The Great Debate
Tomorrow at 7pm EST in Charlotte, North Carolina, my good friend Dr. James Tabor is respectfully dialoguing with Dr. Michael Brown about Paul who is, arguably, the founder of Christianity. The subject of discussion is whether Paul, a Jew from Tarsus, in modern day Turkey, remained true to his Hebrew faith. Professor Tabor recently wrote an excellent book on the subject. In it he argues – correctly, I think – that Paul, formerly called Saul “turned his back on the Torah revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai, with all of its laws, customs and traditions….what Paul proposed as a replacement of the Torah of Moses he called the Torah of Christ.” This latter is not a legal code but a “spiritual” code; so in one fell swoop he did away with the 613 commandments of the Torah. He could do this because he had a vision of Jesus who revealed to him that alongside the God of Israel there was now an exalted heavenly Lord Jesus who ruled the entire cosmos. This essentially new religion, argues Tabor, had very little to do with the teachings of the historical Jesus, a Jewish rabbi from the Galilee. It also put Paul at odds with Jesus’ initial following that experienced Jesus as a person living on Earth, as opposed to Paul who experienced Jesus only after the crucifixion through mystical apparitions.
Tabor’s views are hotly contested by scholars who believe that there is continuity between the original Jesus movement and Paul’s Christianity. They also believe that the original followers of Jesus basically got along with Paul and that their differences are much exaggerated. Meaning, that there was both continuity and Torah observance in early Christianity.
Personally, I believe that there is a third option, namely, that Paul represents the continuity of one aspect of Jesus’ teaching – the aspect which rejected the Torah and elevated Jesus to a near deity. After the crucifixion, people like James, Jesus’ brother, and the apostle Peter, tried to play down that aspect but Paul’s teachings won out when Jerusalem – which was the center of the Torah observant Jesus movement – was destroyed in 70 CE.
In any event, for those fortunate enough to be in Charlotte tomorrow, you can go and hear these two fascinating scholars debating these ideas.
Check out my latest blog in the Times of Israel: Statue of Biblical Joseph found: Story covered up!
