Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul looks at how Jesus’ teachings were supplanted by St. Paul’s doctrines. Jesus is presented to the reader of the New Testament with two different personalities. He is first described as a Jewish Rabbi recognized by His followers as the promised Hebrew Messiah. His second personality, stripped of its Jewish-ness, is somewhat like that of a Greco-Roman god.
His Disciples were Hebrew in the first instance and in the second, they were mostly Greco-Roman. Saint Paul authored most of the Greco-Roman tenets in the New Testament, of course. He became a citizen of Rome as Saul of Tarsus, but is now known as Saint Paul. For centuries theologians seem to have preferred Paul’s doctrines to the teachings of Jesus and have shaped a message over the years that our faith must be placed in Jesus’ death, not in His life.
As Christianity took shape, Paul battled to get his Greco-Roman dogma accepted. Those persons supporting Paul soon developed a strategy to accomplish that feat. Belittling the Disciples was one approach to the problem, it appears. This is especially true of Peter in some of Paul’s Galatians passages.
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
The Usurpation of Jesus and the Original Disciples
F.F. Powell
Universe Inc. New York, 2008-2009
Ms. Powell doesn’t waste time in getting to her primary theme. She puts it succinctly on page 4 where she states, “As Paul’s doctrine replaced Jesus’ teachings, he usurped the remaining eleven disciples’ place as Jesus’ spokesman.”
While I have long known of the gap between Paul and Jesus’ disciples and have been dissatisfied with the seemingly uncritical acceptance of the church for giving Paul the “saintly” role he has had, I have not heretofore read such a passionate attack on him. Yet this attack is not only for him but also for those who, from earliest Christianity until today, have substituted or even denigrated the Jewish Jesus and his Jewish disciples and substituted a Greco-Roman and more elite figure created by Paul.
One focus of this stirring book is how Peter is treated so shabbily by Paul and his followers, being cast in the role of an inept and rather ignorant man, certainly not one qualified to lead a growing group of followers of the Christ out into the world.
Whereas the early church fathers chose Peter as their leader, his decline and the diversion away from the historical Jesus began as the letters accredited to Paul gained ascendancy. Luther carried out the elevation of Paul to a still higher level in his break with the Roman Catholic Church and his focus on Justification by Faith.
Why and how did this crucial change come about? I confess that Powell’s book led me from being critical of Paul and blaming him for the loss of the “earthy” more believable Jesus. It has helped me to see that it was, in fact, the result of a number of factors.
I have also come to believe that had not Paul replaced the “Jewish Messiah” with the “Risen Christ”, it is questionable that the followers of Jesus would have survived more than a generation or two, and likely would not have spread from the Middle East to the larger world.
A view of the conditions present in that part of the world at the time is required for a context with which to understand what happened to the religion of the followers of Jesus. Ms. Powell uses a number of early writers to give us a broader lens through which to view the conditions present in the area.
Tumult, contests for power, and conflicts — up to and including fierce battles, were endemic to the region. Judaism existed, but among a people who were a dissident minority and who were subjects of the ruling Roman Empire. Their tenacity made them survivors but not conquerors. By AD 64, the wars that drove the Jewish disciples from Jerusalem permanently had become pretty regular events. It was not very long before most of Jerusalem and the temple lay in ruins.
Jewish teachings, rules of behavior and their religious institution and structure were not attractive to other groups in the region. A major thrust of the Jewish faith was on how to survive and endure within a world in which they stood alone against the larger world of believers in idols and “false gods”. This required an intense and narrowly focused life that few found acceptable.
Into this context appears Paul, nurtured more in the Greco-Roman world of thought than in Judaism, likely even a citizen of Rome. Both he and the early church fathers following him grew from a very different mental/spiritual “soil”, and therefore produced a very different “flower” of religious faith.
Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Origen and others were influenced not only by Jewish scriptures, but also by the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Homer and others.
It would seem that Paul’s primary “sin” was in his taking a wholly Jewish Jesus, and stripping him of his essential “Jewishness “ and clothing him instead in the garments of the Greco-Roman world of religious thought. In the process Paul also used the all too common weapons of denigrating opponents and raising himself to saintly heights. His beautiful paean to Love in Corinthians is not matched in his behavior toward those he opposes.
In doing this, he created a character more acceptable and attractive to the Greco-Roman culture. If one can fault Paul, it is most fitting for his lack of candor about the fact that he was not introducing and proclaiming Jesus, the Jewish Messiah to the world, but was instead creating a wholly new “Christ” who was “born” as a spiritually significant figure at his crucifixion. The new Christ was not limited by the Judaic Law nor by Jewish customs and worldview. He, instead, could appear much more attuned to the spiritual world of Plato, Homer and the other Greek philosophers.
One illustration of the difference between the Jewish Jesus and the Pauline Christ is that Jesus as portrayed in Mathew is greatly concerned with teaching his followers loving acts of service toward the poor and needy. The Pauline Christ is less concerned in being a teacher and is instead much more a divine figure to be adored and worshiped.
Another major difference in the Jewish Jesus and the Pauline Christ is that, while Jesus did not provoke outright rebellion against Roman authorities like John the Baptist and the Essenes, he clearly did not consider their rule to be blessed by Yahweh. Paul, in contrast, again and again encouraged peaceful compliance with Roman rules and requirements. Slaves were to compliantly serve their masters: women were to be subject to their husbands
When, in 130AD, the destroyed Jerusalem was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina by Hadrian, he enforced an obscure Roman Law on Murderers and Poisoners or Magicians. It included circumcision and castration. It was likely Paul’s Roman background led him to consider circumcision to be mutilation. Peter and the early Jesus followers, however, considered circumcision as one of the natural acts of being a good Jew and Jesus follower, but they were forbidden to practice it in the new Roman city. However, Paul’s “Christian” followers confronted no such issue.
Paul’s new “Christian Faith” was an easier path to follow in the Graeco- Roman world, and the compatibility between the two resulted in the merger between the church and the Roman Empire in the reign of Constantine.
I highly recommend Powell’s book to both those who wish to be aware of the cutting edge scholarship regarding the Christian Faith and to those who just wish read a thoughtful and well written book as part of their everyday Christian living. She does an excellent job of making the source material available in the Notes and Index sections.