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  • From: "Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul's persecution of the Church
  • Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 19:12:27 -0400


Robert,

What they teach in medical school is that the invention of anesthesia by
surgeon John Collins Warren (and his assistant dentist W.T.G. Morton) in
1846 revolutionized medicine, not only because it made surgery vastly less
hellish for patients, but because it enabled surgeons to take time and be
careful, without their having to worry that the patient would break his
straps and cause a catastrophic surgical error.

Although I have not been able to locate detailed descriptions of surgical
practise in the First Century, I believe that wine was the standard
anesthetic then used, and that howls and screams from the drunk patient were
taken for granted as unavoidable.

Furthermore, even though they didn't know back then just why infection
sometimes leading to death did often result--they had no idea of bacteria
and viruses--they did know that any "cutting of the body" (Philippians 3:2)
was extremely dangerous to life and limb.

Paul's promise to his converts was that, once they died, they would, by
God's grace, go to heaven rather than to hell, even despite their sins. All
that he asked from his converts as a demonstration of their meriting this
heavenly afterlife, was a dunking in water, a baptism--far less onerous than
a medical operation (on the penis, no less!), and vastly safer.

It sounded like an attractive deal to, presumably, thousands of men, which
is why Paul was so remarkably successful at selling his new faith.

Circumcision would have upped this price stratospherically, and, moreover,
it hadn't been part of Paul's deal that he had initially offered these men
when they had agreed to join.

These are the reasons why Paul, at the end of Galatians 2:2, and also James
in Acts 15:19, decided that it would be placing too heavy a burden upon
these "converts" to require them to submit themselves to the
covenant-forming commandment, Genesis 17:14, and why Paul even referred to
this issue as one that could destroy what he had spent more than a decade
building.

At the incident retold by Paul (heavily slanted) in Galatians 2:11-16, in
which he describes what had originally led him to pronounce for the first
time in or around 50 CE (in the incident recounted at 2:11-16) his new
gospel of Christ superseding the Jewish covenant as the pathway to
salvation, Paul, of course, could not openly admit that he was rejecting the
covenant because he rejected circumcision rather than the other way around
as he claimed, but it seems to me that that was pretty clearly the case,
especially when you consider how much he (admitted in 2:2 he) had at stake
in this circumcision-matter.

Having to choose between Jesus and success, Paul chose success, and thus,
Christianity was created, at that incident Paul recounts in Galatians
2:11-21. In 2:16-21, he gives his argument, in accord with his own rule
stated in Romans 3:4-7 that one may lie in the service of God, and of 1
Corinthians 9:22-27, that all that matters is winning. He won, and
Christianity is the result..

Best,

Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net
.
----- Original Message -----
From: <RSBrenchley AT aol.com>
To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 5:40 PM
Subject: [corpus-paul] Re: Paul's persecution of the Church


> > In Galatians 2:2, Paul said that what was at stake for him in this
conflict
> > was nothing less than the success or failure of his life's work since
his
> > conversion to this Jewish sect 17 years earlier. His life's work,
according
> > to Galatians 2:8, was to convert as many Gentiles as possible. After 17
> > years of his evangelizing, he probably had thousands of uncircumcised
adult
> > male Gentiles as "converts," but this was, after all, a Jewish sect up
to
> > that point, and the covenant-forming commandment, Genesis 17:14,
required
> > all of these men to become circumcised. Inasmuch as there did not at
that
> > time exist anaesthesia, nor antibiotics, this would have required
> subjecting
> > all of these men to an excruciating, and also dangerous, elective
medical
> > operation. In Philippians 3:2, Paul called it cutting into the body,
and
> > said that only dogs would demand that this be done to his men.
>
> I'm not sure about the point regarding anaesthetics and antibiotics;
does
> anyone know anything about medicine in the ancient Mediterranean? Opiates
> must have been known in the ancient world; were they ever used as
> anaesthetics? The healing properties of honey, which contains an enzyme
which
> produces small quantities of hydrogen peroxide, and gives it an antiseptic
> quality, were known in the ancient world. There is a modern article on
honey
> for healing at http://www.beekeeping.co.nz/info/molan.htm Propolis, which
is
> a mixture of plant resins collected by bees and used to plaster the inside
of
> the nest cavity, is a natural antibiotic which was known in the ancient
> world, but as far as I know there's no actual proof of healing use. Most
of
> the work on it has been done in Eastern Europe, and I don't unfortunately
> have any convenient English references.
>
> Given the comment on 'disguising the marks of circumcision' in 1
> Maccabees 1:16, which I assume refer to some form of surgery, and the
> existence of Jewish proselytes, there must have been established
procedures
> for surgery on the adult penis, however painful and unpleasant, and there
> must have been reasonable numbers of people willing to undergo it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert Brenchley
> RSBrenchley AT aol.com
> Birmingham UK
>
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