Jesus vs Paul: The Origins of a Religious Schism in Early Christianity

Jesus vs Paul: The Origins of a Religious Schism in Early Christianity

Dr Bart Dman welcome back to myth Vision so Paul and Jesus they’re two different guys and you have a course coming up what the heck is this Paul and Jesus course about yeah well thanks it’s it’s called Paul and Jesus The Great Divide and the question is one that’s been around among Scholars for a very long time you have this you know you got the historical Jesus who is preaching his message of the coming kingdom of God and the need to repent because the kingdom is coming near and you want to enter into the kingdom you need to turn back to God in order to enter into this Kingdom you need to start keeping his law the way God wants you to so and then so that’s the preaching of Jesus you get it throughout the gospels of the New Testament and then you come to Paul who’s preaching that the way to have salvation is through the death and resurrection of Jesus and he hardly ever mentions jesus’ teachings and when he does mention his teachings he doesn’t you know they’re not Central teachings to what Jesus appears to have taught and so the question is are they are they preaching the same religion when you think of Christianity Christianity is usually thought of as a religion based on the death and resurrection of Jesus well is that what Jesus own religion was about was that what he was preaching and if not then isn’t Christianity the religion about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus and if so isn’t Paul the one who kind of does that creates this this thing we call Christianity so that that’s that’s the kind of issue that we’re dealing with in the course the relationship of Paul and Jesus where they’re similar but also where they’re very very different

I’ve really enjoyed this question for a long time and learning from you and other academics I want to take just a deep dive into some of this I know you’re going to go into the course extensively on this idea but there have been several academics I’ve interviewed who kind of coin the phrase that Paul’s kind of the Creator or maybe they won’t use the word Creator but they’ll say he is the originator of what we call Christianity however he has this weird list in 1 Corinthians 15 where he claims people before him supposedly were eyewitnesses probably Visionary States or something depends on who you’re reading of Jesus resurrection a resurrected Jesus he also persecuted Christians as you’ve mentioned elsewhere so what is he persecuting them for what is their message are they already preaching a death burial Resurrection idea about Jesus or could this be something different and that Paul as he says in Galatians 1 he receives this gospel through Revelation not of man but directly from Christ I I don’t know the answer but that’s why I’m interviewing you to get you to tease us for your course because I’m sure you’re going to go into several several of these things were the these new testament Scholars who whove said that Paul originated Christianity you don’t need to name names but I mean are they experts yes there’s some new testament Scholars that would say I guess you’d say what we consider Christianity yeah that Paul is the founder of Christianity okay yeah that’s been that’s been a line was around used to be a very common line I think it’s less common now because most people recognize what you say which is that Paul himself heard about Christianity before he became a Christian and so whether or not he was persecuting people it’s almost I think he certainly was persecuting people but I think that I think the problem is that if you look at Paul’s chronology if you look at like when Paul writes his letters he sometimes say you know three years later I did this and then you know 15 years later I did that you know you get these chronological designations and what what historians do is they they take these chronological things and they take the letters and they take the book of Acts they kind of put all together it’s a complicated process people spend years doing this but when you do all this stuff when you crank it all out it looks like Jesus converted to be a follower of Jesus about three or four years after the crucifixion and so Paul you said Jesus converted to become a Christian oh well you know right we’ll call that an orthodox corruption that’s that’s a Corruption of the text only is it corre yeah okay yeah yeah no Jesus never did convert Paul Paul converted three or four years after after the resurrection and so to say that he originated Christianity would mean that there was no Christianity there was nobody believed in Jesus before during those first three or four years and that that stries me completely implausible especially because he himself talks about having arguments with those who were Apostles before him what were the apostles of exactly and so I think it’s implausible to say he started the whole thing it it would be fair to say that he he promoted Christianity more than anyone else that we know of in the period he developed the theological ideas of Christianity more than anyone else we know of in the period he historically he’s far more important than anyone else in the period except for Jesus that doesn’t mean that he’s the originator of Christianity though it means it means something else I mean you know Darwin was not the first who came up with the idea of evolution but you know we talk about him as if he was but of course he had predecessors who were starting to lean this way and he had special ideas of his own Paul had special ideas of his own and when you quote Galatians 1 this is really key because almost everybody misunderstands that verse so so Paul says two things in two different places that that have to be combined to understand his situation in 1 Corinthians 15 as you pointed out he says he learned from others that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and was raised from the dead according to the scriptures and then he was seen by sephus and the 12 Etc so Paul says he’s learned this from other people in Galatians he says that his gospel was given by Revelation and not from any human those two things sound like they’re at odds with each other but they’re not at all at odge with each other because he’s not talking about the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15 he’s not talking about his version of The Gospel he’s talking about the understanding of Christianity that every follower of Jesus had that Jesus died was raised from the dead his gospel in Galatians is quite clear if you read just read Galatians 1 and two very carefully his gospel is his particular understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus which says that Gentiles don’t have to become Jews in order to be followers of Jesus

if I may just to interject here to splice this up a little more into detail is that death burial Resurrection was probably already an established belief or or understood thing within the Christ movement or the Jesus movement Paul is not the originator of that what Paul seems to be the the Pioneer on is oh my goodness I’m on a mission to the guim to the Gentiles to the ethn and the Nations and this is my gospel that they do not need to be they do not convert to Jew to become a Jew in order to have salvation yes I think that’s absolutely the right I think that’s right I don’t I don’t think there can be much debate about that really I mean I mean I think yes yes let me ask you a tough one de about it but there’s debate about I mean yeah I’m sure this is a you’re going to try and crack when you do the the course but how do we really know what Jesus taught right I mean you get this all the time and I know that that you’ve written several books you’re going to go into this in your course can we honestly trust looking at these gospels you know I’m with you on the text critical and looking at this as as a skeptical kind of what Jesus really said did he really talk about his death Buel and his resurrection or is this ad hoc or something added you know to him after his death by the authors in several places it seems to give that nod that the author is putting into Jesus mouth or some of his Parables sound like something the the Temple’s already destroyed and they’re writing some type of parable which makes sense of that kind of criteria how do we know that this is what Jesus taught

yeah well it is a very complicated question a long question and I and I it’s a subject of several of my books and so I won’t give you the book link after you’ll be glad to know the basic answer is that you treat the gospels like you treat any other historical Source many many people object to that conservative Christians think you cannot treat them like any other source because they’re inspired by God but historians understand that inspired by God is a is a theological claim and historians don’t base their analysis on prot one theology or another they don’t base it on a theological claim so the conservative Christians object to it but also people on the on the on the far left object to it as well because they say look the gospels are in the Bible you can’t you can’t trust the Bible sources because I they’re just they’re they’re you know they’re not historical sources they’re biblical s they’re theological books my respon and I think both groups are completely wrong it is true that Matthew is in the New Testament Matthew though did not think he was writing the scriptures of the New Testament Matthew was writing a book about Jesus based on stories he heard yes he believed in Jesus but he still was recording events that he heard about that’s what a historical source is unless he’s making up everything whole cloth then he’s basing it on stories that were in circulation that’s true of Mark Luke and John as well and so since they’re basing on stories that have been circulating these are historical sources that are treated like other sources that contain hearsay that contain inaccuracies that contain contradictions that contain implausibilities we have lots of ancient sources like that we don’t discount them as historical s we don’t say well you can’t trust anything then when you can say that but you could say that about any you know if you if you have a suppose you have a soldier from the second world war suppose you have two soldiers suppose you have a German soldier and an American soldier from the second world war that are both describing the Battle of the Bulge and let’s say these soldiers weren’t actually in the Battle of the Bulge but they heard them from buddies okay so if you’re trying to reconstruct what happened at the Battle of the Bulge do you ignore sources like that yeah but you know the German has his German View and he thinks you know the American has the American view so like you can’t use him cu they’re biased of course not you look at what they have to say you compare them to one another you you can look at plausibilities and you do a historical analysis that’s based on do you have independent attestation of events is it is something clearly expressing the bias of one party or another is another you know I mean these are the kinds of things you look at whether you’re doing the second world war or the historical Jesus and so you can’t just throut the gospels because they’re in the Bible because the authors didn’t know they were writing the Bible they were just writing stories of Jesus they heard

before we move forward on this it’s really interesting is what if one views the gospels the gospel genre not in historiography at all what if what if they’re looking at them in a more Mythic some Mythic category or something that maybe looks similar Matthew and Luke kind of has a biographical look to it Cradle to grave but Mark and John don’t so what if what if we’re looking at the genre and it’s not you know we’re not looking at it as historiography can we then approach this and be wouldn’t that cause people to be more skeptical I guess on what we’re reading as as factual and in that question I guess is like you’re taking the oral tradition kind of route that there’s like stories and oral things that are coming into the gospels there are other Scholars I’m sure you’re aware that try to go well we don’t we don’t think that we should take the oral the oral tradition route into what we’re reading in the gospels they take more of a literary approach or something else what are your thoughts about that

well those are two very big questions and I’d say they’re they’re questions that are different from each other the first has to do with the genre of the gospels and you know if you want to go kind of like I think you said the mythical roote right so I don’t think what you do is you kind of choose something you know you pick something out of the air I think you do what you do is you read a lot of ancient literature and you try to see how literature works so you have all sorts of different kinds of writings from the ancient world you’ve got philosophers you’ve got historians you got biographers you got people writing religious texts you’ve got people writing myths you’ve got people you know you’ve got I mean you got you got hundreds of different kinds of writings and so what you do is you read you read massively and you try to figure out well how does this kind of how do this kind of group writings work together like you have groups that are trying to do historiography like suppose you’ve got histories of Rome okay so how do they work you know their history and so they’re similar because they have this characteristic this these are the characteristic they have lots of things different from each other but they have these characteristics that hold them together as a genre of literature and you have these other things you got these you got these myths and this is how they work boom boom boom boom boom and and you’ve got poetry you know you got epic poetry this is what epic poetry looks like and so this is what you do with modern literature of course you’ve got short stories you got limeric poems you got biographies you got histories you got Sports Page articles you got things and like all of these genres have things in common with each other but the only way to know it is read a bunch of them to see what the things in common are and then if you find if you pick up a book suppose you pick up a book and it doesn’t have a cover on it but you’re reading this thing you’re trying to figure out what this thing is well you look at what’s written in it and you decide is this a biography is this a science fiction novel is this a collection of poems right because you know what the genres are okay so when you approach the gospels that’s what you do you’ve got you’ve read widely in Greek and Roman literature and you ask what is this like is it like myths is it like Ro like histories of Rome is it you know is it epics is it what what is it like and so Scholars who do that for a long time now have said look basically these are biographies you know there are a lot of biographies that do not begin with the birth of a person biographies can begin in mid story if they want to and so a bio so there are certain generic features to biographies that biographers talk about plutar suetonius Etc we have we have biographies and they’re pretty darn similar to the gospels the gospels are different but they’re not a they’re not SE generous they’re not like their own thing they’re very much like biographies especially biographies of religious people you know they are far more like the biography of aalon of Tiana than they’re like like heid’s myths about Zeus you know so so it’s I think I think they are biography most biographies biographers are basing their work on stories that they’ve heard sometimes written sources sometimes stories but plutar for example will talk about what he’s heard about this person or that this person he’s heard this story and he’s heard that story these are the different versions that he’s heard and he reports them because he’s heard them in the ancient world almost everything all all Traditions were passed along orally because most people were illiterate my view is that if Christianity is spreading throughout the Roman Empire as it had to do as it had to do it started out in Jerusalem by the end of the first century there were Christian communities that were scattered throughout Judea and up in Samaria up into Syria over into what’s now turkey Asia Minor over in Italy down in North Africa possibly in Alexandria possibly as far away as Spain I mean they there are Christian communities in all these places most of the people converting are literate so how are people converting people to believe in Jesus Word of Mouth how could you not have oral Traditions I mean what and you have some you have some independent sources that tell very similar stories about Jesus so they can’t all be making it up because they they’re all similar stories

I’m not in oh by the way just to add the this caveat I don’t deny oral sources were definitely working I guess my problem is what do we know is really an oral source that goes back to you know I don’t think there’s a way to falsify it in my mind and that’s the difficult trouble I have is like when I interviewed Dell Allison Jr he’s huge on the oral Source I I did a history or not series with him and said what is what do you think didn’t happen historically taking a reverse role from the gospels kind of butting against apologetics that are out there and he goes well you know I said what do you think about the Jesus being tempted in the wilderness in the gospel of Matthew and he’s like well if there’s a memory he kept using the term memory like there’s a memory behind some of this literature he thinks it means that he was just someone who probably was you know casting out demons and so he took this story to be a memory an oral memory maybe that goes back to Jesus’s casting out demons as some miracle worker and I don’t say that’s not I can’t say that’s not true I just don’t think that for that case right that there’s a good way to even prove that that’s the case and so I’m wondering using the oral approach how far back can we really be confident that something really does go back to Jesus do you see what I’m saying

yeah do I mean there are two questions that I think you’re asking one is how do you know goes back to an oral tradition at all right you know why don’t you just say these gospel writers are Elite literary people who are coming up with their stories and so that’s one question another question is if in fact there are oral Traditions Behind These accounts which I think there have there have to be we could talk about that for a long time but I’m not in denial by the way but yeah no I’m just saying I know that some people are doubting that but I think there have to be if there are oral traditions and how do you establish whether they are historical or not that that has been the the question that has driven a lot of historical Jesus scholarship for over a hundred years now and the so I’ll say several things about it one thing about Dale Allison’s view about this as a memory I think what Dale I mean dale dale knows everything so he knows this but I mean there are a lot of false memories and so the fact you call it a memory doesn’t mean that it has a historical root people remember I remember all sorts of things about my past that did not happen at all and it’s not and it’s not that they it’s not like I I mistook a detail and kind of blew it up or exaggerated it and created a story out of a historical kernel you don’t have to have a historical kernel to have a rumor with no basis whatsoever and so so I’ll say that so yes it could be a memory but it could be a false memory and so my book so my most my my the book that I think is the most important book I ever wrote that nobody read is about memory and about memory studies and about how oral Traditions work and how that relates to the historical Jesus and my book isn’t based on like what new testament Scholars say about oral tradition it’s based on what actual experts say about oral tradition like anthropologists and so if you want to know about oral tradition what you do is you you study social Anthropologist I spent years doing this reading social anthropologists as well as psych psychologists who doing psychological analysis of memory when you do that kind of work then you start to understand better how you get how you understand how oral tradition develops and then the trick is you’ve got to try to figure out how to put it back into the past but but there are criteria that people use in order to know whether a story in the gospels goes back to Jesus or not and it’s but it’s not ever almost never it’s almost never going to be a slam dunk case it’s going to be that’s more probable than this in my for my view Dale’s view that is about Jesus casting out demons or something is I I don’t I don’t find that plausible I don’t know what the evidence is for it but I do know of you know I can think of really good evidence for it just being a rumor about Jesus that started

I want to just upfront let’s just say Okay what we’re reading in the gospels apart from some spots where we might think the author’s putting in either Pauline theology or this death burial Resurrection what post happened to Jesus let’s let’s ignore the stuff that you as a scholar and historian would say hey I don’t think Jesus said that or did that what do you think opposes Paul’s teachings and what does Paul say that you think opposes what you think Jesus actually said are there some teasers you can give us because I know your course is going to go into this but are there any things you can tease us with to just say I Think Jesus probably said this which would be a different thing than what Paul said here and Paul says this and and they’re in opposition

yeah well lots of lots of things and so once again it’s important to differentiate between a contrast between Paul and one of the gospels and the contrast between Paul and the historical Jesus those are two separate issues right just to to explain that for a second before I get to your question you know I think you can show that Paul and Matthew had very different understandings of the Jewish law for example so you can you can argue that of course but if you if you come to think that that’s right that you got this verse in Matthew that says the followers of Jesus have to keep the law better than the scribes and the Pharisees Matthew 5: 17-20 and that no that you’ve got to follow the law better than the scribes and the Pharisees or you know you’re not going to get into the Kingdom of Heaven if you contrast that with Paul who says that no one is made right with God by following the law and that Gentiles don’t have to follow the law that kind of seems like there’s odds so so you could work that out but that would be a contrast between Matthew and Paul the question so that’s one set of questions that’s a very very very important set of questions another important set of questions is the one that I deal with in my course which is what can you establish about what Jesus really himself actually said and what Paul actually said and are they at odds and so this is where of course you you you know all these things you’re dealing with probabilities but you know if you don’t deal with probabilities you don’t deal with history you know you can just say I don’t know anything happened in the past and then and then basically you’re screwed if you don’t think you can know anything about the you’re not just screwed aren’t our culture is screwed if you say that there wasn’t a holocaust I’m sorry but you know we’re screwed or if you say that this this presidential candidate was completely telling the truth when you know that he was lying we’re screwed so I think it’s important to be able to know what the truth I think the truth really matters and the only way to know historical truth is through probabilities and so so I think it’s I think it is really prob that both Jesus and Paul were a were apocalyptic Jews who thought that the end of the age was coming soon and that God was going to intervene in history and he’s going to wipe out everything that was opposed to him and he’s going to bring in a he’s going to bring a utopian kingdom here on Earth Jesus taught that the way to enter into that kingdom was by keeping God’s Commandments to return to God you’re not obeying God you need to return to God you need to repent and you need to to compl completely commit yourself to God and you need to start loving your neighbor as yourself helping those in need taking care of the poor and the hungry the homeless you do those things and you will enter into the kingdom I think you can show that’s highly probable what Jesus taught and it absolutely is not what Paul taught Paul taught that helping others is a good thing and you should do that but you are not capable of being good enough to satisfy God because you you are controlled by a power of sin that forces you into alienation from God and the only way to conquer sin is by believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus and being baptized you do that and then you can enter into the coming Kingdom

well is that the thing and so like one way to put this is if Jesus Is Right that you could turn your life around and start following the Commandments and then enter into the kingdom if if Jesus was right about that then why did he have to die you could just turn your life around Paul said he had to Die the death and Resurrection is what matters and if Jesus Is Right that you know Jesus teachings The Sermon on the Mount for example is just filled with wonderful ethical teachings about how to live Paul doesn’t mention them for him he says that n he said the only to Corinthians he says the only thing I knew among you was Christ and him crucified that’s the only thing that matters it’s not the only thing that matters to Jesus he wants you to behave Paul wants you to behave too but he thinks you’ll behave only when you when you believe in are baptized wow so I say those are different there’s so much there I I know I could go on and on about this it makes me think of questions of once Jesus died what went through the minds what transition took place in the immediate follow who concocted or kind of invented in a way the kind of rituals we have from the the Lord’s Supper to the baptism these are really curious interesting questions that I think maybe some of it’s picked up from the Greco Roman world I mean there seems to be common ritualistic things I look at John kloppenborg and his Christ associations book which is really interesting you know taking anistic approach but I love what you’re saying here it really makes you want to get back to Jesus to know more about this guy and even understanding Paul right so your

and you know and so this course that I’ve done is is kind of scratching the surface for both of them in order to show that I don’t argue that they’re contradictory or anything like that people could draw that conclusion but yeah you know is there continuity are they completely at odds are they similar they I mean how how does all that work and then boy yeah you’re right you know you have these big issues about where do the Christian rituals come from from you know baptism probably not from the GRE or Roman world but the Eucharist probably from you know meals and so yeah that Christian history is a it’s a really interesting thing so but this this to me Jesus and Paul is like one of the fundamental issues the basic things is Christianity what Jesus preached or not and if Paul’s if Paul’s preaching if Paul’s preaching is right then how could Jesus preaching be right

whoa okay then wow so just so everybody knows what they will get here you can go you’ll Own It For Life eight lectures Paul and Jesus The Great Divide did Paul and Jesus have the same religion be sure to sign up lots of questions gets answered in fact I know for a fact we didn’t even touch the top of the tip of the iceberg there’s a lot in this course you’ll get access to and Bart I look forward to seeing you there my friend yeah thanks okay I’m looking forward to it too