St Paul and His Role in the Evolution of Christianity

Paul was born in A.D. 4 (or 5) at Tarsus, Cilicia, South Turkey, to Jewish parents. He was named Saul after the first king of Israel. Paul is his Roman surname, meaning ‘small’. The family was into tent making. His father being rich and influential, managed to get Roman citizenship which Paul inherited by birth. His father had the means to send his son to Jerusalem to study with Gamaliel, the leading rabbi of the day. In addition to learning religious scriptures, he also studied Greek philosophers and was well acquainted with the Stoic philosophers, who advocated that virtue (such as wisdom) is happiness and judgment should be based on behavior, rather than words.

During his early life, Paul was a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish sect that administered the law. The Pharisees believed that God was in control of everything, there is an afterlife, and that there will be the eternal judgment of the departed souls. He admitted to participating in the persecution of Christians. One reason Paul was so critical of the new sect which followed Jesus Christ was the fact he was appalled that Jesus died a ‘criminal’s death’ on the cross. He couldn’t assimilate that with how a Messiah would be treated.

Conversion to Christianity

Around 31-36 AD, Paul relates how he became converted from a persecutor of Christians to a devout follower. On the road to Damascus, he reported to being blinded by a vision of Jesus Christ. For three days after the vision, he remained blind. Later, he was healed of his blindness by a Christian – Ananias of Damascus. After his vision and healing, he proclaimed the divinity of Jesus Christ and dedicated his life to spreading the Christian message.

He claimed that during the vision, he had received both a revelation and a commission. The revelation was that Jesus was the heavenly exalted “Christ”.  The commission was that he, Paul, was to preach the good news of salvation, through faith in Jesus, to the Gentile world.”

He was a contemporary of Jesus but never met him. He called himself the thirteenth apostle and claimed to be given authority over the Gentile world to prepare them for the ‘second coming’ of Jesus as Messiah.

Paul was beheaded in Rome around A.D. 68 during the reign of Nero.

Paul’s message

To understand Paul’s message and its problematic nature, one needs to learn about Jesus and his mission on earth. 

There are two distinct ‘Christianities’ embedded in the New Testament. One is the now familiar Christianity as followed by billions all over the world today for the past two thousand years. Its main proponent was Apostle Paul. The other is mostly forgotten and got marginalized  by the turn of 1^st century A.D. This ‘version of the Christian faith best represents the original beliefs and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptizer – founders of the Messianic Movement.’ James, the brother of Jesus, took over the leadership of this movement after the death of Jesus from A.D. 30 until his violent death in A.D. 69.

During the period AD 66-70, the Jews revolted against Roman rule. This was brutally put down by the Romans and in the process,  they burned down and completely destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. James and the followers of the Jesus movement were either killed or fled the massacre and the movement died a natural death. Had the Temple not been destroyed, perhaps Christianity would have been a continuation of Jesus movement and Paul would have been a footnote in history.

The following is, in brief, the view of James Tabor on this issue:

“Jesus, as we know, was the son of Mary, a young woman who became pregnant before her marriage to a man named Joseph.  The gospels tell us that Jesus had four brothers and two sisters, all of whom probably had a different father from him.  He joined a messianic movement begun by his relative John the Baptizer, whom he regarded as his teacher and as a great prophet.  John and Jesus together filled the roles of the Two Messiahs who were expected at the time, John as a priestly descendant of Aaron and Jesus as a royal descendant of David. Together they preached the coming of the Kingdom of God.  Theirs was an apocalyptic movement that expected God to establish his kingdom on earth, as described by the prophets.  The two messiahs lived in a time of turmoil as the historical land of Israel was dominated by the powerful Roman Empire.  Fierce Jewish rebellions against Rome occurred during Jesus's lifetime.

John and Jesus preached adherence to the Torah or the Jewish Law.  But their mission was changed dramatically when John was arrested and then killed.  After a period of uncertainty, Jesus began preaching anew in Galilee and challenged the Roman authorities and their Jewish collaborators in Jerusalem.  He appointed a Council of Twelve to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel, among whom he included his four brothers.  After he was crucified by the Romans, his brother James – the “Beloved Disciple” – took over leadership of the Jesus Dynasty. 

James, like John and Jesus before him, saw himself as a faithful Jew.  None of them believed that their movement was a new religion.  It was Paul who transformed Jesus and his message through his ministry to the Gentiles, breaking with James and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, preaching a message based on his own revelations that would become Christianity.  Jesus became a figure whose humanity was obscured; John became merely a forerunner of Jesus, and James and the others were all but forgotten.”

The fact remains that Paul’s version of Christianity remained and continued to flourish. What was a Jewish messianic sect, became a Universal Salvation religion.