Apostle to the Gentiles, Saul Paul

Before getting too enmeshed in speculations on the animosity between at least two of the Gospel writers (The New Testament is supposed to be a testament of love, right?) and the looming war of the Jews, I should probably introduce another character from the Biblical record. Here I refer to Paul, who was converted on the Damascus road, by a vision of Christ in great light, and afterwards became the apostle to the Gentiles, according to the book of Acts and his own epistles (letters) to the churches.

The modern church has a tendency to feel uncomfortable about calling Paul the first Christian. Wasn't he persecuting Christians before he became a Christian? This is probably the great failing of our time.

Paul was he who discovered the mystery. What had been hidden from time became known in history. The power of God became an inner reality, associated with a belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior and redeemer of humanity, a force that could not be put down by conqueror or the unconvinced. The Holy Spirit broke through into the affairs of man in a big way!

When we talk about Paul as the first Christian we are merely saying that he was the first to completely envision the future when Jesus would become the Living Lord of Christianity and not merely a wise prophet or revolutionist in some watered down form. This fact so boldly proclaims itself that we should be struck dumb in denying it. And yet, these so-called Gospel writers seemed to be dumb in regard to it. Even Luke, who is said to have written Acts, is equally silent in regard to Paul in his Gospel. Why? Did these persons or communities even know that Paul existed, and that the Lord was working mighty miracles through him? Apparently not.

If Paul was the first, and all others came later, then where is he in the Gospels? Without some slight mention by others, Paul seems to have been intentionally overlooked by the Gospel writers. Why? Does this represent some basic misunderstandings of whom Christ actually was, that took an outsider to see through SPECIAL REVELATION not given to the insiders. The gaping ravine between the Gospels and the Acts is of serious concern. We are led to believe that the Gospel writers were content to leave the future to whomever it be assigned.

Furthermore, the book of Acts and the letters of Paul (epistles) do not match up in certain important areas of confirming evidence. Did Paul actually go to Jerusalem for a meeting with the chosen disciples who had become the apostles to bring relief to the poor and receive from them there some kind of recognition of his role to the Gentiles? Or did he merely wish to do so, and thought better of it in the end. His letters give no acknowledgement to confirm that he had actually traveled to the Holy City. Acts likewise ends with a solemn note, but does not tell the fate of Paul in his Roman imprisonment.

Once again, someone is playing with the facts. How well do we really know this part of church history? Who's telling the truth, and where is the lie? Or do we, in some mysterious way, have all the facts before us, that tell the story, even though the details do not totally mesh together in and of themselves?

Faith seems to require faith, and woe to him who seeks absolute knowledge.

INTERESTING THEORY, MORE QUESTIONS

My last post at the ending entertained certain puzzling questions in regard to the Gospels. An interesting theory is put forth by Evan Powell in his book titled "The Unfinished Gospel". He propounds something along these lines, which questions traditional views to a large extent:

John came first who was anti-Petrine (Peter). Then Mark made his rebuttal, but mysteriously ended his gospel at a strange place, in that the disciples do not encounter the risen Christ after his resurrection from the tomb, as in the other Gospels. Ironically, the missing material may have been moved over to John chapter 21, or else Mark intentionally omitted it, preferring to remain silent on that portion of scripture. The two endings that we currently have in the book of Mark, a short and a longer ending, are known to have been appended later by some kind soul who noticed the discrepancy and thought to make amends for it. And so, the "unfinished Gospel" is supposed to be made well.

The significance of this theory is that if the Gospels of John and Mark came first with Luke and then Matthew following, it totally unnecessitates an external Q source for the Gospels. All the material that Luke and Matthew used can be found in the other two Gospel writers.

The further question arises as to what was this quarrel in the early church between the Johanine and the Petrine factions that resulted in the transmission of the earliest Gospels of Jesus Christ?

But wait, another problem enters in ... my next post will attempt to address it.

Saint Matthew

Matthew is the Gospel writer who gives us the royal lineage of Joseph, directly descended from the original kings of Israel, David and his son Solomon. He claims to be an eye-witness of these events and pronounces Jesus as the expected Jewish Messiah. He also seems to be big on the Virgin birth from a prophecy of Isaiah, but probably related to the curse on Jeconiah recorded in Jeremiah 22.

In April 1996 a book was published by the name of "Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence About the Origin of the Gospels" by Thiede and D'Ancona.

The book claims that three ancient papyrus fragments, known as the Magdalen Papyrus, corroborate the tradition that St. Matthew actually wrote the Gospel bearing his name, that he wrote it within a generation of Jesus' death, and that the Gospel stories about Jesus are true.

Causing questions: Why are there three other Gospels, with Mark traditionally seen as the earliest one? Who is the mysterious Q source for the words of Jesus? How does Matthew treat this material differently than the other three accounts?

Mary, the Virgin?

What to make of this discovery of the tomb at Talpiot in 1980?

Six names were found on ten ossuaries. Mary, Martha and Matthew are .names of some disciples of Jesus that we read about in the Gospels. Matthew is also one of the writers of the Gospel. The other names are Jose (a form of Joseph), Judah and Jesus himself.

Obviously this is not the tomb of Jesus and his family because as far as we know (from scriptures), Jesus had no family. At best, he had some step-brothers (4?), step-sisters (2?) and various disciples. Jose may have been the name of one of the step-brothers.

The scriptures call Jesus a "life giving spirit". In the book of Acts the risen Lord comes into his full power as such, even more so than during his earthly ministry. Therefore, if Jesus is a spirit, then the finding of a body or burial location is not going to be of much importance in this greater scheme of things.

Theologically I can understand all of the above, and the evil of desecrating a burial place (Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.), and yet this finding of a tomb raises certain questions that cannot easily be cast aside without meditation.

Could this possibly represent a Christian burial rather than a strictly Jewish one?

One can only speculate on the relationships of these individuals in the attempts to make some Biblical sense of it, if any.

If one agrees that Jesus the risen is not in this tomb, can one then pose the
possibility that Mary could have remarried someone named Jesus, son of Joseph, at Jerusalem, sometime after her first husband Joseph died in Nazareth/Bethlehem? And that Mary and Jesus had sons by the name of Jose and Judah, who are step-brothers of her son, Jesus? The statistics show that these names were common, Jesus and Joseph, at that time, and so it seems not so far-fetched as it might at first contact.

This seems incredible, but certainly would lessen the controversy of having Jesus, the son of Mary, being placed in a tomb next to his mother, Mary., and he being married to a Mariamne, and they being the parents of a child together, etc. etc. etc., compounding the mystery, especially knowing that scriptures do little to back any of this up, which would have been obvious to first century believers, if not to us. Can we believe that one of the Gospel writers would not have mentioned something about this? For what purpose does it serve for Jesus to have a child when he is obviously consecrated in the last three years of his life (some say last 9 months only as the Paschal Lamb.) to being a sacrifice?

Let's not be so quick to write this off as a non-find until we check out the facts and where they lead. Perhaps something will come of it after further study, but for now we can only speculate ...

Perhaps the step brothers and sisters of Jesus are actually cousins, children of a brother or sister of Mary. Unfortunately, we don't have the geneological records that were destroyed in the Temple in 70 A.D. to verify this.