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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: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 11:02:17 -0400


Robert,

Your theory that "over-zealous proselytes" instead of Jews would have been
the likely people to have been referred to in Gal. 5:1-12, in which passage
Paul concludes with an amazing outburst of anger in 5:12, is reminiscent of
Johannes Munck's theory in PAUL AND THE SALVATION OF MANKIND, that Paul's
opponents were Gentile converts, not born Jews. However, I find overwhelming
evidence against that theory, which I present in my book, and which I shall
try to summarize here.

These outbursts of anger from Paul (Gal. 2:11-13, 5:12 & 6:12, 1
Thessalonians 2:14-16 and Philippians 3:2-8) can reasonably be interpreted
as railing against the same group, whom Paul identifies in Galatians 2:12 as
being from James, and identifies in Galatians 6:12 as seeking to avoid
punishment for their guilt in the crucifixion, and identifies in 1
Thessalonians 2:15 as having actually crucified Christ, and identifies in 1
Thessalonians 2:14 as Jews, and identifies in 1 Thessalonians 2:16 as having
tried to stop him from preaching to the Gentiles the message that would
bring them to salvation, which clearly is a reference, yet again, to James'
agents in Galatians 2:12.

Furthermore, Munck's interpretation makes incomprehensible Acts 21:21
forward, the Jewish riots against Paul after the council in Jerusalem.
Although the writer of Acts clearly does not wish to clarify precisely why
the Jews in Jerusalem, both Jesus-followers and those who weren't, were
rioting against Paul and were even trying to kill him, the reason why they
would have wanted to do so is very clear on the present understanding: Paul,
in his asserting, after the council in Jerusalem and its immediately
following event as recounted by him in Galatians 2:11-16, on which occasion
he had announced to the world for the very first time his gospel of Christ
as superseding the Jewish covenant, such as he recounted himself as having
said, in Galatians 2:16, and such as he repeated later on in his Romans
3:28, was asserting to all Jews, and not only to the Jesus-following ones,
that Judaism, the covenant itself, was actually what had been killed by God
Himself at the crucifixion, terminated by Him through (Galatians 2:16-21)
Christ's sacrificial offering to all of Mankind.

If you will now try to place yourself into the shoes of a Jew, whether
Jesus-following or not, during that time, and you hear about a
self-acknowledged former Jew (according to Galatians 1:13 and Philippians
3:6-8) who is now preaching, to Gentiles no less, that Jews have been
*replaced* as God's People by this former Jew's, that is, Paul's, own
followers, some of whom happen formerly to have been Jews, but some of whom
aren't even former Jewsl, then don't you hear the charge that you and your
own people have been replaced as God's favored people, and aren't you likely
to take deep affront at this? The entire basis for your own culture's pride
in itself is challenged by this man, notwithstanding his palliative
assertions to mixed congregations such as to the Romans (in that letter's
9-11) saying that God still loves the Israelites. You, as a Jew, catch what
he's really saying: Hey, you Jew, get on board, or get lost! Paul had no
issue to make against Israel; only its population had now changed.

According to the account given in Acts 21:18 forward, James was trying to
calm things down there, and to achieve a peaceful resolution of this entire
climactic matter, but, again, the Paul-follower who wrote this was not
interested in making sense out of what might have motivated James, Paul's
real enemy in Galatians 2:12 and in that entire culminating incident, to
attempt such a thing. Of course, maybe the author was simply lying there,
but I find a different explanation to be more likely as to why James was
portrayed by Luke as having tried to achieve peace.

I think that it would, indeed, have made sense for James to have tried to
pacify this situation. After all, he had gone all of these past 17 years,
with first Peter, and then Paul, inviting into this Jewish sect men who were
in violation of Judaism's covenant-forming commandment, Genesis 17:14. He
had postponed and postponed coming to grips with this matter, all the while
accumulating more and more new members to his movement, who, moreover, were
wealthier and more powerful, by and large, than were James' own defeated and
poor people, the Jews. James was even, for a long time now, receiving from
Paul's people a large and growing financial subsidy in the form of Paul's
repeated collections for the poor in Jerusalem. These subsidies were making
James himself look better and better to all Jews, and not merely to those
who accepted Jesus as mashiach.

In other words, James was now like an addict who is torn both ways to
continue and to terminate his addiction.

I am portraying a situation that was obviously intensely embarrassing to
both opponents. Paul did not want to have to admit to his followers that
the head of the Jewish sect to which he had introduced them had instructed
him that they weren't really members at all because they weren't really Jews
at all. James did not want to lose the great benefits that he and his poor
people were obtaining as a result of the efforts of Paul, who was by far
James' best salesman, and who had become the key to James' own success. One
sees the ambivalence in Paul's letters, but especially in Galatians 2:11-16,
the passage in which Paul recounts the creation of Christianity, and which,
as a direct result of Paul's mixture there of both his embarrassment and his
pride, is so subtly veiled in its expression that it is a real rhetorical
masterpiece.

This was a tragic situation, and I think that this is the situation that was
behind James' efforts to broker a peace in Acts 21:18 forward. But soon,
things got out of James' control altogether; Paul and his followers,
continuing to grow ever-stronger, offering the Jews' heaven on sale to
Gentiles at a greatly reduced price, grew to swamp the Jesus-followers, who,
in any event, were eviscerated after 70 CE. Meanwhile, Paul's religion,
which was carefully constructed so as to appeal both to the masses and to
the elite in the post-70-CE world, kept growing more and more, and (1
Corinthians 9:20-27) Paul won the race, hands down, precisely as he had
declared to be his objective. As he put it in Romans 3:4-7, he won his
argument, and therefore he had nothing to feel guilty about.

I think that Paul made himself clear on the basis of a legal/forensic
analysis, in which his honesty is not merely assumed, but that if one does
start with the extraneous assumption that Paul was honest, then it is simply
impossible to explain why he said what he did. The basic principle of
science and thus of legal forensic analysis, is to avoid any superfluous
assumptions, and the assumption that Paul wrote with honest intent is
superfluous. I believe that the evidence of Paul's letters shows that
assumption to be also false.

The situation was also embarrasing to James, but since he lost, the New
Testament and indeed all of posterity belonged to the victor, James' enemy,
Paul, and so there exists virtually nothing from the Jesus sect (unless the
speculations of such people as Robert Eisenman happen to be correct, which
we can probably never know).

Best,
Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net





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