For many years I thought that Paul knew about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot.  And I had good reason: he seems to refer to him in  1 Corinthians 11:23-24: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.” NRSV) Since Paul indicates that the Last Supper happened on the night Jesus was betrayed, that settles it, right?  If so, it would be a relatively big deal, for one thing because otherwise Paul says almost nothing about the events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird to people, but just read all of his letters. Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone, casting out a demon, doing any other miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other leaders, teaching the multitudes, even speaking a parable, being baptized, being transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being arrested, put on trial, found guilty [...]

I have recently finished republishing a series of posts from years ago that explored the tradition that Peter and Cephas were in fact two different people.  Anyone who is not interested in the Bible would not care, of course, but then again, no one like that would be on the blog!  For those who are both interested and familiar with the New Testament, the idea is unusual and odd – a bit of a bombshell, actually, since it is normally assumed that these are two names for the same disciple of Jesus, Simon son of Jonah, nicknamed “Cephas” (an Aramaic term that means “rock”) by Jesus.  When the term “Rock” was translated into Greek by later story tellers, they simply used the Greek term “Petros,” which gets transliterated into English as “Peter.” No problem, right? Well for 99.99% of the readers of the NT over the centuries, right.  No problem.  But for roughly .01% of us there is a problem, as I have outlined in the previous posts. I showed that there was [...]

Very few readers have ever noticed that even though almost everyone (including the Gospel writers) assumes that Peter and Cephas are simply names for the same person (Simon Peter, Jesus's disciple), Paul  -- our only author from antiquity who knew Peter indicates he was not the same person as Cephas.  WHAT? In my previous post I gave the evidence that in the early church there were writers who maintained that Cephas and Peter were *not* the same person, despite what is explicitly said in John 1:42.  Some readers may point out that these later Christian authors *may* have differentiated between the two (saying they were not the same person, even though they were) for a very clear and certain reason: in Galatians 2 Paul confronts “Cephas” and blasts him for not understanding the Gospel.  Could there have been a major rift between the two most important apostles of early Christianity (Paul and *Peter*)?  Surely the apostles were more unified than *that*!  Well, if Cephas was not the same person as Peter, it is a much, [...]

In Galatians 2 Paul describes a serious blow up that he had with "Cephas" over the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in the church.  Major conflict.  Possibly never resolved.  Throughout history this event has usually been cited to show that Paul and Peter had very different views of things. But what if the Cephas Paul attacked was not Peter but someone else? A couple of weeks ago I gave a webinar on “Cephas and Peter” for members of the Biblical Studies Academy (my for-profit business that produces on-line courses, etc., not connected with the blog).  I had written an academic article with that title many years ago, some time back in the Pleistocene age, arguing that contrary to what everyone thinks and says, they may not have been the same person.  That there were two people with that name, not just one (despite what John 1:42 explicitly states). It was a rather, uh, controversial issue and I had to look up the details of a number of the arguments I used; in doing so I [...]

Yesterday one of my fellow-travelers on a trip I'm taking wanted to talk about Paul and his self-image, and whether Paul had a rather (or extremely) exalted view of his own importance.  I gave him one of my standard answers, that I think it's impossible to engage in a psychological analysis of a person's self-image when they lived millennia ago (it's certainly hard enough when they share our time and culture and we've known them for years). But it is possible to know, sometimes, what a person actually thought about themselves on some level.  And however we evaluate the psychological elements involved, I do think it's safe to say that Paul saw himself as an important and inspired person in the history of the salvation of the world.  Make of it what you will! Here's how I have explained it before, based on my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press), edited here for the occasion.   ****************************** To make sense of how Paul’s conversion affected his actual life, not just his theology, [...]

In the previous post I began to answer the question of which lost books of early Christianity I would most like to have discovered, by discussing the earliest writings of which we are familiar, the letters of Paul, most of which (presumably) have been lost.  I would love for us to find some of them.  I doubt if we ever will, but who knows? I suppose we'd all love to have more letters from Paul, and not merely for sentimental reasons (it's not that it "would be nice").  Paul is without a doubt the most important figure in the Christian tradition next to Jesus himself.  His writings have served as a basis for Christian ethical and theological thought for centuries.  And yet we know so little about what he thought and taught. When people read Paul’s letters, they frequently neglect to realize that are all “occasional” writings.  By that I do not mean that Paul occasionally wrote letters, but that Paul wrote his letters for particular occasions.   The letters are addressed to situations [...]

Now that the semester is over and, well, I’m retired from teaching (!), I am able to start in seriously on doing research for my next book project, on how we got the canon of the New Testament.  There are 27  books in the canon.  Why these 27 in particular?  Why were others excluded – other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses, etc.?  Who decided?  On what grounds? And when? I’ve blogged about the book in recent months (back when I thought I’d be able to do some serious research in it during the fall semester!  Oh well…); if you’re interested, here are two posts: My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament My First Scholarly Encounter with the Canon of the New Testament   Here I can explain how I’m starting to approach the issue. There are tons of books about the formation of the canon that are almost entirely focused on the issues of names and dates – based on our surviving evidence which books [...]

I have been providing bullet-point summaries of the books of the New Testament, based on my fuller "nutshell summaries,"  along with some questions to think about in reflecting on the books.  With this post I will complete the undisputed Pauline epistles, that is, the seven letters that by virtual consensus are considered to be authentically from Paul's hand, by dealing with two, the letters to the Philippians and the only one of these letters to an individual, Philemon. Again, if you want to refresh your memory on the books, they are short (Philemon is a single page!) and not complicated to re(read); you can find my posts on them here: Philippians Philippians in a Nutshell Philippians: Who Wrote It? When and Why? Philippians: For Further Reading The Most Widely Discussed Passage of Philippians Philemon Philemon in a Nutshell Philemon and the Morality of Slavery Philemon: For Further Reading At a Glance:  Philippians The letter is written to Christians that Paul had converted in the city of Philippi, in eastern Macedonia. Paul wrote [...]