/lit/ - Literature

His “version” of Christianity was but one of hundreds of versions that existed at his time, which immediately makes his claim of being the harbinger of the “true gospel” suspect. For instance, there were Jewish Christians like the Nazarenes and Ebionites, the latter of whom read the Didache and a slightly altered version of the Gospel of Matthew ; and, besides them, there were also the Gnostics, with their multifarious sects, all of which were, to varying degrees, influenced by an olla podrida of Judaism, Christian Messianism, Neoplatonism, and / or Zoroastrianism, -and so it was that, in the midst of these oceans of different “Christianities” (or, “Christologies”) -there was the Pauline movement.

All of this ultimately means that, in his historical context, Paul of Tarsus was hardly unusual. He fits right into the early Christian milieu like a well-crafted puzzle piece. He claimed to be a “prophet,” (or, at least, inspired by Christ), he had his own “gospel,” and, thanks to the Book of Acts, which many historians attest was written with the intention of downplaying the rift between the Paul and the actual disciples of Christ, -there you have his linkage to Jesus’ disciples. In short, he was nothing special in his day. One of the only reasons, perhaps the only reason, that we even know who he is in modern times is due to the fact that his Christology just happens to be the one that came to dominate, a datum chiefly owing to a number of socio-political realities from his (meaning, Paul’s) time onward.

The likelihood of his Christology being representative of the actual, historical Jesus was, to be blunt, virtually nil. He was, like a multitude of other Christian leaders of the time, little more than a salesman for his “brand.”