Corpus-Paul

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

Re: Robert Brenchley's:

> There's nothing in Acts to suggest that Paul went off from Jerusalem with
a
> chip on his shoulder, and that's exactly the impression I get from
Galatians.

I agree with your inference from Galatians 2:11-21 that Paul was very
disturbed against the leaders, but I see no indication from Galatians that
"Paul went off from Jerusalem with a chip on his shoulder."

Paul said in 2:10 that he did not. We have no reason to believe otherwise.

The friction clearly occurred *soon after* he got back to Antioch. Although
Paul (2:10) had gotten his way at the council in Jerusalem, James right
afterwards (2:11-12) changed his mind and sent first Peter, and then (to
arrive in Antioch later the same day) other "agents from James," all telling
Paul that his uncircumcised Gentile male "converts" were *not* really
converts after all, and had to become circumcised in order to become real
members of the Jesus-sect of Jews.

Peter had temporized in the argument sufficiently to have been able to sit
down peaceably to lunch or dinner with those uncircumcised men, ignoring
that this was in violation of the principle enunciated in Exodus 12:48
prohibiting such ceremonial dining with non-circumcised men. When caught in
this violation by James's follow-up team who reiterated the importance of
adhering to Genesis 17:14, Peter jumped back from the table and repeated,
this time in front of James's backup team, that Paul's men had to become
circumcised. Then (2:13) Paul's immediate superior, Barnabas, fell into line
behind James's order, and so, too, did everyone present except Paul's
uncircumcised men. This was the beginning of Christianity.

James had changed his mind because of the unequivocal nature of Genesis
17:14. Furthermore, Genesis 17:13 had, equally unequivocally, said that the
covenant that God would be having with the Jews would be everlasting. 17:13
also said that the way in which a man would sign on the dotted line to
become one of God's people would be by his being circumcised. In 17:24,
Abraham complied with this, the first of God's commandments,  thus signed
God's covenant or agreement on the dotted line, and became the first of
God's people, the first "Jew."

Paul's Genesis 15:6 argument, given in Galatians 3:1-10, was therefore
false: the covenant had not yet been signed by the time of Genesis 15:6;
God's acceptance of Abraham there was consequently purely tentative. God had
not yet by then even so much as offered the covenant. God's acceptance of
Abraham in 15:6 meant simply that God expressed there his confidence that
Abraham was the sort of man He would want to offer His covenant with. In
Genesis 17:2 God promised to offer Abraham and his people a covenant; in
17:13-14 God did so; and in 17:24-27, Abraham and his people signed it.

We, today, may think that all of this was myth, but Jesus's followers then
did not; as believing Jews, they thought that this was history, not myth.
This history was, in fact, their religion, and the core of it was their
obedience to God's commandments, the Law, the core of the Torah.

You refer to Paul's "chip on his shoulder."

Let's explore now: what did that "chip" really consist of?

Consider Galatians 2:2 saying that the matter that was to be debated at the
council in Jerusalem would determine the success or failure of Paul's life's
work in the past and in the present. What could he possibly have been
referring to?

According to 1:18 and 2:1, he had been accumulating uncircumcised male
"converts" for 17 years. An evangelist's success was measured by the number
of his converts. These "converts" by Paul were now all at stake in the
decision that James would come up with. That's what Paul was referring to in
2:2.

Circumcision was the issue in 2:3-5 leading up to the council-meeting.
Circumcision was also the issue in this very letter, Galatians, as indicated
in its 5:2-12. That is why circumcision was also the unnamed issue behind
its own 1:6-9: Paul was terrified here because one or more of his Galatian
"converts" had bolted from his group and joined James's organization by
becoming circumcised. There was now the very real possibility that others
would follow and that Paul would thus lose all or most of what he had spent,
even by the time of just the Jerusalem conference, already 17 years building
up.

However, Paul and James were both in a real bind, and therefore could not
afford to become public, overt, and explicit, about their conflict:

James could not publicly excommunicate Paul and Paul's men, because of the
severe poverty of James's followers and their growing dependence upon the
financial support that was coming in increasingly from Paul's collections
since Paul's Gentile followers were far more wealthy and powerful than the
pitifully poor and politically vulnerable Jewish followers of that man whom
Rome had executed for sedition. Furthermore, James's own "success" was, by
now, largely dependent upon Paul, because Paul was the best salesman James's
organization ever had. If Paul's men were to be excommunicated, then James's
group would have instantly become virtually annihilated, since the disciples
and other followers of Jesus were simply dying off.

Paul, likewise, was dependent upon James for the respectability as being
"Jewish" that was essential to Paul's own claim to be a follower of the
Jewish mashiach. Paul and his followers had to gradually and subtly redefine
that "Christ" as non-political and as a Christian instead of as a Jew.

By the time that Paul's follower who wrote Matthew 16:18 was writing, it was
already so long after Jesus's death that it was now possible to assert that
Jesus Himself had started Christianity. Paul wasn't able to assert such a
thing when Paul was alive, because when Paul was writing, there were people
still living who had known the actual Jesus and who would have declared Paul
publicly a liar, and who would have had recognized authority to do so. But
by the time that the Gospel writers were writing, such people had died off.

What do you think? This is how I reconstruct Christianity's start. I would
like to know the reactions to this reconstruction from other participants.

Best,
Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net