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The idea that the Paul of the canonical writings is to a lesser or greater degree a 'construct' of the evolving Church, and that this 'construct' differs from the Paul of history, finds support from the treatment accorded by the Church to two other key figures Peter and John. Part of the reason for this partial representation, and indeed misrepresentation, may be that the real interests and dispositions of the Twelve as a group were profoundly inimical to the emphasis of the emergent Church, which, being unable to accommodate the perspective of the group, chose instead to modify the characters of a few of the group's members, creating personae which appeared to harmonize with, and indeed validate, the 'official' position. The modification of the 'real Peter' (into the 'Petrine persona' of the Church) involved, on the one hand, emphasizing certain things as true of Peter which were not true, and, on the other, understating, or even suppressing, essential and actual elements of Peter's character and achievements. The Roman Church has traditionally looked to Peter as the first head of the Church, basing its claim on Jesus' statement "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt.16.18). But this sentence was not part of the original Matthew-text: it belongs to what G.D. Kilpatrick, has termed "The Peculiar Narratives" of Matthew, added at a later stage. One is bound to ask, if Peter was the head of the Church in the earliest period, why James is so obviously in charge during the years up to 62, and why Peter defers to James as to a superior (Acts 12.17, Gal. 2.12). Quite apart from the question of his position vis-à-vis Peter, emphasized by the order "James, Cephas, and John" at Gal. 2.9, the primacy of James - with which canonical Matthew is in conflict - is clear from Acts 15.13, 21.18 and (as noted at an earlier stage) Gospel of Thomas Logion 12. And in due course, Hegesippus tells us, Zoker and James, the grandsons of Jesus' brother Judas, ruled the churches because they were relatives of the Lord. The basis of the dynastic claim of Jesus and his family is abundantly clear when, according to Hegesippus, Zoker and James are brought before the Emperor Domitian for interrogation: "There still survived of the Lord's family the grandsons of Jude ... These were informed against as being of David's line, and brought ... before Domitian ... Domitian asked them whether they were descended from David, and they admitted it" (my emphases). An alternative axis of power is thus in evidence. There was a fundamental conflict of interests between the leaders of the emergent Roman Church on the one hand, wishing to claim a primacy which was not theirs in origin, and the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, who had maintained their own continuity - the only valid continuity, in their eyes. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the early Roman Church should have tried to emphasize its links with, and its growth out of, the Church at Jerusalem. And the conflict between Rome and the dynastic heirs of the Davidic line was no short-lived matter, restricted to the first or early second centuries. As late as the year 318, a meeting took place in Rome between Pope Sylvester and eight leaders of the Church, who requested (l) that the confirmation by Rome of the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus and Alexandria be revoked; (2) that these bishoprics be conferred instead on members of their church; and (3) that the Roman authorities resume sending money to their church, which was the Mother Church. Not surprisingly, Pope Sylvester rejected these requests, stating that the Mother Church was now Rome. And the falsifying of the record of the real Peter also extends to the question of Peter's relationship with Paul. Professor J.V. Bartlet wrote in 1926: "Saul's relations with the Jerusalem community between his coming to Antioch and his final relinquishing of it as his headquarters about A.D. 50 (a period of some ten years) form a crucial point in his missionary life. The extreme Tübingen theory that Saul was now, and even later, in sharp conflict with the leaders in Judaea is a thing of the past". Whether this curt writing-off of the Tübingen school is justified must be doubtful, for Dr. Edwin Hatch observed that, as the First Epistle of Peter, is addressed to those in "countries in which St. Paul and his companions had been specially active ..., it becomes necessary to suppose the existence side by side in the same countries of two sets of communities, Pauline and Petrine, and further to suppose ... that Peter followed Paul upon his own ground". This is neither an absurd nor an improbable view, and, significantly, is not applicable solely to Antioch. Side by side with Paul's mission to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 1.12 suggests the possibility that Peter went to Corinth, as there was a party there which used his name ... Dionysius of Corinth (c.170) states that Peter was in Corinth'. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians finds its corollary in John's work in Ephesus, the Letter to the Philippians and Letters to the Thessaloniana in the missionary activity of Andrew, who also, as well as his brother Peter, visited Corinth; and although Colossae was not visited by Paul himself, but by his convert Epaphras, the area of Phrygia comprising Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae was the heartland of the activity of Philip. And the same kind of parallel is true even in the case of Rome. Professor Wilhelm Schneemelcher has described the Acts of Peter as a work at the beginning of which "Paul is already at work in Rome but Peter is still bound to Jerusalem"; and indeed Paul departs Rome for Spain before Peter's first arrival and preaching in the city. The belief that St. James had preached in Spain was certainly current before A.D.400. The possibility cannot be ruled out that this mission too originated as a response to Paul's Spanish visit. Even if one does not go all the way with Lipsius, who endeavoured to show ... that the whole tradition of the presence of Peter at Rome is a fiction which grew out of the Judaea-Christian attack upon Paul, it is nonetheless claimed by Porphyry that, contrary to the official Roman tradition, Peter was in Rome for only a short time before his death there. And Dr. Hatch has argued that Peter's late arrival in Rome is supported by the fact that "One stream of tradition, for the existence of which it is difficult to account if the other tradition [the Roman] had been uniform, represents Peter as having worked at Antioch, in Asia Minor, in Babylonia, and in the 'country of the barbarians' on the northern shores of the Black Sea. This is in harmony with the geographical details of the first of the two epistles which bear his name". It is difficult to dissent credibly from the likelihood that Pauline Christianity preceded Petrine Christianity not merely in Antioch, Corinth and Rome, but also everywhere else except Jerusalem and Judaea Samaria and Galilee. But if Western Christianity centred on Rome, had emerged in that formative period as a phenomenon devoid of any real link with the Twelve - which in fact it was - the fatal question might quite legitimately have been posed of it, "What is your link with Jesus himself and his immediate followers, the disciples?" The false 'Petrine persona' was part of the answer to that very real dilemma. It thus becomes credible that, for the same reasons, the real Paul, the historical Paul, has been forced into the shadows, and his place taken by a 'Pauline persona', who puts forward, in the canonical Pauline epistles, the 'developed' theology of the post-Pauline Roman Church. The possibility, indeed likelihood, of just this is clear from a comparison of the theological tendencies of the canonical Pauline Epistles on the one hand and the extra-canonical Acts of Paul on the other. Professor J.V. Bartlet in 1926 summed up the canonical Paul as "the first great Christian theologian". Extraordinarily, in the context of this, Professor Wilhelm Schneemelcher has observed of the extra-canonical Acts of Paul that "we do the author an injustice, and put the wrong questions to him, when we seek to extract a theological system from his work". Let us be in no doubt, no doubt at all, that it is the non-theological Paul, the social Paul, the liberal Paul, of extra-canonical Scripture who is the real Paul; and that, in parallel, the theological Paul, the institutional Paul, of the New Testament texts is an unreal and artificial Paul, a Paul who bears no meaningful likeness to his 'real' namesake. This is of fundamental importance to the relationship between Jesus and Paul, which I was examining in the last address in this series, on 5th July. For the Paul whom Jesus knew and trusted and inter-reacted with was "the non-theological Paul, the social Paul, the liberal Paul". That is a most important realisation and discovery, compared with the absurd notions of Paul the hard-linear and anti-feminist which are so much the staple of traditional comment and analysis. Amen. Dr. Martin Pulbrook |