The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Charles Freeman

  In Matthew, John (chapter 21), and possibly Mark’s account, the disciples initially went home to Galilee, but they returned to Jerusalem, probably in the belief that the promised kingdom would still materialize there. From this time, when they strike out as independent preachers, one can call them Apostles, “those who are sent,” and their activities are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (whose author is, according to tradition, Luke, author of the third Gospel). It is certainly true that the imminent arrival of the kingdom dominated their thoughts, and under the leadership of Peter they began preaching their continued belief in Jesus and his promised return. As the followers of a man who had been condemned to death, they were under suspicion and experienced some harassment. However, they still saw themselves as part of Judaism, continued to frequent the Temple and observe Jewish rituals. As the second coming failed to materialize, they began to reflect on how Jesus could be interpreted within Jewish tradition. The idea that he might have been divine was too much for any Jew to grasp, as it was completely alien to any orthodox Jewish belief, but Jesus could be seen as one through whom God worked (as with the earlier Jewish prophets) and who had been exalted by God through his death. Peter put it as follows (Acts 2:22–24): “Jesus the Nazarene was a man [sic] commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you . . . You killed him, but God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades [Sheol, the underworld].” Jesus was still referred to as the Messiah, but how could he be accepted as a Messiah when his earthly life had ended not in the prophesied triumph but in tragedy? The only possible way to explain the crucifixion was to draw on different prophecies. The prophet Isaiah talks, for instance, of a servant of God who was “torn away from the land of the living, for our faults struck down in death. If he offers his life in atonement . . . he shall have a long life and through him what God wishes will be done” (53:8–10). Such texts were used by Christians to create the idea of a “suffering Messiah,” who had died for the sins of mankind. This was very far from the most popular interpretation of Messiah as one coming in triumph, but it was enough for Jesus’ followers to be able to call him Christos, the anointed one. The first recorded use of “Christians” to describe Jesus’ followers comes not from Jerusalem but from Antioch in Syria (Acts 11:26).20

  If we return to the question of whether the historical Jesus can be identified, the answer must be “only with the greatest difficulty.” Although this chapter has tried to set out what appear to be the developments in his life and the elements of his teaching about which there is some consensus, virtually every point will still be challenged by one scholar or another. Jesus’ charisma, the brutality of his death and stories of a resurrection had such an impact that they passed quickly into myth, and this myth was soon being used by those committed to his memory in a wide variety of ways. (The word “myth” is used here not pejoratively but as the expression of a living “truth” that can function, as it certainly has done in Jesus’ case, at different levels for different audiences. Apart from Christianity itself, the impact of Jesus can be gauged from the number of spiritual movements outside Christianity—Gnosticism, followers of theos hypsistos, Manicheism and, later, Islam—that recognized him as a spiritual leader.) No one can be sure where the boundary between Matthew (and the other Gospel writers) and Jesus’ original words should be drawn. This left and still leaves Jesus’ life, death and teachings open to a wide variety of interpretations and uses by those who followed him. Nevertheless, the trend in recent scholarship towards relating Jesus to the tensions of first-century Galilee, in particular as a leader who appealed to the burdened peasant communities of the countryside and reinforced rather than threatened traditional Jewish values, has much to support it.

  As Christian communities established themselves, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be tensions between those who remained traditional Jews, focusing on the Temple, and those who, perhaps drawing on Jesus’ prophecy of the Temple’s destruction, were more openly hostile to the Temple and all that it represented symbolically in terms of wealth and power. The Acts of the Apostles tell of one Stephen, a Hellenized Jew, who took the provocative line that the Temple should never have existed at all and that the God of Jesus stood independently of it (Acts 7). These assertions were treated by the Jews as blasphemy. Stephen was stoned to death and thus earned himself a revered place within the Christian tradition as the first martyr. Acts records that a man called Saul, or Paul as he was to become better known,21 watched over the outer clothes of those who carried out the stoning.

  9

  PAUL, “THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY”?

  Paul occupies the dominant position in the early Gentile church, even to the extent of being called by some the founder of Christianity. It was he who formulated a meaning for Jesus’ death and resurrection, one that he used creatively in the years in which the first troubled Christian communities were establishing themselves, and he was important too in planting these communities in Asia Minor and Greece and in devising ways for them to maintain themselves in a world they had come to see as hostile. Unlike Jesus he insisted on a dramatic break with traditional culture, not only his own, but also that of the Greco-Roman world, and so he brought new challenges and tensions to Christianity as it spread among Gentiles. While Peter and the Jerusalem Christians were, understandably, suffused with their memories of Jesus as a human being (“a man commended by God” as Peter had put it), Paul’s Christ has relevance only through his death and resurrection, in a theology presented in his own words in letters whose eloquence has reverberated through the ages.

  Yet any study of this highly emotional man is fraught with difficulties. Paul cares desperately about his fragile Christian communities and each letter records his frustrations and enthusiasms as they struggle to find their own identity. He is trying to formulate new conceptions of Christ, and Christ’s meaning, in volatile situations. The demands he places on the recipient communities are heavy, and his own authority with them is often under threat. For Paul it is essential that each community flourish, and he is ready to adapt his theology of Christ to the needs of the moment. (As Paul’s thoughts changed with the context in which they were expressed, often resulting in contradictions, it could even be argued that one should talk of his “theologies” of Christ, underlying which, of course, were some consistent themes.) Furthermore, while we are privileged to have Paul’s own voice in his letters, they are responses to situations that can only be guessed at from their content. Hence the contradictions and obscurities that make the letters so difficult to interpret. This is not all. As the church subsequently became increasingly authoritarian, the Church Fathers (the term used to describe a loosely defined group of early Christian writers whose views on doctrinal matters carried special weight) were to attempt to press Paul’s teachings into a coherent theology, bypassing or smoothing over the obvious contradictions. From the second century his letters had also become part of the New Testament canon and had been placed alongside the Gospels. So Paul’s views on idols, sexuality and Greek philosophy, issues that had not featured strongly in Jesus’ teachings and often sit uneasily with them, became embedded in the Christian tradition. When Paul composed responses to his communities in the turbulent and confused years after Jesus’ death, years that Paul believed were a prelude to the imminent second coming, he could hardly have expected that they would be given the status of universal and authoritative truths and be used in contexts totally different from those in which he had written them. One consequence of Paul’s elevation as a theologian was to shift the emphasis away from his personality, yet it is certainly arguable that his own psychological needs defined the distinctive teachings that he preached to his communities and should be central to any study of him.1

  Paradoxically, “the Apostle to the Gentiles” was himself Jewish, and Judaism pervades his theology. Paul was a Pharisee, apparently from the Cilician city of Tarsus, and unusually for an easterner in this peri
od he was also a Roman citizen.2 He was one of those many thousands of Jews, far greater in number than those remaining in Judaea and Galilee, who had scattered in the Diaspora. By now many of these Jews spoke only Greek and used Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures—the Septuagint, so called because some seventy scholars were supposed to be responsible for the translation, made in the third century B.C. The date of Paul’s birth is unknown but is usually placed in the first decade A.D. He came from a very different world from that of Jesus’ original followers; a tent-maker by profession, he knew city life, and he was at ease travelling the sea and land routes of the eastern Mediterranean. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he had studied with Gamaliel, a well-known Pharisee teacher, in Jerusalem, and he certainly knew the scriptures in meticulous detail. He wrote in Greek (“fluent and competent Greek, although much of his vocabulary is coloured by Septuagint usage and he rarely achieves a really polished style”), and it is likely that he spoke Aramaic and knew Hebrew as well. Although no direct connection has been demonstrated between Paul and the Essenes, much of his terminology— “God’s righteousness,” “children of light,” “sinful flesh”—is reminiscent of theirs, as is his eschatology (teaching on “the last things,” such as the end of the world and rewards and punishment after death) with its strong emphasis on insiders and outsiders, the saved and unsaved.3

  Paul’s life is known from his letters (the Epistles) and from the Acts of the Apostles, about half of which is devoted to his activities. Not all the letters attributed to him are accepted as such by scholars—those usually recognized as his are Romans, both letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, the first letter to the Thessalonians, possibly the second, and the letter to Philemon. Many would also add Colossians. Both the letters and Acts have limitations as biographical sources. As has already been suggested, the letters were written as responses to particular situations that confronted Paul and provide biographical information only by chance. It is also possible that when writing to Gentile Christian communities Paul played down his early missionary activity as a Christian among Jews. The author of Acts does mention this activity but appears to be concerned to stress reconciliation between Gentiles and Jews and may have provided a more harmonious account of Paul’s relationships with the Jerusalem Apostles than was the case. Many scholars treat Acts with caution—some going so far as to doubt whether Acts is reliable in saying Paul had studied in Jerusalem. Even when both Acts and the letters are used together with the meagre information from other sources that correlates with them, much of Paul’s life and the dates of his missions, particularly the early ones of the late 30s and 40s A.D., are difficult to reconstruct.4

  In both the letters and Acts, Paul comes across as austere and, despite some physical ailment which he never specified (epilepsy has been suggested), extraordinarily tough and mentally resilient. After his conversion he maintained his commitment to Christ through every conceivable hardship, probably to the extent of martyrdom. He could also be abrasive and deeply sensitive to any threat to his assumed authority, which at the beginning of several of his letters (those to the Galatians and the Corinthians in particular) he proclaims to have come directly from God or Christ. He was, as he puts it in Galatians 1:2, “an apostle . . . who has been appointed by Jesus Christ and by God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead.” He appears never to have married and to have been ill at ease with sexuality, above all homosexuality. It is difficult to know how much this was cultural, absorbed from his training as a Pharisee or perhaps from contacts with the Essenes, and how much inherent in his personality. He was certainly unusual in not being married, especially as mainstream Judaism was actively hostile to celibacy, though the Essenes were in favour of it. There are moments in his letters when he relaxes, writing with protective affection of his followers (see, for instance, 1 Thessalonians 2:7–9, and the tenderness with which he speaks of Onesimus in the letter to Philemon, even though in this case he was returning Onesimus, a slave, to his master), but no one could pretend that he was an easy man to work with. His life appears to have been one of constant conflict. Gamaliel is believed to have been tolerant to Christians (Acts 5:34–40), so Paul’s early desire to persecute them must have come from elsewhere, perhaps from his own combative personality. He had violent confrontations with Barnabas, his companion who had put him in contact with the Apostles in Jerusalem (Acts 15:39), though he travelled extensively with him, and even with Peter, the undoubted early leader of the Jerusalem Christians (Galatians 2:11). In fact, he seems to have accepted that conflict with others was a normal part of life. As he puts it himself in writing to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 12:20): “What I am afraid of is that when I come I may find you different from what I want you to be and you may find that I am not as you would like me to be; and then there will be wrangling, jealousy and tempers roused, intrigues and backbiting and gossip, obstinacies and disorder.” This is certainly not a man who has any confidence in his ability to charm those he met. While Jesus drew people to him, Paul appears to have had the opposite effect; there was not one Christian community in which he can be said to have been fully at ease.

  The result was that although Paul could write, and perhaps speak, with great eloquence, he often failed to win over audiences, and may even have provoked their opposition by his manner. In his final confrontation with the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court at Jerusalem, he knew his speech on the resurrection of the dead would arouse the sensitivities of the Sadducees, who did not believe in an afterlife at all, and yet he went ahead. The ensuing confrontation between Sadducees and Pharisees was so heated that Roman soldiers had to intervene to haul Paul out of the council chamber (Acts 23:1–10). One senses also that he failed, as a Jew, to realize how difficult his theology would prove for a Gentile audience used to the polytheism and mores of the Greco-Roman world. On the other hand, without the turmoil and confusion that his preaching often created and his desperate need to maintain his authority, he would never have been impelled to define his beliefs in the depth he did.

  According to Acts, it was while Paul was “on the road to Damascus” on a mission to persecute Christians there that he had a vision of Christ (Acts 9:1–9). Once in Damascus he began to preach that “Jesus is the Son of God.” A date of about A.D. 33 is proposed by scholars. This sudden shift of perspective is difficult to explain (was it really a vision of Christ, or the culmination of a psychological crisis?), but it defined a new life for him. His first “Christian” mission, again according to Acts, was to Jews; in other words, like the Apostles in Jerusalem, he did not see himself as working outside Judaism. It seems, however, that he was unsuccessful, continually arousing opposition, and in his letters he makes no mention of this part of his life. He returned to Jerusalem but was accepted by the Apostles there only through the good offices of Barnabas, one of the earliest and most trusted of the Jerusalem Christians (middle to late 30s). Soon in trouble again, this time with the “Hellenists,” the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Jerusalem (Acts 9:29), Paul returned home to Tarsus, and it was from there some years later that he was brought by Barnabas to Antioch, where the first community to call itself Christian was based. Perhaps because of his difficulty in preaching to the Jews, he began concentrating on those Gentiles, the theosebeis, or “god-fearers,” who, while attracted to the fringes of Judaism, often through attendance at the synagogue, did not formally accept the Law and rituals such as circumcision. Many Jews accepted that there was a place for righteous Gentiles in God’s kingdom (see, for instance, Isaiah 2:2, where it is said that all nations will eventually flow into God’s house),5 but Paul went further in developing a theology in which, through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, the barrier between Gentile and Jew would be broken down, the Law superseded and rituals such as circumcision and dietary restrictions no longer be of importance. Some passages in his letter to the Romans (for example, 11:11–14) even suggest that the Gentiles are now God’s preferred people because the Jews have b
roken his trust. Gradually Paul defined a role for himself as exclusively committed to the conversion of the Gentiles, though his Jewish background remained influential in his commitment to a single God, his hatred of idols and his adherence to the scriptures. As his role was clarified, his independence grew. His first missions to Galatia and Macedonia in the 40s may have been as an assistant to Barnabas, but he then returned to Jerusalem in around 50 and negotiated a role with the original Apostles as an Apostle working exclusively with the Gentiles. They would allow him to preach among the Gentiles without requiring converts to be circumcised; in return, he promised to collect money for the poor of Judaea (who were heavily burdened by the combined weight of Roman and priestly taxation).

  In view of Paul’s difficulties with other Christian leaders, this was probably the only role that was realistically sustainable, and he developed it to the full. Over the next few years, in the 50s, he travelled widely in Greece, to Philippi and Thessalonika in Macedonia and to Athens and Corinth. In Asia Minor he worked with the communities of Galatia, Colossae, and Ephesus, raising the collections he had promised the Jerusalem community. However, when he faithfully delivered the monies to Jerusalem around 57 he fell foul of the Jews and was taken into custody by the Roman authorities after creating mayhem in the Sanhedrin. Having successfully claimed that his Roman citizenship allowed him to appeal to the emperor, he was eventually transported to Rome and appears to have been martyred there in the 60s. As Paul reminded the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:22–29), there had not been much that he had not suffered on his missions. On no less than five occasions he had received the traditional punishment of thirty-nine lashes from Jewish opponents (his Roman citizenship apparently offering him no protection—one reason why some have doubted it).