Paul and Jesus

Traditionally, the work was attributed to Luke, a companion of Paul as well as a purported eyewitness to some of its main events. Paul mentions a certain Luke once in passing in a list of his fellow workers or assistants (Philemon 24). Presumably the same Luke, “the beloved physician,” is named two additional times in later letters attributed to Paul but not written by him (Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11). The final editors of the New Testament, in trying to support the tradition that Luke wrote both the gospel that bears his name and the book of Acts, likely added these references. The writer of 2 Timothy says that Luke was with Paul in prison and has Paul ask Timothy to “get Mark” and also bring his “books, and especially the parchments.” The author’s clear implication is that these purported gospel writers, Mark and Luke, were companions of Paul, eyewitnesses to many of the events in Acts, with access to documents they got from Paul.

Scholars have usually dated Luke-Acts to the 90s A.D., but a number of scholars have convincingly argued, more recently, for a date well into the second century A.D.⁶

The unabashed hero of the book of Acts is Paul, so much so that the work might be more properly named “The Acts of Paul,” with a few preliminary remarks about the rest of the apostles. Peter and the others show up in the early chapters, but seldom again. The author’s main intention is to glorify Paul as the apostle who brings the Christian message to Rome. Paul’s enemies in Acts are the Jews, not the Romans or other non-Jews that he encounters. Acts is a remarkably pro-Roman book, and the author’s implied context reflects a period many years after the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, with the crushing of Jewish national and messianic hopes and the scattering of the original Jerusalem church (Luke 19:41–44; 21:23–24).

This is not to say the book of Acts lacks historical value. For one thing it is all we have. It covers the critical period from the death of Jesus to Paul’s journey to Rome (A.D. 30–60). As such, despite the author’s strongly pro-Paul bias, it can serve as a source for a critical reconstruction of those missing “lost decades” of early Christianity. In fact it reveals much more than the author perhaps intended, once we factor in what we know from Paul’s letters as well as some of our newly discovered other sources. The author apparently has access to some materials that go back to the days in the Jerusalem church, when James the brother of Jesus led the movement, even as he tries to mute influence of James. The cracks of his presentation show through since we have the other side of the story from Paul, and even a bit from James.

Unfortunately, Acts is seldom read critically. It is usually taken at face value and the portrait of Paul presented therein has become the dominant narrative. If people know anything about Paul, what they know is more than likely drawn from hearing about or reading the book of Acts.

Imagine the implications. Our primary source for the story of the origins of the Christian Church was written by an anonymous devotee of Paul decades removed from the events he purports to narrate. Some scholars have even called the book of Acts the great “cover-up” and as we will see, this language might be considered relatively mild.⁷ Is it possible that this anonymous author has become, unwittingly, one of the most influential writers of the past two thousand years? Has he shaped our view of Jesus and early Christianity in ways that don’t conform to the historical facts? As we will see, the author of Luke-Acts knew precisely what he was doing, and his deliberate obscuring of the original version of “Christianity before Paul” is one of our great cultural losses. So long as the portrait of Paul in Acts prevails, it obscures for us the Christianity of Jesus and his earliest followers.

Ironically, one need only go to Paul’s own letters to recover a more authentic and reliable account of his relationship with James, Peter, and the Jerusalem church—what came to be called “Jewish Christianity” by later generations. Paul’s seven earliest letters—1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon, read carefully, tell the entire story, no holds barred. Most scholars consider these seven to be authentic and relatively free from later interpolations.⁸ They occupy just fifty pages in a typical printed English New Testament totaling 275 pages, but implications of what they say are far-reaching. In this book I try to take Paul very much at his word. When he is allowed to speak for himself, without any predetermined assumptions about the essential unity of early Christianity, the results are clear and unambiguous, but also quite shocking and provocative.