Month: December 2019

Was Paul A Christian?

Last week we discussed the issue of whether Jesus was a Christian. The issue is even more clear cut in the case of Paul, as he made several statements which define his religion for us.

The headings in many Bibles describe Paul’s (Saul’s) encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road as “Saul’s conversion”, as if he converted from Judaism to Christianity. That’s certainly not how he saw it in his later life. Much of his defense in the last half of the book of Acts involves his claiming that his message is identical to the Hebrew scriptures. (Acts 26:22)

Let’s take a look at some of his specific statements concerning his religion. When Paul was on trial before the Sanhedrin, he made the statement, “I am a Pharisee.” He didn’t say, “I used to be a Pharisee”; he said, “I am a Pharisee.” He clearly still considered himself to be a member of that branch of Judaism.

A little later, in his appearance before Agrippa, he made the statement, “According to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.” Here he is talking about the past. But he refers to “our religion”, the religion that he holds in common with Agrippa. What religion is that? And what religion is Pharisaism a sect of? Judaism, of course. Paul never thought of himself religiously as other than a Jew.

He did, however, identify also with another sect of Judaism. In his trial before Felix he says, “I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect.” (Acts 24:14) Paul claimed religious affiliation with the Way, a sect of Judaism. He goes on to say, “I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets.” He’s being rather emphatic that his religion is Judaism. Even his accusers claim that “he is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect.” (Acts 24:5) A sect is a subdivision of a religion, and the religion referenced is clearly Judaism.

Some people think of Paul as the real founder of Christianity. Paul, like Jesus, never had any idea of starting another religion. His focus was Judaism the way it was intended to be, with Jesus as the promised Messiah and Redeemer.

Another misleading idea is that Paul had his name changed when he became a “Christian”. We’ve seen in the Hebrew scriptures that Abram, Sarai, and Jacob had their names changed by God. That’s not the case with Paul. The transition in his name occurred when he was already on a missionary journey. Acts 13:9 says, “Then Saul, who was also called Paul…” There is no name change, just a reference to another name by which he was known.

We need to realize that several people in the New Testament are called by different names depending on whether they were among Hebrew speakers, Greek speakers, or Aramaic speakers. “Saul” is a Hebrew-based name, shared with the first king of Israel, while Paul (Paulos) is clearly Greek.

Peter is another individual who went by three different names, Simon (Shimon) among Hebrew speakers, Cephas (Kefa) among Aramaic speakers, and Peter (Petros) among Greek speakers. Acts 1:23 tells of another man who went by three names, “Joseph (Hebrew) called Barsabbas (Aramaic), also known as Justus (Greek).”

Paul makes it easy to identify his claimed religion when he identifies himself as a Pharisee, which he calls a sect of our religion, and then claims to be a follower of the Way, also a sect of that same religion. We need to realize that the religion taught by both Jesus and Paul was essentially Judaism, with Jesus as the culmination of it.

Was Jesus A Christian?

Was Jesus a Christian? This is a question that I used to hear from theology professors. At the time, I thought it was a trick question, something like, “Is the Pope Catholic?” After all, if Christians are followers of Jesus and his teachings, wouldn’t they be pretty much equivalent?

In another sense, the question is anachronistic. The term “Christian” was unknown in Jesus’ day. It occurs only three times in the New Testament. The first reference to it seems to be in Antioch. This is what the believers were called, whether by their opponents or by their friends is unknown. (Acts 11:26)
Another usage is in the mouth of King Agrippa at the trial of Paul. After Paul’s testimony about his experience, Agrippa comments about Paul trying to persuade him to become a Christian. (Acts 26:28) Paul seems to avoid the term in his reply, saying that he wished Agrippa could become like him. The third and final use of the term is in I Peter 4:16 where Peter talks about suffering as a Christian.

Even though the term was not used during the lifetime of Jesus, I’ve become convinced that the question, “Was Jesus a Christian?” is crucial for understanding Jesus’ life and ministry. We can define “Christian” in a couple of ways. We can define it as a follower of Jesus. By this definition, Jesus would certainly identify with it.

Another definition, however, may accord more closely with how we actually use the term. A Christian is an adherent of the religious system that has come to be known as Christianity. Ever since the second or third century, Christianity has been used to draw a contrast with Judaism. If a person follows Christianity, he does not follow Judaism, and vice versa.

I have become convinced that Jesus, as well as all of his immediate followers, would have described their faith as Judaism, the faith and practice that God established for his people in the Hebrew scriptures. There was no intention to start a new religion.

The issue rarely comes up in the life of Jesus because it was inconceivable. But the one time that people seem to be asking if he’s teaching something new, in Luke 5:33-39, he emphatically denies it, saying, “You don’t fix an old coat with a new patch.”

Jesus was announced at his birth, and presented himself throughout his life, as the “king of the Jews”. He saw himself as the culmination of the prophecies and promises of the Hebrew scriptures, as the ultimate king who would reign over Israel from Jerusalem. He even went so far as to express continuity with the teachings of the Pharisees when he told the crowds that “the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, so you must obey them”. (Matt. 23:2-3) (He then goes on to criticize them for not following their own teachings.)

Jesus’ claim to the kingship of Israel was not accepted by the authorities, and they killed him for it. But after his resurrection, that was still clearly the plan. When Jesus’ disciples asked if he was now going to establish his kingdom, his reply was essentially, “Later”. (Acts 1:6-7)

Jesus may have been the reason for the origin of Christianity, but he unequivocally affirmed the tenets of Judaism, God’s Law (Matt. 5:17-18), his scriptures (Matt. 22:29), his people (John 4:22), and his Messiah (John 4:26). Jesus never criticized Judaism, but the wrong understandings of its practitioners. His death inaugurated the new covenant, which was to be made with Israel. (Jer. 31:31) In the way that we most commonly think of Christianity today, Jesus was not a Christian.

Fence Around Torah

There is a non-canonical Jewish writing from around the time of Jesus titled “Pirkei Avot”, which is translated as “Chapters of the Fathers.” It records the oral transmission of Jewish teaching from a couple of centuries before Jesus until a couple of centuries after him.

The work begins with the following statement. “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and handed it down to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets; the Prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly. The latter said three things: Be cautious in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence for the Torah.”

The first two of these, be cautious in judgment and raise up many disciples, were certainly characteristic of Jesus. He famously commanded, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” He also gave instructions for making disciples in one of his last talks with his followers. So far Jesus seems to be in harmony with these men of the Great Assembly.

But what about the third item, making a fence for Torah? What does that even mean? And is it something that Jesus bought into?

The rabbis considered it to mean setting guidelines for what you do, so that you don’t even come close to breaking God’s Law. One example of this is the command not to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This command is given three times in the books of Torah, and the rabbis decided that a good way to keep from accidentally doing that would be to never serve milk and meat together at the same meal. Hence the intricate traditions about keeping kosher, with even different sets of dishes for meat and dairy.

Many Christians think that the Pharisees overdid this idea of a fence around the Law by developing traditions that kept people from God. We’ve seen in a previous posting that Jesus doesn’t criticize the Pharisees for being too zealous for the Law, but for not being observant enough. What would Jesus think, then about this idea of making a fence around Torah?

Interestingly, Jesus seems to do exactly that in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. There are five different topics on which Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said…, But I tell you…” In each of these cases he first cites a command from the Torah, and then gives the fence that he wants to make to prevent anyone from getting close to breaking it.

For example, he cites the prohibition against murder, and then extends it to say that you should not even be angry with someone. Likewise he cites the command aginst adultery, and then extends it to say that you shouldn’t even look at a woman lustfully. If this isn’t building a fence around Torah, I don’t know what is.

It’s clear that Jesus was zealous enough for the keeping of God’s Law that he instructed his hearers to avoid even getting close to breaking it. Jesus, like the men of the Great Assembly, advocated building a fence for Torah.

Purging All Foods

What did Jesus think about the dietary laws of the Hebrew Bible? In Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 the Israelites are told not to eat any detestable thing. Then the various animals are listed that are not to be eaten.

It’s notable that nowhere in scripture is it recorded that Jesus ate any of these forbidden meats. But that could be considered an argument from silence. What did Jesus teach his disciples about these food laws?

We don’t have any examples in the gospels of Jesus addressing these laws specifically. But we do have an example in Acts of Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers during his years of teaching, and his view of the food laws after sitting under Jesus’ teaching for years.

In Acts 10 Peter is on his roof praying, and he has a vision of a large sheet full of animals, and hears a voice telling him to kill and eat. He refuses to do so, saying that he has never eaten anything unclean. The voice then says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

This is repeated two more times. Clearly Peter does not think that this is God telling him to eat. When he replies, “No way, lord”, the word for “lord”, as with the Spanish “Senor”, can also mean “sir”. Peter replies politely to the source of the voice, telling him that he’s not going to do it.

The next verse says that Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision. Was it really about food, or something else. After being summoned to the house of Cornelius, Peter realizes that the vision is not about food, but about men. “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” But it’s clear from Peter’s response to the vision that Jesus had not taught his disciples to disregard the food laws.

There is, however, a passage in Mark 7 that looks at first glance like Jesus is abolishing the food laws. In Mark 7:19 some translations say something like, “in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.” There are a number of reasons why this cannot possibly be the meaning of the passage.

In the broader context Jesus has been criticized by some Pharisees because his disciples did not do a ceremonial hand-washing before eating. This was not a biblical command, but an oral tradition. Jesus points out that while they are sticklers for their tradition, they are breaking the actual commands of God by using a weasel-word, “corban”, to evade their responsibility to the Law to honor their parents. Jesus’ whole theme in this context is to follow the bibical Law. He’s not going to turn around a few verses later and abrogate the food laws.

Jesus teaches the crowd that nothing outside a man can make him “unclean”. The uncleanness that he is talking about is a heart condition. Later his disciples ask him about this statement. He replies to them, “Are you so dull? Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body, purging all foods.”

It is this last phrase, “purging all foods”, that some translators take as a parenthetical comment by the author saying that Jesus was nullifying the food laws. It’s a real stretch grammatically to go back two or three verses to find an antecedent for “purging” in Jesus making a statement. It’s much more natural to consider the phrase, “purging all foods” to be part of Jesus’ statement. Besides that, forbidden meats were not considered to be foods at all.

It’s also clear that Jesus isn’t talking about forbidden foods. He’s not even talking about ceremonial uncleanness. The kind of uncleanness that Jesus is talking about comes from the heart, the uncleanness of sin, of setting aside God’s Laws, as the Pharisees were doing. Sometimes the translators come to a passage with a particular agenda of what they think a passage means, and they let their preconceptions color their translation, and it ends up misleading people about what the passage actually says.

But it should be clear to an unbiased observer that Jesus held and taught the laws of God, including the food laws. Remember that he insisted that not a jot or tittle of the Law would pass away until heaven and earth disappear.