Paul and Jesus

Paul knows Peter as Cephas, using his Greek name Peter only twice (Galatians 2:7–8). What Paul reveals is sparse but quite telling. Cephas is second next to James the brother of Jesus, along with John the fisherman as a third, in a new leadership triumvirate that Paul refers to as the “pillars” of the Jerusalem-based Jesus movement (Galatians 2:9). In Judaism this is called a bet din or “house of judgment.” That James is in charge, flanked by Peter as his chief confidant, is quite telling since James is known in all of our sources as extremely zealous for the Torah—much as John the Baptizer had been. According to Matthew, Jesus had given Peter the “keys” of judgment, with binding and loosing power, which in Judaism means he functions as a judge over matters of Jewish law and observance for the Christian community (Matthew 16:19 and especially 18:18).

When Paul first visits Jerusalem, three years after his sojourn in Arabia and his revelatory experiences, he goes first to Peter, who then arranges for him to meet James (Galatians 1:18–19). Peter functions as a viceroy for James, and is apparently sent throughout the regions of Judea, Galilee, Syria, Asia, and Greece to represent the Jerusalem leadership and make sure that things are operating smoothly among the various branches of the Jewish-Christian movement outside the Land of Israel. Paul mentions that Peter travels about with his wife, supported by the Jerusalem headquarters, and Peter has apparently even visited Paul’s group at Corinth (1 Corinthians 9:5; 1:12).

When Paul appeared before the Jerusalem Council around A.D. 50 to defend his independent preaching among the Gentiles for the previous fourteen years, he and the Jerusalem apostles apparently reached a kind of “live and let live” agreement to not interfere with one another’s work. They agreed that Paul was to preach among the Gentiles a form of the Jewish messianic faith in Jesus applicable to non-Jews as God-fearers. Peter would head the missionary work to Jews scattered throughout the world. Most important, the Jerusalem leadership would not support any insistence that Paul’s converts become circumcised and convert to Judaism. This is what Paul says in Galatians, and it fits well with what is reported by the author of Luke about the meeting in Acts 15.

What never came up, and what the Jerusalem apostles would never have imagined, given Paul’s devotion and training in the Jewish faith, was that Paul believed that with the coming of Christ, the Torah of Moses, which he called “the old covenant,” had been superseded and was “fading away,” as we have seen in his letters. That means that even Jews were no longer “under the Torah,” or obligated to observe the laws of traditions of the ancestral faith—particularly circumcision, the Sabbath, the Jewish festivals, the dietary laws, and ritual purity. We know from Paul’s letters that he went much further than this, even to the point of teaching that the Torah had been given by angels, not directly by God, and that those who were under its tutelage were slaves to these inferior cosmic powers, which was no better than serving idols (Galatians 4:8–10).

Some have maintained that Paul wrote the negative things he did about the Torah only in the context of insisting that his Gentile converts not be forced to live as Jews, but his language is quite clear in this regard. He constantly uses the first-person plural—“we,” including himself as a Jew. The Torah lasted from Moses to Christ, so we are no longer confined “under the Torah” but are released from its bondage (Galatians 3:23–4:10). According to Paul, as we have seen in previous chapters, if one is in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, one is responsible only for the Torah of Christ.

We can be sure that Peter, James, and the Jerusalem apostles knew nothing about the full implications of Paul’s teaching, especially that Jews need no longer follow the Jewish Torah. The author of the book of Acts tries to present a picture of harmonious cooperation between Paul, Peter, and James—they were all preaching the same gospel message. At the very end of his book, when Paul visits Jerusalem for the last time, before his imprisonment in Rome, Acts reveals more—perhaps more than intended—and the truth seems to come out, at least by implication.