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Who is the founder of Christianity? It is often claimed that the Founder of Christianity was the apostle Paul – or at least that he was the co-Founder, along with Jesus.
The idea behind this claim is that Christianity is not really about the historical Jesus.
Yes, his words are hugely important, and yes it is also important to know that he did all those miraculous deeds. But his public ministry is not the core of Christian belief. Instead, the core of Christianity is the belief in his death and resurrection.
And this is what Paul preached, not what Jesus preached.
So that even if Jesus’ life and teachings are important, they are not really what Christianity is about. Christianity is about believing in his death and resurrection for salvation. And since, in this view, it was Paul who first formulated that belief, he is the founder of the Christianity religion (or co-founder).
Paul vs. Jesus: Who is the Christianity Creator?
I have never found this line of argument convincing, for two reasons. The first is that it contradicts some rather important facts of history and the second is that it contradicts what Paul himself says.
I’ll discuss both contradictions (the first in this post, the second in the next), but before doing so let me be clear and emphatic: I do NOT think that Paul and Jesus delivered the same message in their preaching, or that they did so in the same way. There was an enormous difference between what they taught.
There are points of contact and continuity, to be sure. But the differences are stark and need to be borne in mind constantly.
Comparing Paul’s and Jesus’ Teachings
Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God was soon to arrive with the appearance from heaven of the Son of Man. People needed to prepare for that imminent catastrophic event by turning to God and living in the ways that he decreed through the proper observance of the Torah, principally by loving (and trusting) God above all else and by loving their neighbors as themselves. Those who did so would survive the coming onslaught and would be brought into the Kingdom.
Paul agreed that there was an imminent disaster to take place. But in his view, that would happen when Jesus himself arrived from heaven in judgment. The way a person would survive the onslaught was not by obeying the Law of God or by loving their neighbors as much as themselves. Salvation would come only by believing in Christ’s death and resurrection.
(Click here to learn more about Paul’s importance to Christianity.)
In other words, Jesus preached about God and his coming Kingdom; Paul preached about Christ and his death and resurrection. Important similarities, yes; but also fundamental and crucial differences.
If that’s the case, and what became Christianity was not the Jewish religion Jesus propounded but the religion Paul advocated – the religion about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus – then what’s the problem with saying that it was Paul who founded Christianity?
Why Paul Was Not the Founder of Christianity
Was Paul the Founder of the Christian Religion? As I indicated, saying so contradicts both the facts of history and the statements of Paul himself.
First, facts of history.
As we saw in earlier posts, Paul was originally antagonistic toward the Christians and worked hard to “destroy” (his word) the church. Thus both Paul and the book of Acts insist strongly that he started out not as a follower of Jesus but as a persecutor of his followers.
(In a later post, I’ll talk about what it was about the Christians and their claims that incensed Paul and made him want to oppose them with violence. *Update: here’s the article.)
But for now, I want to focus on the fact that prior to Paul there were Christians who were already making bold claims about Christ. Where did these Christians come from? Obviously from another founder of Christianity (not named Paul). Again, both Paul and Acts are clear on the point: these were people who believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead for salvation.
Who is the Founder of Christianity? Remember Paul was Persecuting Christians
If Paul was the Christianity creator, there would have been no one for him to persecute prior to his conversion. But he was persecuting Christians. They, therefore, had to exist. And they could not have existed simply as a group of Jews in rural Galilee who subscribed to Jesus’ distinctive understanding of the Jewish law. Paul was persecuting Christians outside of Palestine and they must have been saying things other than “love your neighbor as yourself because the end is coming soon.” There is nothing blasphemous about that. They almost certainly were saying something blasphemous about Jesus himself.
When Jesus was living, his disciples (some of them? All of them?) appear to have wondered if or thought that, he was the Messiah. His arrest, trial, and crucifixion showed them that they had been wrong. He clearly was not the Messiah. But when they came to believe that he had been raised from the dead, they “understood.” That is to say, they reinterpreted what they had previously thought in light of the new situation.
They came to see that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the one whom God would use for salvation. But it was not that he would overthrow the Roman armies or set up a kingdom in Jerusalem. He was a different kind of messiah. One who had to die for the sake of others.
Blasphemy
Paul found this blasphemous, for reasons I’ll spell out in a later post. But for now, it’s enough to say that Paul did not invent the resurrection. In fact, he was persecuting people for already having some such view.
The fact that the early followers of Jesus, after his death, focused their beliefs on his messiahship is shown in a number of ways, not least in the way they spoke of him. The term “messiah,” of course, is the Hebrew term that gets translated into Greek as “Christ.”
The early Christians did continue to use the name “Jesus”; but from the beginning, they also called him “Jesus the Messiah” (i.e. “Jesus Christ”) or they would refer to him simply as “the Messiah.” “Christ” very early became almost like a last name. That’s because they used it so frequently of him. And that was almost certainly before Paul came on the scene two or three years later.
Finally, Paul explicitly indicated that he was not the one who created the “gospel,” but that it was Christ’s death and resurrection that brought salvation.
Was the Apostle Peter the Founder of Christianity Religion?
The argument for Peter as Christianity’s founder goes something like this:
- When Jesus was arrested and crucified his disciples fled. They did not go into hiding in Jerusalem – then went back home, to Galilee (where *else* would they go? They went home, to get out of Jerusalem!)
- Soon after, it was in Galilee (not in Jerusalem) that belief in the resurrection occurred. It occurred because Peter had a vision of Jesus that included auditory features (he thought he saw and heard him).
- This “vision” was induced by psychological factors. Peter felt terrifically guilty for having denied Jesus, and the “vision” he had brought forgiveness from his deep guilt.
- The vision was like other visions that people have (all the time): visions of dead loved ones; visions of the Virgin Mary. In these visions, of course, the loved ones do not *really* come back to life from the dead, and the Virgin Mary does not *really* show up at Lourdes, etc. These are psychologically induced visions.
- Still, like other people who have visions, Peter took the vision to be real and assumed that Jesus was alive again, in heaven.
- Peter brought the other disciples together and maintained with them that the end time was near, as Jesus had originally preached, and that the kingdom of God was soon to appear. The evidence? The resurrection of the dead had already begun. The evidence? Jesus had been raised. The evidence? He had appeared to Peter. All this is happening in Galilee.
- The vision was infectious, and the mission got underway.
This series of events was popularized by German New Testament scholar, Gerd Lüdemann, in his book, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (2004).
So, in a sense, you could say that if Jesus did not actually rise from the dead, Peter was initially responsible for igniting the spread of Christianity. For this argument to work, one must only assume that Christianity would not have survived without the resurrection story. I’ve argued multiple times that this is likely the case.
Peter’s Role in the Early Growth of the Church:
There is no doubt that Peter became dominant as the leader of the church early in the Christian movement. We have scores of passages that talk about Peter, his involvement with Jesus during his life, and his leadership of the church after his death.
But none of these mean he invented or founded Christianity. Although it may be appropriate to give him the title of the first “Christian” if Paul is correct in I Cor. 15:3-5, which says that Peter was the first to see the resurrected Jesus.
My view is that Peter really did think he had a vision of the risen Jesus, and that’s what prompted him to share the vision with the other disciples. I don’t believe he made it up. If he had made it up, you could possibly call him the “founder” of the Christian faith. But since I don’t believe he did, I still think Jesus is the more appropriate candidate for that title.
Was Mary Magdalene the Founder of Christianity?
A moment ago, I quoted I Cor. 15:3-5 where Paul cited Peter as the first person to witness Jesus raised from the dead.
You may have realized, however, that the Gospels tell a different story. The Gospels say that Mary was the first. What if they’re right? Wouldn’t it make better sense to say that Mary started Christianity?
You might know that I have written a book about the competition between Peter, Paul, and Mary in the early Christian traditions. Its title is Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene.
The evidence for Mary being the first to witness Jesus is summarized as follows:
- Mary was scarcely known or talked about. If storytellers were to make up stories of Christianity’s beginnings, it’s unlikely they would invent the story that it was a woman who started it.
- Would the “idle tale” of a woman be invented as evidence for the resurrection? That’s also unlikely.
- That being the case, maybe it actually was Mary who found the tomb empty on the third day and first proclaimed that Jesus was raised from the dead.
If you’d like to dive deeper into this line of thinking, please see my post titled “Is Mary Magdalene the Founder of Christianity?”
The True Origins of Christianity
Not all scholars agree that Jesus, Peter, Mary, and Paul should be called “Christian.” Once the earliest followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection, you must keep in mind they were still fully Jews. They were Jews who believed in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.
These same scholars would argue that Christianity was a religion distinct from Judaism. In this view, Christianity didn’t really start until it developed its own beliefs and practices (such as baptism, eucharist, and weekly meetings), none of which would require one to adhere to Judaism. You might argue then that Paul’s first gentile converts were the first true Christians.
You can learn more about this concept in my article titled, “How Did Christianity Start?”
Additional reading you may enjoy related to when and where Christianity originated are:
- The Early Growth of Christianity – This article explains how Christianity grew from its humble origins in Galilee to become something like 10% of the Roman Empire within 300 years.
- Gospel Evidence that Jesus Existed – If you ever wondered when Christianity started or where Christianity started, this article gives some good evidence from the gospels (and non-gospel sources) for its origins in 1st century Palestine.
Conclusion
As it turns out, the question of “who founded Christianity?” turns out to be a difficult one to answer. It depends on your definition of the word “Christian.” Jesus’ followers during his ministry were certainly followers of Christ, so you could call them Christian by that standard, but their beliefs certainly did not match the beliefs of mainstream Christians today.
I personally tend to think of Jesus as the founder of Christianity. Whether it was Mary or Peter who first claimed to see him after his death, or it was Paul who was responsible for taking the message of his resurrection to the first gentiles, I believe their message was based on the man, Jesus.
I know I nitpick a lot, but I agree with every word of this. You might as well say Brigham Young founded Mormonism. There might not be any Mormons today if not for Brigham Young. But that doesn’t make him the founder. James Madison played a far more influential role than George Washington, one could argue, in shaping the nation we are today, but he was just not a very important figure in the founding of that nation (too young at the time).
Paul reshaped an existing religion, which was in need of ideas that could help it survive the growing understanding that the Kingdom was not in fact coming anytime soon. A religious cult is not the same thing as a religious institution, and Paul provided some of the basic building blocks for that institution to emerge. His influence is enormous, but it’s influence over something that existed before he joined up.
If you wanted to get perverse, you could say that having set out to destroy what Jesus had started (and it doesn’t seem like he was terribly effective as a persecutor), he succeeded to a certain extent by converting to that new sect of Judaism, and making it into something Jesus never intended. And yet, of course, we probably wouldn’t remember Jesus, at least not to the same extent, had this not happened.
If you can’t beat em……
Bart, don’t the Gospels paint a different goal for Jesus than Paul? When there are ideas such as this “And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables,'” Mark 4:11 ESV it seems to me that the biggest difference is that Jesus intended on dying not becoming popular.. we see accounts of Him clearing out crowds and investing in a small group of believers whilst not making friends with the ones in authority.. I think it would be radical to determine whether or not the historical Jesus taught the way he did and did the things he did with the intentions of dying..
Mark 4:11 is referring specifically to the reasons for Jesus telling parables: it was so outsiders couldn’t know what he was talking about. Paul, of course, doesn’t deal with that issue (since he never mentions Jesus’ parables, let alone the reasons he told them)
I strongly believe Jesus had the idea that his death was necessary for some time, but I doubt he believed that from the start of his ministry. I think it’s probably something that he started contemplating after John the Baptist’s execution. John’s death didn’t really have that much impact–I have a hard time buying the story about Salome, but very likely Herod had him killed very quietly, to avoid much public uproar. Jesus, John’s former disciple, would have found this horrifying. He would have known the same thing could happen to him. Just snuffed out like a candle, and nobody notices.
So on some level, he may have been thinking about how he could make his death more–significant. There is an element of theater to the way things went down. He couldn’t control every aspect of the unfolding passion play, but he could have a pretty good general idea how how things would go if he did certain things in a certain way. People are very predictable, when you get right down to it.
That was common diarist explanation for why the ideas of Christianity were unknown during the lifetime of Jesus. Writing much later, John made no pretense of an explanation.
The gospel diarists were evangelists. They included texts portraying Jesus as a Zealot, for those who wanted to see him that way. Every outspoken Zealot knew his life was in danger.
True, we have no credible way to determine what Jesus thought and did during his lifetime. Whatever they were, they weren’t noteworthy. His sayings could have been taken from Hillel, and perhaps were. Aside from gospel diarists decades later, no one wrote anything about him that survives today. Not Jews, not friends, not enemies.
In Galatians 2:20, Paul says, “the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Is Paul claiming that Jesus believed in his own death and resurrection rather than the coming kingdom, or is “faith IN the Son of God” the more appropriate translation?
QUESTION UNRELATED TO THIS POST: I read in a commentary on Mark 10:25 that there is no “eye of the needle” gate in Jerusalem, contrary to much evangelical exegesis. What of the Aramaic back-translation story, that the same word in Aramaic can be translated both as “camel” and as “rope?” Could this verse be a mistranslation of an authentic Jesus saying, “It is easier to thread a needle with a rope than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom?”
It’s a debated issue. I personally think he means faith IN Christ. And yes, no eye of the needle gate. We have some ARamaic experts on the blog, but my understanding is that the words for rope and camel are *similar* (but different words).
If any Aramaic experts want to weigh in, I’d love to know your insights.
aek
It’s dangerous to base a doctrine on a single text like that, especially when the foundation could be a simple textual variant, therefore not what Paul wrote. In the biblical context, faith is believing an idea about God, and then acting on it. Jesus did that, even if he wasn’t God, or didn’t know that he was God, or didn’t know that he would become the universal sacrifice of a new religion. So did Paul.
Paul says practically nothing about anything Jesus thought, believed, said, or did during his lifetime.
It’s unnecessary to grasp at straws in desperate attempts to rationalize the eye of the needle. Occam’s Razor. The simple explanation is hyperbole. Jewish sages used it all the time. Hate your mother and brother.
The Pharisees interacted with, and identified with, the common people. They often railed against the rich, not for simple jealousy of their wealth, but because the rich were the powerful, and sometimes abused their power and oppressed the poor, denying them justice. That was also the most common rant of the prophets.
The Eye of the Needle gate is a myth. It was probably created by apologists who wanted to get around the whole rich-men-are-doomed preaching of the NT that is very inconvenient for a modern society that is both Christian and capitalist.
As for whether Jesus said camel or rope, well, for starters, does it even make a difference? Both are impossibilities, and that’s the whole point of the metaphor. It’s impossible for a rich man to get into the Kingdom.
As for the question of whether the original Aramaic could be read as either camel or rope, that’s the fault of basically one man. His name is George Lamsa, an Assyrian scholar who published a translation of the Peshitta, a Syriac version of the NT, into English in the last century. In his translation Lamsa translated “camel” as “rope” in Mark 10:25. The problem is the Aramaic word for rope isn’t gamla (the word for camel). But it’s similiar to the word for rope in Assyrian, the native language of Lamsa! Now, Assyrian and Aramaic, both being semitic languages, are definitely similar (think Spanish and Italian). But the Aramaic spoken by Jesus — 1st century Palestinian Aramaic — was a bit more different than Syriac, let alone Assyrian.
Yes, I know this is all terribly confusing, but many people talk about “Aramaic” as if it’s some kind of monolithic language. It’s kind of like talking about “Chinese” as if it’s a monolithic language. Mandarin and Cantonese are both “Chinese” but they’re certainly different. Same goes for ancient Palestinian Aramaic vs Syriac Aramaic vs Assyrian Aramaic. Anyway, the word Jesus could have used for “rope” back then was kebla, which may possibily have been confused for gamla (camel), but I highly doubt it.
I appreciate your presentation today. What you outline is significant…a developmental progression from the Jesus event in history to it’s interpretation through the ministry of Paul.
There is one element in all of this that has puzzled me for a long time and my questions to scholars and the clergy and my teachers about it often are ignored. I think it is extremely important, and has become, for me, a stumbling block in my personal acceptance of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, which Paul deems critical….that is, Paul’s **vistions**
Paul, especially in Galations, pointedly declares that his gospel (“my gospel”) is not from man but from the Risen Christ directly (through vision (s)) beginning with his conversion vision….and perhaps many more during his ministry.
So, we have some choices….1. are Paul’s visions genuinely from encounters with the Risen Christ, 2. Contrived events for the purpose of making his message more convincing, 3. are Paul’s visions psychotic hallucinations. (These are just three possible options.)
Paul never met nor studied with Jesus personally and met with the Jesus group only twice, the last being more than 14 years into his ministry…leading to an exchange of harsh words with the Jesus group in Jerusalem.
I could go on with this, but to sum up, what are your thoughts on Paul’s visions and conversations directly with the risen Christ as the source of his gospel…or was Paul’s theology already being taught in the early churches during the time of Paul’s ministry, which Paul adopted as his message?
I don’t know the answer to this and I would like your thoughts on it. I think the issue of Paul’s visions is significant; others consider them irrelevant. Thank you in advance.
Sorry…I have difficulty editing on my phone…I meant to spell it “visions” not visitions
I deal with this issue at some length in How Jesus Became God (arguing that Paul and others either had had non-veridical visions, i.e., hallucinations, or veridical ones — i.e. genuine encounters)
Since your blog posts were so thorough it did not purchase your book on how Jesus became God (me bad)….I will do so soon since it contains information I am seeking. Thank you for the heads-up on that.
So you think it’s possible that Peter and Paul really saw Jesus after his crucifixion (almost like a Docetic view)?
I have a related question. I find it strange that when Paul explains his vision of Jesus (in 1 Cor. 15), he makes a distinction between his later vision and the earlier visions of Peter, John, James, et al., but only in regards to the timing of them (Paul seems to say that Jesus appears to him in the same way Jesus appeared to the others before him).
In other words, Paul doesn’t seem to make any distinction in regards to the essence of the visions or appearances. If Paul’s post ascension vision is essentially the same as the pre ascension visions of Peter, John, James, et al., then Paul seems to really blend together his later “spiritual” vision with their earlier “physical” visions.
It seems if people didn’t know the backstory, they’d never pickup that Paul saw Jesus in a much different way than the original disciples saw him. Or maybe Paul is hinting that the original appearances were a bit more spiritual (like his was) than we commonly assume (in the gospels Jesus eats but he also walks through walls!).
Am I missing something here—does Paul (in the Greek perhaps) make a distinction in regards to the essence of his later vision versus the earlier visions of the others?
Yes, I think Peter and Paul both did have visions of Jesus. And yes, I think Paul wanted his readers to know that his vision of Jesus was every bit as real, and the same kind of vision, that the others had had.
Interesting. Something like cognitive dissonance could perhaps cause Peter’s vision, but it seems unlikely it would cause Paul’s vision. In your view, what caused these visions (especially Paul’s)?
No idea! But on cognitive dissonance, see today’s post.
Paul doesn’t explain his visions, and rarely hints at which of his ideas came from visions/dreams, which from others, and which are original with Paul. The essential, and probably original, idea of Christianity was Jesus as the universal sacrifice. From that foundation, all the rest is philosophy. We know he was the sacrifice, but what was his nature? That’s Christology.
People believed that dreams and visions conveyed information. They were of course untestable. As Paul gained popularity and influence, his followers believed whatever he said. He didn’t need to cite sources. Today we know dreams and visions are NOT sources if information, but millions (billions?) of people act as if they are.
We have no certain record of any of Paul’s sources, either dreams/visions or other people. I generally suggest that most of the ideas originated with Paul. Not because I can prove it, but because we can’t trace them any farther back in time. Paul was intelligent, educated, trained in rhetoric, charismatic, and persuasive. We know of no certain writing by anyone in active dialog with Paul. Acts was written probably a couple of decades after Paul’s death.
Most biblical textual scholars suggest that the Deutero-Pauline epistles (2 Thess, Colossians, Ephesians) were likely written by students of Paul. It was common for such students to write in the name of their teacher, out of respect for the teacher. If the pastoral epistles were also written by students of Paul, they certainly stay with Paul’s ideas.
Many people in psychology and in New Age traditions believe that dreams give us information about ourselves.
Paul’s ‘symptoms’ on the Damascus road match perfectly those of temporal lobe epilepsy.
I agree Paul was not likely the founder of Christianity. The work of Walter Bauer and others suggest other variants of Christianity predate Paul. But he is the main candidate for the founder of proto-orthodox Christianity.
Re Jesus’s own beliefs, there are two (unanswerable?) questions that nag at me.
1. Did he really start out believing he was the Messiah, or did his disciples convince him he was?
2. Did he really expect a startling event to take place during that Passover week in Jerusalem, or did he see his preaching as (hopefully) hastening an event that would take place within the next few decades?
If the first choices in both those cases were his actual beliefs, I would suspect “delusions of grandeur.”
1. We don’t know, but I assume it was his idea; 2. Almost certainly not.
The synoptic gospels most strongly portray Jesus as filling a role as a messiah by working as a sage of Second Temple Judaism. All the Pharisees encouraged the learning, teaching, and obedience of Torah. Not least of the motivations was to motivate God to bless Israel by giving them back their political independence. His early teachings were those of John the Baptist, and that’s what John was about.
Only from the later writings of the Johannine community could you justifiably accuse Jesus of delusions of grandeur.
Very interesting. That Paul was persecuting Christians is persuasive evidence that there was some form of Christianity before Paul and, hence, Paul was not the founder of this form of Christianity. focused on belief in the death and Resurrection of Jesus. I look forward to learning more about why Paul persecuted the Christians with such vigor….Carry on!
If true (and I think we have only Paul’s word for it), it is evidence for some prior form of Christianity. But Paul could still have been the founder of proto-orthodox Christianity.
Depends on what we mean by “Christian.” We’re not talking about Jews or gentiles believing that they could avoid the wages of their sins by believing in Jesus as the savior. We’re talking about Jews who believed Jesus was still the messiah, having been resurrected, and would return to rid the Jews of their enemies, restore the nation Israel, and usher in the Kingdom of God. The salvation they believed in and that Paul wrote about was, as Bart has written, “the deliverance Jesus’ followers would experience when the rest of the world was destroyed at the second coming.” On the other hand, perhaps the focus on Jesus himself and the belief in him would be enough for other Jews to see it as at least verging on idolatry and for us to call it Christian, thus separating it from the Judaisms of the day–even though it might not have yet involved belief in Jesus’ death as sacrificial or at least the belief that that belief could effect redemption from the wages of sin.
P.S. to Previous: And the “delusions of grandeur” may have been precisely what turned Judas against him!
Dr. Ehrman, as to the difference between what Jesus preached vs. what Paul preached, I just finished reading Vermes’ “The Religion of Jesus the Jew”, in which Vermes basically says the same thing you’re saying, though he comes at it from the Jewish angle (ala Rabbinic literature). However, upon reading Vermes’ discussion of Jesus’ teaching on the Law (not to mention the entire 4th vol. of Meier’s “A Marginal Jew”), I can’t help but feel that my initial suspicions have been confirmed; namely, that Jesus didn’t talk much about the Law — much less whether it was abrogated or not — and that 90+% of what Jesus had to say during the time of his relatively short “mission” was taken up with eschatological talk — that is to say, “Repent for the end times are at hand!” To quote Vermes: “The religion of Jesus the Jew is a rare, possibly unique, manifestation of undiluted eschatological enthusiasm.”(p.190)
“Possibly unique” might be an overstatement on Vermes’ part, because I can’t help thinking about Muhammad and how his “revelations” as preserved in the Qur’an are almost entirely made up of eschatological exhortations. Indeed, it seems the only significant difference between Muhammad’s and Jesus’ message was that Muhammad seemed as equally obsessed with stamping out idolatry and polytheism as he was with preaching heaven and hellfire. (Since Jesus was preaching almost exclusively to fellows Jews, it would have been unnecessary for him to preach against idolatry.)
If that’s the case, then trying to determine whether Jesus was as antinomian as Paul is futile. In fact, the question is bordering on the absurd, primarily because questioning the primacy of the Torah was so out of Jesus’ view that even trying to determine if he proposed to abrogate it or not is completely anachronistic. It’s as if we tried to determine if Montesquieu believed the American colonies should become an independent republic simply because the Founding Fathers were inspired by “The Spirit of the Laws”. That is, it assumes a totally anachronistic cause-and-effect.
That’s why I think the antinomianism of Paul is almost certainly the creation of Paul and his like-minded acolytes (Barnabas, Timothy, et al.) and NOT the determined plan of Jesus at all. And as to why Paul created this notion of salvation apart from the Law, as I’ve stated before, I think it was simply a matter of pragmatism and expediency on the part of Paul. Paul was single-minded in gathering in all the righteous Gentiles as quick as possible (so as to bring about the Parousia as soon as possible), and if the Law was a stumbling block to that goal, then, well, the Law had to go. Or, as Vermes puts it: “Since the obligatory imposition of the Torah on Gentiles, including circumcision, would have stopped many from joining the church, the Jewish Law, the innermost source of Jesus’ piety, was not only made optional, but had to go, be abolished in the name of Christ.” (p.212)
Paul is probably not the original author of the Corinthian Creed, which states “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-5, NASB).” Paul says he received this information. The author was probably Peter. Interestingly, if the author of the gospel Mark knew the Pauline epistles, and the author of the gospel of John knew at least one of the synoptics, then we may have only one independent source for the crucifixion and resurrection, not multiple attestations. In fact, it may all go back to a single author: the author of the Corinthian Creed. Probably Peter. One source. Who cites only scripture and visions as evidence.
See today’s post. I’m afraid we have no idea who wrote the thing, but it probably wasn’t Peter, since he didn’t write Greek.
“When Jesus was living, his disciples (some of them? All of them?) appear to have wondered if, or thought that, he was the messiah. His arrest, trial, and crucifixion showed them that they had been wrong. He clearly was not the messiah. But when they came to believe that he had been raised from the dead, they “understood.” That is to say, they reinterpreted what they had previously thought in light of the new situation. They came to see that Jesus was indeed the messiah, the one whom God would use for salvation. But it was not that he would overthrow the Roman armies or set up a kingdom in Jerusalem. He was a different kind of messiah. One who had to die for the sake of others.”
You have described very succinctly and correctly both the cognitive dissonance that the execution of Jesus caused in the minds of his disciples and their chosen method of resolving this dissonant state. Namely, start stories of apparitions of Jesus and call them proof of his resurrection.
This phenomenon has occurred many times in the history of Christianity, usually in relation to disconfirmation of claims of the imminence the Rapture, the Second Coming or other failed apocalyptic prophecies. Leon Festinger was the scientist to name this phenomenon in his classic 1956 book “When Prophecy Fails”.
IMHO cognitive dissonance theory, rather than mass hallucinations, better explains how the disciples of Jesus rationalized his death by execution and came to believe in his resurrection.
When Prophecy Fails: great book! But cognitive dissonance can be the *reason* for the visions; it doesn’t have to be an alternative to them.
Excellent summary of Jesus’ teachings and of Paul’s teachings. Thank you.
I have to share this with you: In a news article today relating to the chaos in Brazil, the reporter quoted a Brazilian aphorism: ” Even the past is unpredictable.” As a historian, you gotta love it.
DR Ehrman:
YOUR COMMENT:
Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God was soon to arrive with the appearance from heaven of the Son of Man. People needed to prepare for that imminent catastrophic event by turning to God and living in the ways that he decreed through the proper observance of the Torah, principally by loving (and trusting) God above all else and by loving their neighbors as themselves. Those who did so would survive the coming onslaught and would be brought into the Kingdom.
MY COMMENT:
I don’t believe Jesus taught what you assert He taught in the above statement. The synoptic Gospels taught that Jesus said that the son of man would come in his generation.
The synoptic Gospels are unreliable sources. We don’t really know who wrote them. Nor do we know for what reason these persons wrote them.
The persons themselves who wrote the synoptic Gospels were not eyewitnesses and Certainly God did not instruct nor commission these persons to write these accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
We can’t be sure if they’re quoting Jesus accurately.
In fact they contradict each other. Their statements are historically inaccurate. So how can one know for sure what Jesus really said about the kingdom of God or about when that Kingdom would be revealed to humanity?
We cannot know based on the synoptic Gospels.
Your assertions are null and void.
All one can do, when relying on the synoptic sources is speculate at best, and speculation is futile when one wants to ascertain the exact words of Jesus…
Your assertion that Bart’s assertions are null and void is null and void.
Thank you, Bart, for your elucidating Church History for us.
I am (was) a Mennonite for 70 years- but always thought (wondered) that the Church Leaders were lying (hiding the truth) to/from us. Of course many leaders were just as ignorant as the rest of us- only could talk faster and smarter.
May I suggest that we all take a sabbatical (at least) for one year from Christianity (and perhaps any other Religion) and start living ethically and civil as civilization would have it and we might be surprised how much our lives (as well as our politics) would be transformed for the better.
As always, I always appreciate your thoughts.
Walter Quiring
Oh wow, I am surprised you said that you never found this convincing, because when I listened to your course a while back, this was the exact impression I had taken as your position: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/from-jesus-to-constantine-a-history-of-early-christianity.html
Paul founded Christianity as we know it today. And, he gave divine revelation and scripture as his sources, while also acknowledging that the religion was in existence before he became a believer. Obviously there was no resurrection, there may not have even been a historical Jesus… Paul was either crazy, or a liar…and CS Lewis’s argument doesn’t hold water here. Paul may be the most interesting player in this whole story…
Did “Christ” have a meaning in Greek before Jesus?
It would have referred to someone who was anointed with oil
Follow up: was there a Greek context for anointing someone with oil before Alexander’s conquests?
I suppose athletes getting a rubdown? I don’t really know!
Hah! Brilliant! That’s almost a Monty Pythonesque scene!
“So, Phrastus, tell me about this new god you’re into.”
“Wel his name is Jesus, called Christ.”
“You mean to say he’s all greasy? Like a gladiator? Now that’s a God I could really get behind!”
What is the basis for the assumption that Jesús was an apocalyptic teacher?
I lay it all out in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
By all means, buy Ehrman’s book. But to me, the short answer is that the synoptic gospels portray him that way. His early teachings were those of John the Baptist. His sayings are peppered with the ‘kingdom of God’ phrase, which meant a politically independent Israel. With control over their own destiny, Israel could then forge a nation once again fully pleasing to God, and therefore receiving all the benefits promised in the Mosaic Covenant. It was described in typical apocalyptic / utopian terms, saying how wonderful it will be when God punishes all the bad people (especially the Romans) and blesses all the good people. Reversal of fortunes.
Would it be fair to say those who “witnessed,” reported, and publicized Jesus’ resurrection are the founders of Christianity? Perhaps, according to the stories, the women at tomb?
Yup, I’d say that started it.
Except we think that Jesus’ body wasn’t actually in a tomb so there were no women at the tomb. Therefore didn’t it have to start with those claiming to have visions of Jesus?
Yes, that’s what I think. I explain why more fully in How Jesus Became God.
How can you agree with that, Bart? Resurrection was not unknown in Judaism. The resurrection of someone some Jews believed was the messiah certainly was not part of any prophecy about him and would have been a big, unexpected surprise. But there was nothing, in itself, Christian about it. More had to be added to it for any such identification as Christian…his death as sacrificial, belief in him as the path to salvation…..
I don’t know of any tradition in early Judaism about a human who was killed (or otherwise died) who was raised from the dead, physically, and made an immortal being.
Putting aside, for the moment, the issue of becoming an immortal, wasn’t it Elisha and Elijah who each raised someone after they’d died? And didn’t Jesus raise Lazarus after he had been dead? I’m not saying that there’d been a history of it or tradition, just that it was not unknown in Judaism. Plus, many apocalyptic Jews believed the dead would be resurrected. So resurrection in itself was not announcing a new religion.
I must admit, I only just ordered (finally) your How Jesus Became God. But from what you’ve written about it, it seems that it is only speculation to say that those who witnessed the risen Jesus MUST have also thought he’d ascended to Heaven to become an immortal being. But, even so, if he’d been made an angel, let’s say, who would return embodied to fulfill traditional messianic prophecies, you’d have resurrection, ascension, and a traditional messiah–all within a Jewish albeit slightly revised tradition. You would have no beliefs about the salvific value of his death or a teaching that one had to believe in him to be saved.
There is an important difference between “resuscitation” and “resurrection”. Resuscitation happens when a person is dead and then restored to life. That person dies again later. Resurrection is when a person is dead and then raised and made immortal, never to die again. There is no instance of that in the early Jewish tradition.
Bart, please bear with me while I push this group of questions further. I’m not arguing as much as I am proposing alternatives regarding which your responses can help me get clear.
Bart, Didn’t you say in an earlier post that that is what the first Christians believed–that, merely in virtue of being resurrected and given immortality, he had been made God-like?
Enoch and Elijah were taken up to Heaven without dying or being resurrected. People did not, as far as I know, leap to the conclusion that they had been made God-like (except in their immortality).
That’s the point. Anyone taken up into heaven *was* made a divine being. That’s one of the points about Enoch made in 1 Enoch — he was made divine. See my book How Jesus Became God. I lay out the evidence there.
Per the synoptic gospels, Jesus was definitely not Antinomian.
Perhaps Paul recognized that he was offering the region its very first free religion! No sacrifices required. No dues to a religious hierarchy. That may be why Paul’s churches didn’t have leadership until after his death. 1 Clement wanted a church hierarchy justified by the doctrine of apostolic succession.
I think that’s a key contender, but not the only candidate. The Greek mystery religions were already thinking about a universal sacrifice, and no resurrection is required for that.
I guess Jesus was a fairly common name in Palestine at the time, so when talking about Jesus the Messiah the early Christians would have kept calling him Jesus the Messiah to distinguish him from any of the other Jesus’s around. The title stuck, and the “the” got dropped, possibly even before the Greek speaking Christians started talking about Jesus (the) Christ.
They called him Jesus of Nazareth, as was the custom. Anointment was not limited to a messianic role.
I think a lot of people today think there is only one Christianity, the one they grew up with. Any other form is not *really* Christianity. It’s hard for these people to understand that Paul’s Christianity was just one form of many that were around at the time. Even though he shaped what would become “orthodox” later, he didn’t invent it. If it weren’t for Paul, maybe we would have a bunch of letters from some other guy who went round spreading his own version of Christianity. Or maybe we wouldn’t. But Paul wasn’t the founder.
But we have no letters, do we, from anyone else during the time Paul was writing much less before his conversion and therefore no evidence of earlier Christians. Paul says he received the Gospel from those who came before him and he says that he received it from no man. There was hardly time for many forms of Christianity to have developed before Paul set out for Damascus. It was surprising enough that Paul came to believe what he believed so early.
In his 1934 book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, Walter Bauer makes the case that other variants of Christianity predated the proto-orthodox. Paul also recites earlier creeds and mentions things that were passed on to him. But he’s never specific about which is which. Except the communion ceremony, which he does say was passed on. Paul begins almost 2 decades after the execution of Jesus. That’s enough time.
Hi Bart,
This is off the subject of the thread, but I would like to know what are the best dates ascribed to the biblical books, in terms of when they were written. The internet is not helpful, the dates are so varying and contradictory.
Paul’s letters: in the 50s; Mark 70; Luke and Matthew and Acts 80-85; John 90-95. The others are up for grabs.
Of the “others” that are likely “forged” (e.g Ephesians, Colossians, Peter’s two letters, etc.)… do you think these were written by people who believed they were somehow justified to write in these apostles’ names? Maybe they knew Paul or were very familiar with Q or something like that… and they believed they were accurately applying what those apostles would say if they were alive to address these later issues? Or were they scoundrels? It’s strange that the early church would be so easily duped if these were straight up liars… is it possible they accepted them because they came from sources they believed accurately represented Paul and Peter?
P.s. What’s the difference between pseudonymous and pseudepigraphic? Are they both fancy synonyms for forged? I’ve looked it up and I’ve read varying answers/definitions.
You should probably read my book Forged (or if you’re really invested in the question, my book Forgery and Counterforgery), where I deal with these questions a length. I don’t think they were scoundrels. They had a “truth” to tell and they were willing to deceive their readers in order to convey it. No real difference between the terms, one has greater reference ot the author (he is using a pseudonym) and the other more to the writing (it is written under a pseudonym)
Sounds good. Which book best explains WHY these books are considered pseudonymous? Not just the motives of those who “forged” these letters, but the textual critical reasons like dates, theological differences (and why the different theology can’t be explained by the real author’s theology being developed), Greek style (and why the style differences can’t be explained by the author using different scribes), etc. The hard evidence rather than subjective interpretation is what I’m after… whichever book covers that I’ll get…
Forgery and Counterforgery will give you more information about sucht things than you’ll want!
Roger that… over 6oo pages at over two pounds… that’s the kind of thing I like… I’ll read that and see if I have any questions leftover… thanks!
You are not convinced by Richard I Pervo’s attempt to date Acts in early second century?
I’m open to it, but I’m not completely convinced that Luke used Josephus.
Aren’t some scholars arguing that Acts could well be as late as 110 or even later? What is their argument and your opinion of it?
They think the author is dependent on Josephus. I’ve never been fully convinced.
What evidence is there to support the claim that, before his conversion, Paul was persecuting “Christians”?
Is it not more likely that these people took the Ebionite view that the human Jesus had been brought back to life after crucifixion and was waiting somewhere for the imminent apocalypse? Since Jesus had just been condemned to death by authorities, that would have been sufficient reason to persecute his followers.
How can we be certain how the early followers of Jesus spoke of him before contact with Paul when the only evidence comes from Paul and his supporters?
I don’t think there were any Ebionites yet. The best way to get to pre-Pauline views is to see if there are any pre-Pauline traditions in his letters. I explain about all that in How Jesus Became God. But the short story is that if Paul persecuted Christians, they had to be saying something offensive; and I think the best solution is to say that they were calling a crucified man the messiah of God.
In your book “How Jesus became God” you say “Some scholars have maintained that the Ebionites could trace their theological lineage back to the earliest followers of Jesus, the Jewish believers who congregated in Jerusalem in the years after Jesus’s death around the leadership of his brother James”
If that is so, these would have been the ones that Paul persecuted.
It seems that there are possibilities other than the categorical statement that Paul persecuted “Christians” who shared his belief that Jesus was divine.
The problem with looking for pre-Pauline traditions in his letters is that his conversion was only 2-3 years after the crucifixion whereas the first letters are from about 15 years later. Is it not more likely that the traditions you mention (1 Corinthians 15:3-6) developed during the 15 year period rather than in 2-3 years? It was in Paul’s interest to claim that he was following tradition and not inventing a new religion, so his evidence is suspect.
I don’t think Paul was persecuting them because they believed Jesus was divine, but because they believed he was the messiah.
But did these supporters of Jesus believe that he was divine as well as being the messiah?
My point is that they probably believed that he was just human, which was the Ebionite position., as explained in your book. In that case, Paul was not persecuting “Christians” in the modern sense. Since they were supporting someone who had just been executed as a threat to the administration, could Paul not have persecuted them for that reason, regardless of the details of their belief and whatever he may have said decades later?
I don’t think anyone in the ancient world was a Christian in the modern sense. But yes, I think the “offense” to Paul was that they were calling Jesus (a crucified man) the messiah.
Blackwell’s point is very interesting: “Since Jesus had just been condemned to death by authorities, that would have been sufficient reason to persecute his followers.” Someone (Lawrence Schiffman?) once suggested that the Sadducees were the ones who had given Paul his assignment to persecute “Christians.” It is said that the Sadducees and other leaders at the Temple were quislings of Roman authority, with a responsibility to help Roman authorities in keeping the peace. Roman authority executed Jesus as a troublemaker or because people were treating him like a king, which would have been seditious. Therefore, Roman authorities could have, through the Jewish authorities, had someone assigned to go after those who continued the seditious views.
I agree with that but that still falls short of Christian beliefs, doesn’t it?
It depends how narrowly you define “Christian”
Well, what would be the point of using the word “Christian” if it could be accounted for and understood within Jewish parameters? It seems like you are saying that even slightly tweaked versions of a religion can be considered as breaks with that religion and as new religions? I guess people are free to do that but where’s the integrity in it?
I think you’re saying that a Christian cannot be something else at the same time. That’s certainly one way to define the term. But there are lots of others. Plenty of Christians over history have also been Jews, for example. I know Jewish Christians today.
Bart, you said, “I know Jewish Christians today.” I’ve met some. I’m curious what the people you know believed when it came to Jesus. I presume it’s not just that he is the Jewish messiah, crucified, resurrected, and who would return to help God initiate the Kingdom but that belief in him, his sacrificial death, and resurrection one could be released from paying the wages of one’s sins. Is that about right?
Probably for most, yes.
From what I can tell, polytheists persecuted Christians no more than they persecuted anyone else who refused to offer the traditional sacrifices to the gods. They didn’t want the gods to be displeased. It didn’t escalate until the second century.
“Since Jesus had just been condemned to death by authorities, that would have been sufficient reason to persecute his followers.” — Are you kidding? Martyrdom of a leader often revitalizes a movement. By the time diarists got around to writing gospels, no one knew any details of the execution of Jesus. All we know is that people (at least Paul) believed that he was crucified and then raised from the dead.
Early Christians didn’t hate the Romans because they executed Jesus. The earliest rants we saw were against Jews, since some early authors blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus. Thus the early rise of anti-semitism.
I think the gospel diarists had no idea why Jesus was executed by Rome. So they had to invent stories to show why a good man would be crucified. So they portrayed him as being accused of being a Zealot, judicially exonerated, but then executed anyway because of the threat of riot. It’s a plausible plot, and it makes Jesus look innocent. But in truth we don’t know how it happened.
Saul would have persecuted only Jews for saying heretical things, such as Jesus was a god, and especially the God of Israel. If they weren’t Jews, then the Jews could care less. Paul would not have persecuted the early Jesus Movement, because they were just following the teachings of Jesus, who was following the teachings of Hillel and John the Baptist.
Your work is much appreciated Dr. Ehrman – very thankful to have your knowledge as a resource.
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
This is somewhat unrelated, but your comment about “Christ” being the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah reminded me of a question I have been meaning to ask. Is it true that the Greek word ‘Christ’ comes from the word chrio, chris, chrisma…or something like that, that specifically refers to the type of anointing oil used? A perfumed anointing oil like the kind used by the woman with the alabaster jar?
No, it comes from chrio, the verb, which just means to anoint.
Quick follow-up to this… In 1 John, the “anointing” is referred to a few times using the word “chrisma,” which gets defined as a luxuriant, fragrant, spiced oil mixture likely derived from the far East and used for the anointing of Christian priests or Christians in general. Do you know where the Greek word “chrisma” is coming from and if this was the type of oil used for Christians in the early church? A fragrant, spicy one? Thanks again!
I don’t think that’s actually a definition of chrisma. It must means an ointment, doesn’t it?
Right. I think it is getting defined as a type of ointment.
It’s funny that we know Paul didn’t truly found Christianity, but we tend to give him credit for doing so anyway. Our interpretation of Paul creates an unintentional false memory. It’s completely incorrect, but our minds tell us that it’s *right*.
The same goes for Jesus’ and Paul’s messages. They’re fundamentally different, but a lot of people can’t see that.
Our continued use of ambiguous terminology is causing no end of confusion and misunderstanding.
Jesus is portrayed as a sage of Second Temple Judaism. His saying should be interpreted and understood in that context, though translated (and not necessarily understood) by Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking authors.
In Second Temple Judaism, messiah was a role, not a person. A person qualifies for that role if he successfully ‘saves’ Israel by ending domination by a foreign power and restoring them to political independence. You could succeed by acting as a prophet and causing Israel to repent, therefore causing God to bless. You could succeed by military conquest (as David, or as Cyrus). Jesus accomplished neither.
The theme common to all forms of early Christianity was Jesus as the universal sacrifice. That meant you refused to offer any other sacrifices. Jews and polytheists alike would persecute for you for refusing to offer the sacrifices that the gods required. If you were a Jew (therefore part of Israel), then your disobedience to the God of Israel causes suffering for all of Israel. That’s enough reason for Saul to persecute you.
By this time, Jews were firmly monotheistic. If you were a Jew but worshiped Jesus, you were worshiping other gods, therefore violating Mosaic Covenant, and should be persecuted. Actually, according to Torah, you should be stoned to death. If you were not a Jew, then Jews wouldn’t care whom or what you worshiped.That didn’t affect the blessings/cursings of Israel under Mosaic Covenant.
Among those Christians who thought Jesus was a god, there were many ideas. He only appeared to be human. He was adopted by God. He was a god-man (common in Greek mythology). He was a god but a different god from the God of Israel. He was both God and human, a paradox which has never been resolved, but which finally won the popularity contest. That’s the idea that became orthodox.
It was true Jesus preached about the Kingdom whereas Paul preach about a ressurected Jesus. While Jesus never founded a new religion about himself. The Hellenists like Stephen and Nicolas did found a religion about Jesus (Acts 6). Paul persecuted the Hellenists (Acts 8:1) but later on embraced their faith for reasons he only knew. Most likely two reasons is that the faith of the Hellenists are anti revolutionary Messianic Jews. Their group’d idea about a crucified Messiah needs to be propagated to counter the revolutionary Jews who are waiting a conquering Messiah. The second reason is that Paul want to found a new religion on-top of what the Hellenists are saying. They lack authority to win because no one of them are too charlatan enough to claim the ressurected Jesus appointed them as apostles for both the Jews and the Gentiles. Paul claim it by himself, making him at par or even higher in authority against the original 12 Apostles of Jesus. Thus, Paul both hijacked nascent and weak Hellenist Christianity and founded a new one on top of it by claiming he was appointed by the risen Christ as apostle for both Jews and Gentiles.
According to the barely reliable Acts, it was in Antioch that disciples were first called Christians. What were their beliefs at the time? It probably depended on which Christian you asked. Among those in Antioch at the time were the disciples who were scattered from Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen. Paul was in Tarsus, though Barnabas brought Paul to Antioch. Men from Cyprus and Cyrene were preaching in Antioch. Acts 11:19-26. What were they preaching? Antioch was an important commercial and intellectual center in the Greek world; not in Samaria, Judea or Jerusalem
Is Jesus God? I still think Arian had it right. Can we define Christianity in a generally acceptable way? Pre or Post Reformation? Is belief in the holy Trinity essential? Is belief in original sin essential? From its beginnings Christianity has been evolving at different times in different places. Are snake handlers Christians? Are Christian Nationalist Christians? Jesus, Peter, Paul, None of the above?