Leaving Anhedonia

Study of Hyam Maccoby’s The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Chapter 11, Paul and the Eucharist

How we interpret the life of Paul, how we weave a narrative about him, what sources we choose to develop these ideas, and what sources we deem more credible than others informs who we are before we start our “Paul journey.” N.T. Wright is going to “fill the gaps” in different ways than Hyam Maccoby or James D. Tabor. A.N. Wilson may write about Paul one way and then another later in his life. 

In Chapter 11, Maccoby tackles the idea of “vicarious atonement,” arguing that it is “peripheral and forms no part of the main pattern of salvation” and a “radical departure from Judaism and a return to pagan concepts of atonement” (111).  Of course, a Christian writer would argue that the Old Testament is all about vicarious atonement. So there we are.

Furthermore, HM argues that Paul created both the Eucharist and Christianity (113).  

Study of Hyam Maccoby’s The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Chapter 10, Damascus and After

So far, Maccoby has painted Christianity as a fraud, the creation of a frustrated “adventurer” and “mythogogue” who with other writers has written a work of fiction and propaganda that demonizes the Jews as an evil force that kills the Christian savior. 

HM observes that Christianity exists separate from Judaism because of Paul’s revelations. This is the key. 

After Damascus, does Paul create a new religion or is he a convert to one already established? HM argues the former (105).

Acts, written 40 years after the events described, writes of Paul has having converted. 

Maccoby observes this bombshell, so to speak: “His ‘revelation’ is thus more than a revelation: it is a transformation and a deification of Paul himself as the supreme manifestation of the phenomenon of impregnation by God” (106). 

Paul becomes the ultimate “mystagogue” of his age (107). 

My struggle with The Mythmaker comprises of these questions: How much speculation is used to arrive at conclusions? How much conspiracy thinking informs Maccoby's narrative? 

How can we know Paul relied on mystery cults, and not the Old Testament itself, for the notion of salvation and sacrifice? 

Does one's cognitive bias affect one's willingness to accept Maccoby's points as credible?

The struggle to find the truth about Paul continues. 

Study of Hyam Maccoby’s The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Chapter 9, The Road to Damascus

HM observes that the story of Paul going to synagogues to round up Jesus followers doesn’t accord with history since the High Priest had “no authority over synagogues” (85). 

HM observes that Paul in II Corinthians 11: 32-3 writes of commissioner King Aretas pursuing Paul for arrest while in Acts it is the Jews who are seeking Paul. Maccoby writes about the “shift” between political persecution and religious: “It is a perfect example of how the shift, found throughout the Gospels and Acts, from a political to a religious account of events results in vilification of the News as the villains of the story” (87).

Again and again, HM refers to the “tampering of facts” (88).

Paul’s conflict, Maccoby observes, is not characteristic of a Pharisee: “Further, the psychological dualism found in Paul’s statement is most uncharacteristic of Pharisaism. The dichotomy, in Paul’s thinking, between flesh and spirit, in which evils proceed from the flesh, which can be redeemed only by an inpouring of spirit from above, reflects a view of human nature that issued in the Christian doctrine of original sin. This doctrine is radically opposed to the Pharisaic concept of the essential unity of human nature” (92). 

Further, we read that Pharisaic psychology “not only unifies the psyche by giving it power over all its own processes, but also declares that the psyche becomes more and more unified as it progresses in the moral struggle” (93).

This contradicts Pau’s spiritual orientation of utter helplessness: “the psyche as hopelessly divided and unable to progress without direct supernatural intervention.” 

Paul appears to be influenced by the Gnostics (93), a doctrine that the Pharisees opposed. 

HM compares Paul’s conflict, between torn between two cultures, with that of Augustine (95). 

Maccoby ends the chapter with a contemptuous picture of Paul: He failed to rise in the Pharisee movement; he is imaginative but lacks logical skills in his writing. His education is “feeble.” He cannot tolerate his own “mediocrity” in light of his vaulting ambitions. He is desperate to rise to power and make a name for himself, and he has no scruples in achieving his aims, even if it means demonizing the entire Jewish race (99).