3.Trinity, the doctrine of God taught by Christians that asserts that God is one in essence but three in ``person,'' Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: ``Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one'' (Deut. 6:4). [ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975 ]Jesus' Death.This has been the single most controversial subject in the world. The Quran's miraculous mathematical code has now provided the final answer to this topic:Jesus' soul was raised, i.e., he was put to death prior to the arrest and crucifixion of his body. Thus, his persecutors arrested, tortured, and crucified an empty body - Jesus was already gone to the world of souls (3:55, 4:157).They plotted and schemed, but so did God, and God is the best schemer. Thus, God said, ``O Jesus, I am putting you to death, and raising you to Me; I will save you from the disbelievers.'' [ Quran 3:54-55 ]
They claimed that they killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of God! In fact, they never killed him; they never crucified him; they were led to believe that they did. [ Quran 4:157 ]Mercifully, God has given our generation a living example of a person whose soul departed this world, but his body continued to live for 19 months. On November 25, 1984, doctors at the Humana Hospital of Louisville, Kentucky removed the diseased heart of Mr. William Schroeder and replaced it with a plastic and metal pump (THE NEW YORK TIMES, Monday, November 26, 1984).
On the 19th day after this historic operation - Thursday, December 13, 1984 - Mr. Schroeder, the soul, the real person, departed this world. Mr. Schroeder died. But his body continued to function with the artificial heart implanted in his body. The world was told that he "probably suffered a stroke" (THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 14, 1984). Significantly, only one day before Mr. Schroeder's departure, he talked with President Ronald Reagan on national TV, and demanded that the Social Security Administration send his overdue check. He was perfectly alert. From the moment "he suffered a stroke," he did not recognize the day or time, nor his family members. In fact, Mr. Scroeder was no longer in this world.(The Gospels) state clearly that the arrested body of Jesus was oblivious to the events surrounding it:The chief priests, meanwhile, brought many accusations against Jesus. Pilate interrogated him again: "Surely you have some answer? See how many accusations they are leveling against you." But greatly to Pilate's surprise, Jesus made no further response. [ Mark 15:3-5 ]Herod was extremely pleased to see Jesus. From the reports about him he had wanted for a long time to see him, and he was hoping to see him work some miracles. He questioned Jesus at considerable length, but Jesus made no response. The chief priests and scribes were at hand to accuse him vehemently. Herod and his guards then treated him with contempt and insult. [ Luke 23:8-11 ]The Savior said to me, "He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is the fleshly part. [Apocalypse of Peter, VII, 3, 81] from THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY (Harper & Row, 1977, James M. Robinson, ed, Page 339).The facts that (1) Mr. Schroeder's soul departed on the 19th day after the operation, and (2) his body survived for 19 months, are uncanny reminders that God wanted the world to know the parallel between Schroeder's situation, and the proven account of Jesus' departure prior to the arrest, torture, and crucifixion of his soulless body.WHERE DID THE CONCEPT COME FROM?
...The source of your unity and election is genuine suffering which you undergo by the will of
the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God. Hence you deserve to be considered happy....you are
imitators of God; and it was God’s blood that stirred you up once more to do the sort of thing
you do naturally and have now done to perfection.
—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
Within a hundred years, the concept of Jesus as God was already well established. Bishop
Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch. He was killed around 100 A.D. The above
excerpt is from his letter to the Ephesians (EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS, C. C.
Richardson, ed., Macmillan, 1970, pp. 87-88).
It is important to examine how and why the concept of Jesus as God developed and
became accepted. That understanding helps us to assess our own beliefs. For that reason,
this chapter will give you some historical and theological perspective on the development
of this idea of Jesus as God incarnate. The concept developed very early, but it was not
universally accepted among the vanguard of Christianity. There was great diversity
among early Christians.EARLY DIVERSITY
Even in the newborn church, immediately after Jesus’ death, there were major differences
among the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. These are indicated in the New
Testament book of Acts. During his journeys, Paul went to Jerusalem, where he met with
James and the elders of the early church. In the next verses they are addressing him:
“You see brother, how many thousands of Jews have come to
believe, all of them staunch defenders of the law. Yet they have
been informed that you teach the Jews who live among the
Gentiles to abandon Moses, to give up the circumcision of their
children, and to renounce their customs. What are we to do
about your coming, of which they are sure to hear? Please do as
we tell you. There are four men among us who made a vow. Take
them along with you and join with them in their rite of
purification; pay the fee for the shaving of their heads. In that
way, everyone will know that there is nothing in what they have
been told about you, and that you follow the law yourself with due observance. As for the Gentile converts, we sent them a
letter with our decision that they were merely to avoid meat
sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of strangled animals, and
illicit sexual union.” Accordingly, Paul gathered the men
together and went through the rite of purification with them the
next day. Then he entered the temple precincts to give notice of
the day when the period of purification would be over, at which
time the offering was to be made for each of them.[Acts 21:20-26]
This passage shows that the early Jewish Christians continued to follow Jewish law,
circumcising their sons and keeping the traditions of their fathers. Some of them even
continued to take the Nazarite vow, as the four men whose heads were being shaved. This
Mosaic practice was one of dedicating oneself to God and following strict rules of purity
and sacrifice for a specified length of time. (See Numbers 6:1-21.)
Gentile converts, on the other hand, often did not follow the same set of rules. It is
apparent from the above verses that in the Jerusalem church they had only to abstain from
forbidden meats and adultery.
Besides differing practices, there were also many different understandings within the
early church concerning the true identity of Jesus. In fact, these differences were very
marked, and are eloquently expressed by Robert L. Wilken in THE MYTH OF
CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS (Doubleday, 1971, pp. 165-166):
There were no set beliefs agreed on by all; nor were there any ground rules on how to
determine what to say or think or do; nor was there any acknowledged authority for deciding
such question (sic). Let us suppose that in the year A.D. 35 two men, Michael and Ephraim,
became Christians in Jerusalem; Michael went to the town of Edessa in Syria to live, and
Ephraim went to Alexandria in Egypt. On arrival in their respective cities, each told others
about the remarkable man Jesus. After telling their friends about Jesus, let us say Michael and
Ephraim organized Christian congregations. Almost immediately, problems would arise.
What should we do about the Jewish law? What should we do when we gather for worship?...
The questions were endless, and the Christians in Edessa and the Christians in Alexandria
would not answer all in the same way—the traditions Michael and Ephraim brought with
them were too embryonic, too undefined, to answer every new question or settle every
dispute. They had to make up their own minds as they understood their own situation and the
memories they brought with them.
Now let us change the scene to A.D. 75. Forty years have passed. In the meantime the Jews
have been defeated by the Romans, and Jerusalem has been destroyed. Also, the Christian
movement has spread widely and solidified its traditions. Let us now suppose that someone
from Edessa travels to Alexandria and learns that there is a Christian community there.... To
his surprise, he learns that they have little in common except a common loyalty to Jesus, and
the fragments of his words that have been handed on orally. And even the fragments of his
sayings are not in quite the form they are in Edessa. The visitor from Edessa discovers that the
Christians in Alexandria do not keep the Jewish law, whereas his congregation keeps it
exactly, admitting no one to the Christian community without circumcision.The Alexandrians
pray to Jesus, whereas in Edessa all prayers are addressed solely to God the Father.... Both are
shocked at the practices and beliefs of the others.
Given this great diversity among early Christians, at what point did the doctrine of Jesus’
divinity actually develop? And what were the factors contributing to the spread and
eventual formalization of this doctrine?
Searching for the answers to these questions is especially difficult because there are no
known surviving documents from the ‘Mother Church’, the original Christian community
in Jerusalem. For an extensive discussion of this point, see S.G.F. Brandon’s book JESUS
AND THE ZEALOTS (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967, pp. 148-159). We will review his
arguments in a few pages.
But first, we need to look more closely at the differences that Paul had with other
followers of Christ. Remember that Paul never met Jesus, nor did he study with the
original apostles. His knowledge of Jesus and his teachings came mostly through
personal inspiration. Hyam Maccoby states (THE MYTHMAKER. Harper and Row, 1987,
pp. 3-4):
Paul claimed that his interpretations were not just his own invention, but had come to him by
personal inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus,
even though he had never met him during his lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained
through visions and transports, was actually superior to acquaintance with Jesus during his
lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes. Clearly Paul, however good his motivations, could not pass on to us the exact words or
actions of Jesus during the years he taught on earth. He had no way of knowing exactly
what they were.
It is inevitable that he would be in some conflict with those who were actually with Jesus
during those years. Their experiences and their memories of a flesh and blood man would
necessarily be different from the Jesus he knew from his visions.PAUL vs THE SUPER-APOSTLES
There are many indications in Paul’s letters that there were powerful and authoritative
opponents to his teachings. Paul wrote that these opponents were teaching a “gospel other
than the gospel you accepted” and preaching about “another Jesus:”
My fear is that, just as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning,
your thoughts may be corrupted and you may fall away from
your sincere and complete devotion to Christ. I say this because
when someone comes preaching another Jesus than the one we
preached, or when you receive a different spirit than the one you
have received, or a gospel other than the gospel you accepted,
you seem to endure it quite well. I consider myself inferior to the
“super-apostles” in nothing.
[2 Corinthians 11:3-5].As Paul continues, it is clear that those whom he refers to above as the ‘super-apostles’
are Hebrews whose authority he does not question, but he tries to match their
qualifications with his own: “Since many are bragging about their human distinctions, I
too will boast” (2 Cor. 11:18).
Brandon argues that Paul’s ‘super-apostles’ are indeed the original Apostles of Jesus
(Ibid., pp. 152-153):
Paul, curiously, despite his exceeding agitation over their activity, never names them.
Whoever they were, they were obviously Christians of great authority or representative of
leaders of great authority; for they were able to go among Paul’s own converts and
successfully present a rival interpretation of the faith. Moreover, although he is so
profoundly disturbed by their action, Paul never questions their authority as they did his.
These facts, taken together with Paul’s very evident embarrassment about his relations
with the leading Apostles at Jerusalem, point irresistibly to one conclusion only: that the
‘other gospel’, which opposes Paul’s own, was the interpretation of the nature and
mission of Jesus propounded by the Jerusalem Church, which comprised the original
Apostles of Jesus and eyewitnesses of his life.
Not all Biblical scholars agree that the ‘super apostles’ were the original apostles, and
that the ‘other gospel’ was that of the Jerusalem Church, but there is a very good case for
their being so. In fact, the very name ‘super apostles’ is evidence. Who else would fit
such a name?
The passage we quoted earlier from Acts 21:20-26 demonstrates that the original apostles
had differing views from Paul, and they had the authority to enforce those views, at least
by writing to the Gentile converts to “avoid meat sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of
strangled animals, and illicit sexual union.”
This is important because since Paul never met Jesus, he had no first hand knowledge of
Christ’s teachings. Yet most of what we know about the very early years of Christianity
comes from Paul’s letters. And the Gospel of Christ which has survived has come
through the Pauline tradition. All of this means that we do not know for certain what the
original followers of Jesus taught. And more importantly, we do not know how much of
Christ’s own teaching has reached us unflavored by Paul’s understanding.
One thing we do know is that the differences among the early members of the church
were deep and divisive. Paul’s letter to the Galatians makes that clear. Scathingly, Paul
exhorts his readers to stick to the gospel he had delivered to them:
“I am amazed that you are so soon deserting him who called you
in accord with his gracious design in Christ, and are going over
to another gospel.... For if even we, or an angel from heaven,
should preach to you a gospel not in accord with the one we
delivered to you, let a curse be upon him!”
[Galatians 1:6-8]Obviously, whoever Paul’s opponents were, they had authority that Paul felt he needed to
counteract. This is shown by the fact that he goes on by defending his own authority, and
then attacking those who apparently were preaching a return to Mosaic law:
“All who depend on observance of the law, on the other hand,
are under a curse.”[Galatians 3:10]
In fact, the above verse shows that Paul actively fought against those who observed
Mosaic law. This is reinforced by the following verses:
“I point out once more to all who receive circumcision that they
are bound to the law in its entirety. Any of you who seek your
justification in the law have severed yourselves from Christ and
fallen from God’s favor!”
[Galatians 5:3-4]
One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Paul’s opponents were the original apostles
comes in Galatians 2:6-14:
Those who were regarded as important, however (and it makes
no difference to me how prominent they were-God plays no
favorites), made me add nothing. On the contrary, recognizing
that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the
uncircumcised...those who were the acknowledged pillars,
James, Cephas, and John, gave Barnabas and me the handclasp
of fellowship, signifying that we should go to the Gentiles as they
to the Jews.... When Cephas came to Antioch I directly withstood
him, because he was clearly in the wrong. He had been taking
his meals with the Gentiles before others came who were from
James. But when they arrived he drew back to avoid trouble with
those who were circumcised. The rest of the Jews joined in his
dissembling, till even Barnabas was swept away by their
pretense. As soon as I observed that they were not being
straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I had this to say to
Cephas in the presence of all: “If you who are a Jew are living
according to Gentile ways rather than Jewish, by what logic do
you force the Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways?”
[Galatians 2:6-14]Galatians 2:6-14]
We see here that initially it was James, Cephas and John who recognized Paul’s
authority. What about the other Jerusalem apostles? Were they the important and
prominent ones who wanted Paul to add to his teachings? If not, why were they not
mentioned? And what was he supposed to add? It is logical that these opponents were
original apostles, and that they wanted him to preach the following of Mosaic law.
Later, in Antioch, even Cephas had a run-in with Paul over the practice of Mosaic law.
Paul accuses him and the other Jews of dissembling, and not being straightforward about
the truth of the gospel and of wanting to force the Gentiles to accept Mosaic law. If Paul
attacked even his supporters among the Jerusalem apostles, it is inevitable that he was at
odds with them as a group.
Given the extremely strong prohibition of idol worship in any form, which is at the base
of Mosaic law, it is almost certain that any tendency to deify Jesus would have been
strongly resisted by the Jerusalem apostles. This could well have been the basic cause of
the rift between Paul and the original apostles.
Brandon argues (Ibid., p. 154):
According to Paul’s own testimony, his ‘gospel’ was repudiated and his authority as apostle
was rejected by his opponents. This the leaders of the Jerusalem Church could effectively do,
because Paul had never been an original disciple of Jesus, nor had he learned the faith from
them. However, the irony of the situation, from our point of view, is that it is Paul’s ‘gospel’
that has survived and is known to us from his own writings, whereas the ‘gospel’ of the
Jerusalem Christians can only be reconstructed from what may be inferred from Paul’s
references to it and what may be culled, also by inference from the Gospels and Acts. This
apparent triumph of Paul’s version of the faith is surely to be traced to the Jewish overthrow
in A.D. 70....
That final sentence is of great importance. Brandon draws a parallel between the esoteric
Jewish community at Qumran whose books were hidden before the community was
destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 68. Those documents are now known as the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and the community which authored them is known almost solely through them.
Recently those very scrolls have been made available to scholars at large, stirring great
hopes for break throughs in our understanding of Judaism at the time of Christ and thus,
early Christian development.
Brandon proposes that the Christian community in Jerusalem, which strongly maintained
its ties to Judaism, was also wiped out by the Romans in A.D. 70, and its documents lost,
as a repercussion of the Jewish uprising there.
The annihilation of the Mother Church of Jerusalem meant that the original leaders of
Jewish-Christianity were killed or dispersed. Also, there must have been a strong political
force encouraging the moving away from Judaism and any traditions which identified a
community as being tied to Judaism. These factors would have greatly aided in the
strengthening and spread of non-Jewish concepts among early Christians. They would
have especially helped the spread of the concept of Jesus’ deification.
They claimed that they killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of God! In fact, they never killed him; they never crucified him; they were led to believe that they did. [ Quran 4:157 ]Mercifully, God has given our generation a living example of a person whose soul departed this world, but his body continued to live for 19 months. On November 25, 1984, doctors at the Humana Hospital of Louisville, Kentucky removed the diseased heart of Mr. William Schroeder and replaced it with a plastic and metal pump (THE NEW YORK TIMES, Monday, November 26, 1984).
On the 19th day after this historic operation - Thursday, December 13, 1984 - Mr. Schroeder, the soul, the real person, departed this world. Mr. Schroeder died. But his body continued to function with the artificial heart implanted in his body. The world was told that he "probably suffered a stroke" (THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 14, 1984). Significantly, only one day before Mr. Schroeder's departure, he talked with President Ronald Reagan on national TV, and demanded that the Social Security Administration send his overdue check. He was perfectly alert. From the moment "he suffered a stroke," he did not recognize the day or time, nor his family members. In fact, Mr. Scroeder was no longer in this world.(The Gospels) state clearly that the arrested body of Jesus was oblivious to the events surrounding it:The chief priests, meanwhile, brought many accusations against Jesus. Pilate interrogated him again: "Surely you have some answer? See how many accusations they are leveling against you." But greatly to Pilate's surprise, Jesus made no further response. [ Mark 15:3-5 ]Herod was extremely pleased to see Jesus. From the reports about him he had wanted for a long time to see him, and he was hoping to see him work some miracles. He questioned Jesus at considerable length, but Jesus made no response. The chief priests and scribes were at hand to accuse him vehemently. Herod and his guards then treated him with contempt and insult. [ Luke 23:8-11 ]The Savior said to me, "He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is the fleshly part. [Apocalypse of Peter, VII, 3, 81] from THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY (Harper & Row, 1977, James M. Robinson, ed, Page 339).The facts that (1) Mr. Schroeder's soul departed on the 19th day after the operation, and (2) his body survived for 19 months, are uncanny reminders that God wanted the world to know the parallel between Schroeder's situation, and the proven account of Jesus' departure prior to the arrest, torture, and crucifixion of his soulless body.WHERE DID THE CONCEPT COME FROM?
...The source of your unity and election is genuine suffering which you undergo by the will of
the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God. Hence you deserve to be considered happy....you are
imitators of God; and it was God’s blood that stirred you up once more to do the sort of thing
you do naturally and have now done to perfection.
—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
Within a hundred years, the concept of Jesus as God was already well established. Bishop
Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch. He was killed around 100 A.D. The above
excerpt is from his letter to the Ephesians (EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS, C. C.
Richardson, ed., Macmillan, 1970, pp. 87-88).
It is important to examine how and why the concept of Jesus as God developed and
became accepted. That understanding helps us to assess our own beliefs. For that reason,
this chapter will give you some historical and theological perspective on the development
of this idea of Jesus as God incarnate. The concept developed very early, but it was not
universally accepted among the vanguard of Christianity. There was great diversity
among early Christians.EARLY DIVERSITY
Even in the newborn church, immediately after Jesus’ death, there were major differences
among the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. These are indicated in the New
Testament book of Acts. During his journeys, Paul went to Jerusalem, where he met with
James and the elders of the early church. In the next verses they are addressing him:
“You see brother, how many thousands of Jews have come to
believe, all of them staunch defenders of the law. Yet they have
been informed that you teach the Jews who live among the
Gentiles to abandon Moses, to give up the circumcision of their
children, and to renounce their customs. What are we to do
about your coming, of which they are sure to hear? Please do as
we tell you. There are four men among us who made a vow. Take
them along with you and join with them in their rite of
purification; pay the fee for the shaving of their heads. In that
way, everyone will know that there is nothing in what they have
been told about you, and that you follow the law yourself with due observance. As for the Gentile converts, we sent them a
letter with our decision that they were merely to avoid meat
sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of strangled animals, and
illicit sexual union.” Accordingly, Paul gathered the men
together and went through the rite of purification with them the
next day. Then he entered the temple precincts to give notice of
the day when the period of purification would be over, at which
time the offering was to be made for each of them.[Acts 21:20-26]
This passage shows that the early Jewish Christians continued to follow Jewish law,
circumcising their sons and keeping the traditions of their fathers. Some of them even
continued to take the Nazarite vow, as the four men whose heads were being shaved. This
Mosaic practice was one of dedicating oneself to God and following strict rules of purity
and sacrifice for a specified length of time. (See Numbers 6:1-21.)
Gentile converts, on the other hand, often did not follow the same set of rules. It is
apparent from the above verses that in the Jerusalem church they had only to abstain from
forbidden meats and adultery.
Besides differing practices, there were also many different understandings within the
early church concerning the true identity of Jesus. In fact, these differences were very
marked, and are eloquently expressed by Robert L. Wilken in THE MYTH OF
CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS (Doubleday, 1971, pp. 165-166):
There were no set beliefs agreed on by all; nor were there any ground rules on how to
determine what to say or think or do; nor was there any acknowledged authority for deciding
such question (sic). Let us suppose that in the year A.D. 35 two men, Michael and Ephraim,
became Christians in Jerusalem; Michael went to the town of Edessa in Syria to live, and
Ephraim went to Alexandria in Egypt. On arrival in their respective cities, each told others
about the remarkable man Jesus. After telling their friends about Jesus, let us say Michael and
Ephraim organized Christian congregations. Almost immediately, problems would arise.
What should we do about the Jewish law? What should we do when we gather for worship?...
The questions were endless, and the Christians in Edessa and the Christians in Alexandria
would not answer all in the same way—the traditions Michael and Ephraim brought with
them were too embryonic, too undefined, to answer every new question or settle every
dispute. They had to make up their own minds as they understood their own situation and the
memories they brought with them.
Now let us change the scene to A.D. 75. Forty years have passed. In the meantime the Jews
have been defeated by the Romans, and Jerusalem has been destroyed. Also, the Christian
movement has spread widely and solidified its traditions. Let us now suppose that someone
from Edessa travels to Alexandria and learns that there is a Christian community there.... To
his surprise, he learns that they have little in common except a common loyalty to Jesus, and
the fragments of his words that have been handed on orally. And even the fragments of his
sayings are not in quite the form they are in Edessa. The visitor from Edessa discovers that the
Christians in Alexandria do not keep the Jewish law, whereas his congregation keeps it
exactly, admitting no one to the Christian community without circumcision.The Alexandrians
pray to Jesus, whereas in Edessa all prayers are addressed solely to God the Father.... Both are
shocked at the practices and beliefs of the others.
Given this great diversity among early Christians, at what point did the doctrine of Jesus’
divinity actually develop? And what were the factors contributing to the spread and
eventual formalization of this doctrine?
Searching for the answers to these questions is especially difficult because there are no
known surviving documents from the ‘Mother Church’, the original Christian community
in Jerusalem. For an extensive discussion of this point, see S.G.F. Brandon’s book JESUS
AND THE ZEALOTS (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967, pp. 148-159). We will review his
arguments in a few pages.
But first, we need to look more closely at the differences that Paul had with other
followers of Christ. Remember that Paul never met Jesus, nor did he study with the
original apostles. His knowledge of Jesus and his teachings came mostly through
personal inspiration. Hyam Maccoby states (THE MYTHMAKER. Harper and Row, 1987,
pp. 3-4):
Paul claimed that his interpretations were not just his own invention, but had come to him by
personal inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus,
even though he had never met him during his lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained
through visions and transports, was actually superior to acquaintance with Jesus during his
lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes. Clearly Paul, however good his motivations, could not pass on to us the exact words or
actions of Jesus during the years he taught on earth. He had no way of knowing exactly
what they were.
It is inevitable that he would be in some conflict with those who were actually with Jesus
during those years. Their experiences and their memories of a flesh and blood man would
necessarily be different from the Jesus he knew from his visions.PAUL vs THE SUPER-APOSTLES
There are many indications in Paul’s letters that there were powerful and authoritative
opponents to his teachings. Paul wrote that these opponents were teaching a “gospel other
than the gospel you accepted” and preaching about “another Jesus:”
My fear is that, just as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning,
your thoughts may be corrupted and you may fall away from
your sincere and complete devotion to Christ. I say this because
when someone comes preaching another Jesus than the one we
preached, or when you receive a different spirit than the one you
have received, or a gospel other than the gospel you accepted,
you seem to endure it quite well. I consider myself inferior to the
“super-apostles” in nothing.
[2 Corinthians 11:3-5].As Paul continues, it is clear that those whom he refers to above as the ‘super-apostles’
are Hebrews whose authority he does not question, but he tries to match their
qualifications with his own: “Since many are bragging about their human distinctions, I
too will boast” (2 Cor. 11:18).
Brandon argues that Paul’s ‘super-apostles’ are indeed the original Apostles of Jesus
(Ibid., pp. 152-153):
Paul, curiously, despite his exceeding agitation over their activity, never names them.
Whoever they were, they were obviously Christians of great authority or representative of
leaders of great authority; for they were able to go among Paul’s own converts and
successfully present a rival interpretation of the faith. Moreover, although he is so
profoundly disturbed by their action, Paul never questions their authority as they did his.
These facts, taken together with Paul’s very evident embarrassment about his relations
with the leading Apostles at Jerusalem, point irresistibly to one conclusion only: that the
‘other gospel’, which opposes Paul’s own, was the interpretation of the nature and
mission of Jesus propounded by the Jerusalem Church, which comprised the original
Apostles of Jesus and eyewitnesses of his life.
Not all Biblical scholars agree that the ‘super apostles’ were the original apostles, and
that the ‘other gospel’ was that of the Jerusalem Church, but there is a very good case for
their being so. In fact, the very name ‘super apostles’ is evidence. Who else would fit
such a name?
The passage we quoted earlier from Acts 21:20-26 demonstrates that the original apostles
had differing views from Paul, and they had the authority to enforce those views, at least
by writing to the Gentile converts to “avoid meat sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of
strangled animals, and illicit sexual union.”
This is important because since Paul never met Jesus, he had no first hand knowledge of
Christ’s teachings. Yet most of what we know about the very early years of Christianity
comes from Paul’s letters. And the Gospel of Christ which has survived has come
through the Pauline tradition. All of this means that we do not know for certain what the
original followers of Jesus taught. And more importantly, we do not know how much of
Christ’s own teaching has reached us unflavored by Paul’s understanding.
One thing we do know is that the differences among the early members of the church
were deep and divisive. Paul’s letter to the Galatians makes that clear. Scathingly, Paul
exhorts his readers to stick to the gospel he had delivered to them:
“I am amazed that you are so soon deserting him who called you
in accord with his gracious design in Christ, and are going over
to another gospel.... For if even we, or an angel from heaven,
should preach to you a gospel not in accord with the one we
delivered to you, let a curse be upon him!”
[Galatians 1:6-8]Obviously, whoever Paul’s opponents were, they had authority that Paul felt he needed to
counteract. This is shown by the fact that he goes on by defending his own authority, and
then attacking those who apparently were preaching a return to Mosaic law:
“All who depend on observance of the law, on the other hand,
are under a curse.”[Galatians 3:10]
In fact, the above verse shows that Paul actively fought against those who observed
Mosaic law. This is reinforced by the following verses:
“I point out once more to all who receive circumcision that they
are bound to the law in its entirety. Any of you who seek your
justification in the law have severed yourselves from Christ and
fallen from God’s favor!”
[Galatians 5:3-4]
One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Paul’s opponents were the original apostles
comes in Galatians 2:6-14:
Those who were regarded as important, however (and it makes
no difference to me how prominent they were-God plays no
favorites), made me add nothing. On the contrary, recognizing
that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the
uncircumcised...those who were the acknowledged pillars,
James, Cephas, and John, gave Barnabas and me the handclasp
of fellowship, signifying that we should go to the Gentiles as they
to the Jews.... When Cephas came to Antioch I directly withstood
him, because he was clearly in the wrong. He had been taking
his meals with the Gentiles before others came who were from
James. But when they arrived he drew back to avoid trouble with
those who were circumcised. The rest of the Jews joined in his
dissembling, till even Barnabas was swept away by their
pretense. As soon as I observed that they were not being
straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I had this to say to
Cephas in the presence of all: “If you who are a Jew are living
according to Gentile ways rather than Jewish, by what logic do
you force the Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways?”
[Galatians 2:6-14]Galatians 2:6-14]
We see here that initially it was James, Cephas and John who recognized Paul’s
authority. What about the other Jerusalem apostles? Were they the important and
prominent ones who wanted Paul to add to his teachings? If not, why were they not
mentioned? And what was he supposed to add? It is logical that these opponents were
original apostles, and that they wanted him to preach the following of Mosaic law.
Later, in Antioch, even Cephas had a run-in with Paul over the practice of Mosaic law.
Paul accuses him and the other Jews of dissembling, and not being straightforward about
the truth of the gospel and of wanting to force the Gentiles to accept Mosaic law. If Paul
attacked even his supporters among the Jerusalem apostles, it is inevitable that he was at
odds with them as a group.
Given the extremely strong prohibition of idol worship in any form, which is at the base
of Mosaic law, it is almost certain that any tendency to deify Jesus would have been
strongly resisted by the Jerusalem apostles. This could well have been the basic cause of
the rift between Paul and the original apostles.
Brandon argues (Ibid., p. 154):
According to Paul’s own testimony, his ‘gospel’ was repudiated and his authority as apostle
was rejected by his opponents. This the leaders of the Jerusalem Church could effectively do,
because Paul had never been an original disciple of Jesus, nor had he learned the faith from
them. However, the irony of the situation, from our point of view, is that it is Paul’s ‘gospel’
that has survived and is known to us from his own writings, whereas the ‘gospel’ of the
Jerusalem Christians can only be reconstructed from what may be inferred from Paul’s
references to it and what may be culled, also by inference from the Gospels and Acts. This
apparent triumph of Paul’s version of the faith is surely to be traced to the Jewish overthrow
in A.D. 70....
That final sentence is of great importance. Brandon draws a parallel between the esoteric
Jewish community at Qumran whose books were hidden before the community was
destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 68. Those documents are now known as the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and the community which authored them is known almost solely through them.
Recently those very scrolls have been made available to scholars at large, stirring great
hopes for break throughs in our understanding of Judaism at the time of Christ and thus,
early Christian development.
Brandon proposes that the Christian community in Jerusalem, which strongly maintained
its ties to Judaism, was also wiped out by the Romans in A.D. 70, and its documents lost,
as a repercussion of the Jewish uprising there.
The annihilation of the Mother Church of Jerusalem meant that the original leaders of
Jewish-Christianity were killed or dispersed. Also, there must have been a strong political
force encouraging the moving away from Judaism and any traditions which identified a
community as being tied to Judaism. These factors would have greatly aided in the
strengthening and spread of non-Jewish concepts among early Christians. They would
have especially helped the spread of the concept of Jesus’ deification.
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