Was Paul a Paper Apostle?
Would a pseudonymous author create a set of texts like Paul’s letters for promotional and doctrinal purposes when a careful reading of the texts reveals the apparent source of the letters as such a questionable figure?
Or, alternatively, would editors or a final editor --- assuming there were such who assumed the freedom to extensively modify the letters to better reflect their own doctrinal predilections --- leave such unfavorable personal material about the stated author of the texts?
This is the Paul found in his 5 extant texts to his congregations and in Romans (just a few examples) ---
A criminal publicly and repeatedly punished by both Roman and Jewish authorities (2 Corinthians 11:24-25) with no claim whatsoever that these punishments were a result of, or even during, his evangelizing work.
An admitted liar. (Romans 3:7) (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8363 see parts 2 and 3)
A loser --- apparently rejected by 2 out of 4 of his congregations, with a third a work in progress at best.
Only the Philippians were apparently fully won-over to the doctrines Paul had taught them, and they were the only group that clearly provided Paul with income, even including some monetary contributions after he left the city.
But even after that, Paul guilt-tripped the generous Philippians and blamed them for Epaphroditus almost having died trying to make up for “your deficit of service toward me.” (Philippians 2:25-30) Where did Paul’s priority fall there?
In his quest to minimize conflicts with the sophisticated and prosperous Corinthians, amid hurt feelings Paul gave-in on his badly received and severe demand that they send to Satan the man involved with his father’s woman. And Paul even threw-in the towel on his emphasis on the bodily relevance of his JC figure (2 Corinthians 5:16) amid significant differences of opinion with some of the Corinthians over the nature of the body and the soul (1 Corinthians, various passages). All, I think, to minimize the points of contention with the Corinthians to better concentrate on his primary goal --- the collection for the “saints in Jerusalem." (1 and 2 Corinthians, various passages)
But after Titus returned from his second failed attempt to garner such a collection, the Corinthians had apparently accused Paul and Titus of trying to take advantage of them and of trying to take them by deceit. (2 Corinthians 12:16-18)
A reformed miscreant --- as the figure of Paul is re-imagined in the legendary tales in Acts --- can be seen as an admirable and compelling role model. But Paul as found in the 5 letters is not a rehabilitated figure.
A “paper apostle” having been written as a loser, a criminal, a liar, and an accused swindler in order to promote righteousness and theological doctrines? Not likely.
Those today supporting some relatively conventional view of Paul as an admirable figure and spiritual role model have the benefit of centuries of apologetics and tradition to lend support for their interpretations of the letters.
How Then?
Paul was, in his own time, a small fish in a big pond. Irenaeus and Tertullian, for example, were aware of the subsequent use of Paul by the ‘heretics’. Paul’s texts had been utilized by the Valentinians and the Marcionites as those primarily eastern groups found useful material for which they could spin in the direction of their own predilections.
Paul’s letters didn’t provide support for an emerging catholic version of an early 1st century CE Galilean that was executed by the Romans, but none-the-less, Paul’s letters did contain significant material that was useful for the emerging catholics. By the time the early catholics realized their “universal” version of the faith would need Paul and his letters in order to gain adequate traction and patrons around the Empire, the letters were already “out there”. The horse was out of the barn. Likely, extensive revisions would have only alienated Pauline-oriented audiences. So Paul was tamed and appropriated by the early catholics with the Acts of the Apostles, the Pastorals, 2 Peter, and such, along with apologetics in their polemic works.
Paul’s Product
Paul was selling his own unique spiritual system. Paul cast himself as the agent of the multi-book OT prophesies about Gentiles becoming incorporated into the people of God (i.e., Genesis 22:18, Isaiah 49:5-8, Jeremiah 1:5, and others). Paul’s innovation was a heavenly spirit in the likeness of man having performed a sacrificial act that also served as redemption from the Mosaic Law. Mining the scriptures, especially Isaiah, Genesis, and Deuteronomy, Paul promised his potential Gentile patrons full participation with the chosen people of the God of the Jews by means of faith in the salvific and redemptive act, thereby boldly supplanting the formerly unequivocal requirement in the scriptures for circumcision.
What I find more interesting than Paul’s spiritual system, is the record of how disparate audiences first related to Paul's bold short-cut --- and especially the real-life issues that ensued. That is, the admittedly one-sided, yet “occasional” and situational nature of the letters. They are rife with misunderstandings, disagreements, challenges, an arrogant Paul, a waffling Paul, a desperate and whining Paul, a greedy Paul --- along with several complex inter-personal dramas. When Paul is viewed through the appropriate lens, all that can be seen as clearly making sense.
Paul and the Jewish Scriptures
Paul without the underpinning of the Jewish scriptures would be, well, not Paul. To a critically significant degree, Paul was dependent on his own creative and generative use of the Jewish scriptures to craft his spiritual system, as well as much of his own biography and backstories. Even the Marcionite treatment of Paul did not eliminate the relevance of the Jewish scriptures. BeDuhn lists 23 OT passages that remained in the Marcionite treatment of Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans (The First New Testament, p. 212). BeDuhn writes ---
Not only do all these biblical quotations remain in place in Marcion’s text, but not once is either a quotation or its context altered in order to treat the text critically or negatively. (BeDuhn, p. 212)
Paul’s Predecessors in the Faith
In the letters, Paul is clearly identified as a criminal, admits accusations of deceit over his collection for the saints, and it was admitted that Paul had lied about something important. Why not believe those embarrassing admissions?
The recipients of the letters provide independent witnesses of sorts, in that they would have had direct knowledge and involvement in the issues and questions to which Paul was writing and responding.
However, there are many claims by Paul for which the recipients of the letters would have had no knowledge other than what Paul had told them, including his own biography and backstories, the Judean assemblies, and the Jerusalem Pillars.
Paul’s stories of predecessors in the faith in far-away Judea provided him the valuable claim that his spiritual system was part of a wider spiritual movement in the Jewish homelands --- a sense of tradition. I think it’s worth noting that Paul only trotted-out those purported figures to defend his own doctrinal positions (Galatians and 1 Corinthians) and to gain financial contributions (1 and 2 Corinthians).
If Paul’s letters were a source for the author of GMark, and assuming Markan priority, then there is no extant evidence for the Jerusalem Pillars nor for Judean assemblies of Christ that can be seen as clearly independent of Paul’s letters.
I do not accept Paul’s claims for which the audience of the letters would have had no independent knowledge other than what Paul had told them.
Other Christians in Paul’s Day
Where is the evidence for other Christians in Paul’s day?
Not in the letter Galatians. The Jews opposing Paul’s Galatians in the superstitious interior of Asia Minor might have found it amusing, maybe even interesting, the story about Paul’s heavenly son of the God of the Jews. But for the opponents, the clear and unequivocal scriptural requirement for circumcision to belong with the chosen people of the God of the Jews was non-negotiable.
Looking past sketchy and apologetic translations and interpretations, the evidence in 2 Corinthians fits just fine, or even better, for the so-called “super apostles” to have been polished Jewish missionaries working the Diaspora circuit.
The only places in the 7 letters in which a purported congregation of Christian believers in far-away Rome are mentioned are in canonical Romans 1:7 and 1:15, and portions of chapter 15. Those specific portions of the text known as Romans suffer from having among the strongest evidence for interpolation among all of the 7 letters.
Paul’s Letters as an Incomprehensible Mess
Are Paul’s extant letters almost incomprehensible as RM Price claims in his Colossal Apostle? ---
The Pauline epistles began, most of them, as mostly fragments by Simon … Marcion … Valentinian Gnostics … some few began as Catholic documents … nearly all were interpolated by Polycarp … The result is that in the end we stand, almost uncomprehendingly, before a pile of literary scraps … doing our darnedest to lend some order to a pile of flaking puzzle pieces. (RM Price, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 534)
If Price was right here --- if the letters actually were the product of several disparate hands over some extended period of time --- they would be mostly incomprehensible if expected to be seen as a unified body of works.
But on the contrary ---
If understood as the works of a self-serving, entrepreneurial evangelist crafting much of his own backstory and his spiritual system from the Jewish scriptures, then nearly every passage in the 5 extant letters to his congregations can be seen as making sense --- as would be expected in a unified body of works.
This is a Paul that would make few, if anyone, happy. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to claim that I have found the “real” Paul. But this is the only Paul that I have found in which the 5 extant letters make sense. And they do.
robert j
Note: The composite and jumbled nature of the extant 2 Corinthian correspondence can be addressed using a defined, multi-part methodology. When appropriately sorted-out, the correspondence tells a consistent tale of Paul’s self-serving nature and growing desperation.
