Corpus-Paul

["Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>]

Re: David Inglis saying,
> Sorry Eric, but I don't read Gal 2 as describing a council meeting at all:

I reply:

What Paul describes in 2:2 as "a private meeting with the leaders" was, in
fact, the council in Jerusalem, which was a closed meeting of only the top
people, to deal with Paul, and not an open meeting of all of Jesus's
followers; and which was called together not by "a revelation" as Paul
asserts, but instead by James, the group's leader.

Paul does not want to acknowledge this to the group's followers in Galatia,
because he does not want them to know that the way in which Paul had
"converted" them into the group was a matter of hotly debated legitimacy
amongst their group's leaders.

These leaders consisted of Jesus's disciples who had known Jesus when Jesus
was alive, which Paul himself had not. Paul's followers knew these things,
and so Paul could not explicitly deny them; but in 2:6 he implicitly raised
doubt as to whether these people who knew Jesus "from man or by means of
man" (to use Paul's phrase from Galatians 1:1) were really "the leaders" in
the eyes of God who, "in his grace had chosen me even before I was born"
(1:15). So, Paul had dubiously "converted" his followers into this Jewish
sect, whose leaders were now convening in order to consider the Jewish
legitimacy of those very same "conversions." And thus, Paul was trying to
implicitly plant into the minds of his Galatian followers doubt about the
qualification of the Jesus-sect's leaders to be the group's leaders, because
those leaders were now threatening Paul's life's work.

The issue at hand was hinted at by Paul in 2:3-5, and by Luke in Acts
15:1-3. Paul had been for 17 years bringing men into the group without
requiring them to be circumcised in accord with Genesis 17:14, the
covenant-forming commandment, in which God had allegedly said to Abraham,
"No man will be one of my people unless he is circumcised." A few lines
later, in 17:24, Abraham complied with this commandment, the first-given of
God's commandments, and Abraham's circumcision constituted his signing of
God's covenant and the start of Judaism according to the Jewish myth, which
all of Jesus's followers accepted as being history and not as being myth.
Furthermore, before Abraham signed this covenant by complying with God's
first command, or law, God, according to 17:13, had said to Abraham that
"your flesh will thus be marked with this sign of my everlasting covenant,"
so that a man's circumcision constituted his signing and becoming a Jew or
member of God's people, and so that it would be clear in advance that this
covenant which God would be having with Jews would be no mere temporary
arrangement (such as Paul was now claiming), but would instead be eternal.
Consequently, too, Paul's statements in Galatians, Romans, and elsewhere,
that God has changed the rules, and that after the Crucifixion, "a person
will be viewed favorably in the sight of God only by faith, and not by doing
what the Law requires," was false. God's covenant, that only people who
obeyed the Law, the covenant, would be saved, had been given eternally, and
not temporarily as Paul falsely claimed.

Paul had been working for 17 years acquiring "converts" in this illegitimate
way, and now there were so many of them, that virtually all of Paul's life's
work as an evangelist or salesman for this religious organization was in
jeopardy; his hundreds or thousands of adult male Gentile "converts" who
constituted his 17 years of sales-success, was now being questioned by the
group's leaders. And that is why Paul said in 2:2 that his own success or
failure was now at stake in the decision that James would come up with.

James's initial decision at this council in Jerusalem, according to both
Galatians 2:10 and Acts 15:13-21, was favorable to Paul. Paul does not state
what James' reason was. But according to Acts 15:19, his reason was "not to
place too great a burden upon the Gentiles who are turning to God."

What could James have been referring to here, by calling circumcision "too
great a burden"?

In that ancient era, anaesthesia did not exist. It was one thing when an
unknowling 8-day-old Jewish baby boy involuntarily had this medical
operation performed upon his penis. But, for an adult Gentile male who knew
in advance how excruciating and dangerous any medical operation was in that
crude era, this medical operation was a terror.

Neither did antibiotics exist in that crude era. Consequently, any medical
operation in that time was a severe threat to one's life and health. The
only non-essential, elective, operations in that era were Jewish
circumcisions of male infants, and these were not voluntary.

That's the reason why placing this requirement upon all of these men now,
that they must all undergo this "cutting of the body" (Philippians 3:2),
would cause many if not most of them to abandon the sect. That's what Paul
meant in Galatians 2:2 by saying that his life's work was now at stake. And
this is what James meant in Acts 15:19 by saying "we should not place too
great a burden on the Gentiles who are turning to God."

Acts, having been written by a follower of Paul and not by a follower of
James and the Jesus-sect of Jews, does not even give a hint that James
subsequently changed his mind on this. But Paul's Galatians 2:11-16 does,
because it was written so soon after this climactic event that he had to do
so. Paul there indicates, but only by logically necessary implication, not
by explicit assertion, that James changed his mind and sent a delegation to
Paul in Antioch telling Paul to circumcise all of his men. The first member
of this delegation to arrive was Peter, but he didn't have enough nerve to
put his foot down. The group that came later that day did.

This forced Paul to choose between Jesus and success. He chose success, and
the result was the world's largest religion. Paul's (and the world's)
first-ever statement of his "gospel of Christ" was on the occasion he
recounts in Galatians 2:11-21, and it's given in 2:14-21, the original form
of his "Christianity."

Galatians cannot be truthfully understood without understanding this
background. The letter was occasioned by one or more of his Galatian
followers having abandoned his new religion in favor of James's Jewish sect.
That's why, near the end of Galatians, Paul says, in 5:1-2, that any of his
followers who does what James is demanding will be consigned by God to hell.
At the letter's beginning, in 1:6-8, he had said the same thing. Near the
very end of the letter he reinforced the point yet again by implying in 6:12
that James and the disciples were the actual guilty persons behind the
Crucifixion of Christ. This dark and hazy smear was broadened in 1
Thessalonians 2:15-16, to a smear against "the Jews," meaning against the
supporters of the covenant. This passage was the climax to one of Paul's
autobiographical passages, 2:2-16, and it, too,  cannot be properly
understood unless one understands truthfully what Galatians was all about,
which is circumcision.

I contend that one cannot truthfully understand Paul, and the creation of
Christianity by him and his followers who wrote the New Testament, unless
one understands how frightful and dangerous a thing circumcision was
perceived to be by the adult Gentile males who became Paul's followers and
the first "Christians."

Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net