 |
       |
|
   |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
        |
 WAS ST PAUL THE REAL FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY? This is seriously maintained by some people. Their argument is not that Jesus didn't exist, or that Paul wrote the Gospels: the point is that Paul took over the reins of Christianity after Jesus, and – allegedly – his writings took it in a very different direction to what Jesus taught in the Gospels. Here's the evidence... 1. In all Paul's writings (there are 13 of his letters in the New Testament, though some may not have been by him) there is virtually no information about Jesus's life, apart from his death and resurrection. Wasn't Paul interested in these stories? 2. Paul seems to repeat astonishingly little of Jesus' teachings. There are a handful of direct quotes, but little else. No parables, no Lord's Prayer, none of those pithy sayings. 3. The kingdom of God is the one central theme of Jesus' preaching, but it gets much less of an airing in Paul. 4. Paul never followed Jesus while he was alive, but was converted by a vision of the risen Christ. Did he lack knowledge of – or interest in – the life of Jesus? 5. No longer having to follow the Jewish Law was a major theme of Paul's letters, but not something Jesus said much about. People have tried various ways of explaining this: 1. Paul was a missionary and his writings are merely follow up letters to his converts. This means he has already told them all about Jesus, and he doesn't need to repeat himself. 2. Not having first-hand knowledge of Jesus, he left all that stuff to people who did. 3. For a Jew, the crucifixion of God's Messiah was one of the most offensive ideas imaginable, and "the age to come" one of the most glorious hopes. Once Paul accepted that the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah was God's astounding way of bringing in that new age, here and now, this fact dwarfed everything else in the life of Jesus into relative insignificance. 4. He was a bit sensitive about not having been an original follower of Jesus, so he put all his stress on Jesus the risen Lord, than Jesus the Jewish teacher. 5. Jesus was a Jewish teacher, teaching and leading Jews in Palestine. Paul, though also Jewish, travelled the Roman world, preaching to and organising both Jews and Gentiles. This difference in situation meant that Paul had to interpret Jesus's teachings considerably, even if he stayed true to the heart of them. In balance, it's hard to deny that Christianity took a significant change of direction under St Paul, but there's no reason this was not a legitimate development of what Jesus himself began. More questions about Jesus' teaching |
Picture: 19th-century Bible illustration. |
|
|
|
|
|
|