Chapter one.

Paul, Jesus and the Old Testament Promises.

Paul and his place in the NT.

For generations scholars have claimed that Paul was the creator of Christianity. They have claimed that Paul changed the original message of Jesus and what emerged, it is argued, was something that Jesus himself would never have recognised as what he had taught. Such a claim is a massive blow to the authority of the Christian gospel. If the greatest teacher of the early church left his master’s teaching, then there is a question that must be asked. Do Christians follow Jesus, or do they follow Paul? The claim of this book is that Paul never left the religion of the OT. In fact, it will be argued that he never departed from the teaching of Jesus.

This is a very different position from most NT scholars of the past 100 years who have not only claimed that Paul Hellenised the Jewish message, but have also argued that the gospels were written by Christian communities who invented stories and sayings about Jesus to teach the gentile believers what Jesus would have taught concerning various issues if he had lived among them. The gentiles faced issues that the Palestinian Jews would have known nothing about. The church gave its approval, it is claimed, to the composition of stories attributed to Jesus, that would be the vehicle of instruction for the new believers. These stories, it is argued, became part of the source out of which the four evangelists composed their gospels.

Limits of knowledge.

It follows that if these records do not accurately record Jesus teaching then we cannot possibly ask if Paul is teaching the same thing as Jesus. If they are not reliable records, then we can only guess at what Jesus had actually taught. It would therefore be foolish to say that Paul did not follow Jesus’ teaching if we have no reliable record of it. This illustrates the folly of much NT research. To argue that we don’t have the original teaching of Jesus and then to say Paul rejected it is blind prejudice. Of course the answer from some will be that we know Jesus taught as a Jew and Paul taught as a Greek, and this justifies the assertion that Paul left the teaching of Jesus, but this claim concerning Paul being Hellenistic, as we shall soon see, can no longer be sustained. If however we can demonstrate that the gospels are a faithful record of Jesus’ teaching, then we can compare Paul’s teaching with that of his master. Once we have considered Paul’s commitment to the teaching of Jesus, we can go on to examine: The Contours of Pauline Theology.

The structure of the book

To help the reader navigate this book we will briefly examine its structure. First, in chapter 1, we will consider whether the OT Scriptures were significant for Jesus and Paul. We will also examine the claim that the gospels are not a reliable record of the teaching of Jesus. Then in chapter 2 we will examine the sources that Paul based his teaching on. Did he really depart from Jesus? Was he really a Hellenist teacher? or has he been misunderstood? In chapter 3 we will pause to consider the way scholars are using ancient Jewish literature known as the Pseudepigrapha. These are considered important documents for understanding both the Gospels and