How Jesus Became Christian by Barrie Wilson

Author:Barrie Wilson [Wilson, Barrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37584-1
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2008-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

ACTS’ REVISIONIST HISTORY

What can we conclude from all this? Simply that the Book of Acts invented history. We know that the Book of Acts represents an unreliable source for information about Paul. Acts contradicts what we know of Paul from his own writings. Acts’ Paul is a later creation that serves the author of Acts’ purposes well. It is not, however, a reflection of the historical Paul. It is, rather, the Paul the author of Acts needed to invent to support the linkage between the two movements. We should look to Paul’s own writings if we wish to grasp the Paul of history. Paul took every opportunity to separate his movement, his message, and his career from that of the Jesus Movement. Paths did cross, and when they did, as with an incident with a member of the Jesus Movement, Peter, Paul pressed his religious commitments. There was no indication from Paul that there existed another perspective or that another arm of the movement might have differing practices.

What we know of Paul, then, is from Paul himself, and his “authentic Paul” is vastly different from Acts’ “revisionist Paul.” Therefore, we cannot use the Book of Acts to supplement Paul’s own account of his career and message. We simply have no way of knowing what additional information is fictional and what is historically accurate.

Most importantly, we cannot use Acts to say with confidence that the Christ and Jesus Movements simply represent two differing views of one common enterprise. Because Acts creates a different Paul than the real one revealed in his letters, we know that Acts has a hidden agenda—and we can now recognize what that is. The author of Acts is at pains to demonstrate that both Paul’s movement and James’s were part and parcel of one religious impetus stemming from Jesus himself.

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