I appreciate the engagement, Morgan. There are astonishingly few true villains in our history, though they certainly exist.
My hunch, of course, is that in the Always-Already, we are all understood in our fullness. This should terrify, then comfort each of us.
Paul will be a villain or a hero not based on what I write or say - he stands convicted by his own hand much more effectively than anything I have to say about it. But truth and reconciliation starts, painfully, with truth.
I intend to publish a full accounting, people are free to make their own opinions about it as it gets produced. Keep your eyes peeled!
I don’t know how to explain this but I often feel Saul’s agony in my body. I think he is tormented by how his words have been used by Christians who have kept persecuting Jesus in their zeal for correct ideas. From what I have studied and seen, I see Augustine as a major turning point when the nihilism of original sin became the justification of colonial empire. I don’t think there was ever supposed to be a closed book through which our divine connection is mediated. What if all the letters and debates were simply understood as a continual conversation and the Roman Empire had never institutionalized a closed canon? Saul got screwed over by having his words made permanent and exclusively authoritative. I also think he and all the other apostles have been learning alongside us throughout the centuries. And I wonder if they are continuously resurrecting into our bodies. I feel their longing for us to finally make heaven here again instead of pining away for an afterlife where we will sit and watch Christians keep ruining the world.
I would say Saul chose his words intentionally. He was brilliant. A master debater, a rhetorician par excellence. Aristotle would have been extraordinarily proud.
The best we can say about it is that he was “far too uncareful”. That’s the best we can say about the things his letters have unleashed on humanity for 1,500 years.
Homophobia.
Slavery.
Gender-subjugation.
The Holocaust.
The steps from Paul’s writings to the writings that justified those outcomes are one- and two-degrees removed.
How many words from the Gospel of Yohanan Marqos can be made to support those things?
How many from Levi ha-Mattityahu?
Yohanan ha-Rahima has one, due to terrible translation - hos Ieudoi (mediated through Latin to mean “the Jews”; but really it means “the Yehudans” - a regional-cultural designation to mean “aligned with Hasmonean- or Herodian- Jerusalem/Judahite culture”); a designation that made more sense after 70 CE to a largely Goyim (Greco-Roman) audience that was weaponized by the Roman Church.
Even Loukas doesn’t contribute text in this regard - largely because Yehoshua didn’t. That’s what they share in common with each other and not with Paul: they quote Yehoshua extensively and incessantly.
The difference between these men matter. They were roughly the same age. Paul with Gamaliel were both in Jerusalem when Yehoshua stormed the Temple at Passover. Paul had plenty of opportunities to join Yehoshua, to become a “lowly Galilean” - to become what his master, Rabban Gamaliel ben-Hillel ha-Tzaken, “an unkosher fish, born of poor parents, capable of rigorous Torah study, but not capable of understanding Torah because they have no money.”
Paul chose, over and over, to stick with privilege - to engage Rome on Rome’s terms: obedience to Roman laws, acceptance of Roman taxation, participation in Roman markets, wealthy patrons “sustaining” his local cohorts, even appealing to Caesar, as a Roman citizen, legitimating Caesar’s authority to judge… everything Saul did needs to be addressed.
Never repenting of Stephanos’ murder. Never submitting to Torah accountability on the matter before the Twelve. Always undermining James and Peter (Ya’akov and Kefa), putting Timotheus as bishop in a city where an actual Disciple (John) is living? Never mentioning them in his letters?
All of this must be addressed and discussed in sober terms.
I’m very intrigued by your account though I’m ambivalent about making Saul the villain of the story.
I appreciate the engagement, Morgan. There are astonishingly few true villains in our history, though they certainly exist.
My hunch, of course, is that in the Always-Already, we are all understood in our fullness. This should terrify, then comfort each of us.
Paul will be a villain or a hero not based on what I write or say - he stands convicted by his own hand much more effectively than anything I have to say about it. But truth and reconciliation starts, painfully, with truth.
I intend to publish a full accounting, people are free to make their own opinions about it as it gets produced. Keep your eyes peeled!
I don’t know how to explain this but I often feel Saul’s agony in my body. I think he is tormented by how his words have been used by Christians who have kept persecuting Jesus in their zeal for correct ideas. From what I have studied and seen, I see Augustine as a major turning point when the nihilism of original sin became the justification of colonial empire. I don’t think there was ever supposed to be a closed book through which our divine connection is mediated. What if all the letters and debates were simply understood as a continual conversation and the Roman Empire had never institutionalized a closed canon? Saul got screwed over by having his words made permanent and exclusively authoritative. I also think he and all the other apostles have been learning alongside us throughout the centuries. And I wonder if they are continuously resurrecting into our bodies. I feel their longing for us to finally make heaven here again instead of pining away for an afterlife where we will sit and watch Christians keep ruining the world.
I would say Saul chose his words intentionally. He was brilliant. A master debater, a rhetorician par excellence. Aristotle would have been extraordinarily proud.
The best we can say about it is that he was “far too uncareful”. That’s the best we can say about the things his letters have unleashed on humanity for 1,500 years.
Homophobia.
Slavery.
Gender-subjugation.
The Holocaust.
The steps from Paul’s writings to the writings that justified those outcomes are one- and two-degrees removed.
How many words from the Gospel of Yohanan Marqos can be made to support those things?
How many from Levi ha-Mattityahu?
Yohanan ha-Rahima has one, due to terrible translation - hos Ieudoi (mediated through Latin to mean “the Jews”; but really it means “the Yehudans” - a regional-cultural designation to mean “aligned with Hasmonean- or Herodian- Jerusalem/Judahite culture”); a designation that made more sense after 70 CE to a largely Goyim (Greco-Roman) audience that was weaponized by the Roman Church.
Even Loukas doesn’t contribute text in this regard - largely because Yehoshua didn’t. That’s what they share in common with each other and not with Paul: they quote Yehoshua extensively and incessantly.
The difference between these men matter. They were roughly the same age. Paul with Gamaliel were both in Jerusalem when Yehoshua stormed the Temple at Passover. Paul had plenty of opportunities to join Yehoshua, to become a “lowly Galilean” - to become what his master, Rabban Gamaliel ben-Hillel ha-Tzaken, “an unkosher fish, born of poor parents, capable of rigorous Torah study, but not capable of understanding Torah because they have no money.”
Paul chose, over and over, to stick with privilege - to engage Rome on Rome’s terms: obedience to Roman laws, acceptance of Roman taxation, participation in Roman markets, wealthy patrons “sustaining” his local cohorts, even appealing to Caesar, as a Roman citizen, legitimating Caesar’s authority to judge… everything Saul did needs to be addressed.
Never repenting of Stephanos’ murder. Never submitting to Torah accountability on the matter before the Twelve. Always undermining James and Peter (Ya’akov and Kefa), putting Timotheus as bishop in a city where an actual Disciple (John) is living? Never mentioning them in his letters?
All of this must be addressed and discussed in sober terms.