* I The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity Barnes {LNoble BOO K S NEW YORK Copyright © 1986 by Hyam Maccoby This edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc., by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. 1 998 Barnes & Noble Books ISBN 0-76070-787-1 Printed and bound in the United States of America M 9 8 7 6 BVG For Cynthia - CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Preface xi PART I: SAUL i The Problem of Paul 3 2 The Standpoint of this Book 14 3 The Pharisees 19 4 Was Jesus a Pharisee? 29 5 Why Was Jesus Crucified? 45 6 Was Paul a Pharisee? 50 7 Alleged Rabbinical Style in Paul’s Epistles 8 Paul and Stephen 72 PART II: PAUL 9 The Road to Damascus 85 10 Damascus and After 100 n Paul and the Eucharist no 12 The ‘Jerusalem Church’ 119 13 The Split 139 14 The Trial of Paul 156 15 The Evidence of the Ebionites 172 16 The Mythmaker 184 Note on Method 206 Notes 212 Bibliography 222 Index 229 Index of Quotations 235 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank Dr Francis T. Glasson, with whom I have discussed various issues relevant to this book over a considerable period. His remarks were most thought-provoking, even when I did not agree with them. I should like to thank also Professor E. P. Sanders for his generous and stimulating comments. I am also most grateful to Professor A. R. C. Leaney, Professor P. R. Ackroyd, Canon J. W. Packer and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for their encouragement of the rabbinical aspects ofmy work. Special thanks are due to Mr Jack Eisner for the generosity and warmth of his support. I have been greatly heartened by the deep understanding of the origins of the Jewish-Christian conflict shown by Professor Roy Eckhart and Dr Robert Everett, and by their courageous support. I am most grateful to Professor Yehuda Bauer for his encouragement of my work, and to the International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism, at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, for supporting its continuance with a grant. I should like to thank also my colleagues and students at the Leo Baeck College for their unfailing encouragement and companionship in scholarly enquiry. The poet Samuel Menashe has been an indefatigable and inspiring friend and adviser, and I am glad to express here my deep gratitude to him. My chief thanks, however, must go to my dear wife, Cynthia, whose keen criticism and advice has contributed to every page of this book, and whose constant, loving support has made its completion possible. H.M. IX PREFACE As a Talmudic scholar, I have found that knowledge ofthe Talmud and other rabbinical works has opened up the meaning of many puzzling passages in the New Testament. In my earlier book on Jesus, Revolution in Judaea, I showed how, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks and acts as a Pharisee, though the Gospel editors have attempted to conceal this by representing him as opposing Pharisaism even when his sayings were most in accordance with Pharisee teaching. In the present book, I have used the rabbinical evidence to establish an opposite contention: that Paul, whom the New Testament wishes to portray as having been a trained Pharisee, never was one. The consequences of this for the understanding of early Christianity are immense. In addition to the rabbinical writings, I have made great use of the ancient historians, especially Josephus, Epiphanius and Eusebius. Their statements must be weighed in relation to their particular interests and bias; but when such bias has been identified and discounted, there remains a residue of valuable information. Exactly the same applies to the New Testament itself. Its information is often distorted by the bias of the author or editor, but a knowledge of the nature of this bias makes possible the emergence of the true shape of events. For an explanation of my stance in relation to the various schools of New Testament interpretation of modern times, the reader is referred to the Note on Method, p. 206. In using the Epistles as evidence of Paul’s life, views and ‘myth- ology’, I have confined myself to those Epistles which are accepted by the great majority of New Testament scholars as the genuine work of Paul. Disputed Epistles, such as Colossians, however pertinent to my - argument, have been ignored. When quoting from the New Testament, I have usually used the New English Bible version, but, from time to time, I have used the xi PREFACE Authorized Version or the Revised Version, when I thought them preferable in faithfulness to the original. While the New English Bible is in general more intelligible to modern readers than the older versions, its concern for modern English idiom sometimes obscures important features of the original Greek; and its readiness to paraphrase sometimes allows the translator’s presuppositions to colour his trans- lation. I have pointed out several examples of this in the text. In considering the background of Paul, I have returned to one of the earliest accounts of Paul in existence, that given by the Ebionites, as reported by Epiphanius. This account has been neglected by scholars for quite inadequate and tendentious reasons. Robert Graves and Joshua Podro in The Nazarene Gospel Restored did take the Ebionite account seriously; but, though they made some cogent remarks about it, their treatment of the matter was brief. I hope that the present book will do more to alter the prevailing dismissive attitude towards the evidence of this fascinating and important ancient community. PART I SAUL CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM OF PAUL At the beginning of Christianity stand two figures: Jesus and Paul. Jesus is regarded by Christians as the founder of their religion, in that the events of his life comprise the foundation story of Christianity; but Paul is regarded as the great interpreter of Jesus’ mission, who explained, in a way that Jesus himself never did, how Jesus’ life and death fitted into a cosmic scheme of salvation, stretching from the creation of Adam to the end of time. How should we understand the relationship betweenJesus and Paul? We shall be approaching this question not from the standpoint of faith, but from that of historians, who regard the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament as an important source of evidence requiring careful sifting and criticism, since their authors were propagating religious beliefs rather than conveying dispassionate historical information. We shall also be taking into account all relevant evidence from other sources, such as Josephus, the Talmud, the Church historians and the Gnostic writings. What would Jesus himself have thought of Paul? We must remember that Jesus never knew Paul; the two men never once met. The disciples who knew Jesus best, such as Peter, James and John, have left no writings behind them explaining how Jesus seemed to them or what they considered his mission to have been. Did they agree with the interpretations disseminated by Paul in his fluent, articulate writings? Or did they perhaps think that this newcomer to the scene, spinning complicated theories about the place ofJesus in the scheme of things, was getting everything wrong? Paul claimed that his interpretations were not just his own invention, but had come to him by personal inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus, even though he had never met him during his lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained through visions and 3 THE MYTHMAKER transports, was actually superior to acquaintance with Jesus during his lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes. We know about Paul not only from his own letters but also from the book of Acts, which gives a full account of his life. Paul, in fact, is the hero of Acts, which was written by an admirer and follower of his, namely, Luke, who was also the author of the Gospel of that name. From Acts, it would appear that there was some friction between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem Church’, the surviving companions of Jesus; but this friction was resolved, and they all became the best of friends, with common aims and purposes. From certain of Paul’s letters, particularly Galatians, it seems that the friction was more serious than in the picture given in Acts, which thus appears to be partly a propaganda exercise, intended to portray unity in the early Church. The question recurs: what would Jesus have thought of Paul, and what did the Apostles think of him? We should remember that the New Testament, as we have it, is much more dominated by Paul than appears at first sight. As we read it, we come across the Four Gospels, of which Jesus is the hero, and do not encounter Paul as a character until we embark on the post-Jesus narrative of Acts. Then we finally come into contact with Paul himself, in his letters. But this impression is misleading, for the earliest writings in the New Testament are actually Paul’s letters, which were written about ad 50-60, while the Gospels were not written until the period ad 70-1 10. This means that the theories of Paul were already before the writers of the Gospels and coloured their interpretations of Jesus’ activities. Paul is, in a sense, present from the very first word of the New Testament. This is, of course, not the whole story, for the Gospels are based on traditions and even written sources which go back to a time before the impact of Paul, and these early traditions and sources are not entirely obliterated in the final version and give valuable indications of what the story was like before Paulinist editors pulled it into final shape.