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In the section of Tom Lee's manuscript that we publish today, the focus is on how Paul came to focus on the Gentiles in his missionary endeavours and how this in turn led to the first major dispute that needed resolution through a Council of Elders of the embryonic Christian community. Tom Lee examines the decision of the first Council held at Jerusalem under James, the brother of Jesus…

Paul and his radical interpretation of the message of Jesus
Part 5.3
by Tom Lee

A new threat to the Roman authorities…

Shortly after the Jerusalem decision Paul was anxious to leave Antioch to visit the communities of converts created during his first missionary tour and wanted Barnabus to accompany him as before. But when Barnabas required that John Mark should join them Paul refused. "After a violent quarrel they parted company, and Barnabus sailed off with Mark to Cyprus."

The abandoned Paul chose as his new associate Silas from Jerusalem, a good move as Silas also was a Roman citizen. Jews were forbidden under Roman law to try to convert Romans, but presumably as Roman citizens they entered the gray area where interpretation of the law became difficult. Timothy, son of a Jewess and a Greek father, joined them at Lystra; and Luke also appears to have joined them, at least occasionally, for in writing Acts he began at this point to write in the first person. Yet most scriptural experts are convinced that Luke's Gospel and Acts were not penned until at least thirty years later, raising the question whether Luke sat down to write them in his old age, or whether an artful writer assumed his mantle to create this much enhanced and fanciful Gospel.

Paul's second missionary journey probably began in the spring of 50 and took he and his colleagues into Europe, traversing Greece to Athens and then further west to the affluent seaport of Corinth where he made his longest stay, from mid 51 to 52. These travels lasted about three years, so Paul was well removed from troubles in the Holy Land.

Insurrections broke out between Samaritans and Jews and complaints were made that the governor had accepted bribes from the Samaritans. Quadratus, the legate of Syria, intervened and after hearing charges on both sides crucified a number of prisoners, both Jews and Samaritans. Then he sent the leaders of both parties along with the governor, Cumanus, to Rome to answer to the emperor. Claudius ruled that the Samaritans were in the wrong and banished Cumanus. Antonius Felix was appointed as the new governor of Galilee, Samaria and Judaea; but the sojourn of Felix, belying his name, was not a happy time. It was marked by mounting disorders, terrorist activities and the appearance of several false messiahs and prophets.

Poisoned by his wife, Agrippina, Emperor Claudius died in October 54, shortly after the start of another Jewish Sabbatical Year, when many Jewish men were free from agricultural labor. There was a sharp deterioration of the situation in Judaea and the infestation of the country with "brigands and impostors who deceived the mob".

In Rome Agrippina thrust Claudius' eldest son aside and secured the succession for her own son Nero. The new emperor, a spoiled brat given power over the known world, confirmed Felix in office; one of those advising his retention being the former high priest Jonathan. The Sadducee hierarchy in Jerusalem were disturbed by the activities of a new terrorist organization called the Sicarrii. Their name was derived from the short curved daggers they carried beneath their cloaks. They mingled with the crowds at festival times and struck at their victims, mostly Roman supporters, with little risk of discovery in the press of people. They even killed some within the Temple precincts. Josephus reports:

"The panic created was more alarming than the calamity ... Men kept watch at a distance on their enemies and would not trust even their friends when they approached. Yet, even while their suspicions were aroused and they were on their guard, they fell; so swift were the conspirators and so crafty in eluding detection."

Class war…

One of the early victims was Jonathan whose past excesses while serving as high priest were neither forgiven nor forgotten. Religion was used as a sanction for acts of savagery. Men of violence committed atrocities against fellow-Jews on the pretext of purifying the nation from all taint of heathenism. Many of the wealthy were murdered and their possessions plundered, and all who gave support to the Occupying Power were marked men. It became a class war with the aristocracy and the powerful sacerdotal families lumped with the Romans as the enemies of the People of God.

The Epistle of James may date from this period, though some contend that it was produced much later with James's name attached to give it greater acceptance and credence. It counsels peacefulness and patience, while warning the rich of what awaits them on the Day of Judgment. It is fully consistent with how the saintly president of the Nazoreans is depicted by tradition, as a man of the deepest piety who spent long hours on his knees praying for the forgiveness of his people. He evidently expected his adherents to be strict pacifists.

He did have another reason to worry apart from the troubles in Judaea. Disturbing messages were arriving about Paul's increasingly unorthodox teachings. To read any of Paul's Epistles, with the exception of his private note to Philemon, is at once to enter an atmosphere of fierce controversy. The conflict centers round two subjects; the essentiality of circumcision for Jewish Christians and Paul's own authority. But he was also developing a theology that conflicted in many essentials with the original message propounded from Jerusalem.

Paul was giving a redemptive role to the crucifixion, which seemed more important to him than either the resurrection or ascension. He was not preaching what Jesus had preached, for whereas Jesus had proclaimed that the Kingdom of God had already dawned in his own lifetime, the happenings that Paul claimed to be decisive had not occurred during Jesus' life at all but at the moment of his death and even after it, since it was not until the resurrection that Paul believed Jesus to have been declared Son of God. Paul seems to have been influenced by pagan ideas about sacrifice in which ritual worship offered the gods a gift or sacrifice to win their aid or avert their wrath. It was believed that Holy formulas pronounced over the animal victim turned it into the god who was to receive it, so that the god himself was sacrificed. Only the viscera were burned on the altar, while priests and congregants ate the rest, transferring the strength and glory of the god into the feasting worshipers.

Paul had also formed an extremely unfavorable attitude to the Jewish Law, which, unlike Jesus, who challenged its extreme strictures with his emphasis on mercy and love without attempting to abolish it; Paul increasingly regarded it as wholly inadequate or even irrelevant. A careful reading of his letters reveals how thoroughly Jewish he was as well as his familiarity with Hellenistic culture and his skills in negotiating his way within the Roman Empire and just how opposed he was to the Roman imperial cult that so pervaded the Mediterranean world he traversed with his gospel of freedom, grace and peace.

Paul advanced his absolute worldview against Roman claims that the divine Augustus had fulfilled history, dispensing peace and prosperity to the world. From Rome there emanated a far-reaching political, cultural and religious transformation utterly apparent in the art, architecture and literature of the Empire. Against all that, Paul advocated an alternative transformation toward the Jewish God and opposed to the Roman gods and the Roman Augustus. Thus two visions of cosmic peace and two programs for global faiths, and two faiths in two different gods clashed profoundly.

Paul deliberately mirrored the language of Roman propaganda to challenge imperial claims that the divine Augustus, "Son of God," was the savior of history and bringer of "good news". Jesus was honored with the self-same plaudits, a deliberate political challenge in the eyes of Roman officials.

Rome used unmatched force to conquer and control, then bestowed the benefits of Roman colonization in the form of roads, aqueducts, markets, and spas. It still enslaved the work force, extracted resources to increase its own wealth, insinuated Roman hierarchy and social inequality into local politics and culture. Jesus, in contrast, offered peace through justice, an unprecedented equality among the baptized, erasing all distinctions ("In Christ, there is neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free" - Galatians 3:28). This equality was the mark of the Christian Eucharist for Paul, and why he fought so hard against dividing the church into Jewish and Gentile Christians and resisted hierarchies of men over women and clergy over laity. That Paul lost these battles doesn't dismiss their radical claim.

It is impossible for us to ascertain how much Paul was influenced by his Pharisaic background, or even by the pagan beliefs of the natives of his hometown Tarsus, the celebrated university city of Cilicia. Tarsus housed followers of the Orphic and other mystery religions, believing that the god they worshiped had died for them, had risen from the grave, and would save them from Hades, sharing with them the gift of eternal life. It is known also that Tarsus was a major center of Mithraism and, along with Pontus, was one of the principal sources of dissemination of Mithraism in the Western world.

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Tom Lee is an Australian, now semi-retired in Phoenix, Arizona, who has had an illustrious international career as an actor, writer, and broadcast commentator. He does not claim to be a professional theologian, nor an historian, but he undertook this study because, like many of the people who are attracted to what we're doing here at Catholica Australia, he was simply inquisitive about the history of Christianity and trying to better understand what he had been brought up to believe. In a sense, his book is a one-man journey seeking to better understand who Jesus was and what his own faith was about.

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©2009 Tom Lee (Star Concepts LLC) 15633 N. 17* Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85023-3409

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