Apostle

by Tom Bissell

  Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. 1976. Reprint, New York: Touchstone, 1995.

  ———. A History of the Jews. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

  Josephus. The Jewish War. Translated by G. A. Williamson. 1959. Revised by E. Mary Smallwood. New York: Penguin, 1981. A quick note about the work of Josephus, who, like Paul, was a defector to a cause he initially fought. In 63 CE, when he was a Pharisee still only in his twenties, he traveled to Rome to lobby the emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priests. He returned to Palestine in 66 CE quite astonished by the power and reach of the Roman Empire. Shortly after his return home, unfortunately, the Jewish revolt against Rome began. Josephus, believing the rebellion would fail, claimed he reluctantly served as the military commandant of Galilee against the Romans, though in actual fact he appears to have been attempting to quell the rebellion from within on behalf of the Temple’s high-priestly authorities. (His various accounts of his actions during the war are difficult to reconcile with one another.) Whatever the case, when the fortifications of Josephus’s fortress, Jotapata, collapsed, he and many of his comrades fled and took shelter in a cave, which was eventually surrounded by the Romans. Josephus’s initial impulse was to surrender. Not because he was a coward (he performed with guile throughout the siege of his fortress, at least according to him) but because he knew that much of what was driving the Jewish War was the fanaticism of the Jewish Zealots he despised. Josephus was encouraged in his wish to surrender when it was communicated to him by the Romans that he would be spared if he emerged from the cave. Yet Josephus’s comrades made it quite clear they would kill Josephus if he gave himself up. And so Josephus and his comrades pledged to commit mass suicide rather than surrender. At their commander’s suggestion, the men drew lots to determine the order in which they would die, with one person killing the next until the last alive finally killed himself. Josephus somehow managed to ensure that he drew the last lot. All went according to plan: Josephus’s comrades killed each other, one after another. Eventually, the young general was left alive with his final remaining soldier; both agreed they had no strong wish to die after all. Josephus was soon captured by the Romans but proved his worth in intelligence and insight into his fellow Jews’ strategies and desires. He remained a prisoner, however, until the commanding Roman officer in Judaea, Vespasian, whose notice Josephus had caught when he predicted to Vespasian that he would eventually sit on the Roman throne, left Palestine to fulfill his imperial destiny. Working now as the official translator of Vespasian’s son Titus, Josephus attempted to persuade the Zealots barricaded within the city of Jerusalem to surrender, but the sight of the man many Zealots regarded as a traitor tearfully beseeching them from behind enemy lines put steel in their backs. After Jerusalem was destroyed, Josephus salvaged a few devotional items from the wreckage of the Temple, intervened to save three friends from crucifixion, and halted the Roman deportation and enslavement of several dozen others, including his brother. Josephus returned to Rome, and Titus placed him on a pension as an official historian. Eventually, he became a Roman citizen and was adopted into Titus’s imperial family, the Flavians, earning him the name Titus Flavius Josephus. It was in Rome that he wrote his histories, a short autobiography (notable for being the first known work of its kind to survive into the modern age), and a tract against a dead Jew-hating Alexandrian academic named Apion. As a Roman apologist to the Jews and a Jewish apologist to the Romans, Josephus displays a fascinating split in his sympathies as a historian and writer. This dividedness—to say nothing of Josephus’s anfractuous morality—is why so much of his work is to be treated with caution.

  ———. The Works of Josephus. Translated by William Whiston. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1987.

  Kazin, Alfred. God and the American Writer. 1997. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

  Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

  ———. Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies. 1975. Reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2000.

  Krosney, Herbert. The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2006.

  Kugel, James L. The Bible as It Was. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1997.

  Kysar, Robert. John: The Maverick Gospel. Rev. ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.

  Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Translated by Michael Steinhauser. Edited by Marshall D. Johnson. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

  Lane, Belden C. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and Hopeful. New York: Riverhead, 2012.

  Longenecker, Richard N. Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999.

  MacArthur, John. Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped His Disciples for Greatness, and What He Wants to Do with You. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002.

  MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Viking, 2010.

  ———. Silence: A Christian History. New York: Viking, 2013.

  MacDonald, Dennis Ronald. The Acts of Andrew and The Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990.

  Mack, Burton L. Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of Christian Myth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.

  Malina, Bruce. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. 3rd ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001.

  Martin, Michael. The Case Against Christianity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

  Matthew. Translation and commentary by W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann. Anchor Bible 26. New York: Doubleday, 1971.

  Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. 1983. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.

  ———. The Moral World of the First Christians. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986.

  ———, ed. The Writings of St. Paul. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.

  Melczer, William. The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela. New York: Italica Press, 1993.

  Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. 1987. Reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

  Metzger, Bruce M., and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

  Meyer, Marvin. The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

  Milavec, Aaron. The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003.

  Miles, Jack. Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. 2001. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 2002.

  ———. God: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

  Most, Glenn W. Doubting Thomas. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.

  Murray, Peter, and Linda Murray, eds. The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

  Origen. Contra Celsum. Translated by Henry Chadwick. 1953. Rev. ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  ———. An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works. Translated and introduction by Rowan A. Greer. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1979.

  Osborn, Eric. Irenaeus of Lyons. 2001. Reprint, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Irenaeus casts a long shadow on early Christianity. Along with salvaging the reputation of the Fourth Gospel, Irenaeus helped rescue the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles from their association with Marcionism. More than that, Irenaeus provided early Christianity with its most crucial voice in determining what would and would not later be recognized as orthodoxy. Despite this, very little is known of him. Exactly two of Irenaeus’s works have survived, and the
n only in (incomplete) Latin and (complete) Armenian translations. Everything else is either fragmentary or preserved in the work of Eusebius. He was probably born no later than 130, at some point replaced the martyred bishop Pothinus at Lyon, and later traveled to Rome to mediate the dispute about when Asian Christians, known as Quartodecimans, celebrated Easter. Thanks to Irenaeus—whose name, fittingly in this case, means “peace”—the Quartodecimans were not excommunicated. It is believed that one of the reasons Irenaeus’s work did not survive was due to his belief, which Paul shared, that the world was soon coming to an end. He was one of the last prominent Christian intellectuals to make such an argument, which might have been a source of embarrassment to Christians of the defiantly sturdy fourth and fifth centuries.

  Paffenroth, Kim. Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001.

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  Price, Reynolds. Three Gospels. New York: Scribner, 1996.

  Pritz, Ray A. Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century. 1988. Rev. ed. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2010.

  Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid with collaboration from Paul Rorem. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1987.

  Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson, eds. Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, Down to A.D. 325. Vols. 1–26. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1867–1885.

  Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 1978. Rev. ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

  Rollston, Christopher A., ed. The Gospels According to Michael Goulder: A North American Response. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2002.

  Rudolph, Conrad. Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

  Ruffin, C. Bernard. The Twelve: The Lives of the Apostles After Calvary. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997.

  Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977.

  Schnackenburg, Rudolf. Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology. Translated by O. C. Dean Jr. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995.

  Scotti, R. A. Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s. New York: Viking, 2006.

  Stegemann, Ekkehard W., and Wolfgang Stegemann. The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century. Translated by O. C. Dean Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

  Stewart, Robert B., ed. The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

  Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves. 1957. Revised by Michael Grant. London: Penguin Books, 1979.

  Tacitus. The Annals and The Histories. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. Edited by Moses Hadas. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

  Taussig, Hal. Jesus Before God: The Prayer Life of the Historical Jesus. Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 1999.

  Tertullian. Apology and De Spectaculis. Translated by T. R. Glover. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931.

  ———. Five Books Against Marcion. Translated and edited by Alexander Roberts. Calgary, Alb.: Theophania, 2010.

  ———. Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and on Purity. Translated by William P. Le Saint. Ramsey, N.J.: Newman Press, 1959.

  The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Translated by C. W. R. D. Moseley. London: Penguin Books, 1983.

  Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. 1869. Reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

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  Wilson, A. N. Jesus: A Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

  ———. Paul: The Mind of the Apostle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

  Wink, Walter. John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition. 1968. Reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2000.

  Witherington, Ben, III. John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995.

  ———. What Have They Done with Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.

  Wright, N. T. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999.

  ———. Who Was Jesus? 1992. Reprint, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001.

  Wroe, Ann. Pontius Pilate. New York: Random House, 1999.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tom Bissell was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of The Father of All Things, Extra Lives, and The Disaster Artist (co-written with Greg Sestero), among many other books. He has also done scriptwriting for several popular video-game franchises, including Gears of War, Battlefield, and Uncharted. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his partner, Trisha Miller, and their daughter, Mina.

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