The Men Who Invented Religion by Jeffrey M. Pike

Author:Jeffrey M. Pike
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Dog Books

CHAPTER 6

5BC – 67AD PAUL OF TARSUS

Paul (5 - 67 AD) did not follow the traditional Jewish teachings of Jesus but introduced a new faith in which a ‘modernised’ Judaism was merged with Hellenic ideas. Whereas there are no writings by Jesus, we are fortunate to have the letters of Paul in Galatians, Romans and Corinthians which are the earliest writings of Christianity, although the authorship of the other Epistles is disputed. Writings under his name but composed by others still exist including Epistles addressed to Philippi, Thessalonica and Colossae, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians consisting of fragments of three letters and the note sent to Philemon. A letter which Paul addressed to Laodicaea has not survived so it is possible that there was a period when Paul’s writings were no longer accepted and when this was later reversed some had been lost or damaged.

Paul never met the living Jesus and, unlike the later Gospels, which broaden the message of his letters, he makes few references to any of Christ’s sayings although he claims to be an apostle. Tertullian said Jesus warned of false prophets who would perform miracles, signs and wonders in His name and Paul matches that description perfectly. His ideas were a radical innovation, taking the vision of a Jewish God to the pagans when, if we rely on the Gospels, Jesus wanted to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven to the Jewish poor and sinners. No doubt Jesus, as an Orthodox Jew, would have disagreed strongly with the new religious philosophy Paul was espousing and Paul confirms in Galatians that Jesus’ followers in the Jerusalem church were also negative.

What do we know about Paul? There are few personal details, but according to Acts he was born Solon and the name Saul could have been adopted from this Greek name. The name Paul may have come as a mark of respect to his patron, the Governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus (hinted at in Acts 13). He was from Tarsus (Acts 9.11 & 22.3) in Asia Minor, an important, mainly Greek- and Aramaic-speaking town, where Cleopatra met Anthony. It was a centre of the cult of Mithras and pagan beliefs were important in Paul’s later development. Paul’s parents were Roman citizens, possibly originally war refugees from Gischala in Upper Galilee, and his father allegedly supplied the Roman army either with tents or harnesses for the cavalry. His youth was spent in a region with strong Greek pagan traditions and Greek was his first language. Paul was almost certainly influenced by the tragic traditional deaths of the gods of his home town: Attis, who died in agony from a crucifixion, and Baal-Taraz who was resurrected. In Tarsus there was an annual pagan resurrection, not unusual in farming societies, where a great pyre was ceremoniously set alight after the harvest for the ritual burning of the god who was believed to rise again in the spring. His very ‘conversion’ was the conclusion of assembling these many

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