The Earliest Christians were Muslims, according to scholars
James D Tabor:
Muslims do not worship Jesus, who is known as Isa in Arabic, nor do they consider him divine, but they do believe that he was a prophet or messenger of God and he is called the Messiah in the Quran. However, by affirming Jesus as Messiah they are attesting to his messianic message, not his mission as a heavenly Christ. There are some rather striking connections between the research I have presented in The Jesus Dynasty and the traditional beliefs of Islam. The Muslim emphasis on Jesus as messianic prophet and teacher is quite parallel to what we find in the Q source, in the book of James, and in the Didache. To be the Messiah is to proclaim a message, but it is the same message as that proclaimed by Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets. Islam insists that neither Jesus nor Mohammed brought a new religion. Both sought to call people back to what might be called 'Abrahamic faith.’ This is precisely what we find emphasized in the book of James. Like Islam, the book of James, and the teaching of Jesus in Q, emphasize doing the will of God as a demonstration of one’s faith. Also, the dietary laws of Islam, as quoted in the Qu'ran, echo the teachings of James in Acts 15 almost word for word: “Abstain from swine flesh, blood, things offered to idols, and carrion” (Quran 2:172).
Since Muslims reject all of the Pauline affirmations about Jesus, and thus the central claims of orthodox Christianity, the gulf between Islam and Christianity on Jesus is a wide one. However, there is little about the view of Jesus presented in this book that conflicts with Islam's basic perception.
Muslims do not worship Jesus, who is known as Isa in Arabic, nor do they consider him divine, but they do believe that he was a prophet or messenger of God and he is called the Messiah in the Quran. However, by affirming Jesus as Messiah they are attesting to his messianic message, not his mission as a heavenly Christ. There are some rather striking connections between the research I have presented in The Jesus Dynasty and the traditional beliefs of Islam. The Muslim emphasis on Jesus as messianic prophet and teacher is quite parallel to what we find in the Q source, in the book of James, and in the Didache. To be the Messiah is to proclaim a message, but it is the same message as that proclaimed by Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets. Islam insists that neither Jesus nor Mohammed brought a new religion. Both sought to call people back to what might be called 'Abrahamic faith.’ This is precisely what we find emphasized in the book of James. Like Islam, the book of James, and the teaching of Jesus in Q, emphasize doing the will of God as a demonstration of one’s faith. Also, the dietary laws of Islam, as quoted in the Qu'ran, echo the teachings of James in Acts 15 almost word for word: “Abstain from swine flesh, blood, things offered to idols, and carrion” (Quran 2:172).
Since Muslims reject all of the Pauline affirmations about Jesus, and thus the central claims of orthodox Christianity, the gulf between Islam and Christianity on Jesus is a wide one. However, there is little about the view of Jesus presented in this book that conflicts with Islam's basic perception.
- Jesus Dynasty, Page 315
Not only do I believe Paul should be seen as the “founder” of the Christianity that we know today, rather than Jesus and his original apostles, but I argue he made a decisive bitter break with those first apostles, promoting and preaching views they found to be utterly reprehensible. And conversely, I think the evidence shows that James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, as well as Peter and the other apostles, held to a Jewish version of the Christian faith that faded away and was forgotten due to the total triumph of Paul’s version of Christianity. Paul’s own letters contain bitterly sarcastic language directed even against the Jerusalem apostles. He puts forth a starkly different understanding of the message of Jesus—including a complete break from Judaism. This viewpoint changes our understanding of early Christianity.
- Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, Page 6
Bart Ehrman:
Historians of the Gospels have long concluded that the idea that Jesus called himself God is not historical. If it were, it would be in the earliest Gospels; this is a view that is distinctive to John, the last of the Gospels to be written.
- How Jesus Became God, Page 37
"Jesus is not God in Islam. Certainly, more realistic, Jesus was a man. And I think, the early Christians would agree that Jesus was a man and this would be a point of... and Christians would agree that Jesus was a Prophet, which is what the Quran says. And so I think there are places of agreement."
- MythVision Podcast, 4:24
Robert Eisenman:
Because of its palpably more accommodating attitude towards foreign rule and, at least while the Temple was still standing, to High Priests appointed by foreigners or foreign-controlled rulers, it was really the only form of Jewish religious expression the Romans were willing to live with. The same was to hold true for the form of Christianity we can refer to as 'Pauline', which was equally accommodating to Roman power. For his part, Paul proudly proclaimed his Pharisaic roots (Phil. 3:5).
This form of Judaism must be distinguished from the more variegated tapestry that characterized Jewish religious expression in Jesus' and James' lifetimes. This consisted of quite a number of groups before the fall of the Temple, some of which were quite militant and aggressive, even apocalyptic, that is, having a concern for a highly emotive style of expression regarding 'the End Time'. Most of these apocalyptic groups focused in one way or another on the Temple. They were written out of Judaism in the same manner that James and Jesus' other brothers were written out of Christianity.
'Christianity', as we know it, developed in the West in contradistinction to the more variegated landscape that continued to characterize the East. It would be more proper to refer to Western Christianity at this point as 'Pauline' or 'Gentile Christian'. It came to be seen as orthodox largely as a result of the efforts of Eusebius and like-minded persons, who put the reorganization programme ascribed to Constantine into effect. It can also be usefully referred to as 'Overseas' or 'Hellenistic Christianity' as opposed to 'Palestinian Christianity'.
- James The Brother Of Jesus And The Dead Sea Scrolls I
Not only do I believe Paul should be seen as the “founder” of the Christianity that we know today, rather than Jesus and his original apostles, but I argue he made a decisive bitter break with those first apostles, promoting and preaching views they found to be utterly reprehensible. And conversely, I think the evidence shows that James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, as well as Peter and the other apostles, held to a Jewish version of the Christian faith that faded away and was forgotten due to the total triumph of Paul’s version of Christianity. Paul’s own letters contain bitterly sarcastic language directed even against the Jerusalem apostles. He puts forth a starkly different understanding of the message of Jesus—including a complete break from Judaism. This viewpoint changes our understanding of early Christianity.
- Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, Page 6
Bart Ehrman:
Historians of the Gospels have long concluded that the idea that Jesus called himself God is not historical. If it were, it would be in the earliest Gospels; this is a view that is distinctive to John, the last of the Gospels to be written.
- How Jesus Became God, Page 37
"Jesus is not God in Islam. Certainly, more realistic, Jesus was a man. And I think, the early Christians would agree that Jesus was a man and this would be a point of... and Christians would agree that Jesus was a Prophet, which is what the Quran says. And so I think there are places of agreement."
- MythVision Podcast, 4:24
Robert Eisenman:
Because of its palpably more accommodating attitude towards foreign rule and, at least while the Temple was still standing, to High Priests appointed by foreigners or foreign-controlled rulers, it was really the only form of Jewish religious expression the Romans were willing to live with. The same was to hold true for the form of Christianity we can refer to as 'Pauline', which was equally accommodating to Roman power. For his part, Paul proudly proclaimed his Pharisaic roots (Phil. 3:5).
This form of Judaism must be distinguished from the more variegated tapestry that characterized Jewish religious expression in Jesus' and James' lifetimes. This consisted of quite a number of groups before the fall of the Temple, some of which were quite militant and aggressive, even apocalyptic, that is, having a concern for a highly emotive style of expression regarding 'the End Time'. Most of these apocalyptic groups focused in one way or another on the Temple. They were written out of Judaism in the same manner that James and Jesus' other brothers were written out of Christianity.
'Christianity', as we know it, developed in the West in contradistinction to the more variegated landscape that continued to characterize the East. It would be more proper to refer to Western Christianity at this point as 'Pauline' or 'Gentile Christian'. It came to be seen as orthodox largely as a result of the efforts of Eusebius and like-minded persons, who put the reorganization programme ascribed to Constantine into effect. It can also be usefully referred to as 'Overseas' or 'Hellenistic Christianity' as opposed to 'Palestinian Christianity'.
- James The Brother Of Jesus And The Dead Sea Scrolls I
Hans-Joachim Schoeps:
For in the understanding of Jewish Christianity, the new law is in fact identical with the oldest law of all. Like the Ebionites, Mohammed wanted to correct the false hoods which had crept into the law and to effect a reformation which would restore the original. To be sure, a full demonstration of the relationship between Mohammed and the Ebionites is not possible, but the line of tradition has been established. And thus we have a paradox of world historical proportions, viz., the fact that Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian church, but was preserved in Islam and thereby extended some of its basic ideas even to our own day. According to Islamic doctrine, the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Mohammed; the two elements, through the agency of Jewish Christianity, were, in Hegelian terms, "taken up" in Islam.
- Jewish Christianity, Page 140
Jeffrey Bütz:
That the earliest Christian doctrine was in no way incompatible with Jewish doctrine is evidenced above all by the fact that the Jews in Jerusalem continued to accept Jesus’ followers as fellow Jews; in fact, they saw them as being particularly rigorous and pious Jews. It is more than intriguing that the Muslim understanding of Jesus is very much in conformity with the first Christian orthodoxy—the original Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus. As already noted, this is no coincidence, for in his extensive travels prior to receiving his first revelation from Allah, Muhammad had numerous contacts with various seventh-century Jewish Christian sects in the northwestern perimeter of the Arabian Peninsula. It would seem that their views on Jesus strongly influenced Muhammad’s understanding of Jesus. If Jewish Christianity had prevailed over Pauline Christianity, history would likely have been written quite differently. It is quite likely that such atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust would never have transpired. If the Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus had prevailed, Jews and Christians might never have parted ways, and Islam would never have become Christianity’s perceived enemy. To this day, it is the refusal of Jews and Muslims to accept the full divinity of Jesus that makes them “pagans” and “heathens” in the eyes of many Christians.
As abundant evidence has shown us, after Jesus’ crucifixion his family and disciples continued to worship together in the Temple in Jerusalem, manifesting no difference from their fellow Jews except in their belief that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah. Unfortunately for these harmonious beginnings, Pauline Christianity increasingly adopted an understanding of Jesus that Judaism could not ultimately bear: the Hellenistic theological belief that Jesus was literally God incarnate in human flesh. As the doctrine of the incarnation became ever more central to Gentile Catholic Christianity, an impassible theological wall arose between Jews and Christians. The doctrine of the incarnation is also the great wall that separates Muslims and Christians. Most Christians today are completely unaware that Muslims highly revere Jesus and honor his teachings (they even believe in the virgin birth), but like their Jewish cousins, the strict monotheism of Islam could never accept the key Christian dogmas of the incarnation and the Holy Trinity. It is therefore potentially significant for interreligious dialogue today that one of the firm conclusions modern research into James has revealed is that neither Jesus’ family, nor the apostles, nor his Jewish disciples, believed that Jesus was literally God.
- The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity
Hyam Maccoby:
What, then, was the new story that Paul created? For the commonly held picture of Paul as the theorist who spun an intellectual framework for the simple teachings of Jesus will not do. This picture assumes that Jesus was the founder of Christianity, and Paul was the intellectualizing epigone. The truth, however, as we have seen, is that Jesus did not found a new religion at all, but simply sought to play an accepted role in the story of an existing religion, Judaism. It was Paul who founded Christianity, and he did so by creating a new story, one sufficiently powerful and gripping to launch a new world religion. In this new story Jesus was given a leading role, but this does not make him the creator of Christianity, any more than Hamlet wrote the plays of Shakespeare. The Jesus of Paul’s story was a fictional character, just as Shakespeare breathed new imaginative life into the bones of the historical figure of Hamlet the Dane.
The myth created by Paul was thus launched on its career in the world: a story that has brought mankind comfort in its despair, but has also produced plentiful evil.
Out of his own despair and agony, Paul created his myth. His belief that he received the myth from the heavenly Jesus himself has obscured Paul’s own role in creating it. The misunderstandings which he fostered about his own background have prevented readers of the New Testament from disentangling Paul’s myth from the historical facts about Jesus, the so-called Jerusalem Church, and Paul’s own adventures and clashes with his contemporaries. Paul’s character was much more colourful than Christian piety portrays it; his real life was more like a picaresque novel than the conventional life of a saint. But out of the religious influences that jostled in his mind, he created an imaginative synthesis that, for good or ill, became the basis of Western culture.
- The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Page 184 - 205
A. N. Wilson:
It could be seen, then, that the essence of the Gospels, the thing which makes them so distinctive, and such powerful spiritual texts, namely the notion of a spiritual saviour, at odds with his own kind and his own people, but whose death on the cross was a sacrifice for sin, is a wholly Pauline creation. The strange contrarieties which make the Jesus of the Gospels such a memorable figure- namely his insistence on peace and kindness in all his more notably plausible or 'authentic' sayings, and his virulent abuse of Pharisees, his Mother, and the temple authorities on the other- could pointless to a split personality in the actual historical Jesus, and more to the distinctive nature of Paul's spiritual preoccupations a generation later. Even in this respect, therefore, Paul seems a more dominant figure in the New Testament tradition than Jesus himself. The Jesus of the Gospels, if not the creation of Paul, is in some senses the result of Paul. We can therefore say that if Paul had not existed it is very unlikely that we should have had any of the Gospels in their present form. The very word 'gospel', like the phrase the New Testament itself, are ones which we first read in Paul's writings. And though, as this book has shown, there were many individuals involved in the evolution of Christianity, the aspects which distinguish it from Judaism, and indeed make it incompatible with Judaism, are Paul's unique contribution. It is for this reason that we can say that Paul, and not Jesus, was- if anyone was- the 'Founder of Christianity'.
- Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, Page 258
Joseph Klausner:
Nevertheless, it is permissible to say—of course with certain reservations—that it was not Jesus who created (or more correctly, founded) Christianity, but Paul. Jesus is the source and root of Christianity, its religious ideal, and he became all unconsciously its lawgiving prophet. Jesus did not intend to found a new religion or a new church; he only strove to bring about among his people Israel the Kingdom of Heaven, and to do this as a Messiah preaching the repentance and good works which would result in the politico-spiritual redemption of his people, and through them, of all mankind. Not so Paul. He was the clearly self-conscious creator and organizer of Christianity as a new religious community. He made Christianity a religious system different from both Judaism and paganism, a system mediating between Judaism and paganism but with an inclination toward paganism. He was also the great institutionalizer of the Christian Church. Once Paul had welded together Nazarene Jews and Gentile Christians into one body, there was no place for them either in Judaism or in paganism, so they necessarily separated from their respective religious communities and formed a new church.
This contrast between Jesus and Paul derived not only from differences in their personalities, but also from differences in their respective environments and situations.
- From Jesus to Paul, Page 581-582
Albert Schweitzer:
What is the significance, for our faith and for our religious life, of the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus? Is the alternative “Jesus or Paul” a real alternative, or should the phrase run, for us, “Jesus and Paul”?
It is doubtless a fact in the history of Christian belief that for centuries, in a certain sense, the Gospel of Paul stood in the way of the Gospel of Jesus. How did this result come about?
The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority. But in doing so he does not aim at invalidating it, but only at carrying it on in the proper way. He preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus as the Coming Messiah in the form which it must necessarily take in consequence of the death of Jesus having already occurred, and of the assigning to this death of the significance of the initial event of the Coming of the Kingdom. In the mystical redemption- doctrine of Paul the Primitive-Christian faith discharges the task which it had been set of bringing the belief in the expected Kingdom, and the redemption which goes with the Kingdom, into logical connection with the belief that the Jesus who had died was the Coming Messiah. This is, according to Paul, necessary in order to bring home to the believer that in the union with Christ he has already attained the state of existence proper to the Kingdom of God, and is therefore a redeemed man, even though the Kingdom is not yet present; and also that, as being in this state of existence, he is freed from the domination of the Law. At the same time this belief in the redemption already obtained through the death of Jesus, when thus connected with the expectation of the Kingdom, helped him to rise superior to the delay of the return of Christ
and of the appearing of the Kingdom.
- The Mysticism of the Paul the Apostle, Page 389-390
Jeffrey Bütz:
That the earliest Christian doctrine was in no way incompatible with Jewish doctrine is evidenced above all by the fact that the Jews in Jerusalem continued to accept Jesus’ followers as fellow Jews; in fact, they saw them as being particularly rigorous and pious Jews. It is more than intriguing that the Muslim understanding of Jesus is very much in conformity with the first Christian orthodoxy—the original Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus. As already noted, this is no coincidence, for in his extensive travels prior to receiving his first revelation from Allah, Muhammad had numerous contacts with various seventh-century Jewish Christian sects in the northwestern perimeter of the Arabian Peninsula. It would seem that their views on Jesus strongly influenced Muhammad’s understanding of Jesus. If Jewish Christianity had prevailed over Pauline Christianity, history would likely have been written quite differently. It is quite likely that such atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust would never have transpired. If the Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus had prevailed, Jews and Christians might never have parted ways, and Islam would never have become Christianity’s perceived enemy. To this day, it is the refusal of Jews and Muslims to accept the full divinity of Jesus that makes them “pagans” and “heathens” in the eyes of many Christians.
As abundant evidence has shown us, after Jesus’ crucifixion his family and disciples continued to worship together in the Temple in Jerusalem, manifesting no difference from their fellow Jews except in their belief that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah. Unfortunately for these harmonious beginnings, Pauline Christianity increasingly adopted an understanding of Jesus that Judaism could not ultimately bear: the Hellenistic theological belief that Jesus was literally God incarnate in human flesh. As the doctrine of the incarnation became ever more central to Gentile Catholic Christianity, an impassible theological wall arose between Jews and Christians. The doctrine of the incarnation is also the great wall that separates Muslims and Christians. Most Christians today are completely unaware that Muslims highly revere Jesus and honor his teachings (they even believe in the virgin birth), but like their Jewish cousins, the strict monotheism of Islam could never accept the key Christian dogmas of the incarnation and the Holy Trinity. It is therefore potentially significant for interreligious dialogue today that one of the firm conclusions modern research into James has revealed is that neither Jesus’ family, nor the apostles, nor his Jewish disciples, believed that Jesus was literally God.
- The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity
Hyam Maccoby:
What, then, was the new story that Paul created? For the commonly held picture of Paul as the theorist who spun an intellectual framework for the simple teachings of Jesus will not do. This picture assumes that Jesus was the founder of Christianity, and Paul was the intellectualizing epigone. The truth, however, as we have seen, is that Jesus did not found a new religion at all, but simply sought to play an accepted role in the story of an existing religion, Judaism. It was Paul who founded Christianity, and he did so by creating a new story, one sufficiently powerful and gripping to launch a new world religion. In this new story Jesus was given a leading role, but this does not make him the creator of Christianity, any more than Hamlet wrote the plays of Shakespeare. The Jesus of Paul’s story was a fictional character, just as Shakespeare breathed new imaginative life into the bones of the historical figure of Hamlet the Dane.
The myth created by Paul was thus launched on its career in the world: a story that has brought mankind comfort in its despair, but has also produced plentiful evil.
Out of his own despair and agony, Paul created his myth. His belief that he received the myth from the heavenly Jesus himself has obscured Paul’s own role in creating it. The misunderstandings which he fostered about his own background have prevented readers of the New Testament from disentangling Paul’s myth from the historical facts about Jesus, the so-called Jerusalem Church, and Paul’s own adventures and clashes with his contemporaries. Paul’s character was much more colourful than Christian piety portrays it; his real life was more like a picaresque novel than the conventional life of a saint. But out of the religious influences that jostled in his mind, he created an imaginative synthesis that, for good or ill, became the basis of Western culture.
- The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Page 184 - 205
A. N. Wilson:
It could be seen, then, that the essence of the Gospels, the thing which makes them so distinctive, and such powerful spiritual texts, namely the notion of a spiritual saviour, at odds with his own kind and his own people, but whose death on the cross was a sacrifice for sin, is a wholly Pauline creation. The strange contrarieties which make the Jesus of the Gospels such a memorable figure- namely his insistence on peace and kindness in all his more notably plausible or 'authentic' sayings, and his virulent abuse of Pharisees, his Mother, and the temple authorities on the other- could pointless to a split personality in the actual historical Jesus, and more to the distinctive nature of Paul's spiritual preoccupations a generation later. Even in this respect, therefore, Paul seems a more dominant figure in the New Testament tradition than Jesus himself. The Jesus of the Gospels, if not the creation of Paul, is in some senses the result of Paul. We can therefore say that if Paul had not existed it is very unlikely that we should have had any of the Gospels in their present form. The very word 'gospel', like the phrase the New Testament itself, are ones which we first read in Paul's writings. And though, as this book has shown, there were many individuals involved in the evolution of Christianity, the aspects which distinguish it from Judaism, and indeed make it incompatible with Judaism, are Paul's unique contribution. It is for this reason that we can say that Paul, and not Jesus, was- if anyone was- the 'Founder of Christianity'.
- Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, Page 258
Joseph Klausner:
Nevertheless, it is permissible to say—of course with certain reservations—that it was not Jesus who created (or more correctly, founded) Christianity, but Paul. Jesus is the source and root of Christianity, its religious ideal, and he became all unconsciously its lawgiving prophet. Jesus did not intend to found a new religion or a new church; he only strove to bring about among his people Israel the Kingdom of Heaven, and to do this as a Messiah preaching the repentance and good works which would result in the politico-spiritual redemption of his people, and through them, of all mankind. Not so Paul. He was the clearly self-conscious creator and organizer of Christianity as a new religious community. He made Christianity a religious system different from both Judaism and paganism, a system mediating between Judaism and paganism but with an inclination toward paganism. He was also the great institutionalizer of the Christian Church. Once Paul had welded together Nazarene Jews and Gentile Christians into one body, there was no place for them either in Judaism or in paganism, so they necessarily separated from their respective religious communities and formed a new church.
This contrast between Jesus and Paul derived not only from differences in their personalities, but also from differences in their respective environments and situations.
- From Jesus to Paul, Page 581-582
Albert Schweitzer:
What is the significance, for our faith and for our religious life, of the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus? Is the alternative “Jesus or Paul” a real alternative, or should the phrase run, for us, “Jesus and Paul”?
It is doubtless a fact in the history of Christian belief that for centuries, in a certain sense, the Gospel of Paul stood in the way of the Gospel of Jesus. How did this result come about?
The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority. But in doing so he does not aim at invalidating it, but only at carrying it on in the proper way. He preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus as the Coming Messiah in the form which it must necessarily take in consequence of the death of Jesus having already occurred, and of the assigning to this death of the significance of the initial event of the Coming of the Kingdom. In the mystical redemption- doctrine of Paul the Primitive-Christian faith discharges the task which it had been set of bringing the belief in the expected Kingdom, and the redemption which goes with the Kingdom, into logical connection with the belief that the Jesus who had died was the Coming Messiah. This is, according to Paul, necessary in order to bring home to the believer that in the union with Christ he has already attained the state of existence proper to the Kingdom of God, and is therefore a redeemed man, even though the Kingdom is not yet present; and also that, as being in this state of existence, he is freed from the domination of the Law. At the same time this belief in the redemption already obtained through the death of Jesus, when thus connected with the expectation of the Kingdom, helped him to rise superior to the delay of the return of Christ
and of the appearing of the Kingdom.
- The Mysticism of the Paul the Apostle, Page 389-390
At the outset, some reflections on the terms "founder" and "Christianity" are appropriate. First, identifying Paul as the founder of Christianity is polemical, for it denies that Jesus initiated the tradition that bears his title "the Christ." This denial is based in part on the widely accepted evidence that the title was not assigned to him nor was the movement so designated during his lifetime. It arises also from the truth of the droll but accurate observation that Jesus was looking for the Kingdom of God, but the church arrived instead. Second, it was not until the Jesus movement was identified externally and internally as something new that the term "Christianity" arose. In the following we have to ask whether these two points—the external and the internal one—apply to the movement in question.
Still, Paul would never have become the founder of Christianity—his Jewish bias remained simply too strong (see above, pp. 108–109)—had he not raised up gifted pupils who transmitted his preaching to coming generations. Some of them indeed composed letters in his name thus presented his message in a different situation.
- Paul the Founder of Christianity, Page 213-223
Hugh Schonfield:
- Paul the Founder of Christianity, Page 213-223
Paul figures so prominently in the New Testament
and his writings occupy so much of it that he has often
been described as the real founder of Christianity.
There is considerable justification for this view, for the
Christian Faith as we know it would not have existed
if it had not been for his contribution to its development.
It was not only the teaching and activities of Paul
which made him obnoxious to the Christian leaders;
but their awareness that he set his revelations above
their authority and claimed an intimacy with the mind
of Jesus greater than that of those who had companied
with him on earth and had been chosen by him. To
them he was a presumptuous upstart. It was an abomination, especially as his ideas were
so
contrary to what
they knew of Jesus, that he should pose as the embodiment of Messiah's
will and dare to instruct them as
if he were Jesus himself. They may not have guessed
Paul's Messianic secret; but they did realise that he held
himself to be uniquely and independently inspired,
and they appreciated the power of his personality, his
persuasive force, his mystical erudition, and his cultural
and intellectual superiority. Physically insignificant,
unlike King Saul of old, he yet— as that monarch had
done in stature— stood head and shoulders above his
fellows. It became imperative to cut him down to size.
- Those Incredible Christians, Page 63-66
Barrie Wilson:
Looking ahead, you will discover that I contend the tradition “miscarried,” that Christianity became over time something radically different from what its originator intended. The faith that emerged was not the religion practiced by its founder. There was a switch. I call this the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis. This stance has three components.
First of all, the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis contends that the original message of Jesus and the Jesus Movement, Jesus’ earliest followers in Jerusalem, became switched for a different religion. This other religion, one that in origin, beliefs, and practices differed from the Jesus Movement, was the Christ Movement developed by Paul in the Diaspora. A few decades after the death of both Paul and James in the 60s, the religion of Paul became grafted onto the original religion led by James. This was the impressive accomplishment of the author of the Book of Acts around the turn of the second century. The Christ Movement replaced the original Jesus Movement at least in the popular imagination as the dominant expression of the new religion.
Nothing in the early Jesus Movement prepares us for Paul. Written in the mid 50s, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians was a “bombshell” document. While intended to settle a dispute within one of the communities he founded, its impact has extended far beyond the mere arbitration of a local and temporary dispute. It laid out the main tenets of Paul’s radical Christ Movement, which is considerably different from both Judaism and the earlier Jesus Movement centered in Jerusalem. Galatians remains one of the most influential documents ever written within Christianity, for its views represent the underpinnings of a new religion.
It is significant, however, that Paul never met the Jesus of history, that charismatic rabbi who gathered disciples around himself and taught and practiced Judaism during the 20s. By his own admission, he never conferred with Jesus’ successors, the senior members of the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem, until at least three years after his dramatic experience, and even then only brie y. Paul remained curiously detached from those who knew what Jesus stood for and represented. In his writings, he constantly positioned his Christ Movement as separate and distinct from the Jesus Movement. This is considerably different from the picture the Book of Acts will paint some fifty or so years later. This latter work tried to fuse the two movements together, but it is likely this is more revisionist history than actual fact in the mid first century
Paul’s dispensing with Torah obligations represented a major religious breakthrough, something new on the horizon of the first century A.D. It offered enormous advantages: an expanded dietary menu, for one thing, and a welcoming stance for the God-fearers who no longer had to become Jewish to gain access to the promised Kingdom. It had major disadvantages as well. Paul’s views created massive dissension. Not everyone was in agreement, certainly not the members of the Jesus Movement who considered Paul’s position anathema.
Paul’s Christ Movement differed considerably in origin, beliefs, and practices from the Jesus Movement and from other Judaisms of the time. It owed its origin, for instance, not to the historical Jesus who was a teacher and Messiah claimant, but to Paul’s personal experience of the mystical Christ. Paul himself rarely referred to the teachings of the Jesus of history. That just wasn’t his focus. This differs significantly from the Jesus Movement, that group of observant Jews in Jerusalem who were faithful to the teachings and practices of the historical Jesus, their rabbi. Under the leadership of James, Peter, and John, these individuals knew the Jesus of the 20s, walked with him, saw him killed, and understood what he represented. Paul’s beliefs were also distinctive, conceiving of Christ as a savior, not the political Messiah come to reestablish the David throne and do away with Hellenization. Not for Paul was the Kingdom of God message with its subversive anti-Roman slant. His practices, moreover, differed fundamentally, denying the legitimacy of keeping the law. So Paul’s movement bypassed both Jesus’ challenge of Torah and promise of the Kingdom—the two pillars of Jesus’ thought and his bulwark against Hellenization.
- How Jesus Became Christian
Richard Leigh & Michael Baigent:
In all the vicissitudes that follow, it must be emphasised that Paul is, in effect, the first 'Christian' heretic, and that his teachings - which become the foundation of later Christianity - are a flagrant deviation from the 'original' or 'pure' form extolled by the leadership. Whether James, 'the Lord's brother', was literally Jesus' blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus, or the figure subsequently remembered as Jesus, personally. So did most of the other members of the community, or 'early Church', in Jerusalem - including, of course, Peter. When they spoke, they did so with first-hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he'd begun to regard as his 'Saviour'. He had only his quasi mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice. For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort Jesus' teachings beyond all recognition - to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimise it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus. For Jesus, adhering rigorously to Judaic Law, it would have been the most extreme blasphemy to advocate worship of any mortal figure, including himself. He makes this clear in the Gospels, urging his disciples, followers and listeners to acknowledge only God. In John 10:33-5, for example, Jesus is accused of the blasphemy of claiming to be God. He replies, citing Psalm 82, 'Is it not written in your Law, I [meaning God in the psalm] said, you are Gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed.'
Paul, in effect, shunts God aside and establishes, for the first time, worship of Jesus -Jesus as a kind of equivalent of Adonis, of Tammuz, of Attis, or of any one of the other dying and reviving gods who populated the Middle East at the time. In order to compete with these divine rivals, Jesus had to match them point for point, miracle for miracle. It is at this stage that many of the miraculous elements become associated with Jesus' biography, including, in all probability, his supposed birth of a virgin and his resurrection from the dead. They are essentially Pauline inventions, often wildly at odds with the 'pure' doctrine promulgated by James and the rest of the community in Jerusalem. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that James and his entourage should be disturbed by what Paul is doing.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, Page 184-185
Source: https://archive.org/details/the-jesus-dynasty-james-d.-tabor_202301
Source: https://ru.scribd.com/document/109860022/Paul-and-Jesus-How-the-Apostle-Transformed-Christianity-by-James-D-Tabor
Source: https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-jesus-dynasty-james-d.-tabor_202301/The%20Jesus%20Dynasty%20%28James%20D.%20Tabor%29.pdf
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lNj7KXcfA
Source: https://archive.org/details/JamesTheBrotherOfJesusAndTheDeadSeaScrollsI/page/n3/mode/2up
- Those Incredible Christians, Page 63-66
Barrie Wilson:
Looking ahead, you will discover that I contend the tradition “miscarried,” that Christianity became over time something radically different from what its originator intended. The faith that emerged was not the religion practiced by its founder. There was a switch. I call this the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis. This stance has three components.
First of all, the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis contends that the original message of Jesus and the Jesus Movement, Jesus’ earliest followers in Jerusalem, became switched for a different religion. This other religion, one that in origin, beliefs, and practices differed from the Jesus Movement, was the Christ Movement developed by Paul in the Diaspora. A few decades after the death of both Paul and James in the 60s, the religion of Paul became grafted onto the original religion led by James. This was the impressive accomplishment of the author of the Book of Acts around the turn of the second century. The Christ Movement replaced the original Jesus Movement at least in the popular imagination as the dominant expression of the new religion.
Nothing in the early Jesus Movement prepares us for Paul. Written in the mid 50s, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians was a “bombshell” document. While intended to settle a dispute within one of the communities he founded, its impact has extended far beyond the mere arbitration of a local and temporary dispute. It laid out the main tenets of Paul’s radical Christ Movement, which is considerably different from both Judaism and the earlier Jesus Movement centered in Jerusalem. Galatians remains one of the most influential documents ever written within Christianity, for its views represent the underpinnings of a new religion.
It is significant, however, that Paul never met the Jesus of history, that charismatic rabbi who gathered disciples around himself and taught and practiced Judaism during the 20s. By his own admission, he never conferred with Jesus’ successors, the senior members of the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem, until at least three years after his dramatic experience, and even then only brie y. Paul remained curiously detached from those who knew what Jesus stood for and represented. In his writings, he constantly positioned his Christ Movement as separate and distinct from the Jesus Movement. This is considerably different from the picture the Book of Acts will paint some fifty or so years later. This latter work tried to fuse the two movements together, but it is likely this is more revisionist history than actual fact in the mid first century
Paul’s dispensing with Torah obligations represented a major religious breakthrough, something new on the horizon of the first century A.D. It offered enormous advantages: an expanded dietary menu, for one thing, and a welcoming stance for the God-fearers who no longer had to become Jewish to gain access to the promised Kingdom. It had major disadvantages as well. Paul’s views created massive dissension. Not everyone was in agreement, certainly not the members of the Jesus Movement who considered Paul’s position anathema.
Paul’s Christ Movement differed considerably in origin, beliefs, and practices from the Jesus Movement and from other Judaisms of the time. It owed its origin, for instance, not to the historical Jesus who was a teacher and Messiah claimant, but to Paul’s personal experience of the mystical Christ. Paul himself rarely referred to the teachings of the Jesus of history. That just wasn’t his focus. This differs significantly from the Jesus Movement, that group of observant Jews in Jerusalem who were faithful to the teachings and practices of the historical Jesus, their rabbi. Under the leadership of James, Peter, and John, these individuals knew the Jesus of the 20s, walked with him, saw him killed, and understood what he represented. Paul’s beliefs were also distinctive, conceiving of Christ as a savior, not the political Messiah come to reestablish the David throne and do away with Hellenization. Not for Paul was the Kingdom of God message with its subversive anti-Roman slant. His practices, moreover, differed fundamentally, denying the legitimacy of keeping the law. So Paul’s movement bypassed both Jesus’ challenge of Torah and promise of the Kingdom—the two pillars of Jesus’ thought and his bulwark against Hellenization.
- How Jesus Became Christian
Richard Leigh & Michael Baigent:
In all the vicissitudes that follow, it must be emphasised that Paul is, in effect, the first 'Christian' heretic, and that his teachings - which become the foundation of later Christianity - are a flagrant deviation from the 'original' or 'pure' form extolled by the leadership. Whether James, 'the Lord's brother', was literally Jesus' blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus, or the figure subsequently remembered as Jesus, personally. So did most of the other members of the community, or 'early Church', in Jerusalem - including, of course, Peter. When they spoke, they did so with first-hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he'd begun to regard as his 'Saviour'. He had only his quasi mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice. For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort Jesus' teachings beyond all recognition - to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimise it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus. For Jesus, adhering rigorously to Judaic Law, it would have been the most extreme blasphemy to advocate worship of any mortal figure, including himself. He makes this clear in the Gospels, urging his disciples, followers and listeners to acknowledge only God. In John 10:33-5, for example, Jesus is accused of the blasphemy of claiming to be God. He replies, citing Psalm 82, 'Is it not written in your Law, I [meaning God in the psalm] said, you are Gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed.'
Paul, in effect, shunts God aside and establishes, for the first time, worship of Jesus -Jesus as a kind of equivalent of Adonis, of Tammuz, of Attis, or of any one of the other dying and reviving gods who populated the Middle East at the time. In order to compete with these divine rivals, Jesus had to match them point for point, miracle for miracle. It is at this stage that many of the miraculous elements become associated with Jesus' biography, including, in all probability, his supposed birth of a virgin and his resurrection from the dead. They are essentially Pauline inventions, often wildly at odds with the 'pure' doctrine promulgated by James and the rest of the community in Jerusalem. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that James and his entourage should be disturbed by what Paul is doing.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, Page 184-185
Source: https://archive.org/details/the-jesus-dynasty-james-d.-tabor_202301
Source: https://ru.scribd.com/document/109860022/Paul-and-Jesus-How-the-Apostle-Transformed-Christianity-by-James-D-Tabor
Source: https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-jesus-dynasty-james-d.-tabor_202301/The%20Jesus%20Dynasty%20%28James%20D.%20Tabor%29.pdf
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lNj7KXcfA
Source: https://archive.org/details/JamesTheBrotherOfJesusAndTheDeadSeaScrollsI/page/n3/mode/2up
Source: https://youtu.be/0s0kToALlbU
Source: https://archive.org/details/jewishchristiani0000scho/page/140/mode/2up
Source: https://annas-archive.org/md5/f45cfdcd9253b0f422dcc1cbee551307
Source: https://ia601508.us.archive.org/3/items/B-001-001-718/B-001-001-718.pdf
Source: https://archive.org/details/paulmindofapostl0000wils_p5o2
Source: https://archive.org/details/fromjesustopaul0000klau/page/580/mode/2up
Source: https://archive.org/details/mysticismofpaula0000schw/page/388/mode/2up
Source: https://archive.org/details/paulfounderofchr00lude/page/212/mode/2up
Source: https://archive.org/details/thoseincrediblec0000unse/page/244/mode/2up
Source: https://annas-archive.org/slow_download/21560846fa2f7defd01d80d959740476/0/2
Source: https://ia601201.us.archive.org/2/items/TheDeadSeaScrollsDeception/The_dead_sea_scrolls_deception_-_baigent_Leigh.pdf
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