I wrote this responding to a friend who had questions after reading a lot of the new stuff by Borg, Erhman and Crossan regarding Paul, Jesus and the development of Christianity.

Let me start off with a link. I scanned a portion of Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” and posted it on my server. It’s a scholarly work as opposed to a piece oriented to lay persons but I think it’s quite clear in what it intends to communicate. Tell me if you have trouble with the link. I can e-mail it directly otherwise.

Consider the response on the book of Acts to Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill. There’s a lot of suspicion around regarding the canonical texts, but consider the text itself of that encounter. If we were suspicious that the text was a manipulative hack job intended to magnify Paul and embellish a legend we’d imagine that the author would report that thousands would be “added to their number” as we saw earlier in the book at Pentecost. Paul is waiting in Athens for his buddies and is bugged by the idols so he starts causing trouble as was his pattern it seems in many of these cities. He preaches the very famous sermon, complete with references to pagan texts and the response if frankly, underwhelming. Why?

Maybe the Athenians are too smart for him, maybe their snobs, whatever. It seems a most reasonable possibility is that they simply had so little frame of reference that Paul’s sermon would simply have been regarded as gibberish, which again, according to the text, seems to have been the response. A few wanted to hear more and eventually became believers according to the text, and they are in fact, NAMED. Why would these names be dropped here, unless, in fact, these names would have meant something to Luke’s intended readers.

That issue of naming launched Bauckham on his study. Why is the name dropping in the gospels so inconsistent. Some people are named in multiple gospels, some people aren’t, and even when we have a very strong indication of textual dependency (Matthew copied Mark for example) the names aren’t always carried over. Why would Matthew decide to include some names and not others? There is clearly purpose behind why and when some are named and some are not.

In the same book of Acts we find very different responses to Paul’s work. We know that in some places he was there only a short time, other places longer, and we know that the church spread to other places where he never visited. We also know that it was Paul’s habit of starting with the Hellenized Jewish community in each place. That makes perfect sense, of course, because they in fact are “his people”. It is very interesting looking at the early chapter of Acts and noting the tension between the Hellenistic community in Jerusalem and the “Hebrew” community. The “deacons” all have Hellenistic names. They start “waiting tables” but it seems very quickly that they expand their own job descriptions as we find Stephen preaching and irritating other “not so Hebrew” Jews. It seems in fact that the Jerusalem persecution that broke out early was among the Hellenists. The Apostles didn’t flee, but the “deacons” go out and in fact become the first wave of evangelists into Samaria, Antioch and into the Hellenistic Jewish communities. That makes perfect sense of course. That was where they had family connections and cultural similarity.

OK, back to the story. Why was Paul able it seemed to get so much traction in some communities and not others? I would suggest two reasons: 1. The cultural/theological/language/worldview was already set by Judaism. Paul was a Pharisee and very at home in the Synagogue and an expert in the religious tradition of the “God fearers” and Hellenistic Jews wherever he went. It seems the “God fearers” (non-Jews exhibiting some participation in the Jewish community who had not necessarily become formal converts) were “easy pickings” for this new Jesus movement. Motivation regarding circumcision for some I’m sure played a role. But also, there would have been other sources of Jesus material that had gone out. Bauckham gets into this directly.

Consider this as well. Very quickly in places like Corinth we see Paul dealing with “super-apostles”. These were obviously people also carrying Jesus information into the communities. We also meet characters like Apollos who are out there telling Jesus stories and making claims about the resurrection and having ideas about what he might be that seem highly non-monotheistic.

These contemporary authors like Ehrman and others like to posit “lots of Christianities”. From the NT Epistles it certainly seems that Paul had plenty to deal with from “super-apostles”, not getting along even with his co-workers, Judaizers (People influenced by the Jesus story who were demanding observance of OT Law) and likely plenty of others. What might assumptions might we make about the context from which all this Jesus connected activity is arising? Imagining a poverty of information about Jesus seems the least likely option. Imaging that Paul had a thin portfolio on Jesus seems very strange for a man who had a significant period of time prior to the Acts stories and also one that was zealous enough about his Savior to suffer all the catastrophe and calamity he testifies to.

It’s also important to not fall victim to historical snobbery, to imagine that somehow first century people were gullible dimwits who couldn’t didn’t understand what it meant to be lied to, manipulated, sold a religious bill of goods. These cities in the Roman empire were filled with all manner of religious movements aggressively seeking converts and patrons. These people would have understood a religious marketplace. Now this strange story out of Judea arises talking about, of all things, resurrection! The response in Athens is most understandable. What is more remarkable is the response in the cities where churches would in fact take root, grow despite persecution, motivate believers to act generously with a reckless disregard for their own economic and physical safety and well-being to such a degree that in not too long a time dominant paganism itself that had held sway over that region for hundreds of years would be displaced by this strange Jewish sect.

When Paul and others start telling stories people are going to ask questions, check sources to the degree they can, which will likely be fact checking and name checking, and comparing notes on just exactly who this Jesus-savior is, what he taught, and what they are saying REALLY happened to him.

To me Bauckham’s account rings true. Paul, and others, learned the Jesus tradition that was handed over to them and that’s what they worked from. There were certainly conflicts and tensions, even between Paul and the apostles. We don’t need to learn about that from a book published by someone guessing about it today, you can find that in the canonical record. pvk