In Chapter 2, Maccoby wants to outline his objectives: explore the role of the Pharisees in the time of Jesus; he wants to contrast Jesus the Jewish Messiah with Paul’s notion of Jesus the Christ; he wants to contrast the early Church of Jerusalem with Pauline doctrine; he wants to explore the Ebionites and their antagonism toward Paul.
He further outlines six propositions that are the grounds for his claim that Paul is a charlatan who created an anti-Semitic cult.
Proposition One: Paul was not a Pharisee rabbi, “but an adventurer of undistinguished background” in search of a lofty status. He “deliberately misrepresented his own biography in order to increase the effectiveness of his missionary activities.”
Proposition Two: Jesus and his followers, unlike Paul, were true Pharisees. They did not wish to create a new religion. This was Paul’s plan.
Proposition Three: James and Peter were Nazarenes, and they held Pharisee beliefs, “except that they believed in the resurrection of Jesus in the purpose of fulfilling the Torah, not violating it. The Nazarenes and Paul had a rift, and Paul, so to speak, won.
Proposition Four: Paul was the creator of Christianity by abolishing the Torah. Paul’s religion was a synthesis of Greek mystery cults, Gnosticism, and Judaism.
Proposition Five: The Ebionites have valuable information about Paul that contradicts what we know about him in the New Testament. The Ebionates “testified that Paul had no Pharisaic background or training; he was the son of Gentiles, converted to Judaism, in Tarsus, came to Jerusalem when an adult, and attached himself to the High Priest as a henchman.”
Proposition Six: The church marginalized the Ebionites as heretics when in fact they are “the authentic successors of the immediate disciples and followers of Jesus, whose views and doctrines they faithfully transmitted, believing correctly that they were derived from Jesus himself.”
My thoughts are this: We can side with orthodox Christianity or Maccoby and find reasons to support our position, but in the end, we are dealing with speculations and faith in our speculations to prop a worldview, which is a reflection of our values.
If we see Christianity as an anti-Semitic force that appropriates Judaism for its dominance, as Maccoby does, then we will be sympathetic to Maccoby’s analysis and speculations.
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