Pauline Christianity

Earlier this year I read a book, which I have linked to in previous posts that I have found to be very interesting. It is an eye opener and not everyone will be happy about it's message. I'm going to post again an excerpt from the book to illustrate a point.

In addition, it is James, by Paul's own testimony in Galatians 2:12, who has sent the messengers - the names of whom for the moment are immaterial - done to the Church in 'Antioch' (Acts 15:1), Acts has many names for these representatives, referring to this episode, as it were, in freeze frame, since it is so important - always coming back to it as one of the only really certain bits of information it can rely on until the 'We Document' intrudes in the text in the next chapter. And James must be present, too, for the climactic final confrontation with Paul five chapters later in chapter 21.

It is the position of this book that the authors of Acts and the authors of the Pseudoclementines are, in fact, working off the same source. Both are Hellenistic romances, but where points of contact can indisputedly be shown between the two narratives - as, for instance, in the First Book of the Recognitions - the Pseudoclementines are more faithful to their original source. Not only is there less fantasy, there is less obfuscation and out and out fabrication. This is particularly the case in the matter of the key attack on James in the Recognitions, where the 'Enemy' (Paul) is introduced, and we can see it paralleled in Acts by the attack on Stephen, introducing 'Saulus" (later known as Paul). But it is also true of the picture of Peter's conduct and teachings - the direct opposite of Acts.

This is not the normal scholarly view, which holds the Pseudoclementines as late. But on this point, scholars - many governed (as in the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls) by subconscious preconceptions or orientations they themselves may often be unaware of - are simply mistaken. There is no other response one can make. It is patent that the Pseudoclementines are superior, at least as narrative - and no doubt ideology and history as well - except where the 'We Document' begins to make its presence felt in the second part of Acts. Perhaps this was why Jerome was so angry at his erstwhile colleague Rufinus who published the Pseudoclementines in the West at the end of the fourth century, probably based on a Syriac original. It is also possibly the reason why no Greek version of the Recognitions has survived - the manuscript went directly from the Syriac into the Latin.

Granted, speeches in the Pseudoclementines cannot, perhaps, be relied on any more than those in Acts (there are exceptions), but neither can they in Josephus, to say nothing of the Gospels. It was the custom in Greco-Roman historical narrative from Thucydides onwards for the narrator to supply important speeches according to what he thought the speaker would or should have said. The same is true for Hebrew literature of the time - and earlier. Therefore, we refer to the vast body of this literature in whatever language as 'pseudepigraphic'. This approach has been raised to an art form in the Gospels, to the extent that little or nothing in them can be relied on as authentic representations of what Jesus did or might have said. The early chapters of the Book of Acts, too - though none the less creative - are on the whole even less convincing.

Which is pretty much the point of the book: Christianity as we know it today bears no relationship to the historical men James and Jesus and their brothers and sisters and the movement that they began in an effort to regain the Temple from the foreigners that were defiling it. They were fundamentalist Jews that wanted to return their faith to its roots and restore it to what it was supposed to be. Christianity was not what Jesus wanted and, in that regard, he failed in his mission.