicted or psychosomatically
produced, made him, in his own eyes and those of his followers, the
supreme embodiment of the power of the mystery god, the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Here we must note the parallel between Paul and other mystagogues
of the period, who also sought to found a new religion, based on their
own embodiment of a divine power. Simon Magus is a good example.
He is mentioned in Acts as having started a movement among the
Samaritans, claiming to be ‘that power of God which is called “The
Great Power” ’. That Paul and Simon Magus were regarded widely as
similar figures is shown by the fact that in certain anti-Pauline
documents, Paul is referred to under the code-name ‘Simon Magus’.
This brings home to us that the picture of Paul found in the book ofActs
as merely one of the Apostles, with no claim to a special doctrine of his
own or to outstanding pre-eminence as the possessor of divine, mystical
power, is untrue to the way in which Paul, as a historical fact, presented
himself.
Yet we must not forget the aspect that differentiated Paul from all the
other mystagogues of the time and ensured that his religion, unlike
theirs, was not forgotten. This was Paul’s determination to connect his
new religion to Judaism and thus give it an historical basis going back

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in time to the beginning of the world — rather than basing it solely on

his own personality. This was the feature that gave Paul’s religion
substance and impressiveness in the eyes of the Greco-Roman world, so
that his followers felt themselves to be carried along 1in the sweep of
cosmic history — though again, Paul was not unique in this harnessing
of the Jewish Bible to his purposes, for this had been done by some of
the Gnostic sects, particularly the Sethians, as we shall see.
Paul’s feeling for the Jewish Bible, which he had absorbed in its
Greek translation and had studied avidly during his phase of ambition
of Pharisaic eminence, can be seen even in the account quoted above of
his Damascus revelation. Not only does he refer obliquely to Moses, as
we have seen, but there is also a plain identification of himself with the
prophet Jeremiah. He says, ‘. . . God, who had set me apart from birth
and called me through his grace, chose to reveal his Son to me and
through me. ...’ Once more, the New English Bible has blurred the
matter by its search for modern English idioms, rather than literal
representation of the original. The literal translation, as in the Revised
Version, is ‘. . God, who separated me from my mother’s womb .
and this immediately recalls the summons to prophecy of Jeremiah:
‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest
forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet
unto the nations’ (Jeremiah 1: 5). Paul, too, declared himselfto have a
mission to the nations, but he wished this mission to have biblical
sanction, and he therefore described himself in terms derived from the
biblical prophet Jeremiah. In so far as Paul likens himself to Moses, he
is thinking of himself as the founder of a new religion; but in so far as he
likens himself to Jeremiah, he sees himself as the continuator of
Judaism, even though his message is not for the Jews but for the whole
world.
Thus Paul’s Damascus revelation not only resolved the conflicts of a
convert struggling to find his feet in the Jewish world by reinstating the
pagan romanticism of his childhood; it also gave satisfaction to the
yearnings of one who had regarded the Jewish tradition with awe and
envy, and had sought to master it, only to meet with failure and rebuff.
Paul fantasized a career as a successful Pharisee, which he had
voluntarily renounced; this consoled him for his actual failure. But he
also wove for himself a far greater fantasy: that his status was far above
the Pharisees (none of whom claimed prophetic status), for in him the
biblical gift of prophecy had been renewed; and that the whole
panorama of biblical prophecy had existed merely to culminate in him,
a greater prophet than Moses, and the initiator of the culminating

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phase of history, for which a new type of religion, transcending but

containing that of the Bible, was required.

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 CHAPTER 11

PAUL AND THE

EUCHARIST

It may be urged, in accordance with received Christian doctrine, that

the Eucharist was instituted by Jesus himself, and therefore constitutes
evidence that Paul was not the originator of the mystery cult
interpretation of the death of Jesus, but that this interpretation
originated with Jesus.
The Eucharist signifies the mystical incorporation of the initiate into
the godhead by eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ. Such
a ceremony implies the deification of Jesus and is quite impossible to
reconcile with a view of Jesus as merely a Messiah in the Jewish sense.
Moreover, the Eucharist, as well as implying a doctrine of participation
in the godhead, implies a doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus as an
atonement for mankind; the worshipper partakes of the body of the
sacrificed Jesus much as the Jewish worshippers used to eat the Paschal
lamb (to which Jesus is likened in 1 Corinthians 5: 7). Such a concept of
the death of Jesus cannot be reconciled with any variety of Judaism, for
it amounts to the reinstatement of human sacrifice, which for Judaism
was anathema — indeed a large part of the Hebrew Bible constitutes a
campaign against human sacrifice. The institution of animal sacrifice
was understood to entail the complete supersession of human sacrifice;
and the story of the akedah or Binding of Isaac in which God finally
renounces human sacrifice in favour of animal sacrifice is the validating
myth of this advance.
While it is true that the idea of vicarious atonement is not wholly
alien to Judaism, as pointed out earlier, it is peripheral and forms no
part of the main pattern of salvation. The story may be told in the
midrash that Rabbi Judah’s sufferings ensured good harvests (Genesis
Rabbah 33), but this does not mean that the average Jew was

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encouraged to lay his burden of sin upon Rabbi Judah or other such
figures and abandon his own individual struggle against the evil
inclination by the guidance of the Torah. Even the story in the Bible
about Moses’s offer to sacrifice himself for the Israelites is a peripheral
narrative device, heightening the character of Moses as a lover of
Israel, rather than pointing a way to salvation. In any case, Moses’s
offer is immediately refused by God in terms that reinforce the usual
pattern of individual responsibility: ‘And the Lord said unto Moses,
‘‘Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book” ’
(Exodus 32: 33). The implication of the Eucharist that salvation is to be
obtained through Jesus’ death and the shedding of his blood is thus a
radical departure from Judaism and a return to pagan concepts of
atonement. If the Eucharist, then, was indeed instituted by Jesus, we ,
would have to say that Jesus, not Paul, was the founder of Christianity.
Equally relevant is the fact that the Eucharist, as the basic sacrament
of Christianity, marks it off from Judaism as a separate religion. IfJesus
instituted the Eucharist, then he was founding a new religion thereby, if
only in the institutional sense of providing a central ceremony not
contained in Judaism and taking the place of the Jewish sacraments of
the Temple or (in the absence of the Temple) of the Shema, the
affirmation of the unity of God, which forms the central act of Jewish
worship. The institution of the Lord’s Prayer by Jesus, as pointed out
before, did not constitute any such radical departure from Jewish
practice, for it was quite usual for rabbis of the Pharisaic movement to
compose some personal prayer, for the use of themselves and their
immediate disciples, which would be used in addition to the normal
prayers.’ A number of such prayers have been preserved in the
Talmud, and some of them have actually been incorporated into the
Jewish Prayer Book and are used by all Jews today. It was only when
the Lord’s Prayer, after the death of Jesus, was made into a central
feature of the daily service, instead of being added to the normal Jewish
prayers, that it became a specifically Christian observance; for in itself,
it contains nothing contrary to Judaism, and is indeed a character-
istically Jewish prayer.
In the Gospels, certain familiar texts portray Jesus as founding the
Eucharist. The earliest of these is in Mark: ‘And as they did eat, Jesus
took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave it to them, and said,
“Take, eat: this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given
thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank ofit. And he said unto
them, ‘“‘This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for
many”’’ (Mark 14: 22-4). Matthew and Luke give the same account,

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 THE MYTHMAKER

with some small variations. This account forms part of the story of the
Last Supper. John, however, strangely enough, does not mention this
incident in his account of the Last Supper, but instead attaches the
Eucharistic idea to a quite different phase of Jesus’ life, his preaching in
Galilee in the Capernaum synagogue:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh
my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my
flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh
and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father
hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live
by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers
did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth ofthis bread shall live for ever.
(John 6: 53-8)
In the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), Jesus is
represented as performing a ceremony (distributing bread and wine to
his disciples), but not as instituting a rite to be observed by his followers
in perpetuity. It is left to the reader to surmise that this story provides a
historical or aetiological origin for the rite of the Eucharist as practised
in the Christian Church. In John, on the other hand, Jesus does not
even perform a ceremony: he merely expresses some ideas, dark and
cryptic even to his disciples, some of whom are alienated by them (John
6: 66). Where, then, do we find the first expression of the notion that
Jesus actually instituted the Eucharistic rite as a regular sacrament in
the Christian Church?
The earliest assertion ofthis is to be found in Paul’s Epistles, and this
is indeed the earliest reference to the Eucharistic idea too, i.e. to the
idea that there is salvific power in the body and blood of Jesus:
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the
Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when
he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which
is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also
he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament
in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as
often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till
he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the
Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood ofthe Lord. But let a
man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation
to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak
and sickly among you, and many sleep. (1 Corinthians 11: 23-30)

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From this passage, it is abundantly clear that Paul himself was the
inventor and creator of the Eucharist, both as an idea and as a Church
institution. For Paul says quite plainly that the Eucharist was founded
on a revelation which he himself received: ‘For I have received of the
Lord that which also I delivered unto you.’
The fact that Paul says here that he received directly ‘from the Lord’
(i.e. by direct revelation from Jesus himself, in one of the many
appearances which Paul claims occurred to him) the details of how
Jesus instituted the Eucharist (or what Paul calls ‘the Lord’s Supper’,
verse 20), has been glossed over by scholars in a manner that might be
considered extraordinary; but it is really quite understandable, for
there is a great deal at stake here. To admit that Paul was the creator of
the Eucharist would be to admit that Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of ,
Christianity. It means that the central sacrament and mystery of
Christianity, which marks it off as a separate religion from Judaism,
was not instituted by Jesus. Nor are the ideas underlying this
sacrament — the incorporation of the worshippers in the body of the
divine Christ by a process of eating the god — part of Jesus’ religious
outlook: indeed, he would have found such ideas repugnant, though not
unfamiliar, for they were a well-known aspect of paganism, especially
in its mystery religion manifestations.
Even Christian scholars, however, have not been able to hide from
themselves completely that Paul is here claiming to have received by
revelation from Jesus personally how, at the Last Supper, Jesus gave
instructions about the institution of the Eucharist. A typical comment
is the following: ‘Perhaps St Paul means that he received this
information by revelation, though the preposition apo (from) rather
suggests his having received it from the Lord through the elder apostles
or other intermediaries’ (Evans, Corinthians, Clarendon Bible, 1930).
While allowing that it is possible that Paul is here claiming a revelation
(though without admitting how momentous such an interpretation
would be, or why it has to be fended off so desperately), this scholar
takes refuge in a grammatical comment of little weight.”
We must accept, then, that Paul is saying here that he knows about
Jesus’ words at the Last Supper by direct revelation, not by any
information received from the Jerusalem Apostles,-some of whom were
actually at the Last Supper. It would obviously be absurd for Paul to
ascribe to an exclusive revelation of his own an institution already
well known in the Church since the days ofJesus himself. This explains
was
the otherwise inexplicable fact that, as we shall see, the Eucharist
not observed by the ‘Jerusalem Church’ at all, but only by those

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churches that had come under the influence of Paul. For if.Jesus himself
had instituted the Eucharist, one would expect it to be observed, above
all, by those who were actually present at the Last Supper— unless they
had unaccountably forgotten Jesus’ words, and needed to be reminded
of thern through a special revelation given to Paul.
The Gospels, of course, do assert that the Eucharist was instituted by
Jesus — or, at least, that as an institution it was based on something that
Jesus did and said at the Last Supper. But we must remind ourselves,
once more, that the Gospels were all written after Paul’s Epistles, and
were all influenced by Paul’s ideas. Of course, there is much in the
Gospels that is not derived from Paul, especially in relation to Jesus’
earthly life, in which Paul did not take much interest. But here is one
alleged incident in Jesus’ life about which, for once, there is a close
correspondence between something in Paul’s Epistles and the account
of the Gospels. It is significant that this one incident concerns an
institution so central for the Christian Church, which had a strong
motive to ascribe its institution to Jesus, since otherwise it would have
to admit that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion at all.
Weare forced to the conclusion that the source from which the Gospels
derive their account of the Last Supper, in its Eucharistic aspects, is, in
fact, Paul’s account of his revelation on the matter in Corinthians.
The Gospels, in general, have other sources for their accounts of
Jesus’ last days. But the Gospel-writers, being members of a Church in
which the Eucharist was already centrally important, and having no
other source for the institution of the Eucharist than Paul’s account,
had to turn away from their usual sources and draw on Paul directly in
order to write into the story something corresponding to what Paul
alleged to have seen in his vision of the Last Supper. This explains the
numerous verbal correspondences between the accounts given in the
Synoptic Gospels and Paul’s words in Corinthians. These cannot be a
coincidence, but must mean that the Gospel authors had Paul’s words
before them as they wrote (they cannot be from a common source, since
Paul says explicitly that he did not have them from any source but by
personal revelation).
Though the Synoptic Gospels follow the outline of Paul’s account
closely, they do not go as far as Paul in ascribing to Jesus the actual
institution of the Eucharistic rite; instead they portray Jesus as
performing a ceremony which was afterwards made the basis of the
Eucharistic rite. The absence of the whole incident in their other
sources must have embarrassed the Synoptic writers to the extent that
they inserted only a pared down version of Paul’s visionary incident.

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The author of John, on the other hand, omitted the incident altogether
from his account of the Last Supper. This was certainly not because he
was indifferent to the Eucharist, for, in another context, he gives a
much longer and more impassioned version of its theory than is found
in any of the Synoptic Gospels, making it essential to the attainment of
eternal life, and evidently regarding it as a mystery of incorporation
with the divine just as in the mystery cults. His omission of the topic
from the Last Supper must mean that he was unacquainted with the
Epistle of Paul in which the topic was attached to the Last Supper for
the first time. Nevertheless, as a member of a Church in which the
practice of the Eucharist was regarded as essential for salvation
(though unaware that this doctrine came from Paul), he included a
long defence of the institution as part of Jesus’ preaching. Thus all the ,
Gospels provide some kind of basis in Jesus’ life for the Eucharistic rite
of which Jesus, in historical fact, knew nothing.
John shows himself well aware of the shocking character of the
Eucharistic idea in Jewish eyes when he portrays even the disciples as
offended by it, and some of them as so alienated that ‘they walked no
more with him’. What John is describing here is not the shock felt by
Jewish hearers of Jesus (for Jesus never expressed any Eucharistic
ideas) but the shock felt by hearers of Paul when he grafted on to the
practice of Christianity a rite so redolent of paganism, involving a
notion of incorporation of the godhead by a procedure with strong
overtones of cannibalism.
This is not to say, of course, that Jesus did not distribute bread and
wine to his disciples at the Last Supper. This was quite normal at a
Jewish meal, whether at festival time or not. The leading person at the
table would make a blessing (blessing is the original meaning of the
word ‘eucharist’) and then break the loaf of bread and pass a piece to
everyone at the table. Then at the end of the meal, grace would be said
over a cup of wine, which would be handed round at the end of grace.
(This cup of wine of grace seems to be what is referred to in the Synoptic
accounts and in1 Corinthians, rather than the kiddush wine of sabbath
and festivals, which preceded the bread.) This procedure, which is still
practised today at Jewish tables, has no mystical significance; the only
meaning of it is to thank God for the meal He-has provided. The
addition of mystery religion trappings (i.e. the bread as the body of the
god, and the wine as his blood) was the work of Paul, by which he
turned an ordinary Jewish meal into a pagan sacrament. Since the
blood even of an animal was forbidden at a Jewish meal by biblical law
(Leviticus 7: 26), the idea of regarding the wine as blood would be

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found disgusting by Jews. Here again, Paul seems to be deliberately

removing himself from the Jewish ethos and canons of taste, and
aligning himself with the world of paganism.
It is worthy of note that the term Paul uses for the Eucharist is ‘the
Lord’s Supper’ (Greek kuriakon deipnon). This same expression was used
in the mystery religions for the sacred meals dedicated to the saviour-
god. There is evidence that in the early Church, this ceremony was
indeed regarded as a mystery, for an atmosphere ofsecrecy surrounded
it, and non-Christians and even catechumens (those being inducted
into Christianity) were not allowed to witness it. Paul’s expression ‘the
Lord’s Supper’ was so redolent of mystery religion that the early
Fathers of the Church became embarrassed by it, and they substituted
for it the name ‘Eucharist’, which had Jewish, rather than pagan,
associations. Thus the Fathers sought to align the Christian ceremony
with the non-mystical, non-magical kiddush of the Jews, in which the
wine and the bread were ‘blessed’ (or, more accurately, God was
blessed for providing them). Despite this change of name, however, the
Eucharist continued to have magical associations, since it was believed
that a miracle occurred every time it was celebrated: the bread and
wine turned into the body and blood of Christ. This magical
significance existed from the first institution of the rite by Paul, as can
be seen from his expressions concerning the magical effect of the proper
performance ofit: ‘For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth
and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For
this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.’
Nevertheless, even Paul had no wish to cut off his new religion, with
its new rite of communion, from Judaism entirely. Even though he gave
authority to the new rite by a vision, it was not his own authority that he
cited, but that of Jesus. He would thus have approved ofthe effort later
put into the Gospels and Acts to derive Paul’s doctrines, including the
Eucharist, from Jesus, and thus to play down the role of Paul himself.
Paul had no wish to be acclaimed as the founder of a new religion; on
the contrary, he wished his doctrines to be accepted as the logical
continuation of Judaism, and therefore to have the backing ofthe whole
panoply of history contained in the Jewish scriptures. Consequently,
even in his institution of the Eucharist, he seeks to stress biblical
antecedents. Thus he relates the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the
eating of the body and blood of Christ to the sacrifices of the Temple (1
Corinthians ro: 18), and the imbibing of Christ’s blood to the imbibing
of miraculous water by the Israelites in the wilderness (1 Corinthians
10: 4). By surrounding what was, in fact, an audaciously pagan

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ceremony with a web of scriptural allusions, Paul hoped to attach his

cult of Jesus as a saviour-god to the Jewish background which he still
cherished as a convert and in which he had aspired to reach great
heights. In this way he could think of himself as a prophet, like
Jeremiah. He had not broken from the Pharisees whom he had hoped to
conquer through his gifts; instead, he had transcended them, and so
conquered them in a different way. His abject failure had been turned
into triumph. The Gamaliels and Hillels on whom his youthful
admiration had been bestowed were now small fry: mere epigones of
the prophets, among whom Paul took his place. If the Pharisees now
wished to achieve any eminence, they could do so only by attaching
themselves to Aim, and seeking salvation by the route which only he
could show. ;
It remains to demonstrate that the Eucharist ceremony was not
practised by Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem, who were led by the
disciples of Jesus himself, who would surely have known whether Jesus
had given them this new foundation rite.
As the celebrated scholar Hans Lietzmann indicated long ago, the
evidence of the book of Acts points to the conclusion that the Eucharist
was not practised by the Jerusalem Nazarenes. Instead, a sense of
community was instilled simply by having communal meals, as in the
case of other Jewish fellowships. Thus, we find the following: “They met
constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to
break bread, and to pray... . With one mind they kept up their daily
attendance at the temple, and, breaking bread in private houses,
shared their meals with unaffected joy, as they praised God and
enjoyed the favour of the whole people’ (Acts 2: 42-6). The expression
‘to break bread’ (Hebrew betzo’a) simply means to initiate a meal in a
ceremonious way; the host or some prominent guest makes a blessing
over a loaf of bread and then breaks the loaf, giving a piece to each
person present. This was done (and still is done) by Jews at all
communal or celebratory meals, whether on a week day or a festival
day, and nothing is said to suggest that the bread has any symbolic or
mystical significance.
If these communal meals ofJesus’ followers in Jerusalem had had a
Eucharistic character (i.e. if they were sacraments with a mystical
significance of eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus),
something would surely have been included to indicate this: at the very
be
least, the wine would have been mentioned, which it is not. It may
Gospel a
asked why Luke, who did not scruple to include in his
Eucharistic element in his account of the Last Supper, did not venture

M7
 THE MYTHMAKER

to give a Eucharistic colouring to his account of the communal meals in

Acts. Luke himself must have been familiar with Eucharistic practice,
since at the time ofthe writing of Acts (about aD go), the Eucharist was
an established rite of the Church. Yet he did not think ofinserting into
his account of the practices of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ that they
performed the Eucharist. This is merely an example of how difficult it is
to rewrite history without leaving tell-tale traces of the original story.
One alteration always implies others; but the redactor does not always
think of the repercussions of an alteration he has inserted, and so leaves
other parts of his work unaltered and inconsistent with his pattern of
adaptation of the original.’
A survey of the evidence thus confirms that Paul and no one else was
the creator of the Eucharist. He gave authority to this new institution,
which he actually derived from mystery religion, by adducing a vision
in which he had seen Jesus at the Last Supper, giving instructions to his
disciples about performing the Eucharistic rite. This vision of Paul’s
was later incorporated as historical fact into the Gospels, in the
accounts given there of the Last Supper, and thus has been accepted as
historical fact by the vast majority of New Testament scholars. The
followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, who were pious Jews and would have
regarded the idea of eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood as
repugnant, never practised this rite, but simply took communal meals
prefaced by the breaking of bread, in the manner sanctioned by Jewish
tradition for fellowships within the general community of Judaism.

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 CHAPTER 12

THE ‘JERUSALEM
CHURCH’

The book of Acts does not disguise the fact that the Nazarenes of
Jerusalem, in the days immediately following the death of Jesus,
consisted of observant Jews, for whom the Torah was still in force. For
example, we are told that ‘they kept up their daily attendance at the
Temple’ (Acts 2: 46). Evidently, then, Jesus’ followers regarded the
service of the Temple as still valid, with its meat and vegetable
offerings, its Holy of Holies, its golden table for the shewbread, and its
menorah or candelabra with its seven branches symbolizing the seven
planets. All these were venerated by the followers of Jesus, who made
no effort to set up a central place of worship of their own in rivalry to the
Temple. Also, their acceptance of Temple worship implied an accept-
ance of the Aaronic priesthood who administered the Temple. Though
Jesus’ movement had a system of leadership of its own, this was not a
rival priesthood. Every Jewish movement, including the Pharisees, had
‘its internal system of leadership (e.g. the rabbis), but this was in
addition to the priesthood of the Temple, not instead of them. It was
not until the Christian Church proper was set up, under the influence of
Pauline ideas, that a rival priesthood was instituted, with priestly
vestments patterned partly on Jewish and partly on pagan models, and
with sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, intended to supersede the
sacraments of the Jewish Temple. Indeed, the Christian Church
produced a proliferation of temples, for, while in Judaism only one
sacramental centre was allowed, i.e. the Jerusalem Temple, in
Christianity every church was a centre for sacramental rites, while the
vast cathedrals reached an ornateness undreamt of even in the Jewish
Temple, much less in the simple conventicles or synagogues in which
ordinary prayer and study took place. Moreover, the new priesthood

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instituted in the Pauline Christian Church was accorded an awesome

authority which the Jewish priesthood never enjoyed, since the latter
were regarded as mere functionaries with no authority to pronounce
on matters of religious practice or ethics, or to perform absolutions or
excommunications.
At the time of the Jerusalem Apostles, who were the companions of
Jesus himself and continued his work, no such developments were in
sight. The Apostles showed by their attendance at the Temple that they
did not claim priestly status for themselves. Also, they and their
followers attended the synagogues for normal Jewish daily worship.
This is shown by the easy access of the preachers of Jesus’ movement,
including Paul, to synagogues at all times; even the alleged prophecy
included in John that ‘they shall put you out of the synagogues’ (John
16: 2) shows that Jesus’ followers, in the early days, were accepted as
attenders at the synagogue and also that they were themselves quite
willing to attend the synagogues. Of course, this does not mean that
they had no meeting places of their own; but these meeting places were
themselves synagogues, and did not differ in kind from the various
synagogues which catered for specialized groups of Jews, e.g. for Jews
who came from the same area of the Diaspora (see, for example, Acts 6:
g: ‘the Synagogue of Freedmen, comprising Cyrenians and Alexand-
rians and people from Cilicia and Asia. .. .’). This type of synagogue
for Jews of similar interests or background exists today, even in Israel.
The followers of Jesus thus formed a separate group, but by no means a
Church; religiously, it was an integral part of Jewry. The expression
‘the Jerusalem Church’ is thus, at this stage, a misnomer.
Now this immediately constitutes a difficulty for the conventional
Christian believer, for the Gospels say quite distinctly that Jesus
founded a Church. Why, then, did the Apostles of Jerusalem act as if no
Church had been founded, and they were still members of the Jewish
religious community? This leads to the further puzzling question: if
Jesus, as the Gospels say, chose Peter as the leader of the Church, why
were the Nazarenes, after Jesus’ death, led not by Peter, but by James,
the brother of Jesus, a person who is not even mentioned in the Gospels
as a follower of Jesus in his lifetime? This is the kind of contradiction
that, if logically considered, can lead us to the true picture of the history
of Jesus’ movement in Jerusalem, as opposed to the picture which the
later Church wished to propagate. We shall also be able to understand
much better the nature of the conflict which broke out between the
Jerusalem ‘church’ and Paul.
In Matthew, we find the following account of Peter’s election:

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‘And you,’ he asked, ‘who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter answered: ‘You are
the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Then Jesus said: ‘Simon, son of
Jonah, you are favoured indeed! You did not learn that from mortal man; it
was revealed to you by my heavenly Father. And I say this to you: You are
Peter, the Rock; and on this rock I will build my church, and the forces of
death shall never overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; what you forbid on earth shall be forbidden in heaven, and what
you allow on earth shall be allowed in heaven.’ (Matthew 16: 15-19)
This account, which appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, was
combined with a second-century legend locating Peter’s death in Rome
to provide support for the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to
supremacy over Christendom. Peter was conceived to have been the
first Bishop of Rome or Pope and, since Peter had been declared by
Jesus to be the rock on which the Church was to be built, this made
Rome the centre of Christendom, and the papal succession the true
hierarchy founded by Jesus himself. This is, of course, mere power
politics and not to be taken seriously as historical fact. To Jesus, a Jew,
the idea that his teaching would have its administrative centre at
Rome, the capital of the military power against which his whole life was
directed, would have seemed astonishing and dismaying.
But to return to historical realities, what was the relationship
between Peter, evidently the leader of the Apostles during Jesus’
lifetime, and James, the brother of Jesus? Why was it that Peter did not
become the unchallenged leader of the movement after the death of
Jesus?
To understand this, we must remind ourselves of what Jesus really
was. He was not the founder of a Church, but a claimant to a throne.
When Peter, as recorded in the passage cited above, hailed Jesus as
‘Messiah’, he was using this word in its Jewish sense, not in the sense it
acquired later in the Christian Church. In other words, Peter was
hailing Jesus as King of Israel. Jesus’ response was to give Peter his title
of ‘Rock’ and to tell him that he would have ‘the keys of the kingdom of
Heaven’. The meaning of this phrase, in its Jewish context, is quite
different from what later Christian mythology made of it, when it
pictured Saint Peter standing at the gate of Heaven, holding the keys,
and deciding which souls might enter. The ‘kingdom of Heaven’ is the
same as the ‘kingdom of God? (since ‘Heaven’ was used in Hebrew asa
title of God), and the reference is not to some paradise in the great
beyond, but to the Messianic kingdom on Earth, of which Jesus had
just allowed himself to be proclaimed King — i.e. the Jewish kingdom,
was
of which the Davidic monarch was constitutional ruler, while God

12]
 THE MYTHMAKER

the only real King.

By giving Peter the ‘keys of the kingdom’, Jesus was appointing him
to be his chief minister. King Hezekiah’s chief minister was called
Shebna; and when the prophet Isaiah predicted that this official would
be dismissed in favour of Eliakim, he did so in the following terms:
And I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee
down. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant
Eliakim the son of Hilkiah: and I will clothe him with thy robe, and
strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his
hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the
house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his
shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none
shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place. (Isaiah 22: 19-23)
The similarities between this and Jesus’ charge to Peter are striking.
Where Eliakim is given the key of the house of David, Peter is given the
keys of the Messianic kingdom; where Eliakim is told that ‘he shall
open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut. and none shall open,’
Peter is told, in effect, that he shall bind and none shall loose, and he
shall loose and none shall bind. (The New English Bible destroys the
immediacy of the original by its concern for idiomatic English, turning
the ‘bind’ and ‘loose’ of the Authorized Version and Revised Version
into ‘forbid’ and ‘allow’.) The terms to ‘bind’ and to ‘loose’ are used in
the rabbinical literature as the powers of the Sanhedrin and other
rabbinical courts, so that Jesus by giving Peter these powers is
appointing him not only chief minister at his royal court but also head
of the Sanhedrin; this is the only difference between the appointment of
Eliakim and that of Peter. This is perhaps the reason why Jesus gives
Peter the ‘keys’ in the plural.
Peter, then, is appointed chief minister of King Jesus. This explains
fully the relationship between Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, in
the movement, and why James suddenly rises to prominence at this
point. When Jesus became King, his family became the royal family, at
least for those who believed in Jesus’ claim to the Messiahship. Thus,
after Jesus’ death, his brother James, as his nearest relative, became his
successor; not in the sense that he became King James, for Jesus was
believed to be alive, having been resurrected by a miracle of God, and
to be waiting in the wings for the correct moment to return to the stage
as Messianic King. James was thus a Prince Regent, occupying the
throne temporarily in the absence of Jesus.
Further proof that this was the situation can be derived from what is
known about other members of Jesus’ family. After James, Jesus’

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brother, was executed by the High Priest, the Sadducee Ananus, in AD

62, he was succeeded by another member of Jesus’ family, Simeon, son
of Cleophas, who was Jesus’ cousin. This again shows that the structure
of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ was monarchical, rather than ecclesiastical.
Moreover, there is evidence that the Romans saw the matter in this
light, for they issued decrees against all descendants of the house of
David, ordering them to be arrested; and Simeon, son of Cleophas, was
eventually executed by the Romans as a pretender to the throne of
David.
The position of Peter, then, after the death of Jesus, is thus easily
understood. He could not become the leader of the Jesus movement,
because he was not of the royal blood. But he could and did retain his
position as chief adviser and minister of the royal court, the holder of .
the ‘keys of the kingdom’. Often such a minister is the real ruler, and
Peter, carrying the authority of having been an apostle and disciple
from the beginning, dominated the early scene. James, however, seems
to have had a strong character too, and eventually he used his position
as Prince Regent to become the effective ruler of the movement. But on
the usual interpretation of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ as a purely religious,
non-political movement, it is a complete mystery why James, who was
not one of Jesus’ twelve chief disciples, should have been made the
official leader of the movement after Jesus’ death, over the heads of all
the main figures including Peter.
Nevertheless, the New Testament contains certain features which
obscure the situation outlined above, and create the impression that the
early movement was primarily a religious one, and indeed a new
religion intended to replace Judaism. One of these features we have
already considered: the ascription of the Eucharistic rite to Jesus, as the
foundation rite of a new communion incompatible with adherence to
the communion or covenant of Judaism. The author of the book of Acts
does not take advantage of this feature, and does not portray the early
‘Church’ as practising the Eucharist. Instead, he apparently stresses a
different alleged foundation event, that of the First Pentecost. This,
then, requires some consideration.
The second chapter of Acts, having described in the first chapter the
appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the Apostles, gives an account of
a miraculous event which took place on the day of the Jewish feast of
Pentecost. The Twelve Apostles received inspiration and began to ‘talk
in other tongues’. This phenomenon was accompanied by others: the
sound ofa rushing wind was heard and tongues of fire were seen resting
on each of the Apostles. A crowd then gathered, attracted by these

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phenomena, and Peter addressed them, explaining the significance of

the occasion. He tells them: ‘These men are not drunk, as you imagine;
for it is only nine in the morning. No, this is what the prophet spoke of:
“God says, ‘This will happen in the last days: I will pour out upon
everyone a portion of my spirit; and your sons and daughters shall
prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall
dream dreams.’’’’ Peter then announces that Jesus has been
resurrected:

Men of Israel, listen to me: I speak of Jesus of Nazareth, a man singled out
by God and made known to you through miracles, portents and signs, which
God worked among you through him, as you well know. When he had been
given up to you, through the deliberate will and plan of God, you used
heathen men to crucify and kill him. But God raised him to life again, setting
him free from the pangs ofdeath, because it could not be that death should
keep him in its grip.

He then goes on to say that the psalmist David had prophesied that one
of his descendants, who would ‘sit on this throne’, would be resurrected
from the dead and would be ‘Lord and Messiah’.
The account then says that many Jews were convinced by Peter’s
address and asked him what to do, upon which he said, ‘Repent and be
baptized.’ Three thousand were then baptized and ‘were added to their
number’.
Throughout the centuries, this occasion has been regarded by
Christians as the inauguration of the Christian religion. Scholars have
pointed out that the feast of Pentecost or of Weeks (Shavuot) was
regarded in the rabbinical movement as the foundation date of the
Jewish religion, since it was held that the giving of the Torah on Mount
Sinai took place on that date. Moreover, the reference to baptism is
held to show that this rite now became the entry rite to the new
Christian religion, taking the place occupied by circumcision in the
Jewish religion.
No doubt the author of Acts did see the matter in this light; yet it is
remarkable how little support is given to this interpretation by the
actual account which he gives, evidently based on early records of the
Jerusalem Nazarenes. For nothing is said here about the founding of a
new religion. The doctrines characteristic of Christianity as it later
developed under the influence of Paul are not present. Thus Jesus is not
described as a divine figure, but as ‘a man singled out by God’. His
resurrection is described as a miracle from God, not as evidence of
Jesus’ own divinity; and Jesus is not even described as the son of God.

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Everything said, in fact, is consistent with the attitudes of a Jewish

Messianic movement, basing itself entirely on the fulfilment of the
Jewish scriptures, and claiming no abrogation or alteration of the
Torah.
The belief that Jesus had been resurrected was indeed the mark of
the movement after Jesus’ death. Without this belief, the movement
would simply have ceased to exist, like other Messianic movements.
But this belief did not imply any abandonment of Judaism, as long as it
did not involve a deification of Jesus or the abrogation of the Torah as
the means to salvation. It simply meant that, unlike other Messianic
movements whose leaders had been killed by the Romans or their
quisling henchmen, the Jesus movement intended to continue, with
exactly the same objective as before, i.e. the restoration of the Jewish
monarchy, the re-establishment of Jewish independence, and the end of
military empires throughout the world. Jesus was still alive and would
soon return to continue his mission; meanwhile like other figures of
Jewish folk legend (Enoch, Eliezer, Methuselah, Hiram of Tyre, Eved-
Melekh, Bithiah, Serach, the three sons of Korah, Elijah and Rabbi
Joshua ben Levi) he had entered Paradise while alive and was waiting
for the moment to return to Earth.!
The belief that the Apostles had spoken in tongues and had
experienced a rushing wind and tongues of flame does not imply the
founding of a new religion, but merely the importance of the new
conviction, reviving the Messianic hopes of the movement (hitherto in
despair at the death of Jesus) that Jesus was still alive. Such
phenomena occur frequently in the rabbinical literature to mark some
moment of great mystic illumination, and certainly do not imply any
abandonment ofJudaism.’ It is interesting that the homely touch is
preserved that the bystanders thought the Apostles were drunk. This
shows that the rushing wind and tongues of fire were observed by the
Apostles alone, and are psychological phenomena of a kind familiar to
investigators of religious possession. (Of course, the recognition by
bystanders of their own languages being spoken is inconsistent with
their thinking the Apostles drunk, and is a later addition, though still
part of the authentic tradition of the Jerusalem Nazarenes.)
The call by Peter to baptism also cannot be regarded as a call to
conversion to a new religion, except by reading into the practice of
baptism a meaning that it acquired later in the Pauline Christian
Church. Jesus himself had called people to baptism, and the same thing
had been done before him by John the Baptist. This was always
associated, as it is here in the case of Peter, with repentance. Baptism

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was an ancient Jewish ceremony that could have many meanings: it

was used for the removal of ritual impurity (in order to prepare
someone for eating holy food or entering holy precincts), but it was also
part of the process ofinduction of a proselyte into Judaism, in addition
to circumcision (or instead of circumcision, in the case of women). It
could also be used symbolically, as a sign of repentance and re-
generation, and, in this sense, it was especially associated with
Messianic movements, which generally began with a campaign of
repentance (i.e. return to the observance of the moral and ritual
requirements of the Torah).* Thus Peter’s use of baptism was simply a
continuation of the practice of Jesus and John the Baptist: not an
induction into a new religion, but symbolic of a return to God in
preparation for the great event of the Messianic kingdom — in this case
to be inaugurated by the reappearance of Jésus, expected in the near
future.
In view of the lack of evidence in what they said and did that they
were conscious of starting a new religion, the mere dating of the event at
Pentecost cannot be accorded the weight put upon it by scholars. There
may be some idea in the mind of the author of Acts that this date is
significant in view ofits importance in Judaism as the time of the birth
of the Jewish religion; but even this is doubtful, since nothing is said
explicitly to this effect. Certainly there is no need to suppose that the
people who actually took part in the event — Peter and the other
Apostles — interpreted its timing in this way. Nor does the reception of
the Holy Spirit point to the beginning of a new religion; it merely
means, as Peter points out, that the gift of prophecy has been renewed.
This was expected to happen in the Messianic age, and the belief that
this expectation had been fulfilled was in no way a contravention of
Judaism.
Thus everything points to the conclusion that the leaders and
members of the so-called ‘Jerusalem Church’ were not Christians in
any sense that would be intelligible to Christians of a later date. They
were Jews, who subscribed to every item of the Jewish faith. For
example, so far from regarding baptism as ousting the Jewish rite of
circumcision as an entry requirement into the religious communion,
they continued to circumcise their male children, thus inducting them
into the Jewish covenant. The first ten ‘bishops’ of the ‘Jerusalem
Church’ (as Gibbon pointed out, basing his statement on the infor-
mation provided by Eusebius) were all circumcised Jews. They kept
the Jewish dietary laws, the Jewish sabbaths and festivals, including
the Day of Atonement (thus showing that they did not regard the death

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of Jesus as atoning for their sins), the Jewish purity laws (when they
had to enter the Temple, which they did frequently), and they used the
Jewish liturgy for their daily prayers.
The book of Acts provides plentiful evidence that the above was the
case. For example, the first follower of Jesus with whom Paul had
friendly contact, Ananias of Damascus, is described as ‘a devout
observer of the Law and well spoken of by all the Jews of that place’
(Acts 22: 12). This shows that not only the Jerusalem movement but
also those of them who had had to flee abroad because of political
persecution were loyal to the Torah. Further evidence is the following
passage:
Next day Paul paid a visit to James; we were with him, and all the elders
attended. He greeted them, and then described in detail all that God had ,
done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they
gave praise to God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many
thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch
upholders of the Law. Now they have been given certain information about
you: it is said that you teach all the Jews in the gentile world to turn their
backs on Moses, telling them to give up circumcising thcir children and
following our way of life. (Acts 21: 18-21)
It is abundantly clear from this that James and his followers in the
Jerusalem movement saw no contradiction between being a member of
their movement and being a fully observant Jew; on the contrary, they
expected their members to be especially observant and to set an
example in this respect. The corollary of this is that they did not regard
themselves as belonging to a new religion, but as being Jews in every
respect; their belief that the Messiah had come did not in any way
lessen their respect for Judaism or lessen their fellowship with other
Jews, even those who did not share their Messianic belief.
Nineteenth-century New Testament scholarship, on the whole,
recognized these facts and gave them due weight. It has been left to
twentieth-century scholarship, concerned for the devastating effect of
this recognition on conventional Christian belief, to obfuscate the
matter. Thus the editor of the prestigious Anchor Bible Acts of the
Apostles, Johannes Munck, states roundly that nineteenth-century
research on this subject was ‘not correct’. He states further that ‘the
Jewish element in Jewish Christianity had been devalued to nothing
more than popular customs without any reference to salvation’. This is
given no solid backing and flies in the face of the evidence adduced
above.
It is not at all surprising, however, that such attempts to turn back

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the clock should be made. For the beliefs of the Jerusalem movement
throw valuable light on the views of Jesus himself. If James, Jesus’ own
brother, and the apostles who had lived and worked with Jesus had
apparently never heard of the doctrines of later Christianity — the
abrogation of the Torah and the deification of Jesus — or ofits central
rites of the Eucharist and baptism (in its Christian sense), the natural
inference is that Jesus himself had never heard of them either. In that
case, we cannot regard Jesus as the founder of Christianity, and must
look elsewhere for someone to fill this role. But Christian belief depends
on the idea that Jesus himself founded Christianity. Attempts have
been made (particularly by Rudolf Bultmann’‘) to argue that this is not
necessarily so: that Christianity is based on the ‘post-Resurrection
Jesus’ (i.e. on the mythical Jesus invented by Paul), not on the
historical Jesus, who may well have been a purely Jewish figure with no
inkling of the Christian myth. The attitude is a little too sophisticated
for the average Christian, or even the average Christian scholar, who
likes to feel that Christian reverence for Jesus is directed towards the
real Jesus, not towards a figment, however mythologically acceptable.
Another line of approach, which attempts to preserve the idea of
Jesus as a rebel against Judaism and the founder ofa new religion, is to
say that what we find in the Jerusalem movement is an instance of ‘re-
Judaization’. Later movements in Christianity, such as the Ebionites,
are regarded as re-Judaizing sects, which lapsed back into Judaism,
unable to bear the newness of Christianity. Re-Judaizing tendencies
are seen in certain passages of the Gospels, especially that of Matthew,
where Jesus is portrayed as a Jewish rabbi: this, the argument goes, is
not because he was one, but because the author of the Gospel or the
section of the Church to which he belonged was affected by a re-
Judaizing tendency, and therefore rabbinized Jesus and tempered the
extent of his rebellion against Judaism. All the evidence of the
Jewishness of Jesus in the Gospels, on this view, is due to late tampering
with the text, which originally portrayed Jesus as rejecting Judaism.
This is a line that was fashionable at one time and is still to be found
in many textbooks. Its implausibility, however, has become increas-
ingly apparent.” The Gospel of Matthew, for example, takes a hostile
stance, in general, towards the Jews and Judaism (see, for example,
chapter 23), so that it is incredible that its author is a re-Judaizer. On
the contrary, the evidence in this Gospel of the Jewishness of Jesus goes
against the grain of the narrative, and must be regarded as an outcrop
of an older stratum.
The implausibility of the ‘re-Judaization’ approach cannot be better
illustrated than when it is applied to the Jerusalem movement led by

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James and the Apostles. This would mean that Jesus’ new insights had
been lost so quickly that his closest associates acted as if they had never
been. Of course, it may be said that Jesus’ closest associates never did
understand him and, in support of this, various passages in the Gospels
may be adduced, e.g. Peter’s altercation with Jesus, upbraiding him for
announcing the necessity of his sacrificial death, after which Jesus was
so angry with Peter that he said, ‘Away with you, Satan; you think as
men think, not as God thinks’ (Mark 8: 33). But here the following
question is appropriate: which is more likely, that Jesus’ closest
disciples failed to understand his most important message, or that
Pauline Christians, writing Gospels about fifty years after Jesus’ death,
and faced with the unpalatable fact that the ‘Jerusalem Church’ was
unaware of Pauline doctrines, had to insert into their Gospels
denigratory material about the Apostles in order to counteract the
influence of the ‘Jerusalem Church’? Mark’s story about Peter, so far
from proving that Peter misunderstood Jesus, is evidence of the
dilemma of Pauline Christianity, which was putting forward a view of
Jesus that was denied by the most authoritative people of all, the
leaders of the Jerusalem movement, the companions ofJesus. It is a late
addition, and tells us nothing about the true relationship between Jesus
and Peter.°
Those who hold to the ‘re-Judaization’ theory of the ‘Jerusalem
Church’ then have to explain how the allegedly revolutionary ideas of
Jesus did not become lost altogether. The episode of Stephen is seized
upon as providing a link between Jesus and Pauline Christianity. We
have already seen that the Stephen episode cannot be understood in
this way, though it was intended by the author of Acts to provide sucha
link. Nor can the incident of the ‘Hellenists’ be used to hypothesize the
existence of a reforming party among the adherents of the ‘Jerusalem
Church’; this is a scholarly fantasy conjured out of the text.
Another incident in Acts, however, also functions as an attempted
link between a reforming Jesus and the Pauline Church: this is the
curious incident of Peter’s dream.
The story, in chapter 10 of Acts, concerns the reception into Jesus’
a.
movement of a Gentile, the Roman centurion Cornelius, at Caesare
man, and he and his
He is described as follows: ‘He was a religious
whole family joined in the worship of God’ (verse 2). Ina vision, he sees
le,
an angel, who tells him to summon Peter, who is at Joppa. Meanwhi
Peter too has a vision, in which he sees ‘creatures of every kind,
said to
whatever walks or crawls or flies. Then there was a voice which
no: I have
him, ‘‘Up, Peter, kill and eat.”? But Peter said, ‘‘No, Lord,
again a
never eaten anything profane or unclean.” The voice came

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second time: “It is not for you to call profane what God counts clean.” ’
Messengers from Cornelius arrive, and escort Peter to Joppa, where he
enters Cornelius’ house, where the centurion and his family and friends
are gathered. Peter says to them: ‘I need not tell you that a Jew is
forbidden by his religion to visit or associate with a man of another race;
yet God has shown me clearly that.I must not call any man profane or
unclean. That is why I came here without demur when you sent for me.’
Peter instructs the assembly in the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection, and
says that he (Jesus) ‘is the one who has been designated by God as
judge of the living and the dead. It is to him that all the prophets testify,
declaring that everyone who trusts in him receives forgiveness of sins
through his name.’
The Holy Spirit now comes upon all present, and Peter and his
disciples are astonished to see that even Gentiles have received the gift
of the Holy Spirit. Peter then orders them to be baptized ‘in the name of
Jesus Christ’. In the following chapter, Peter, on his return to
Jerusalem, faces criticism from ‘those who were of Jewish birth’, who
say, ‘You have been visiting men who are uncircumcised, and sitting at
table with them!’ Peter then repeats at great length his dream at Joppa,
and the doubts are silenced. “They gave praise to God and said, ‘““This
means that God has granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles
also.” ’
This story contains a mass of confusions and contradictions, and it
will be useful to tease these out, for we shall then be able to discern the
method of the author of Acts in his attempt to disguise the gulf that
existed between the Petrine Jesus movement and the Pauline Christian
Church, and to represent Peter as moving towards a Pauline position.
The story implies the asking of three questions, which are in fact
distinct, though the story does not keep them distinct. They are:
1 Should Gentiles be admitted to membership of the Jesus move-
ment, even without prior conversion to Judaism?
2 Should Jewish followers of Jesus enter into social! relations with
Gentiles, by visiting their homes and sitting at table with them?
3 Should Jesus’ followers adhere to the Jewish dietary laws, or
should they eat all foods indiscriminately?
The passage as a whole is evidently about the question of whether
Gentiles should be admitted to Jesus’ movement without prior
conversion to Judaism, the matter being decided by the fact that the
Holy Spirit fell upon Gentiles in an unconverted state. So far, the
conclusion would be: Gentiles can be members of Jesus’ movement
without observing the special provisions of the Torah (e.g. abstaining

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from forbidden foods), but Jews who are members of Jesus’ movement
should continue to observe the Torah. Peter’s dream, on the face of it,
does not have the message, “The distinction between clean and unclean
foods is hereby abolished for Jews,’ for, as Peter later interprets the
dream, it was only symbolically about clean and unclean foods, and was
really about clean and unclean people, signifying that this was the
distinction that was to be abolished. Yet the message of the story is not
as clear as this. There is a confused intention in the story that Peter’s
dream is to be understood on both a symbolic level and a literal level,
though this is not stated explicitly. For the picture of Peter, in the
dream, refusing in horror to kill and eat unclean animals, but being told
by a heavenly voice to do so, for ‘it is not for you to call profane what
God counts clean’, reaches beyond the symbolic level at which it is
interpreted, ‘... God has shown me clearly that I must not call any
man profane or unclean’ (verse 28). It is an attack on the deep-seated
Jewish concept of holiness; even though this is a dream, Peter’s Jewish
sanctities are being threatened, and the thought is being planted that,
‘even though the dream refers symbolically to clean and unclean
people, can the literal distinction between clean and unclean foods
survive either?’
Thus the method of the story is to say explicitly that Peter was forced
to the conclusion that Gentiles should be admitted to the Jesus
movement, but to hint at something much more radical: that the whole
distinction between Jews and Gentiles was to be broken down, for the
special provisions of the Torah, marking out the Jews as a ‘kingdom of
priests’ with a distinctive code of holiness to observe, were to be
abolished. Peter has not yet reached this stage of understanding, except
perhaps unconsciously. He continues to observe the holiness code of
clean and unclean foods, even after his dream, which he understands to
refer only to the question of the admission of Gentiles. Yet his
adherence to the holiness code is now shaken, for has he not heard a
voice from heaven saying, ‘It is not for you to call profane what God
counts clean’, in reference to ‘creatures of every kind, whatever walks
or crawls or flies’? The story thus represents a half-way stage: Peter is
pictured as coming part of the way towards the Pauline position about
the Gentiles, but is still only obscurely understanding the full Pauline
position, that the distinction between Jews and Gentiles no longer
exists, and that there is no longer any obligation even on Jews to
observe the Torah. This situation is conveyed by the story in a manner
which may be regarded as employing ambiguity artistically though the
element of non sequitur somewhat detracts from the artistic effect.

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Peter’s half-way position, as portrayed in this story in Acts, is thus

rather similar to his equivocal stance in an earlier story found in Paul’s
letter to the Galatians:
But when Cephas [i.e. Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face,
because he was clearly in the wrong. For until certain persons came from
James he was taking his meals with gentile Christians; but when they came
he drew back and began to hold aloof, because he was afraid of the
advocates of circumcision. The other Jewish Christians showed the same
lack of principle; even Barnabas was carried away and played false like the
rest. But when I saw that their conduct did not square with the truth of the
Gospel, I said to Cephas, before the whole congregation, ‘If you, a Jew born
and bred, live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew, how can you insist that
Gentiles must live like Jews?’ (Galatians 2: 11-14)
Paul’s story about Peter (here given his Aramaic name of ‘Cephas’,
which, like the Greek name ‘Peter’, means ‘Rock’, being the title given
to Simon by Jesus) is, however, much more hostile to Peter than the
story in Acts. Paul describes Peter as vacillating in his attitude to
Gentile Christians, at first consenting to eat with them, but later, when
emissaries from James arrived in Antioch, withdrawing from these
contacts out of fear of Jewish Christian reactions. In Acts, however,
Peter is not described as vacillating, nor is he criticized in any way:
though he is reluctant and doubtful at first, his dream convinces him
that he should have social relations with Gentiles, and also that they
should be admitted to Christianity without prior conversion to
Judaism. He maintains this view despite questioning and criticism
from the Apostles and members of the Jerusalem movement.
It seems, indeed, that the story of Peter’s dream in Acts is simply a
reworked version of Paul’s story in Galatians. Though the scene has
been shifted from Antioch to Caesarea, the same themes are present:
admission of Gentiles to Christianity without prior conversion to
Judaism, entering into social and eating relationships with Gentiles,
facing criticism from members of the ‘Jerusalem Church’. No doubt,
there was also available to the author of Acts some story about the
conversion to Christianity of a Roman centurion called Cornelius; but
on to this story he has grafted the subject-matter of the passage in
Paul’s letter, thus removing Paul himself from the scene of the story.
The function of this rearrangement is to remove the sharp conflict
between Paul and the ‘Jerusalem Church’ that appears so plainly in
Paul’s own account. Instead ofa ‘Jerusalem Church’ at one extreme
and Paul at another, with Peter uneasily shifting between the two, we
have a picture of the whole ‘Jerusalem Church’, guided by Peter

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(himself under divine guidance), moving steadily in the direction of a

Pauline standpoint. Thus the general aim of the book of Acts, which is
to give a picture ofessential unity in the early Church, and hide the fact
that there was deep conflict between Paul and the ‘Jerusalem Church’
under the leadership of James and Peter, is achieved. By the time that
the confrontation occurs in Jerusalem (to be discussed in the next
chapter), the sting of opposition to Paul by the Jerusalem leaders has
already been drawn, and they can be portrayed as having no great or
irreconcilable points of conflict with him.
Of course, the question remains: why was it necessary for Peter to
have a special vision to tell him something that, according to the
Gospels, he had already been taught by Jesus? Why does Peter say,
with such unthinking conviction that he even contradicts a voice from
God in saying it, ‘No, Lord, no: I have never eaten anything profane
and unclean,’ thus proclaiming his adherence to the Torah, when Jesus
is supposed to have abrogated the Torah? Peter, apparently, has never
heard of the abrogation of the Torah, so that now, several years after
the death of Jesus, he has to be slowly and painfully educated into
abandoning his unquestioning loyalty to it. The answer given in the
Gospels is that Peter and the other Apostles were thick-witted, and this
solution is continued in the story in Acts now under discussion. To be
quite so thick-witted, however, is incredible; and the solution, on the
level of history, rather than pro-Pauline propaganda, is that Jesus
never did abrogate the Torah. The adherence of the leaders of the so-
called ‘Jerusalem Church’ to Judaism proves that Jesus was never a
rebel against Judaism. The Pauline Church, however, was not content
to base its rejection of the Torah on Paul alone, for this would have
meant the abandonment of the authority associated with the presti-
gious ‘Jerusalem Church’, and would have left a suspicious gap
between Jesus and Paul. This would have made it clear that the
abrogation of the Torah derived solely from Paul’s contacts with the
post-Resurrection Jesus, not from any tradition derived from the
historical Jesus. A gradual process of enlightenment is therefore
ascribed to the leaders of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, James and Peter, by
which their obtuseness is slowly dispelled, and they reach at last the
realization that Jesus, during his lifetime, was telling them something
that they quite failed to comprehend at the time.
We may now ask the question, so far postponed: what, actually, was
the teaching of Judaism about social relationships with Gentiles and
about eating with them? This will lead to the further question, were
there any special difficulties, as regards relationships with Gentiles, in

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the position of a Messianic movement such as that of Jesus’ move-

ment?
As far as eating with Gentiles was concerned, there were three
separate areas of difficulty for observant Jews:
1 Certain foods (more precisely, certain forms of meat and fish) were
forbidden to Jews by the Bible (which, however, does not forbid these
foods to non-Jews).
2 It was forbidden to Jews to eat any food from which an offering or
libation had been made to an idol; at pagan meals, such offerings were
usually made.
3 At certain times, it was necessary for an observant
Jew to be ina state
of ritual purity, and this was possible only if he shared his meal with
others observing ritual purity.
We note that, in the case of Cornelius, point two is irrelevant, since
he was not a pagan (i.e. a worshipper of the Roman gods), but a ‘“God-
fearer’ (Acts 10: 2). This means that he was a monotheist, who
acknowledged the One God worshipped by the Jews, but had decided
not to become a full Jew by circumcision and commitment to the
Torah. Such ‘God-fearers’ are mentioned frequently in the New
Testament,’ which gives valuable testimony to the existence of this
class, which would otherwise be known only from later rabbinical
literature, though it is most probable that the ‘God-fearers’ mentioned
in the biblical book of Psalms are people of this category. The ‘God-
fearers’ (who will be important in the argument of the next chapter)
were regarded with respect by the Jews, as is shown by the passage in
Acts which says that Cornelius was acknowledged as a good and God-
fearing man by the whole Jewish nation (Acts ro: 22). There would
certainly be no difficulty about sharing a meal with such a person on
grounds of idolatrous offerings made from his food, since the ‘God-
fearers’ were not regarded as idolaters, but as having a pure and valid
form of religion which was acceptable to God. The ‘God-fearers’ were
regarded, too, as having their own covenant with God, just as valid in
its way as the Torah: namely, the covenant made with Noah (Genesis
g), which, in Pharisee exegesis, comprised a kind of Torah for the
Gentiles, and was called the Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah (Noah
being regarded as the patriarchal ancestor of the Gentiles, just as
Abraham was the patriarchal ancestor of the Jews).
Nor would there be any necessary difficulty about sharing a meal
with Cornelius on the grounds stated in point three, that of ritual
purity, for this was not required of Jews except in special circum-
stances, i.e. when about to eat holy food (e.g. the Passover sacrifice), or

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when about to enter the Temple precincts. Even if ritual impurity were
incurred, this posed no great difficulty, since it could be removed by a
simple ablution in the ritual bath. It is important to realize firstly that
ritual impurity was not required of even the most observant Jew at all
times; and secondly that there was no sinfulness in being ritually
unclean — this was just a state that everyone was in most ofthe time; the
only sinfulness lay in entering holy areas or eating holy food before
washing off the ritual impurity. The capacity of Cornelius, a Gentile, to
impart ritual impurity was no greater than that of any ordinary Jew in
the normal state of impurity which Jews were usually in. (Remember,
too, that it was sometimes a duty for a Jew to enter a state of ritual
impurity, e.g. when attending a funeral.) There were some Jews
(known as haverim) who dedicated themselves to a higher state of ritual
purity than was normally required (probably in order to help with the ~
separation of the terumah or holy tithe on behalf of the priests®), but even
these Jews did not have to be in a state of ritual purity at all times
(which was impossible).? The haverim did, however, have meals
together in ritual purity throughout the duration of their vows, and
only if Peter was a haver would he have had to be concerned about ritual
purity at mealtimes. Thus the statement attributed to Peter that ‘a Jew
is forbidden by his religion to visit or associate with a man of another
race’ is not historically correct. How, indeed, could the ‘whole Jewish
nation’ have expressed their respect to Cornelius, or responded to the
fact that ‘he gave generously to help the Jewish people’ (verse 2), if they
all treated him like a leper? In historical fact, there was great social
intercourse between Jews and non-Jews, as is shown by the fact of
widespread proselytization, commented on by many ancient authors
and attested in the Gospels. The insertion of this speech into Peter’s
mouth is thus a piece of Pauline Christian propaganda, intended to
emphasize the contrast between the universality of Pauline Christian-
ity and the alleged particularism of the Jews.
The only possible impediment to Peter’s sharing a meal with
Cornelius would have been on the grounds stated in point one, the
question of forbidden foods, such as pork or certain kinds of fish, which
Cornelius might have had on his table, and Peter would have been
forbidden by the Torah to eat. But Cornelius, being a ‘God-fearer’,
would have been well aware of this, and would have had the courtesy
not to have had such foods on his table if he had a Jewish guest. The
forbidden foods all belonged to the categories of meat and fish; a
vegetarian meal would therefore have been unobjectionable to Peter
or any other observant Jew. The biblical book of Daniel (written during

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the Hellenistic period) shows that this solution to social intercourse

between Jew and Gentile was regularly applied (see Daniel chapter 1).
On the other hand, if the Jew was the host and the Gentile the guest,
there were no difficulties at all.
We now turn to the question of whether there were any special
difficulties in the position of aMessianic movement, such as the Jesus
movement, in relation to Gentiles.
On the one hand, the Messiah, in the pre-Pauline Jesus movement,
was the King of the Jews and therefore not directly relevant to Gentiles.
The Messiah was the human descendant of King David, who would
restore the Jewish monarchy and Jewish national independence. He
would not reign over the whole world, for each nation would retain its
own independence, with its own king or ruling senate, or whatever
system of government it preferred. Jewish Messianism was not the hope
of a Jewish world empire.
On the other hand, indirectly, the Messiah was relevant to Gentiles,
for the coming of the Messiah would mean the end ofmilitary empires
all over the world and particularly of the Roman Empire. Though the
Messiah would not be a world emperor, he would be the leader of a
priest nation, which, in the Messianic age, would come into its own as
the spiritual guide of the whole world: the doctrines of monotheism,
peace and love of neighbour which it had pioneered would be
accepted by all nations, and it would be given special honour as the
nation which had fought through the centuries for these ideals.
Many Gentiles had been attracted to Judaism just because of its
everyday doctrines, without reference to its Messianic aspect, and had
therefore become attached to Judaism, either by becoming full Jews or
by becoming ‘God-fearers’. But a special Jewish movement with a
strong Messianic aspect, promising the near approach ofthe Messianic
age — an age of peace when the swords would be beaten into
ploughshares — would have a particular missionary appeal to Gentiles
weary of the politics of the sword.
The question now arose whether it was possible for a Gentile to share
in devotion to the awaited resurrected Messiah without becoming a full
Jew. This was a puzzling question for the Jerusalem Jesus movement
because the problem was new. Other Messiah figures had made no
appeal beyond the Jewish confines, because their movements had
fizzled out together with their political failure; once the Messiah figure
had been crushed by the Romans, the hopes of his followers had died
with him. The Jesus movement was unique because ofits doctrine of
resurrection, by which its hopes were kept alive even after the

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crucifixion of Jesus. The Nazarene movement, continuing in existence,

began to attract the attention of Gentiles, who were specially disposed
to become converted to Judaism just because Judaism now offered a
Messiah near at hand.
At first, it seemed obvious that any Gentile particularly attracted by
Jesus would have to become a full Jew, i.e. become circumcised,
commit himself to the Torah, and join the Jewish nation, for if not,
when Jesus returned to Earth as King of the Jews, no Gentile would
belong to his nation or be his subject. Even those Gentiles who had
become ‘God-fearers’ would not belong to the nation of the Messiah,
but still belong to their own nation, revering the Messiah from a
distance. Moreover, it was thought, there was some urgency in the
matter; for it was a Pharisaic doctrine that full converts to Judaism
would not be accepted any more after the advent of the Messiah (since
it would then be to everybody’s advantage to become a Jew, and sincere
conversion would be impossible).'° Consequently, any Gentile who
wished to be part of the inner Messianic circle after the advent of the
Messiah should become a full Jew, and not be content with the status of
a ‘God-fearer’.
However, this produced the anomalous situation that, whereas the
average Pharisaic synagogue contained its nucleus of full Jews and its
outer circle of ‘God-fearers’, the Nazarene synagogues of Jesus’
followers contained only full Jews, whether born or converted. There
was thus some pressure towards accepting ‘God-fearers’ as members of
the Jesus movement, so that the pattern of Nazarene missionary
activity should come in line with that of Judaism in general, even
though the logic of Messianism seemed to demand the acceptance of
full converts only into the Nazarene movement, since the King of the
Jews could not be a king over other nations too. As members of a
Messianic movement, the Nazarenes were interested in adding to the
subjects of King Jesus; but as Jews, they were interested, like other
Jews, in adding to the subjects of God, whether in the form of Torah-
observing Jews or Gentile ‘God-fearers’.
The ‘God-fearers’ thus constituted a problem for the Nazarenes, and
the story of Cornelius shows that the ‘Jerusalem Church’ was divided
on the question. Peter was criticized by Paul for hisalleged vacillation
in this matter, but, of course, Paul had quite a different starting-point
from Peter in weighing the question, for Paul was convinced, by this
time, that the Torah had been abolished by the divine Jesus, and that
therefore the distinction between Jews and Gentiles had been
abolished. Peter had quite different considerations in mind: he was

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concerned that it might not be doing a kindness to Gentile ‘God-fearers’

to admit them to the Nazarene movement, when on the advent of King
Jesus they would have to be treated as foreigners and sent back to their
own kingdoms, or, at best, be regarded as resident aliens.’' Surely it
would be better to encourage them to become full Jews and so have a
full share in the Messianic kingdom? Yet, on the other hand, the right of
a Gentile to seek his salvation under the Noahide dispensation had to
be respected.
The above discussion shows that the Nazarene movement had
special problems not because it was a new religion, which it was not,
but because it was a monarchical, Messianic, political movement within
Judaism. This does not mean that it was a political party in the modern
sense, for its aims were always primarily religious; but its religious aims
were couched in political terms, in a way characteristic of Judaism
generally. Just as political liberation had been the theme of Judaism
from its inception in the exodus from Egypt, so the Nazarene movement
made the religious future of the Jews and of the world depend on
liberation from the Roman Empire.
Pauline Christianity, as expressed in the New Testament, in
depoliticizing Jesus, also depoliticized the ‘Jerusalem Church’,
representing it as an other-worldly religious sect, looking forward to a
saviour of souls, not of bodies or of polities. An incidental result was
that the various political persecutions suffered by the Nazarenes were
turned into religious martyrdoms. Thus the killing of James, the son of
Zebedee, by King Herod Agrippa’? and the killing of his namesake,
James, the brother of Jesus,'* by the High Priest Ananus in ap 62, are
represented as martyrdoms for the transcendent Pauline Christ, when
they were in fact casualties in the resistance against Roman occupation
and its minions, the Jewish quislings. Just as Jesus himself was falsely
represented as a victim of Judaism through the depoliticization of his
life work, so the tragedies among his followers in the Nazarene
movement were removed from the account of Roman oppression and
laid at the door of Judaism, in a myth of Jewish persecution of the
Nazarenes, who were in fact not at odds with their co-religionists but
were loyal both to the Torah and to the Jewish nation.

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 CHAPTER 13

AE OP LLL

We have seen that Christianity, as a new religion distinct from

Judaism, with a doctrine of salvation through the divine sacrifice of
Jesus Christ and with new sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, did
not arise through the ‘Jerusalem Church’, which indeed was not a
‘Church’ at all, but a monarchical movement within Judaism, with a
belief in the miraculous resurrection of a human Jesus. The founder of
Christianity as a separate religion was Paul, who first deified Jesus and
claimed revelations from this new deity as the basis of the doctrines of
his new religion. We must now enquire about the steps by which the
split took place between Paul and the Jerusalem Nazarenes to whom,
for a period, he was uneasily attached.
As we have seen, the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the
conflict between Paul and the leaders of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, James
and Peter. Peter and Paul, in later Christian tradition, became twin
saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter
opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have
been repudiated with horror. The work of the author of Acts was well
done; he rescued Christianity from the imputation of being the
individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree,
as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called ‘Jerusalem Church’,
conceived as continuous in spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of
Rome. Yet, for all his efforts, the truth of the matter is not hard to
recover, if we examine the New Testament evidence with an eye to tell-
tale inconsistencies and confusions, rather than with the determination
to gloss over and harmonize all difficulties in the interests of an
orthodox interpretation.
The first hint of dissension in Acts is at the beginning of chapter 15:
Now certain persons who had come down from Judaea began to teach the
brotherhood that those who were not circumcised in accordance with

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Mosaic practice could not be saved. That brought them into fierce
dissension and controversy with Paul and Barnabas. And so it was arranged
that these two and some others from Antioch should go up to Jerusalem to
see the apostles and elders about this question.

Paul and Barnabas then travel to Jerusalem, where they are

welcomed by ‘the church and the apostles and elders’. But again, there
is criticism: ‘Then some of the Pharisaic party who had become
believers came forward and said, ‘“‘They [i.e. the Gentile converts]
must be circumcised and told to keep the Law of Moses.” ’ Then follows
an account of the meeting held to discuss this matter: whether Gentile
converts to Jesus’ movement should become full converts to Judaism. A
long debate takes place, but finally Peter makes a speech, urging his own
experience (with Cornelius), and arguing that conversiontoJudaism is
not necessary: ‘He [God] made no difference between them and us: for he
purified their hearts by faith. Then why do you now provoke God by
laying on the shoulders of these converts a yoke which neither we nor our
fathers were able to bear? No, we believe that it is by the grace of the Lord
Jesus that we are saved, and so are they.’
The final word is given by James, as leader of the Nazarene
movement:
My judgment therefore is that we should impose no irksome restrictions on
those of the Gentiles who are turning to God, but instruct them by letter to
abstain from things polluted by contact with idols, from fornication, from
anything that has been strangled, and from blood. Moses, after all, has
never lacked spokesmen in every town for generations past; he is read in the
synagogues sabbath by sabbath.

The above account contains many confusions, and has been coloured
by later Pauline Christian interpretation, but it is quite possible to work
out from it what actually happened at this important conference.
The main clue is the list of commandments drawn up by James as the
basis of conduct for Gentile adherents to the Jesus movement. For this
list bears a strong resemblance to the list of Laws of the Sons of Noah
drawn up by the Pharisee rabbis as the basis of conduct for Gentiles
who wished to attach themselves to Judaism without becoming full
Jews. With a little exegesis, the two lists can be shown to be even more
similar than they appear at first sight.
To abstain from things polluted by idols. This does not refer to ritual
purity, for this was never regarded as a concern of non-Jews. The term
‘pollution’ here is thus not meant in any technical sense, but only in its
general metaphorical sense, as referring to the abomination of idol-

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worship. The meaning is thus that the Gentile worshippers were to

refrain from eating anything that had been involved in the worship of
idols. This does not mean merely food brought as offerings in pagan
temples, for, as pointed out earlier, libations and offerings of food were
made to the gods even at ordinary meals, thus rendering the whole meal
a service to the gods. Thus, this commandment prevents the Gentile
worshippers from sharing meals with idol-worshippers, and is therefore
more far-reaching than it appears at first sight. The effect of this
commandment, then, is to prohibit for Gentile ‘“God-fearers’ everything
that is forbidden to full Jews under the heading of ‘partaking in
idolatry’.
To abstain from fornication. This refers to the grave sexual offences:
adultery, incest, sodomy and bestiality. Intercourse of unmarried
partners was not regarded as a grave offence against biblical law,
though frowned on,as inconsistent with a serious life.
To abstain from anything that has been strangled. This means that meat is
forbidden unless, the animal is killed in the Jewish way (shehitah), by
which the blood is drained away. The meat must be, as far as possible,
bloodless. This commandment has an obvious connection with the
command given to Noah (and therefore to all Gentiles), ‘. . . you must
not eat flesh with life, that is to say blood, in it’ (Genesis 9: 4). This does
not mean, however, that the other Jewish dietary laws are to apply to
Gentile ‘God-fearers’. They may eat the meat ofall animals, since these
were permitted to the descendants of Noah (‘... every living and
crawling thing shall provide food for you’ Genesis 9: 3), but must
abstain from the blood of all animals.
To abstain from blood. This appears to be a repetition of the third
commandment, but a glance at the commandments given to Noah will
provide the true meaning. Immediately following the prohibition of
animals’ blood comes a prohibition of the bloodshed of one’s fellow
man: ‘He who sheds man’s blood shall have his blood shed by man’
(Genesis 9: 6). The meaning here, then, contrary to the commentary
usually given, is a prohibition of bloodshed or murder.
The four commandments given to the ‘God-fearers’ are thus basic
moral imperatives. Many commentators have tried to explain them
differently, as mere dietary laws, intended to facilitate social inter-
course and the sharing of meals between Jewish and Gentile adherents
to Christianity. This interpretation cannot explain the second
commandment at all, since no ingenuity can turn this into a dietary
law, and it also depends on inadequate understanding of the other three
commandments. In any case, these commandments do not facilitate the

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sharing of meals by Jewish and Gentile Christians, for they still permit
the eating of pork and other ‘unclean’ meats by the Gentiles, which
could not be shared by the Jews. We must therefore conclude that the
Jerusalem Council here laid down a basic moral code for Gentiles, and
we must consider what this implies about the intentions of the Council.
It is important to be clear that the drawing up of a basic moral code
for Gentiles was one of the preoccupations of the Pharisaic rabbis, and
the Jerusalem Council was by no means making a pioneering effort in
this regard. To draw up such a code did not in any way throw doubt on
the validity of the Torah as a code for Jews. It was a familiar concept in
the Pharisaic movement that the Torah was never intended for more
than a small minority of mankind: for those who were born Jews (who
were under an obligation to keep it from birth), and for those Gentiles
who elected to become full Jews and thus join the ‘kingdom of priests’
(who thus undertook full observance of the Torah for themselves and
their descendants). The majority of mankind, i.e. the ‘sons of Noah’,
were obliged to keep only the commandments which were given to
Noah after the Flood by God. There were differences of opinion among
the rabbis (as on so many other topics) about the exact details of these
Noahide laws, and about how to derive them by exegesis from the
relevant verses in Genesis; but they were agreed that these laws were
few in number, but that by keeping them Gentiles were accounted
righteous and were eligible to have ‘a share in the World to Come’.
The list of the Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah, as found in the
rabbinical sources, is as follows: prohibitions against idolatry, blasph-
emy, fornication, murder, robbery and eating limbs cut off from a live
animal; and, finally, an injunction to set up courts of law to administer
justice. Three of these are identical to laws included in the list drawn up
by the Jerusalem Council: idolatry, fornication and murder. The one
dietary law differs, however: the Jerusalem Council forbids ‘anything
that has been strangled’, while the rabbis substitute the prohibition of
a limb from a live animal’. This difference clearly arises from differing
interpretations of the verse, ‘You must not eat flesh with life, that is to
say, blood, in it’ (Genesis g: 4). This difference of interpretation is well
within the limits of rabbinical disagreement, and, though the
rabbinical writings which have come down to us do not preserve a
record of the interpretation given to the verse by James and the
Jerusalem Council, thisiLs an opinion that may well have been held by a
minority of the rabbis.' The difference does not militate against the
general explanation given here that we have to do with a version of the
Noahide laws, but, on the contrary, confirms this explanation, since the

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 THE SPLIT

difference is evidently an outcome of exegesis of the same biblical verse,

which forms part of the biblical passage which (together with God's
injunctions to Adam) is the basis of the Noahide laws.
This leaves three of the Seven Laws unmentioned in our passage of
Acts: the prohibitions against blasphemy and robbery, and the
injunction to set up courts of law. Actually, the manuscripts show
considerable divergence at this point: some omit ‘from fornication’,
some omit ‘from anything that has been strangled’, and some even add
*, . and to refrain from doing to others what they would not like done
to themselves’ (an interesting negative version of the Golden Rule,
taking the form used by Hillel, not the positive form ascribed to Jesus in
the Gospels). It is clear that there were different traditions about the list
of commandments and this is not surprising, since there are diver-
gencies in the various Talmudic lists too, and there was no unanimous
agreement about how to list the Noahide laws. The omission of the
injunction to set up courts of law is understandable, as this was
intended to apply to whole nations who became converted to mono-
theism, not to individual ‘God-fearers’ who attached themselves to
the synagogues. The omission of ‘blasphemy’ may be because it was
felt to be implied by the prohibition of idolatry; and similarly the
prohibition of ‘robbery’ may have been regarded as implied by the
prohibition against bloodshed; but, again, these may both have been
included in the original list and have dropped out through the
reluctance of Christian editors to admit that the list is, in fact, a version
of the Noahide laws. Indeed, we find throughout chapter 15 a strong
reluctance to interpret the commandments listed by James as Noahide
commandments, for to do so would be to admit that, when James issued
these commandments, he was in no way going beyond accepted Jewish
thought.
Thus, the speech ascribed to Peter in the above account of the debate
in Jerusalem goes far beyond the question of whether Gentile converts
should be required to adopt the whole ofthe Torah: it slips over into the
assertion that the Torah is not necessary for Jews either: ‘He made no
difference between them and us: for he purified their hearts by faith.
Then why do you now provoke God by laying on the shoulders of these
converts a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? No,
we believe that it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, and
so are they.’
This speech is full of Pauline concepts which were quite alien to the
Jerusalem community of Jesus’ followers, who, as Acts testifies
elsewhere, did not regard the Torah as a yoke too burdensome to bear,

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but on the contrary as a gift from God for which they were grateful.
Peter here has been given his usual role in Acts, in keeping with his
dream: he is represented as being the stepping-stone between the old
dispensation and the new.
James, on the other hand, is not given this treatment. Nowhere in
Acts is he represented as anything‘other than a loyal follower of the
Torah. In this passage under discussion, he does not respond to Peter’s
suggestions that the Torah should be regarded as altogether abrogated,
even for Jews. James’s final judgment assumes just the contrary; that
the Torah remains valid, but that Gentile converts to the community of
Jesus should not be required to become full converts to Judaism, but
only to the Noahide laws. His final remark is: ‘Moses, after all, has
never lacked spokesmen in every town for generations past; he is read in
the synagogues sabbath by sabbath.’ This remark has proved very
puzzling to Christian commentators, but its meaning is surely clear.
James is saying, ‘There is no need for us to worry about the survival of
Judaism. Its future is assured, for the Jewish people are loyal to the law
of Moses, whose words they constantly repeat in the synagogues.
Therefore, there is no need to look for recruits to Judaism, or to provide
reinforcements by insisting on full conversion to Judaism on the part of
Gentiles. Let them simply declare their adherence to monotheism by
adopting the Noahide code.’ James’s remark thus implies his own
unquestioning adherence to Judaism, and his confidence that Judaism
would continue.
There is therefore a tension in our passage between two opposing
interpretations of the debate in Jerusalem. One interpretation
(evidently that of the author of Acts) is that this debate marked the
breakdown of all distinctions between Jews and Gentiles in the
Christian movement. The other interpretation (which can be discerned
as the substratum of the discussion, and is thus the authentic and
original meaning of the incident) is that it was decided that the Jesus
movement should consist of two categories of people: Jews, practising
the whole Torah; and Gentiles, practising the Noahide laws only. This
decision was in one way quite in accordance with normal Judaism; but,
in another way, it was unprecedented. It was quite in accordance with
Judaism to make a distinction between two kinds of believers in
monotheism, Torah-practisers and Noahides. But it was unprecedent-
ed that both should be combined in one Messianic movement (see
page 137).
The two interpretations of the debate which we find so confusingly
intertwined in Acts reflect two interpretations that were felt at the time

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of the debate itself, though not openly in both cases. For Paul, who
travelled to Jerusalem to be present in the debate, came away from it
with his own purposes confirmed. As he understood the matter, the
conference had given him carte blanche to work in the Gentile field
without having to impose the demands of the Torah on his converts.
This was a great step forward for Paul, even though he well understood
that the motives of James in assenting to this policy were quite different
from his own. In Paul’s mind, the whole distinction between Jews and
Gentiles had ceased to be valid, for the revelation at Damascus had
convinced him that the spiritual dilemma of mankind could be solved
not by Torah or any other kind of moral code, but only through ‘faith’,
i.e. through identification with the cosmic sacrifice of Jesus, conceived
as a divine figure. Paul, it appears, did not voice this view at the
conference itself. He confined himself to giving an account of his
successes in winning over Gentiles to adherence to Jesus. It was the
extent of these successes that finally convinced even James that Gentile
adherents would have to be given official standing in the movement,
rather than being regarded as having merely the status of ‘God-fearers’
in the periphery of the synagogues. Paul, then, employed cautious
tactics at this important conference. He knew that a full disclosure of
his position would have aroused strong opposition from James (and
Peter, whose views, historically speaking, were the same as those of
James), so he went along with the main lines which the discussion
followed. He went away with the permission he wanted, to admit
Gentile converts without full conversion, and kept his understanding of
this permission to himself.
Indeed, the mere fact that Paul obeyed the summons to come to
Jerusalem and face the charges made against him shows that at this
time he was not revealing openly his full doctrines. For, in reality, Paul
did not accept, either in his private thoughts or in his teaching to his
Gentile converts, that he was under the authority of the Jerusalem
community led by James. On the contrary, he regarded his own
authority as higher than theirs, since his doctrines came direct from the
risen Christ, while theirs came only from the earthly Jesus. Yet he came
meekly to Jerusalem when summoned, and submitted himself to the
decision of James, for he did not consider the time-ripe for a complete
break with Jewish Christianity.
What happened next can be gathered from an interesting account
given by Paul in the second chapter of Galatians. First, he presents his
own record of the Jerusalem Council discussed above; and then he
describes an incident not mentioned in Acts at all, when Peter, some

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time after the Jerusalem Council, visited Antioch, and serious friction
occurred between Paul and Peter. In his version of the Jerusalem
Council, Paul (writing for Gentile converts who accepted his valuation
of himself as an Apostle superior in inspiration to the Jerusalem
leaders) gives himself a much more lofty role than appears from the
account in Acts. Instead of being summoned to Jerusalem to answer
charges against him, Paul represents himself as having travelled to
Jerusalem ‘because it had been revealed by God that I should do so’.
Instead of concealing his new doctrines and confining himself to the
question of whether converts to belief in Jesus’ Messiahship should be
made into full Jews or left in ‘God-fearer’ status, Paul represents
himself as having fully revealed his new doctrines to the Jerusalem
leaders, though only in private. Instead of a tribunal, in which the final
decision is delivered by James in his capacity as head of Jesus’
movement, Paul gives the impression of a colloquy between leaders, in
which he was treated as of equal status with James. The conclusion of
this colloquy is expressed as follows:
But as the men of high reputation (not that their importance matters to me:
God does not recognize these personal distinctions) — these men of repute, I
say, did not prolong the consultation, but on the contrary acknowledged
that I had been entrusted with the Gospel for Gentiles as surely as Peter had
been entrusted with the Gospel for Jews. For God whose action made Peter
an apostle to the Jews, also made me an apostle to the Gentiles.
Recognizing then the favour thus bestowed upon me, those reputed
pillars of our society, James, Cephas [Peter] and John, accepted Barnabas
and myself as partners, and shook hands upon it, agreeing that we should go
to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews. All that they asked was that we
should keep their poor in mind, which was the very thing I made it my
business to do. (Galatians 2: 6-10)
This conclusion differs so remarkably from the conclusion recorded
in Acts that some scholars have doubted whether it refers to the same
conference, while others have adopted the explanation that Paul’s
account deals with private discussions which took place behind the
scenes at the Jerusalem Council, while Acts deals only with the public
discussion. Such explanations, however, are unnecessary. Paul’s letter
to the Galatians was written at a time when his break with the
Jerusalem leaders was almost complete. He refers to these leaders with
hardly veiled contempt. He still needs to claim their sanction for his
own role, however, so he feels free to represent them as having
acknowledged his own equal status with them and as having appointed
him as ‘Apostle to the Gentiles’; though, in fact, as the account in Acts

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makes clear and as can be gathered from other sources, the Jerusalem
leaders by no means gave up their proselytizing activities among the
Gentiles, nor did they regard themselves as merely ‘apostles to the
Jews’. The Jerusalem Council did not hand over the whole Gentile
missionary field to Paul. Nor did it ban the conversion of Gentiles to full
Judaism; it merely decided that such conversion was not a necessity.
Now comes Paul’s account of subsequent events:
But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face,
because he was clearly in the wrong. For until certain persons came from
James he was taking his meals with gentile Christians; but when they came
he drew back and began to hold aloof, because he was afraid of the
advocates of circumcision. The other Jewish Christians showed the same
lack of principle; even Barnabas was carried away and played false like the
rest. But when I saw that their conduct did not square with the truth of the
Gospel, I said to Cephas, before the whole congregation, ‘If you, a Jew born
and bred, live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew, how can you insist that
Gentiles must live like Jews?’ (Galatians 2: 11-14)
This passage, despite a certain incoherence, is very revealing. (One
incoherence, however, arises from the New English Bible translation,
‘because he was afraid of the advocates of circumcision’. This should
read, as in the Revised Version, ‘because he was afraid of those of the
circumcision’. No one was ‘advocating’, at this stage, that all converts
to belief in Jesus’ Messiahship should be circumcised, i.e. adopt full
Judaism. The Jerusalem Council had enacted that this was not a
necessity. The Greek simply says ‘those of the circumcision’, i.e. the
Jewish Christians.)
This passage is revealing because it shows that there was much
stronger conflict between Paul and the Jewish followers of Jesus than is
ever allowed to appear in Acts. Nowhere in Acts is there any criticism of
Peter or any suggestion that Paul and Peter did not see eye to eye on all
matters. On the contrary, Peter is represented as the link man between
Paul and the Jerusalem community, struggling to bring them round to
the more enlightened views of Paul. True, Peter is represented in Acts
as having to overcome psychological difficulties in performing this
transition role: something of the stupidity syndrome attached to the
Twelve still clings to him. But the open criticism of Peter by Paul (not
followed up by any suggestion of a change of heart by Peter as a result)
found in this passage in Galatians is quite alien to the portrayal of Peter
in Acts. Galatians must be regarded here as much more historically
reliable, not only because it is earlier, but because it reveals a state of
affairs that the later Church wished to conceal; it is a passage that goes

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against the grain. (On the other hand, the previous passage in the
chapter in Galatians, in which Paul gives his account of the Jerusalem
Council, is less historically reliable than the account in Acts, since Paul
has such a strong motive to aggrandize his role.)
The actual point of conflict between Paul and Peter, however, is not
quite so clear as the fact that serious conflict took place, and that this
conflict involved not only Peter but also James (for the emissaries to
whom Peter deferred are described unequivocally as ‘from James’,
unlike the previous critics of Paul, whose criticisms led to the Jerusalem
Council, Acts 15: 1). It seems, at first, that the issue is whether Jewish
followers of Jesus should take their meals together with Gentile
followers of Jesus; but Paul’s last remark seems to shift the issue to the
question of whether Gentile followers should observe the Jewish dietary
laws. To clarify this matter, the following points should be borne in
mind:
By the decision of the Jerusalem Council, Gentile followers of Jesus
were not obliged to keep the Jewish dietary laws, but only to refrain from
the meat of ‘strangled animals’. This means that they were allowed to
eat the meat of animals forbidden to Jews, e.g. pig and rabbit, but were
still obliged to kill the animals by the Jewish method, by which the
blood was drained away.
This means that Jewish followers of Jesus would still not be able to
share the food eaten by Gentile followers if this food consisted of meat
forbidden to Jews but permitted to Gentile ‘God-fearers’.
On the other hand, this did not mean that Jewish followers of Jesus
were necessarily forbidden to share the same table as Gentile followers.
Provided that the food on the table was such as could be eaten by Jews
and Gentiles alike (e.g. vegetarian food, or meat from animals
permitted to Jews, or fish of the varieties permitted to Jews), there was
no reason why Jews and Gentiles should not share the same table.
As far as ‘food sacrificed to idols’ was concerned, this was forbidden
both to Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus, so did not constitute any
difficulty in fellowship at table.
Even if food forbidden to Jews was served to Gentiles at the table, while
permitted food was served at the same table to Jews, this would not
infringe any essential law, though pious Jews might look askance at this
arrangement, feeling that there might be some danger of getting
permitted food mixed up with forbidden food.

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In view of the above points, one may ask what exactly Peter was
doing when he shared meals with Gentile followers of Jesus. Comment-
ators have assumed that he was actually sharing forbidden foods, such
as pig, with the Gentile believers. This would mean that he had, by this
time, adopted Paul’s view that the Torah was obsolete, having been
supplanted by the salvation doctrine of identification with the sacrifice
of Jesus and his resurrection. On this view, Peter, having made this
radical transition from observant Pharisee to pork-eating Christian,
suddenly had cold feet when some emissaries from James arrived and
pusillanimously removed himself from the table of the Gentile converts
and started acting like an observant Jew again. Upon this, Paul
upbraided him, not for this vacillating behaviour, but for ‘insisting that
Gentiles must live like Jews’. Such an insistence had been renounced by
the Jerusalem Council, and had, in any case, never formed part of
Jewish doctrine, so it is extremely puzzling that this now should be
made the issue. The explanation to which commentators are forced is
that the Jerusalem elders, led by James, had changed their minds and
reversed the decision of the Jerusalem Council, and were now sending
emissaries to insist that, after all, Gentile believers in Jesus’ Messiah-
ship must undergo full conversion to Judaism.
This whole exegesis is confused and improbable. If Peter had crossed
the gulf from Torah observance to salvation religion, he would not have
slipped back into observance with such ease. In any case, the evidence
is that Peter never renounced adherence to the Torah. The probable
explanation of the incident is as follows. Peter arrived in Antioch
believing that Paul was adhering to the terms of the Jerusalem Council,
by which Gentile converts would refrain from food offered to idols and
from meat containing blood. In this belief, Peter had no hesitation in
sharing meals with Gentiles, who, he was confident, would not offer
him anything forbidden to a Jew and would themselves not eat
anything forbidden by reason of idolatry or blood. Then, however,
emissaries arrived from James who informed Peter that his confidence
was misplaced. Information had reached James that Paul was not
adhering to the Jerusalem decision, but was allowing Gentile converts
to eat everything without restriction, including food offered to idols (see
1 Corinthians 8, where Paul declares that this prohibition applies only
to the ‘weak’ people who cannot distinguish the food from its idolatrous
uses). For Paul no longer adhered to the distinction between the Torah
and the Laws of the Sons of Noah, because he regarded all law as
outmoded and as irrelevant to salvation.
On receiving this information from James, Peter withdrew from

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fellowship at table with Paul’s Gentile converts, since he no longer

trusted them to keep the Noahide dietary laws or to respect his own
adherence to the Torah dietary laws — they might well put before him
food which they knew was forbidden to an observant Jew. This
withdrawal of Peter from fellowship at table with Paul’s Gentile
converts was no weak vacillation but a climactic act of withdrawal from
Paul himself, and a decisive break between the Pauline movement and
the Jerusalem community. It marked the rejection by Peter of Paul’s
new doctrines, which demolished the whole distinction between Jews
and Gentiles within the movement; or rather (since there was never any
question of Peter adopting such a doctrine) it marked the recognition
by Peter that Paul had indeed adopted such a doctrine, which put him
beyond the pale of Judaism and made it impossible for any follower of
James to associate with him or his converts.
Paul’s alleged reproof of Peter was thus never delivered to Peter in
person, but was an afterthought inserted by Paul in his account of the
break. What this afterthought amounts to is this: ‘Peter, when you
consented to share a table with my Gentile converts, you were
accepting the abolition of the distinction between Gentiles and Jews.
Now, however, you are insisting on the old requirements by which
Gentiles must keep a law of their own, and if they want to achieve full
fellowship with the people of God, they must adopt the whole Torah.’
However, the inconsistency of which Paul is accusing Peter did not
really exist, for Peter, when he shared a table with the Gentiles, was
not conceding any point essential to Judaism, since he thought that
they were adhering to the Jerusalem resolution.
So far, the break between Paul and the Jerusalem leadership was
only on the personal level of a quarrel between Paul and Peter. Later
came the final and decisive break, in which Paul was officially
repudiated by the Jerusalem movement as a whole.
There is ample evidence in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, and also
in his two Epistles to the Corinthians, that in the years following his
quarrel with Peter, he had to face continual opposition from emissaries
of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, who were sent out by James and Peter to
counteract Paul’s teaching about the abrogation of the Torah.
Moreover, it appears that Paul had to defend himself frequently from
the charge of being without true authority in his teaching, since he had
no direct personal link with the historical Jesus, but relied only on
visions, which were of doubtful validity. However, this uneasy situation
did not yet lead to a complete schism. On the one hand, the Jerusalem
leaders, while deeply suspicious of Paul, were not yet sure that he was

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actually preaching against the Torah. Paul’s missionary activities were

almost entirely among Gentiles, who were not required to observe the
Torah. Consequently, his teaching to them could always be plausibly
represented by Paul, when enquiry was made from Jerusalem, as not
contravening any essential Jewish doctrine. He seems to have been
quite willing to use a considerable amount of deception in his relations
with Jerusalem, and to have done his best to reassure Jerusalem of his
loyalty to Judaism, while at the same time, as his Epistles show clearly,
teaching his new converts that the Torah was now entirely obsolete.
Paul himself proclaims his policy of adapting his tone to his audience,
and hiding his anti-Torah beliefs from those who were loyal to the
Torah:

To Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; as they are subject to the law of
Moses, I put myself under that law to win them, although I am not myself
subject to it. To win Gentiles, who are outside the Law, I made myself like
one of them, although I am not in truth outside God’s law, being under the
law of Christ. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. Indeed, I have
become everything in turn to men of every sort, so that in one way or another
I may save some. (1 Corinthians 9: 20-22)

This passage ostensibly describes only his policy in winning converts to

beliefin Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles: but if Paul could pretend to be
an adherent to the Torah when approaching Jewish prospective
converts, he could easily use the same deception when reporting his
doings to the central body of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem. In fact,
we have, in Acts, in an episode to be considered shortly, a vivid
description of Paul’s effort to convince the Jerusalem leaders of his
orthodoxy by the performance of an elaborate ritual act; this episode
shows how far Paul would go to disguise his true beliefs about the
Torah from the Jerusalem leaders.
It may be asked, on the other hand, why Paul went to such lengths to
avoid a break with the Jerusalem leadership. Why did he not simply
found a Church of his own, since his views differed so radically from
those of James and Peter? Paul, in his three great missionary journeys,
had founded many Gentile communities of Christians, and, if he had
broken his links with Jerusalem altogether, could have set up a Gentile
Christian Church under his own leadership; this, indeed, is what
happened in later years, after Paul’s death. But Paul, apparently, could
not envisage such a drastic step. The authority of Jerusalem still
remained paramount for him, just as the authority of the Old
Testament never lost its hold over him, compelling him to reinterpret it

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in weird, unpredictable ways, but never allowing him to cut himself

loose from it, in the way adopted by the more logical Paulinist of the
next century, Marcion. Through the Jerusalem leadership, Paul saw
himself as linked to the whole history of Israel, from Abraham onwards;
to detach himself would be to sink into the forlorn status of being a
Gentile again, without past or future. To transform Judaism was his
aim, not to abandon it. The masters of Pharisaism were to come to him
for instruction; and this could only happen if they occupied the same
arena.
Meanwhile, he was prepared to adopt devious tactics in order to
maintain the links between himself and the Jerusalem leadership. The
first crisis had been successfully surmounted by the decision of the
Jerusalem Council, by which Paul was given a free hand and was able
to keep his new doctrines to himself. A second crisis, however, now
arrived. Paul was summoned to Jerusalem once more to give an
account of himself. This time the charges were more serious and the
prospect of some ingenious compromise more unlikely. This might
have been the moment to refuse to come and thus precipitate a
complete break. Instead, Paul accepted the summons. He still hoped to
lull the suspicions felt against him by the Jerusalem leaders; and he also
felt that he had a strong means of appeasing them by bringing them a
substantial sum of money collected by him for the upkeep of the
Jerusalem community.
This culminating scene of Paul’s relations with the Jerusalem
Nazarenes is described in muted terms in chapter 21 of Acts. As in the
case of the Jerusalem Council (about five years before), the author of
Acts is much concerned to play down the conflict, so that it will not
appear that Paul was the true founder of Christianity rather than Jesus
and his immediate disciples. Yet even the author of Acts has difficulty
in disguising the bitter conflict of this scene:

So we reached Jerusalem, where the brotherhood welcomed us gladly.

Next day Paul paid a visit toJames; we were with him, and all the elders
attended. He greeted them, and then described in detail all that God had
done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they
gave praise to God. Then they said to Paul: ‘You see, brother, how many
thousands of converts we have among the Jews, all of them staunch
upholders of the Law. Now they have been given certain information about
you: it is said that you teach all the Jews in the gentile world to turn their
backs on Moses, telling them to give up circumcising their children and
following our way of life. What is the position, then? They are sure to hear
that you have arrived. You must therefore do as we tell you. We have four

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men here who are under a vow; take them with you and go through the ritual
of purification with them, paying their expenses, after which they may shave
their heads. Then everyone will know that there is nothing in the stories they
were told about you, but that you are a practising Jew and keep the Law
yourself. As for the gentile converts, we sent them our decision that they
must abstain from meat offered to idols, from blood, from anything that has
been strangled, and from fornication.’ So Paul took the four men, and next
day, after going through the ritual of purification with them, he went into
the Temple to give notice of the date when the period of purification would
end and the offering be made for each one of them. (Acts 21: 18-26)

It is clear that the author of Acts has much softened the tone of the
discussion here recorded between Paul and the elders of the Jerusalem
community. It is stated that he was greeted warmly on his arrival,
and congratulated on his achievements among the Gentiles. Then the
elders mention, as if incidentally, that, though the elders themselves
believe Paul to be a fully observant Jew, some thousands of their
followers are doubtful about this, and need to be reassured by an
elaborate demonstration of loyalty to the Torah. Otherwise, there will
be trouble of some unspecified kind (“They are sure to hear that you
have arrived’).
This is a most unlikely tone for the elders to adopt. If the reports of
Paul’s abandonment of the Torah were so insistent (and indeed they
were perfectly true), the elders themselves, who were no less ‘staunch
upholders of the Law’ than any of their flock, would have been
thoroughly concerned, especially as Peter (who, strangely enough, is
not mentioned specifically as present on this occasion) will have told
them about his own rift with Paul and the reasons for it. It is much more
likely that this incident was in the nature ofan official enquiry or even a
trial, and that Paul had been officially summoned to attend it in order
to answer, once and for all, the charges now being made against him on
all hands. If he failed to attend or failed to satisfy the elders having
attended, he would be formally ejected from the Nazarene movement.
It seems that, in the course of this enquiry, Paul refused to admit that he
had advocated the abandonment of the Torah in his teaching.
Consequentl y, and the other elders had decided to put him to the
James
test or rather to devise a procedure by which he would publicly
repudiate any teaching that he might have given against the continuing
validity of the Torah.* The news of this public repudiation by Paul of
his former views would quickly reach his converts, and thus strengthen
the hands of the emissaries from Jerusalem who were working to correct
Paul’s teaching. The elders were probably convinced that Paul had

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indecd spread an anti-Torah doctrine, but they hoped to counteract the

effect of this by an exhibition of repentance on Paul’s part.
Paul had thus failed to find any compromise formula to save his face,
as he did at the previous Jerusalem Council. He was forced to
capitulate and to agree to a public humiliation and retraction.
Commentators have strangely forborne to comment on this abject
behaviour of Paul’s. Since-he had proclaimed in his Epistles that the
Torah was dead, that circumcision was no more than a mutilation, and
that observance of the Torah was of no effect towards salvation, which
could only be obtained through the sacrifice of Jesus, one would have
thought that this was an excellent occasion to give witness to these
views, which were for him all important. Instead, he consented meekly
to an action that reinstated the Torah, and thus relegated Jesus to the
status of a Jewish Messiah figure with no aim of salvation, but only of
liberation — the freeing of the people of God from foreign domination so
that they could devote themselves more fully to the study and practice
of the Torah.
Paul must have been overawed by James on this occasion. Probably
(though this is not mentioned in the account in Acts), Peter too took a
prominent part in the enquiry, and the third leader, John (who receives
only passing mention in Acts), must have been a formidable character
as well. Though Paul could convince himself, when not in their
presence, that he was their equal or even superior, he could not sustain
this attitude to their faces. Some of the grandeur which must have
surrounded James can be felt even in the record of Acts, but Peter is
turned into an almost comic figure by the exigencies of tendenz, which
require the author of Acts to find the roots of Paulinism in the so-called
‘Jerusalem Church’, and therefore force Peter into the mould of a
groping transition figure, half in the old Jewish world and half in the
new world of Christianity. In reality, these men had the gravity and
presence of the great Pharisee teachers (such as Hillel and Gamaliel),
and the parvenu Paul could not withstand them in their own milieu; he
succumbed, and consented to what was in effect a recantation.
Quite apart from the awesomeness of the Jerusalem leaders,
however, there were strong factors compelling Paul to adopt un-
palatable emergency policies while in Jerusalem. He was surrounded
by enemies, some of whom threatened physical danger. To comply with
the demands of one set of enemies meant to offend another. All of Paul’s
considerable pliancy and powers of adaptability were called for in order
to escape the situation into which he had plunged by obeying the
summons to Jerusalem. Jn the next chapter we shall be examining and

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attempting to unravel the complicated manoeuvres which now ensued.

It will be a test of the formulations advanced in this book, explaining
the various stances of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, the High Priest and of
Paul himself, if light can be thrown on this most puzzling period in
Paul’s career.

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 CHAPTER 14

THE TRIAL OF PAUL

When Paul consented to make a public demonstration of loyalty to the

Torah in the Temple, he hoped that this would be the end of opposition
to him on the part of the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, who, like their leader,
James, were loyal adherents of the Torah. In the event, however, as the
story is told in Acts, he met with serious trouble from another quarter:
from ‘Jews from the province of Asia’, who recognized him while he was
in the Temple and raised a riot against him, from which he was lucky to
escape with his life. The incident is described as follows:
But when the seven days were nearly ended, the Asian Jews caught sight of
Paul in the temple, and they stirred up the whole crowd, and laid hands
upon him, shouting: ‘Come and help, Israelites! Here is the man who
teaches all men everywhere against the people, the Law, and this place;
moreover he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.’
For they had earlier seen Trophimus of Ephesus with him outside in the
city, and they thought that Paul had brought him into the temple. So the
whole city was roused, and a crowd gathered. They seized Paul and dragged
him out of the temple, and at once the doors were shut. While they tried to
kill him [or: were clamouring for his death] a report was made to the tribune
of the cohort: “The whole of Jerusalem is in an uproar.’ (Acts 21: 27-31)
Who were the ‘Jews from Asia’? Why were they so violently opposed
to Paul? If what Paul himself says about his preaching to Jews on his
missionary journeys is correct, they had no reason to believe him to be
an apostate from Judaism, for Paul’s method when approaching Jews is
described by him as: “To Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; as they
are subject to the Law of Moses, I put myself under that Law to win
them, although I am not myself subject to it’ (1 Corinthians 9: 20-22). It
was only to his Gentile converts that Paul revealed that he regarded the
Torah as obsolete; and he may have revealed this also to Jewish
converts to Christianity, when he considered that their progress in

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understanding had reached such a level that they would be receptive to

anti-Torah teaching. The news of his abandonment of the Torah was
thus confined to the Jesus movement itself, where it had caused such
anxiety that Jewish Christian emissaries had been sent out to combat
his teaching, and Paul himself had been summoned twice to Jerusalem
to answer charges before the supreme tribunal of the Nazarenes.
As far as Jews in general were concerned, the Jesus movement was a
resistance movement against the Romans, pious and extremist. They
did not know enough about the internal politics of this movement to
distinguish Paul from its other leading figures. Whenever they came
across Paul in his missionary travels, he seemed to be preaching pious
Judaism, combined with belief in Jesus as a Messiah figure. The
opposition which Paul met from Jews on his travels was not on the
grounds of heresy or apostasy, but on the political grounds that Paul,
like his fellow Nazarenes of Jerusalem, was stirring up trouble with the
Roman Empire and thus endangering their comfortable settlements in
the Jewish Diaspora. This is explicitly stated in relation to the Jews of
Thessalonica, who denounced Paul to the local magistrates in these
terms: ‘The men who have made trouble all over the world have now
come here; and Jason has harboured them. They all flout the
Emperor’s laws, and assert that there is a rival king, Jesus’ (Acts 17: 6-
7). Here we get a whiff of political reality for once. In other passages, to
be sure, the opposition of Diaspora Jews to Paul preaching against the
Jewish religion is expressed in doctrinal terms; but this is part of the
depoliticizing approach of the author of Acts, which he neglected to
apply in the case of the Jews of Thessalonica.
Paul’s main interest, in any case, was not in converting Jews, but in
converting Gentiles, in accordance with his self-description as the
‘apostle to the Gentiles’. It is in his Epistles to his Gentile converts,
which have been preserved in the New Testament, that he pours out his
real thoughts and expresses his view that salvation does not come from
observance of the Torah. These thoughts became known to the Jewish
adherents of Jesus in the natural course of events, but the Jews as a
whole would have no means of learning about them.
The strong probability, then, is that the ‘Asian Jews’ who dragged
Paul out of the Temple and denounced him to their fellow Jews as an
opponent of the Torah, Israel and the Temple were in fact Jewish
Christians who had been in conflict with Paul in his Asian missionary
activities, in Galatia, for example. (Asia means Asia Minor.) It was
against the possible violence of these Jewish Christians that James had
already given Paul a warning:

EO?
 THE MYTHMAKER

You see, brother, how many thousands of converts we have among the Jews,
all of them staunch upholders of the Law. Now they have been given certain
information about you: it is said that you teach all the Jews of the gentile
world to turn their backs on Moses, telling them to give up circumcising
their children and following our way of life. What is the position, then? They
are sure to hear that you have arrived. (Acts 21: 20-22)
In certain early manuscripts of the New Testament, the last portion of
this passage reads: ‘. . the multitude must needs come together: for
they will hear that thou art come’ (Revised Version rendering). This is
probably the correct reading, and it is much more menacing than the
reading adopted by the New English Bible, though even that has a
menacing undertone. James is warning Paul that there may be mob
violence, and the mob of which he is talking is the rank and file of the
Jewish Christians of Jerusalem (whom he reckons in ‘thousands’,
though, in fact, the Greek word here is myriades, which means ‘tens of
thousands’). It seems that the Nazarenes led by James had made great
advances in Jerusalem, and a significant proportion of the population
now adhered to them. These were the people from whom Paul had to
fear violence, for they were in touch with the Jewish Christians of the
Diaspora and were thus familiar with Paul’s personality and teaching,
which they regarded with hostility. Some of these Nazarenes belonged
to the extreme wing, which, as argued earlier (p. 79), had previously
been led by Stephen and were activists, participating in the resistance
against the Roman occupation. Such zealots (who indeed had much in
common with the Zealot party founded by Judas of Galilee) would be
particularly likely to resort to violence against someone like Paul, who
was reported to have given up Jewish patriotism as well as reverence for
the Torah. Incidentally, when James said to Paul that he is reported to
have been telling ‘all the Jews of the Gentile world’ to abandon the
Torah, he must be referring to the Jewish Christians only, or is perhaps
reporting an exaggerated rumour which has spread among the
Nazarenes of Jerusalem. For, as we have seen, Paul was careful, when
talking to unconverted Jews, not to say anything against the validity of
the Torah: “To Jews, I became like a Jew.’
Why, then, has the author of Acts disguised this matter by
representing the people who attacked Paul, dragged him out of the
Temple, beat him and called for his execution, as ‘Jews’, not as Jewish
Christians? The obvious answer to this is that the author of Acts wishes
to minimize the opposition to Paul in the Jerusalem movement, to
which he always attempts to attribute Pauline doctrines. Yet there is an
obvious discrepancy between this picture and the speech of James to

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Paul, in which it is clearly revealed that James fears for Paul’s physical
safety because of the hostility felt towards him by ‘tens of thousands’ of
members of the Nazarene community. This discrepancy was felt so
keenly by the editor of the Anchor Bible edition of Acts that he
proposed to emend James’s speech drastically so that James would be
referring here to Jews, not to Jewish Christians. Otherwise, he says,
‘James is revealed as a bad Christian and an unreliable and cowardly
leader of the Church’, since he had failed to convince his followers of the
validity of Paul’s work and attitude.
Having been attacked by the Jewish Christians, Paul was rescued by
the Roman police, who had some difficulty in finding out why he had
become the centre of a disturbance, but gathered that he had been
guilty of some offence which had angered the crowd and so arrested
him. Some of the details now added in chapter 22 of Acts are not —
credible. Thus the Roman commandant is said to have asked Paul
whether he was ‘the Egyptian who started a revolt some time ago’. Such
a question is hardly likely about a man who was so obviously unpopular
with the Jewish masses that they were calling for his execution. A
Messianic leader such as ‘the Egyptian’ (about whom details are given
in Josephus!) would be much more likely to be popular with the
Jerusalem crowd, though he would be regarded as a dangerous
nuisance by the High Priest and his followers. It is likely that Luke, the
author of Acts, has simply inserted the ‘Egyptian’ here because he had
read about this character in Josephus, and wished to add a further
touch of drama to the story: Paul is not only hated by the hostile Jews
but is also suspected of insurrection by the Romans.
Even more unlikely is the account inserted by the author here that
Paul was allowed by the Roman police officer to harangue the crowd
from the steps of the police barracks. Luke was evidently an avid reader
of Greek historical works, which never lost an opportunity to insert
some edifying speech into the mouth ofan admired historical character,
sometimes in circumstances when a lengthy oration was no more
historically likely than a full-throated aria from a dying character in an
opera.
The next sequence of events reported in Acts, however, supplies
some historical insight:
_, . the commandant ordered him to be brought into the barracks and gave
instruction to examine him by flogging, and find out what reason there was
for such an outcry against him. But when they tied him up for the lash, Paul
said to the centurion who was standing there, ‘Can you legally flog a man
who is a Roman citizen, and moreover has not been found guilty?” When the

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centurion heard this, he went and reported it to the commandant. ‘What do

you mean to do?’ he said. ‘This man is a Roman citizen.’ The commandant
came to Paul. ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ ‘Yes’, said he. The
commandant rejoined, ‘It cost me a large sum to acquire this citizenship.’
Paul said, ‘But it was mine by birth.’ Then those who were about to examine
him withdrew hastily, and the commandant himself was alarmed when he
realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had put him in irons.
(Acts 22: 24-9)

We can now begin to see why Paul, a shrewd man, had done such an
apparently foolish thing as to go to Jerusalem at this point in his life.
Jerusalem was for him a hornet’s nest: he was in danger from enemies
on all sides: from the Jewish Christians who were incensed at reports of
his strange and idolatrous teachings about Jesus, and also, as we shall
see, from his former associates, the High Priest’s party, at the other end
of the politico-religious spectrum. But Paul had much to gain by going
to Jerusalem: he could perhaps do what he had done before, at the time
of the Jerusalem Council, and gain a compromise solution by which he
could avoid the painful break that he dreaded. If the worst came to the
worst and he was beset by enemies, he could play his trump card, of
which his enemies were unaware, that he was a Roman citizen. He
could invoke the protection of the Roman authorities, and so escape
from Jerusalem unharmed.
It seems likely, indeed, that the Roman police did not arrive on the
scene simply because a hubbub arose, as in the account given by Acts,
but that Paul had previously arranged that they should be sent for in
case of trouble, for Paul was not quite alone in Jerusalem. It appears
that he had a Gentile supporter called Trophimus at hand, and we also
know that his nephew was in Jerusalem and was active in helping him
out of difficulties (Acts 23: 16). His emergency plan was thus put into
operation, and one of his supporters alerted the police. Support for this
probability comes from the letter sent by the commandant, Claudius
Lysias, reporting on the affair to the Governor, Felix, in which he says:
‘This man was seized by the Jews and was on the point of being
murdered when I intervened with the troops and removed him,
because I discovered that he was a Roman citizen’ (Acts 23: 27). From
this report by the commandant, it appears that he was informed of
Paul’s Roman citizenship before he intervened. Otherwise, he probably
would not have intervened at all, since the Romans were not so
conscientious in their duties as police as to be much concerned whether
some Jew was killed or beaten in a religious squabble. The author of
Acts, however, does not wish to give such an impression of conscious

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planning by Paul, and thus postpones Paul’s revelation of his Roman

citizenship until he was about to be lashed (but then forgets to alter the
commandant’s letter accordingly).
According to Acts, Paul had only once before invoked his Roman
citizenship when in trouble. This was during his second missionary
journey when he was at Philippi, in Greece, when Paul and his
companion Silas incurred the wrath of certain Gentile idolaters who
denounced them to the magistrates, who ordered them to be beaten
(Acts 16: 19ff). On that occasion, both Paul and Silas claimed to be
Roman citizens, but strangely enough, said nothing until after they had
been beaten. There is thus some doubt about the historicity of this
episode, especially as it seems incredible that not only Paul, but also
Silas, were Roman citizens. It is surprising enough that Paul was a
Roman citizen, without his companion Silas being one too. It seems,
therefore, that the author of Acts has inserted the claim to Roman
citizenship as an afterthought in the story, with the effect that Paul and
Silas were not only released from prison but also reduced the
magistrates to fear and trembling. The story of Paul’s declaration of his
Roman citizenship in Jerusalem later was too good not to be used in
some earlier context too.
It is also surprising that Paul never invoked his Roman citizenship
on other occasions when he was flogged. According to his statement in
11 Corinthians 11: 25, he was ‘beaten with rods’ (i.e. by the Roman
lictors) three times, and apparently did not protest on these occasions
that the punishment was illegal. Nor does Paul mention anywhere in
his letters that he was a Roman citizen, though such a mention might
have been expected.
These considerations would seem to point to the possibility that Paul
acquired his Roman citizenship only shortly before he travelled to
Jerusalem. This was a time in his life when he had a large amount of
money at his disposal, for he had made a special effort to collect a huge
sum to bring with him to Jerusalem (see 1 Corinthians 16: 1-4). This
was in fulfilment of his promise at the Council of Jerusalem to make a
substantial contribution from his new Gentile converts to the expenses
of the central organization of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem. James
had demanded this not as an act of charity (as Acts depicts it), but as a
gesture of submission to his own authority as head of the Nazarenes.
Paul, therefore, on the eve of his fateful visit to Jerusalem, when his
loyalty to James and to the Torah would be questioned, felt it
imperative to fulfil this pledge. But while in possession of such large
sums, it would be natural for him to think of some method ofinsurance

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by which he could prepare a mode of escape, if things went wrong in

Jerusalem. An excellent plan in this regard was to purchase Roman
citizenship for himself; by this means he could call upon Roman help in
an emergency.
Paul would not consider it dishonest to use funds collected for the
‘Jerusalem Church’ for the purpose of acquiring Roman citizenship for
himself, because this was not just a matter of personal advantage, but of
high policy, affecting the whole future of Christianity. Ifnegotiations in
Jerusalem broke down, his own survival was essential for the continu-
ance of the doctrines which he held dear, and on which, he believed, the
salvation of all humanity depended. Moreover, these funds belonged to
Jerusalem only if circumstances made possible the continuance of his
own loyalty and submission to the Jerusalem leadership as the official
centre of the Jesus movement. If matters came to a schism, then Paul
himself, instead of the Jerusalem leadership, would become the central
authority of a Gentile Christian Church whose funds it would be his
duty to administer. So he was merely putting aside a contingency fund,
in case the schism actually took place. It is likely that he held back a
considerable sum, in addition to the money he spent on purchasing
Roman citizenship, in case it was needed to found his own Church.
Some corroboration of this is to be found in a detail that the author of
Acts lets slip. This is that Felix, the Roman Governor, ‘had hopes of a
bribe from Paul; and for this reason he sent for him very often and
talked with him’ (Acts 24: 26). This happened while Paul was Felix’s
prisoner, awaiting settlement of his case. Now a Roman Governor
would not expect any paltry sum as a bribe, so he must have thought
that Paul had considerable amounts at his disposal. Indeed, Paul had
previously gone out of his way to hint as much (verse 17). It seems,
then, that Paul had not handed over to James all the money which he
had brought from the Gentile churches of Asia Minor and Greece; he
still had a financial base which he could use for bargaining purposes.
The above considerations throw a poignant light on the conversation
already quoted between Paul and the commandant, Claudius Lysias:
But when they tied him up for the lash, Paul said to the centurion who was
standing there, ‘Can you legally flog a man who is a Roman citizen, and
moreover has not been found guilty?’ When the centurion heard this, he
went and reported it to the commandant. ‘What do you mean to do?’ he
said. “This man is a Roman citizen.’ The commandant came to Paul. ‘Tell
me, are you a Roman citizen?’ he asked. ‘Yes’, said he. The commandant
rejoined, ‘It cost me a large sum to acquire this citizenship.’ Paul said, ‘But
it was mine by birth.’ Then those who were about to examine him withdrew

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hastily, and the commandant himself was alarmed when he realized that
Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had put him in irons. (Acts 22: 25-9)
This whole conversation is spurious, as argued before. since Paul had
really been known to be a Roman citizen before he was rescued by the
Roman commandant, and otherwise would not have been rescued at
all. So what is the purpose ofthe insertion of this conversation? It is as if
the author of Acts is going out of his way to tell us that Paul did not
purchase his Roman citizenship, a possibility which might not
otherwise have occurred to us. There is an element of ‘protesting
too
much’ in this fictional insertion. It should be remembered thatthis
alleged assertion of Paul’s, ‘But it was mine by birth,’ is theonly
evidence in existence that Paul was born a Roman citizen, which is
prima facie unlikely.
When Paul declared himself aRoman citizen, this was the end of his
uneasy association with the ‘Jerusalem Church’. The announcement
would have come to James and the other Jerusalem leaders as a great
shock. The Jesus movement was essentially an anti-Roman movement.
Its aim was the freeing of the Jewish people from bondage to Rome.
None of its members, therefore, would have sought Roman citizenship.
But Paul’s new interpretation ofthe life and death of Jesus had severed
Paul from adherence to Jewish patriotism or to politics in general. He
no longer thought of Jesus as the Messiah, in the Jewish sense, who
would restore the House of David and Jewish independence, but.as a
cosmic figure who had come to provide a way of salvation for all
mankind by his death on the cross. This ‘salvation’ was not a matter of
political liberation; it was a personal, individual matter that trans-
cended all politics, and indeed made politics irrelevant. To Paul, it did
not matter whether a person was physically enslaved, since this did not
affect his spiritual salvation. Thus he urged his disciples to obey Rome,
whose power was ‘ordained of God’, and he also urged slaves to be
contented with their lot and not to strive for freedom.” This contempt
for politics was in fact a political attitude — an acquiescence in the
political status quo. Consequently, the Pauline Christian doctrine was
fitted from the start to become the official religion of the Roman
Empire. Nothing is more welcome to a military empire than a religious
doctrine that counsels obedience and acquiescence. That Paul, the
creator of the doctrine that eventually became the official Roman
religion, made himself into a Roman citizen is symptomatic.
At the same time, the leaders of the Nazarene community in
Jerusalem, knowing that Paul’s Roman citizenship must have been
purchased for a large sum of money, would immediately know how

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Paul had come into the possession of such a substantial amount— by his
collection of contributions for the ‘Jerusalem Church’. This again
would have put him beyond the pale as far as they were concerned; to
them, the matter would appear as plain dishonesty and embezzlement,
though to Paul himself, as we have seen, the use of these funds for the
preservation of what he regarded as the true Christianity would have
seemed quite justified.
Having saved himself from a dangerous situation at the hands ofthe
Jewish Christian crowd, and finding himself apparently safe in the
hands of the Romans, Paul, ironically enough, now experienced danger
from quite a different quarter. For Paul found himselfin contact with
the last person he wanted to encounter, the High Priest. The Roman
commandant, Claudius Lysias, decided to bring Paul before the
Sanhedrin, of which the High Priest was the chairman, in order to
discover why Paul had fallen foul of theJerusalem crowd: whether this
was a purely internal Jewish religious quarrel (in which case he need
not take any further interest), or whether there was some danger to the
Roman occupation.
This was an extremely awkward situation for Paul, not so much
because of having to appear before the Sanhedrin, but because of
having to make an appearance before the High Priest personally. For
the High Priest had good reason to think bitterly of Paul, who had been
a mainstay of the regime at one time, but had suddenly and
unaccountably defected during an important mission. As far as the
High Priest was concerned, Paul was indeed a person who constituted a
danger to the Roman occupation and to his own quisling regime, since
he was a member ofa revolutionary organization, the Nazarenes. Even
though this movement had been politically quiescent for some years,
waiting for the return of Jesus, there was known to be one wing of the
party which was more activist, and wished to pursue Jesus’ aims even
in his temporary absence. Paul, for all the High Priest knew, belonged
to this extremist wing; and, in any case, the High Priest had strong
reasons for resenting Paul’s defection at a crucial juncture of an official
operation.
The drama of Paul’s confrontation with the High Priest at this time
has been entirely missed by commentators, who do not seem to have
borne in mind Paul’s previous relations with the High Priesthood.
True, it was now a different High Priest from the one served by Saul;
but even so, the bureaucratic memory is not short, and Paul would
certainly be remembered as the high-ranking police officer who fouled
up the Damascus operation so spectacularly and actually defected to

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the dissidents.
The High Priest was thus Paul’s personal enemy and the ensuing
events made him éven more of one, for Paul, finding himself before the
Sanhedrin and knowing that this body had a majority of Pharisees
which had on a previous occasion rescued Peter from the High Priest,
decided, with great presence of mind, but with a distinct lack of scruple,
to play on this situation to escape condemnation. This tactic involved
appealing to the opponents of the High Priest in the Sanhedrin, which
would not endear Paul further to him. But the alternative course, which
was to declare his loyalty to Rome, would not work with the High
Priest, who remembered him only as the employee who had once
proved conspicuously disloyal to the pro-Roman regime.
So Paul decided to play for all he was worth the role of a Nazarene of
the type of James or Peter, knowing that this kind of person would —
receive sympathetic treatment from the Pharisee majority of the
Sanhedrin. The proceedings are described in Acts:
Paul fixed his eyes on the Council and said, ‘My brothers, I have lived all my
life, and still live today, with a perfectly clear conscience before God.’ At this
the High Priest Ananias ordered his attendants to strike him on the mouth.
Paul retorted, ‘God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to
judge me in accordance with the Law; and then in defiance of the Law you
order me to be struck!’ The attendants said, ‘Would you insult God’s High
Priest?’ ‘My brothers,’ said Paul, ‘I had no idea that he was High Priest;
Scripture, I know, says: ‘You must not abuse the ruler of your people.” ’
Now Paul was well aware that one section of them were Sadducees and
the other Pharisees, so he called out in the Council, ‘My brothers, I am a
Pharisee, a Pharisee born and bred; and the true issue in this trial is our
hope of the resurrection of the dead.’ At these words the Pharisees and
Sadducees fell out among themselves, and the assembly was divided. [The
Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection, or angel or spirit, but the
Pharisees accept them.] So a great uproar broke out; and some of the
doctors of the law belonging to the Pharisaic party openly took sides and
declared, ‘We can find no fault with this man; perhaps an angel or spirit has
spoken to him.’ The dissension was mounting, and the commandant was
afraid that Paul would be torn in pieces, so he ordered the troops to go down,
pull him out of the crowd, and bring him into the barracks. (Acts 23: I-10)
Many of the details of this account are manifestly unhistorical. The
Sanhedrin was a dignified body, not an unruly mob, and conducted its
affairs with great decorum, in accordance with the provisions of the
law: it is extraordinary how the New Testament, while complaining
that the Jews and particularly the Pharisees showed over-zealous
attachment to the law, portrays them on occasion as flouting it

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outrageously. We may extract certain things from the account,

however, as historically true: that the High Priest showed personal
hostility to Paul; that Paul appealed to the Pharisees, declaring himself
to be a Pharisee and a believer in the doctrine of resurrection, as
especially exemplified in the resurrection of Jesus; and that when the
matter came to a vote, the Pharisees, as they had done in the case of
Peter, voted for Paul’s acquittal, arguing that to be a Nazarene was no
offence against the law, and that the Nazarenes (as Gamaliel had
argued) were quite possibly the recipients of a revelation from God. In
the case of Peter and Gamaliel, the author of Acts preserved something
of the atmosphere of debate in the Sanhedrin; but in the present
passage, while forced to admit that Paul was saved by the Pharisees, he
tries to deprive them of all credit by ascribing their attitude to mere
factiousness, degenerating into ludicrous brawling.
Nevertheless, this incident gives further support to the picture of the
Pharisees put forward in the present book. The Pharisees were not
opposed to the Jesus movement, which was indeed a Pharisee
movement. It was the Pauline Christian movement that blackened the
name of the Pharisees by distorting their image in the New Testament,
the scripture of Paulinism. In the four trials described in the New
Testament — those of Jesus, Stephen, Peter and Paul — all purporting to
be before the Sanhedrin, only two, those of Peter and of Paul, can be
regarded as genuine Sanhedrin trials, and in both of these the Pharisees
were on the side of humanity and tolerance.
Furthermore, the trial of Paul proves conclusively the unaccept-
ability of the idea proposed earlier in Acts, that Paul was an object of
hatred to pious Jews as a whole. It was only within the Nazarene
movement that Paul’s new doctrines about Jesus were known. To the
main body of Jews, Paul, if known at all, was thought of as simply a
member of the Nazarene movement, and was presumed to hold the
same doctrines as James and Peter. It was easy, therefore, for Paul to
pose before the Sanhedrin as a pious Pharisee and Nazarene, and thus
enlist the support of the Pharisees.
Most commentators seem to gloss over Paul’s duplicity on this
occasion. His claim to be still a Pharisee was simply a lie, and if his real
views had been known, the Pharisees would certainly not have
supported him. His policy of being all things to all men might have had
some justification in terms of winning converts to belief in Jesus’
Messiahship, but here the issue was simply to save his skin. In the
fictitious story of Stephen, much is made of Stephen’s alleged disregard
for his own life when he testified to his beliefs; why then should Paul’s

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refusal to testify to his beliefs, or rather his deliberate misrepresentation

of his beliefs, be regarded as so free from question? We have to admit
that Paul was no martyr and was not even notably truthful; he was first
and foremost a survivor. Despite his undoubted belief in the genuine-
ness of his vision at Damascus and subsequent visions, he was is. some
respects unscrupulous, especially when he felt that the Lord’s cause
required a policy of deception. In the light of Paul’s behaviour at his
trial, we need not feel amazed that he told lies in less urgent
circumstances too: for example, when he claimed to be descended from
the tribe of Benjamin, or that he had been born a Pharisee and the son
of Pharisees, or that he had been born a Roman citizen (though, to be
sure, he may never have claimed the latter, since the claim is only
attributed to him by Luke, the author of Acts, and is not found in Paul’s
letters).
His subterfuge at his trial was most successful, and he was acquitted
and discharged. The representation of Acts that he had to be rescued
from the meeting of the Sanhedrin by Roman troops, because the
rioting Sanhedrin members were endangering Paul’s life, is un-
historical. The letter written by Claudius Lysias to Felix, the Governor,
makes no mention of any riot in the Sanhedrin but simply says that, as a
result of the Sanhedrin enquiry, ‘I found that the accusation had to do
with controversial matters in their law, but there was no charge against
him meriting death or imprisonment’ (Acts 23: 29). The author of Acts
no doubt found this letter in the archives and transcribed it, without
reflecting that it refuted several of his own statements.
As far as Claudius Lysias was concerned, Paul was now free to go.
The Sanhedrin had refused to condemn him, and since Paul had
proved that he was a Roman citizen (presumably he had documents to
prove this), it did not occur to the commandant that Paul might be
guilty of sedition against Rome — a conclusion which might otherwise
have been held to follow from Paul’s connection with the Nazarenes. It
was probably felt that Paul must belong to the quietist wing of the
Nazarenes, and was no political threat, and had even taken great pains
to prove himself friendly to Rome by becoming a Roman citizen.
But Paul was by no means out of the woods, for what happened next
was a determined attempt to assassinate him. In Acts, of course, this
attempt is blamed on ‘the Jews’. It is not explained who these ‘Jews’
were, but there is no need of an explanation, for in the New Testament
generally it is taken as understood that ‘the Jews’ are the enemies of the
Light and are always eager to murder any person who is of the party of
Jesus. Thus it was ‘the Jews’ who attacked Paul before and from whom

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the Romans rescued him, though we have seen reason to suppose that
these attackers were actually Jewish Christians. Certainly it would be
hard to explain why Paul, having been acquitted by the Sanhedrin,
would still be an object of hatred to ordinary pious Jews, who were
adherents of the Pharisees and followed their rulings. Who then were
these ‘Jews’ who wished to kill Paul?
We cannot come to the same conclusion as before and say that these
‘Jews’ were Jewish Christians, for, despite certain attempts to indicate
that the previous attack was an attempted lynching, it is in fact clear
that it was, on the contrary, an attempt to bring Paul to trial. The
Jewish Christians were not murderers or a lynch-mob, but pious Jews,
with whom it was a point of civilized behaviour that no one could be
killed without a trial according to law. The present incident, however,
was a plain assassination plot:
When day broke, the Jews banded together and took an oath not to eat or
drink until they had killed Paul. There were more than forty in this
conspiracy. They came to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have
bound ourselves by a solemn oath not to taste food until we have killed Paul.
It is now for you, acting with the Council, to apply to the commandant to
bring him down to you, on the pretext of a closer investigation of his case;
and we have arranged to do away with him before he arrives.’ (Acts 23: 12—
15)
These conspirators cannot have been Jewish Christians, not only
because of their murderousness, but also because of their closeness to
the ‘chief priests’, i.e. to the High Priest and his entourage. The clue to
the whole incident is the involvement of the High Priest. Paul had
succeeded in escaping from the Jewish Christians, from the Sanhedrin,
and from the Romans. He still had one enemy to reckon with, the most
deadly of all, the High Priest, who, as Paul well knew from personal
acquaintance, had a body of ruffians at his command who were
accustomed to perform lynchings and assassinations in order to uphold
his position as Gauleiter for the Romans. The High Priest was not willing
to let Paul escape scot free after his defection nearly twenty years
before; he therefore arranged to have him eliminated.
Of course, the author of Acts, in characteristic fashion, obfuscates
the issue by associating with the High Priest in this plot the ‘elders’ and
the ‘Council’. In view ofthe fact that he has just described the acquittal
of Paul by these very ‘elders’ and this very ‘Council’, one would have
thought that he would have balked at including them in the ensuing
conspiracy; but consistency or logic is not his strong point.
Paul, however, was again too clever for the High Priest. He learned of

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the plot and was able to avoid it. The informant was his nephew, but no
doubt Paul was aware of danger from the High Priest, knowing his
methods so well, and instructed his friends to spy out the land for him
and report to him any threatening rumours. Paul then prevailed on the
Roman commandant, no doubt using his status as Roman citizen
again, to remove him from danger by transporting him under armed
guard from Jerusalem to Caesarea.
Even in Caesarea, however, Paul had not quite escaped from the
High Priest, who took the matter seriously enough to pursue him there
to lay charges against him:
Five days later the High Priest Ananias came down, accompanied by some
of the elders and an advocate named Tertullus, and they laid an information
against Paul before the Governor. When the prisoner was called, Tertullus
opened the case.
‘Your Excellency,’ he said, ‘we owe it to you that we enjoy unbroken
peace. It is due to your provident care that, in all kinds of ways and in all
sorts of places, improvements are being made for the good of this province.
We welcome this, sir, most gratefully. And now, not to take up too much of
your time, I crave your indulgence for a brief statement of our case. We have
found this man to be a perfect pest, a fomenter of discord among the Jews all
over the world, a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. He even made an
attempt to profane the temple; and then we arrested him. If you will
examine him yourself you can ascertain from him the truth ofall the charges
we bring.’ The Jews supported the attack, alleging that the facts were as
stated. (Acts 24: 1-9)

It is clear enough that the High Priest’s charge against Paul was a
political, not a religious one, consisting of an allegation that Paul was a
danger to Roman rule, the benefits of which are depicted by the High
Priest’s representative in sycophantic style. Nevertheless, the author of
Acts cannot resist involving the ‘elders’ (though he has the grace this
time to say only ‘some’ of the elders) and, finally, the ‘Jews’ once more.
The use of the blanket term ‘the Jews’ in Acts (exceeded in this respect
only by the Gospel of John) is a major contribution to the general anti-
Semitic effect of the book, despite the fact that many details, if closely
examined, contradict the author’s intention. There would be no reason
for the ‘elders’ of the Sanhedrin to be involved in the case at all at this
stage, since the Sanhedrin had cleared Paul of all religious charges.
Who the ‘Jews’ are here is even less clear than usual (the Jews of
Caesarea?), and they have evidently been included only to add to the
general anti-Semitic indictment.
Though the High Priest is bringing a political charge (even to the

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extent of employing a Roman advocate in the case), he also adds, as an

afterthought, the religious charge that Paul has ‘made an attempt to
profane the temple’. This charge was first raised, also as a kind of
afterthought, by the ‘Asian Jews’ who first denounced Paul in the
Temple grounds (Acts 21: 28). Remarkably, however, this charge is not
mentioned during the proceedings before the Sanhedrin. It seems
likely, therefore, that this charge was actually first raised by the High
Priest in Caesarea, and was only afterwards inserted by the author of
Acts into the denunciation by the ‘Asian Jews’ (with the awkward
explanation that they had seen Paul walking around Jerusalem with a
Gentile called Trophimus, and wrongly thought that Paul had brought
this Gentile into the Temple area forbidden to Gentiles). The High
Priest, in accusing Paul of being a troublemaker, adds that Paul has
offended not only against the Roman jurisdiction, but also against his
own authority in the Temple in some way. This too, as the Roman
Governor would understand it, would be an aspect of troublemaking
rather than of religious opinion. It may be that we have here an echo of
the charge made against Jesus and later against Stephen that they had
spoken against the Temple, by declaring that it was destined to be
destroyed and rebuilt, a prophecy typical of Messianic movements.
The High Priest adds this detail only to complete his picture of Paul asa
prominent figure in a dangerous Messianic movement of dissidence
and rebellion.
Thus the High Priest’s charge confirms that he is pursuing a personal
vendetta against Paul because of the latter’s defection from the pro-
Roman camp. It does not occur to the High Priest that Paul is in fact
still pro-Roman, since Paul’s peculiar variety of belief in Jesus is
divorced from all politics and does not require any implementation on
Earth in the form of an independent Judaea. The High Priest thinks of
all Nazarenes as political nuisances, and this particular Nazarene as
the most obnoxious ofall, since he is a deserter from the collaborationist
side to the resistance. This speech of the High Priest is valuable further
evidence of the standpoint of the Nazarene movement, as argued in this
book, showing that the Jerusalem Jesus movement had strong political
aims.
The Governor, however, decided to keep an eye on Paul, rather than
hand him over to the High Priest, partly because of Paul’s Roman
citizenship, and partly because he scented that Paul had large funds at
his disposal of which he hoped to obtain a slice. It may well be that Paul
did in fact give Felix a bribe, and so was enabled to live unmolested in
Caesarea until the governorship of Felix ended two years later.

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When the new Governor, Festus, arrived, the High Priest renewed
his charges against Paul, and pressed them so vigorously that Paul was
forced to a new recourse: he appealed for a trial in Rome before Caesar,
to which he was entitled as a Roman citizen.
Now follows in Acts a set piece in which Paul is brought before the
Jewish King, Herod Agrippa 11, and states his views so eloquently that
the King is full of admiration and seems to hover on the brink of
becoming a Christian. This whole episode has the atmosphere of
fiction, and is full of unhistorical aspects. Thus Herod Agrippa u,
whose father, Herod Agrippa 1, had executed the Nazarene leader
James, son of Zebedee, could not have been totally unaware of the
political aspects of the Nazarene movement, which threatened his own
regime (since the Nazarenes did not recognize the Herodian dynasty as
rightful kings). Yet he raises no objection to Paul’s non-political
account of the aims of the Jesus movement, according to which its aim
was merely to call Israel to repentance, in line with the wishes ofJesus,
portrayed as a non-Messianic figure. Luke, the author of Acts, was
something of a novelist and could not resist introducing the colourful
characters of Herod and his sister Berenice, and giving his hero Paul an
opportunity to harangue them and win their respectful attention.
Paul was thus sent to Rome, as he had requested, to answer a charge,
preferred by the High Priest, of disloyalty to Rome. The charge was
certainly not one of offences against the Jewish religion, since the
Roman Emperor would have had no interest in hearing such a charge.
Yet the author of Acts, despite his clear portrayal of the High Priest’s
charges as political in chapter 24, goes back to describing them as
religious in chapter 25: 18 and chapter 28: 20. Otherwise, it would not
be possible to involve the ‘elders’ and the ‘Jews’, who were to be held
responsible for Paul’s troubles, just as they were blamed for Jesus’
troubles.
What happened to Paul in Rome we do not know. It is probable that
he was able to persuade the Roman authorities that he had severed all
connection with the seditious Nazarene movement centred on
Jerusalem. On the other hand, his grave dereliction of pro-Roman duty
at: Damascus may have weighed heavily against him. His Roman
citizenship would have helped to confirm his continued attachment to
Rome, despite that aberration. According to Church legend, Paul was
martyred in Rome, but no reliance can be placed on this story. It is
quite possible that he lived on toa ripe old age, building up the Gentile
Christian Church which he had created, and for the sake of which he
had brought to bear such ingenuity and resource.

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 CHAPTER 15

THE EVIDENCE OF
THE EBIONITES

In the preceding chapters we have built up, from the evidence of the
New Testament itself, a picture of Paul that is very different from the
conventional one. We have seen that Paul, in describing himself as
deeply learned in Pharisaism, was not telling the truth. On the
contrary, we have reason to think that Paul reacted to his failure to
acquire Pharisee status by creating a synthesis of Judaism with
paganism; and that the paganism so deeply embedded in his con-
ception of Jesus argues a Gentile, rather than a Jewish, provenance. We
have seen, further, that the impression of unity between Paul and the
leaders of the Jerusalem Jesus movement, so sedulously cultivated by
the author of Acts, is a sham and that there is much evidence, both in
Acts itselfand in Paul’s Epistles, that there was serious conflict between
the Pauline and the Jerusalem interpretations of Jesus’ message. This
conflict, after simmering for years, finally led to a complete break, by
which the Pauline Christian Church was founded, comprising in effect
a new religion, separated from Judaism; while the Jerusalem
Nazarenes did not sever their links with Judaism, but regarded
themselves as essentially believers in Judaism who also believed in the
resurrection of Jesus, a human Messiah figure.
Scholars have not been able to deny that the Jerusalem Church,
under the leadership of James, consisted of practising Jews, loyal to the
Torah, but they have attempted to explain this fact by the concept of
‘re-Judaization’, i.e. a tendency to slip back into Judaism, despite the
contrary teaching of Jesus. We have seen that attempts to by-pass the
Jerusalem Nazarenes by constructing a different tradition linking Jesus
to Paul (through the ‘Hellenists’ and Stephen) fail under examination.
Similarly, scholars have attempted to explain away all the evidence in

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the Gospels that Jesus himself was a loyal adherent of the Torah by the
same concept of ‘re-Judaization’: when, for example, Jesus is repre-
sented in Matthew as saying, ‘If any man therefore sets aside even the
least of the Law’s demands, and teaches others to do the same, he will
have the lowest place in the kingdom of Heaven, whereas anyone who
keeps the Law and teaches others so, will stand high in the kingdom of
Heaven’ (Matthew 5;: 19), this is explained as not something that Jesus
said, but something that was inserted into the text of Matthew by a ‘re-
Judaizer’. Since the Gospel of Matthew contains quite a number of
such sayings, the Gospel as a whole has been characterized as a re-
Judaizing Gospel, written specifically for a Jewish Christian com-
munity.
Several scholars, however, in recent years, have come to see that this ,
position is untenable.' For the main tendency and standpoint of the
Gospel of Matthew is far from supporting the continuing validity of
Judaism or of the Jews as the chosen people of God. Passages such as
the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21: 33-43) preach the in-
corrigible sinfulness of the Jews and their supersession by the Gentiles.
It is Matthew that stresses, perhaps more than any other Gospel, the
alleged curse that has come upon the Jews because of their crime of
deicide: e.g. Matthew 23: 33-6, ‘on you will fall the guilt of all the
innocent blood spilt on the ground’, and Matthew 27: 26, ‘ “His blood
be on us, and on our children.” ’ Such anathematization of the Jews is
hardly consistent with loyalty to the Torah, which declares the Jews to
be God’s priestly nation for ever. No Jewish Christian community
would assent to the statements quoted.
Consequently, if the Gospel of Matthew contains assertions by Jesus
about the validity of the Torah, this is strong evidence that Jesus
actually made these assertions, for only a persistent and unquenchable
tradition that Jesus said these things would have induced the author
of the Gospel to include such recalcitrant material, going against the
grain of his own narrative and standpoint.
If Jesus himself was an adherent of the Torah, there was no need for
re-Judaization on the part of the Nazarenes in Jerusalem, who were
simply continuing the attitudes of Jesus. But, in any case, several
scholars have now come to think that the loyalty of the Jerusalem
movement to the Torah is itself strong evidence that Jesus was similarly
loyal. It is, after all, implausible, to say the least, that the close followers
of Jesus, his companions during his lifetime, led by his brother, should
have so misunderstood him that they reversed his views immediately
after his death. The ‘stupidity’ motif characterizing the disciples in the

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Gospels is best understood as a Pauline attempt to explain away the

attachment of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ to Judaism, rather than as
historical obtuseness.
Though the concept of re-Judaization has become distinctly suspect
in relation to the Gospels and to the Jerusalem followers of Jesus, it does
not appear to have occurred to scholars to reconsider it in relation to
certain groups for whom our evidence is later. We know of a number of
Jewish Christian groups or sects which existed in the first four centuries
of the Christian era, the best known being the Ebionites. The evidence
about these groups is scanty and sometimes contradictory; but our
understanding of Jewish Christianity may be furthered by a willingness
to criticize the assumption that they were essentially and invariably
re-Judaizing sects, falling away from Pauline Christianity and ‘re-
lapsing’ into Judaism. It may well be that some, at least, of these groups
were genuine historical continuations of the Nazarene community led
by James and Peter, and were thus closer in spirit to Jesus than the
official Catholic Church based on the teachings of Paul. If so, we may
be inclined to listen to what they had to say about the background and
life of Paul with more attention, since they may have had access,
through their unbroken tradition, with the origins of the Christian
religion and its earliest conflicts.
The ‘Jerusalem Church’ itself has a sad history. This has been
obscured by the Church legend, found in Eusebius and later in
Epiphanius, that before the Jewish War against Rome broke out in aD
66 the whole Nazarene community, warned by an oracle, left
Jerusalem and went to Pella in Transjordania. That this story is merely
a legend has been well demonstrated by S. F. G. Brandon’, and
confirmed by later research.? The Jerusalem Nazarenes never left the
city at the time of the Jewish War; they stayed there and played their
part, as loyal Jews, in the fight against Rome. When the Jews were
broken by the Romans and their Temple destroyed in ap 70, the Jewish
Christians shared in the horrors of the defeat, and the Jerusalem
Nazarenes were dispersed to Caesarea and other cities, even as far as
Alexandria in Egypt. Its power and influence as the Mother Church
and centre of the Jesus movement was ended; and the Pauline Christian
movement, which up to ap 66 had been struggling to survive against
the strong disapproval of Jerusalem, now began to make great
headway. It was not until nearly seventy years later that a Christian
Church was reconstituted in Jerusalem, after the city had been
devastated by the Romans for the second time (after the Bar Kokhba
revolt) and rebuilt as a Gentile city called Aelia Capitolina. This new

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Christian Church had no continuity with the early ‘Jerusalem Church’

led by James. Its members were Gentiles, as Eusebius testifies, and its
doctrines were those of Pauline Christianity.* It attempted, however, to
claim continuity with the early ‘Jerusalem Church’, in accordance with
the Pauline policy (evinced in the New Testament book of Acts) of
denying the rift between Paul and the Jerusalem elders. The Pella
legend was developed in order to give colour to this alleged continuity,
since some of the members of the new Church had come from Pella.
Jerusalem, however, never regained its former centrality. In the now
dominant Pauline Christian Church, the centre was Rome; while the
descendants of the former proud ‘Jerusalem Church’, now scattered
and poor (for which reason, probably, they acquired the nickname of
‘Ebionites’, from the Hebrew evyonim, meaning ‘poor men’) were
despised as heretics, since they refused to accept the doctrines of Paul.
Another name by which these later Jewish Christians were known,
according to the Church historians, was ‘Nazarenes’. This name goes
back to very early times, for it is found in the New Testament itself, not
only applying to Jesus (‘Jesus the Nazarene’) but also (Acts 24: 5) to the
members of the ‘Jerusalem Church’, in the denunciation by the High
Priest. It seems, then, that ‘Nazarenes’ was the original name for the
followers of Jesus; the name ‘Christians’ was a later development, not
in Jerusalem but in Antioch (Acts 11: 26). In the Jewish rabbinical
writings, the name used for Jesus’ followers is similar to ‘Nazarenes’,
i.e. notzerim. Whether this name is derived from Jesus’ place of birth,
Nazareth, or from some other source, is a matter of scholarly debate.
But it is clear that the survival of this name in sects of the third and
fourth centuries points to continuity between these sects and the
original followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. Various theories have been put
forward as to why some Jewish Christian sects were called Nazarenes,
while others were called Ebionites. The best solution seems to be that
the original name was Nazarenes, but at some point they were given the
name Ebionites, as a derogatory nickname, which, however, some of
them adopted with pride, since its meaning, ‘poor men’, was a
reminder of Jesus’ saying, ‘Blessed are the poor,’ and also of his and
James’s sayings against the rich.
Nevertheless, it does seem from the rather confused accounts given
by the Church historians that the Jewish Christians, as time went on,
split into various sects, some of which strayed far from the tenets of the
original Nazarenes. Thus we read of certain Gnostic Ebionites, of
whom the founding father was Cerinthus, who combined beliefin the
humanity ofJesus and in the validity of the Torah with a Gnostic belief

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in a Demiurge (‘creator’) and a High God.° We also read of certain

Nazarenes who believed in the Torah, but also believed in the virgin
birth of Jesus and in his divine nature. These sects, however, arose by
attrition of the original beliefs of the Nazarenes; for the isolation of the
Nazarenes from both Christianity and Judaism subjected them to
pressures which could give rise to some strange mixed or synthetic
forms.
In general, however, the Nazarenes or Ebionites held fast to their
original beliefs which we find mentioned again and again in our
Christian sources: that Jesus was a human being, born by natural
process from Joseph and Mary; that he was given prophetic powers by
God; that he was an observant Jew, loyal to the Torah, which he did not
abrogate and which was, therefore, still fully valid; and that his
message had been distorted and perverted by Paul, whose visions were
deluded, and who had falsely represented Jesus as having abrogated
the Torah.
In view of the thesis, argued earlier, that the Nazarenes were a
monarchical movement of which James was the Prince Regent and
Jesus the awaited King, we may ask whether there is evidence that the
Nazarenes or Ebionites of later times looked upon Jesus as their King.
Most of our Christian sources do not mention this aspect. Instead, they
stress that the Ebionites, while insisting that Jesus was no more than a
man, achieved prophetic status by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon
him, which was identical with ‘the Christ’, a divine power. Of course,
the Gentile Christian historians who wrote these accounts were
strongly affected by the Pauline Christian definition of the word
‘Christ’, by which it lost its original Jewish monarchical meaning and
became a divine title (partly because it became assimilated, in the
Hellenistic mind, to the Greek word chrestos, meaning ‘good’, which was
a common appellation of divine figures in the mystery religions). Apart
from this inauthentic use of the word ‘Christ’, the accounts ring true;
for the idea that prophecy is attained by the descent upon a human
being of a divine force (called in the Jewish sources ‘the Holy Spirit’ or
ru’ah ha-qodesh, or sometimes the shekhinah or indwelling presence of
God) is common in Judaism, and must have been shared by the
Ebionites. But the monarchical overtones of the word ‘Christ’ (Hebrew
Messiah) are lost in most of these Christian accounts. Where the
monarchical aspect reappears, however, is in the occasional mention of
the millenarian or chiliastic beliefs of the Ebionites, who believed that
Jesus, on his return, would reign for a thousand years on Earth.® Here
the concept of Jesus as King of the Jews (and by virtue ofthe priest role
.

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of the Jewish nation) spiritual King of the whole world is clear, and the
Ebionites are shown to regard Jesus as the successor of David and
Solomon. The thousand-year reign does not point to a concept of Jesus
as a supernatural being, but reflects the common idea that human
longevity in Messianic times would recover its antediluvian dimension.
Of course, millenarian beliefs. are not entirely lacking in Pauline
Christianity, too, where they have a curiously subterranean role. The
Book of Revelation, originally a Jewish Christian work but much
edited, was included in the New Testament canon, and from this
stemmed millenarian beliefs which are somewhat hard to reconcile
with Pauline Christology. The beliefin the thousand-year earthly reign
of a kingly Jesus at the end of days inspired many movements of
political revolt within Christendom and often threatened the
domination of the Pope and the Emperor, for inherent in these beliefs
was the notion that justice is attainable on Earth and that the kingdom
of God is an earthly Utopia, not an other-worldly condition of
blessedness. The role of Antichrist, the earthly power opposed to Jesus
redivivus, was usually assigned to the Jews, so that populist millenarian
movements were often viciously anti-Semitic;’ but occasionally, the
Antichrist was identified instead as the real oppressors of the poor and
on these occasions the political aspirations derived from Judaism and
from Jewish Christianity threatened to perform a role of liberation in
Christendom, in contrast to the other-worldly Paulinist theology which
always worked on the side of the powers that be. It is not surprising that
Popes and Emperors have always deprecated millenarianism, despite
its New Testament authority, and excluded it from official Christian
doctrine.® In the beliefs of the Ebionites, however, it plays a natural and
integral part, and helps to characterize Ebionitism as continuous with
Judaism, as well as with the ‘Jerusalem Church’ led by James, the
brother of Jesus.
The prophetic role assigned to Jesus by the Ebionites also deserves
some comment. Even in the New Testament, there is much evidence
that Jesus, in his own eyes and in those ofhis followers, had the status of
a prophet. Thus some of his followers regarded him as the reincar-
nation of the prophet Elijah®, with whom John the Baptist had also
been identified. Jesus saw himself, at first, as a. prophet foretelling the
coming ofthe Messiah, and it was only at a fairly late stage of his career
that he had came to the conviction that he was himself the Messiah
whom he had been prophesying. Jesus then combined the roles of
prophet and Messiah. This was not unprecedented, for his ancestors
David and Solomon were also regarded in Jewish tradition as endowed

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with the Holy Spirit, which had enabled them to write inspired works
(David being regarded as the author of most of the Psalms, and
Solomon of the canonical works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of
Songs). Nevertheless, these works were not regarded as having the
highest degree of inspiration, and were included in the section of the
Bible known as the ‘Writings’, not that known as the ‘Prophets’. Jesus
was not the author of inspired writings, but he belonged, in his own
eyes, to the ranks of the non-literary, wonder-working prophets such as
Elijah and Elisha. Such a prophet had never before combined his
prophetic office with the position Messiah or King, but there was
nothing heretical about the idea that the Messiah could be a prophet
too. Such a possibility is envisaged in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah,
where the Messiah is described as an inspired person and as having
miraculous powers, like a prophet. This assumption of a prophetic role
distinguished Jesus from the more humdrum Messiah figures of his
period such as Judas of Galilee or, later, Bar Kokhba (though it seems
that Theudas also sought to combine the two roles). Thus the Ebionite
belief that Jesus had the status of a prophet was not at all inconsistent
with their belief that he was the King of Israel, who would restore the
Jewish monarchy on his return. To be both king and prophet meant
that Jesus was not just an interim Messiah, like Bar Kokhba, sent to
deliver the Jews from another wave of Gentile oppression, but the final,
culminating Messiah, who would inaugurate the kingdom of God on
Earth, as envisaged by the Hebrew prophets, a time of worldwide peace
and justice, when the knowledge of God would cover the Earth ‘as the
waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11: 9).
On the other hand, this belief in Jesus as an inspired prophet is what
ultimately cut off the Ebionites from the main body of Judaism. As long
as Jesus was alive his claim to prophetic and Messianic status was not
in any way heretical; Pharisee leaders such as Gamaliel were prepared
to see how Jesus’ claims would turn out in actuality and meanwhile
would suspend judgment: in Gamaliel’s phrase, ‘if this idea oftheirs or
its execution is of human origin, it will collapse; but if it is from God,
you will never be able to put them down, and you risk finding
yourselves at war with God’ (Acts 5: 39). Even after Jesus’ death, for
some considerable time, the Pharisees, in view of the Nazarene claim
that Jesus’ movement had not yet ‘collapsed’, Jesus being still alive and
on the point of return, would be prepared to suspend judgment, as
evidenced by Gamaliel, who was speaking after the death ofJesus. But
as time went on, these Nazarene claims would wear very thin as far as
the main body ofthe Jewish community was concerned: How long did

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one have to wait in order to reach a decision that the Nazarene

movement had collapsed? Jesus had failed by being crucified, and the
assurance by the Nazarenes that he would return had not been fulfilled.
The conclusion reached by most Jews, therefore, was that Jesus was
just another failed Messiah. As for his alleged prophetic powers, these
must have been delusions. He was not after all a genuine prophet or his
prophecies about himself would have been fulfilled. The Ebionites,
however, still refused to accept this conclusion; though no doubt some
of them, weary of waiting for Jesus’ return, went back to the fold of
normative Judaism and gave up their belief in Jesus as Messiah and
prophet. The remaining Ebionites, while still loyal to the Torah, built
up an additional scripture or gospel (unfortunately now lost, having
been suppressed by the Pauline Christian Church together with the
other Ebionite writings), in which they set down the sayings ofJesus,
who, to them, was just as inspired as Isaiah or Jeremiah and therefore
deserved to be included in the canon. This new scripture, for the main
body of the Jews, was a heretical addition to the canon of holy writ, and
its appearance marked out the Ebionites as a heretical Jewish sect, like
the Samaritans and the Sadducees. Moreover, since the Ebionites
thought that the age of prophecy had returned in the person of Jesus,
they cannot have been willing to accept the authority of the Pharisee
sages who built up a corpus of teachings after Jesus’ death, on the
assumption that the age of prophecy was over, having ceased with the
last of the biblical prophets, Malachi. Thus the Ebionites, by their
continued belief in Jesus as prophet and Messiah, were increasingly cut
off from the developing activity of rabbinical Judaism. Yet it was
probably not until about AD 135'° that the Ebionites were finally
declared heretics by the Pharisee rabbis. This decision was no doubt
influenced by the awareness of the rabbis that the Gentile branch of
Christianity, following the teachings of Paul, had abrogated the Torah
and developed anti-Semitic attitudes. This was the conclusive proof
that Jesus’ claim to Messiahship had not been ‘from God’. Gentile
Christianity, however, unlike Ebionite Christianity, was never de-
clared heretical, since it was too far removed from Judaism to be
regarded as a heretical form of it.
The Ebionites were thus in the unhappy position of being ostracized
both by what was now the main body of Christians, the Catholic
Church, and by the Jews. The pressure to join one or other of these two
religions was enormous, and by the fourth century the Ebionites had
ceased to be a discernible separate community. Consequently, they
have tended to be disregarded and despised by historians. Yet what

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remains oftheir testimony about the origins of Christianity is of unique

importance, for, unlike the Catholic Church, they were directly linked
to the ‘Jerusalem Church’ and thus to Jesus himself. Their testimony
about Paul and the circumstances in which he broke with the
‘Jerusalem Church’ deserves to be treated with respect, not with the
usual scornful dismissal. i
The testimony of the Ebionites has been preserved in two forms.
Firstly, there are the summaries, already mentioned, of Ebionite beliefs
found in the writings of the Church authors Justin Martyr (second
century), Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Tertullian (end of the second
century and the first half of the third), Origen (middle of the third
century), and Epiphanius and Jerome (fourth century). These all
confirm that the Ebionites opposed Paul as a false apostle.
The second type of testimony is more indirect, depending on the
detective work of modern scholars, yet it is very convincing. Certain
texts which have been handed down from the ancient world and the
early middle ages are ostensibly not writings of the Ebionites, but of
other religious groups; but the painstaking analysis of scholars has
shown that embedded in each of these works is a stratum written by an
Ebionite author, which has been taken over and adapted by a non-
Ebionite author. The two examples that are most pertinent here (since
they show how the Ebionites thought of Paul) are the following.
The Pseudo-Clementine writings. These writings were preserved as
orthodox patristic works because they were falsely attributed to the
authorship of Pope Clement 1, who was popularly supposed to have
been a disciple of Peter himself. In fact, the core of these writings, as
was pointed out by F. C. Baur in the nineteenth century and as most
scholars now agree (afteran interim of dispute and denigration of
Baur’s work), is Jewish Christian or Ebionite, stemming from second-
century Syria. This core shows a staunch adherence to the Torah, and
contains an impassioned attack on those who attributed anti-Torah
views to Peter. Paul is not mentioned by name, but he is strongly hinted
at as the supreme enemy under the disguise of ‘Simon Magus’, against
whom Peter is represented as polemicizing. Peter’s attack on this
lightly disguised Paul is on the grounds that he is a false prophet, that
he has spread lies about Peter and, most telling of all, that he knows
nothing about the true teachings of Jesus, since he never met him in the
flesh and bases his ideas of Jesus on delusive visions. That this ‘Simon
Magus’ is really Paul is now accepted by scholars, despite many
desperate attempts to resist this conclusion made by critics of Baur who
realized how profound would be the consequences of such an

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admission. For it shows that Paul, far from being a unanimously

accepted pillar of the Church, like Peter, was a controversial figure,
whose role in the founding of Christianity was a subject of great
contention.
The Arabic manuscript discovered by Shlomo Pines. Some interesting
evidence of the views of the Jewish Christian community of Syria at a
later date, probably the fifth century, was discovered by the Israeli
scholar Shlomo Pines. While studying a tenth-century Arabic work by
‘Abd al-Jabbar in a manuscript in Istanbul, he was able to prove that
one section of this work had actually been incorporated from a Jewish
Christian source. The standpoint of this incorporated section is that of
the Ebionites: belief in the continuing validity of the Torah, insistence
on the human status of Jesus as a prophet, and strong opposition to
Paul as the falsifier of Jesus’ teachings. According to this source, Paul
abandoned the observance of the Torah mainly in order to obtain the
backing of Rome and achieve power and influence for himself. Paul is
even held responsible for the destruction of the Temple by the Romans,
since his anti-Jewish propaganda inflamed the Romans against the
Jews. His Christianity, says this source, was ‘Romanism’; instead of
converting Romans into Christians, he converted Christians into
Romans.
This Jewish Christian source also contains some acute criticism of
the Gospels, which it declares to be untrustworthy and self-contra-
dictory. The only trustworthy Gospel, it declares, was the original one
written in Hebrew, yet it is doubtful whether the community which
produced this source still possessed a copy of this original Gospel. One
of the source’s remarks on the Gospel stories of Jesus’ alleged
abrogation of the laws of the Torah is of special interest. It relates to the
corn-plucking incident, which it explains as a case of dire emergency
due to the state of starvation of the disciples; and the technical phrase in
Arabic used to explain the legality of the corn-plucking is a direct
translation of the Hebrew pigquah nefesh (‘the saving of a soul’), used in
the Talmud in connection with the abrogation of the sabbath law in
cases of danger to human life.
In general, the picture emerging from this text is of a Jewish
Christian community, in the fifth century, out of touch in many ways
with its own sources and barely managing to preserve an underground
existence, yet still clinging to elements of belief deriving from centuries
earlier and, at certain points, still linked to the earliest Jewish
Christians of all, the Jerusalem Nazarene community of James and
Peter.

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The Ebionites did not survive for the simple reason that they were
persecuted out of existence by the Catholic Church. When this
oppression was lifted for any reason (for example, when an area
changed from Christian to Muslim rule), they sometimes came out of
hiding and resumed an open existence. There is even evidence, from the
works of the Jewish philosopher Saadia,'' that this happened as late as
the tenth century. Mostly, however, the Ebionites were forced to
assume a protective disguise of orthodoxy, and in time this led to
complete assimilation. Yet, while they still retained their clandestine
beliefs, they often had a profound influence on Christianity in general;
there is reason to believe that many Judaizing heresies in Christian
history, including Arianism, derived from underground Ebionite
groups. Their influence was in the direction of humanism and this-
worldly concern, and against the meek acceptance of slavery and
oppression, and they had a restraining influence on Christian anti-
Semitism. They represented an alternative tradition in Christianity
that never quite died out.
The Ebionites are thus by no means a negligible or derisory group.
Their claim to represent the original teaching of Jesus has to be taken
seriously. It is quite wrong, therefore, to dismiss what they had to say
about Paul as unworthy of attention.
Let us look, then, more carefully at the earliest extant formulation of
the Ebionite view of Paul, found in the works of Epiphanius (fourth
century). “They declare that he was a Greek ... He went up to
Jerusalem, they say, and when he had spent some time there, he was
seized with a passion to marry the daughter of the priest. For this
reason he became a proselyte and was circumcised. Then, when he
failed to get the girl, he flew into a rage and wrote against circumcision
and against the sabbath and the Law’ (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30.16. 6—
g). This account, of course, is not history. It is what Epiphanius
declares the Ebionites were saying in the fourth century and is coloured
both by Epiphanius’s hostility to the Ebionites and by the Ebionites’
hostility to Paul. Nevertheless, there is a core here that may well be
true.
Two elements in particular in the story have been shown in our
previous discussions to be important: that Paul was a ‘Greek’ (i.e. a
Hellenistic Gentile), and that he was involved with the High Priest
(here simply called ‘the priest’). A third authentic element may be
detected: a failure by Paul to achieve an ambition, and his consequent
desertion of the High Priest and involvement with the Jesus movement.
The picture of Paul as a disappointed lover is a typical-creation of the

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folk imagination, yet it is not entirely off the mark. Paul was indeed in
love, not with the High Priest’s daughter, but with Judaism, of which
the High Priest was the symbol (if not the exponent). It was Paul’s
frustrated love-affair with Judaism that created Pauline Christianity.
On the more realistic level, the High Priest was indeed the key person
in Paul’s life: his employer when he harassed the Nazarenes, his enemy
when he abandoned his attachment to the High Priest’s collaboration-
ist regime by his defection at Damascus, and again his deadly enemy
when he escaped from the hostility of the Nazarenes into the custody of
the Roman police.
Epiphanius’s account is clearly incomplete, for it contains no
reference to Paul’s relations with the Jerusalem Nazarenes. The
Ebionites of Epiphanius’s day must have had some view about how
Paul stood with James and Peter.
Yet, incomplete and romanticized as Epiphanius’ account is, it is in
several respects more accurate than the account of Paul that was
handed down by the Catholic Church or even than the account that
Paul gives of himself in his Epistles. Instead of the respectable Pharisee
of unimpeachable Jewish descent, the friend and peer of James and
Peter, we can sense through Epiphanius’s garbled account something
of the real Paul — the tormented adventurer, threading his way by guile
through a series of stormy episodes, and setting up a form of religion
that was his own individual creation.

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 CHAPTER 16

THE MYTHMAKER

Books on Paul generally end with a chapter on Paul’s theology, in

which the authors try to tease out Paul’s position on such matters as
predestination, original sin, the trinity, soteriology and eschatology. It
generally emerges that Paul has no sustained philosophical position on
these abstract matters, though he provides much material for later
more professional thinkers. Paul was not primarily a thinker, but he
had a religious imagination of a high order. It seems more fruitful,
therefore, to consider Paul as mythologist, rather than as theologian.
No religion is based primarily on a theology. First comes the story; and
later, when the imaginative fires have died down and the mythmaking
faculty has ceased, along come the theologians to try to turn the story
into a system. What, then, was the new story that Paul created? For the
commonly held picture of Paul as the theorist who spun an intellectual
framework for the simple teachings of Jesus will not do. This picture
assumes that Jesus was the founder of Christianity, and Paul was the
intellectualizing epigone. The truth, however, as we have seen, is that
Jesus did not found a new religion at all, but simply sought to play an
accepted role in the story of an existing religion, Judaism. It was Paul
who founded Christianity, and he did so by creating a new story, one
sufficiently powerful and gripping to launch a new world religion. In
this new story Jesus was given a leading role, but this does not make
him the creator of Christianity, any more than Hamlet wrote the plays
of Shakespeare. The Jesus of Paul’s story was a fictional character, just
as Shakespeare breathed new imaginative life into the bones of the
historical figure of Hamlet the Dane.
The basic theme in the Pauline myth can be summed up in one
phrase: the descent of the divine saviour. Everything in the so-called
theology stems from this; for since salvation or rescue comes from
above, no efficacy can be ascribed to the action or initiative of man.

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Thus some kind of doctrine of predestination follows: when the divine

rescuer descends, he does not look to see who deserves to be rescued,
because this would be to ascribe some kind of saving efficacy to
something that man does by his own effort, whatever he does that
comprises deservingness. How, then, do we know who will be rescued?
We do not. Those will be rescued whom the saviour has decided to
rescue. What, then, can we do to be rescued? Nothing, except to have
faith. What does this mean? It means to rely entirely on the descending
saviour, and to abandon every other hope of rescue. But surely even to
have an attitude of faith requires some kind of effort, and, if so, not
everything is contributed by the saviour. This kind of conundrum
engages the attention of later theologians, and helps to fill the libraries
of Christian theology, but the basic thing is still the story: rescue has
come from above. .
The descent of the divine saviour implies other narrative elements. It
means that there are two realms, Above and Below. Above is the region
of Light, and Below is the region of Darkness, the dark prison from
which we need to be rescued and from which no one belonging to Below
can release us. Thus no Below-type act of liberation can do us any good,
no transfer from one area of Below to another, such as from Egypt to
Palestine or from slavery to freedom. What imprisons us is the human
condition, which is one of bondage to the powers of Evil. From this
aspect of the story comes what theologians call the doctrine of Original
Sin, a re-reading by Paul of the Hebrew story about the ejection of
Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, which in the story itself, and
its traditional Jewish exegesis, did not have this radical connotation.
So far the story is the same as that found in the type of religion known
as Gnosticism. Recent discoveries have shown that, contrary to what
was previously argued, Gnosticism existed before Christianity, though
it later took Christian forms.' The essence of the Gnostic myth was that
this world is in the grip of evil, and that therefore a visitor (or a series of
visitors) is necessary from the world of Light, in order to impart the
secret knowledge (gnosis) by which some privileged souls may escape
from the thrall of this world. In Gnosticism, this world is regarded as so
evil that it cannot have been created by God. It was created by a limited
or evil power called the Demiurge (‘creator’). The true High God lives
in a region beyond the skies, but he has pity on humanity and sends
them an emissary to teach them how to free themselves from the
Demiurge. In some Gnostic sects the Demiurge is identified with the
God of the Jews, and it was thought that the Jewish scripture, the
Torah, was given by this evil deity. The Jews were therefore regarded

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by these sects as the special people of the Demiurge and as having the
role in history of obstructing the saving work of the emissaries of the
High God. While anti-Semitism (in the sense of intense dislike of Jews)
was not uncommon in the ancient world, it was probably among the
Gnostic sects that the most radical form of anti-Semitism originated —
the view that the Jews are the representatives of cosmic evil, the people
of the Devil.
Paul’s Epistles show.a form of Gnosticism which is worth isolating,
though it is combined with other, non-Gnostic mythological elements
to which we shall come later. The basic perception of Gnosticism is
certainly present in Paul: that this world is so sunk in evil that rescue
from above is a necessity. But the mythological details are modified.
Paul! does not think that the world was actually created by an evil
power; he accepts the account of Genesis that the world was created by
God. But he believes that the world has come under the control and
lordship-of an evil power; the Earth is captured territory. This is why
there can be no hope of salvation except from outside.
The importance of the concept of an evil power or the Devil in Paul’s
thought, or rather mythology, cannot be overestimated. When refer-
ring to this power or powers, he generally uses expressions derived from
Gnosticism rather than from Judaism. Thus, he gives a picture of the
assault of cosmic evil powers on Jesus in these words: ‘None of this
world’s rulers knew this wisdom; for if they had known it, they would
not have crucified the glorious Lord’ (1 Corinthians 2: 8). The
expression ‘this world’s rulers’ (archonton tou aionos toutou) does not refer
to earthly rulers such as the Romans or the High Priest, but to
supernatural powers who rule over ‘this world’ in the sense of ‘this
cosmic era’. Similarly, he uses the expression ‘principalities and
powers’ and other such expressions with Gnostic connections to refer to
the supernatural forces that oppose Jesus and himself (e.g. Romans 8:
38). On one occasion, he even calls the supreme evil force a ‘god’ (11
Corinthians 4: 4).
Paul thus thinks of the forces of evil as organized in a hierarchy and
as having power independent of God, at least for a period in cosmic
history. It was primarily to break the power of these forces that Jesus
came to the world; though the earthly power that opposed him, that of
the Jews, seemed to be his main enemies, this was only on the surface,
for he was engaged, in reality, in a vast cosmic struggle in which his
earthly antagonists were the pawns of evil supernatural forces.
Even in Iranian religion, from which the dualism of the Gnostics was
ultimately derived, the evil supernatural power was regarded as

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inferior to the good power in that good would ultimately prevail. So

Paul’s dualism is hardly less extreme than that of Iranian or Gnostic
religion. It has been argued recently that Paul derived this dualism
from Jewish, not Hellenistic, sources since the Jewish Apocryphal and
Pseudepigraphical books do give an important role to Satan; and the
Qumran writings (the Dead Sea Scrolls) also ascribe much of the evil in
the world to the activities of an evil angel called Belial. These writings,
of course, were excluded from the canon of scripture by the Pharisees,
who strongly opposed dualism and regarded Satan as merely one of
God’s angels, who did not rebel against Him, but obeys his orders,
whether as the Angel of Death or as prosecutor of human beings in the
divine court. Even in purely Jewish terms, Paul’s dualism would
exclude him from the Pharisee mode of thought. But, in any case, there
is a great difference between Paul’s dualism and that of the Jewish
writings mentioned, which, though affected by despair, never descend
to the depths out of which Paul’s writings spring. Though the Jewish
Pseudepigrapha and Qumran writings have a sense of cosmic evil, they
still believe in the efficacy of the Torah and of the election of Israel; they
do not require a saviour from the upper world in order to make human
life viable. It is through the practice of the Torah that the power of evil
is eventually broken; and this means that the exercise of the human will
to good is still the most important factor in history. The scene of the
battle between good and evil is still within the human psyche, not
removed to the skies with humans as helpless and passive reflections of
the conflict. On the contrary, the battle that goes on between
supernatural powers is a reflection of the battle on Earth; and the
outcome of the battle will be a transformation of the Earth, not an
organized escape from it.
No plausible Jewish model can be found for Paul’s type of dualism;
the only contemporary parallel is in Gnosticism. There are some
differences, of course, but even in the differences we note a basic
similarity; and here we must bear in mind that there were many
varieties of Gnosticism, and that the central doctrines of the evil of this
world and the need for extraterrestrial salvation could receive an
almost infinitely varied mythological elaboration. Paul’s variety does
not include the notions that the evil power created the world and the
Torah; but it contains notions that perform the same kind of function.
Paul belongs to the kind of Gnosticism that was fascinated by the
Jews and Judaism, and sought to weave them both into its pattern,
usually with anti-Semitic effect. The Torah, in this kind of scheme, 1s
acknowledged to be of supernatural origin, but it comes from the wrong

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supernatural source. Yet the Torah, for this kind of Gnostic, contains a
secret message: despite itself, it gives information about the tradition of
the true gnosis. Over and against the official tradition contained in the
Hebrew Bible there are hints of an alternative tradition, by-passing the
authority of the Jews and Judaism. Thus we find the .Gnostics
concentrating on figures in the Bible who are not Jews, but who
nevertheless seem to have authority: such as Seth, the son of Adam
born after the murder of Abel by Cain; or Enoch, reputed to have been
taken alive into heaven; or Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High
who was not of the Jewish Levitical priesthood. On figures such as these
it was possible to construct the fantasy of an alternative tradition,
stemming not from the Jewish God, but from the High God above
whose message far transcended Judaism.
Some Gnostic sects, indeed, went much further than this and,
instead of constructing an alternative tradition out of non-Jewish
figures mentioned with respect in the Bible, they reversed the values of
the Bible altogether, and constructed their alternative tradition out of
figures regarded by the Bible as evil. Thus the Cainites revered Cain,
and all the other villains of Bible stories. Yet even this is a kind of
tribute to the power of the Bible saga; only by a parasitic feeding on the
Bible could the Gnostics supply their myth with content. The Gnostics
of this type were actuated by an ambivalent feeling towards Judaism.
They felt the pull of Judaism and especially its vast canvas of human
history, but could not accept it, since the pride of Hellenistic culture
prevented them from accepting a ‘barbarian’ religion; and also the
basic optimism of Judaism, with its gratitude to God for the gift of this
world, was repugnant to them.
Paul, as we have seen, did not adopt the Gnostic myth of the creation
of the world by the Demiurge; but he adopted the almost equivalent
myth of the ‘ruler of this age’, the evil power who has taken over the
world, though he did not create it. Similarly, Paul did not adopt the
Gnostic myth that the Torah was given by an evil power and was thus
an evil work; instead, he introduced the view that the Torah was a work
of limited authority. Giving mythical expression to this view, he
asserted that the Torah was given, not by God, but by angels. This
demotion of the status of the Torah is expressed as follows: ‘It was a
temporary measure pending the arrival of the ‘‘issue’’ to whom the
promise was made. It was promulgated through angels, and there was
an intermediary; but an intermediary is not needed for one party acting
alone, and God is one’ (Galatians 3: 19-20). Various scholars have

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tried to argue that the Jewish sources contain the notion that the Torah
was given by angels, not by God, and that therefore Paul was not saying
anything startling or new in this passage. Note that the New English
Bible translation, quoted above, rather disguises the starkness of Paul’s
statement by translating the Greek word ‘diatageis’ as ‘promulgated’
instead of the correct translation (found in the Revised Version)
‘ordained’. If the Torah was ‘ordained’ by angels that means that they
originated it, while if they only ‘promulgated’ it, it may have originated
from God. Paul is saying quite definitely that the angels were the
authors of the Torah, not God. Despite the convoluted arguments of
scholars, there is no parallel to this in Jewish sources, which all insist
that God was the sole author of the Torah and that it was God Himself,
not angels, whose voice was heard on Mount Sinai ‘giving’ the Torah.”
The only parallel to Paul’s statement is to be found in the Gnostic
literature, which states that the Torah was given by an inferior power,
the Demiurge. Paul is thus adapting the Gnostic doctrine of the
inferiority of the Torah: instead of being ordained by an inferior and
also evil power, it is ordained by inferior but beneficent powers. This is
in accordance with Paul’s view of the Torah as merely temporary and
as foreshadowing something greater that would supersede it, the
advent of the saviour. The other two references to the angels as authors
of the Torah in the New Testament (Acts 7: 53 and Hebrews 2: 2) are
simply based on Paul’s statement here. Paul was the sole creator of this
myth about the angels fathering the Torah. Here again we encounter
the pressure that exists in the Christian tradition and scholarship to
deprive Paul of his originality as the inventor of Christianity.
The ‘intermediary’ to whom Paul refers is Moses, but his remark that
‘an intermediary is not needed for one party acting alone, and God is
one’ is somewhat cryptic. The best explanation seems to be that Paul is
pointing out that the Torah constitutes a covenant or contract between
two parties, God and Israel. God’s pronouncement of blessings to
Abraham, on the other hand, was one-sided, with Abraham as passive
recipient, required only to have ‘faith’: consequently no ‘intermediary’
was needed. This one-sided conferring of blessing is, for Paul, a far
superior and more immediate form of communication between man
and God, reflecting the helpless state of man, utterly dependent on
salvation from above. Paul thus rejects as inferior the Jewish concept of
the dignity of human nature, by which the Torah constitutes a
covenant and agreement between two partners, God and Israel.
Paul’s use of Abraham in his discussion in Galatians and elsewhere is
interesting in the context of our consideration of his affinity to

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Gnosticism. We have seen that the Gnostics used non-Jewish biblical

characters such as Seth, Enoch and Melchizedek as alleged represent-
atives of an alternative tradition of gnosis. Paul uses Abraham in just the
same way. Abraham, though the ancestor of the Israelites, was also the
ancestor of other nations and was a pre- Mosaic figure not involved with
the Torah. Paul therefore treats him as an exponent of the way of ‘faith’,
foreshadowing the obsolescence of the Torah even before it was given.
This trend is developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (written by a later
disciple of Paul, though wrongly attributed to Paul himself by Church
tradition), where the figure of Melchizedek is used in the same way, to
show that there is an alternative priesthood, superior to that of the
Jewish Aaronites.
This use of non-Jewish figures from the Bible, so reminiscent of
Gnosticism, is not, however, the main strategy of Paul and of the
Pauline Church with regard to the Hebrew Bible. The Gnostics
regarded themselves as outsiders and therefore constructed an ‘out-
sider’ tradition from biblical materials, rejecting the main line of the
biblical story as concerned with the people of the Demiurge and thus
contaminated by worldly dross. Paul, however, and the Christian
tradition that followed him, adopted a much bolder line. He asserted
that all the main prophets of the Hebrew Bible were proto-Christians.
None of them (not even Moses) had regarded the Torah as perma-
nently binding; all of them had looked forward to the advent of the
saviour who would abrogate the Torah and show the true way of faith
and salvation.
This amounted to a wholesale usurpation of the Jewish religio-
historical scheme. Something very similar happened six centuries later,
when Islam performed the same operation of usurpation on both
Judaism and Christianity, declaring that Abraham, Moses and Jesus
had all been proto-Muslims. Islam, however, did not adopt the Jewish
and Christian scriptures into its own canon; it was able, therefore, to
alter the details freely, for example substituting Ishmael’ (thought to
be the ancestor of the Arabs) for Isaac in the story of the akedah or
Binding of Isaac. Alterations of this kind were not open to Paul, who
accepted the Old Testament in full as the word of God, but instead he
imported his own meanings into it, and turned it into a coded message
of the Pauline mythology. In this way, the succession of Hebrew
prophets was put into the place of the succession of ‘outsiders’ bearing
gnosis, envisaged by the Gnostic exegetes of the Bible. The prophets
were now the outsiders, because they knew the Christian meaning of
their message, which was rejected by the Jews, who insisted on the

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permanence of the Torah and treated the prophets as they later treated
Jesus. The division between Jews and outsiders is retained, as in
Gnosticism, but the lines are differently drawn, with the result that
Pauline Christianity, instead of opposing prophetic Judaism, appro-
priated it for its own purposes.
Paul’s attitude to the Torah must now be examined in order to show
his affinity to Gnostic antinomianism. It is the essence of Paul’s
religious stance that law cannot save; for if so, as he says, what need
would there be for the sacrifice of Jesus? In Judaism, these alternatives
are not even intelligible, since in Judaism the issue is not salvation at
all, for one is saved merely by being in the covenant, and the issue is
then to work together with God by implementing the Torah. For the
Jew, only outrageously wilful behaviour can jeopardize his condition of
being ‘saved’, and thus the expression ‘saved’ is not even part of the
Jewish religious vocabulary. For Paul, however, the human condition
is desperate, and the only issue is salvation. Thus law is irrelevant, for it
is useless to talk to a drowning man about how he should behave;
instead, one should throw hima rope. The purpose of the law or Torah,
says Paul in Galatians and elsewhere,’ is not to teach us how to behave,
but to convince us of the desperate nature of our moral situation. By
giving us a model of what good behaviour would be, it shows us how
incapable we are of such behaviour in the evil state of human nature,
and therefore impels us to seek a way of acquiring a new nature. The
human condition must be changed, for as it is, it is not viable.
This attitude to law corresponds to that of Gnosticism. For in
Gnosticism, too, the issue is not instruction about how to behave, but
salvation. On the other hand, there are some differences between the
antinomianism of Paul and that of Gnosticism. The Gnostics did not
merely despair of law, as Paul did; they actually despised law, as
something essentially inferior to gnosis. For law was indissolubly
connected with the activities of the body, as opposed to the spirit
(pneuma). The spiritual being, the ‘pneumatic’, was above the operation
of the moral law or, in the phrase of a modern thinker with some affinity
to the Gnostics, Nietzsche, ‘beyond good and evil’. Like Nietzsche, the
Gnostics were led by this attitude to develop a human typology, by
which only a minority of humanity was capable of true spirituality;
most human beings were irretrievably bound to the body and
materialism. Paul too uses the expression ‘spirit’ (pneuma) in ways
analogous to the usage of the Gnostics; thus at times he suggests that
only those already predisposed to the ‘spirit’ can benefit by the sacrifice
of Jesus, and here the tendency towards predestination inherent in

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Pauline doctrines is reinforced by a destiny of personality and

character. Yet Paul’s attitude towards law itself is not straight-
forwardly Gnostic. At times, at any rate, he sees law, as supremely
embodied in the Torah, as the ultimate goal, but one that cannot be
realized except through ‘salvation’ and rebirth. Only the reborn
personality can achieve the goal of observing the Torah.
It has been argued that here Paul is merely echoing the thought of
rabbinical Judaism, which envisaged that in the ‘world to come’, God
would obliterate the ‘evil inclination’, and mankind would be able to
observe the Torah without psychological impediment or struggle. This
is the concept formulated by the prophet Ezekiel: ‘I will give them a
different heart and put a new spirit into them; I will take the heart of
stone out of their bodies and give them a heart of flesh’ (Ezekiel 11: 19).
The only difference between Paul and the rabbis, it is argued, is that
Paul believed that the world to come had already arrived, with the
advent of Jesus. By having ‘faith’ in Jesus and sharing in his crucifixion,
Paul believed, the ‘heart of stone’ would be removed, and the Torah
could be observed at last. This, however, is to misunderstand the
subtlety of the rabbinical attitude in this matter. The rabbis did believe
that the ‘evil inclination’ would be obliterated finally, but this would be
as a reward to humanity for its long struggle against evil. It was not the
solution to the problem of sin, which was the task of this world and of
humanity; it was the removal of the problem in order to reward
mankind with a state of blessedness. Thus the rabbis say in the
Mishnah: ‘Better is one hour of repentance and good works in this
world than the whole life of the world to come; and better is one hour of
bliss in the world to come than the whole life of this world’ (Mishnah,
Avot 4: 17). This is an attitude that Paul could not understand. It
shows a subtlety and maturity that contrasts strongly with Paul’s
adolescent despair and impatience for perfection. For rabbis, the point
of life is in the struggle, rather than in the reward. For Paul, the reward
has become the indispensable substitute for the struggle, which he
regards as hopeless and, therefore, pointless.
Thus, even when Paul is in the mood to take the Torah to be the true
standard of moral behaviour, he destroys its efficacy: in a fallen state
humanity cannot implement it, while in a ‘saved’ state humanity does
not need it, since its provisions then become second nature and are
automatically obeyed. But Paul does not adopt this comparatively
respectful attitude to the Torah consistently. Sometimes (especially
when combating the influence of the Jerusalem Jesus movement) he
takes up an attitude of hostility to the Torah, berating it as materialistic

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and unspiritual, quite in the Gnostic vein. Thus he declares that those
who wish to keep the sabbaths and festivals of the Torah are
subservient to ‘the mean and beggarly spirits of the elements’
(Galatians 4: 9), a Gnostic expression for the lower forces of nature. At
times he seems to be saying that there is now a new law, called ‘the law
of Christ’, which has superseded the old law of the Torah, which has
been abrogated and was always imperfect. But this is not just a matter
of reform, for the new ‘law of Christ’ operates in a different way, being
based on grace and faith, not on works. Nor is it a matter of simply
dropping the ceremonial provisions of the old law, while retaining its
moral provisions, for Paul introduces new ceremonies such as the
Eucharist and Pauline Christianity has been, if anything, more fully
equipped with ritual than Judaism ever was.
The fact is that Paul, like all the Gnostics, is unable to fit law into his
scheme of things intelligibly, and yet he has to try to do so, because law
simply will not go away. All Gnostics wish to abolish law and to
substitute for it some kind of instinctive, ‘saved’ behaviour that will
fulfil all the demands of law without the necessity of having a law. But
in practice things never work out in this way. People who are supposed
to be ‘saved’ behave, unaccountably, just as badly as before they were
saved, so that law has to be reintroduced to restrain them. Also, there
are always logically minded people to say that if they are ‘saved’, all
their behaviour must be correct, so they can indulge in any kind of
behaviour that happens to appeal to them (such as sexual orgies or
murder) in the confidence that nothing they do can be wrong. In other
words, by being ‘saved’, people may behave worse instead of better.
Paul had to cope with this ‘saved’ libertinism, and could only use the
methods of moral exhortation that were supposed to have been made
obsolete by faith and the transition from ‘works’ to ‘grace’. The same
problem was felt throughout Gnosticism, as is shown by the Gnostic
libertine sects such as the Carpocratians.
Thus Paul’s attitude of partly admitting the validity of law, under
pressure, does not exclude him from the category of Gnosticism, as
some have argued, for this compulsion to do something, however
unwillingly, about fitting law into the scheme is common to all the
Gnostic sects, each of which dealt with the matter in its own way. It is
interesting to compare Valentinian Gnosticism, for example, with
Pauline Christianity. Each, on the level of basic theory, is antinomian,
but each provides a place for law out of practical necessity. This led to
the ironic result, in Christianity, of the building up, eventually, of a
huge body of canon law in a religion which began as a revolt against

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law. The new law was supposed to be fundamentally different from the
old law of the Torah, being a law of grace, but in fact it was
administered in exactly the same way, except that it lacked the
humanity and sophistication which centuries of rabbinical develop-
ment had given to the Torah. For example, all the safeguards for the
position of women which had bece developed in Pharisee law were
jettisoned by the new Pauline law.? Starting from scratch, Christian
law had to rediscover painfully insights that Pharisee law had long
taken for granted. For example, Pharisee law regarded all evidence
extorted by compulsion as invalid. Christian law was still torturing
people to obtain evidence, regarded as legally valid, sixteen centuries
after Paul scrapped the Torah and instituted the ‘law of Christ’. The
paradox of an antinomian religion with a complicated legal system led
constantly to attempts in Christian history to restore pristine anti-
nomian attitudes; the Reformation was the most massive instance. But
the Reformation churches soon found themselves in precisely the same
dilemma and developed systems of canon law of their own. The
dichotomy between an antinomian core and an outer shell of law is not
conducive to the best kind of development of law, but rather leads to a
desiccated form, very different from the warmth and enthusiasm found
in Jewish law. It is ironic that the best exemplification of the dry
‘Pharisees’ of Christian myth is to be found among Christian religious
lawyers.
Paul, by adopting the Gnostic myth of the descending saviour,
produced doctrines typical of Gnosticism in his dualism, his anti-
Jewish use of the Jewish scriptures and his antinomianism, though in
each case, the more extreme forms of Gnosticism are excluded by Paul’s
acceptance of the Hebrew Bible as the word of God. He emerges from
this examination as a moderate Gnostic, but a Gnostic none the less. He
does not represent the world as the creation of an evil God; nor does he
say that the Torah emanated from an evil God; nor does he say that law
is to be utterly condemned as a mere prescription for the body; but he
has doctrines which are analogues of all these, adding up to a Gnostic
system of salvation by a heavenly visitant.
Why, then, did the Pauline Christian Church treat those Gnostic
groups that attached themselves to Christianity as heretical? This fact
alone has led many scholars to argue that Pauline Christianity cannot
be regarded as owing anything to Gnosticism. This conclusion,
however, does not foliow. For Pauline Christianity did not consist of
Gnosticism alone, but contained other important ingredients which the
Gnostic Christians were not prepared to accept. It is the fusion of these

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other elements with Gnosticism that constitutes the uniqueness of

Paul’s mythology. Paul did not invent any of the elements that went to
make his mythology; what he did invent was the way in which all the
elements were combined to make a new and powerful myth.
The chief non-Gnostic element was derived from the mystery
religions. It was from the latter that Paul derived his idea of Jesus as a
dying and resurrected god, who confers salvation and immortality
through a mystic sharing in his death and resurrection. In the Gnostic
myth, the bearer of gnosis may encounter hostility from the unspiritual
followers of the Demiurge, and he may even be killed by them, but this
is not the main purpose of his coming. His chief purpose is to bring the
gnosis, which is the secret knowledge of a mystic or magical nature, by
which the initiate can undertake the spiritual journey that takes him
away from the domination of the lower powers. There is thus no
sacrificial motif in Gnosticism. The saviour does not come to Earth to act
as a sacrifice for mankind, but to bring them knowledge, if they are fit to
receive it.
In Pauline Christianity, on the other hand, the gnosis which the
saviour brings is nothing but the knowledge of the saving power of his
own death. He functions as a sacrifice, but only if the initiate is aware of
his sacrificial power and shares, by ‘faith’, in the saviour’s sacrificial
experience. This idea is derived wholly from the mystery cults, in which
precisely the same mystery of sharing in the death and resurrection of
the deity was central.
This explains why the Gnostic Christians were condemned as
heretics, for they could never accept this sacrificial aspect of Pauline
salvation doctrine, the aspect derived from the mystery cults. For them,
Christ was a bringer of secret knowledge, not a sacrificial figure. They
therefore denied that he ever died on the cross, saying that this was
mere appearance; consequently, their heresy was known as ‘Docetism’,
from a Greek word meaning ‘to appear’ or ‘to seem’. The Gnostics, with
their radical opposition between spirit and matter, could not accept
that Christ was material enough to undergo a sacrificial experience;
that would argue that he had truly become flesh, for only the flesh could
undergo such real suffering. But for Paul, it was essential that Christ
should be a real sacrifice, not just a seeming one. Otherwise, the burden
of sin, for which all mankind deserved death, could not be rolled away.
Consequently, Christ had to be made sufficiently material to undergo
such a death. The descent into matter of the divine saviour was part of
both myths; but for the Gnostics, this descent was sacrifice enough and
was undertaken only because the imparting of gnosis would be

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impossible without it. But for Paul, with his mind full of sacrificial
imagery, with his conviction of the saving power of the shedding of
blood and the undergoing of torture (derived from his youthful
experience of the horrific Attis cult), such bloodless imparting of secrets
was unsatisfying. There had to be a cosmic agony to answer to the
agony of his own soul. He therefore turned from the sophistication and
intellectuality of the Gnostics to the primitive imagery of the mystery
cults, derived from prehistoric rites of human sacrifice.®
There was thus a real amalgamation in Paul’s mind between
Gnosticism and mystery religion, and this was unprecedented. From
Gnosticism came the picture ofa world in hellish darkness, yearning for
salvation, into which a figure descends from the world of light. This
figure walks through the world dispensing cryptic saving wisdom,
attracting a few, but surrounded by the baying forces of evil. From
mystery religion comes the story of the death of the saviour: over-
whelmed by the forces of evil, he suffers a cruel death, but this very
death is the source of salvation, far more than anything he has taught
(and what he has taught turns out to be only the saving efficacy of his
coming death).
From mystery religion, too, comes the paradox of sacrificial sal-
vation: that it is the result of the success of evil. Only because the forces
of evil succeed in overwhelming the saviour does salvation come to the
world; because death must precede resurrection, and without death
there can be no atonement for mankind, which can provide from its
own number no person worthy of such a sacrificial function. So, in
mystery religion, the dying and resurrected god has an evil opponent—
Set against Osiris, Mot against Baal, Loki against Balder — who is
essential to the story, because without him there would be no salvation,
though his lot is to be accursed and damned; he is the Evil Christ, who
bears the sin of killing the Good Christ.
It must be emphasized that neither Gnosticism alone, nor mystery
religion alone, could have produced this powerful myth. For
Gnosticism, as we have seen, is without the concept of the divine
sacrifice. Mystery religion, on the other hand, is without several
ingredients of the Pauline myth. It does not conceive the world as a
dark hell into which the god descends, nor does it conceive the salvation
it offers as a rescue from hellish damnation.’ Typically, mystery
religion offers immortality as a kind of bonus for initiates; those who are
not initiates are not regarded as damned, but simply as having missed
an extra benefit. It is the admixture of Gnosticism that adds urgency to
the mystery religion initiation, giving the sense of escape from a terrible

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doom. Thus the element of incarnation is unimportant in mystery

religion, though not entirely absent.? Sometimes the god undergoes
death (like Balder) without incarnation or descent to Earth. This is not
because Pauline Christianity values the flesh more than mystery
religion (as some Christian apologists have argued) but because the
Gnostic descent into vile matter is essential to Paul in order that the
sacrifice should be complete. It is because the world is a hell which has
to be harrowed that Christ descends into it, not because the flesh has to
be beatified. Similarly, the insistence of Paul that Christ has to be really
crucified, not apparently crucified as the Gnostics would have it, does
not argue a higher valuation of the flesh by Paul, but rather a concern
that the flesh should be thoroughly tortured and thus exorcised on
behalf of mankind, whose own sufferings are not sufficient and who
cannot be saved by mere enlightenment.
The Pauline myth is not, however, composed merely of Gnosticism
and mystery religion; a third ingredient was necessary to make it the
most compelling myth known to mankind, and that is the ingredient of
Judaism. It was from Judaism that Paul added to his concoction the
dimension of history. Judaism contains a vast panorama of history from
the creation of the world until the last days, and part of the
impressiveness of Judaism to observers in the ancient world was its
purposive scheme of history, quite different from the annalistic
approach of Greek historians. Mystery religion was completely
ahistorical; its offer of salvation was for the individual alone.
Gnosticism, on the other hand, did have a historical scheme of a kind,
parasitic on the Jewish scheme; the succession of outsiders, beginning
with Seth, which provided a tradition of gnosis. But this was again
individualistic, and provided little sense of the development of a
community — indeed the only well-formulated community in the
Gnostic scheme was that of the Demiurge, the Jews. Gnostic history
was a kind of anti-history. Paul, however, boldly took over the whole
Jewish scheme of history from Adam to the last days, as a framework for
his story of salvation, which he conceived as working itself out through
various epochs. The actual content of this historical framework,
however, was not derived from Judaism. The Jewish myth of a
liberated nation leaving Egypt and crossing the desert to the Promised
Land — a paradigm of the political and social Utopianism of Judaism —
did not touch Paul at all; instead, he converted it into a parable of his
own scheme of salvation for the individual through the sacrifice of
Christ. Yet his early admiration for Judaism prevented him from
sinking into the quest for mere individual salvation; he conceived of the

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Church as a community moving through history, and to this end he

incorporated the Jewish ‘promises’ to Abraham as the rationale of a
new ‘Israel’ taking over the function of a chosen people. The
incorporation of the Old Testament into the Christian canon ensured
the future of Pauline Christianity as a solidly based human institution,
as opposed to the evanescent Gnostic sects and the mystery cult secret
societies.
This threefold synthesis of Judaism, Gnosticism and mystery
religion was not constructed consciously by Paul, but, as argued in a
previous chapter, sprang ready made into Paul’s psyche on the road to
Damascus, as the solution to his hitherto unsuccessful spiritual quest.
It was an imaginative creation of tremendous poetic power, and its
progress in the Greco-Roman world is not to be wondered at. Its chief
ingredients are indeed Greco-Roman rather than Jewish, and its
appeal was to the world-weary Hellenists, yearning for escape from
disorientation and despair, not to the Jews, energetically working out
the implications of their own very different myth and world view.
Pauline Christianity, despite its effort to anchor itself in Judaism by
usurping the Jewish religio-historical scheme, is far from Judaism in
tone. Its basic world attitude is that of Gnosticism, reinforced by
powerful sado-masochistic elements derived from mystery religion,
evoking echoes of primitive sacrifice.
An important feature of the Gnostic tone of Paul’s religious attitude
is his negative view of sex. A relevant passage is the following:
It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with women; but because
there is so much immorality, let each man have his own wife and each
woman her own husband.... All this I say by way of concession, not
command. I should like you all to be as I am myself; but everyone has the
gift God has granted him, one this gift and another that. To the unmarried
and to widows I say this: it is a good thing if they stay as I am myself; but if
they cannot control themselves, they should marry. Better be married than
burn with vain desire. To the married I give this ruling, which is not mine
but the Lord’s: a wife must not separate herself from her husband; if she
does, she must either remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband;
and the husband must not divorce his wife. (1 Corinthians 7: 1-11)
This passage shows that Paul regarded sexual activity as unspiritual,
but regarded the ‘gift’ of chastity as somewhat rare and therefore did
not enjoin chastity on all. This passage and others like it have led to the
institution of celibate orders in Christendom and in general to the
Christian admiration of celibacy and virginity as ideals; thus Jesus
himselfis portrayed in the Gospels as sexless or celibate, and his birth is

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described as miraculously unsexual. Further, Paul, in order to

emphasize the grudging nature of his permission of sexual activity in
those who lack his ‘gift’, hedges round even permitted sexual activity
with prohibitions: he forbids divorce and remarriage. This prohibition
too was institutionalized in Pauline Christianity.
Nothing of this is derived from Judaism. Unmarried people, in
Jewish tradition, are regarded with pity, not admiration. It was
regarded as a duty to marry. Rabbis were all expected to be married,
and the few exceptions were regarded as lacking in full humanity. The
cult of the Virgin Mary is entirely alien to Judaism, and Paul’s
reference to a ‘gift’ of chastity would be regarded as unintelligible.
Jewish mysticism (based on the biblical Song of Songs) regards sexual
intercourse as of high mystical significance, and as the earthly analogu
of the bliss of the Godhead.
Divorce and remarriage are permitted in Judaism. It is often said
wrongly that divorce is permitted only to husbands, not to wives. This
is true only in a technical sense; when the ceremony of divorce takes
place, the husband hands the bill of divorce, which he has signed, to the
wife. But a wife, in rabbinical law, can sue the courts for divorce, and
the courts can compel the husband to give a divorce. Grounds for
divorce are liberal: a wife can sue for divorce, for example, on the
ground that her husband wishes to move to a place where she does not
want to live. If it is the husband who wants a divorce, the wife’s rights
are protected: any property which she brought into the marriage must
be returned to her, and she is entitled to a sum of alimony. Though
divorce, in Jewish law, is easy, this has not led to an attitude of levity
towards marriage; Jewish marriages are notoriously stable. The Jewish
attitude to divorce, however, is relaxed and uncensorious. Such an
attitude to divorce is generally associated with a positive view of sex, in
which the cruelty of condemning people to a sexually unhappy life is
fully appreciated.
Attitudes of hostility to sex were not uncommon, however, in the
Hellenistic world, and were particularly marked in the Gnostic sects,
which, on the whole, associated sex with the contamination of the body,
and regarded sexual activity as affecting adversely the spiritual
progress of the initiate. In a few Gnostic sects, the attempt to exorcise
sex produced, instead of the usual abstinence,‘a wild, indiscriminate
incontinence. This phenomenon is well known in ascetic mystical
groups. Paul’s attitude of sexual asceticism would have been well
understood in the Gnostic sects, some of which (the Valentinians, for
example) showed exactly the same tolerance as Paul towards the

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weaker brethren, who did not have the ‘gift’. Thus this aspect of Paul’s
teaching, in view of his general affinity to Gnostic outlooks, should be
ascribed to the influence of Gnosticism, and is certainly strongly
opposed to the outlook of Judaism.
Paul’s attitude to women, however, has often been ascribed to the
influence of Judaism. A common formulation is the following: Jesus
showed a new attitude of respect for women, as opposed to Judaism, in
which ‘women had no rights’; Paul, however, relapsed into the attitude
of rabbinical Judaism and regarded women with contempt. This
formulation is misconceived. Jesus had women disciples, and imparted
his sayings to women as well as men. In having women disciples Jesus
was not departing from Judaism, but following the well-known
prophetic pattern, shown in the stories in the Hebrew Bible about
Elijah and Elisha. In imparting his teachings to women as well as men,
Jesus was following not only the prophetic but also the rabbinical
pattern, for the preaching of the rabbis, still preserved in the
voluminous Midrashic writings, was performed in the presence of both
men and women. As for the allegation that in Judaism ‘women had no
rights’, this shows a steadfast ignorance of the rabbinical legislation
about women, which gave women rights which they later entirely lost
in Christendom, because the abolition of Pharisaic law, instead of
producing a new era of spontaneous saintly behaviour, as Paul
intended, simply led to a legal vacuum, in which women were without
legal protection.
Paul’s attitude to women was actually somewhat complex, and
cannot be deduced in any simple way from his negative attitude to sex.
Indeed, an anti-sex attitude can often lead to a doctrine of the equality
of women, since the obliteration of sex also brings about the obliter-
ation of sex differences, so that all human beings are regarded as
belonging to a neuter sex. This was the case in some of the Gnostic
groups in which sex was regarded as having been overcome, so that
women could be regarded as asexual human beings, or even as men, or
beings indistinguishable from men.?
Many pro-feminist details and remarks can be collected from the
writings of Paul. For example, he says, “There are no such things as Jew
and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you are all one
person in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3: 28). Paul’s letters show that he
was friendly with many women, who were prominent helpers in his
work as missionary and apostle.
On the other hand, the following passage shows-considerable anti-
feminism: ‘As in all congregations of God’s people, women should not

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address the meeting. They have no licence to speak, and should keep
their place as the law directs. If there is something they want to know,
they can ask their own husbands at home. It is a shocking thing that a
woman should address the congregation’ (1 Corinthians 14: 34-5). The
usual explanation given of this passage is that here Paul is relapsing
into Pharisaic Judaism, which, it is assumed, gave women an inferior
position in the synagogue. Thus when Paul supports his remarks by
appeal to the ‘law’ (‘as the law directs’), what he had in mind,
according to this unthinking but widespread view, was Pharisaic law.
As Paul has devoted so much of his energy in his letters to explaining
that this law is no longer in force, this explanation is, to say the least,
open to objection.
If, however, Paul, as some have argued, is referring to scripture when
he says ‘as the law directs’, what passage of scripture does he have in
mind? It has been suggested that he was thinking of Genesis 3: 16:
‘,.. and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’
If indeed Paul was thinking of this verse, he was applying it in a new
way, for nowhere in Pharisee law do we find this verse used as a basis for
anti-feminist legislation. It was regarded as a narrative part of the
Bible, not a legal part. It was a kind of ‘Just-so Story’, explaining how
women came to be subjected to men, though in an unfallen state they
were men’s equals. Pharisee legislation was based on the avowedly
legal parts of the Bible, not on its narratives. So if Paul was using this
passage to derive a new ‘law’ about how women should behave in
church, this was not Pharisaic law, but the ‘law of Christ’ to which he
refers at times: a new Christian system of halakhah which, he claims, he
derived partly from personal revelations given to him by the heavenly
Christ, and partly from his own human decisions which his position as
Apostle entitled him to make.
Moreover, if Paul had turned to the Hebrew Bible for guidance in
this matter, he would have found much to contradict his ruling that
women must not speak up in a religious context. The Bible contains
many vocal women: for example, the prophetesses Miriam, Deborah
and Hulda, and the ‘wise women’ who take a leading role at various
points and were evidently an institution in biblical times.'°
Furthermore, the assumption that Pharisaic religion gave a down-
trodden role to women in the synagogue is not correct. Recent research
has shown that it was considerably later than the time of Paul that, for
example, women were confined to a separate gallery in the synagogue.
Women, as excavated inscriptions show, were given the title of
archisynagogissa (‘head of the synagogue’) and presbytera (‘elder’).

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Whereas the general organization of Jewish society was undoubtedly

patriarchal, this did not exclude women of special talent from rising to
positions of high influence in a religious context, and there was He
blanket prohibition to prevent this, such as Paul is here proposing.’
It is indeed rather puzzling that Paul gives such an illiberal ruling in
view of other evidence about the position of women in the early
Christian Church. The Book of Acts refers to women with the gift of
prophecy; for example,.the four daughters of the evangelist Philip (Acts
21:9). Would Paul’s prohibition on women speaking in church apply to
them too? The gift of ‘speaking in tongues’ evidently belonged to men
and women alike (Acts 2: 18-19).
The answer seems to be that at first licence was given to women as
well as to men to speak in church meetings just as the spirit moved
them. In theory this was supposed to produce'spontaneous and ecstatic
worship, but in practice, as in other areas of Pauline antinomianism,
the result tended to be chaos. A perusal of the passage in 1 Corinthians
leading up to Paul’s outburst against women shows that he was
concerned with the problem of disorder in church due to spontaneous
‘speaking in tongues’. As often happens in antinomian movements, a
reaction against chaos produces repressive legislation — far more
repressive than is found in communities that value law in the first place.
Thus Paul moved from an initial position in which no distinction was
made between the sexes in worship to a final repressive position made
in the interests of order.
The explanation that he ‘relapsed into Pharisaism’ is thus incorrect.
Where Paul actually was influenced by Pharisaism is in some of his
more liberal and humane remarks about relations between the sexes.
For example: ‘. . . the husband cannot claim his body as his own; it is
his wife’s’ (1 Corinthians 7: 4), which corresponds to the Pharisaic
concept that a husband must not withhold intercourse from his wife,
who is entitled to divorce if intercourse is withheld or irregularly
performed (‘irregularity’ being defined according to the circumstances
and profession of the husband).'? Similarly, the precept, ‘Each of you
must love his wife as his very self’ (Ephesians 5: 33) can be paralleled in
many rabbinical sayings; but, unfortunately, the Epistle to the
Ephesians was probably not written by Paul.
Paul’s attitude to women was thus not wholly consistent. His
friendships with women helpers do not tally with his later illiberal view
that it is shocking for women to speak up. A possible explanation lies in
the context of proselytizing. Many women of aristocratic birth were
attracted to Judaism and became converted; and as converts, their high

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rank gave them a status not enjoyed by native Jewish women. The same
phenomenon no doubt occurred in Paul’s missionary work, and
accounts for the high consideration in which some of his women
converts were held. Also the Gnostic influence no doubt made itself felt:
the obliteration of sex made women, especially those who chose
chastity as their way of life, into neuter beings. Finally, the prophetic
model, which had influenced Jesus himself, gave women a special
status as the helpers of a prophet figure (as in the case of Elijah and
Elisha), and Paul, as a prophet, may have felt this influence. It is hard
to say which of these models was most important for Paul.
We thus find in Paul’s attitudes towards women the pressures and
difficulties of founding a new movement, giving rise to contradictions.
An important aspect of Paul’s mythology is the strong potential for
anti-Semitism which it shares with Gnosticism. If Paul was the creator
of the Christian myth, he was also the creator of the anti-Semitism
which has been inseparable from that myth, and which eventually
produced the medieval diabolization of the Jews, evinced in the stories
of the ‘blood libel’ and the alleged desecration of the Host.
Even if the most explicit outburst against the Jews in Paul’s Epistles
(1 Thessalonians 2: 15-16) is regarded as a later jnterpolation (and this
is by no means proved), there is quite sufficient in his more moderate
expressions about the Jews and in the general configuration of his myth
to give rise to anti-Semitism. It is he who first assigns to the Jews the
role of the ‘sacred executioner’, the figure fated to bring about the death
of the Saviour. He says that the Jews ‘are treated as God’s enemies for
your sake’ (Romans 11: 28), a phrase that sums up the role of the Jews
in the Christian myth as the Black Christ who assumes the burden of
guilt for the bloody deed without which there would be no salvation.
The responsibility of Paul for Christian anti-Semitism has been
overlooked because of the settled prejudice that Paul came from a
highly Jewish background. It seemed impossible that a ‘Hebrew of the
Hebrews’, a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Pharisee of
standing could be the originator of anti-Semitic attitudes. (The
solution, put forward at times, that Paul was a self-hating Jew is
anachronistic. Self-hating Jews, such as Otto Weininger, were
produced by many centuries of Christian contempt, which, in the case
of some individual Jews under intolerable pressure, was introjected. In
the ancient world, there was no such pressure of universal contempt
and there were no self-hating Jews.)
But the picture of Paul that has emerged from the present study
makes it understandable that he was the originator of Christian anti-

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Semitism. He belonged to the fringes surrounding Judaism, of people

who were impressed and attracted by Judaism, but had to fight against
their upbringing and emotional make-up when they attempted a closer
approach. Often such people would succeed in overcoming all
difficulties and would become fully attached to Judaism either as
‘God-fearers’ or as proselytes; such people, as the Talmud says, became
the best Jews of all.'? But occasionally the influence of childhood
culture was too strong; they might fall back into paganism or,
alternatively, they might concoct weird religious fantasies, partly
derived from Judaism and partly from Hellenism, in which the Jews
tended to figure as the villains, rather than as the heroes. A certain
feeling of failure or rejection lies behind these fantasies.
Paul was the greatest fantasist of all. He created the Christian myth
by deifying Jesus, a Jewish Messiah figure whose real aims were on the
plane of Jewish political Utopianism. Paul transformed Jesus’ death
into a cosmic sacrifice in which the powers of evil sought to overwhelm
the power of good, but, against their will, only succeeded in bringing
about a salvific event. This also transforms the Jews, as Paul’s writings
indicate, into the unwitting agents of salvation, whose malice in
bringing about the death of Jesus is turned to good because this death is
the very thing needed for the salvation of sinful mankind. The
combination of malice and blindness described here is the exact
analogue of the myth of Balder, in Norse mythology, in which malice is
personified by the wicked god Loki and blindness by the blind god
Hother, and both together bring about the salvific death which alone
guarantees a good crop and salvation from death by famine.
Paul took the cosmic drama of good and evil from Gnosticism, and so
took over also the dramatization of the Jews as the representatives of
cosmic evil. But, by combining the myth of Gnosticism with the myth of
the mystery cults (which were not themselves anti-Semitic), Paul
sharpened and intensified the anti-Semitism already present in
Gnosticism. The Jews became not just the opponents of the figure
descended from the world of light, but the performers of the cosmic
sacrifice by which the heavenly visitant brings salvation. The Jews thus
become identified as the dark figure which in myths of the deaths of
gods brings about the saving death — Set, Mot, Loki; and the stage is
prepared for the long career of the Jews in the Christian imagination as
the people of the Devil. The elements which Paul took over from
Judaism to embellish his myth -— the religio-historical element which set
the death of Jesus in a panorama of world history —only intensified the
resultant anti-Semitism, because there was now an aspect of usurp-

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ation in the Pauline myth, an incentive to blacken the Jewish record in

order to justify the Christian take-over of the Abrahamic ‘promises’.
The career of the Jews in history began to be seen as a prefiguring of
their central role, the murder of the divine sacrifice;'* they were
separated from their prophets, now regarded as proto-Christs,
hounded, like Jesus, by the Jews.
The myth adumbrated by Paul was then brought into full imagin-
ative life in the Gospels, which were written under the influence of
Paul’s ideas and for the use of the Pauline Christian Church. A fully
rounded narrative of mythological dimensions is now elaborated on the
basis of historical materials, which are adapted to provide a melodrama
of good and evil. The powerful image of Judas Iscariot is created: a
person fated and even designated by his victim, Jesus, to perform the
evil deed, possessed by Satan and carrying out his evil role by
compulsion, yet suffering the fate of the accursed — a perfect embodi-
ment of the role of the sacred executioner, deputed to perform the deed
of blood, yet execrated for performing it.'* While Judas performs the
role on the personal level, the Jewish people, in the Gospel myth,
perform it on the communal level: actuated by blindness and malice in
alternation, calling for Jesus’ crucifixion in the climactic Barabbas
scene and accepting responsibility for the sacrifice by saying, ‘His
blood be on us and on our children’ (Matthew 27: 25). What in Paul’s
letters was only the outline of a myth has become definite and replete
with narrative quality, an instrument for cultural indoctrination and
the conveyor of indelible impressions to children who are told the tale.
The myth created by Paul was thus launched on its career in the
world: a story that has brought mankind comfort in its despair, but has
also produced plentiful evil.
Out of his own despair and agony, Paul created his myth. His belief
that he received the myth from the heavenly Jesus himself has obscured
Paul’s own role in creating it. The misunderstandings which he
fostered about his own background have prevented readers of the New
Testament from disentangling Paul’s myth from the historical facts
about Jesus, the so-called Jerusalem Church, and Paul’s own
adventures and clashes with his contemporaries. Paul’s character was
much more colourful than Christian piety portrays it; his real life was
more like a picaresque novel than the conventional life of a saint. But
out of the religious influences that jostled in his mind, he created an
imaginative synthesis that, for good or ill, became the basis of Western
culture.

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The history of New Testament scholarship may be summarized as

follows. Though some sporadic efforts had been made (by Jewish
scholars in the Middle Ages and by English and German Deists in the
eighteenth century) to apply scientific principles to the study of the
New Testament, this was begun in a massive way only in the nineteenth
century. The religious dogma of scriptural infallibility was abandoned,
and it was fully acknowledged that contradictions and inconsistencies
in the narratives should not be ‘harmonized’ away, but should be
treated as the outcome of human fallibility. It was recognized that the
books of the New Testament were derived from various sources,
stitched together as best the editors could manage, and that the editors
had been much affected by considerations of bias and propaganda in
their work, suppressing or altering what did not suit their religious
standpoint in the controversies of the early Church.
The tendency of all this work was to uncover the fact that Jesus
himself and his earliest followers in the ‘Jerusalem Church’ were very
Jewish figures, who knew nothing of the doctrines which later became
characteristic of the Christian Church (the divinity of Jesus, the
abolition of the Torah, and the Crucifixion as a means of salvation and
atonement taking the place of the Torah). As Julius Wellhausen said,
‘Jesus was not a Christian.’ The analysis of the editorial work in the
Gospels showed that it consisted of the foisting on the original material
(still discernible under the editorial revisions) of the later standpoint of
the Church. The intensely Jewish standpoint of the early ‘Jerusalem
Church’ (who did not regard themselves as having separated from
Judaism) was disguised in order to cover up the fact that there had been
a catastrophic split. It was F. C. Baur (1792-1860) and his followers of
the “Tubingen school’ who stressed the Jewishness of the Jerusalem
Church, though they did not fully realize the ees of this as far
as Jesus himself was concerned.

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In the twentieth century, however, an ingenious way was found to

halt this unpalatable trend. This was to cast doubt on whether the New
Testament contains any material of historical value at all. The school of
‘form criticism’, of which Rudolf Bultmann became the leading
exponent, denied that there was any underlying historical layer in the
New Testament at all, since the narrative framework was merely a
device for linking together items which served various functions in the
life of the Church of the late first century and second century. This
intensified scepticism served a pious purpose, for, by removing Jesus
from historical enquiry, it was possible to prevent him from assuming
too Jewish an outline. Instead of defending the traditional Jesus by
attempting to reassert the editorial standpoint of the Gospels (a trap
into which nineteenth-century apologists had fallen) it was now
possible to defend an orthodox standpoint through the ultra-scepticism
of declaring the quest for the historical Jesus to be impossible. All the
evidence of Jesus’ Jewishness in the Gospels could simply be ascribed to
a phase of ‘re-Judaization’ in the history of the Church: this too served
a Church function. Though the historical Jesus was beyond a historical
approach, he could still be reverently guessed at through faith; and the
guess generally made was that he must have had some affinity with the
doctrines at which the Church eventually arrived. So, by a tour de force,
the ultra-sceptics found themselves thankfully back at square one.
Bultmann himself, in his earlier work, had taken a slightly different
standpoint: namely, that the historical Jesus may indeed have been a
figure of wholly Jewish import (a Messiah figure raising a banner of
revolt against Rome). This could not be proved or disproved, but, in
any case, it did not matter, because Christianity was based not on the
historical Jesus, who lived and died in Palestine, but on the mythical
Jesus, who was resurrected like the gods of the mystery cults and
brought salvation through his resurrection. This Hellenistic myth
removed Jesus from his historical connections, whatever they may have
been, and turned him into a totally mythical figure of far greater
spiritual importance, since religion is built on myth, not on fact. Later
Bultmann abandoned this radical position (much to the disgust of
Jaspers, who reproached him for forsaking his own main insight) and
resorted to the strategy outlined in the last paragraph, by which a
denial of the quest for the historical Jesus on the scholarly plane could
be combined with a fairly orthodox guess about what he must have
been like.
It is from the early Bultmann, however, that we may derive a very
interesting and important phenomenon in twentieth-century New

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Testament scholarship, the work of S. G. F. Brandon. Since Bultmann

had declared the historical Jesus to be of no theological importance, the
way was open to someone like Brandon, who did not agree that ‘the
quest for the historical Jesus’ was impossible (but, on the contrary, that
the Gospels are full of clues about the historical Jesus) to search for him
purely as a historian, without any theological axe to grind. Bultmann’s
very insistence on the insignificance of the historical Jesus released
Brandon to build up a picture of him from the evidence of the Gospels
without the theological worries which had always attended such a
search, and which had prompted Bultmann’s dismissal of the signific-
ance of the historical Jesus in the first place. Brandon’s theological
views, as can be gathered from various remarks scattered through his
writings, were similar to Bultmann’s: he thought that the mythological
scheme of Paul was far superior, spiritually, to that of the Jerusalem
Nazarenes and indeed to that of Jesus, which he regarded as identical to
that of the Jerusalem Nazarenes. Here I personally part company with
Brandon. As will be seen from the present book, I am not at all inclined
to think that Paul’s scheme of mythology was a spiritual improvement
on Judaism, the faith of both Jesus and of the Jerusalem Nazarenes. But
I am grateful for Brandon’s magnificent remodelling of the Tubingen
insights, freeing them from philosophical and methodological irrelev-
ancies, and establishing them on a sound basis of twentieth-century
historical and textual enquiry.
Thus, though my views coincide in many ways with those of the
Tubingen school and Brandon, I do not count myself a member of that
school, but rather of the school of what has been called ‘the Jewish view
of Jesus’. An interesting and scholarly, though hostile, account of this
school is given in David Catchpole’s The Trial of Jesus (1971), which
shows that over 300 authors (some of them non-Jewish) have
contributed to it since the eighteenth century. Catchpole does not
mention, however, that the first contributions were made by Jewish
authors in the Middle Ages, notably Joseph Kimchi, Profiat Duran and
Isaac Troki. Prominent contributors in the twentieth century have
been Joseph Klausner, Robert Eisler, Solomon Zeitlin, Samuel
Sandmel, Paul Winter, Hugh J. Schonfield, Haim Cohn, David
Flusser, Geza Vermes, Robert Graves with Joshua Podro, Joel
Carmichael, and H. J. Schoeps. Though all these writers have their
individual approaches, it is characteristic of the school as a whole to use
the Talmud to show that Jesus’ life and teaching are entirely
understandable in terms of the Judaism of his time, particularly
rabbinical or Pharisaic Judaism. The corollary is that, since Jesus did

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not conflict with Judaism, his death took place for political reasons,
later camouflaged as religious by the Christian Church in its anxiety to
cover up the fact that Jesus was a rebel against Rome.
Where, then, does the ‘Jewish position’ put Paul? Unfortunately,
many adherents of the ‘Jewish position’, such as Klausner and
Schoeps, have thought it only natural and proper, after demonstrating
the Jewishness of Jesus, to go on to ‘prove’ the Jewishness of Paul. This,
however, leaves unexplained the break with Judaism that produced the
Christian Church and its motivation to feign a split between Jesus and
Judaism. Not all ‘Jewish position’ adherents have taken this false step:
Kaufmann Kohler, for example, the distinguished Talmudic scholar
and editor of the Jewish Encyclopaedia, wrote in 1902 that ‘nothing in
Paul’s writings showed that he had any acquaintance with rabbinical
learning’ — a judgment with which I entirely concur (see chapter 7).
The trouble is that well-meaning eirenic or oecumenical considerations
have interfered with perception of the facts. Many Jews (and many
non-Jews, W. D. Davies, for example) have considered themselves to
be building a bridge between Jews and Christians by asserting the
rabbinical Jewishness of Paul (though in earlier times, Paul’s alleged
‘rabbinical Jewishness’ had been held against him by scholars such as
Renan, who held the ‘Romantic liberal’ conception of Jesus, and
deplored the complications introduced into the sweet simplicity of
Jesus’ message by the tortuous Paul).
Among Christian scholars in general the Bultmannite approach is
still the most influential, and the ‘Jewish position’ is combated by the
assertion that the historical Jesus is a chimera, and that all attempts to
reconstruct the historical Jesus by the use of Gospel texts are naive,
since they fail to take into account the sophistications of ‘form
criticism’. This approach has even been welcomed by some Jewish
scholars (e.g. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin), who hope that the disappear-
ance of the historical Jesus will also mark the disappearance of
Christian anti-Semitism, overlooking the fact that a mythical Jesus
hounded to death by mythical Jews can cause just as much anti-
Semitism as a historical Jesus hounded by historical Jews (how much
anti-Semitism has been fostered by admitted fictions such as The
Merchant of Venice?). j
On the other hand, a growing body of Christian scholars in recent
years has rebelled against the Bultmannite approach and has re-
asserted the historical Jesus, while at the same time explicitly seeing its
task as the dismantling of the ‘Jewish view of Jesus’. The definitive
volumes of this ‘backlash’ movement, as I have called it, are David

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 THE MYTHMAKER

Catchpole’s The Trial of Jesus (mentioned above), and Jesus and the
Politics of his Day, edited by Ernst Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (1984).
The ‘backlash’ movement has the merit of taking the ‘Jewish view of
Jesus’ seriously as its most formidable opponent, instead of dismissing
it, as the Bultmannites do (with the exception of Brandon who was a
theological rather than a methodological Bultmannite), as failing to
employ the ultra-professional mysteries of ‘form criticism’. On the
contrary, the ‘backlash’ scholars (K. Schubert, for example) tend to
point out the shortcomings of ‘form criticism’, particularly its frequent
subjectivism and dogmatism, masquerading as the minute application
of an unimpeachable methodology. In this stance, I am happy to
regard myself as in line with ‘backlash’ scholarship, as also with their
conviction that the historical Jesus cannot be banished from the scene
as easily as form critics would like. On the other hand, in the ‘backlash’
attempts to outdo the adherents of the ‘Jewish view’ by applying
Talmudic knowledge, but with an opposite result, I find great
incompetence and prejudice, comparable to the shortcomings of early
German critics of Pharisaic Judaism such as Billerbeck and Schirer.
Also the stance of ultra-professionalism is just as marked in the
‘backlash’ as in the form critics, and equally phoney. Though the
‘backlash’ scholars eschew form criticism itself, they employ assump-
tions strongly associated with form criticism, notably the assumption of
re-Judaization, wherever the evidence seems to point to strong
Jewishness in the earliest layers of Christianity and in the teaching of
Jesus. To support this assumption, recourse is had to minutiae of
source criticism which, despite their air of formidable science, are just
as subjective and debateable as the minutiae of form criticism. For
example, great play is made of stylistic criteria, which in fact prove
nothing, because a later writer copying out a passage from an early
source is quite likely to import features of his own style in the course of
copying out: such stylistic features thus do not disprove the earliness of
the content of a passage, even if the stylistic analysis is valid, which is
frequently doubtful because of the paucity of material for statistical
analysis.
In the present work, the main principles of New Testament study are
employed, without recourse to pseudo-scientific minutiae. These
principals are the detection of bias or tendenz, and the isolation of
passages which contradict the tendenz and can thus be identified as
belonging to an earlier stratum, since they could not have been added
when the tendenz was fully established. In this research, the dating of the
main sources is important, especially the priority of Mark, since

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 NOTE ON METHOD

without such dating, it would not be possible to chart the growth of the
tendenz or arrive, by extrapolation, at the situation before the com-
position of the Gospels. While twentieth-century scholarship has made
great progress in many areas, especially the dating of the main
documents, it has often lost sight of basic principles of tendenz criticism,
despite the splendid beginning made in the nineteenth century. The
main reason for this myopia has been programmatic, i.e. theological:
the reluctance to face the consequences of research into the Jewishness
of Jesus and the ‘Jerusalem Church’, and the consequent elaboration of
ever more sophisticated methods of escape.
This is not to say that the present work does not require supplement-
ation. It has been my aim to make the book fully intelligible to the non-
specialist reader, and this has meant that certain aspects have been
presented in a somewhat simplified form. Those readers who would like
to see a more academic treatment of these aspects are referred to my
forthcoming book (written under the auspices of the International
Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism, the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem), entitled Paul, Pharisaism and Gnosticism.

211
 NOTES

Chapter 1: The Problem of Paul

I See Maccoby (1982: 1).

Chapter 3: The Pharisees

=For a fuller treatment of the subject-matter of the present chapter and the
following two chapters, see Maccoby (1980).
See Moore (1927), Herford (1924), Parkes (1960), Sanders (1977),
Sanders (1985).
Antiquities, XIII. 294.
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzi’a, 59b.
Mishnah, Avot, 5: 23.
is) Rabbi Hillel (not the famous Hillel the Elder). See Babylonian Talmud,
OO
&
Do
Sanhedrin, gga.
Mishnah, Horayot, 3: 8.
For example, Deuteronomy 4: 9; 6: 7; 11: 19; Psalms 78: 4-6.
Antiquities, XVII. 41.
OnJosephus (Antiquities, x111. 372) describes an occasion when the people
=owo

showed indignation against a Sadducee High Priest. The incident is

further explained, in terms of Pharisee law, in Mishnah, Sukkah 4: g. See
also Tosefta, Sukkah 3: 1, and Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 43b. In these
passages, the people (ammei ha-’aretz) are shown in alliance with the
Pharisees against the Sadducees, which demonstrates the falsity of the
picture often drawn of enmity between the people and the Pharisees, based
mainly on the Gospels, but also on certain Talmudic passages taken out of
context.
I ~ See Baumgarten (1980).

Chapter 4: Was Jesus a Pharisee?

I Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 13b.
2 Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a, where the principle of love of

212
 NOTES

neighbour is expressed in the form of the Golden Rule: ‘What is hateful

to you, do not to your fellow creature.’
3 Sifra 89b, Genesis Rabbah 24: 7. ‘Rabbi Akiba said, ‘“Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself”’ is the greatest principle in the Law.’
4 See Acts 5: 36, and Josephus, Antiquities, xx. 97, for Theudas. See Acts 21:
38, and Josephus, Antiquities, xx. 167, for ‘the Egyptian’.
5 See Maccoby (1980), pp 139-49.
6 For example, the prayer of Mar bar Ravina (Babylonian Talmud,
Berakhot 17a), “To those who curse me may my soul be dumb,’ which has
been incorporated into the Jewish liturgy (Singer, p. 110, etc.).
7 Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 85b, where Rabbi Jonathan ben Joseph
derives it from the scriptural expression, ‘For it is holy for you’ (Exodus, 31:
14).
8 Babylonian Talmud, Menahot g6a.
g ‘One may violate all laws in order to save life, except idolatry, incest, or
murder.” Palestinian Talmud, Sheviit, 4: 2 (35a); Babylonian Talmud,
Sanhedrin 74a.
10 Because of the difficulty of finding their victims to make restitution. The
solution of giving money to charity or public works is offered in Tosefta,
Bava Metzi’a, 8: 26.

Chapter 5: Why Was Jesus Crucified?

1 Vermes (1973).
2 Grant (1977).
3 See, however, Freyne (1980), who warns against exaggerations of this
aspect.

Chapter 6: Was Paul a Pharisee?

1 Some of Theudas’s followers were killed too, and some were taken prisoner
(Antiquities, xx. 97). Jesus’ followers, however, according to the Gospel
accounts, were allowed to escape. From this, Sanders argues that Jesus
cannot have had political aims (Sanders, 1985, p. 231) and could not have
been regarded as posing a political threat to the Romans. However, the
aim of the Gospels to depoliticize Jesus and his movement accounts
sufficiently for the omission of details of the arrest of Jesus’ followers.
Nevertheless, some traces remain showing that Jesus was not the only
person to be arrested. He was crucified between two ‘robbers’ (Greek,
lestai, a word often used to designate rebels), and the probability is that
they were members, of his movement (as against the late legends
concerning them). Moreover, the mystery of the relationship between
Jesus and Barabbas has led several commentators to postulate that they
were part of the same movement, or linked movements (see Brandon,
1968, p. 102). See Maccoby (1980) for the view that Jesus and Barabbas

213
 THE MYTHMAKER

were the same man, Barabbas being the split-off embodiment of the
political aspects of Jesus.
See Townsend (1968), Haaker (1971-2), Hiibner (1973).
ies) See Biichler (1902), Mantel (1965), pp 54-101.
For example, Mark 7: 13, ‘... making the word of God of none effect
through your tradition’. See Maccoby (1980), p. 108. The contrast
between the ‘word of God?’ (i.e. the Bible) and ‘tradition’ is typical of the
Sadducees and, taken seriously, would nullify all the reforms by which the
Pharisees had made scriptural law less severe.
Munck (1967).

Chapter 7: Alleged Rabbinical Style in Paul’s Epistles

I The term ‘lord’, of course, could be used in its human sense without giving
any offence. See Vermes (1973), pp 103-28. In Hebrew, the two senses are
distinguished, adon meaning ‘human lord’ and adonai, Divine Lord.
For example, 1 Corinthians 1: 23, Galatians 5: 11.
It may be said that we do not know what Pharisaism was like in Paul’s day,
since all the Pharisee or rabbinical writings come from a later period (for
this agnostic view see Sandmel,1970, pp 14-15, and 44-6). As against this,
see Vermes (1983), showing the folly of ignoring the rabbinical data
relevant to the time of Jesus and Paul on purist grounds. The agnostic view
at least acknowledges that Paul shows little sign of Pharisaism in the
rabbinical sense, but seeks to substitute the view that Paul was a Pharisee
in some other (unprovable) sense. The real point of this argument is that, if
we cannot prove whether Paul was a Pharisee or not from the evidence of
his writings, we must fall back on his own assertion that he was one. This is
at least an advance on the dogmatic view that Paul’s writings show him to
be a typical rabbi.
See Guggenheimer (1967), pp 181-5, for an excellent discussion by a
professional logician. In the Mishnah (Bava Qamma 2: 5), an argument
between the sages and Rabbi Tarfon turns on the question of dayo. It is
clear, however, that even Rabbi Tarfon does not dissent from the principle
of dayo, but thinks that a certain well-defined type of a fortiori argument
may be exempt from it (see Gemara, ad loc.).
Tosefta, Sanhedrin g: 5, “Those who are put to death by the court have a
share in the world to come.’
Rabbi Meir’s explanation, Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 46b. The
Mishnah (Sanhedrin 6: 4) gives another interpretation: that this punish-
ment is given only in a case of blasphemy, when the accused has ‘cursed
God’s name’ (the translation is thus, ‘He is hanged because of a curse
against God’). This interpretation too involves no curse on the executed
man, who expiates his sin by his death.
7 Joseph Klausner (1942, pp 453-4) states roundly, ‘It would be difficult to

2i4
 NOTES

find more typically Talmudic expositions of scripture than those in the

Epistles of Paul.’ Among six unconvincing examples, he includes the
example discussed here, concluding, ‘Could there be a more unnatural
interpretation than this? Truly only Paul the Jew could have based his
entire teaching on radical reinterpretations of Torah like these.’ Klausner
here comes close to saying that Paul must have been a Pharisee because
only a Pharisee could have used such nonsensical arguments. In fact,
rabbinical arguments are never guilty of logical confusions, though their
assumptions may often be questioned.
8 Paul’s attempt at legal argument is swamped by his imaginative obsession
with death and rebirth. Thus he produces a muddled poem, instead of a
legal argument. Various attempts have been made to defend his argument
on the ground of its ‘poetic truth’, but such analysis has no tendency to
confirm the picture of Paul as a rabbinical thinker.
9 In1 Corinthians 15: 33, he quotes a line from Menander, ‘Bad company
corrupts good habits’ (Thais, 218). The line has been traced further back,
however, to a fragment of Euripides (1024).
10 This is not in the Epistles, but in the report of Paul’s speech in Acts 17: 28,
‘For we also are his offspring.’ This is from the Stoic poet Aratus (c. 270
BC), Phaenomena, line 5. The words also contained in Paul’s speech, ‘In him
we live, move and have our being,’ come from Epimenides, a poet and
prophet of the sixth century Bc, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius (Lives of
Philosophers, i. 112), with slight alteration. The second line of the quatrain is
quoted by Paul in Titus 1: 12, ‘Cretans were always liars, vicious brutes,
lazy gluttons,’ so Luke was certainly correct in portraying Paul as familiar
with these lines.
11 It has been argued that Paul deliberately used the Septuagint rather than
the Hebrew text because he was writing for Greek-speakers who had no
access to the Hebrew. Alternatively, it has been argued that Paul used the
Septuagint to save himself the trouble of retranslating from the Hebrew
(Klausner, 1942, p. 305). Both these arguments fail to take into account the
importance of the canonical Hebrew text to Palestinian scholars, who
would never base any argument on a reading found in the Greek but not in
the Hebrew. The use of the Septuagint thus stamps Paul as at the very least
a Hellenistic Jew of the type of Philo, as Sandmel argued (Sandmel, 1970),
and as definitely not in the rabbinical mould. Another line of argument is
that Paul did use the Hebrew text, but later editors altered his quotations
in accordance with the Septuagint, though traces of his use of the Hebrew
text remain. For a sustained attempt to establish this view, see O’Neill
(1975). For criticism of this view, see my forthcoming Paul, Pharisaism and
Gnosticism, where the earlier attempt by Puukko to establish Paul’s use of
the Hebrew text (Puukko, 1928, pp 34-63) is also criticized.
12 See Pseudo-Philo, 12c and 13a.

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 THE MYTHMAKER

Chapter 8: Paul and Stephen

1 See Maccoby (1980), pp 135-6. See also now Sanders (1985), pp 71-6.
Sanders argues correctly that Jesus’ threatened destruction and rebuilding
of the Temple was an inevitable feature of his hopes of eschatological
‘restoration’. Later, however, he argues inconsistently (p. 270) that the
majority of Jews would have found Jesus’ threat against the Temple
‘offensive’. Only those who were sure that Jesus was not the Messiah would
have resented such Messianic behaviour; most would have been doubtful
but hopeful, like Gamaliel. Note also that the description by Ezekiel of the
eschatological Temple made it heretical not to believe that there would be a
new Temple in the Last Days.
2 See Cadbury (1933), Hengel (1983), pp 1-29.
3 Eusebius, quoting Justin Martyr, Ecclesiastical History, 1v, 8. Also, Latin
version, Hadrian’s Year 17.

Chapter 9: The Road to Damascus

1 Gaston (1970), Stendhal (1976), Gaston (1979), Gager (1983).
2 Gaston (1979), pp 56-8, attempts to prove that before Maimonides (!) the
Noahide laws had nothing to do with salvation/covenant for Gentiles, but
were simply a code for Gentiles resident in Israel. “The point of this
legislation is only to keep the land from being polluted’ (p. 57). He ignores
the evidence from the Book of Jubilees, which shows that the idea of a
Gentile code was current from at least the second century Bc (Jubilees 7:
20-39). Earlier, the biblical book of Jonah already shows that Gentiles
(the inhabitants of Nineveh) could achieve God’s grace by repentance
without conversion to Judaism. Yet Gaston argues that the idea of
repentance by Gentiles was unknown before Paul!
3 At the time of the return from Babylon (536 Bc), the returned exiles still
distinguished between Judah and Benjamin (Ezra : 5, Nehemiah 11: 7,
31-6, and Nehemiah 7: 6), and even settled in their old territories.
However, later the distinction was lost (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot
16b, ‘... we do not know whether we are descended from Rachel or
Leah’). In the Apocrypha, there is no indication that Benjamites were
distinct (in 11 Maccabees 3: 4, ‘Benjamin’ is a copyist’s error for miniamin;
see Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v. ‘Benjamin’). Only one passage has been
cited to support the survival of Benjamites in Paul’s period: the ascription
of Benjamite origin to Hillel in Genesis Rabbah 33: 3. This cannot be
regarded as historically authentic. Klausner (1942, p. 304) acknowledges
this, but it does not occur to him that Paul’s claim to be a Pharisee may be
in the same category as his claim to be a Benjamite.
4 The most probable theory is that he adopted the name ‘Paul’ as a token of
respect to his patron and convert, Sergius Paulus, Governor of Cyprus. See
Acts 13, where we encounter the name ‘Paul’ for the first time in the

216
 NOTES

context of Cyprus.
5 The Peshitta (Syriac translation of the New Testament) translates as
‘harness-worker’ (using a word which is a transliteration of the Latin
lorarius). Chrysostom, Theodoret and Origen all called Paul a ‘leather-
worker’. This evidence suggests that the Greek word skenopoios used of Paul
in Acts 18: 1-3 (though literally ‘tent-maker’) had come to mean ‘leather-
worker’. The earliest Latin translation calls Paul lectarius, which means
literally a ‘maker of beds’ or ‘bedsteads’, but could also mean a ‘maker of
leather cushions’. See /DB, s.v. ‘Tentmaker’.

Chapter 11: Paul and the Eucharist

I See Petuchowski (1978).
2 See Higgins (1952), p. 25. The alternative preposition para has been held
to be more appropriate for direct derivation, but apo is found elsewhere in
this sense too (e.g. Colossians 1: 7). Loisy (1908), ii, p. 532, n. 1, accepts
that Paul is speaking here of a direct revelation. Lietzmann (1955), Pp 255;
argues that ‘Paul, by emphasizing the atoning death of Christ, was the real
originator of a type of Eucharist which differed from the so-called
Jerusalem type.’
An example in modern times is the Soviet rewriting of the history of the
Russian Revolution. Despite all the care of Soviet historians to underplay
the role of Trotsky and overplay the role of Stalin, inconsistencies remain
which would enable a historian of the future to reconstruct the real course
of events, even if no other sources of information survived. With a
succession of datable textbooks covering a period of forty to fifty years, the
task would be much easier, since the trend or ¢endenz would be more easily
observable — and this is the case with the four Gospels.

Chapter 12: The ‘Jerusalem Church’

I Derekh Eretz Zutta, 1; Yalqut Shimoni 11, 367. See also Maccoby (1982:
1), p. 129.
Seatforexample, Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14b: when Rabbi Eleazar
ben Arakh expounded the Work of the Chariot (Ezekiel 1), ‘fire came down
from the heavens and surrounded all the trees that were in the field.’
An instructive later example is the Messianic campaign of the seven-
teenth-century Messiah figure Sabbatai Sevi. This campaign included
both mass repentance and baptism. See Scholem (1973).
See Bultmann (1921). }
(1985), p. 268, ‘We have again and again returned to the fact
ousSee Sanders
that nothing which Jesus said or did which bore on the law led his disciples
after his death to disregard it. This great fact, which overrides all others,
sets a definite limit to what can be said about Jesus and the law.’
6 A book that is vitiated throughout (despite its apparently scientific stance)

217
 THE MYTHMAKER

by the assumption of ‘re-Judaization’ is Bammel (1984).

7 This is often obscured by vague translations, e.g. Acts 13: 16, where Paul,
in Pisidian Antioch, addresses both Jews and God-fearers explicitly.
8 See Spiro (1980).
9 For full discussion of ritual purity laws, see Maccoby (1986).
10 Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 24b: ‘No proselytes will be accepted in the
days of the Messiah. In the same manner, no proselytes were accepted in
the days of David or in the days of Solomon.’
I = The status of a resident alien (ger toshav) was well defined in Judaism and
was respected (see Talmudic Encyclopaedia, s.v. ‘Ger’). Obviously,
however, the personal link with the Messiah in the case of a resident alien
would not be as strong as in the case of a Jewish national.
12 See Acts 12: 1-3, which says that Herod Agrippa, who ruled from AD 42 to
44, ‘beheaded James’, adding that ‘the Jews approved’ (the usual general
charge against the Jews in all matters relating to persecution of the
Nazarenes). In historical fact, the persecution of the Nazarenes by Herod
Agrippa is best explained by Nazarene political oppositon to his reign. The
Nazarenes (see p. 79) had become politically quiescent, waiting for the
return of Jesus, but the appointment of a Jewish King (by the Romans)
would have roused them from their political quiescence into active
opposition, since the new King was usurping, in their eyes, the throne of
Jesus. Similarly, the Nazarenes opposed the reign of the Messiah figure,
Bar Kokhba (see p. 80).
13 See Josephus, Antiquities, xx. 197-203. Josephus stresses that this was a
Sadducee act of violence, and that it was strongly opposed by the Pharisees
(‘those who were strict in the observance of the law’), who complained to
the Roman Albinus and to the King, with the result that Ananus was
deposed from his office. This incident deserves to be placed alongside the
trial of Peter and the trial of Paul as evidence of the friendliness of the
Pharisees towards the Nazarenes. The Sadducee hostility to the Nazarenes
is also shown in all three trials, but it was political, not religious, in
character. A later and less reliable account of the death of James is found in
Hegesippus (quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 1, 23: 4-18).

Chapter 13: The Split

1 The existence of divergent exegeses of Genesis g: 4 is shown by Jubilees 7:
28-31, which, in fact, interprets the verse as prohibiting flesh from which
the blood has not been drained, just as in Acts 15. A position intermediate
between that of Jubilees and that of the Talmud is found in Tosefta,
Avodah Zarah 8: 6, where one authority forbids blood from a diving animal
to Gentiles. The difficulty which led to the Talmudic opinion that Gentiles
are forbidden only to eat a limb from a living animal, and are not forbidden
to eat flesh undrained of blood, is that Deuteronomy 14: 21 explicitly

218
 NOTES

permits meat of this kind to Gentiles (i.e. to a resident alien or ger

toshav). Therefore, the opinion prevailed that Genesis 9: 4 must refer to
living flesh.
Paul does advocate care in using ‘this liberty’, in case it should become ‘a
pitfall for the weak’ (verse 9). This means that food consecrated to idols
should not be eaten in the presence of one who might thereby be tempted
back into idol-worship.
The procedure advised was that Paul should pay the expenses of four
Nazirites undergoing purification at the end of their vows. This was a not
uncommon way of showing piety and charity (see Josephus, Antiquities,
XIX. 294, and Genesis Rabbah xc. 3). The further requirement that Paul
should undergo purification together with the Nazirites does not mean (as
some commentators have said) that Paul was to undertake a Nazirite vow
too (for this would have taken a minimum of thirty days), but that Paul
should go through the usual purification for one arriving in the Holy Land
from abroad, timing this so that he could enter the Temple simultaneously
with the Nazirites and offer a free-will offering while they were making
their offerings in completion of their vows. See Strack-Billerbeck (1922)
a.l.

Chapter 14: The Trial of Paul

1 Josephus, Antiquities, xx. 169; War, 11. 261-3.
2 1 Corinthians 7: 20-22. See also Ephesians 6: 5, Titus 2: 9.

Chapter 15: The Evidence of the Ebionites

I For example, Gager (1983), pp 129, 141.
2 See Brandon (1951), pp 168-73.
3 See Liidemann (1980).
4 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 111. v. 2-3. See also Epiphanius, De Mensuris
et Ponderibus, xv (Patrologia Graeca, ed. Migne, t.xliii).
se) See Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 1, Xxvi. 1, 2.
6 This feature has been preserved only in connection with Cerinthus (see
Irenaeus, 1 xxvi, Epiphanius, Haer. xxviii), but was probably common to
all Ebionite groups.
See Maccoby (1982: 2), pp 171-5.
See Cohn (1957).
Matthew 16: 14, Mark 6: 15, Luke g: 19.
OnThe common scholarly opinion that the Nazarenes were excluded
oo
from the
synagogue in about AD go at the ‘Synod of Javneh’ by the formulation
against them of the birkat ha-minim has been refuted by Kimelman (1981).
The actual exclusion of the Nazarenes did not take place until the time of
the Bar Kokhba revolt, in which the Nazarenes refused to take part (see
p. 80).

219
 THE MYTHMAKER

I! Landauer (1880), p. go. See Pines (1968), p. 276.

Chapter 16: The Mythmaker

I MacRae (1976), p. 618.
2 The Hebrew Bible states quite plainly that God Himself gave the Torah:
e.g. ‘... and the Lord spoke unto you out of the midst of the fire,’
(Deuteronomy 4: 12); ‘Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice,’
(Deuteronomy 4: 36)? Some have cited Deuteronomy 33: 2 and Isaiah 63:
g, which only say that God was accompanied by angels when he gave the
Torah, not that the angels gave it. Some cite Josephus, Antiquities, xv. 136,
but this refers only to the mediation of Moses and other prophets (see
W. D. Davies, 1984, pp 85-6). Davies, however, wrongly refers to a ‘well-
attested tradition that the Law was given by angels’. This so-called
tradition has been derived by Christian scholars from Canticles Rabbah 1:
2, which they have misunderstood. This Midrashic passage, in the name of
Rabbi Johanan, does not say that the Torah was given or ordained by
angels, but only that angels acted as carriers of each word from God to each
Israelite; a notion that actually emphasizes the derivation of each word from
God Himself, and also the care of God that each word should be
individually received and accepted. Even this idea of Rabbi Johanan’s,
however, was rejected by the other rabbis, who insisted that each word
went directly from God to each individual, without the employment of an
angel as carrier.
Quran, Sura 37: 100-111. See Torrey (1967), pp 102-4.
Romans 3: 19; Galatians 2: 24.
O98
&
Or For example, the right of women to divorce, and the right of married
women to own their own property. See Amram (1897), Kahana (1966),
Falk (1973).
Of course, there were other factors also leading to the condemnation of the
Gnostics as heretics: their rejection of the Old Testament as the work of the
Demiurge, their rejection of the divine origin of the world, and, generally,
their extreme cosmic dualism. Their Christology, however, was the most
obviously heretical consequence of this extreme dualism.
7 Thus, by stressing the differences between Christianity and mystery
religion, on the one hand, and Christianity and Gnosticism on the other,
Christian apologists try to prove that Christianity was indebted to neither.
All the features of Christianity, however (other than those derived from
Judaism), can be explained by the postulate of a fusion between mystery
religion and Gnosticism, and this fusion itself is the only truly original
feature of Christianity.
8 Some: have argued that Christianity differs fundamentally from the
mystery religions in that Jesus was a historical personage. But Osiris too
was asserted to have once been a historical personage, a King of Egypt.

220
 NOTES

Whether this is factually true or not is beside the point; the Egyptian
myth includes the concept of the suffering and apotheosis of a historical
personage, and all the incarnational consequences that flow from this.
See Gospel of Thomas, 114: ‘For every woman who will make herself male
will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’
10 For example, 1 Samuel 25: 3-35 (Abigail), 11: Samuel 14: 1-20 (the wise
woman of Tekoa), 11 Samuel 20: 16—22 (the wise woman of Abel).
I! See Brooten (1982).
12 See Mishnah, Ketuvot 5: 6.

13 See, for example, Leviticus Rabbah 4: 5, for the parable of “The King and
the Stag’, with the message that God loves the proselyte more than born
Jews, because of the proselyte’s self-sacrifice in leaving his native
surroundings to join the people of God.
14 See Maccoby (1982: 2).
15 That the Judas myth had not yet developed in the time of Paul can be seen
from 1 Corinthians 15: 5, which speaks of the appearance of the resurrected
Jesus to the Twelve Apostles — in later Christian myth, there were only
eleven Apostles at this time, Judas having died for his sin. For an analysis
of the Judas myth see Maccoby (1982: 2), pp 121-33, and (for a purely
literary analysis) Kermode (1980).

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228
 INDEX

Aaron, 23, 24, 96 Bammel, Ernst, 210, 218

Abba Hilkiah, 45 Baptism, 124, 125-6
‘Abd Al-Jabbar, 181 Barabbas, 205, 213—4
Abel, 188 Bar Kokhba, 37, 49, 55, 80, 178, 218,
Abraham, 189-90 219
Acts, Book of, 4, 5, 11, 87, 133 Barnabas, 105, 140, 146, 147
Adam, 185, 188 Baumgarten, Joseph M., 212
Adonis, 101 Baur, F. C., 180, 206
Aelia Capitolina, 174 Belial, 187
A fortiori, see gal va-homer Benjamin, tribe of, 95-6, 216
Aggadah, 22 Berenice, 171
Agrippa 1, 10 Bible, 25, 70
Akedah, 110, 190 Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-Philo), 71,
Akiba, 31 215
Albinus, 218 Billerbeck, Paul, 210
Amram, D. W., 220 Birkat ha-minim, 219
Analogy (in logic), 66 Bithiah, 125
Ananias, 89, 105, 127, 169 Brandon S. F. G., 174, 208, 213, 219
Ananus, 123, 138, 218 ‘Breaking Bread’, 117
Angels, 188 Biichler, Adolf, 214
Antichrist, 177 Bultmann, Rudolf, 128, 207-8, 217
Antinomianism, 191
Antioch, 132, 175 Cadbury, H.J., 216
Anti-semitism, 177, 186, 203, 209 Caesarea, 132
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 187 Cain, 188
Apollonius of Tyana, 17 Cainites, 188
Apostles, 120 Caligula, 86
Arabia, 104, 105 Canon Law, 193
Aramaic (language), 70 Carmichael, Joel, 208
Aratus, 215 Carpocratians, 193
Aretas rv, 86, 87 Catchpole, David, 208
Aristotle, 64 Catholic Church, 182
‘Asian Jews’, 156~7 Cephas (name for Peter), 132
Attis, 101, 102, 107, 196 Cerinthus, 175, 219
Che Guavara, 49
Baal, 196 Christ (title), 62, 105
Baal-Taraz, 100, 101 Christian Church, 78
Balder, 196, 204 Chrysostom, John, 217

229
 INDEX

Circumcision, 124, 125—6, 140 Festus, 171

Claudius Lysias, 160, 162, 164, 167 Flusser, David, 208
Clement 1, Pope, 180 ‘Form Criticism’, 207
Cohn, Haim, 208 Francis, St, 107
Cohn, Norman, 219 Freyne, S., 213
Conversion to Judaism, 94
Cornelius, 129-31 Gager, John G., 94, 216, 219
‘Galatians (Epistle), 4
Damascus, 9, 86, 88 Galilee, 46
Daniel, Book of, 135 Gamaliel, 7, 9, 20, 33, 48, 51-7, 77, 98,
David, 41, 177 154, 178, 216
Davies (W. D.), 13, 209, 220 Gaston, Lloyd, 94, 216
Dayo, 66, 214 Genesis, 9, 134
Day of Atonement, 32 Gentiles, 94, 130-1; social relationships
Dead Sea Scrolls Sect, see Essenes with, 133-6; in Jewish-Christianity,
Deborah, 201 136-8
Demiurge, 176, 185 Ger toshav, 218
Devil, 186 Gibbon, Edward, 126
Dietary Laws, 130, 135, 148 Gideon, 53
Diogenes Laertius, 215 Gnosis, 188
Divorce, 45, 199, 220 Gnosticism, 13, 16, 93, 101, 108, 185ff,
Docetism, 195 220
Dualism, 92, 220 ‘God-Fearers’, 96, 134, 141
Duran, Profiat, 208 Gospels, 4, 29; interpretation of, 32
Grant, Michael, 213
Ebionites, xii, 5, 14, 17, 60, 81, 95, 96, Graves, Robert, xii, 208
128, 174-83 Greek (language), 70
Education, 24 Guggenheimer, Heinrich, 214
‘Egyptian’, The, 37, 159
Eighteen Benedictions, 20 Haaker K., 214
Eisler, Robert, 208 Hakhamim, 23
Eliakim, 122 Halakha, 22, 201
Eliezer (servant of Abraham), 125 Hamlet, 184
Eliezer, Rabbi, 22 Hanina ben Dosa, 45
Elijah, 62, 125, 177, 200 Hasidim (lst century movement), 45-6
Elisha, 200 Hasidim (18th century movement), 104
Enoch, 125, 188, 190 Hasmoneans, 25-6
Epimenides, 215 Haverim, 135
Epiphanius, xi, xii, 17, 174, 180, 182 Hebrew (language), 70
Essenes, 27, 187 Hebrews, Epistle to the, 190
Eucharist, 104, 110-18, 217 Hegesippus, 218
Euripides, 215 ‘Hellenists’, 17, 79, 129
Eusebius, xi, 126, 174, 175 Hengel, Martin, 216
Eve, 185 Herford, Travers, 212
Eved-Melekh, 125 Herod 1, 38
Evil Christ, 196 Herod Agrippa 1, 138, 171
Exodus from Egypt, 138 Herod Agrippa n, 171, 218
Ezekiel, 43, 215 Herod Antipas, 34, 35, 41
Herodians, 34
Falk, Z. W., 220 Hezekiah, 22
Felix, 160, 162, 167, 170 Higgins, A. J. B., 217

230
 INDEX

High Priest, 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, 25, 26, 27, Johanan, Rabbi, 220
34, 38-9, 48, 51, 58, 73, 76, 85, 164-7 John the Baptist, 126, 177
Hillel, 31, 98, 143, 154 John (son of Zebedee), 3, 154
Hillel, House of (Hillelites), 45, 54—5 John (Gospel of), 44, 48
Hillel, Rabbi, 212 Jonah, 216
Hippolytus, 180 Jonathan ben Joseph, Rabbi, 213
Hiram of Tyre, 125 Joseph of Arimathea, 57
Holy Spirit, 130, 176 Josephus, xi, 19, 52
Honi the Circle-Maker, 45 Joshua ben Levi, Rabbi, 125
Hother, 204 Judah, Rabbi, 110
Hubner, H., 214 Judah, tribe of, 96, 216
Hulda, 201 Judaism, 16, 49, 197, 199; on women,
Human sacrifice, 110, 196 200-1
‘Judaizers’, 79
Incarnation, 197, 220 Judas of Galilee, 37, 46, 48, 52-3, 178
Iranian religion, 186 Judas Iscariot, 205, 221
Irenaeus, 180 Justin Martyr, 180
Isaac, 110, 190
Isaiah, 75 Kahana, K., 220
Ishmael, son of Abraham, 190 Kermode, Frank, 221
Ishmael, Rabbi, 20 ‘Keys of the Kingdom’, 121-2
Islam, 190 Kiddush, 115, 116
Israel, 198 Kimchi, Joseph, 208
Kimelman, Reuven, 219
James (brother of Jesus), 3, 5, 79, 87, Kingdom of God, 31
120-3, 140, 144, 154; death of, 138, Klausner, Joseph, 64, 208, 214-5, 216
158-9, 161 Kohanim, see Priesthood
James, son of Zebedee, 138, 171, 218 Kohler, Kaufmann, 209
James, William, 89 Koine, 70
Jaspers, Karl, 207 Korah, sons of, 125
Jeremiah, 108 Kurios, see ‘Lord’
Jerome, 180
Jerusalem, 6, 9, 17, 174 Last Supper, 112
‘Jerusalem Church’, 4, 14, 33, 113, ‘Law ofChrist’, 193, 201
119-38, 139-55; quietists and activists ‘Lawyer’, 30
of, 79, 86 Lazarus, 102
Jerusalem Council, 140-5 Levites, 96
Jesus, and Paul, 3; brothers of, 5; aims Lietzman, H., 117, 217
of, 14-5, 50; a Pharisee, 29-44; Loisy, A., 217
warned by Pharisees, 36; trial of, 36; Loki, 196, 204
Messianic claim of, 37; and Temple, Lord (title), 63, 214
38, 47, 75; alleged reforms of, 39-41; Lord’s Prayer, 104, 111
and corn-plucking, 40-42; parables ‘Lord’s Supper’, 116
of, 44; crucifixion of, 45-9, 102; and Liidemann, Gerd, 219
Stephen, 75-8; resurrection of, 101, Luke, 4, 51, 56, 159
125; as prophet, 177
‘Jewish view of Jesus’, 208 Maccoby, Hyam, 212, 213, 214, 216,
Jews, transfer of guilt to, 47, 49, 50; as 217, 218, 219, 221
‘kingdom ofpriests’, 131, 142; MacRae, G. W., 220
considered Jesus a failed Messiah, Maimonides, 216
179 Malachi, 179

231
 INDEX

Mantel, Hugo, 214 Original Sin, 185

Mar Bar Ravina, 213 Osiris, 101, 196, 220
Marcion, 12, 152
Mark (Gospel of), 29, 32 Paradise, 125
Matthew (Gospel of), 128, 173 Parkes, James, 212
Meir, Rabbi, 20 Parthian Empire, 6, 98
Meichizedek, 188, 190 Paul (see also ‘Saul’), and Jesus, 3, 46,
Menander, 70, 215 102; whether a Pharisee, 6, 50-61,
Messiah, Jewish meaning of, 15, 37, 62, 62-—71;Roman citizen, 9, 97, 159-62;
77; variety of views on, 22; Christian psychology of, 89-91, 100; and
meaning of, 38; and Temple, 75; in Gentiles, 95; inventor of Eucharist,
Jewish-Christianity, 136-8 113-8; and ‘Jerusalem Church’, 139-
‘Messianic Secret’, 38 55; and Peter, 145-8; trial of, 156-71,
Methuselah, 125 218; as mythmaker, 184-205; and
Middat hasidim, 91 Gnosticism, 186-8; and Torah, 188;
Midrash, 11, 12, 23, 67-70 and sex, 198-9; and anti-semitism,
Millenarianism, 177 203-4 ,
Miriam, 65, 66, 201 Pauline Christianity, 129, 166, 199
Mishnah, 7, 21, 70 Paul’s nephew, 97, 169
Moore, G. F., 212 Pella, 174
Moses, 20, 24, 49, 62, 65, 102, 104, 105, Pentecost, 123-6
106, 111, 189 Peshitta, 217
Mot, 196 Peter, 3, 51, 78, 79, 87, 120-3, 140, 143,
Moule, C. F. D., 210 218; dream of, 129-31; quarrel of,
Mount of Olives, 15, 37 with Paul, 145-8; misrepresentation
Munck, Johannes, 59, 127, 159, 214 of, 154
Mystery-religion, 13, 16, 102, 195-6, Petuchowski, Jakob J., 217
220 Pharisees, 6, 14, 19-45, 48, 51, 67, 90,
92, 165-6, 218
Nabataea, 86 Philip, 202
Nazarenes (see also ‘Jerusalem Philippi, 161
Church’), 51, 55, 73, 88, 119, 158, Philo, 64, 215
164, 171, 174, 175, 218, 219 Phyla, 98
Nazareth, 175 Pilate, 47
Nazirite vow, 219 Pines, Shlomo, 181, 220
Nehemiah, son of Samuel ben Nahman, Pigqquah Nefesh, 181
92 Pneuma, 93, 191
New English Bible, xii Podro, Joshua, xii, 208
New Testament scholarship, 206-11 Police, High Priest’s, 60, 81, 86
Nicodemus, 57 Polis, 98
Nietzsche, F. W., 191 Pope, 121
Noah, 94, 134, 141 Predestination, 185
Noahide Laws, 94, 134, 216; and Priesthood, Priests, 23, 27, 76, 85, 96
Jerusalem Council, 140-5 Priesthood (Christian), 119
Notzerim, 175 Pseudo-Clementines, 180
Pseudo-Philo, see Biblical Antiquities
Obadiah, 98 Ptolemaic Greeks, 25
O’NeillJ.C., 215 Publicans, 42, 43
Onkelos, 98 Puukko, A. F., 215
Oral Torah (Oral Law), 20, 22
Origen, 180, 217 gal va-homer (argument), 64—7

232
 INDEX

Qumran sect, see Essenes Shalmaneser, 96

Quran, 220 Shammai, 98
Shammai, House of (Shammaiites), 45,
Rabbis, 85 54-5
Reformation, 194 Shebna, 122
‘Re-Judaization’, 128, 172 Shehitah, 141
‘Re-Judaizers’, 17 Shema, 111
Renan, Ernest, 18 Silas, 161
Repentance, 91, 94, 125 Simeon ben Gamaliel, Rabban, 20
Resurrection of the dead, 34, 165
Simeon, son of Cleophas, 123
Revelation, Book of, 177
Simon Magus, 17, 107, 180
Ritual Purity, 134-5
Solomon, 39, 177
Roman Empire, Romans, 6, 15, 25, 42,
‘Son of God’, 77
46, 47, 76, 98, 157
Rome, 121, 171 ‘Son of man’, 42, 74, 76-7
Russian Revolution, 217 Spiro, Solomon J., 218
Stalin, 217
Saadia, 182 Stendahl, Krister, 94, 216
Sabbatai Sevi, 217 Stephen, 7, 16, 72-81, 129, 158, 166
Sabbath-healing, 33, 36 Stigmata, 107
Sacrifices, 31-2 Stoicism, 67, 70
Sadducees, 8, 14, 22, 25, 26, 34-5, 51, Strack-Billerbeck, 219
58, 165, 218 Suffering servant, 102
Salvation, Jewish meaning of, 102; by Supererogatory virtue, 91
faith, 185; Paul’s doctrine of, 191 Synagogue, 24, 120
Samaritans, 107 ‘Synod of Javneh’, 219
Sanders, E. P., 212, 213, 216, 217
Sandmel, Samuel, 208, 214, 215 Talmud, 11, 12, 25, 44, 64
Sanhedrin, 10, 51, 73, 74, 122, 164 Tarfon, Rabbi, 214
Sarx, 93 Targum, 70
Satan, 187 Tarsus, 6, 7, 9, 17, 70, 96
Saul (name of Paul), 5, 7, 58, 60, 95; Temple, 24, 38, 74, 111, 119;
and Stephen, 80-1; mission of to destruction of, 76
Damascus, 86-8; parents of, 96; Tendenz, 210
desire of to be Pharisee rabbi, 98 Tertullian, 180
Saul, King, 95 Tertullus, 169
Saviour, descent of, 184-8 Terumah, 96, 135
Scapegoat, 32 Tetragrammaton, 63
Schoeps, H.J., 64, 208 Theodoret, 217
Scholem, Gershom, 217 Thessalonica, 157
Schonfield, Hugh J., 208 Theudas, 37, 52-3, 178, 213
Schubert, K., 210 Tithes, 58
Schirer, Emil, 210 Torah, 16, 17, 91, 92, 185, 187
Seleucid Greeks, 25 Torrey, C. C., 220
Septuagint, 68, 71, 215 Torture, 194 |
Serah, 125 Townsend,J. T., 214
Sergius Paulus, 216 Troki, Isaac, 208
Set, 196 Trophimus, 156, 160, 170
Seth, 188, 190 Trotsky, 217
Sethians, 108 ‘Tiibingen school’, 206
Sex, 198-9 Twelve Disciples, ‘stupidity’ of, 4

233
 INDEX

Valentinians, 193, 199 Women, 194, 200-1; in Judaism, 201

Vermes, Geza, 208, 213, 214
Vicarious suffering, 101, 110-11 Yetzer ha-r’a, 92
Yetzer ha-tov, 92
Weininger, Otto, 203
Weiss-Rosmarin, Trude, 209 Zacchaeus, 43
Wellhausen, Julius, 206 Zealots, 48, 53, 158
Winter, Paul, 208 ‘Zechariah, 15, 37
‘Wise women’, 201 Zeitlin, Solomon, 208

234
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS

Hebrew Bible 13:14 71 5:36 213

(Old 5:39 178
Isaiah
Testament) 6:1 79
11 178
Daniel 6:9 79, 120
11:9 178
1 137 6:13-14 74
22:19-23 122
7:13 77 6:51-3 74
63:9 220
7:53 189
Deuteronomy 7:59-60 80
Jeremiah
4:9 212
1:5 108 8:1 7
4:12 220 8:2 78
4:36 220 1 Kings 63317)
6:4 30 8:27 74 98
6:7 212 Leviticus 9:1-31 88-9
11:19 212 7:26 115 9:2 85
14:21 218 19:18 30 9:11 6
17:20 62 9:22-5 87
21:23 67, 102 Nehemiah
10 129-31
23:25-6 42 7:6 216
10:2 134
30:11-14 91 11:7 216
10:22 134
30:12 2/ 11:31-6 216
11:26 175
33:2 220 Numbers 12:1-3 218
12:14 65 13 216
Ecclesiastes 13:16 218
Psalms 15 139-40
4:4 92 78:4-6 212 15:1 148
Exodus 115:16 49 16:19 16
21:19 39 1 Samuel, 17:6—7 157
21:24 39 21 40-41 17:28 215
31:14 213 25:3-35 221 18:1—3 217
32:33 111 21 152-5
34:28 105 u Samuel
21:9 202
7:14 77 21:18-21 127
Ezekiel 14:1-20 220
1 217 21:20-2 158
20:16-22 220 21:27-31 156
11:19 192
New Testament 21:38 213
Genesis Acts 21:39 6
3:16 201 2 123-6 21:40 70
9:3 141 2:18-9 202 22 8-9
9:4 141, 142, 2:42-6 117 22:3 6-7
218 2:46 119 22:12 127
9:6 141 5 7, 11, 48, 22:24-9 160,
Hosea 51-7, 77 163

235
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS

22:28 97 2:2 189 11:1 96

23:1-10 165 11:26
John
23:12-15 168 11:15 65
6:53-8 112
23:16 97, 160 11:24 65
6:66 112, 115
23:27 160 13:1 163
7:23 33
23:29 167
16:2 120 Titus
24:1-9 169
19:12 47 1:12 215
24:5 175
2:9 219
24:17 162 Luke
24:26 162 6:29 39 Non-canonical
269 9:19 219 works
13:31 35
Colossians Gospel of
W721 31
1:7 217 Thomas
19 43
114 220
1 Corinthians 22:38 53
Jubilees
1:23 214 23:2 47, 56
7:28-31 218
2:8 186
Mark 11 Maccabees
5:7 110
1:43 40 3:4 216
7:1-11 198
2:23-8 40-2
7:4 202 Mishnah
2:27 34
7:20-2 219 Avot
3:6 33, 34
8 149 4:17 192
6:15 219
9:20-2 151, 156 5:23 212
7:13 214
10:4 7/, 116 Bava Qamma
7:19 40
10:18 1/6 8:33 129
2:5 214
11:23-30 112 Bava Metzi’a
10:25 44
11:30 116 7:2 42
12:18-27 35
14:34—5 201 Eduyot
12:28-34 30
15:5 22] 15:27
14:22-4 111
15:33 215 Horayot
14:59 75
15:55 71 3:8 212
14:60—-4 76
16:1—4 16] Ketuvot
Matthew 5:6 22]
Corinthians
4:17 31 Sanhedrin
4:4 186
5 40 6:4 214
11:25 161
5:19 173 Sukkah
11:32-3 87
7:3 44 4:9 212
12:2-3 107
12:14 33
Ephesians Tosefta
16:14 219
5:33 202 Avodah Zarah
16:15-19 12]
6:5 219 8:6 218
21:33-43 173
Bava Metzi’a
22:34-40 30
Galatians 8:26 213
23 128
1:10-17 103 Sanhedrin
23:33-6 173
1:15 108 9:5 214
27:24 47
1:16 106 Sukkah
27:25 205
2:11—4 132 31212
27:26 173
2:24 220
3:10-12 9/ Philippians Other Jewish
3:13 67 3:5 6, 96 Writings
3:14 95 Canticles
Romans Rabbah
3:19-20 188
3:19 220 1:2 220
3:28 200
5:10 65 Derekh Eretz
4:9 193
5:11 214 5:17 65 Zutta
7:1-6 68-9 1 217
6:17 107
7:14-8:1 90 Ecclesiastes
Hebrews 8:38 186 Rabbah

236
 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS

4:4 92 74a 213 Biblical

Genesis Rabbah Shabbat Antiquities
24:7 213 3la 2/2 (Pseudo-
33 110 Sukkah Philo)
33:3 216 43b 212 12c 215
91:3 219 Yevamot 13a 215
Leviticus 24b 218 Epiphanius,
Rabbah Yoma Panarion
4:5 22] 28 219
85b 213
30.16. 6-9 182
Sifra
Eusebius,
89b 213 Josephus
Ecclesiastical
Yalqut Shimoni Antiquities History
ul, 367 217 xiii. 294 2/2 un. 23:4-18 218
xiii. 372 2/2 mi. 5:2-3 219
Babylonian Talmud xv. 136 220 Iv. 8 216
Bava Metzi’a xvii. 41 2/2 Irenaeus,
59b 2/2 xix. 294 2/9 Adversus
Berakhot xx. 97 213 Haereses
13b 2/2 xx. 167 213 1. xxvi. 1 2/79
16b 216 xx. 169 2/9 Pseudo-
17a 213 Clementine
Hagigah 197-203 Recognitions
14b 2/7 218 i. 70 86
Menahot Quran
War
96a 213 Sura
uu. 261-3 2/9
Sanhedrin 37:100-11
46b 2/4 Other writings 220

237
 | EE
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 ~

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_
(continued from front flap)

Ebionite sect was really a continuation of

the “Jewish Christianity” against which
Paul had rebelled.
In progressing from failed rabbinical
student to self-appointed apostle,
Maccoby’s Paul displays the wiliness
and, often, the unscrupulousness of a
picaresque hero. Yet Maccoby grants
Paul a rich, indeed mythmaking, reli-
gious imagination.
As exciting in its revelations as it is
exacting in its methods, The Mythmaker
is essential reading for anyone interested
in the problematic historical origins of
Christianity.

BARNES
& NOBLE
BOO KS
NEW YORK
MA can now begin to see why Paul, a shrewd man, had done
such an apparently foolish thing as to go to Jerusalem at this
point in his life. Jerusalem was for hima hornets nest: he was in dan-
ger from enemies on all sides: from the Jewish Christians who were
incensed at reports of his strange and idolatrous teachings about
Jesus, and also, as we shall see, from his former associates, the High
Priest’s party, at the other end ofthe politico-religious spectrum.
—from “The Trial of Paul” in The Mythmaker

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