Re "Paul’s entire authority rests on Jesus skipping the men he’d spent his ministry training and appearing in secret to a thirteenth, unconnected man, handing him new instructions and leaving the original disciples in the dark to spread a wrong form of Christianity until Paul showed up to correct them."
Which would make Jesus the dumbest god on record. Tale a troop of disciples on the road, teach them up, but teach them the wrong things, so a super secret apostle can teach the right things ... against all of the resistance created by the disciples who actually saw, lived, heard, was instructed by the god itself.
Thank you for lobbing an objection right over Tanner's head.
The authors who claim in their writings that they did not understand what was happening the whole time were not the real authors. Obviously. But we still need to believe they were because all of the notable scholars are apologists and willing to pretend. Tanner has yet to figure this out.
I really appreciate writing that makes us think and question a status quo whose consistent practice in America led to many of Paul's followers to elect a pedophile braggart to the highest office. Reading Paul, I am struk by the his level of self pity and importance, something absent in Jesus.
Thanks for this. The part that seems unclear to me, how would Paul, who also happened to be a Roman citizen, have been granted authority to persecute anyone?
Paul was connected socially to Herod's family in addition to being a Roman citizen. When Paul was summoned to Antioch to join an already-existing movement, a leader already there was Manaen, the foster brother of Herod Antipas - those two raised together in Rome.
Joanna was the wife of Chuza, the manager of the household of Herod Antipas. She and her associate Mary Magdalene were financiers of Jesus's ministry, we are told, and also eyewitnesses to the resurrection which (in Christian myth) broke the Covenant of Moses, which the real disciples of Jesus continued to follow.
Rome appointed Herodians as client rulers, tasked with suppressing a Torah-nationalist insurgency, which roughly describes the Baptist/Jesus/James/Peter group. So we see an alliance of zealous Jews in conflict with Herod, and an alliance opposed to them and connected to Herod. This latter group includes Paul.
Persecution is just one way to suppress rebellion. The pen being mightier than the sword was known well before Shakespeare's time. Paul's conversion was to oppositional rhetoric, and he joined a Torah-lax Jewish group that was socially attached to Herod and collectively opposed to the Torah-zealous Jesus/James/Peter group.
Whether in the employ of Herod Agrippa II or the Sanhedrin, Paul would've had no authority to do anything in Damascus, the Roman capital of Syria. The name 'Damascus' (a cipher?) is, however, closely connected to the Ebionite community of Qumran.
The "real" disciples of Jesus continued to follow their law because they were (wait for it), Jews. Paul never told Jews not to follow their law. What he said was going through the motions of the Levitical law ("works of the law") wouldn't justify them -- i.e., place them in God's family.
Paul was going to synagogues and teaching a ritual with unclean foods, but only to the non-Jews who were at the synagogue? And the pious Jews there said, that's fine as long as Paul does not teach apostasy to any Jews here in the synagogue?
Was Crispus, the leader of the synagogue in Corinth, Jewish prior to Paul baptizing him? I think Crispus was definitely Jewish.
I didn't read much of the linked article. There are two resurrection paradigms - 1) a reward for strict Torah observance, and 2) symbolized by a ritual that violates Torah. Each must be accounted for separately because participating in the newly concocted resurrection paradigm requires violating the requirements needed for earning the old one. Paul taught Jewish dietary apostasy in synagogues - and that the Covenant with Moses was broken.
About 90 CE, Gamaliel II forbade people like Paul (who was dead then) from continuing to enter synagogues. The Birkat ha-Minim is a curse-prayer used to address this situation.
Oh? Can you please supply the evidence you are using to support your conclusion that Paul was “teaching a ritual with unclean foods” to Jews? I don’t find that, unless you’re referring to the Peter in Antioch thing. The lesson for Peter was that kashrut had been overtaken God’s New Covenant.
Or are you disputing that 1st century synagogues in the Diaspora were full of “God-fearers”, which of course they were? And to what are you referring when you charge that a “resurrection paradigm” is symbolized by “a ritual that violates Torah”?
FWIW, in my experience most people that complain about Paul do so on the basis of an inferred history, focusing on their (and their teachers’) interpretations of the extent to which Paul either violated Torah himself, or disputed against those who sought to maintain its adherence. So, they construct their circumstantial case against his behavior without ever actually trying to understand what he was teaching; to recognize that he wasn’t guiding a sect of the first covenant observance but its revolution.
If a guy was dead and then isn’t, you kind of have to stop and rethink things.
If the resurrection story is a myth, then OK, you can complain about Paul’s apostacy against food laws, amongst many others. But if it wasn’t (or you’re at least willing to entertain the notion that it wasn’t), then and only then can you make sense of his profound kerygma particularly in Romans and Galatians.
It is my own (so far circumstantial) case that all of the Levitical Torah was a scribal invention and deception. You can’t credibly author it in the 6th century BC, recording conversations between Moses and God, when Moses had been dead for 800 years. But that’s the shtick. Oh, that plus the Pharisaic rabbis deciding in the 2nd century CE to finally write down what God actually told Moses that he didn’t write down! To say this strains credulity is beyond understatement. I think it is fascinating how you can pull off something like this amongst a population that is substantially illiterate (90%?), and the ones that aren’t know Greek, not Hebrew. They believed (then as now) what they were told and bought (as they had been for a couple of centuries) the whole “Law of Moses” cover story, but even this Halakhah le Moshe mi Sinai — הֲלָכָה לְמֹשֶׁה מִסִּינַי. Here’s a case for my blasphemy: https://saludovencedores.com/2026/07/04/how-judaism-was-subverted/
"Can you please supply the evidence you are using to support your conclusion that Paul was “teaching a ritual with unclean foods” to Jews?"
You are very familiar with the unclean foods Paul taught. "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread..."
The bread represents human flesh. The wine represents human blood. It no longer surprises me when Christians (or others) cannot see that these are unclean foods to orthodox Jews. The life is in the blood is commonly known, and kosher law requires its removal from meat. Eleazar accepted martyrdom rather than even pretend to eat pork, so the symbolism matters as much as the substance.
Oh, but Jesus rose and that changed things! It did not change anything for the disciples of Jesus who stuck with Torah. Peter, kill and eat! No lord, nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. This was after "(thus Jesus declared all foods clean)" which the disciples clearly were not aware of. They told Paul not to teach blood or the strangled thing. Even if strangled thing = crucified man (died of asphyxiation) is too far a stretch for you, there is still the leaders at Jerusalem's prohibition of Paul teaching blood. Did they not know that Paul taught blood? That is a very huge stretch.
'The Jerusalem Decree is really about circumcision' to bald-faced liars only. It doesn't mention it. The disciples never abandoned Torah. Jews who later became known as Christian did - by very publicly breaking the Mosaic Covenant. Apostasy!
Claiming God-fearers (whom we cannot clearly define) were ALL non-Jewish people only tries to fill the huge demographic gap that is created by apologists when they pretend that all Jews everywhere were zealous for Torah, while the NT is mainly about Jews who were not, were in conflict with Jews who were very insistent upon it, and those insistent Jews fought three wars against Rome and the Jews who sided with Rome.
Do you think the disciples of Jesus (real ones) accepted the brand new and significantly different meaning of resurrection that made its debut in the NT, and abandoned the traditional Maccabees' version, when they never abandoned Torah?
Paul also taught eating of meat sacrificed to idols - but try not to piss off any of the *pious* Jews. Btw I am a huge fan of Paul. Tanner, our gracious host, is not.
Your ("the bread represents human flesh", "the wine represents human blood") is a secular belief not held by many, if not the majority, of Christians. Both were elements of nearly all 1st century meals. So, it is unsurprising that that habit engaged daily would be chosen as the context for the establishment of memorials of Christ -- opportunities to reflect on his teachings, death, and resurrection. This is by far the prevalent Protestant view.
With all due respect, the rest of your theory of Paul "teaching blood" is nothing if not grasping at grammatical straws. "Teaching" blood. He had to have been teaching it to gentiles (worse, Jews) in order for the Ebyonim in Jerusalem to ban it? I don't think so.
"The Jerusalem Decree is really about circumcision"? I don't know what you're talking about.
Do I think the "real" disciples of Jesus accepted the "new" meaning of resurrection? Yes, I do. Particularly those who talked with the one resurrected.
Back to the kashrut stuff. I'm sorry but I just have a real hard time taking any of that Levitical stuff seriously. Judaism in its near-current cultural form didn't even begin until the 2nd century BC. Read Adler's "The Origins of Judaism". Up until that time/the time of the Hasmoneans, it never existed. Israel simply worshipped like all the others in their neighborhood -- on alters on high places. The Law of Moses (whatever that was at the time) was, we're told, publicly given to the illiterate population exactly twice: once by Josiah (late 8th century BC, if true) and once by Ezra (5th century BC, if true). Aside from those two readings, Israelites knew nothing about it nor did they ever live as if they knew anything about it. The historical data indicates that Judaism in the sense we think of it today didn't exist as a cultural practice in Judah or anywhere else until the 1st century BC-1st century AD.
That being the case, it's hysterical that we, today, should turn on anyone from that day (in this case Paul -- mid-first century) for his perceived violations of the ageless Law of Moses, a set of scrolls the Sadducees only began pushing as the basis for reforms 100 years before Paul was born.
"The [earliest followers of Jesus (from context)] movement was also taking in gentiles without asking them to keep the Law, which meant uncircumcised men eating at the same table."
Mr. Tanner, you are so frickin' naive!
Oh, was it the original Jesus movement that was violating the Law by letting non-Jews join and not requiring them to obey Torah? Because that's what we are told *in propaganda* written by Paul and his Torah-violating associates? It never even says that. No, it was Paul and his associates who were teaching the breaking of Jewish Law, especially by consuming two Torah-unclean foods - the body and blood of the crucified leader of the group that emphatically insisted on diligently obeying the Law. The original disciples remained zealously Torah observant all the way to the end of the story.
James was called a lifelong Nazarite who never ate even a grape or raisin because that was too close to wine, an intoxicating beverage. And he never ate any meat. Please write an article telling us how you think James felt about symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of his martyred brother without even noticing any of the details of that ritual commemoration. Two unclean foods, one not allowed to a Nazarite even dropping the symbolism - plus it's his brother!
Paul claimed he was granted authority to go to Damascus to root out the insurrectionist Way. Paul was a Roman citizen whom we are told was rescued by 470 Roman soldiers (70 mounted, and horses also provided for Paul and his entourage) that time the Jerusalem leaders told Paul not to teach 'blood' or 'the strangled thing' (the Eucharist) which Paul definitely did teach. Rome could have authorized Paul for his police activity in Roman-ruled Damascus, but Judean religious leaders could not. And Paul did successfully cause mustering of Roman troops at least once.
Tanner, I think you have been an aggregator of other people's muddled (because apologetic) research long enough and you should be doing your own research by now. Please write an article about James reverently eating and drinking his martyred brother's body. How did that make James feel is the human interest angle I would go for if I wrote it. (Hint: It was James's brother, not James, who was allegedly a zombie. And I think clear-thinking James got pissed as hell when he first heard Paul's teaching about the bread and wine.)
Thanks, that is a really interesting point, and news to the ignorant me. Please could you recommend something I could read to learn more about James and his refusal to take this early version of the eucharist etc?
I write as Russellonius on Medium. Nobody else is saying what I'm saying and that's why Tanner does not engage. People never discover anything new apparently.
The Didache has a sacred meal but does not have the blood apostasy. Gnostic texts don't either. Revelation has 'Jesus followers' in opposition to teachers in the seven churches who teach eating meat sacrificed to idols like Paul did (Romans & 1 Cor) and considers drinking blood to be a curse, according to ancient tradition. James was the real leader, not Peter, but James enters the NT story late. Little detail is known about him outside of Hegessippus via Eusebius who gave the Nazarite info. Josephus calls James the brother of Jesus.
The disciples claimed resurrection according to the 200 year-old tradition because Jesus lived by strict Torah and died a martyr. In my view. I don't know why they wouldn't. The NT version is a newly concocted and radically different meaning of resurrection. A historical critic would want to know who desired this outcome and had the means to carry it out.
I'm trying to help Tanner out because I don't like writing much myself. Take wings, Tanner! Did Paul really get info from Jesus or could he have been lying?
Paul’s resume is wild: persecuted the church, never met Jesus before the crucifixion, then announced that Jesus had privately appointed him to correct the people who actually did. And Christianity said, “Sounds legitimate. Give him half the New Testament.” I can believe Paul sincerely changed. What I can’t understand is why his private vision became a theological override button. Acts polishing him into Darth Vader on the Damascus road only improves the sales pitch: the worse the villain, the bigger the conversion, and the less anyone asks who authorized the sequel.
I think you received a lot more flack than you deserved. Not all extracanonical sources about James, Jesus and Paul are the final arbiters of the historicity of your comments.
Thanks for your speedy and detailed reply. I've started reading your stuff on Medium and downloaded the Didache (sadly in English) and you've given me enough above to start finding out for myself.
As with most closet Catholics. Paul is the devil incarnate, The usurper of Peters power. A false prophet. But since he had done a far better job of spreading the Word as Jesus commanded the "church of Peter" finally accepted him, grudgingly, but still wanted Peter the failure to be the boss. SMH
Re "Paul’s entire authority rests on Jesus skipping the men he’d spent his ministry training and appearing in secret to a thirteenth, unconnected man, handing him new instructions and leaving the original disciples in the dark to spread a wrong form of Christianity until Paul showed up to correct them."
Which would make Jesus the dumbest god on record. Tale a troop of disciples on the road, teach them up, but teach them the wrong things, so a super secret apostle can teach the right things ... against all of the resistance created by the disciples who actually saw, lived, heard, was instructed by the god itself.
Sounds like a recipe for success ... not.
Thank you for lobbing an objection right over Tanner's head.
The authors who claim in their writings that they did not understand what was happening the whole time were not the real authors. Obviously. But we still need to believe they were because all of the notable scholars are apologists and willing to pretend. Tanner has yet to figure this out.
I really appreciate writing that makes us think and question a status quo whose consistent practice in America led to many of Paul's followers to elect a pedophile braggart to the highest office. Reading Paul, I am struk by the his level of self pity and importance, something absent in Jesus.
Thanks for this. The part that seems unclear to me, how would Paul, who also happened to be a Roman citizen, have been granted authority to persecute anyone?
Paul was connected socially to Herod's family in addition to being a Roman citizen. When Paul was summoned to Antioch to join an already-existing movement, a leader already there was Manaen, the foster brother of Herod Antipas - those two raised together in Rome.
Joanna was the wife of Chuza, the manager of the household of Herod Antipas. She and her associate Mary Magdalene were financiers of Jesus's ministry, we are told, and also eyewitnesses to the resurrection which (in Christian myth) broke the Covenant of Moses, which the real disciples of Jesus continued to follow.
Rome appointed Herodians as client rulers, tasked with suppressing a Torah-nationalist insurgency, which roughly describes the Baptist/Jesus/James/Peter group. So we see an alliance of zealous Jews in conflict with Herod, and an alliance opposed to them and connected to Herod. This latter group includes Paul.
Persecution is just one way to suppress rebellion. The pen being mightier than the sword was known well before Shakespeare's time. Paul's conversion was to oppositional rhetoric, and he joined a Torah-lax Jewish group that was socially attached to Herod and collectively opposed to the Torah-zealous Jesus/James/Peter group.
Thanks
Whether in the employ of Herod Agrippa II or the Sanhedrin, Paul would've had no authority to do anything in Damascus, the Roman capital of Syria. The name 'Damascus' (a cipher?) is, however, closely connected to the Ebionite community of Qumran.
The "real" disciples of Jesus continued to follow their law because they were (wait for it), Jews. Paul never told Jews not to follow their law. What he said was going through the motions of the Levitical law ("works of the law") wouldn't justify them -- i.e., place them in God's family.
You might enjoy poking holes in this defense: https://saludovencedores.com/2025/11/11/jesus-in-light-of-paul-in-light-of-jesus/
Paul was going to synagogues and teaching a ritual with unclean foods, but only to the non-Jews who were at the synagogue? And the pious Jews there said, that's fine as long as Paul does not teach apostasy to any Jews here in the synagogue?
Was Crispus, the leader of the synagogue in Corinth, Jewish prior to Paul baptizing him? I think Crispus was definitely Jewish.
I didn't read much of the linked article. There are two resurrection paradigms - 1) a reward for strict Torah observance, and 2) symbolized by a ritual that violates Torah. Each must be accounted for separately because participating in the newly concocted resurrection paradigm requires violating the requirements needed for earning the old one. Paul taught Jewish dietary apostasy in synagogues - and that the Covenant with Moses was broken.
About 90 CE, Gamaliel II forbade people like Paul (who was dead then) from continuing to enter synagogues. The Birkat ha-Minim is a curse-prayer used to address this situation.
Oh? Can you please supply the evidence you are using to support your conclusion that Paul was “teaching a ritual with unclean foods” to Jews? I don’t find that, unless you’re referring to the Peter in Antioch thing. The lesson for Peter was that kashrut had been overtaken God’s New Covenant.
Or are you disputing that 1st century synagogues in the Diaspora were full of “God-fearers”, which of course they were? And to what are you referring when you charge that a “resurrection paradigm” is symbolized by “a ritual that violates Torah”?
FWIW, in my experience most people that complain about Paul do so on the basis of an inferred history, focusing on their (and their teachers’) interpretations of the extent to which Paul either violated Torah himself, or disputed against those who sought to maintain its adherence. So, they construct their circumstantial case against his behavior without ever actually trying to understand what he was teaching; to recognize that he wasn’t guiding a sect of the first covenant observance but its revolution.
If a guy was dead and then isn’t, you kind of have to stop and rethink things.
If the resurrection story is a myth, then OK, you can complain about Paul’s apostacy against food laws, amongst many others. But if it wasn’t (or you’re at least willing to entertain the notion that it wasn’t), then and only then can you make sense of his profound kerygma particularly in Romans and Galatians.
It is my own (so far circumstantial) case that all of the Levitical Torah was a scribal invention and deception. You can’t credibly author it in the 6th century BC, recording conversations between Moses and God, when Moses had been dead for 800 years. But that’s the shtick. Oh, that plus the Pharisaic rabbis deciding in the 2nd century CE to finally write down what God actually told Moses that he didn’t write down! To say this strains credulity is beyond understatement. I think it is fascinating how you can pull off something like this amongst a population that is substantially illiterate (90%?), and the ones that aren’t know Greek, not Hebrew. They believed (then as now) what they were told and bought (as they had been for a couple of centuries) the whole “Law of Moses” cover story, but even this Halakhah le Moshe mi Sinai — הֲלָכָה לְמֹשֶׁה מִסִּינַי. Here’s a case for my blasphemy: https://saludovencedores.com/2026/07/04/how-judaism-was-subverted/
Truly remarkable.
"Can you please supply the evidence you are using to support your conclusion that Paul was “teaching a ritual with unclean foods” to Jews?"
You are very familiar with the unclean foods Paul taught. "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread..."
The bread represents human flesh. The wine represents human blood. It no longer surprises me when Christians (or others) cannot see that these are unclean foods to orthodox Jews. The life is in the blood is commonly known, and kosher law requires its removal from meat. Eleazar accepted martyrdom rather than even pretend to eat pork, so the symbolism matters as much as the substance.
Oh, but Jesus rose and that changed things! It did not change anything for the disciples of Jesus who stuck with Torah. Peter, kill and eat! No lord, nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. This was after "(thus Jesus declared all foods clean)" which the disciples clearly were not aware of. They told Paul not to teach blood or the strangled thing. Even if strangled thing = crucified man (died of asphyxiation) is too far a stretch for you, there is still the leaders at Jerusalem's prohibition of Paul teaching blood. Did they not know that Paul taught blood? That is a very huge stretch.
'The Jerusalem Decree is really about circumcision' to bald-faced liars only. It doesn't mention it. The disciples never abandoned Torah. Jews who later became known as Christian did - by very publicly breaking the Mosaic Covenant. Apostasy!
Claiming God-fearers (whom we cannot clearly define) were ALL non-Jewish people only tries to fill the huge demographic gap that is created by apologists when they pretend that all Jews everywhere were zealous for Torah, while the NT is mainly about Jews who were not, were in conflict with Jews who were very insistent upon it, and those insistent Jews fought three wars against Rome and the Jews who sided with Rome.
Do you think the disciples of Jesus (real ones) accepted the brand new and significantly different meaning of resurrection that made its debut in the NT, and abandoned the traditional Maccabees' version, when they never abandoned Torah?
Paul also taught eating of meat sacrificed to idols - but try not to piss off any of the *pious* Jews. Btw I am a huge fan of Paul. Tanner, our gracious host, is not.
Your ("the bread represents human flesh", "the wine represents human blood") is a secular belief not held by many, if not the majority, of Christians. Both were elements of nearly all 1st century meals. So, it is unsurprising that that habit engaged daily would be chosen as the context for the establishment of memorials of Christ -- opportunities to reflect on his teachings, death, and resurrection. This is by far the prevalent Protestant view.
With all due respect, the rest of your theory of Paul "teaching blood" is nothing if not grasping at grammatical straws. "Teaching" blood. He had to have been teaching it to gentiles (worse, Jews) in order for the Ebyonim in Jerusalem to ban it? I don't think so.
"The Jerusalem Decree is really about circumcision"? I don't know what you're talking about.
Do I think the "real" disciples of Jesus accepted the "new" meaning of resurrection? Yes, I do. Particularly those who talked with the one resurrected.
Back to the kashrut stuff. I'm sorry but I just have a real hard time taking any of that Levitical stuff seriously. Judaism in its near-current cultural form didn't even begin until the 2nd century BC. Read Adler's "The Origins of Judaism". Up until that time/the time of the Hasmoneans, it never existed. Israel simply worshipped like all the others in their neighborhood -- on alters on high places. The Law of Moses (whatever that was at the time) was, we're told, publicly given to the illiterate population exactly twice: once by Josiah (late 8th century BC, if true) and once by Ezra (5th century BC, if true). Aside from those two readings, Israelites knew nothing about it nor did they ever live as if they knew anything about it. The historical data indicates that Judaism in the sense we think of it today didn't exist as a cultural practice in Judah or anywhere else until the 1st century BC-1st century AD.
That being the case, it's hysterical that we, today, should turn on anyone from that day (in this case Paul -- mid-first century) for his perceived violations of the ageless Law of Moses, a set of scrolls the Sadducees only began pushing as the basis for reforms 100 years before Paul was born.
"The [earliest followers of Jesus (from context)] movement was also taking in gentiles without asking them to keep the Law, which meant uncircumcised men eating at the same table."
Mr. Tanner, you are so frickin' naive!
Oh, was it the original Jesus movement that was violating the Law by letting non-Jews join and not requiring them to obey Torah? Because that's what we are told *in propaganda* written by Paul and his Torah-violating associates? It never even says that. No, it was Paul and his associates who were teaching the breaking of Jewish Law, especially by consuming two Torah-unclean foods - the body and blood of the crucified leader of the group that emphatically insisted on diligently obeying the Law. The original disciples remained zealously Torah observant all the way to the end of the story.
James was called a lifelong Nazarite who never ate even a grape or raisin because that was too close to wine, an intoxicating beverage. And he never ate any meat. Please write an article telling us how you think James felt about symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of his martyred brother without even noticing any of the details of that ritual commemoration. Two unclean foods, one not allowed to a Nazarite even dropping the symbolism - plus it's his brother!
Paul claimed he was granted authority to go to Damascus to root out the insurrectionist Way. Paul was a Roman citizen whom we are told was rescued by 470 Roman soldiers (70 mounted, and horses also provided for Paul and his entourage) that time the Jerusalem leaders told Paul not to teach 'blood' or 'the strangled thing' (the Eucharist) which Paul definitely did teach. Rome could have authorized Paul for his police activity in Roman-ruled Damascus, but Judean religious leaders could not. And Paul did successfully cause mustering of Roman troops at least once.
Tanner, I think you have been an aggregator of other people's muddled (because apologetic) research long enough and you should be doing your own research by now. Please write an article about James reverently eating and drinking his martyred brother's body. How did that make James feel is the human interest angle I would go for if I wrote it. (Hint: It was James's brother, not James, who was allegedly a zombie. And I think clear-thinking James got pissed as hell when he first heard Paul's teaching about the bread and wine.)
Thanks, that is a really interesting point, and news to the ignorant me. Please could you recommend something I could read to learn more about James and his refusal to take this early version of the eucharist etc?
Thanks, Paul
I write as Russellonius on Medium. Nobody else is saying what I'm saying and that's why Tanner does not engage. People never discover anything new apparently.
The Didache has a sacred meal but does not have the blood apostasy. Gnostic texts don't either. Revelation has 'Jesus followers' in opposition to teachers in the seven churches who teach eating meat sacrificed to idols like Paul did (Romans & 1 Cor) and considers drinking blood to be a curse, according to ancient tradition. James was the real leader, not Peter, but James enters the NT story late. Little detail is known about him outside of Hegessippus via Eusebius who gave the Nazarite info. Josephus calls James the brother of Jesus.
The disciples claimed resurrection according to the 200 year-old tradition because Jesus lived by strict Torah and died a martyr. In my view. I don't know why they wouldn't. The NT version is a newly concocted and radically different meaning of resurrection. A historical critic would want to know who desired this outcome and had the means to carry it out.
I'm trying to help Tanner out because I don't like writing much myself. Take wings, Tanner! Did Paul really get info from Jesus or could he have been lying?
What was the motivation behind Act's revisionism of Paul's story?
Paul’s resume is wild: persecuted the church, never met Jesus before the crucifixion, then announced that Jesus had privately appointed him to correct the people who actually did. And Christianity said, “Sounds legitimate. Give him half the New Testament.” I can believe Paul sincerely changed. What I can’t understand is why his private vision became a theological override button. Acts polishing him into Darth Vader on the Damascus road only improves the sales pitch: the worse the villain, the bigger the conversion, and the less anyone asks who authorized the sequel.
It makes sense if the Pauline & Petrine Jesus sects were bitter rivals, with Acts a Catholicizing capture, dehorning, & taming of the Paul legacy.
Thanks for writing on Paul. I am very interested in him and would love to understand the full truth of him and his motives.
I think you received a lot more flack than you deserved. Not all extracanonical sources about James, Jesus and Paul are the final arbiters of the historicity of your comments.
Thanks for your speedy and detailed reply. I've started reading your stuff on Medium and downloaded the Didache (sadly in English) and you've given me enough above to start finding out for myself.
Best wishes and Thanks, Paul
As with most closet Catholics. Paul is the devil incarnate, The usurper of Peters power. A false prophet. But since he had done a far better job of spreading the Word as Jesus commanded the "church of Peter" finally accepted him, grudgingly, but still wanted Peter the failure to be the boss. SMH