Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: The Usurpation of Jesus and the Original Disciples

By F. F. Powell

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul looks at how Jesus' teachings were supplanted by St. Paul's doctrines. Jesus is presented to the reader of the New Testament with two different personalities. He is first described as a Jewish Rabbi recognized by His followers as the promised Hebrew Messiah. His second personality, stripped of its Jewish-ness, is somewhat like that of a Greco-Roman god.

His Disciples were Hebrew in the first instance and in the second, they were mostly Greco-Roman. Saint Paul authored most of the Greco-Roman tenets in the New Testament, of course. He became a citizen of Rome as Saul of Tarsus, but is now known as Saint Paul. For centuries theologians seem to have preferred Paul's doctrines to the teachings of Jesus and have shaped a message over the years that our faith must be placed in Jesus' death, not in His life.

As Christianity took shape, Paul battled to get his Greco-Roman dogma accepted. Those persons supporting Paul soon developed a strategy to accomplish that feat. Belittling the Disciples was one approach to the problem, it appears. This is especially true of Peter in some of Paul's Galatians passages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 24, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595629572

F. F. Powell

F. F. Powell is a journalist. She has written Sunday School material for the Southern Baptist Convention and has worked as a reporter for the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Research and the writing of this book took fifteen years. Currently she edits a travel magazine.

Book preview

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

The Usurpation of Jesus

and the Original Disciples

by

F. F. Powell

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

The Usurpation of Jesus and the Original Disciples

Copyright © 2008, 2009 Foncell Fields Powell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-0-595-52907-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-51949-1 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-595-62957-2 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009935873

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 9/16/09

Contents

Chapter 1

St. Peter’s Place in History

Chapter 2

The Time-Honored Practice of Syncretism

Chapter 3

Practical Politics

Chapter 4

Called by God or Employed by Caiaphas?

Chapter 5

Greco-Roman Influences

Chapter 6

Writers of the New Religion

Chapter 7

More Inconsistencies

Chapter 8

The Gospel According to

Mark and Luke

Chapter 9

The Fourth Gospel

Chapter 10

St. Paul Pays Homage to Plato

Chapter 11

Daniel and Matthew:

The Abomination of Desolation

Notes

Chapter 1

St. Peter’s Place in History

Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom to the Jewish disciple Simon, also called Peter (Mt.16:19). Those seeing only the face value of keys have turned Peter into the admissions officer at the gates of heaven, but that is usually said as part of a bad joke. As for Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, most members of the Protestant faith easily dismiss it as accidental insight. After all, his reputation as a totally inept disciple is well-known. Bible narratives describe his blunders, and over the years, those stories have been used in countless sermons. The record of Peter’s betrayal the night of Jesus’ arrest elicits a certain amount of ridicule, so, of course, he is often dismissed as inconsequential to the development of Christianity. Outside of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, few would say they hold him in high esteem. Indeed, he has only a minor role in the history of Protestant Christianity and that is deemed to have been performed very badly. During the early years of Catholic Christianity, its leaders, seeking authenticity, placed Peter in Rome to be their first pope. The New Testament does not put him there. It was the church fathers whose writings put Peter in Rome, where he was thought to have been crucified upside down.

Scholarly diversion away from the historical Jesus began as his life and work were studied in comparison to the letters credited to Paul. Over the years, many arguments erupted in the new religion as changing doctrines appeared, representing the new religion. Numerous councils were convened to settle differences concerning the incarnation of Jesus. When did Jesus become divine? Was he the same substance as the Father? Did he possess both divine and human natures? A consensus was difficult to achieve, and by the mid fourth century, the fractious discourses began to split the Catholic Church into what would eventually become the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. When Martin Luther finally broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the mid sixteenth century, he made his prime doctrinal element Paul’s justification by faith.

Nineteenth century theologians seeking to mythologize Jesus soon dismissed the four Gospels’ efforts to describe the historical Jesus. In the mid nineteenth century, University of Tubingen professors and students further influenced the Reformation. Theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur borrowed G. W. F. Hegel’s formula for looking at history and applied it to Christianity using the idea of ––—opposing forces—thesis and antithesis—to form a third force, synthesis.1 For Baur, thesis was Peter’s Jewish Christianity; antithesis was Pauline Christianity that resulted in the early Catholic Church: the synthesis.

Yet Peter and the other disciples’ authenticity was built on the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, which led them to leave their families and homes to accompany Jesus for three years. In following him, these men tried to live by his teachings—those hard lessons that help us live less vicious lives. To those he chose to guard his precepts, Jesus explained that two ideas are preeminent: humanity’s relationship to God, and their relationship to one another.2

For the most part, Protestants now ignore that the writer of Matthew’s Gospel gathered Jesus’ Jewish teachings and placed them in the fifth through the seventh chapters of his work. The passages have been there two thousand years, but few Christians attempt to live by them, especially since Baur and others made Paul’s Gospel preeminent over Jesus’ teachings. Evidence of their success are the demands often made that the Ten Commandments be posted in public places, but we never hear pleas that Jesus’ expansion of those laws be put up anywhere. Yet, surely, if one loves Jesus, that love takes shape in his words from the Sermon on the Mount. Most theologians, however, have replaced Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount with the Greco-Roman message of a cosmic Christ waiting for us in the next world. A former student of the University of Tubingen, Rudolf Bultmann, in his later career developed his own theological position; namely, that Christian faith is, and should be, comparatively uninterested in the historical Jesus and centered instead on the transcendent Christ.3

Of course, ideas from the late nineteenth century Modernism movement should be part of theological study. Acknowledging that the earth is not flat should always direct Bible study.

The work of Bultmann and others only emphasizes that the New Testament clearly presents Jesus as two different personalities. He is first described as a Jewish rabbi recognized by his followers as the promised Hebrew Messiah. His second personality, stripped of its Jewishness, is somewhat like that of a Greco-Roman god, easily added to the popular mass of Roman deities of the day. His disciples were Hebrews in the first instance, and in the second, they were mostly Greco-Romans.

A citizen of Rome, Saul of Tarsus, now called Saint Paul, composed the New Testament’s Greco-Roman tenets. Many theologians prefer Paul’s doctrines and have, over the years, shaped the message that our faith must be placed in his death, not in his life. This approach, however, overlooks Jesus’ assurance in the Gospel of John, when Jesus was in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. There, he told the people around him, Anyone who gives heed to what I say and puts his trust in him who sent me has hold of eternal life, and does not come up for judgment, but has already passed from death to life (Jn. 5:24 NEB).

And what about the first disciples? Their beliefs were not filtered through Paul or other theologians but came directly from the object of their faith. Surely, they did not cast aside what Jesus had taught them and take up Paul’s Gospel.

Each of the two saviors in the New Testament has a Gospel, of course, but the Christ—who is presented as a dead, though resurrected, savior through a Greco-Roman creed—is the one most Christians follow. But as one studies Paul’s Gospel, one finds threads pulled from Greco-Roman religions, poetry, laws from the Roman government, and most of all, philosophy. It is from these elements that Paul wove a linsey-woolsey religion, claiming it was God’s secret message for him alone to broadcast to the known world. Paul’s esoteric religion is composed of quotes from Aratus of Soli, Cilicia (b. ca. 315 BC), in Acts 17:28; Epimenides of Cnossos, Crete (fl. sixth century BC), in Titus 1:12; and Plato (428/427–348/347 BC), who established the Academe at Athens, Greece, and whose ideas are scattered generously throughout most of Paul’s Gospel.4 As a result, extensive portions of the Greek philosopher’s writings have become Christian doctrine through the thirteen canonical letters credited to Paul. As the Catholic Church developed, it followed in Paul’s footsteps, and because of the influence of Plato and Aristotle on those who developed it, Roman Catholic doctrine must be studied philosophically even to understand its theological vocabulary.5

As Paul’s doctrine replaced Jesus’ teachings, he usurped the remaining eleven disciples’ place as Jesus’ spokesmen.

In their writings, Bible scholars often point out that Jesus and his followers were awkward rustics at best while Paul was an educated Hebrew Greek. Furthermore, some scholastics doubt that Jesus knew Greek and hint that Hebrew wisdom falls far short of Greek philosophy. But Alexander the Great had swept through Palestine in 332 BC, planting the seeds of Greek culture on his way to conquer other lands, and the Romans had controlled Palestine since Pompey’s conquest of the area in 63 BC, completing the Greco-Roman influence over the land. Could it be that the Jews knew the language but simply refused to use it?

As Christianity took shape, Paul battled to get his Greco-Roman dogma accepted, and as the war with Rome demolished Jerusalem and scattered Jesus’ followers, Greco-Roman writers took the Jewish religion of Jesus in another direction. Although the church fathers were some of the first writers to separate Christianity away from its Judaic roots, as time passed, many other scholars followed their lead and moved it farther and farther away from its Creator.

One of the strategies of Paul’s supporters was belittling the disciples. In Gal. 3:19, where Paul describes his challenge to Peter, Paul makes the disciple appear to be an unworthy spokesman for Jesus. In his letters, Paul mentions Peter and John a couple of times, and in Acts, Luke writes of the Eleven, and also mentions Peter and John and Judas Iscariot individually. But the names of Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew; James, the son of Alphaeus; Lebbaeus; and Simon the Zealot are not used in connection with spreading the Gospel. Furthermore, most of the New Testament, especially Luke and Paul’s epistles, raise the question of why Jesus chose these men as keepers of his teachings in the first place.

Contrary to all reason, of course, is Peter. In the Synoptic Gospels, he is presented as such a dim-witted man, it is astounding to find that later on he was chosen to head the congregation for a time after Jesus was crucified.

An example is Matthew 14:22–33. In this narrative, Peter climbs out of a boat on the Sea of Galilee and starts walking toward Jesus across the water, but fear suddenly overtakes him, and he sinks into the lake. Though this story is rife with theological possibilities, it is the only account of Peter’s attempt to walk on water. The writers of both Mark and John’s Gospels say that only Jesus walked on water.6

That, of course, is only the beginning. Besides being presented as a man of little or no faith, readers are also told that Peter is Jesus’ adversary. Although Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter sixteen, tells of Peter’s special insight regarding the Messiah, only a few verses later he becomes evil incarnate and Jesus calls him Satan.7 Neither Luke nor John’s Gospel has an account of Jesus naming Peter Satan. Each of the Synoptic writers do, however, point out Peter’s foolish statement at the event called the Transfiguration. According to these writers, Peter’s spiritual knowledge is so poor, he urges that shelters be built on earth to house the ghostly spirits of Moses and Elijah, and Jesus as well.8 Interestingly, the Gospel according to John does not report this incident, although the other three Gospel writers place John in the group viewing this amazing sight and hearing Peter’s reportedly misguided attempt at homage. Of course, some say this is evidence that the disciple John did not write the last Gospel.

Obviously, it is disappointing that Peter denied he knew Jesus the morning after his nighttime arrest, but as we all know, before the rooster announced dawn, Peter had said three times he was unacquainted with the Nazarene. All four Gospel writers report Peter’s betrayal, but of the four persons telling this story, only the writer of John’s Gospel adds that Jesus, appearing to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias after his resurrection, probed the open wound of shame borne by Peter and healed it. It appears Jesus’ triple inquiry Simon, son of John, do you love me, and his charge that Peter tend my sheep, is evidence of Jesus’ forgiveness. In this exchange, Jesus let Peter know he still believed he was capable of accomplishing what needed doing.9

Looking to the two tiny books bearing Peter’s name for answers to any of these conflicting stories only raises more questions. Indeed, it appears doubtful that the disciple Peter wrote either of the two letters attributed to him in the New Testament since they contain a strange combination of Old Testament quotes and Pauline notions. A word or two now and then may echo Jesus, but none of his teaching is there.

Despite John’s defense of Peter, Protestants place the fisherman far below Paul in importance to Christian history. It is the educated man holding Roman citizenship rather than the unschooled fisherman from Galilee who many believers wanted to be

Reviews for Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

[Gústaf Funi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really thorough. A great overview of the subject. I haven't found a better book on this important topic.