Discovering and Re-discovering Paul

Douglas Tennant       

RS 236 Paul: Life and Letters – Book Study Assignment

Professor A. Witmer

Crossan, John Dominic, and Larry L. Reed. In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.

Discovering and Re-discovering Paul

A book, and a fairly lengthy one at that, could be written regarding the books about Paul of Tarsus. Indeed, our course book study list of just the ‘recent’ works about Paul lists 36 titles with almost all of them published since the beginning of the 21^st century. So it seemed at first somewhat overwhelming as to which one to choose to study and be engaged with for this assignment. ‘Ho hum’ came immediately to mind. However, after choosing one by a familiar author there it was, in the first paragraph of their book. “[B]ooks about Paul could fill a library, so why one more on an overworked subject” (ix). The hook was set and I opened my mind to see if Crossan and Reed could deliver on something ‘new’ about Paul.

Part A

Crossan and Reed’s literary newness was premised upon the integration of Greco-Roman archaeology with an exegetical study of Paul’s life and letters (ix). Uniquely, the authors were to take me on a guided virtual tour of the Greco-Roman world and have me travel alongside Paul as he missionised his way around the Mediterranean. They desired to immerse me into the stark “normalcy of [Roman] civilisation” (x), which was/is in sharp contrast of my stereotypical mind view of Jesus’ rural society back in Judea. This was laid out so that I might understand and appreciate the injustice and oppression of Paul’s Romanised urban landscape (x) and why/how he questioned and eventually successfully opposed it.  It was to be an incredible experience as they provided an overview of each stop (chapter) along the way. Utilising my fertile imagination as directed, I was virtually ensconced with Paul along the Via Egnatia near Phillipi. I spent time marvelling at the magnificent victory arches and other massive edifices built in the various Romanised cities we visited. Amazingly, I was able to immerse myself with Paul as I tagged along with him to a house-church meeting and meal in urban Corinth. We wove our way through those who were out on the streets to the little apartment on the third floor of a five story building where, with the osmotic influence (329) of society and architectural infrastructure, I was a participant in early Christian worship amongst a most unique socio-economic stratum of brothers and sisters (376).

Additionally, the authors set out to (i) archaeologically and exegetically show how Paul was successful in his mission of spreading the gospel of Jesus by focusing upon and essentially “poaching” the God-fearers or God-worshippers who frequented the diasporic Jewish (and Samaritan?) synagogues (36-40, 164) and (ii) demarcate the writings of Luke in Acts from the genuine letters of Paul (40).

Paradoxically, the supportive strength and immense ability of the authors to weave Greco-Roman and Jewish archaeological facts and information about Paul’s Roman world into their contention that Paul focussed upon the conversion of local God-fearers and their exegetical presentation of his theologically centred “new creation”  (xi) seemed to go on far too much at times (179-209). Indeed, the remarkable and forensically detailed section of the book on the sexuality and pornographic aspects of patriarchy/control (250-269) was a major distraction within the book. However, overall the book content was interestingly in lockstep and agreement with the general layout and information presented in the course material. This is not surprising given the primary source materials upon which they are both based. It was uniquely comforting in a religious oriented book to find no discernible divergence between it and the course lecture content. Frankly, this enabled me to augment my studies and, indeed at times, to utilise the book as a non-canonical exegetical textbook for the course. To this end, I suggest the course author consider incorporating the work as a textbook for the course in conjunction with a bible.

Part B  

            Part B is presented as a collection of some of my personal insights of Paul that were discovered, re-discovered or gleaned and formulated from Crossan and Reed’s book and discussed generally in comparison to an excerpt from my ‘Opening Exercise’ found in Appendix A.

            Prior to taking this particular course and reading this book, I thought I ‘knew’ Paul. After all you take for gospel (I just could not resist the pun) what your Mom would say about him – wouldn’t you? My mom always said that Paul was a woman hater. Others in my church told me Paul was an anti-Semite bully who was in confrontation with the teachings of Jesus and was really just in his mission for his own self-aggrandisement. Fortunately though, I persisted in registering for this course, to seek to understand, and have been shown once again how fascinating and literally enlightening academia can be for a person. To that end, I have been discovering and re-discovering many new and different aspects and viewpoints from an historical and theological perspective about Paul.

Paul is no longer an enigma or un-embodied shadow of a man to me (Appendix A). I am gob smacked as to how this book (concomitantly with the course lectures) has brought him to life through the integration of archaeology and a wonderfully clear exegetical review of his letters. I have walked with Paul for some of those 50 km a day (162) that he would have travelled along the Via Egnatia. Crossan has created/reinforced a vivid mind’s eye view for me of Paul with his discussions of Paul who may have suffered from bouts of malaria (232), limped and/or been wracked with arthritic pain due to his many beatings and extreme hardships (2 Cor 11:23 -27), one who was the centre of a network of ‘co-workers’ (161), and a mystic and ecstatic (278-279).

I have discovered in 1 Cor. 11:17-34 the shared import that Paul has with Jesus regarding the sacredness of Jesus’ commensality (339). This is also brought to life in Crossan’s “work, share, eat” comment on Paul and his ‘new creation’ theology (339) through the important statement that “individual work must precede common food” (340). This strikes a very personal chord in me (Protestant work ethic) via my maternal grandmother who was want to say ‘them that works - eats’ before every chore and/or meal and which I reflect upon daily in like fashion. As well, I never knew before reading this book that the ‘common courtesy’ of waiting for everyone to receive their food at meal time was actually an admonishment by Paul to the Corinthians (340 and 1 Cor11:33). Who knew these common everyday activities were resultant from Paul of Tarsus and had such stature in his letters?

I wrote pages and pages of personal insights and ‘Ah Ha!’ moments such as the forgoing about Paul while reading and re-reading this book. Knowing that I cannot possibly incorporate all of them within the confines of this essay, I will now concentrate on the more salient ones that I have discovered and/or re-discovered about Paul.

I have humbly discovered that the ‘teaching points’ in Paul’s letters have become tangible realities that can now being incorporated into my daily spiritual and workaday life. For one major example, I am now convinced and espousing that Paul was not a misogynist (111-115). As Crossan and the course material point out, these are letters, pastoral yes, but they were not sent to Paul’s brothers and sisters as “theoretical theological treatise[s]” (111). Paul was clearly writing in his letters about the equality of women and men (110-111, 291, 334). Indeed, Crossan emphatically points out that Paul’s letters contained theology which entrained equality for women and men “in family, assembly and apostolate within Christianity” (110).

I have discovered that the letters that Paul wrote are not disjointed and unknowable musings from his prison cell. Crossan points out, given his pharisaic training and ingrained Jewishness, that Paul was extremely adept and savvy (342-345) and demonstrates this through his letters to his followers. Crossan identifies this for example, on the topic of ‘Christian-Jewish’ relations (390-397), where Paul writes about the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:35-54). Another unique aspect I have come to realise or perhaps more correctly, rediscovered, from Paul’s letters as expressed by the book, is that of Paul’s conception of Christ as the ‘new Adam’ (344), the ‘new creation’ (173-174, 409) and the ongoing or continuum of the transformative action of Christ (174-176, 344) in the world. Perhaps it has been my blinders all these years that has prevented me from appreciating the incredible depth and breadth of Paul’s theology that is based upon Christ (Gal. 6:15, 2 Cor. 5:17). And though I listened to the lectures and read the course notes, it was not until I became immersed in the book that I truly grasped the magnitude and ‘essence’ of Paul’s letters.

Crossan outlines throughout the book something else of Paul’s incredible ability as a Christian strategist and Jewish visionary, heretofore unbeknownst to me, where he parallels the “faith [and normalcy of the Roman Empire] in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace” against the faith of Paul and his theological sequence of “covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace” (xi).

This book dispels completely my mind view that Paul was a hermetic loner who in spite of himself was just plain lucky in being able to take on and ultimately triumph over the massive ‘normalcy of the Roman Empire’. Crossan again and again shows that after breaking away from Barnabas and the Judean brothers and sisters (220-221, 230), Paul was strategically able to develop his own network of bases in Roman provincial capitals with co-workers to spread the good news (162).  A good number of women took leading roles in his apostolate (114,161). Indeed once again, Crossan points me to the reality where I see, understand and appreciate that Paul was not a misogynist but a through and through Christian egalitarian (110-115, 228, 291). He heavily relied upon women and men to enthusiastically (162) assist him in his mission. Indeed, Crossan clearly states that “Priscilla [a woman listed first in prominence] and Aquila employed Paul in their workshop at Corinth” (329). In this vein, Paul had Phoebe carry, “read and explain” his letter from Corinth to the Roman brothers and sisters (114).

While glossolalia and visions are mentioned in the course materials, Crossan and Reed present a fuller examination of Paul as a mystic/ecstatic (277-284). This portion of their book paints another exceptionally fascinating part of Paul that I have never frankly taken notice of and had never appreciated about him. Their efforts here shed a new-to-me insight into Paul. He is shown to be more than just a letter writer. Paul was an ‘ecstatic’ Christian witness “in Christ” (280 and Gal. 2:20). The colloquial adage of ‘who knew’ comes to mind on this point.

It is enigmatic to ponder what the recipients thought of the letter(s) they received from Paul. If only Reed had been able to find evidence of some Pauline related graffiti or a fragment of a letter from Philemon. Perhaps a brave and learned author will create a work containing fictional letters of response from the Corinthians, or Galatian, or Thessalonians to Paul rebutting, refuting, agreeing, and/or modifying what he wrote to them (215).

Crossan draws a brief and a somewhat distracting comparison of the United States of America (USA) today with the Roman Empire of 2000 years ago (xi, 412). As it was briefly in the book and left somewhat hanging like a voter card chad, it would be interesting to have had Crossan insert a fictional interview with Paul about his thoughts of the USA. This could have been framed utilising Paul’s Jewish Christian faith sequence of ‘covenant, nonviolence, justice, peace’ against the ‘normalcy of the USA civilisation’ and its modern day ‘faith sequence’. On a further point of the insertion of the USA comparison, it is akin, albeit in a weak sense, to the abrupt fragment insertion into 2 Corinthians at 7:2-4. I came to wonder where the rest of the commentary on this point is. Is there a new book coming out on it in the future?

I have continually wondered till now about ‘how’ Paul was able to pull it off? How did he seemingly invent a new religion and put it into play with the result that it subsumed the Roman Empire? This book has totally engaged me and has been vaulted right up there into my top five list of influential books on my life. Crossan and Reed have brought Paul’s urban missionscape to vibrant life. Crossan and Reed have pulled a 180 degree reversal of my understanding and appreciation for Paul. They have shown me that after leaving the tutorship (shackles?) of Barnabas and the Judean Christian Jews, Paul utilised a combination of street smarts and his academic and spiritual abilities to set up a network of likeminded individuals and house-churches from Galatia to Philippi to Rome (did he ever get to Spain??) to accomplish his mission (162). On whether or not Paul was anti-Jewish, I understand that Paul’s Jewish “rootstock” background (391) served him well in his raison d’etre and as a prophet and apostle of Christ (29). And so, in spite of his detractors and opponents from those super-apostles mentioned in 2 Corinthians, to the Jews who persecuted and had him arrested and the Romans who executed him, Paul was able, through the Holy Spirit, to ultimately establish Christ’s transformative ‘new creation’ and nonviolent justice in Rome (366) and then let go and let God do the rest.

Two final comments come to mind through this book. The first is the interesting proposal that Luke never mentions Paul’s letters (28) and that he does not recognise Paul as an apostle (29). The other one is the irony that after Crossan and Reed have definitely shown that Paul ‘bested’ the mighty Roman Empire, in western society today, his ‘religion’ is best known as Roman Catholicism.

  

Appendix A – excerpt from RS 236 “Opening Exercise by D. Tennant”

I have always thought of Paul as an enigmatic entity. I know he existed as a person but he always seemed beyond my comfort zone of description of just an “ordinary” person. I have held onto the characterisation of him since a teenager as being misogynistic, a bully, anti-semitic and even at times a wee bit anti-Jesus.

My mind’s eye view of Paul is one of an unembodied individual – a shadow of a man. To me he is someone who was hiding in the dark in a dimly lit room devoid of creature comforts, perhaps an ascetic who had a conniving look on his face as he plotted against the followers of Jesus. I have often conjured up the image of him miserly and alone in prison, praying and thinking of his religious views as he wrote his various letters to the churches he was involved with throughout the Mediterranean. Paul was a facilitator of persecutions against the early “Christians” who after understanding that he could not beat them – he joined them. And that is the crux of the enigma. He persecuted/killed them and then in my simplistic mind (on this matter) he was converted to the way of the Lord but in a fashion that seems so much more complicated than Jesus is made out to be in the gospels. At times I have wafted in and out of surmising that Paul constructed/created his own version of Christianity to meet his own religious world view.