In this chapter, HM compares Jesus to “other figures of Jewish folk legend who “had entered Paradise while alive and was waiting for the moment to return to Earth” (125).
HM further argues that the Jerusalem Church was not the same as what would be the Christian church at a later date (126). For example, James saw no rift between the Jesus movement and Judaism, but the rift was fictionalized at a later date by NT writers, and he refers to Johannes Munck’s Acts of the Apostles.
HM claims that Peter’s speech about sharing meals with Gentiles in Acts is “Pauline Christian propaganda” (135).
He concludes the chapter by arguing that Pauline Christianity took political killings and turned them into religious ones, resulting in antisemitism (138).
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