Another excellent article, thanks. Regarding your paragraph on the letter of James. This is a topic I am especially interested in. I have read the argument that while James is the most Jewish part of the New Testament, it is at least in part Pauline and was unlikely to have been written by him. A couple of items raised are its sophisticated Koine Greek, and the fact that when it discusses the law, circumcision and dietary law are never mentioned. The parts of the law that are mentioned are those that Acts (I think?) consider to be acceptable for Christians.
I would love an article of the letter of James but probably too much in the weeds for most readers.
Thanks! The scholars say the Greek is too polished for a Galilean carpenter's brother, and the law stuff is the real tell: no circumcision, no kashrut, no Sabbath, just the ethical bits that happen to match the Acts 15 compromise. For the guy supposedly leading the faction Paul fought with in Galatians 2 over exactly those issues, that silence says a lot.
My guess is it's real early Jewish-Christian material that got rewritten later by someone with better Greek, slapped with James's name because it still carried weight.
And don't sell your readers short — the James/Paul split is one of the best ways to show that early Christianity wasn't one thing. I'll put it on the list.
If you sell people what they are already buying, sales are assured.
Paul taught it was the end-times because that idea was already selling. The end times were coming soon, according to Torah-zealous Jewish apocalypticists, because the Jewish nation was not adequately obeying Torah. The nation had been thoroughly contaminated by Roman infringement. So they took up arms in apocalyptic fervor in response.
This is not what Paul taught. Roman-citizen Paul taught that Jews no longer needed to obey Torah. Non-Jews either but this is peripheral to the main dispute.
Apologists make Paul's relaxation of Torah requirements for Jews seem to disappear by claiming that only non-Jews were involved in this religious dispute between Jews. No Jew ever insisted that non-Jews needed to fully obey Torah. People naively read Paul's propaganda as if it is straight reporting. Donald Trump also sells end-times rhetoric to his MAGA base because that's what they are buying, not because Trump seriously believes it himself. Rhetoric can be used to manipulate.
Why couldn't Paul have been manipulating existing sentiment when we can plainly see that Donald Trump does that? Diasporan Jews were lax in Torah observance already before Paul publicized a completely new method for their full inclusion - along with the non-Jews some Jews were already married to in violation of Torah.
"Resurrection is a reward for strict Torah observance," said the conservative Jew. "No, it isn't," said Paul. "Resurrection - in its newly changed meaning - is why Jews no longer need to obey Torah." That's Paul's story. 'Jews could not see any value in eternal life so Paul desperately tried to sell it to non-Jews so it would not go waste' is the Christian apologetic version of the same story.
Apocalyptic sentiment arises - across cultures - when society has changed so much that indigenous people who bemoan those changes realize that no natural force could set things right again, the way things had been before. So they imagine a supernatural force intervening to restore past conditions.
Paul had no reason to believe this. Paul was a Roman citizen and therefore represented the foreign encroachment. Paul had an extensive social network that included the ruling class - Manaen in Antioch when he was first called, and the nephew and two nieces of Herodias to whom he offered salvation through Christ. Paul did not know the disciples.
Apocalyptic fervor among Jews who revered Torah was present in the group that included James and Peter. Paul interfaced with the disciples of Jesus by telling them that Paul's group symbolically drank the blood and ate the flesh of their former leader.
These Eucharistic elements are not kashrut, which everyone would have noticed immediately. Paul's teaching was deliberately provocative and represented not only the incursion of foreign influence but also the undermining of native tradition. Behaving in a way that inflames apocalyptic sentiment is not consistent with feeling that sentiment oneself.
Circumcision is not mentioned in the Jerusalem Decree, but both elements of the Eucharist are - blood and the strangled (asphyxiated) thing. Jesus died by asphyxiation. Paul intentionally escalated an existing conflict. Apologists claim that things got smoothed over between these opposed groups by agreement that non-Jews did not need to be circumcised, which was already the rule.
Oddly, this makes me think more forgivingly of Paul, who I generally think of as a bit of a sh&thead trying to hijack early christianity by stripping out the hard-to-sell bits; sort of like a car salesman desperately trying to make the quarterly numbers necessary for the early church to spread.
If we interpret it as genuine "This plane is going down, right now" then maybe your advice does need to be stripped down to "put on this parachute, count to 5 after you jump and pull this cord real hard" - you'll get injuries that better training would have prevented, but there's just no time for that
I very much enjoy your writings, and I just caught up with the article below. Somehow I missed reading it at the time.
I have always been interested in Paul and suspected that he had ulterior motives, but what you have written here makes so much sense of his letters. However, what I still wonder about are his claims that he spoke in the spirit with Christ and was called up to heaven on one occasion, etc. If he'd spoken with the risen Christ in the spirit, surely he would have known the timeline for His return was not so imminent. What do you make of these claims? And, in fact, his whole apparently miraculous conversion? It is very difficult to accept them at face value. Was he inventing these mystical happenings to impress people so they would listen to his message, or was he delusional? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thank you for your always interesting and revelatory articles.
A helpful, clear-eyed view, Tanner. Thank you.
Thank you, Steven!
Another excellent article, thanks. Regarding your paragraph on the letter of James. This is a topic I am especially interested in. I have read the argument that while James is the most Jewish part of the New Testament, it is at least in part Pauline and was unlikely to have been written by him. A couple of items raised are its sophisticated Koine Greek, and the fact that when it discusses the law, circumcision and dietary law are never mentioned. The parts of the law that are mentioned are those that Acts (I think?) consider to be acceptable for Christians.
I would love an article of the letter of James but probably too much in the weeds for most readers.
Thanks! The scholars say the Greek is too polished for a Galilean carpenter's brother, and the law stuff is the real tell: no circumcision, no kashrut, no Sabbath, just the ethical bits that happen to match the Acts 15 compromise. For the guy supposedly leading the faction Paul fought with in Galatians 2 over exactly those issues, that silence says a lot.
My guess is it's real early Jewish-Christian material that got rewritten later by someone with better Greek, slapped with James's name because it still carried weight.
And don't sell your readers short — the James/Paul split is one of the best ways to show that early Christianity wasn't one thing. I'll put it on the list.
If you sell people what they are already buying, sales are assured.
Paul taught it was the end-times because that idea was already selling. The end times were coming soon, according to Torah-zealous Jewish apocalypticists, because the Jewish nation was not adequately obeying Torah. The nation had been thoroughly contaminated by Roman infringement. So they took up arms in apocalyptic fervor in response.
This is not what Paul taught. Roman-citizen Paul taught that Jews no longer needed to obey Torah. Non-Jews either but this is peripheral to the main dispute.
Apologists make Paul's relaxation of Torah requirements for Jews seem to disappear by claiming that only non-Jews were involved in this religious dispute between Jews. No Jew ever insisted that non-Jews needed to fully obey Torah. People naively read Paul's propaganda as if it is straight reporting. Donald Trump also sells end-times rhetoric to his MAGA base because that's what they are buying, not because Trump seriously believes it himself. Rhetoric can be used to manipulate.
Why couldn't Paul have been manipulating existing sentiment when we can plainly see that Donald Trump does that? Diasporan Jews were lax in Torah observance already before Paul publicized a completely new method for their full inclusion - along with the non-Jews some Jews were already married to in violation of Torah.
"Resurrection is a reward for strict Torah observance," said the conservative Jew. "No, it isn't," said Paul. "Resurrection - in its newly changed meaning - is why Jews no longer need to obey Torah." That's Paul's story. 'Jews could not see any value in eternal life so Paul desperately tried to sell it to non-Jews so it would not go waste' is the Christian apologetic version of the same story.
Thanks for sharing this.
Don’t you think Paul genuinely believed end of times was coming?
Apocalyptic sentiment arises - across cultures - when society has changed so much that indigenous people who bemoan those changes realize that no natural force could set things right again, the way things had been before. So they imagine a supernatural force intervening to restore past conditions.
Paul had no reason to believe this. Paul was a Roman citizen and therefore represented the foreign encroachment. Paul had an extensive social network that included the ruling class - Manaen in Antioch when he was first called, and the nephew and two nieces of Herodias to whom he offered salvation through Christ. Paul did not know the disciples.
Apocalyptic fervor among Jews who revered Torah was present in the group that included James and Peter. Paul interfaced with the disciples of Jesus by telling them that Paul's group symbolically drank the blood and ate the flesh of their former leader.
These Eucharistic elements are not kashrut, which everyone would have noticed immediately. Paul's teaching was deliberately provocative and represented not only the incursion of foreign influence but also the undermining of native tradition. Behaving in a way that inflames apocalyptic sentiment is not consistent with feeling that sentiment oneself.
Circumcision is not mentioned in the Jerusalem Decree, but both elements of the Eucharist are - blood and the strangled (asphyxiated) thing. Jesus died by asphyxiation. Paul intentionally escalated an existing conflict. Apologists claim that things got smoothed over between these opposed groups by agreement that non-Jews did not need to be circumcised, which was already the rule.
Oddly, this makes me think more forgivingly of Paul, who I generally think of as a bit of a sh&thead trying to hijack early christianity by stripping out the hard-to-sell bits; sort of like a car salesman desperately trying to make the quarterly numbers necessary for the early church to spread.
If we interpret it as genuine "This plane is going down, right now" then maybe your advice does need to be stripped down to "put on this parachute, count to 5 after you jump and pull this cord real hard" - you'll get injuries that better training would have prevented, but there's just no time for that
Ray Kolle 29 July
I very much enjoy your writings, and I just caught up with the article below. Somehow I missed reading it at the time.
I have always been interested in Paul and suspected that he had ulterior motives, but what you have written here makes so much sense of his letters. However, what I still wonder about are his claims that he spoke in the spirit with Christ and was called up to heaven on one occasion, etc. If he'd spoken with the risen Christ in the spirit, surely he would have known the timeline for His return was not so imminent. What do you make of these claims? And, in fact, his whole apparently miraculous conversion? It is very difficult to accept them at face value. Was he inventing these mystical happenings to impress people so they would listen to his message, or was he delusional? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thank you for your always interesting and revelatory articles.