Foolish Galatians
TAPPED: ENOUGH OF ST. PAUL
Charles P. Pierce simply doesn't know what he's talking about. Paul of Tarsus did not write any of the "Pastoral Epistles" (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus). They were written many years after his time (probably in the second century) by people who considered him their founder but profoundly distorted his message in order to reinforce the status quo. In point of fact, what happened to Paul after his death is exactly what liberals often accuse Paul of doing to Jesus.
Consider Galatians 3, one of the greatest calls for human equality (within the Church, anyway) ever put on paper, especially verses 28-29:
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
In the Roman Empire, this is pretty radical. Now, Paul never advocated an end to slavery, something that in the Roman Empire was impossible to contemplate. (He clearly agonized over it, though -- read the genuine epistle Philemon.) This statement -- that slaves were at least morally equal to free men, and that women were morally equal to men -- is the most radical statement of equality in the Bible, if not in all of classical literature. Jesus never said anything like that, or if it was it wasn't recorded.
Get rid of St. Paul? Get rid of Plato, first, and the rest of the slave power that ran Greek and Roman antiquity.
posted by Mac @ 8/22/2006 04:27:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Thank you! I've been arguing this point all over the blogosphere since the story broke on the firing of the Sunday School teacher. Not only do biblical scholars say Paul didn't write the words used to ban the teacher, the person who did write them said "I", not "God".
Maybe not... But since Paul was closer to Jesus than any of the gospel authors (he wrote in the fifties, while Mark was written in the seventies) his interpretation is probably closer to Jesus' actual message than anything save perhaps the "Q" sayings. The pastoral epistles, for their part, are rather loathsome documents that should not be part of the canon -- many works that were rejected as "too late" are actually earlier.
What fundamentalists believe doesn't interest me.
I don't know how far away from Jesus' teachings Paul was, because I don't know how far to trust Acts. It was, after all, written by one of the Evangelists, and its source material (for the problems with James) seems to be largely the letters of Paul. "Luke" may even have been a member of the same party as wrote the Pastorals (if you accept a late date for Luke which I'm not convinced of). I don't see any great difference between Paul and the other authentically early material ("Q") beyond the natural changes from the shift in social class and region.
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