Introduction

Dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly papers have been written on the subject of the differences in the ministry messages of Paul and Jesus.  Some gloss over the differences in their attempt to maintain a united Christian front.  But others use the differences to claim that Paul, not Jesus, is the real founder of Christianity and its “through grace by faith” message, and that this Christianity is unfaithful to Jesus’ authentic version.

The purpose of this note is not to reconcile these differences but rather to pay attention to the historical context into which they were each proclaimed.  In this way I think we can demonstrate the logic of their messages for their audiences, and therefore their continuity.

My secondary purpose is to use my arguments to refute those made by my friend Dr. James D. Tabor in his book “Paul and Jesus”, as those representative of scholars uninterested in what unified Paul and Jesus, but merely interested in parsing their respective words (and those of pertinent historical sources).  In this note, I hope to show how Dr. Tabor’s beliefs, theological biases, and training as a historian have negatively influenced the veracity of the conclusions he draws.

Jesus’ Historical Context

Everyone has heard of Jesus and has some awareness of what he preached in 1st-century Israel.  Jesus was a Jewish man, steeped in the history, traditions, scripture, and law (Torah) of His people.  Christians believe He was sent by God to not only redeem His countrymen back to their God but to enable even Gentiles to be reconciled to their God.  The vast majority of Jews have dismissed Him down through the centuries to this day as simply a Messianic pretender.  He didn’t reestablish the Davidic Kingdom; He didn’t free the Jews from Roman oppression.  Heck, He was even murdered!  Doesn’t sound much like a guy reestablishing God’s reign on earth forever. But most of them will agree that He was a faithful Jew and rabbi (teacher).

Jesus’ ministry to Israel was a call to repent (turn from the lives they had been leading) and believe Him as the Son of God sent by God to invite them to follow Him into what He called the Kingdom of God.

Those arguing for Jesus to be thought of as merely an obedient Jew and rabbi sometimes point out that this Kingdom He announced He never contrasted with the Torah.  Nor did He speak of replacing their covenant from Moses.  Rather, Jesus only described this Kingdom in parables. 

Its central idea was that God was inaugurating His Kingdom on earth (as it is in heaven) through the transformation of its people enabled by their faith that Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God, and the event of His death and resurrection, by which His followers would be equipped to, finally, be devoted to God and to the best interests of their neighbors in love.

It is also important to keep in mind that Jesus’ messages came nearly exclusively during His earthly ministry.  In other words, His cosmos-upending death and resurrection had not yet occurred.  It was only following His death and resurrection that His power was unleashed in creating the environment for humanity to live in faithfulness to God – as citizens of His Kingdom.

This single fact, I believe, creates the perceived schism between Jesus’ messages and themes during his lifetime, and Paul’s, after it.

Paul’s Ministry Context

Paul, on the other hand, too was a faithful Pharisaical Jew and, until his revelation on the road to Damascus, a zealous persecutor of those who had chosen to believe and follow Jesus – Who at that time was thought of as largely within the broad framework of the Jewish faith and its religious traditions.

Unlike the twelve apostles of Jesus who had lived with and learned from Him for three years during his ministry, Paul, as far as we know, never spoke with Jesus – never met Him.  Jesus was sent to Israel to (first and foremost) redeem Israel back to its God (Mt 10:5-6).  This was the message the twelve heard and repeated.  They were witnesses to Jesus’ miracles and, finally, to His resurrected manifestation.

Paul’s only credential for his ministry, in contrast to the twelve, was his face-to-face encounter with the risen Christ in which he was informed as to a) just who Jesus the Christ was, and b) what Christ was calling Paul to do for Him – bring His message to the Gentiles.

So here’s a guy in whom the traditions of the Torah were the bedrock of his life; whose dedication to Israel’s God as Israel’s God was “blameless”; and who, like all Jews, looked down on Gentiles as pagans.  Suddenly, he’s in the presence of the risen Christ (the followers of whom it had been his mission to persecute), given knowledge in this encounter in which he says he “heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor 12:4).

So here’s the first stake to drive firmly into the ground: Paul’s revelation (and its information) post-dated the earthly ministry of Jesus by something like four years.  According to Mat 28, Jesus in His post-resurrection body commanded His apostles to “make disciples of all nations”.  But, apparently, they didn’t take this commission to heart, as we have precious little evidence of their outreach beyond Jerusalem/Israel subsequent to this commission.  Instead, they took up the thankless job of trying to persuade Jews of Jesus’ Messiah-ship, which was largely rejected.

Initial Observations on the Contexts of Jesus and Paul

From this brief introduction, we can see clear differences in context:

• Jesus’ preaching occurred (primarily) while he was alive, as a man. And, while He mentioned on a few occasions that He was going to “go away” and subsequently provide a “helper” to His followers, He by no means fleshed out that arrangement in detail as to how it would affect the daily life of believers.  The twelve seemingly remained quite oblivious, despite the fact that it was the most important event in the history of humanity.  (In fairness, it remains opaque even in much of today’s church.)
• Paul had been forcibly conscripted into the service of God in his visionary revelation with Christ during his Damascus Road experience. This experience was unique among the Apostles.  And, the information communicated to Paul was, assumedly, unique among the Apostles (thus his use of the phrase “my gospel”).  Part of this information was apparently a complete presentation on the working of the Holy Spirit in those who chose to follow Christ, be they Jew, Greek, male, female, slave, or free.  This one piece of information completely revolutionized Paul’s former Pharisaic worldview.  We need to note that this perspective was never communicated (so far as we know) to the Twelve, nor professed by Jesus during His life.

Next, we see the message Paul was given to spread – that the “grace” of God was the sole source of our salvation, as sinners, from His judgment, and that one could be added to God’s family (justified) only by faith in the Christ (Gal 2:16). 

What, you might ask, do these ideas have to do with Jesus’ Kingdom of God (on earth as it is in heaven; Lk 17:20-21); His pattern and profession of total devotion to the “Law of Moses” (Mt 19:16-21); His concern for the meek and poor (Mt 5:3-5); His admonition to love God and our neighbors as ourselves (Mt 22:37-39) and, like John, His call to repentance (Mt 4:17)?  Great questions.

Let’s find out.

Charge: Jesus Taught The Kingdom of God; Paul Taught Justification by Grace

Scholars and historians seem bothered by the disconnect (in their view) between Jesus’ ministry of the Kingdom of God, while Paul features the Kingdom relatively infrequently in his epistles (17 references).  Why Paul’s relative lack of emphasis on Jesus’ Kingdom?

My contention is that Jesus’ message was talking about what the world would look like, and how its humanity would behave after the implementation of their faith in Christ that Paul preached.  The foundational change in man’s spiritual standing initiated by his faith in Christ was the gift of the Holy Spirit on and after Pentecost, which Jesus had profoundly, if only in passing, announced (Jn 14:26).

You see, the Kingdom of God, both in Jesus’ ministry and in Paul’s mind, was an earthly community – “on earth as it is in heaven” (for the present, at least) in which its inhabitants, through their faith in Christ, had been endowed with God’s Spirit (Acts 2:1-4) to enable them to live as God willed them to live – loving Him and loving their neighbors as themselves[i]. 

What Paul was charged to communicate was that if you want to be right with God in these two preeminent ways (loving God and your neighbor as yourself), you must place your faith – your trust, in Christ.  Your ability to do so is afforded you by God’s grace.  That’s Paul’s gospel[ii].  And, as controversial theologically as this was at the time, it was offered to all.

Think how blasphemous this message would have sounded to the pious Jews of Paul’s day.  The Jews were the ones chosen by God exclusively to be His people!  If Christ offered a new path into God’s will and family, it would be by being Jewish (as He was), either by birth or conversion, certainly NOT by being an idolatrous pagan. This was the source of much of Paul’s friction with the Jerusalem church.  They were apparently slower to take up this ecumenical message than was Paul following his face-to-face revelation of what he referred to in Eph 3:2-4 as “the mystery…made known to me by revelation”.

Charge: Jesus Kept the Law; Paul At Best Made it Optional: The Effectivity of the Law of Moses

A hallmark complaint of many critics of Paul’s ministry in contrast to Jesus’ is Jesus’ earthly commitment to the upholding of the Law of Moses, while Paul seems to dismiss the continued need for followers of Christ to adhere to it.  Actually what he says is that the law stands:  it is not overturned by “faith” but is to be “upheld” (Ro 3:31).

However, Paul does teach that after Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, that adherence to the Mosaic law is no longer the operative mechanism for identifying who is in God’s family (“justification”/”righteousness”).  Following Christ, that mechanism is faith in Christ.  This is Paul’s entire thrust in Rom 3.  He repeats this message with clarity here: Ro 10:4

[4] For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

In other words, attaining righteousness before YHWH is no longer effective by following the practices (of which most were ceremonial) specified in the Mosaic Law.  From Christ on, that mechanism is faith that Jesus is Lord — the King of the Kingdom of God.

One never reads Paul arguing to abolish or even just ignore the Law of Moses.  But when one studies the Torah/Pentateuch one quickly discovers that virtually all of its laws relating to Temple sacrifice were in support of one of two objectives: 1) cleansing the offeror from the effect of an offense, or a ritual uncleanness condition, or 2) cleansing the holy precincts of the Temple and its altar from uncleanness that may have polluted it due to the sin of those priests (or their families) administering their rituals.

Over against these priestly laws, we have Paul declare that one is declared justified before God when he puts his trust in and follows Jesus.  One is judged righteous if his sins have been blotted out.  So if the Christ-follower’s sins were blotted out/forgiven by God, then there remained no rational reason to continue to offer Hatta’at (sin/purification) or Olah (burnt) offerings to the priests, let alone the Yom Kippur ritual.  No wonder the priests wanted Paul dead!

Jesus said He wasn’t here to “abolish” the Law or the prophets but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17).  What does “fulfill” them mean?  The Greek word (4137. πληρόω pleróō; contracted plērṓ, fut. plērṓsō, from plḗrēs (4134), full. To make full, fill.) carries the derivative meaning of “to complete”, “perfect”.  In what sense did Jesus see Himself as “completing” the law and the prophets?

For one, He was one “born of a woman” (Ga 4:4), like all of us, who was, according to the testimony of Paul “without sin” (2 Cor 5:21).  This set Him apart from all other humans who had ever existed.  In Jewish metaphor, He was the “spotless lamb”.  It was this standing of sinless perfection that enabled Him to be sacrificed for the transgressions of His earthly brethren, cleansing them not as on Yom Kippur, for a single year, for unintentional transgressions, but permanently, for all transgressions. 

This was the sacrifice that cleansed humanity to allow it to be inhabited by God’s Spirit.  Had this sacrifice not occurred, it would have been out of the question for the Holy Spirit to reside within a human, defiled by his own sin.  (To understand the background of this point, one needs to understand something of Jewish Temple sacrifices.  As mentioned above, sacrifices were primarily intended to cleanse sin from God’s Tabernacle/Temple home, and from those that came near it/Him.  This piece sheds a little light on this subject.)

The fulfillment of the law (as a righteousness preservation system) and the prophets (i.e. their Messianic prophecies) was the presentation of the perfect sacrifice.

There are those today, either Jews or those sympathetic to classical Judaism, that protest that Paul abrogated the need to continue to follow the Law of Moses in the Hebrew Torah, and thus broke off from Jesus’ (and James’, the brother of Jesus, and leader of the Jerusalem church) admonitions to “keep” the Torah.  This position completely ignores the context of Paul’s ministry – informed by the risen Christ and directed to the Gentiles. If Israel’s Messiah had come and declared the advent of the Kingdom of God on Earth, what lunatic would advocate not changing anything in accordance with what He had taught?

Such myopic criticism simply ignores that Paul’s focus was on communicating to both Gentiles and Jews the apocalypse of Christ for all people, but particularly affecting the Jews.  If the world is no longer the same place as before Christ’s advent, if, indeed, the New Covenant has been inaugurated, it is an extremely weak and uninformed criticism of Paul to say that he didn’t want to keep things the same as they always had been.  Under the overwhelming circumstances, how could he act as if nothing had changed?  In fact, one of the ways we know Paul is telling the truth in his Epistles is that he so radically changed the cultural and religious landscape through his teachings.

Only a non-Christian believer could even offer such a criticism.

You may read the New Testament as you wish.  But I don’t believe you will find any post-resurrection words that admonish Christ’s followers to “keep the Torah”.  One who fails to accept the unprecedented magnitude of Christ’s resurrection, and instead pines for His endorsement of keeping Moses’ law, even for Gentiles, as was the historical case in Judaism for “God-fearers”, is simply oblivious to the completion of the Old Covenant and the inauguration of the New, prophesied by Moses (Dt. 30:6) and proclaimed by Christ.

Charge: Jesus Preached Repentance and Water Baptism – Paul Did Not

Jesus (8 times) or his disciples (1 time) mentioned the need to repent, in addition to the ministry of John the Baptist.  Paul in his epistles did not.

However Paul, in Acts 17:30, indeed proclaims that repentance is essential:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

It is worth taking note here that Paul’s epistles were written mainly to churches of believers that he had founded.  His epistles were not evangelistic messages to unbelievers, in need of repentance as were Jesus’.  As believers, his churches had already repented.  They were submitted to God’s calling.  They were members of God’s family.  There is a significant difference between counseling believers in Christ (even if “baby” believers), and those who have not even heard who He was or what He said.

As for water baptism, it is not true that Jesus, as John, preached that baptism by water was some kind of requirement for entry into God’s family.  He did, however, commission His disciples with: “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19), by which the reader can assume he’s talking about water baptism.  But the New Testament goes out of its way to record that a) Jesus Himself never performed water baptism, and b) Jesus was the one who would baptize His followers with the Holy Spirit (Jn 1:33).

In fact, in John’s testimony we find perhaps the clearest revelation of Jesus’ take on baptism in His conversation with the Pharisaical rabbi, Nicodemus (Jn 3:5-8):

[5] Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ [8] The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Charge: Jesus Ministered To the Poor and Meek; Paul Did Not

It is true that Jesus’ ministry was extremely attentive to the poor, meek, ill, and disabled; in short, to those forgotten in the two-tier culture of their day in which the “haves” of the elites may have tolerated, but did not take on the responsibility for redeeming, the “have nots”.

Jesus’ ministry is famous for preaching the inversion of this system in His Kingdom – where “many who are first shall be last, and the last first” (Mt. 19:30).  It seems He sensed more sincere hearts in the disadvantaged than their elite overlords (as can be seen in His parable of the rich young man – Mt 19:16-24).

Jesus wasn’t just making political statements about these forgotten (though He was doing that).  He is portrayed in the text as sincere in His care for and compassion toward them, as we see in this prayer (Mt 11:28-30)

[28] Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus was evangelizing.  Paul, on the other hand, while he did evangelize throughout Asia and Greece, and certainly among his captors in Caesarea and Rome, was predominantly concerned in his epistles with the spiritual well-being of those in the churches he had planted.  He was certainly no elite, at least having abandoned his business and Pharisaical position in Jerusalem.  He makes clear that he, himself was poor.

However, he was preeminently concerned with the poverty (perhaps brought on by drought) of the believers in the Jerusalem church and as the Bible portrays his role, nearly single-handedly raised the funds from his churches in Asia (and then delivered them) to sustain those in need in Jerusalem (Gal 2:10, 2 Cor 8–9).

So while it is fair to observe that Paul’s messages to his churches did not contain the special pleadings for the disadvantaged (other than the church in Jerusalem) while Jesus’ did, one must recognize that the material we have from Paul is virtually all directed at churches, who we can fairly assume had already been indoctrinated with how to practically implement mutual care and “love one’s neighbor as himself”.  (For example, the early churches in Acts were portrayed as sharing all of their resources in common, so that none were “poor”.)

Once again: Jesus and Paul had two very different audiences and circumstances.

Disputing the Critics

As mentioned earlier, in rereading Dr. Tabor’s “Paul and Jesus”, I came away with a profound conviction that scholarly critics of Paul and his ministry in contrast to Jesus’ may, in fact, be missing the forest for the trees.  Using Dr. Tabor’s book as an instance of this type of criticism I want to point out a few statements and conclusions he makes that, in my humble opinion, demonstrate a misunderstanding on the author’s part.

Before progressing, however, I feel I should point out that Dr. Tabor’s command of the history of varying views on concepts in both Jesus’ gospel and Paul’s writings, as well as his facility with extra-biblical sources, is very helpful in tracing the development of orthodoxy within the Christian church.

However, I conclude that you can’t act as a theological critic of Paul (or any other Christian figure) if you, yourself, are not authentically Christian — i.e. a follower of Christ.  And, Dr. Tabor makes no such claim.  As I understand his theology it is founded on Jewish principles but focuses on what could be summarized as the Noahic laws – the foundational moral principles embedded in the Torah and the Prophets which recur in the texts of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophetic texts, along with a heavy dose of humanism.  In other words, my understanding is that his faith is based on the moral bedrock that led to Judaism, not its priestly implementation in post-exilic Israel.

He does not accept Jesus as divine.  He does accept Him as a prophet who admonished humans to get along with each other.  He most certainly does not accept Paul and his claims and is careful to point out where, in his estimation, Paul is teaching contrary to traditional Judaism(!) (which he sees Christ preserving) and the earliest Christian practices which, he contends, preserved Jewish identity in James’ Jerusalem church.  That’s the critical backdrop.

This list is in no significant order but simply consists of criticisms of Christian orthodoxy in which Tabor finds a corruption of the beliefs and operation of the first church of James in Jerusalem.

Sacramental Practices

1. First Tabor claims (p133) that Paul claims that Christ manifested Himself as YHWH (Phl 2:6-7).

Actually, Paul doesn’t say Christ was YHWH in this passage.  He says He was in the form of 2316. Θεός Theós; gen. Theoú, masc. noun. God. Originally used by the heathen, but in the NT as the name of the true God.

Yes, the “true God” is YHWH.  But Theos was the Greek term for God, the divine being, not the specific name of the God of Israel.  If he would have said “the God” (instead of just “God”), then he would have meant the Father, YHWH.  The passage cited goes on to say that “Theos has highly exalted him (Christ) and bestowed on him the name that is above every name”.  So it is quite clear that the two are not being conflated here.

2. On page 135 Tabor commits, in my estimation, a critical error. Concluding another point he says that “rites of baptism and eating the Lord’s Supper were their means of uniting with Christ and being possessed by his Spirit.”

I simply don’t know of any Christian traditions that equate these practices with “being possessed by his Spirit”.  Maybe there are some.  But it is assuredly not mainstream Christianity.  The indwelling of the Spirit is a one-time outcome of the regeneration of the believer at his conversion.  So Paul and his churches were not sitting around thinking that if they just ingested wine at the Lord’s supper, they were ingesting God’s Spirit.  The communion offering, for all but the Catholic or Orthodox faiths (so far as I know), is a symbolic remembrance only of Christ’s sacrifice (as it is for these same traditions who also believe that consuming the elements unites them in Christ as His body).

3. On page 137 Tabor assaults baptism “in the name of Christ”, as an invention of Paul’s that contradicts John’s baptism.

Baptism, to John, was a public profession of repentance – that one was turning away from his old life (dying to it, submerging it as if buried) and arising to new life committed to following God.  “Christ” wasn’t even present yet in John’s day, and certainly had not yet demonstrated divinity through His resurrection.  So it would have been hard for him to baptize in the “name of Christ”.

Paul’s baptism, with the exception of the insertion of the “name of Christ” is identical to John’s.  (Remember, Paul’s testimony came only after Christ’s resurrection.  Christ to him was someone completely different than He was to John.)  The One offering this new life was Christ, following His resurrection.  The repentance (dying to self) was the same.

That theological minutiae such as this took time to circulate throughout the first century Near East shouldn’t be surprising, nor the basis for criticism.

4. Tabor presses the point on p139 that Paul’s version of baptism was something new and revolutionary and unlike John’s, which was, oh by the way, endorsed by Jesus. It should be mentioned that until Paul’s revelation, all there was regarding baptism’s significance and form was John’s.  In his revelation of Christ, Paul suddenly “gets” that everything about the redemption of humanity to God is now due to Christ.  So, if Christ is the eternal life-giver, it seems quite reasonable to acknowledge Him in being raised from the baptismal pool/river.  Paul had information the other Apostles, and certainly John, did not.  His information wasn’t his own invention.  After all, he was a “Hebrew among Hebrews” dedicated to the destruction of the Jesus movement.  He got his information from the risen Christ and passed it on to his churches and colleagues as circumstances allowed.

NOTE:  Throughout my review of Tabor’s book I was continually struck by the degree to which he focuses on mechanisms and procedures and the words used to describe them, (as if there were some secret handshake or communal password in 33 AD which Paul threw out in 48 AD) when the truth of the matter for Christians is that none of these procedures (e.g. baptism, communion, etc.) mean anything in the final analysis.  What matters is whether or not we have ceded total control of our lives to God through His Christ.  End of story.

5. On pages 147-148 Tabor quotes from the Didache re: the communion supper. He says (somewhat disingenuously, IMHO) that “This precise text provides us with clear evidence that early Christian communities were gathering together for a common thanksgiving meal called the Eucharist, blessing bread and wine, but with no connection whatsoever to the Pauline words associated with the Lord’s Supper that became the norm within Christianity.”  The Didache was written in maybe the 1st century AD (maybe the 2nd), by Jewish Christians as a development of an earlier Jewish catechetical work.  I leave it to you to judge whether this is “early” or not relative to Paul and whether it represents Christian or Jewish interests as it thanks God for the “knowledge you made known to us through Jesus your child”.  Notice, not that He offered them life.  But that he gave them knowledge.  Gnostics?
6. Tabor seems quite convinced that the identification of Christ’s blood and body with the Eucharist elements is Paul’s invention and contrary to other early traditions (see the previous Didache item). On p 155 he says this: “When he instructs the Corinthians about the way in which they must approach this sacred meal with awe and proper preparation, Paul observes that some of them, who have ‘disregarded’ (his translation) the ‘body of Christ’ have become ‘weak and ill, and some have died (1 Cor 11:30).  He means this quite literally….The implication is that if one properly participates in this sacred meal one will be preserved ‘body, soul, and spirit’ in sound health…” 

Paul doesn’t say anything like this.  What he is saying is if the participant treats the eating of the Eucharist in the same way as he treats his eating of any other meal (i.e. not διακρίνων it – not ‘setting it apart’ [v29]) then he should expect consequences from his irreverence, even concluding some illnesses in the church have been the result of such casual attitudes.  The passage has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of mystically consuming Christ’s body to preserve one’s health.

Social Issues

7. In his chapter 7 “Now and Not Yet”, Dr. Tabor does a good job of laying out the tensions within societal behaviors in the here and now, and, to Paul, the imminence of Christ’s return. However, he makes some mistakes in identifying these problems.

On p166, having laid out Paul’s special treatment of women (their hair length, dress code, speaking in church, etc. – 1 Cor 7) he concludes that Paul withheld access to God from women!  I have no idea where he gets such a conclusion.  Paul is exclusively talking to the Corinthians about the social roles of women within the church; NOT their standing as believing “saints” nor their ability to commune with God, members of Christ’s body as males were.  (Note: I have recently heard Dr. Tabor completely back off this opinion, siding instead with Paul’s simple desire to establish order in his churches before the impending end of the age.)

Theological Issues

8. On page 169, however, we get a more profound error. In a concluding statement of Paul’s various admonitions for how the saints were to behave in light of Christ’s immanent return, he says: “Marriages have their normal stresses, and people are being born as well as getting sick and dying.  In Paul’s ideal world of being in Christ, none of these things should be happening.  Men and women should already have transcended their physical, sexual lives.  No one should be getting sick or dying.  Sexual immorality should be no temptation whatsoever.  If Christ is in them, and they are in Christ, why should any realities of the old creation have any sway?  Why should there be any struggle ‘against the flesh’.  After all, the ‘outer nature’ is fading while the ‘inner nature’ is being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Paul is profoundly disappointed in his followers, whom he chastises for still living ‘according to the flesh’.”

(Please observe.  Tabor is making erroneous theological criticisms, not criticisms of a secular, academic historian.)

Tabor’s assertion is that Paul has been encouraging his followers to suspend some of their normal life activities because he believes Christ’s return is imminent.  He then mocks Paul’s encouragements to his saints for ‘right’ behavior but leaves it firmly within the context of it being due to the imminent return of Christ.

Here’s where we need to spend a moment on the working of the Holy Spirit within the follower of Christ (of which Tabor is apparently ignorant).  First, I think it worth noting that no one who has not had God’s Spirit take up residence within them can credibly critique the nature, or personal transformation, of that experience, and the dramatic transformation from world-focused to God-focused that occurs.  Only authentic Christ-followers can properly interpret how challenging admonitions to them would (or should) be interpreted.

Yes, Paul had a clock ticking in his head.  Therefore, he did not encourage marriage.  But marriage is not a sin.  Sexual immorality is.  Under any circumstances, Paul would have chastised those in the Corinthian church who were practicing this sin.  Why?  Because he will tell us in 1 Cor 10:

[13] No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

And he tells the Galatians:

[5:16] But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

(See also Ro 13:14, Eph 4:30, 1 Jn 3:9, Ro 6:2, etc.)

He’s describing the nominal condition of the Spirit-indwelt believer.  The thing that the non-Christian misinterprets is that admonitions by Jesus, James, Paul, Luke, etc. against sinning are all predicated on the assumed state of the Christian who, by definition, has been, and is currently being, regenerated by God’s indwelt Spirit.  In the Spirit’s power, avoiding sin is immanently doable.  Escaping sin naturally, in one’s own power, is unattainable.  But in the Spirit, these admonitions are immanently achievable.  Moreover, they are what the Christian wants to do, more than the sin.[iii]

Tabor is seemingly oblivious to the role of the Spirit in freeing the Christ-follower from a sentence of continual, assured sin.  But he is also oblivious that the life of the Christian is nevertheless subject to persistent temptations presented by his worldly surroundings. 

Tabor seems to think that the condition described by the literal phrase “in Christ” identifies a comprehensive and permanent “get-out-of-jail-free card”, and so he demeans Paul’s exhortations to his churches who, he reasons, are in that state.  This is the problem with secular historical criticism of authentic Christianity.  Such criticism comes up with uninformed statements like:

“If Christ is in them, and they are in Christ, why should any realities of the old creation have any sway?  Why should there be any struggle ‘against the flesh’.”

Wrapping up the subject of Paul’s instructions re: males and females in the church, Tabor chides Paul’s assertion that in Christ, “there is neither male nor female”.  Now, the only way I can reconcile his comment with Paul’s plain meaning is that he somehow has conflated a theological/spiritual statement – that all in Christ are indiscriminately His members, without regard to who they are, what gender they are, where they came from, or what tribe was theirs – with Paul’s practical counseling re: behavior of those in the church, both male and female.  It may be something like confusing a person’s status before God as justified with the fact that he is sitting in prison – supposedly far from God’s justification.  In other words, the two notions: Paul’s anti-human (according to Tabor) prescriptions, in contrast with their spiritual status, are simply different in kind.

9. Tabor seems to make the same error of conflation in criticizing “…neither slave nor free” (p171). Again, he mistakes a statement of spiritual status with people’s practical socioeconomic status. 
10. Finally, and I will wrap up with this[iv], Tabor demeans Paul’s whole concept of “now and not yet” when (on p 173) he says: “With God there is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. On the level of what he calls ‘the flesh’, such matters might seem important, but from the viewpoint of those ‘in Christ’, all such states of life are transcended by the new creation, which is already here – but has not yet arrived!”

To cut Tabor some slack, those in Christian scholarship who can concisely yet comprehensively explain the phenomenon of “now and not yet” are few and far between.  But, if one doesn’t understand it, I’m quite sure that isn’t justification to demean it and its reporter.  And, this book is full of such jibes and digs – again, from a non-Christian.

Conclusions

I hope we’ve succeeded in showing that the differences between Jesus’ ministry messages and Paul’s can be explained by a few important facts.  First, their ministry contexts were completely different.  Paul’s earliest writings post-date the resurrection of Jesus by about a decade.

Paul wrote to newly-minted Christian believers in the churches he had planted.  Jesus taught life-long Jews (and Samaritans) for whom His message was completely revolutionary and for whom the concept of being a “Christian” was unknown.

Second, in comparing the messages of the Gospel writers with Paul’s epistles, we find many theologically weighty messages in Paul not present in the gospel material.  Why is that?  Was this the “religion of Paul” as many assert?

No.  It was the gospel (“my gospel”) he was given during a face-to-face revelation from the risen Christ that he received during a trip to Damascus to persecute followers of the same Christ.

Christianity is not a simple faith, theologically.  It has some open questions being debated even after 2000 years of study and discussion among followers of Christ.  Someone who knows something about its history can, despite the study of its texts, come away completely confused simply because they are not Christian, and have not experienced the ongoing revelation of the Holy Spirit working within Christians.

James Tabor is a friend of mine.  He has tons of very interesting and informative material on his websites amassed during his forty-some years of scholarship and teaching (specializing in Ancient Near Eastern religions and Christian origins), much of which I find extremely valuable.  However, he seems unable to write objectively about Christianity – in the present case, the dissimilarities between Jesus’ ministry (really his brother James’ — a guy who had no reported regard for his brother’s message until after the resurrection) and Paul’s.  He, rather, has taken the position that if either of them disputes his beliefs, they’re subject to subjective criticism.  That’s not actually how scholarship works.

James D.G. (“Jimmy”) Dunn’s review of Tabor’s book (found here) does a far better job of efficiently zeroing in on its overriding “tendentiousness” than I ever could.

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[i] More on this here.

[ii] Modern Christianity has, in my view, completely misunderstood Paul’s messages in Romans and Galatians directed at his Jewish brethren.  There he makes the point that, following Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, God has implemented a new method of joining His family, and a new method for living — in the power of His Spirit.  Paul’s arguments in these books against the effectiveness of “works of the law” is not, as so many have been taught to interpret, his argument against working for your righteousness with God.  He’s telling Jews that from now on, simply participating faithfully in their cultural and sacrificial rituals (i.e. “works of the law” – activities mandated by the Law) – i.e. being Jewish – is no longer adequate to maintain membership in God’s family, as a child of God.  He argues that now faith in Christ is that way (using Abraham as his role model).

If you hold to the traditional view that Paul is teaching against “works righteousness”, reread Galatians 2:16 a few times.  There Paul is quite plain.

[iii] Standard Christian teaching says that despite the leading of the indwelt Spirit, the Christian may still on occasion “stumble” – i.e. do something out of character with his regenerated nature.  However, what Christians do NOT do is allow themselves to follow a pattern of sin.  To the Christian, sinning or not sinning is a choice.  It is NOT a natural compulsion over which they have no control.  In fairness to non-Christian critics, many Christians don’t have a solid understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

[iv] This list could go on for tens of pages.  But that’s not necessary.  I believe the point has been made. 1 John 4:2

[2] By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, [3] and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.